The Hollow Jouney

Three people travel through a void, containing only them and a distant red light. The cold leeches at their strength, and memories of fire plague their thoughts.

I often find myself struggling to remember things. My life before we began this journey. The life I’ve now lost. When I do manage to catch one of these memories before it fades away, I cherish it. Spend eternities living and experiencing it, over and over. I drink in the emotion, the feeling, the fact that it’s something different from the constant emptiness. It’s bliss, a joy that I’ve forgotten, even when I immerse myself in the memories that are more pain than happiness. Memories of fear, of agony, of regret. By remembering what I’ve lost, I remember that I used to have something to lose; that there was something to drive me forward. A meaning to it at all. 

Now there is nothing to lose, and nothing to gain. 

I’m inhaling ice and exhaling memories. 

 

When I woke today, it was to see Westenra kneeling next to me. I was so used to waking up to the constant view of complete blackness, that at first I assumed this was simply another memory. But behind her red hair, I could still see the black nothing that constantly surrounded my reality, and it was clear I was awake. 

I remember no such blackness in my fading past. 

Seeing something sparkling on her face, I reached out, expecting ice. To my surprise, I found water clinging to my fingers after she flinched back. Touching it to my mouth, I tasted salt. Tears. I shivered. “What is it?” 

Instead of answering, Westenra stood and began pacing beside my prone form. Every few steps, she’d pause and look off at something to the side, then continue. She had never been one for talking. Groaning, I attempted to raise my head off the ground to see what was troubling her, but it was too heavy. I was too heavy. The cold weighed me down, and I felt tired. I’m always tired now. It must be something about this reality, how our old vitality seems to have drained away. 

But not Westenra’s. She still seems as vibrant as she did when she first brought us on this journey. The lone source of heat in this world. While Mors and I fade away, she shines pure. 

 

I don’t remember the beginning of our journey. How we arrived here. But I do remember our destination. Westenra told us it was salvation. I don’t know if that’s true or not. I’ve never thought of salvation as a place; but more as a state of being. I do know that we’re heading towards a light. In the infinite void, there is the red light, and there is us. ‘Us’ being me, Mors, and Westenra. Forgotten pilgrims on a voyage we don’t understand.  

Westenra may know, but she had never been one for talking. 

 

After a while of her pacing and my attempts to move, she spoke. “Mors is dead.” 

I stopped struggling against my apathy. “What?” I whispered. Mors had always been my rock. Practical, gruff, a strong moral compass. I didn’t understand how he could be dead. Yes, he had been struck by the same entropy as me, but it wasn’t lethal. Just tiring. “Dead?” 

Westenra nodded, and more tears fell and carved lacerations down her angular face. I found myself wanting to join her. I wanted to cry for losing my rock. My one tie to my old life. He had always been there with a piece of advice, a helping hand. My old neighbour.  

Dead. 

I didn’t know we could die in this void. 

I thought we could become lost for eternity. Traveling off into the nothing. But not die. We had come here to escape death. I remember that. We were supposed to be finding salvation. Safety. A haven. Sometimes I found myself thinking this was the haven, and that the light was simply an illusion to hold our focus. I had thought we had escaped death in our sphere of reality. 

I had thought we were beyond life and death. 

 

Our sphere was a simple thing. A lonely island lost in the black. The ground inside of it was simple dirt covered in flowers. Westenra told us that they were called amaranths. I don’t know whether that was true or not, as I don’t know much about flowers. In any case, they were pretty, just like their supposed name. 

In the center of our reality was a black marble pillar, about waist height, and wide enough to sit on comfortably. When we had arrived, we had found a plain ceramic chalice and an obsidian knife laying on it. 

We’ve never touched either of them. 

 

The city was burning. I remember that. I forget why it was burning, but it was. Huddled in a cold room, looking out through a small hole in the wall, I could see the fire slowly making its way towards me. Behind me crouched Mors, calmly trying to explain that we had to leave. We had to move. But I couldn’t. Wouldn’t. I don’t know which. Perhaps they were the same. But I simply crouched there, unable to hear Mors as he talked. 

I couldn’t hear anything. 

In hindsight, I was most likely in shock. Presented with a view so familiar, one that I had grown up with, suddenly with a single glaring difference. It was destroyed. In the process of being destroyed. On the edge of extinction. A city is one of those things you think is eternal. Buildings fall, buildings rise, but the city. . . the city would remain. 

Except it didn’t. 

The city disappeared, erased from the maps of the world, and it happened in front of my eyes. Yes, I was probably in shock. For good reason. 

