Barbs of Inc.lined Choice

My hope surged, 3 quivers of light converging in slow-motion. But moments passed, and the Abyss remained entrenched. Slowly, I realized the battle was over. Exhaustion poured down among eerie silence.

Hooked.

Dragged.

Enveloped.

Sunken.

I dropped to my knees, plowing them against now-invisible grates. “Why were there so many choiiiceZzz..?!” I broke into sobs. “Dammn. IITTT!” I screeched into unrelenting Void: my rage merely swallowed by the Tarpit of darkness, defeat crushing down over me.

“Maybe we just weren’t quick enough,” my companion’s voice arose through the thick veil. “Or maybe our karma is poor. No telling what went wrong.”

My mouth opened once more to contend, desperately entreating the light back, a muffled roar frozen below a Gravestone while the surface was twinkling on somewhere else*. Yet only wordless bubbles rose... as endless Oil shoveled it’s way down my throat by the gallon.

My thoughts spiraled. The people entrusted with the hope of our return were separated. I was even now cut off from Gutterson with no safe way down from the Heights. Hell, I felt out of touch with myself. Numb. And I just wanted another chance to stay home today and graduate at Week’s end. “We let them dowwnnn..” I moaned, unable to shout any more, utterly unraveled.

The noise of machine had died; you could hear the cry of a hair if it were to flutter to the ground. “It was our only job. To come back and aid them. Why were we greedy for the Flamezzz??”

His voice was slow with disbelief. “We tried. So hard. We... we, we were gonna make it. In fact, I just had this theatrical feeling. We were.”

I dug into my eye sockets to drive the tears away, but they squirted out only more to replace the flow. “No. No. No. We didn’t know what we were doing. Somebody lost the instructions, or maybe they didn’t like them and tried to hide ’em so nobody would know what to Aim for. Had we searched hard enough to really discover something; Or did we settle to write our own rules, since everybody wanted to push a different style?

Maybe it was basically a daydream all along anyway, while the wealthy paid to insert rules to tip pursuits in their advantage. Hell, we barely know the characters we’re playing alongside our whole lives...

“It’s alright, Pyramis.” Gutt quavered. “We’ll figure something else out. Don’t quit now.”

I tore at my face. “Oh, it’s no use. We screwed up. We lost.” My head turned, I could feel it, but the direction it faced was ambiguous. All I knew was that every direction might as well have been the same direction. “And I won’t sit here and rot away. There’s nothing left to gain here. I’m not sure what I was playing for to begin with -- some sort of Crowdfund charity club?”

I dragged myself, feeling along for the railing with blind hands.

Malibu heard my body scraping. “Take it easy, son. What are you doing?”

I couldn’t answer him. My face was leaking all over the place: He shouldn’t have to be in this mess; This is because I didn’t listen closely about spinning Heschita.

“Wait a minute, Pyram. Do you hear that?” In my beleaguered state I barely heard his voice, and sure as heck didn’t hear anything the crazy man thought he was hearing. In a fog of isolation, I became dead-set on the one thing that could end the the torment of it all.

I was about to leap off the catwalk and float to my inevitable death.

Shuffling along, I jammed my finger into something sturdy that gave a little ground & budged. Then my nail caught in a crack and I winced as it bent the wrong way. But i merely brushed the pain away with a depleted thought - Oh, must be the Gaslighter. Supposed to lift us to victory, but our attempt to retrieve it ironically proved too tantalizing & its flame consumed us instead. I howled maniacally.

I couldn’t find the strength to keep on being a Robin; I went rogue, replanted my roots as Throbbin, a villain. The same reaction as any other joker with nothing sweet cooking would have: rob every trace of joy near your clutch: because you aren’t living if all you feel is bitterness or fear. You’re taking in the scant essentials; Where’s the charging conductivity of fascination?

My hand kept wandering, until it slipped off and dangled into empty space. The edge.

Finally there, I grappled onto the cold bars and erected myself. The bones, the flesh; they came easy. It was the flagging mind I wrestled to lift. But I beat him down; I shoved my conscience away, swapped it against the cost of perseverance, and planted my rocking legs on the middle rung -- thighs inclined against the firm bars, suspended over the beckoning pit, drooped like a slave long-chained.

“It’s a high-pitched droning sound,” Mali remarked.

I laughed to myself. “Drone? It’s MEeEEeE…!” tore free from my lungs with barbs attached to it, startling myself with its thirst for blood. “It’s. ONLY. me.”

“Pull yourself togeth–” but the air froze on its climb across his vocal chords. “Odd.” His attention had been diverted. “Do you feel that pressure in here?”

“If ‘in here’ is my head, then abbbB-solutely!” I cracked. “It says I can fly.”

He was finally catching onto the bigger signals. “Son,” he said diligently. I could picture him holding a hat over his heart. “I need ya.”

A fresh pang of remorse rolled over me, but I swallowed it hot and hard. It severed the chords of my heart, but over the sore lump in my throat, I managed to continue: “And you know what? I buy what it says. I’m gonna punch a ticket and fly into forever.”

I stabilized myself. Two, Deep, breaths. Except the clarity didn't arrive. I was torn between my immediate desire for relief and crawling around to give my buddy some sort of false solace unto starvation of body and soul.

So I dredged up a collection of all the instances that marked me a dopey loser, staring down the circumstances of my worst memories, in order to quash any further reluctance to give up all of my eighteen years in a solitary minute. My breath backed up behind my lips, threatening to blow out my eyeballs, and all my muscles contracted -- until I thought I had been compacted into an air-tight can.

“Please.” Though I wished it to be imaginary, Malibu’s despairing voice was wriggling into my ear, “You’re ALL I’ve got left here.”

I knew I was killing the both of us. But weren’t we already dead meat? Surely the power-Grid disturbance would be summoning some Security force to investigate very soon.

One of my feet trickled its way upon the middle bar, between me and the easy way out, the act of total release proving none too easy. Lifting my heel, I shunned the pieces of my Path. My calves tensed in anticipation.

And I leaned forward off the rail, with heavy tears roaring down.

***

My eyes were flexed open by some external force. Seemed I was in some decorative nursery. A small rocking horse sat in the corner, the lone object in the room. I no longer owned it, so I figured I had joined the places of the Dead, or else was in some Twilight transit phase. It was a distinct object, an amusement between myself and a childhood friend. Suddenly, a mighty Peal of thunder E-’RupteD and the room crunched down into pitch black. Not again… is Death going to remove my reliefs too?

The roar of a Proud Cat blasted through the formless space, and my eyes darted around warily. But I seemed totally alone. Nothing could protect against it if it sought me. I fully expected to be ripped apart - when warm lights popped on -- revealing I had unexpected company. My rocking horse was gone; a fluffy white cloud stood there instead. I saw hooves, and distinguished it as the tail-end of a lamb. I heard a quiet “baah” and started to approach it for inspection.

When it turned around I stopped dead in my tracks.