Either I'm losing my mind or I’m seeing things clearly for the first time, I don't know – maybe those things aren't distinct. What I do know is that what I've seen and felt is just as real as it is absurd and that absurdity makes it near-impossible to talk about coherently, but I'm going to try anyway because as I type this my life has reached and passed the point of being only just barely bearable. As far as I see it I have absolutely nothing of real value to lose and, hopefully, writing everything out is at least cathartic; a scream to nothing but a scream for a scream’s sake.
For a long time I enjoyed my job (or at least found it comfortably tolerable), but a little over a year ago something changed, something almost imperceptible but something significant that I couldn't quite pin down until slapped in the face with the obviousness of it on a day as familiar and now forgotten as every other – a low and almost imperceptible.. sound.. sensation.. that buzzed, hummed, rumbled, whistled and whined all at once with the subtle smell of damp and rot. When I noticed it there was no un-noticing it and it was there, not just in the background but the background itself, infinite and directionless. At first I assumed (or hoped) it was a mechanical abnormality, maybe the furnace laboring especially hard because of the cold weather, but I quickly found It followed me home, subdued slightly, until brought back and felt at its full ‘volume’ on my return to work. It was as if the building and my body spoke a language I could suffer but not understand.
It was all-consuming. I assumed (or hoped) I would eventually tune It out or be able to focus my attention in spite of It, but It was both subtle enough to not overwhelm and constant enough to be irritatingly unignorable. With each passing day, week, and month that blurred into one giant waste of time, I could feel my memory and energy erode, along with my very will to continue to exist at all. There was no longer a single aspect of my job to trick myself into enjoying anymore and I would dread the cycle’s continuing from the moment it finished. I attributed my newfound anxiety and the strange symptom it had
manifested to a general fatigue of COVID and the accelerated absurdity that was 2020 and and the decade that preceded it, but I couldn't shake the feeling that something was seriously off, something beyond normal – it was like my spirit was being suffocated, sucked, and smothered by some force unseen – a force that seemed to prefer me exhausted to dead.
I figured my stress was also made worse by a timely mid-life crisis (I just turned 30) where I was struggling to let go of whatever bright-eyed childhood dreams I once lived with and had now forgotten. I was instead diminished to a drone in pursuit of a goal I couldn't quite wrap my head around, a goal that made no real sense to me or, I suppose, the goal made sense but my means of getting there didn't. I was stuck wanting to be unstuck and the only way to get unstuck, I was told, was to unstick myself.
My manager must have noticed how disconnected I’d been because he called me into his office and asked in a hushed tone and with a corporate concern, if “everything was okay?”.
I told him about the general stress, fatigue, and anxiety I'd been feeling lately and spit out some lie about learning of an old (and imaginary) friend’s passing all while It hummed tirelessly, as It always did, behind our conversation and behind everything else. Although I had mostly acclimated to life with the sound and stench of It, for the first time since I had felt It for the first time, It overwhelmed me and consumed everything else in that room and I could only sit there, alone, injured, and not even sure who or how or what to ask for help because I couldn't even articulate what was happening to me.
“Seriously, are you alright? You look like you’re about to pass out.”
His words broke through, each one and then each syllable punctuated by static.
I grimaced and pinched the bridge of my nose. I asked him if he heard a buzzing.
“Like tinnitus?”
“Sort of, I guess.. not really.. or maybe.. I don’t know. I have to make an appointment with my doctor.”
He smiled, wide and wildly with eyes unmoving, his face set with an expression that felt far too exaggerated for our interaction.
“Have you ever seen what we work for?”
His voice trailed off as if he already knew the answer I struggled to provide. Anticipating my confusion and probably reading it on my face, he took my hesitation as his turn to continue.
“I mean It’s a real spectacle. The One Above All Else.”
The way he said those last five words instilled a deep and instinctual terror – a need to flee – but I sat stonelike in my chair, held down by whatever forces moved me or the tides. His change in tone was so stark that it sounded like some disembodied voice had pushed its way out through a portal and past his lips.
His eyes finally shifted to match his smile, igniting like someone just given permission to share something intimate – something they desperately want to talk about but can't, shouldn’t, or won’t.
