Museum “Entrance to Oblivion”

“I was just trying to do the right thing.

I was always trying to do the right thing.

I am...how many stories will be told like this?

How many times will the blood on the page end up as a certain shade of empty nothing?

I know how hard you are trying, but it was never going to be enough.

At a certain point, it is either you or them.

You selfishly chose you, thinking that maybe if you felt better that you would somehow have everything make sense. But you refuse to just accept you are like everyone else. You have to be special and unique or your life is just too much like everyone elses. And there is something truly sick in trying to make people like you through pain. In the end, people do seem to like you.

And that maybe makes you happy.

But they only like you because you haven't scared them yet.

They know you, but they don't know the actual you. Because inside, your body is screaming, even after all the fighting you have done.

Inside, something is lashing out.

And how do you explain that to someone who has never had to be in pain every day of their life? Who look at you with a smile but never a hug or a warm blanket. Because they can't understand what it feels like to be a boundless wreck, held up by obligation and fear of losing even more than you already have.

I feel empty, and you feel empty.

I understand, in a small way, how you feel.

But that doesn't mean you aren't a freak.

They call what is inside a monster, but what really is that?

The sleep is calling you,

and the itch has been scratched for now.

No.

Not for now.

It feels so good to feel complete.

Why does that feeling hold such a high cost?

It’s because that feeling isn't truth, and the fact is that you feeling sad never should have been so important.

This is all your fault.

Had one of you held on, the world would have sustained.

Now we see that the world is dead.

And we along with it.”

I found this on Eric's corpse after discovering him at his desk at work. All the remaining personnel have disappeared or been found dead by various means.

Under the note was a tablet.

It is very old, written in Mesopotamian cuneiform.

It wasn't long. Time was short.

There were three sons. One of yellow, one of red, and one of black.

Those sons had seven daughters.

There were seven, now there are two.

It is all my fault. The rot, the death, the failure to stop it.

We are the end of the world.

That is what connects us.

I have tried to bring all of this into context, but every time I do I feel like I am losing a little more of myself. When I think back on everything, it takes something out of me, and I struggled to get my mind together long enough for me to write to you.

I say I am tired, or I am scared. But really I am sad.

All those things feel the same to me.

Because now there is nothing left for me here, save for the connections I share with monsters.

I am thinking back on the time my dad had me talk to the strange man on his porch. Did my dad know the seed that was going to be planted that day? Did he really think the mannequin man was really that invested in pretending that he is something that he isn't?

It was serendipitous, when you think about it.

No matter how much skin you wear, it cannot hide what is underneath.

The world is breaking, in physical ways that most people struggle to see. The sun is gasping and the world is rotting, and if I had just been stronger than maybe it wouldn't have turned out this way. If I was stronger, than I would have been able to save Max and Ariana. It doesn't matter how I feel, or how much all of this makes me feel dead.

I wanted so much to feel alive again, but it isn't worth it.

It doesn't matter.

They are all gone.

And it is all my fault.

I am so so sorry Noomi.

You shouldn't have had to exist in a world that depended on me to survive.

I know I am being cruel.

I know that.

I want to sleep so badly, to welcome something, anything new and far away from the pain.

But it is too much for me.

It is all too much.

There is a voice, a cadence that I hear in my head. When I speak in that voice, things fit together in the most wonderful of ways. Some part of me is scared of that, but another feels relief. I have always hated the sound of my voice. But when I let my voice sit like gravel, when I pitch it down and allow the hollow tones to take over...

I can smell it all the time now. It smells of stars and the black expanses of space. And when I stop and listen, I can hear it loud and clear.

My heart speaks to the night, and it is the night, not sleep, that calls me.

There is a place for me in the dark, a way into the night.

Please don't hate me for what I have done. Underneath my skin is something so beautiful.

When I laugh, it is a cackle,

and when I cry it is tinged with night.

I don't want to see

what is hidden under my nails.

But now...

it is all I can think about.

With love, always,

Niomi