 

Memories of the journey are clearer. Clearer than my old life. Though I do wonder if perhaps they too shall eventually disappear, leaving me drifting in nothing. I need an anchor. Without one, I am nothing. A shell. I am defined by my past, not by my present. We all are. The present is temporary and ever changing. The past is solid, and set in stone. When we think of ourselves, who we are, we remember joy, misery, love gained and love lost. All in the past. Gone, sifted through our fingers. Yet we catch it. We cherish it, because without it, we are empty paintings hanging on a wall. 

 No depth. No colour. No meaning. 

 

Somehow I managed to drag my body over to Mors’s. It was only a journey of ten or eleven steps, but I felt as though I had scaled a mountain. My breath was short, my heartbeat erratic. 

My muscles would burn, if not for the cold. 

My limbs would shake, if not for the entropy. 

In truth, I never would have been able capable of making the trip in my previous state. My current state. But I had to see. I had to know what form death took in a reality beyond death. 

In my reality, death left no marks. Mors’s body lay still, peaceful, as if he was simply giving way to the ice. A temporary arrangement. With his arms cushioning his head and legs stretched out behind him, he lay there. 

Westenra came up behind me, shaking. I looked to her. “Why is he facedown?” I asked. He needed to be turned over. He needed to face the world. He needed to be calm and stoic in the face of death. He needed to be turned over. But Westenra shook her head and took a step back. I repeated my question. She went to take another step back, then froze, her eyes locked onto the back of Mors’s head. 

With a visible effort of will she took a single step forward, the first of many, and grabbed Mors under the arms.  

When Mors’s corpse was turned over, a single moth flew from his open mouth. Westenra screamed and stumbled backwards. I didn’t have the energy. 

I was tired. 

The moth, frightened by Westenra’s shuddering, flew towards my still form and rested upon my shoulder. That moth had surely been carrying the entire weight of Mors’s lost memories, for abruptly my legs no longer supported me and I fell to the ground. 

 

I woke to Westenra’s attempts to coax my mouth open. I didn’t resist. Couldn’t. When she had managed to open it, she proceeded to lift my head and hold something to my frozen lips. 

Suddenly my mouth was burning. Spewing fire. Molten metal had found its way into me and was carving itself new paths in and out of my body. 

It was torment. 

It was ecstasy. 

I found myself savouring every drop. Every ember that forced its way inside me was caught and cherished. The sensation of warmth had been lost to me for so long that its return made me feel as though I was discovering a whole new sense, unknown to humanity. Heat. Fire. Life. All of them rushed through my veins and banished the ice that had settled deep within my marrow. Once more my body was mine to control. The shortness of breath that had plagued me was gone. 

My muscles burned. 

My limbs shook. 

I was healed. 

 

It wasn’t long before I couldn’t see the city anymore. Everything had been tainted red. Everything had been tainted black. The walls around me had begun to char and shrivel away. Wall paper had curled and timbers had crumbled. 

Fire rushed through my peephole. 

There was no hand on my shoulder. 

Mors had moved off, realizing it was too late to leave. To escape. To live. The fire had finished its journey and was hungry for its prize. Hungry for fuel. Hungry for existence. Only by devouring the world could it continue, and all things wish to last forever. It was the embodiment of greed, this fire, willing to destroy everything for another ten minutes of being. 

Another ten seconds. 

Less. 

It wanted to live, and only then did I realize so did I. 

 

In my mind, I lay down, Mors beside me, and watched nothing speed past. Stay still. Disappear. How could we move through nothing? Exist in nothing? How could the light shine and taunt in a world without space? Perhaps we weren’t travelling towards salvation, but through our perception of it. 

After all, salvation wasn’t a place.  

It was a state of being. 

In my memories, Mors began to snore. He had started feeling tired more often. I sympathized. I thought it might have been a result of our apathy. There wasn’t much to do on our small island of flowers. Nothing besides waking and remembering. 

We had talked of such memories, of the lives we had lived. Talked of the numerous times our paths had crossed, and laughed at the differences between our telling.  

I remember. 

I forget. 

I continue to swallow. 

 

The drink was all too quickly finished, and I breathed a sigh of fire. If I could have continued for eternity, I would have been satisfied. But the chalice was empty, and I was left without. I brushed Westenra off, who was still supporting my head, and rolled over onto my hands and knees. When I wiped at my mouth, my hand came away red. 

Desperate, I licked at the remnants, so as to not waste a drop. 

I looked up to Westenra to ask where the drink had come from. But around her arm was wrapped a simple white cloth, on which a single red dot, the first of many, began to appear. 

I looked away. 

A chill sent shivers down my body. 