“Follow me. I’ll take you to It.”
I sat up from my chair before he even finished and, as if possessed and propelled by an idea I wanted no part of, followed directly behind as he led the way past a row of cubicles and down a stairwell towards the ground floor and eventually past it, into the bowels of the building.
Whatever it was that pushed me forward was only aided by my very-human need to satisfy my curiosity and whether or not I wanted to be a part of whatever was going on I was.
So I moved forward.
The further we descended the more intensely the sensation seemed to surround me, but It morphed into something else, something new, twisting and contorting Itself with added sensations: grinding metal, shattering glass, explosions, gunfire, and tormented human screaming layered into a single consuming cacophony and endless crescendo.
I don't know exactly how many flights of stairs we climbed down but it had to be more than actually existed. By the time we reached the bottom I could barely walk or hold myself upright unassisted, but my faithful and determined guide steadied me as we continued the desperate march forward. My heart was pounding faster with every inch of progress and every beat sent a burst of pain right to the centre of my brain, branching out to every connected nerve.
I would be ripped apart if it went on much longer,, surely.
I wanted to collapse but was still being propped up and by now practically dragged.
“What the hell is happening to me? I need to go to the hospital..” I managed to gasp out.
“There's nothing wrong with you and there's nothing the hospital can do for you. Don’t worry, we're not that far now and then you’ll see, and then you'll wish you didn't see!”
See what? Whatever it was I didn't want to see it, I just wanted relief from the hell that was in my head, but when he said the hospital couldn’t help I instinctively and instantly knew he was right – I knew whatever was wrong with me was something significant and I was its opposite. I knew that going to the hospital meant going strapped down to a room with padded walls but the longer we continued the more it seemed like maybe that was just what I needed.
We trudged down a long corridor lit by those awful humming fluorescent lights that smother everything in a clinical and cold constrastless white. A single heavy metal door with a porthole stood out at the end of the hallway, lined on each side by doors that looked far more appropriate in the context of an office building. Every few seconds a banging on the door repeated in some strange disjointed pattern, like discordant music from another dimension.
There was a pause and everything was quiet – I heard quiet for the first time. I stood limply at this door, perturbed by its novelty and now sick with exhaustion, stricken sick by a silence that seemed disturbingly alien. If the 'sound' was all-consuming then the silence was its inverse, pure emptiness.
I felt sick.
I wanted to collapse.
I was urged forward by a voice that trembled and almost sang with a mixture of fear, anger, and anticipation.
“We're here! Go ahead! It's all in there! Everything you need to know is in there! Everything you’re feeling is in there! You asked about the noise so now witness It! See It! Feel It! Let It show Itself to you! Let It consume you! Consume It! Reciprocate! Open the door! Open the door! Open it!”
I felt like I was being beckoned by something vast and ancient, as if I was being called into a void that might swallow me whole and in swallowing me relieve me of everything that burdened me. If I had a choice I didn't know it. If I could have turned around and walked back upstairs I think I would have, but I didn't, because I couldn't. I could do only what I did and grip the door’s handle tightly with both hands and heave.
The sound of metal scraping started the symphony of sound again. A cold air blasted past me, carrying with it every terrifying image and symbol my brain knew and could imagine. It was as if I had opened a door to a raging storm in a boundless ocean, where the wind whipped and carried with it things that were not “things” at all but more like memories, disfigured, distorted and twisted by time's passage.
The sound and stench were back and in a single horrifying flash I knew that their source was not external – it wasn't in the building, behind the walls, or even the door to another dimension I now stood in front of – It was living inside me and had festered and grown until what 'I' was once was consumed and all but
forgotten. What I saw behind the door and through the storm was only a reflection of the ugliest parts of our own particularly peculiar Human sickness – greed, gluttony, ignorance, and contempt.
There was nothing to see but I saw It anyway – an infinite blackness silhouetted a vaguely human form, some strange amalgamation of familiar but mutated parts – hair and bone and flesh – arranged nonsensically, dancing as in a frenzy, thrashing and jerking with eyes absent yet looking straight through me, as if It simultaneously didn't even acknowledge my existence while also viewing whatever it considered me to be with a great radiating hatred.
