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Time is funny where you are.
You are here. You have always been here.
You have been dead and born and dead and born again. You will never die. Seasons pass by and fruits fall and rot and you wonder if you have become a tree, your roots planted in the soil, everything circular and unmoving. Everything goes back to what it once was. Except for you. You’re stuck here.
You will never leave. You’ve never left. You’ve only ever existed when you were inside of It.
Wait.
That’s not right.
There’s something - there at the edge of your consciousness - at the point where you and It and you and It and you and It melt together and you are One - that’s not right .
You used to be alone. And then you weren’t alone anymore. Not un-alone like you are now, because when you are It and It is you, you are never alone, but you had. People. They loved you, you think. And you loved them, that, you know. You grab your certainty with both hands and you hang on tightly, tightly as you feel the blossoms turn into fruit, the fruit rot, the leaves falling, the Dead coming back to life and the Living slowly dying – everything is always dying. As you watch it all crumble and reconstruct itself. You latch onto it, because if you were loved, and if you loved, that makes you a person. You’d rather be a person than a shadow, a ghost, a glitch in the periphery of a vision. Blink and you’ll miss it.
***
Your name is Kat. On the good days, you can remember it. On the bad days, you call yourself the Abyss.
The Abyss is hungry. It wants. You think maybe this is why you felt such a kinship with It, and why It took you, or you took It. You’ve wanted. You’ve felt angry, and trapped, and once you could, you fought back. You took and took and took and maybe the Man with the Teeth was right to call you selfish, but does it make you selfish if you wanted only what was yours to truly claim ? Does it make you selfish if you only wanted yourself back ?
It’s done anyway. You can’t undo it. He will never hurt anyone ever again. Your sister is safe. The ones you love are untouched by his unworthy hands. You don’t regret it. You would do it again, and you do. Again and again and again.
It feels lonely, down here.
Down is the wrong term. Space is funny, here, too. No ups or down, no left or right. Sometimes it feels like you’re floating above everything, like you can see beyond the trees of the forest, like a bird. Like a raven, maybe. Bringer of death, prophecy and poetry. Fitting.
Mostly you feel like you’re just beside everything. Like you’ve taken a sheet of tracing paper, and dragged it just slightly to the side. The same, but also different.
***
When you were a child, when nothing could touch you, when the Abyss was nothing but a distant dream you couldn’t even fathom ( but you felt it, didn’t you ? wasn’t there a small part of you that has always known ? ), you had a rabbit. Your sister had worked her magic, one of the last times it had ever been in your favor, and convinced your parents to get you one.
You remember feeling the pulse of its beating heart, and looking up to Dylan, terrified your rabbit was dying : it’s beating too fast . And then, smaller, ashamed. Is it scared of me ?
You wonder what happened to it. You can’t remember. You can’t remember most things.
Some days - days don’t mean anything here - sometimes - time doesn’t work right - you call for her. Your sister. You call her name, and when you can’t remember her name you just scream. Wasn’t she supposed to protect you, always, no matter what ? Where is she ? Where is your sister ? Where are you ? What are you doing here ? You don’t belong here.
You’re wrong. You don’t belong anywhere else.
***
When you - and it gets hard to say - when you call for Swann, you’re never angry. You’re pleading. Come find me . You wonder if it’s you or It, because the Abyss loved her, too, didn’t It ? You say, I’m here . You say, I’ve always been here . You say, can you hear me ?
She always could, that’s the issue.
When you can’t even remember her name, when you can’t even picture the edges of her, when her eyes and her smile and her freckles and her awkward laughter all fade away, you don’t scream. You fall silent. There’s a hole in you where the memory of her should be. A piece of you has been ripped away, and it hurts .
Which is fucked up, because honestly you were pretty sure the deal was that you were never supposed to hurt again .
You don’t want It to have her. And the feeling of her, the knowledge of her existence, that, It can’t take. This is yours.
You still wish, sometimes, she’d come and find you.
Selfish, greedy, hungry . Wanting. There you go. That’s you.
You wonder how much of you is left. Have you always been like this ? The yearning for more, in the cassette tapes, in the objects placed on the table in your room with symbols you didn’t quite understand, has It been calling you this whole time ? Have you ever even been a person, or have you always been a part of the Abyss, waiting to return ? Maybe you’ve never even lived outside of it. Maybe you’ve always been here. Maybe you’re the Abyss. Maybe there’s no Kat.
Maybe —
No .
***
Time is funny.
The barrier gets thinner, and suddenly reaching for the outside doesn’t seem as impossible as it used to. Maybe the Abyss is growing weaker. Maybe it needs another sacrifice, and that’s why It lets you bridge the gap in their memory. Exist again, if only in the remembrance of a few words scratched on paper, a song, a necklace.
You find her camera. When you record the message, a part of you can’t help but wonder if it’s really yourself talking, calling out, begging, or if the Abyss is just using you as a vessel to get what It wants. Which is Swann. It favors her, It always has. Maybe because you’re the same, you and It, you and Swann, It and Swann. This is something you’ve always understood.
You’ve already said that. You’re running in circles. This isn’t what you wanted, this isn’t what you wanted, this is not –
Find me. I’m here .
You wonder what will be left of you when she comes. If she will even be able to recognize you. You don’t wonder if you will come at all ; you know she will. It’s just a matter of when. The push she needs, you and the Abyss, youtheAbyss, you’re both more than willing to provide.
You will not be forgotten. You will not, you will not, you will not —
You’re here, you’re here you’re here you’re HERE and why can’t they see you , you’re right HERE and –
Swann ?