 

Eventually Mors and I had realized that there had been someone else in the room with us. Whether she had been with us the whole time, or had somehow entered despite the fire had been unknown. What we had known was that it didn’t matter. The fire was still outside, and all that had changed was that we would be three instead of two when we burned. 

The woman, the third prisoner, had been tall. Angular. Her hair had been red, or perhaps everything had been tainted red. I can’t remember. She seemed calm. Not the calm I felt, born of shock. Not empty. Not the calm Mors felt, born of need. Not hidden. She had been truly calm. To her, the fire didn’t exist. Didn’t matter. She ignored it, and simply stood to the side.  

 

My newfound energy demanded action. Demanded that I take advantage of it. Use it. Embrace it. But in a world such as ours, there is very little to do. Sleep. Think. Remember. All things that I had long since done enough of. I was tired of remembering. Tired of becoming lost in my own mind. Tired of waiting for some unknown goal. 

I was awake. 

I was tired. 

No more. 

Fire had replaced my insufficient blood. My weakened blood. For the second time, Westenra had saved me, and I meant to repay her in some kind. Delight her. Reward her. I needed to change something. Reflect myself upon our world. 

But there was nothing to change. 

Nothing to clean. Nothing to improve. Nothing to remove. 

Nothing that wasn’t required. Important. 

Nothing except Mors. 

Rotting, emancipated, silent Mors. 

A constant reminder of our past mortality. Our possible mortality. A blight on our world, one that needed to be cleaned. One that I would clean. For our peace of mind.  

I had to remove the taint. 

Moving over to his body, I stared. His form was thinner, but no rotting marred his features. His face was still, but no tightness twisted his expression. His clothes were threadbare, but no decay ruined them. Moths, in the count of a near dozen, surrounded his body, fluttering and shuddering away. They were perfectly white, these moths. The size of my hand, they left faint traces of powder on everything they touched. 

Grabbing his cadaver under the arms, I began to pull, but the body refused to move. The stubbornness and stability of Mors had carried on beyond death, in an attempt to hinder my actions. Setting my teeth into a snarl, I pulled harder. The body had to be removed. The taint gone. My world pure. 

Still the body refused to move. 

Still I pulled harder. 

Then, in the end, something gave. 

I fell backwards, my head hanging out over the void, the corpse on top of me. Part of the corpse on top of me. Everything below the chest had remained behind, and from the cavity poured white. Moths took to the air, in such numbers that their powder began to coat the world. Turn it blank. 

Turn it pure. 

 As the moths tumbled forth from the two halves, the corpse seemed to grow lighter. More ethereal. Until eventually, it crumbled away. 

Turned into the powder that had rested within. 

Yet something remained. 

Resting in my hands, clasped to my chest, lay a stone heart. Rough. Grey. Heavy. Scarred only by a single crack. A thin veil of frost coated the surface. Frightened, I threw it away before it could cool my hands. Before it returned the ice to my world. 

The moths followed the stone, and in their departure, revealed Westenra. Her eyes were wide, stance rigid. As I pulled myself away from the edge and climbed to my feet, I saw that her hands shook. Quiet and unobtrusive was this shaking, but still they shook. Fluttered and shuddered away. As I found my feet, she took a step back. 

She was frightened. 

She was enraged. 

She was horrified. 

I had broken some law, destroyed some unwritten rule. Or perhaps the rules were written, secure in their permanence, but keep in confidence. Keep from me. For it seemed I had unknowingly blasphemed, and that my attempt at showing gratitude had turned to rot. 

 

At some point in our journey, before the entropy had set in, the three of us had entertained a more physical relationship. It had not been born of love, but of excitement. Relief. Relief that we had cheated death. While later on the affair had simply been a way to relieve the monotonous cycle of waking and remembering, at the first it had reminded us that we were, in fact, alive. That we had escaped death. 

That we were beyond life and death. 

 

Time wore on, and the moths eventually settled to the ground around the stone. Some, or even many, it seemed had simply disappeared. Perhaps they had ventured too far from my world, and had become one with the nothing. Had become void. No longer a figure or quantity in the fabric of reality. No longer, that is, except for the powder they left behind. A powder that continued to float through the air, and continued to smother the amaranths. 

Around the stone heart, the faint sparkle of ice could be seen. I desired nothing more than to remove the stone and its taint from my world. I feared nothing more than to approach its cold radiance. So I remained on the edges, removed from the rest, legs dangling over the edge. Over the boundaries of the world. No longer on the map. 

On the far side, I could sometimes see Westenra pacing. Staring off into the void. Activities that had been common for her since the beginning, but that now held a grimmer connotation. Now done with a certain rigidness that had not been there before. A certain detachment. 

