Anthesis of Sadness
Chapter 147: My Joy Was a Chasm

Him. The one I had longed for so much. Not a being, not a god, not even an enemy — but an obviousness. An end. A promise. He was there, standing before me like a perverse reward, an open door in a world that kept folding back onto itself. And everything in me unraveled.

I wasn’t really thinking anymore. Thoughts had melted like black wax, running down my temples, slow and sticky, until there remained only a vague sizzle, a warm mush where nothing took shape. It wasn’t me anymore, not really. More like a moving caricature, a silhouette of nerves and laughter, without structure. A leftover.

My smile widened slowly, almost painfully, as if it were splitting my flesh from the inside. The anger, the hatred, the contained rage... all of it melted into a single breath. It wasn’t an emotion anymore. It was a relief. A release so deep it became absurd. A deliverance bordering on madness.

So I laughed.

I laughed with a bottomless laugh, a disjointed, nervous, broken laugh — a laugh that was no longer human. I bent over, breathless, lungs twisted, belly shaken by a joy too violent to be real. I burst out laughing the way one bursts into sobs, without filter, without control, without shame. My laughter echoed against nothing. It got lost in the void.

At that moment, I think something cracked. Not outside. Inside. A small crack, discreet, almost tender. As if my mind, too stretched, too worn, had decided to give in without a sound. I didn’t feel it as pain. More like a release. A lucid, voluntary, delicious surrender. As if I had finally agreed not to understand.

Because I had won.

Because, in a twisted way, in a way no one would ever understand, I had fucked this world. I had gone through all its traps, all its rigged sweetness, all its trapped caresses, and I was still here, alive, standing, facing it.

My end.

My way out.

And in front of me, I saw it.

The chasm.

A perfect void. A black orbit lodged in the belly of the world, smooth, vast, total. It did not open. It did not close. It did not invite me. It didn’t even exist as a place. It was. A complete absence. Bottomless. Edgeless. Without promise. Without illusion.

There was no heartbeat.

No warmth.

No smell.

No love.

Nothing but absence.

And that was its perfection.

It was waiting for me.

So I leapt, from one platform to the next, propelled by a sluggish gravity, almost ashamed, as if the world itself, in its sickly embarrassment, was trying to accompany me in my fall without truly committing, without too much brutality, without too much noise. Like a lukewarm hand gently pushing in the back, never quite daring.

Every impulse was muffled, every momentum slowed before reaching its own violence. The air, instead of letting me pierce through space, became substance; an invisible, thick, cushioning substance, which refused to let me crash, to let me strike, to grant me that brutal pleasure I was begging for with all my being.

The whole atmosphere seemed to want to cradle me, to hold me back, to contain me — even in my rage. Even in my desire to break. Even in that vital need to slam my screams against the walls of the world, to hit something to feel that I still existed. And despite everything... despite the effort, despite the will to tear myself away, my steps remained smooth. Silent. Discreet.

As if even my fury no longer had the right to make noise.

This world... refused to let me harm. Not just others. Not just itself. No. It refused to let me strike anything. Not even the void. Not even myself. As if every intention of violence dissolved before reaching the matter. As if the space, the very texture of this place, had been stolen from me in the name of a peace I never asked for.

And that... that drove me mad.

I felt my own name fleeing me. As if even the idea of me was erasing itself. I was becoming someone else. Or rather: I was ceasing to be someone. I was nothing but this — this stifled tension, this aimless will, this scream without a mouth. Even memories were blending into a gray backdrop. I was a patch of skin stuck to an intention with no direction.

Mad with silence. Mad with restraint. Mad from not being able to destroy what I carried. I wanted to hit. To scream. To tear apart that gentleness. I wanted my anger to explode like an axe on the altar of a too-patient god. I wanted to hear the crack. The impact. The blood. I wanted fragments, shards, proof.

But everything was lost.

Everything crashed into a tepid fluff, into a cotton that absorbed even my cry. My rage, sucked in, digested, like a fire drowned in warm milk. Even my hatred had no rebound. Even my voice had no wall to crash into.

And in that gentleness... I drowned.

My inner voice became blurry, unrecognizable. It still spoke, sometimes, but it was a crooked whisper, a breath veiled in stifled laughter. I no longer knew if I was thinking or just repeating remnants of a forgotten speech. Fragments of sentences, misaligned echoes. Sometimes I spoke to myself in the third person, without knowing why. Sometimes I said we. And I no longer knew who else was there.

I no longer thought, I just ran. Again. Always. I ran without direction, without breath, without voice. I was fleeing, not from something, but from the very absence of an end, I was fleeing the gentleness of this world, its patience, its perverse tenderness. I leapt on blurry islets, ghostly platforms drifting in a void saturated with solidified memories, dead emotions frozen in the air like relics. And then I fell. Not because of an obstacle. But from exhaustion. From too much wasted breath, from too little hope to feed my legs. I fell, emptied, hollow, incapable of still resenting this world that never hit back.

And I got back up. By reflex. By pride. By habit. Because that was all I had left. I fell. And I got up. Again. Again. Again. And again. And again. And again. And again.

There was a song, somewhere in my head. Not a real one. Just a motif. Three detuned notes that returned, again and again, every time I touched the ground. A rhythm without music, like a lullaby eaten by moths. And I loved that imaginary song. Because it was the only thing that didn’t judge me.

