Between reason and ruin

This is an extract from a story I'm working on :3

A place to purge my thoughts—raw, rotting, festering thoughts. No matter how wretched, they belong here. I clutch the quill like a blade, fingers aching, knuckles bone-white. Ink stains my hands like blood, seeping into the creases of my skin. This leather-bound thing—this cursed tome—it holds me captive, and yet, it is the only thing that sets me free. I write, and with each frantic stroke, I feel my mind splintering further, fracturing like cracked glass. But I cannot stop. I mustn't stop. No. The words spill forth, gushing, clawing, writhing onto the page. Each line drags me closer to something terrible, something vast and endless and inescapable. And still, I write.

I feel myself unraveling. The more I pour onto these pages, the more I feel the sinews of my mind stretch, snap, fray at the edges. It is exhilarating. Terrifying. A high that no mere substance could provide. How far can I go? How deep does this abyss truly reach before I plunge so far that silence swallows me whole? What happens when there is nothing left to think? Nothing left to write? Does my existence simply—end? I wonder.

‘Human.’

A word so flimsy, so meaningless. A pathetic, hollow sound dressed up in self-importance. What does it mean, really? Humanity is a disease—a mass of squirming, carbon-based things playing dress-up as something greater. They believe themselves unique, but they are nothing more than copies of copies, smudged and fading with every iteration. It disgusts me. They call me mad for refusing to be a forgery, but I see them for what they truly are. They are the broken ones. Splintered from the start, rotting beneath the skin.

Look at them—these faceless mannequins that litter the streets, their dead eyes staring at nothing, their lips moving but saying nothing. Their laughter is hollow, their sorrow rehearsed, their joy an illusion. And yet, they pity me. They whisper behind my back, their voices dripping with condescension. They think I don’t hear them. But I do. I hear everything. I see everything.

I slam the quill down, my fingers digging into my palm so hard that the skin threatens to tear. My breath comes in jagged bursts, heat crawling up my neck like an unseen hand. My thoughts are colliding, spiraling, combusting into something too vast to contain.

"I won’t be like them. I refuse to be like them!"

They believe their world is real. That their little lives and little loves and little ambitions mean something. But it’s all a lie. A performance. A sick, twisted game where everyone plays their assigned role, never daring to look past the stage. And I… I am the only one who sees the strings. The only one who sees the hands that pull them.

And you—

Can you hear me? Do you understand? Or are you just another puppet, nodding along, pretending? No one listens. No one ever listens. I scream, but the sound is swallowed whole, devoured by the grinding, relentless machine of the world. And it keeps turning, and turning, faster and faster, dragging me with it, forcing me to play along, to conform. My lungs burn, my mind screams, but I cannot stop. I cannot get off this wretched ride.

Is this madness?

I laugh—a sharp, brittle sound that scrapes against the silence of the room. My body trembles, every muscle taut, my nerves alight with something close to hysteria.

Do you hear it? The silence? The vast, suffocating quiet that comes after the noise? That moment where everything stops—where everything is still? I wonder if that’s what it feels like to finally let go. To surrender. To be consumed by it completely. But no, that is not the answer. That is not my answer. Because what is left after silence? Nothing. And I cannot bear that.

I need the noise. The chaos. The madness. Without it, I would cease to exist. I would fade into the nothingness that terrifies me more than any torment.

I pause, breath heaving, sweat beading at my brow. The quill trembles in my grip, my fingers aching from the force of it. My reflection stares back at me from the ink-blotched pages, and for a fleeting second, I see something else there. Something… foreign.

Am I truly mad? Or am I simply the only one awake in a world full of sleepwalkers? Perhaps they are the ones who should be locked away, not me. Perhaps they are the ones who are too afraid to see.

A sharp exhale. A shake of the head. My body sways, my legs uncertain beneath me as I push myself up, staggering toward the bed. The room shifts, warping at the edges, bending and twisting in ways that should not be possible. Or perhaps it is merely my mind that bends. I cannot tell anymore.

I collapse onto the mattress, my face pressing into the fabric, cool against my burning skin. The air is thick, suffocating, pressing in from all sides, but the exhaustion drags me under, relentless, inescapable. My heartbeat pounds against my skull, rhythmic, ceaseless.

And as my eyes flutter shut, a single thought echoes through the vast, endless chambers of my mind.

Will I ever truly rest?