We had become detached, and already I could feel myself fading. 

I needed to drink. 

Shaking, I climbed to my feet. Unsteady, I traced the edge of our world, making my way towards Westenra. Ahead, I saw her move away. Leave me. I walked faster, and she reciprocated. 

I had made a mistake. I had done wrong. But I had done so for good reason. I had done so with good intentions. I wasn’t told the rules, I wasn’t made aware of any boundaries. I couldn’t be blamed for an honest mistake. I shouldn’t. What had earned her the right to decide what was and wasn’t allowed? How I should be punished? It wasn’t her decision. This was my world as much as hers. My life more than hers. 

I wanted to live. 

Turning towards the ice, I passed through the center of my world and cut Westenra off. She paused for a second, and then turned to head the other direction. Grabbing her, I kept her in place. I could feel the heat radiating off her skin, serving only to underscore how far I had fallen. When she tried to pull away, my grip tightened. 

Tongue licked pale lips. “I need-” A cough racked my body. How weak was I? Had I truly been so distracted as to not notice my descent? I tried again. “I need to drink.” 

She shook her head, face tight. 

With the b*****d offspring of a snarl and a sob, I drew her in. “I need- it was- I need-” My thoughts were tumbling, lost, scattered. It was happening too fast. I was falling behind. “A mistake. I need to drink.” 

She shook her head, and I screamed. 

 

“I can help.” The third woman, the third prisoner, had said. The sounds of destruction and collapse could be heard from other parts in the building, and I had been panicking. The realization of my desire to live had trapped me in a cage of my own devising. What a cruel twist of fate, it had been, to only desire life when it was seconds away from being torn from me. 

“I can help.” The words had been repeated, the statement piercing through the smoke. She offered salvation. She offered safety. She offered existence, and I leapt on the chance. 

The idea that she would save me had grabbed my desperate heart, and had controlled my every thought. 

 

Dragging her behind me, I shook my head. I couldn’t let myself become lost in the past. Not again, never again. I needed freedom, I needed now, I needed to drink. Heedless of the cold, I passed the stone on my path to the center. Westenra’s struggles doubled. Ahead of me rested the pillar, chalice and knife resting atop its marble crown. 

I needed to drink. 

The thought circled through my mind, and I coaxed it along. I needed the drive and simplicity it brought. I needed it to drown out the echoes of my past. I needed it to drown out myself. With shaking hands I released Westenra in order to grab the knife and chalice. 

A mistake. 

I suddenly found myself knocked to the ground by her angular form, a knee digging into the small of my back. Hands grappled for the knife, and amaranths sought to drag me under. The world, my world, was attacking me. Drowning me and freezing me. 

And I wanted to live. 

With a desperate surge of strength and a muffled shout, I twisted around, slashing wildly with the knife. Something caught, and then gave. A spray of red blinded me, and everything froze. 

Everything burned. 

The blood soaked into my eyes, my skin, my body, and once more banished the cold. Once more I was whole, powerful, alive. Within seconds every last shard of ice, every last crystal, was banished, and fire born in the gaps. My mind cleared, my muscles burned, and my limbs shook. 

The past was shoved aside. 

And still the blood came. 

Opening my eyes, I saw Westenra atop me, eyes wide, body still. Her hands fluttered and shuddered their way upwards, reaching for the red laceration that marred her neck. Her life, her necessary life poured forth, and fell wasted to the ground. 

I had killed her. 

And in doing do, I had killed myself. 

Soon the river became a stream, and then a trickle, and then stopped. Westenra’s eyes faded, and her hands stopped their flight. With a final breathe of ice, she toppled to the side. I was alone. Alone with myself, the moths, and my thoughts. 

 

It did not take long for the cold to return. For the ice of the stone to regain the ground it had lost. For the powder upturned by my struggle to fall one more. For reality to reassert itself, and wipe out the evidence. Once more my mind wandered, will faded, and body faded. 

Yet I found hope. 

The red light was stronger and brighter than ever before. For the first time it was obvious that my world was travelling to a true destination, as opposed to simply becoming lost in the void. Everything I saw was becoming tainted with red, and gave the appearance of warmth. And that appearance was enough to drive me forward. I sat perched on the edge, my back to the ice and death. I was leaving it behind, ignoring it. My future, my salvation, lay ahead, and I would not stray from it. 

And so it was, thin and weak on the edge, facing the light, that I saw the first candle. 

 

I often thought of memories over the course of my journey. Of their meaning, their resilience, their weakness. How they changed us. Made us. And that while memories may define us, they are soft things. Easily bent and molded by the gentle urgings of our perception.  

