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From: Mr. Nothing
Date: 09 Dec 1999
Time: 13:47:12
There is a longing, and a sojourn my body is too tired to take... Once he had been a man who loved, a man who filled those around him with ideals and visions shielded by an aegis of human morality that would live forever. It was unfortunate that these beliefs would discover a death that he hid deep within his own heart, away from prying eyes because he was an alienist. For his entire life, he hid the rotting, which was only sped by the tragedies and depressions life inflicts on people. There came a time when he fell in love with the most beautiful woman, one of compassion and understanding, a woman who could deal with his quirks, and the lack of faith a scared man is filled with when he is frightened. She wove a blanket of security around him, one to shelter him from a world that he sought to discover, but one he could never handle.
Indeed, she had taken a glimpse at the decaying of his essence; she had hoped to revive it. In due time, it would happen, and the years he had spent with her were the happiest of his life, for he was no longer just an alienist. However, destiny or just pure chance stood in his way. His love was killed.
For a time he tried to drown himself in his sorrow, but he had not realized how long he could hold his breath within the pool of agony. For a time, he had tried to dull the pain by throwing himself into his work, but working in the field of death and psychology sharpened his guilt. When night came, though, he would be glad, for he would fall into his bed, only to awake the next morning dreamless.
The rot had spread even further, and soon enough he was ready to put his heart out of it’s misery, for it was too much infected with the suffering of the past. That was the day he had given up his mortal existence, and he sailed away to another realm. There were passions though that kept him from attaining peace, and he became one like us all, a drifting spirit, one flowing on the winds of it’s desires. He became a Wraith.
Nothing heals in the shadowlands. Nothing is ever accomplished. Your existence here is an incomplete reality, an unlife where you dwell in a state of purpose that can never be fulfilled. In a way, answers become questions, the image of the self distorted, and what you once knew is now an unsolvable enigma. If he had known this, maybe he would have given up more quickly than he did when he was alive, for this world is much the same as our past, except here the emotions and desires are only heightened. He did not though.
The scholars of this world say you are reaped, and given clarity, a purpose in this new world, a clarity you have only dreamt of in the past. He was reaped by a kindly priest, tutored in the ways of light, converted by lies, and became an acolyte. Just as he had before, he thought himself to be serving the citizens of the shadows. Maybe he was...
Years would pass, and his name and image would be altered, along with his very identity. The kindly priest had moved on, leaving him with only a whisper of his teachings, a trinket of knowledge to satisfy this devout soldier. In all honesty, the only thing that he knew was real were his passions, not to mention the rot that never died in his death, but grew only stronger. But these passions kept him going, and he was filled with the hypocracy that wise men love to influence the young with, and he now had Oblivion to fear, if there was any truth to what they said.
In time, despite what he promised, he found his own student to brainwash. By this time he had become well known; he was a figure both fear and revered. He took to his student like a father would a daughter, and she was the daughter he never had. Again, like in his life, he filled her with ideals that could never be destroyed, for they were so perfect for those who wished to believe. With him, he was never a believer, though. Again, the rot would win, and he would fall away into the storm, to not seek redemption, but the bliss that everlasting pain could inflict on him, a punishment for his sins. The tempest.
The tempest had swallowed him whole, just as death had, taking all that he had ever possessed and ripping it from his body, from his soul, and battering his spirit incessantly with cresting waves of dark passions; the gales tore through his will and sanity just the same, and on the winds he ascended to the heights of heaven, only to descend damned. His broken wings spread to embrace the tribulation. It was a nugatory attempt to accept his fate, the domination of his will, and the shattering of his dreams, those of which drifted about in the currents of the storm, like shards of glass, that when looked into, revealed only distorted images of himself. At times he would in vain, reach out to try piece these dreams together, only to cut his hands on barbed memories. On other attempts, his grasp would slip from the jaded surface of a reverie.
When an eternity had slowly faded, he still drifted, a shaft of wood floating upon the turbulent, chaotic sea of the unconscious strife, and his rag doll corpse would rise and fall to the orchestrations of a silent, sleeping rage. His eyes were two gaping sores, bleeding apathy from having seen the madness and terror of Oblivion. Bloated with a loneliness that only comes from having been soaked by the experiences of an everlasting isolation, he had only known the nightmares that played out in a mind to weak to fight back.
Through a miracle, the only one he had ever believed in, he was cast from the tempest, his punishment erected. There was a longing, and a sojourn his body was too tired to take...