Abyss

There’s a place to the East that once was, but now never is. I go there, sometimes, when the weight of it all becomes too much to bear. That’s where you found me, teetering at the edge of the possibility of everything.

There is a place outside of town as endless as time. I had heard tales for as long as I remembered about why and when and what it was, but they were all just tales. I went there once, to see the abyss, and found a girl walking the precipice of nothingness.

You looked confused, as if I’d interrupted you and not the inverse. You stood by the trees, shadowed by their reaching arms. I didn’t mind though. I smiled. Company can be nice. Especially today.

I was somehow hurt, offended that someone could steal this moment from me. I hesitated at the edge of the clearing, feeling the canopy press down on me. She smiled, but I did not. I had not wanted company. Not today.

I shifted to the side with my arms raised for balance, making room for you at the edge. My silence was an invitation. We could look at impossibility together.

She wandered lazily along the border, not watching where she placed her feet, arms held aloft. I felt that I should do something, say something to stop her.

But you didn’t.

But I did not.

“I wonder how far down it is.”

“Farther than we can drop a stone.”

I sat down, swinging my feet through the cloudy darkness. The rock was rough beneath my palms. I brushed the sand off of them, watching it trickle away. It made a sound like coral when it slipped into the abyss.

She lowered her body until she sat with her legs over the edge. My breath caught. The nothingness called in a voice of midnight. I willed myself to leave, to go back to town and work and forget this place that never is.

You sat next to me.

I sat next to her.

“I don’t like staying at home.”

“I don’t know where home is anymore.”

I looked at your combed hair and fitted suit and clipped productivity and I smiled. Of course it was you. It could never have been anyone else. You embodied this place.

She looked at me with eyes as hollow as bone and smiled like the ocean. It no longer surprised me that you would be here when I was. You embodied this place.

“The world is filled with oozing grey. Maybe it had colours, once, but not for a long time now.”

“One day I woke up and realised that I no longer had fun. I do not know when. Perhaps this morning.”

I looked up at the bleeding moon and laughed, my legs slowly going numb. A rumble had started in the back of my skull, an aircraft or power tool.

I looked up at the cracked sky as she laughed, the colour leeching from my clothes. A crackle had started in the back of my skull, cellophane or lightning.

“Do you feel like letting go?”

“Do you?”

The rumble increased as I stood up, drawing my legs from the hungry pull of inevitability.

My clothes were white by the time I stood beside her, crackling with the static of the past.

You looked at me like you had known me your whole life, like waking next to your blood sister from a spontaneous nightmare of mundanity.

She looked at me like it was the millionth time, as familiar as her own skin laid out on the grey rock on which we stood.

“Walk with me to the end?”

We moved our feet, your left and her right, joined at the shin by the eternity that never was. For a single moment, we stood taller than all sentience.

There’s a place to the east of town that has never been. We had gone there for as long as we remembered, when the tales became too much to bear. That’s where we found each other, on the precipice of potential. We stared into the abyss, the void perfectly reflecting the world above, wondering how far down it was. Then we let go.

Bit of a weird one, this time. I haven't really played with the actual format of a snippet before, it's usually just the descriptions within it. I tried to use the spacing of the paragraphs to reflect the characters' relationship and it's not hugely clear but for a first attempt I'm pretty happy with it.