Anthesis of Sadness
Chapter 182: A Lullaby Planted in the Belly

Chapter 182: A Lullaby Planted in the Belly

I approached. Not with a determined step, not like one rushes toward something they want to understand or possess, but with that dense slowness of bodies summoned by something other than themselves.

I wasn’t going fast. It wasn’t caution, nor fear. It wasn’t curiosity either. Nothing in me was trying to see, to know, to discover.

I advanced simply, because I couldn’t do otherwise.

Because something, in the very weaving of this space, in the contained beating of this cocoon, was pulling me deeper than any reason.

As if each step toward it was already written, inscribed, sewn into my muscles, into my breath, into my oldest memory.

That cocoon wasn’t calling me. It projected no sign, no whisper, no light trying to attract me. It stretched nothing toward me. It didn’t call me. And it was precisely that... which made it more powerful. It wasn’t calling me, no. It was waiting for me.

Simply.

Silently.

With that calm and indestructible patience that needs no gesture to impose its presence. Like a motionless truth, like a forgotten beat that doesn’t stop. It was there, suspended, stable, sure of itself. And in this space become fragile again, it seemed to be the only thing that did not doubt.

It was waiting for me.

Not to embrace me.

Not to judge me.

Just because it was the moment. Because it was my step. Because it was up to me.

My heartbeats had calmed down. But it wasn’t relief. It wasn’t the peace you reach after a storm. It was something else. An abnormal calm, too full of emptiness, too perfect to be human. They had become smooth, regular, as if something had smothered the chaos, not to soothe it, but to erase it.

Too smooth, yes.

Too constant.

As if they were no longer carried by emotion, nor crossed by doubt, nor even affected by what was happening around. They were still beating, yes, but in a strange, absent way. As if the body persisted without me.

Too regular.

Too dead.

Not extinguished — but emptied. As if each pulse was now the reflection of an empty movement, mechanical, detached from any memory.

I needed noise. Not words, not music, not song. Real noise. The kind that pounds, that splits, that drills through space and makes the nerves vibrate.

I needed shock, brutality, that clean contact with the world, even if it hurt. Especially if it hurt. I needed something hard, raw, sharp, dry.

A rough material, a resistance, a wall. Even a scream. A hand striking or a stone one hits, it didn’t matter — something real.

I wanted to prove that I could still stand, that my legs still meant something, that my body hadn’t become a ghost gliding through white silence.

I wanted, perhaps, to scream myself. Or strike the void. Or bleed. Anything to feel that I still existed, that I hadn’t completely become that smooth calm, that rhythmic absence my own heart had become.

I wanted to breathe. Just for a moment. To find a point of contact, a support, an irregular beat to cling to. A true breath. A living breath.

So, without really thinking, without trying to anticipate or understand, I leaned toward the cocoon. My movement was slow, precise, almost sacred, as if it obeyed a law older than my will. And to that gesture, the cocoon reacted. It opened. Not wide, not like an explosion or a triumphant birth. Just a slit, barely visible at first, a moist and supple opening that split its surface slowly, like an eyelid lifted for the first time, like a vegetal mouth hesitating between breath and silence.

It was organic.

Pulsing.

Disturbing.

A living fault, full of warm mystery, of an almost carnal tension. A silent invitation. Or perhaps a trap. In that opening was something alluring and unsettling, a mix of softness and threat, of warmth and unknown.

I didn’t know.

And deep down, I didn’t want to know.

I no longer wanted to ask questions. No longer seek answers. No longer name what I touched. I just wanted... to continue.

And suddenly, the cocoon screamed.

But that scream... had nothing mechanical, nothing beastly, nothing of what one expects from a simple object that yields, breaks or reacts. It wasn’t the sound of matter splitting. It wasn’t a creaking of fibers, nor a cracking of membrane.

It was a howl.

Full.

Total.

Heart-rending.

And that howl wasn’t from a thing — but from a being. A whole being. Living. Crossed by suffering or by birth, I didn’t know. A cry that vibrated with memory and flesh, a cry that carried an entire world inside it, a whole story no language could speak. It didn’t come out of the cocoon. It was its heart. Its breath. Its soul. And that cry, I felt it in my bones before hearing it. In my spine. In my teeth. In my eyelids.

