Anthesis of Sadness
Chapter 151: The Hell of Sweetness

Chapter 151: The Hell of Sweetness

Something, yes... something was slowly rising in me, not in a jolt, not in a scream, not even in the painful burst of a sob, but like black water rising from the depths of a consciousness frozen for too long. It wasn’t anger. It was no longer a call. It wasn’t a surge of pride or a remnant of hatred. It was something else. A kind of defeat.

A dense, ancient, sticky capitulation, rooted in my vertebrae, infiltrated into my bones, heavier than remorse and more vivid than fear. A defeat without scream, without face, without word, but which my whole being recognized in the clammy silence that enveloped me.

And there, in the hollow of this murky softness, in this saturated silence like cotton that’s too warm, I understood. I understood the most unbearable truth, the most indefensible one, the one no rage can dissolve: this world didn’t want to hate me. It didn’t want to reject me. It sought neither vengeance nor justice. It refused to condemn me, refused to erase me, refused even to punish me.

This world, in its tender madness, still looked at me. It recognized me. Not as an enemy. Not as an abomination. But as something still... worthy. Something still... lovable.

And worse than all, yes — worse than all, it held out its arms to me. After the bodies, after the blood, after the screams and the claws, after the shame, after the abandonments, after the most repugnant betrayals... it continued. This world, this unforgivable matrix, kept looking at me as if I still existed.

It saw me. It pointed at me. It didn’t flee. It opened its arms. Not to correct me. Not to transform me. Not to cleanse me. But to love me. Simply. Without conditions.

And that was it — yes, that was exactly it — the most atrocious thing of all.

It wasn’t the roots. It wasn’t the fall. It wasn’t the whisper nor the abyss. It wasn’t even the memory of my own monstrosity. The worst was that damn sweetness. That insane sweetness, that tepid light sliding into my cracks like a balm I didn’t want to receive, that warmth that refused to fear my claws, that didn’t back away from my wounds, that invisible hand brushing my neck with tenderness while I was begging for my skull to be crushed.

That was the punishment. Not pain. Not solitude. But that persistent, absurd, unjustifiable mercy.

This world, in all its loving madness, refused to abandon me. Even after me. Even after what I had become. And I didn’t fall. No. Not yet. But something, deep within my nerves, deep within that thing knotted in me forever, that burned, stiffened, frozen core of solitude and refusal... something had just started to slip.

Softly. Irreversibly.

So I resumed the road. My endless journey. Not a wandering. Not a walk. Not even an escape, this time. Just a movement. Slow. Inevitable. One step after another, in this earth that was no longer one, this sky that was no longer one, this world that looked more like a dream stuck under the skin than an outer reality.

I no longer tried to escape, nor to hurt myself, nor to convince myself of anything. I simply moved forward, driven by something older than my will: a kind of exhaustion rooted in the marrow, a calm resignation, almost gentle, almost dangerous.

All around me, the softness persisted. That hell without flames, without screams, without obvious torment. A hell of cotton, of tepid warmth, of sweet smells. A hell that didn’t want to destroy me, but to welcome me. And that was its ultimate cruelty.

It opposed me with no resistance. It offered no monster to slay, no wall to break. Nothing but acceptance. Nothing but tenderness. And I walked in this living cotton like a damned one who had forgotten his sentence, a survivor unable to accept his salvation, a monster offered a kiss instead of a stake.

I walked in the hell of sweetness. And the more I walked, the more I felt it still waited for me.

Somewhere.

Him. That heart. That thing. That forgiveness. That persistent love. That unbearable love I had never known how to kill.

I walked. Or at least, I believed so. Maybe I was no more than a fragment of impulse, a motion prolonged by habit, a gesture emptied of goal, of meaning, of outline. Maybe I no longer walked, but drifted, carried by a current I no longer controlled, that I had never controlled.

I slipped, slowly, without shock, like a piece of debris abandoned in the stomach of a sick world, half-digested by a decomposing reality, suspended in the viscous fluids of a dream turned to mud, turned to belly, turned to grave.

Around me, everything seemed softened, melted, curved. The air itself rippled in an uncertain way, as if the laws of matter had been unlearned. This world was nothing more than a mass of rotting tenderness, a swamp of oblivion where the outlines of existence dissolved the more one tried to fix them.

And I... I floated in it, still standing, still moving, but without clear shape, without defined will — a slowed, tired, almost mute consciousness, continuing its path like an animal that has forgotten why it survives.

How long had it lasted? I didn’t know. And more than that: I no longer wanted to know. For here, time had no more form, no more spine, no more direction. It didn’t flow — it stagnated. It traced no path — it glued.

It was no longer a thread one follows or cuts, but a tepid marsh, a heavy and sticky fluid that clung to thoughts, slowed every gesture, absorbed my memories like marrow being sucked, drop by drop, until oblivion.

My steps dragged, clinging to the soft surface of these misshapen, floating, uncertain islets — fragments of poorly digested world, pieces of reality melted into blurry contours, like thoughts never truly completed, like barely conceived memories already abandoned.

Each step seemed to dissolve more of my link to the real, as if by treading this hesitant matter, it was my own memory I was crushing.

Some of those islets barely floated, so fragile, so soft, that they trembled with each breath of air, as if they were not quite sure they had the right to exist. Others, more anchored but more painful still, pulsed beneath my feet — an undefined life, a dull beat, a sort of silent moan that seemed to beg me to stay, as if my passage awakened them, and my departure condemned them.

But I didn’t stay. I couldn’t. Not because I was awaited elsewhere. But because even here, even in this sick matrix, in this damp womb, this world still wanted to hold me — and I still refused to be welcomed.

This world didn’t change. It remained the same — soft, tepid, stuck in its own slowness, like an endless matrix that no longer needed to evolve, since everything that had to collapse already had.

It was me, and only me, who was transforming. Me who, with every step, became a bit more hollow, a bit more empty, a bit more blurry, as if my identity was silently fraying, abandoning me cell by cell, until nothing remained but a walking memory, a trace of my disembodied self.

I was nothing more than an envelope of flesh moved by inertia, driven not by impulse or desire, but by that pain so old, so rooted in my fibers, that it had lost all urgency; it was no longer a scream, nor a shock, but a background sound, a dull and continuous murmur in the marrow, a painful slowness become almost familiar, almost calm, almost... soothed.

I drifted thus, lost without being astray, present without being there, carried by that absence of will that resembles a dead prayer.

My body still moved forward, but my mind, it, seemed to float elsewhere — not far, but deeper, as if it sank into the sediments of my own nothingness.

And around me, nothing opposed, nothing screamed, nothing guided. Everything was softness. Everything was slowness. Everything was that tepid hell where sorrow is no longer lived as a wound but as a climate.

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