As It danced It counted and as It counted uncountable natural riches, jewels, and coins sparkled and rained down all around It and with each obscene and unrecognizable number It grew.
More. More is all It wants, all It knows, and all It is. More. More and more, forever. More. Insatiable. All-consuming. Accumulating endlessly, forever. And ever. And ever. And ever. And beyond ever. Never is enough enough. There is no enough. More, always more. More is all It needs. More is all there is. More is all that drives It. More is all that drives us. There is no end and no enough, just a tireless march towards MORE and a singular purpose – MORE MORE MORE MORE MORE MORE MORE MORE GIVE ME MORE MORE IS NOT ENOUGH EVERYTHING THERE IS IS NOT ENOUGH THERE WILL NEVER BE ENOUGH.
With a deafening crack and a blinding flash I was back sitting in my manager's office, nose pinched between my thumb and finger and some words echoing and rattling around in my head.
“Seriously, are you alright? You look like you’re about to pass out.”
The sound and stench were still there.
“What do you work for?”, the words escaped my mouth before the thought even finished forming in my head.
He raised an eyebrow, considered, and confidently chuckled his reply.
“Money.”
His laugh seemed to echo through the entire building and nestle itself to the now barely audible but still debilitating hum.
I felt sicker than ever before.
Maybe I never really left that office but maybe that didn't really matter – I know what I saw was still 'real' regardless. Maybe what might be true is just as significant as what is, or at least, what appears to be for the moment.
I know It exists because I’m sick with it and I feel myself getting sicker. I know it better than I know myself and I see hints that most others do, too – we just don't seem to know how to frame or conceptualize It beyond talking vaguely about 'mental health' within the boundaries It permits.
There is no mental health – only MORE.
It wails endlessly and I'm sure differently for all, silently screaming its own sick song or whispering vague promises of fulfillment to those chosen to be wielded to its end, to continue and preserve it as The One Above All Else. It is ancient and it is evil, and, most terrifyingly, it is a part of Us and a part seemingly inseparable; an inoperable tumor that has been with us for so long we cannot imagine life in its absence because as far as we know there is no such thing.
It exists because it must.
It exists because this is just the way the world is.
So It has led us to believe. So It manipulates us into prostration. So It forces our submission, through the only fact that matters – MORE IS NEVER ENOUGH.
It doesn’t want us to know that we can talk, and that conversation might be all it takes to destroy or at least cripple It. It has prepared for that potential by instilling in us the dreadful and hopeless sense that this is just “The Way the World Is”, as if the way the world is is completely untouched by our shared ideas about it.
Seeing the acceleration into absurdity that is the past decade I am completely convinced that it's possible to get a message out and that message might shrink It; not kill It, but at least wound It, and wound it enough that others might kill It. I’m counting on it, in fact, because everything I read and everything I feel in my gut leads me to the inevitability of this world’s – Our world's – total and rapid collapse, consumed by our own psychic and parasitic miasma of peddling and profit.
A world confused, where Power, Politics and Profit are indistinguishable.
A message so simple it can’t be misinterpreted.
A message so simple it will be misinterpreted.
UNIFY.
That is our only hope of depriving It – of perhaps smothering It underneath the collective gravity of our thoughts and extinguishing It with a shared sense of what is right, what is good, what is just, what is valuable, what is true, and most importantly what is possible. The only thing It might fear, if It can know fear, is that We might one day wish It away, because as all-consuming and powerful as It is It is ironically just as fragile; perched on a precipice of uncertainty and illusion and fed, powered, and driven by nothing other than you, I, and everyone else, and our own warped inclinations and desires – our perfectly Human inclinations and desires.
It is good to hate what you are if what you are should be hated.
Now there is nothing left for me to do but return to the inescapable. There is value in hurling a message in a bottle into an ocean to nobody, defeated but somehow still hopeful that things might be better because you can dream they could be.
That We can be, as One.
I can feel the days blurring into weeks, into months, and then years. In what seems like a moment but was really many, life – living – will have passed me by, waiting my turn, and with each day, month, and year I am more pacified by the routine droning persistence of It. I fear I am almost willing and ready to give myself over totally and completely to the void's vision of value and its measure because really, what else is there?
There is nothing else.
There is just the counting.