It was too human.

Too familiar.

Too... real.

And yet, I couldn’t retreat.

Not after that.

Suddenly it exploded.

Not in pieces.

Not an explosion, not a violent fragmentation.

They were waves.

Whole, successive, relentless waves.

Waves of force, first — of strange density, almost physical, that made the air around me vibrate like an inner sea abruptly awakened. Then waves of light, not blinding, but raw, sharp, like a clarity too ancient to bear. And finally, the worst — waves of truth. Buried truths, organic truths, raw, that needed no words to hurt.

They struck me.

Head-on.

Right in the chest.

Without detour, without gentleness, without the slightest pity.

And I was thrown backward.

Not with blind violence — but with an almost surgical precision, as if the world itself decided I had to fall. My back hit the ground. Clean. Straight. A dry, hard, living contact. There was in that ground a texture I hadn’t felt in a long time. Something tangible. Something real.

My vision blurred all at once, as if something had slid between my eyes and the world, a damp, opaque, painful veil. My breath cut off just after, sharply sliced in the hollow of my chest, torn by a shock I didn’t yet understand, but that my body, it, seemed to recognize.

And then, a cry escaped me.

Not a controlled cry, not a deliberate cry.

A cry torn out, burst from my guts like a truth held back too long.

It wasn’t a cry of rage, nor a cry of defiance, nor even a protest. It wasn’t a response to anything. It was a cry of pure pain. Raw. Bare. A cry of flaying. A cry of rupture. Something in me, that I may never have known how to name, had just cracked, yielded, broken in an inner noise louder than all the silences in the world.

My throat bled. Literally or not, I no longer knew. But the taste was there. The metallic taste of iron, of fire, of burning. An acid heat rose in my mouth, in my skull, in my eyes. I no longer knew if I was crying, if I was suffocating, or if I was dying in small pieces.

And my ears were ringing.

A high-pitched, continuous, unbearable ringing — not like an external noise, but like a shutting. As if the world, saturated with my screams, now refused to listen to me. As if even space wanted to close in on itself to no longer hear what I had become.

And in the midst of that violence, of that scream left hanging in the air like a sonic scar, the voice returned. It wasn’t louder than before. It didn’t try to impose itself. On the contrary. It seemed lower. More tired. Almost weary. As if it knew it could no longer break anything, because everything had already been laid bare.

— You’re still lying, it said simply.

I didn’t know what to reply right away. My breath was chopped, cut into segments too short to form a sentence. Between two gasps, with a hoarse voice, scraped by pain and exhaustion, I ended up whispering:

— It’s not a lie... if I really believe it...

A silence settled.

Dense. Inhabited. Neither hostile nor compassionate. A silence that judged without condemning.

Then the voice resumed, with that same calm slowness, that same way of speaking that no longer seeks to convince:

— You don’t believe it. Not really.

— You just want, once again... to survive your own softness.

I stayed there.

Lying on that hard ground, as if abandoned to a gravity more intimate than the world’s. I wasn’t moving anymore. Not because I couldn’t. Because I no longer knew why I would.

Breath short, torn at every inhale like a debt that could no longer be paid.

Chest burning, strained by an inner fire that consumed nothing but never ceased.

Neck stiff, as if still bearing the weight of all the hands I had refused to take.

And my fingers... my fingers were trembling. Not from cold. Not from fear. Just from too much. Too much truth. Too much emptiness. Too much of me.

And my belly, in turn, started to hurt. It wasn’t an ordinary pain, not a cramp that could be soothed, not an identifiable, localizable, treatable burn. It was an older pain, more confused, more alive. It wasn’t sharp like an open wound, nor dull like a muscle tension. It was different.

It was as if something in me had split from the inside. As if a blade had been planted there, not in the flesh, but in that core we never name, that center we forget until it screams. And that blade... wasn’t made of steel. It was made of sounds. Of notes. Of vibrating memories. Of softness.

It was a song.

A slow, ancient, haunting song, someone might have slipped into my belly while I slept, while I wasn’t looking. A song turned wound. A lullaby turned into iron, into fire, into a fault line.

And I didn’t know if it was that pain, exactly, I had always been trying to flee.

But it was there, now.

Inevitable.