Supernova

by otomriddle

Perhaps you are the void, instead of it simply living inside you. That thought is the first thing you fear.

1. "people have feelings, Tom" Mrs. Coles tells you in a stern tone, as if it should be obvious by now. But it to you, it's not. You don't have feelings, you only have a void that sucks everything in – all your fears and hopes and dreams and maybe that's why you no longer feel anything but darkness; yes, darkness, as a presence always lurking in the back of your mind. Maybe the void sucked your feelings and all the light too and now you're left with an empty shell that tries to understand that people – other people – can feel but not all of them; not you.

2. you have no idea when the void appeared. Sometimes you think you were born with it, but in the bad nights you figure it existed even before you did; it has always been a presence, waiting to crawl itself inside someone weak and co-live with them, or live on its own because you have the distinct impression that you don't live, you never have, you have just existed for as long as your memories go. One night, as you clean your own blood off your face, you think you have gotten it all wrong; perhaps you are the void, instead of it simply living inside you. That thought is the first thing you fear.

3. it was naïve, even you admit it, but you truly believed everything would change from that moment on. A new place, with new people – people who would understand and not fear. But the void remained and so nothing really did change because how could it? Change comes from within and not from around you and everything remained the same. Static. The only thing always moving was the void, working twice as hard to just pull in all in its path. And that includes you.

4. When those old blue eyes pierce through you, in class, across the hallway, any and everywhere, you know he knows. The old man sees your void the same way you do when you look in the mirror – there are no limbs, no hair, no face, only the nothingness swirling inside nonstop. You have this theory, you never told anyone about it but it has never been mistaken before; the theory is that you're not alone, there are others like you, people who can't offer anything because there isn't anything in them to offer and you always recognize each other. A glimpse, a touch, that's all it takes. You know, even then, he can see the void in you because it matches the one inside him. It strikes you that if he could live so long without being sucked inside his own self, then maybe, if you try hard enough if you pretend well enough, so can you.

5. For a short while, you think you've solved the problem. You can feel and this is so new to you that you can hardly do anything else besides it now. You think to yourself one night that perhaps that was the thing missing, that someone to fill the void and quiet your self-destructive thoughts with gentle hands and warm lips. It's so strange to you, such a foreign everything that you start to believe in his bullshit words about soulmates who were separated by Zeus and cursed to spend the rest of eternity searching for each other, always feeling empty, because that was you before him. It was like you didn't have enough limbs and organs and hearts and pretty much anything until he came to you and suddenly: you had exactly what you needed.

6. it didn't last. You think it's because he was too late, and the void had pulled in so much of you already that the only thing left to give him was nothing.

7. he thinks differently.

8. you read once about supernovas; they were dying giants starts with a gravitational field so forceful that, once they imploded – crumbled into their own selves – they never stopped. They created black holes that would keep imploding forever and ever and pulling everything inside themselves simply by sheer gravity and nothing could scape it, not even light, and you understand it too well. You were that supernova, dying slowly thanks to your own fucking impulse and people failed to see this. Those people, they were drawn in by the same forces killing you slowly, and they'd die along if they kept too close but they couldn't avoid that attraction just as you couldn't stop it from working. You haven't always been the void, but you became it – slowly, but surely. Now, there was nothing to stop you. You were nothing.