NEW: Gothic

 

The corridor was dark, sprawling, seeming to go on and on - endlessly. The silence was so bitter that it could be cut with a blunt knife. I walked with a spluttering candle in one clenched fist, as my naked feet touched the icy flagstones, step after step - but I felt nothing.

Walking like a ghost, the gloomy corridor seemed to pass around and through me. I had no essence, no corporality, I was part somnambulist, part haunting spirit. Was I dead? Was I ever alive?

I felt at once broken, twisted, torn apart - and yet stitched back together again, hastily and with a cynical abandon - a rhythm that seemed to repeat itself with every cold step taken down this endless corridor.

"There is nothing that is truly endless", came a whisper from everywhere and nowhere. "And yet", the voice continued. "The cosmos has cheated itself, and you are the result, sweet thing. You are the endless and enduring result."

I had no idea as to what the whispered voice could mean, and I had no inclination to stop my journey, to ponder. How could I? The corridor remained dark, sprawling, as I continued my walk - step by cold step, towards nothing.