Descent into Nothingness

My house is freezing as usual and I shiver in the doorway of my dingy studio flat in Corydon, waiting for the lights to finish flickering after flipping the switch. I take in the peeling walls and the grimy fixtures that are caked in limescale and mould and sigh heavily before opening my humming fridge to grab a beer. I sit on my alcohol-stained sofa and begin my nightly ritual of mulling over how much I've failed since I came to London ten years ago. I was 21 years old and fresh out of university with big dreams of becoming a successful lawyer for a well-known city firm, but I soon realised that my limited intelligence that had scraped me through my law degree wasn’t enough to get me through my LPC. With my unrealistic dreams shattered, I began a life of minimum wage retail jobs that drained the essence of my soul more and more each day and drove me into a life of heavy drinking and regular eviction notices.

Staring blankly at the pile of bills on the table, I shuffle around in my pockets to find my tobacco and begin rolling a cigarette with my nicotine-stained fingers. I try to calculate in my head the amount of money I need to get myself out of this rut. With my unpaid bills, the last four months of rent, and the maxed-out credit cards, I figure I would need about fifteen grand to pay for everything. I scoff at the thought of obtaining such a sum from my shitty job at the Off Licence, pop the cigarette in my mouth and stand to open the grime coated window to my balcony. I inhale deeply, filling my lungs with the toxic smoke, and hold my breath for a minute until my head spins, then I exhale, watching the cloud dissipate into the night. In my depressive state, I will the rusty railing to give under my weight and let me fall to my demise, splattering me on the pavement below like some bird shit on a car. I don’t have the balls to do it myself but if something bad happened to me I wouldn’t be upset either. It’s not like there is anyone around to miss me. I don’t believe in the afterlife or anything. I think we just die and that’s the end of our existence. Our spirit dies with us. But even eternal nothingness has to be better than this.

A sound to my left jerked me away from my morbid thoughts to something utterly bizarre. Dangling from the rails above is a woman who appears to be climbing down onto my balcony. She lands her feet on the thin, rusted railing next to me and looks down as I gape at her in shock. She is possibly the strangest looking woman I have ever seen. Everything about her is white; her hair, her skin, her clothes, even her eyelashes, and eyebrows are pure white I notice as she gazes down at me with electric blue eyes, the only visibly coloured feature on her entire being.

“What the fuck are you doing!?” I yell at her readying my arms to catch her in the likely instance that she falls. She looks over her shoulder at the ground several stories down, then crouches and jumps down onto my balcony with a feline elegance. I breathe a sigh of relief at her safety but I’m also completely dumbfounded by her presence. “Who are you?” I ask, hoping this time I would get an answer.

“I have something for you,” she murmurs in a light, toneless voice. It is only then that I notice what she is gripping in her porcelain hands. She holds it out to me expectantly and I stand and observe for a minute. It’s a small, black, soft-covered notebook with a black elastic close on it. The book is a deep contrast next to the girls’ ghostly skin and I look up from the book and into her distant eyes.

“What is it?” I ask, hesitant to take anything from this balcony-climbing stranger.

“It’s a book you can use to write your wishes.” She says flatly and smiles with her thin, white lips but stares at me with dead eyes that make me nervous.

“Is this some kind of joke? I ask, suddenly remembering the cigarette I had between my fingers as the burning tip reaches my fingers “shit…”

“You want to die, don’t you?” she continues and I just stare at her in shock. “You were just thinking about dying…if you use the book your life can be better. You will still die but you can be happy until then.”

My eyes are drawn back to the small black book contrasting against her pale hands. Maybe the beer has gone to my head already, or maybe I am too bewildered at the peculiarity of my situation. Regardless I slowly reach out to take the book from the stranger’s hands, feeling like the object is calling to me. I take it from the girl without pulling my eyes away from it. It feels pleasant in my hands, the cover smooth against my fingers, but there seems to be ominous energy radiating from it like it has power. Like maybe it could grant my wishes but with a dark consequence. I shake my head to rid it of my ridiculous thoughts and finally look back at the girl. She still wore her piercing, dead stare that made me shiver and feel a little nauseous.