Like a cursed automaton, like a damned soul whose only language is the repetition of the same gesture, the same refusal, the same pain. I became a rhythm, a hollow beat, a puppet banging against silence without even knowing why.

And it was then that the world, too, seemed to tire. The islets began to fray under my feet, like fabrics eaten by time. The paths unraveled, vanished into nothing. The platforms grew thin, porous, uncertain, as if the universe itself was slipping away beneath me. As if it were gently — almost tenderly — inviting me to stop moving. Or to fall. For good.

And I almost wanted to speak to him. Not the world, no. To him, up there, down below, or anywhere. The one who watches. The one who let me run like a rat on acid. I would have liked to tell him Look what you’ve made of me. But there were no more words. Only gusts of breath. Tremors. And my skull, full of bubbles.

And then... he was there.

Him. The one I had so badly wanted, so desperately implored, so harshly cursed. The one I had called with every fall, invoked with every scream, hoped for in every crack of the world. The one I had hunted through pain, shame, howls, and flight. The one whose presence became the only logical finality of my flayed existence.

He was there.

Right in front of me.

As if he had always waited for me. As if all the wounds, all the steps, all the silences had led me to him. And in the dull tremor of my throat, in the tense shiver of my legs, I knew it wasn’t a hallucination. It wasn’t a mirage.

He was there.

In front of me.

And something in me stopped resisting.

I think I had ceased to be a body. I was an effect. A drift. A recoil. Something secondary and useless, a residue of man expelled from an overfull world. And I didn’t mind. Because there, in that fleeting form, in that progressive erasure, there was freedom. A delight. A vertigo.

My smile widened, slowly, twisted, almost painfully, like a scar reopening without warning. It stretched crookedly, cracked down to the bone, loaded with a glint that nothing living should ever reflect. The anger, the hatred, all that weight I had carried in my nerves, in my jaws, in my bones stretched to the breaking point... all of it melted. In a single breath. In a single glance. It all dissipated like fog too long pressed against the cold windowpane of my mind. And in its place came joy. A mad joy, absolute, uncontrollable. A relief so violent, so deep, that it became an almost unhealthy euphoria, a delirious exaltation bursting in my gut.

Because I had found him.

Because I had won.

Because I had betrayed this world.

Because despite its traps, despite its whispers, despite its lukewarm caresses and clammy promises of love and light, I had managed to pull away. To not care. To trample it.

And it was delicious.

I had succeeded. In an impure, brutal, almost obscene way. I had fucked this world — I had twisted it, tricked it, humiliated it. And I had found my end, my escape, my chasm. The perfect flaw in its matrix of forced love. I had won.

And I laughed.

Not a social laugh. Not a nervous laugh. No. A laugh that rose slowly from the belly, swelled my guts like a fever bubble, burst in my throat like an uncontrollable eruption. I began to laugh, to bend, to shake with spasms, breathless from the exaltation — a laugh that had nothing human left in it, a rattle of demented, warped joy, a jolt of fractured soul.

It was even more twisted than before. More violent. More raw.

A dry laugh, chopped, bottomless. A hollow laugh, without echo, like a well into which my consciousness fell in loops. A laugh of deliverance, of madness, of rupture. The laugh of a condemned man who discovers the gallows is a refuge. The laugh of a monster who finds that his scream is a song.

I saw myself laughing, from the outside. It was strange. A still scene. Me, bent over, eyes wide open, mouth twisted. I was no longer inside. I was watching. A spectator of a puppet too disjointed to still have a center. And that image... I loved it. I wanted to applaud myself.

I had found my way out. Not a metaphor, not an abstract promise, not a peace hidden under symbols. A real exit. A tangible end. A concrete escape from all this theatre of forced gentleness and sticky light. And it was there. It existed. Not elsewhere, not tomorrow, not in another dream.

There.

Right in front of me.

Silent, offered, indisputable.

The chasm. Not an opening, not a fault, not even an abyss as the living might conceive — no. It was a perfect void, absolute, pure of all nuance, all warmth, all form. A black orbit, smooth as a deathly eye, embedded in the center of the world like a gaping hole in the flesh of a sick dream. It did not open. It did not move. It didn’t even breathe. It was there. Motionless. Silent. Cold without being freezing, mute without promise of peace. It gave nothing back. No echo. No light. No sensation. It had no edge, no bottom, no breath. It offered nothing. It expected nothing. And that’s exactly why it drew me in. Because it didn’t lie. Because it didn’t pretend to offer anything. It was pure absence. The complete absence of everything that is.

It didn’t open. It didn’t quiver, didn’t reach toward me like the aura of a long-awaited answer. It didn’t call me, didn’t whisper anything, didn’t try to seduce me, didn’t try to scare me. It was there. Simply. In a presence so absolute, so complete, that its mere existence was enough to erase everything else. It existed — and that was enough.

No heartbeat to create illusion. No warmth to invite me. No smell to recall a memory. No love disguised as a trap. Nothing but it. It alone. A black and mute mass in the belly of the world. And me. There. Standing. Facing it.

Facing my end.

And I knew. Without question. Without inner word. Without detour.

It was waiting for me.