If the past survives through our recollection of it, then it surely must be a wild, multifaceted thing. The shadows and rays cast by candlelight through a prism. Each candle a soul, each prism a choice. Eternally scattering, flickering, reflecting.  

We talk of the future as having infinite faces, but I believe the past is more varied still. 

 

The candle merely floated past, a small island of red flame and dripping wax in an ocean of red light. To tell whether the candle was moving or the island was impossible, but I was tempted to believe the former. I was tempted to believe that these candles were what made up the red light. That this was the herald of my destination. To the end of the journey. 

It felt right. 

The red flame burned. 

 

I blinked, and the candles numbered in the dozens. I had fallen asleep, and now I found myself laying on the edge, mere inches from falling off. 

With a small cry, I rolled away. As I did, I could feel ice crack and shatter. While I had slept, it had crept upon me, and embraced me. I shivered. I was falling too fast, fading too quickly. I needed to drink. I needed fire 

But the drink was gone. The fire was gone. I had killed it, spilled it, wasted it. There was nothing left. 

I froze. 

I hadn’t checked. I had ran, turned my back, and I hadn’t checked. Something could remain, something could still save me. I could still be saved. 

With a surge of hope, I rose to my hands and knees, and began to crawl. My head too heavy to lift, I blindly forged ahead towards the center. Shards of ice cut my hands and slowed my blood. With each inch forward, another splash of grey blood remained behind, crystallizing in seconds. 

Within minutes, within hours, I arrived. The pillar loomed above me, embracing and hoarding the red that struck it, returning nothing. A devouring black that left only shadows for the world. Around it, the once purple flowers had taken on a red hue. Tainted from the blood. Tainted from the light. Looking from side to side, I saw nothing. 

Not at first. 

But there was something different. Something new. A lump of earth and clay resting where previously there had only been flat ground and flowers. It was in the shape of a woman. 

Weeping with joy, I crawled the last few feet and fell atop the clay. Something had remained. I could be saved. There was still time. I began stuffing handfuls of the brown remains into my mouth, with little time wasted on the chewing. A trace of her life had to remain. A trace was all I needed. My throat became thick, as the clay began to coat the inside and become stuck. Still I ate, still I devoured. I would do anything for another ten minutes of existence. 

Ten seconds. 

Less. 

The tears froze into ice. 

 

The ice melted into tears. 

Candles flooded the air, a sea of red light and heat. Heat infused my body, heat drowned the ice, heat embraced my world. The moths that had been so still took once more to the air, and their powder lit trails of sparks across my vision. 

I had made it. 

The red light was everywhere, there was no escaping it. No shadows, no crevices, nowhere for the ice to hide. The candles blocked out the blackness beyond. I felt warmer, more alive, than ever before. More so than before this journey. More so than after my first drink. I was more than myself, stronger than myself. 

Stronger than death. 

I had done it. I had escaped death. Where Mors and even Westenra had failed, I had succeeded. I would live forever. I would last forever. I would exist forever. 

The candles continued to thicken, as did the heat. They began colliding with me, blinding me, burning me. And then they broke. Ahead of me was solid light. No candles cast it. No candles approached it. They kept their distance, and left my reality alone to confront it. 

It was salvation. 

It was more than a state of being; it was a place. 

And I was there. 

The ice turned to water, the water to steam. Joyful, I shed myself of the numerous layers of cloth that I wore and climbed to my feet. I let the light, the heat, rush over me and purify me. The grey cuts on my hand from the crawl began to weep, and the blood that emerged was red. A beautiful, perfect red. 

Then the front edge of my reality hit the solid light. A blast of hot air made me stumble, and the flowers came alight. They burned, and charred, and disappeared as the red light washed over them. My world was being destroyed, cleansed until nothing remained. 

I screamed. 

I burned.  

Erased from the maps of the world. 

 

The woman, the third, the savior, had held out her hand. I wanted to live, and she could save me. And in that moment, I had worshipped her. As the walls fell apart and the fire made its way inside, I took her hand. 

“What are you doing?” Mors seemed frightened. He was too stable to believe. To believe that death was not inevitable. I held out my hand to him, a smile on my face. 

“We don’t have to die,” I said, and he took my hand. Together we looked to the woman. To the side, a section of the floor fell away, and a pillar of fire burst forth and shattered across the ceiling. The woman smiled. 

“I am Westenra,” she said, and opened the door. 

The fire rushed through and claimed its prize.

Author's Note

Technically wrote this about a year ago, but had lost the file until some recent digging.