Anthesis of Sadness
Chapter 146: BOOM. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.

Chapter 146: BOOM. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.

I was running. Not towards something. But against. Without direction. Without purpose. Without escape. I was running like one tears away an infected strip of skin, like one tries to rid oneself of a limb too sick to be saved. I was running like one tries to escape a pain that one knows comes from within. There was no destination. No promise. Not even an illusion. Just that desperate, animal, compulsive movement, which looked more like a spasm than an act of will.

I was fleeing. Not a monster. Not a screaming shadow. Not a tangible threat.

I was fleeing a whisper.

A memory.

A light.

Something that had brushed against a part of me I thought had long been dead. Something that, by its simple existence, had awakened a possibility I no longer wanted to consider. A soft crack. A cruel opening.

And I was running to close it.

With steps. With breath. With denial.

And in that frantic escape, in that absurd rush towards nowhere, every step became a negation thrown to the sky like a silent cry, every leap a desperate protest, every breath a confession I tried not to hear. I was no longer moving forward — I was struggling against myself. Against what I refused to see. Against what, without violence, still wanted to believe in me.

My breath was turning rough, deep, broken. It slipped from my lungs like a betrayal, like a moan I would’ve rather held back, and I felt in every inhalation the weight of refusal. Even the air seemed to resist me, as if the world, in a sudden moment of clarity, refused to let me breathe fully. As if the mere act of living, of filling my lungs, had become too much. A stolen act. A privilege I no longer deserved.

My throat was burning. My chest seemed to crack with every stride. My whole body was becoming a field of active pain, an architecture of nerves on fire, but I refused to stop. I didn’t even allow myself to slow down.

Because deep down, I knew.

If I stopped now... I would see.

And I must not see.

Not yet.

The islets flew beneath my feet like solidified regrets, like floating crystallizations of thoughts too old, too heavy to have been digested, suspended in space like fragments of a rejected past — blocks of frozen remorse, never truly faced, never truly erased. Each seemed to carry within it a form of truth we had painted over, half-forgotten, or shattered too early.

Some were tiny, barely larger than a sigh. Milky glass bubbles, smooth, almost translucent, whose surface seemed to vibrate beneath my steps, as if merely stepping on them might shatter them. They were fragile, like thoughts we have no right to think, like fragments of memory too painful to recall but too vivid to disappear.

Others, larger, more misshapen, looked like knotted cotton, soft platforms made of fibers intertwined with distorted scraps of memory. A child’s blanket, still wrinkled from an ancient sleep, hung between two hollow arches, as if forgotten there for years; a rocking horse, headless, eyeless, rested crookedly at the edge of the void, barely swaying in a non-existent wind; a mobile with blurry shapes spun slowly, suspended in the air as if each movement was dictated not by a force, but by a memory too soft, too slow, almost guilty — and I no longer knew if it was the air dancing around it, or it making the air dance.

All around me, in the air, in the ground, in the very fibers of this sick world, it was there. That beating. That dull, obstinate rhythm, always the same, always present, like a grotesque reminder of my existence.

BOOM.

BOOM.

BOOM.

BOOM.

Again and again, as if the world itself held me by the heart, planted its tempo into my bones, forced me to follow a dance I had never chosen. And I was sick of it. A furious, brutal, devouring weariness.

— Fucking boom! I growled through a torn breath.

— Fucking heart!

— FUCKING WORLD!!!

The words came out like shards of teeth, pieces of soul spat in the face of a deaf god. I couldn’t take it anymore. I didn’t want it anymore. Every second spent existing in that space disgusted me more. I wanted to disappear. Extinguish. Dissolve into the air, melt into the void, no longer weigh on anything, not even as a trace, not even as a memory.

I no longer wanted this world.

But this world... still wanted me.

And that fucking smell... that obsessive olfactory presence clung to my skin like ancient sweat, like a sticky memory nothing could wash off. It was a tenacious scent, thick, sickly sweet, but with that bitterness beneath — that rancid taste of something that should’ve been beautiful and never truly was. A suffocating scent, between forgotten milk and tepid shroud, between the memory of a caress and the mold of a rotting love. It didn’t surround me. It penetrated me.

