Kill The Lights

Slowly but surely, the sun rises and falls, rises and falls, and I don’t remember the last time I left my apartment, and I don’t remember the last time I ate, but the world continues to turn and I don’t care anymore. I’ve lost count of hours, of days, of weeks. Nothing matters.

There’s an intense pain in my head, in my stomach, throughout my entire body, and it hurts to breathe, it hurts to move. I’ve been lying in the same position in the hallway for who knows how long.

All I know is that it hurts to live.

My breathing’s ragged now, maybe it always has been, but I’m only just now noticing, only just now in a lucid state of mine. I can feel something tearing at my throat, like sandpaper, like a saw, like a firebrand, and my lungs are burning, burning, burning. I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe, and tears are leaking from my eyes, soaking into the ground, mixing with the inky blackness.

The same inky blackness that has coated my lungs, drowned my insides, seeped into my heart, it now flows across my floor. I can feel it, feel myself lying in a pool of it, feel it sticking to the threads of my hair, feel it slowly pulling me down.

I’m suddenly aware of a knocking, a banging, a hammering. It echoes inside my head, pounding against my skull, creating echoes of echoes. Quietly at first, then slowly intensifying in volume until I can’t stand it anymore.

The walls are reverberating, almost visibly shaking with the noise, and I can feel it rattling my bones.

For the first time in a long time, I just want it to stop. For the first time in I don’t know how long, I find myself slowly dragging myself to the door.

Though it hurts, though fire spreads through my limbs to make moving complete agony, I continue. I just want it to stop.

The hallway seems to stretch for my miles as I struggle to swim through the filthy oil that coats the floor. Every inch forward seems to drag me back two, and my lungs are burning, my throats burning, everything’s burning, but finally, finally I reach the door, clasp the handle in my clammy palm and pull myself up.

My legs are about to give up, I’m about to give up, but for once I refuse. I manage to pull the door open, leaning against the doorframe, barely standing, my fingers gripping the wood so tightly I’m bound to get splinters. And there in front of me is some guy, some guy I barely recognise, who’s yelling, screaming something about rent and money, and I don’t care.

I don’t care, I want to die, I want everything to stop.

I’m barely breathing now, the only oxygen I get coming in small gasps. My feet have gone numb, I can’t feel anything in the lower half of my body, and slowly, slowly, slowly, the edges of my vision begin to darken and distort until I can barely see. The inky filth is claiming my head, claiming everything, pulling me down.

I don’t even notice when I hit the floor.