To my surprise, I woke up again. To be exact, a few feet in the plummeting towards the ground face first.
Something that wasn't gravel, it was more akin to sawdust.
Uprooting myself, I spat and coughed out whatever that all was.
What in the world? Am I dead?
To say I was surprised is putting it lightly, but my eyes weren't deceiving me. I didn't find any extra items on me, and I didn't find any sign of being probed.
Confusion filled me to the brim.
I couldn't tell where I was. I just knew that I didn't belong here. Was it the air, or was it the paradoxical feeling of weight and weightlessness at the same time? Everything that weighed down on me every second was also released. It gave me the sense I was being pulled in every direction simultaneously.
Standing, shards of something similar to a shimmering white sand-like substitute fell from my still clothed body. Upon inspection, I found it was more similar to a powdered glass than sand. The particles seemed to shift between states of transparency and bleached color constantly and impeccably. It was unnervingly satisfying to watch.
As the false sand rolled off my body, I absorbed the scenery.
What greeted me was nothing but equal parts of even and unshifting purity. The lifelessness of this place was uncomfortable, for all was stagnant.
I tried to look away from it all, but I couldn't quite do that. It was everywhere, after all.
I found myself completely alone. There was no one here aside from me.
I wandered around until my brain began to run blank. The longer I roamed, the more alien this place became. The uncharted lands seemed to have something that always danced at the edge of my vision.
Beings constantly faded in and out of reality, barely audible voices whispered and garbled ill omens. I wanted to say that I wasn't scared, but my brown pants said otherwise.
Time passed, and I decided to lay down to look into the bleached infinity above. I did not find anything through the wandering. I knew running and hiding from shadows was pointless.
As I lay down, waiting for impending doom, I learned that I was merely paranoid. The scary monster never came.
I was beginning to accept my new reality as a true loner when blinking brought a myriad of imagery to mind. I saw two monolithic silhouettes sitting side to side, observing a ball. They sat atop the sea of the undyed landscape like gods. It didn't need many brain cells for me to understand that they weren't human.
Whatever those two were, they were in the same place as me. That knowledge gave me some hope. Those two look rather sharp, despite me not seeing their face. Maybe they would have some answers.
I was still hesitant to take charge and move in this directionless world, but I had to remind myself. Those who succeed are the ones who put in an effort, supposedly.
There is no return if there is no investment, apparently.
The source this time comes from the international brigade of successful people. What, never heard of them? Of course, you wouldn't have. I made them up just now.
After spewing out a few more cheesy motivational lines, I eventually gathered enough courage to move forward. My bare feet press against the cooled sand once more. Any footprints I attempt to make don't even manage to form in the end. Then again, the direction to home didn't matter this far in.
With a now tangible goal in mind, I pushed forward. Having an objective did wonders in helping me ignore the foreboding whispers and visual hallucinations.
As I trudged forward for hours, I got gifted with an increasingly severe headache. It was only now that I realized I should have just continued to lay down.
There was no sun, but everything seemed so piercingly bright as an omnipresent light shone upon all. There was some silver lining, I guess. There were visions of nonsensical events that came with the headaches.
The visions showed events I hadn't experienced. I felt emotions that I wouldn't have felt in three lifetimes.
Far too many emotions washed over me. Hatred, vindication, envy, love, lust, happiness, and apathy surged within me. I felt saturated in them.
I can only describe the entire experience right now as something painfully unpleasant.
It started to hurt looking at anything, so I shut my eyes. That still failed to fend off anything. I could still feel the full brunt of the mental assault.
I thought I would weather the storm, but I overestimated myself. With every step I took forward or back, it all worsened exponentially.
My legs began to turn into pool noodles, and my head burned like a furnace. Thankfully my stomach remained empty. I felt anything in my body would have been a burden at this point.
I dry heaved, retching up bodily fluids. My body curled inward, aching in ways unimaginable. There was no resistance to give as I fell to the ground. It felt as if white-hot nails drove themselves into my bones, forcibly separating them incrementally. They cut through my body with what felt like the edge of a dull and serrated knife.
Everything itched as if ants crawled up and down my body. The miserable concoction of aching and itching pulsated dully through my body. It never caused immense agony in a single instant but instead lingered like the fog on a lake, robbing my senses.
I wanted to stop moving. However, my gut told me that my goal was close, so I foolishly pushed on even though I could no longer walk. I already put in too much effort. I needed to see this through.
After walking and crawling for eons without a single change in scenery, I have many reasons to stop. So that's what I did. The rekindled ember of motivation and hope burnt out.
Seeing there was no way to reach the two, I was content with dispersing into the mixture of fine sand.
I hoped my suffering would have ended there, but it didn't. Time continued to flow and melt away, and my anguish continued.
There was some respite in it all. The visions that I had grew more potent with time as well. The phrases and words now held clarity. A crisp and clean video feed placed itself directly into my mind's eye.
I now had a movie theater in my head for my troubles. The theatre showed small snippets of different lives, and I "lived" through a countless number of memories. Many of the visions were incomprehensible or plain, but one. This memory particularly stood out.
A sigh came from the surface of a grey and withering world. Crags and fissures ran along the ground like open wounds.
The forceful yet breathless voice close by was the only sign of life on this silent planet.
Not even rubble would keep you company under the starless void.
There was no sun. There was no light.
A desolate land where not even weeds would bloom was its present state.
Ash filled my lungs, and the cold filled my body. Someone patted my head lightly. Their rigid fingers caressed my scalp. The whispers of a weak man filled my ears. "It seems that I ran all the time short. I'm sorry, kid. In the end, I couldn't take you to that arcade I promised."
I felt an unbridled sense of sorrow and anguish while looking at the man.
All of this was strange. Despite never seeing that man, I felt a deep connection to him. Then again, should I have been so surprised? I was in a space without end, and I maybe was hallucinating. Maybe this needless scenery and suffering was simply a figment of my imagination, for that matter.
Regardless, even if this was an imagined scenario, I wish it would come to a close soon. I couldn't die from hunger, dehydration, or mental damage here.
At some point in my ongoing torment, I began to feel nothing. My mind began to meld into the white around me as my body no longer felt anything. The visions continued to play, but I gave them no time or mind. In my state of numbness, I stood once more and trudged on as lively as a zombie.
I gave up trying to think or feel anything.
Unaware of the time, I roamed. The goal I had was nearly a faint memory in the past. Things began to slip from me as I became immersed in this world. There was no doubt that I would have been lost in the sea of white forever as a mindless dreg.