The Black Labyrinth

Would it be irresponsible of me to expect wish-granting hospitality out of life? Because it's been a defining attitude of mine, and it helps in the laborious act of stepping on the cold wooden floor, the one my bed keeps protecting me from in the recurring morning. I've been conditioned to an open cell of sedentary questions to the explosive chemistry of unknown fate, and each one is contained by mindfully mindless distractions. I am machine working to not work itself out. There is no maintenance required for black doors of forever expanding abysses. And it's not like the terrains of the outside have been waiting for my path to unfold, they are more preoccupied with the dancing stars of clear vision and unworried inner monologues. There is no part replacement for the broken radio rumbling in my skull.

One would presume me for dead with a long enough look into my eyes before the rehearsed illusion of a spark ignites the mechanisms to be like one of their own. Most of them find the unintended mockery insulting, but they allow me to walk away unscathed. No matter the outcome, I avoid the chance of all those scenarios with ease. There is not a need for the observing eyes and the brutally honest critique for the poster child of time-skipping. My contract says the self-torture is sufficient punishment for allowing myself to take part in this existence. Had I not signed that paper, however, I would have been a smiling corpse without an invitation to the question dimension.

I cannot contact the outsiders from here. I have tried engineering signals, languages, devices, and they've all met the rejecting silence beyond the blur. I could scream in the direction of the passing faces and be met with unflinching obliviousness. I could speak in all the languages they know only to conclude there's many more I have not learned. I could repeat myself in varying levels of loudness, intonations, and vocabularies to no avail. The walls have swallowed my voice. Even those brave enough to enter have to pay percentages of a lifetime to purchase a map of the Black Labyrinth, and many more years to learn it changes with the day. It's not like I'd have much to say whenever they get here.

Despite the contents of this letter, I do not subscribe to nihilistic simplicities. To enter the question dimension is to unleash the experiences of a hundred lifetimes, and the loud thud they make as they flop to the gray wooden floor is the fanfare of victory. I subscribe only to the religion of persistence. Isolation itself is part of my contract, too. Where the requirements end and the make of me begins is one of the many enigmas I attempt to quarter with the daggers of self-absorbed egoism. The result matters very little when the present worry is of a consistent curiosity that never fades. I wish to study the unstudied, but then I wander off in search of new discoveries. My body walks at night, and it travels north, east, south, and west with varying levels of success. It drops a part of me each time it tires itself out, and the lightless trail it leaves behind expands the reaches of the Black Labyrinth.

I can find the center without much thought. The creaking of the planks is what one should look for should one wish to visit it. The question is 'why', and it's the conditional exit to this eternal slumber away from the outsiders. The planks, the bed, the darkness, and me. That's all there is. The 'why', however, is an irrelevancy and red herring from the Being to distract me and take away my time with the rest of the questions. It needs me to wonder. My pauses and doubts are the essences of this realm, but I knew of the paradoxical challenge as I signed those terms. I am forever chasing an exit that moves away from my reach the harder I run towards it. It's been half a decade and I still turn into a sequence of falling dominoes when I see the white rectangle on the horizon.

This document is merely for safekeeping, one should not look for sentimental purpose in here. I reject the need for a savior and their warm solutions to my struggles. The reflection of me would fade if I didn't. For them to spawn more of those fake sparks in me would confirm their role as antagonists to my little excursion to this void. All of the wonderful times they could offer would break the invisible glass holding more of the lightlessness. The questions would turn into poisonous affirmations of simulated rage, and their impact would make me victor to a throne of spikes made of my own past. I reject the need for a savior to save them from demise.

I have a clear goal for beating this twisted trickster's game, and it aligns with the opening question. The Finder of the white door is allowed eternal wishes. The fine print does not specify the limits, but even a fate spawned from the monkey's paw principle would be called an improvement to my broken present. The humanity in me knows I could wish for eternal pleasure and a future without black holes. I could wish for world peace, infinite income, superhuman abilities, or the answers to all the questions known to conscience. All of them would satisfy the global needs and demands, but not mine. The only wish I would have would be of a retry. Not a time machine or other inventions of foolishly optimistic science fiction, but a decisive disintegration of the world I know today for it cannot, should not be called a world without you in it.

I mentioned I do not subscribe to nihilism, but this question dimension is the only place it can call home since I am all the things contained within these words. And I will forget. Should a new day begin, I would wonder the same things I've been wondering for the past hour, and I would write them down to you—my distant shining door.