It seeped everywhere: into my nostrils, into the back of my mouth, between my teeth, into my hair that seemed soaked with it, as if every fiber of my being had absorbed that essence — an essence of a sweetness too old, too insistent, too present to disappear. It didn’t come from me, but it clung to me as if I were its designated carrier.

It oozed from the invisible walls of this world, from the cracks in the air, from the very dust, like a sentimental gas, like a poorly digested maternal vapor, like an embrace that never stopped returning. It followed me. It haunted me. Like a ghost of tenderness. Like a faceless mother. Like a faded version of a love that refused to die.

And that refusal... made me want to scream.

And the worst part of it all? It wasn’t the void. Nor the rhythm. Not even the memory. It was that warmth. A diffuse warmth, everywhere at once, creeping, insidious — under my feet, on my skin, around my neck, between my shoulder blades. It didn’t crush. It didn’t attack. It settled. Like a blanket. Like a warm breath laid on a feverish child’s forehead. An invisible gentleness, almost maternal, almost tender... almost loving.

It was an embrace suspended in the atmosphere, an abstract enfolding, as if the universe itself, in its contained madness, in its sick love, was trying to hold me in its arms. As if this world, in all its devastation, in everything it had torn from me, was still saying: stay.

This world... was caressing me.

Even in my escape.

Even in my rage.

It did not reject me. It wrapped me. Pursued me. Clung to my skin with the disturbed tenderness of an executioner who loves his victim. It wanted something. It wanted me to stay. It wanted me to give in.

It wanted to love me.

And I no longer knew... if that hurt me or shamed me.

But me... I didn’t want that. I no longer wanted that kind of love. That embrace offered without reason, that floating compassion, that insidious tenderness still trying to reach me despite everything. I no longer wanted anyone to hold out a hand to me. I no longer wanted to be looked at as someone who could still be waited for. Who could still be saved. Who could still be loved.

I no longer wanted to be touched.

I no longer wanted to be lifted.

I no longer wanted to be forgiven.

I wanted to suffer. I wanted to atone. I wanted to pay, to the bone, to the blood, until everything I was dissolved in pain. I wanted to die for real — not physically. But with an interior death, definitive, irrevocable. A death that left no return.

And it was there, in that absurd race, that skinned flight against a light too soft, against a peace that no longer had the right to exist for me, against every possibility of redemption, against the very idea that there might still be an after — it was there that I understood.

That I knew.

That I had no other shelter than my suffering.

My pain had become my only refuge.

So I leapt from platform to platform, propelled by a sluggish gravity, thrown without violence, as if held back at the very moment of impulse. Each push was muffled. Each movement seemed sucked downward, slowed by an invisible density. As if the air itself, saturated with foolish love, tried to cushion my gestures, absorb my violence, subdue me with gentleness. Even in my rage, my steps remained silent. Smooth. Discreet. As if I were gliding instead of striking. As if everything I did was already forgiven.

This world... refused to let me harm anything.

Not even the void.

And it drove me mad.

I wanted to strike, to break, to destroy, to roar, to tear the silence until it screamed — but every gesture crashed into cotton. Every scream drowned in warm fluff. Even my anger no longer echoed. Even my hatred was digested before it existed.

So I kept running.

I ran.

I ran.

I ran, without direction, without breath, without voice. I passed many islets, crossed impossible fragments of world, as if each step devoured a little more of what remained of coherence. I fell from exhaustion, body shaking, knees split, hands scratched by nothing. Then I rose. Again. And I fell. And I rose. Once, twice, ten, a hundred times. In a ballet of useless perseverance. The obstinacy of a beast slapped by the world but incapable of dying.

I fell.

I got up.

I fell again.

I rose again.

Again.

Again.

Again.

And again.

And again.

And again.

And again.

Until the islets began to fray beneath my feet. Until the paths were lost, the platforms became thin, unstable, uncertain, like threads of mist stretched into the void. As if this world, from trying to contain me, to swallow me without extinguishing me, was finally beginning to yield. Or perhaps... inviting me to stop moving. To fall. Definitively.

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