“Are you ok? Do you need help or something?” I ask suddenly wondering if she is an escaped psychiatric patient or in some kind of trouble. Why else would she be climbing down balconies in the middle of the night? It wouldn’t be the first time something fucked up was happening in this part of town. She turns and leans against the rail then tilts her head back at a disturbing angle to look at me, grinning this time and showing unnaturally sharp teeth. This time her smile reaches her eyes and my stomach drops in horror at the sinister look in them that turns my blood to ice.

“I’ll see you soon,” she replies with a wicked tone in her previously dead voice then she throws herself over my balcony before I have time to scream. Dropping the book, I rush to the edge, the railing groaning against my weight. My eyes scan the darkness below expecting to see her white figure laying on the gravel below, blood splattered across her form finally adding colour to her. But there was nothing.

Later in the night, I have gulped down several cans of beers until my head swims in intoxication. The events of the night disappearing from my mind with every swallow but the small black notebook on my coffee table remains to remind me that it was not a figment of my imagination. In all honesty, it’s occupying my every thought. Every time my eyes droop in my drunken stupor, I am dragged back to reality by an invisible force that leaves me obsessing over the book like a withdrawn addict. I think about opening it, but then I think I shouldn’t. After the pure terror caused by the girl on my balcony, I’m not sure I can stomach anything else tonight. However, my curiosity and liquid courage lead me to place the book on my lap and run my fingers across its soft surface. With shaking hands, I pull on the elastic and slowly open it. The aura radiating from the book is menacing but its appearance seems so normal. The paper inside is thick and lined and I flip through the pages until I come across small writing near the middle. It reads “I wish for my love to be requited”. I wonder if the strange woman wrote it…she did say I should write my wishes inside and surely only someone like that could be crazy enough to believe it.

Despite my obvious doubts, I reach out for the pen on my table feeling compelled to also write something. Before I know it, the words seem to have written themselves. “I wish for twenty thousand pounds cash”. I look at my handwriting as if it is alien to me as I snap out of whatever hypnosis overtook me and toss the book and pen on the floor in frustration. I’ve had too much to drink. Perhaps I’d drank too much before even returning home. It was the only explanation of the night. I anxiously swipe my beer from the table and quickly chug it down then throw myself down on the sofa, allowing the spinning in my head to stop before passing out.

Alas, even my dreams would not let me forget. There is the woman, alive and well. We are in a forest in pitch black and I am unable to decipher whether the monochrome colour of everything is due to the lack of light or whether we are really in black and white. She is stood a distance away, but I can see her ghostly figure clearly in the murk. I hear a sound to my right and turn to see a large steel door with sounds of clanking coming from the other side. Whatever was hammering the door was beginning to make dents in the metal, I try to run but my body is paralysed like always in the depths of a nightmare.

Panic-stricken, I look towards the woman who is once again sporting that ghastly grin and she speaks, “we will come for you soon,” then I bolt up on the sofa dripping with sweat.

I nervously scan the room, half expecting the nightmare to continue; for the woman to be stood in my flat ready to abduct me from my home. But there is nothing. I sigh in relief and wonder if it was all a dream. I search the floor where I threw the notebook and I’m happy to discover it’s gone. However, when I drop my head in my hands I notice something unfamiliar on the coffee table. My eyes widen and instead of feeling amazed or delighted I once again feel dread. Next to the stack of utility bills and eviction notices is what I assume to be twenty thousand pounds in cash.

I’d like to tell you that my life improved after the money I desperately needed miraculously appeared in front of me. I’d like to say it was just the push I needed to get my life back on track. Everything was marginally better as I paid my debts and no longer had the threat of homelessness hanging over me, but I am now unable to sleep at all due to the same, petrifying dream that returns every single night. Every night is in black and white. Every night the woman stands closer and closer to me and I fail to move a muscle to retreat. Every night some kind of monster pounds against the steel door, bending it more and more. And every night she tells me she will come for me.

I’m smoking more and more and the money I wished for dwindles. I am now on the final cigarette I bought with the last of the money and I feel more broken and exhausted now than I did when I had nothing to lose. I lean on the railing and wonder if the girl really will come for me. At that moment I freeze at the sight of the steel door protruding from the pavement below. I gasp as porcelain hands land on my back and push me over the edge and I have but a second to realise, there is more than nothingness waiting for me below.