The Gateway to Envy | A Short Story

TW//: seclusion imagery, forced isolation, implied death

Isolation is a proxy by which self-destruction occurs. No, you scoundrels I do not mean the self-inflicted isolation those which carry the spell of introversion lit aflame. This one is far more dreary. A slow stinging pain that carves its course into you until the first jab of the knife. Simple pain that barely exists until some forsaken event reminds you of its unholy presence. Its ghostly existence that haunts even long beyond the wounds has finished its course. This isolation is a cruel mother who clings to you like a devil grasping at the ankles as you sleep. Feelings carve so deep the emptiness of solitude you once desired is glaringly broken.

I had never understood such pain.

Until it was simply all I had.

It did not come overnight, but certainly, at the time it felt like it. Hollowness. That’s what I called it. The crippling feeling of absence that in return causes a question upon just what it is. Something is missing yet nothing can be established gone. In that sense, it is like a memory that was forgotten. Nagging ruthlessly until one day finally it is recognized.

Very quickly that hollowness evolved into tantalizing lapses of relief paired with a violent succumbing to the agony again. One day the sensation was all but lost. Then mere moments later ruthlessly returning. Loneliness. I called it loneliness then.

How foolish of me.

Finally, it begins to truly take shape. After internal strife, a sudden bout of realization normally is inflicted upon oneself. This casing is no different. The shock comes aggressively fast after months of repetitive ascends and descends. Situations make the feelings. When one lacks such dreaded agony but then it viciously returns the brain is slowly able to comprehend what is occurring. Isolation. At last, I learned it was isolation.

To what? To what ends is this isolation something I must be inflicted with. Well, it is a secret lost to your mind. What made this isolation, this suffering, so brilliantly strong is not conducive to this story. The ending is all the same. My suffering is all the equal. My isolation does not change. Its existence is all the more powerful.

Negative emotions devour the soul.

They devour negative emotions.

We harbor them when they are weak.

They need us and we need them. I was no different. Pain can only be withstood long enough for a human to be able to continue to function. If a human cannot function they cannot live, hence how they come to be so critical. Isolation, the suffering it brings, is rather potent especially when it is harbored away for months.

“Isolation is lonely isn’t it? Let me help you not be alone.”

Those sickenly sweet words were the whispers of a hope I clung to for months on end. To be validated and understood without needing to speak up first. That’s why I clung to it. The offer was too sweet. No longer suffering while also being granted a power to be noticed. I should have taken the isolation, the entire change was not worth the cost.

Did you know Isolation can look a lot like Envy?

Again, not the normal kind of self-inflicted isolation. No, I mean the one that you do not decide. The one where you look onto those you know and think, “why can that not be me? Why must I be the lonely one? I’m right here notice me not them.” Taken out of context may those not seem like they belong to Envy. “Why can I not fit in? Why do I have to sit here unacknowledged? Why can I not be like everyone else here?” Every single line carves a single path towards the champion emotion of Envy.

“You can be like them too. They don’t have to have it all.”

Its second set of words should have sounded suspicious when I first heard of it. It does not. Yet at the time I did not connect Isolation to Envy as I had just done for you. At the time it sounded comforting. An escape from my misery and a return to normalcy. It was an offer I did not want to refuse. So the feeling stabbing my stomach vanished all the more quickly. Freedom from such sensation was at the grasp of my fingertips and it was all thanks to them. Devouring the parts of myself I did not want to see. Feeding away on the agony so that only positivity could exist in the space.

Yet as happy as I was, as much as it promised, I was still alone. Isolated. Outcasted. Ignored. Shunned.

Why? What circumstances led to this suffering of my own soul to be acceptable? How is it ok that I am like this but no one else is? When is the agony ever going to stop? Who must I meet for everything to finally change for the better again?

Question upon question drove me further down a pit of madness to a location where I could not even identify myself. In the end, there was but no one to blame but myself was there not? Isolation is not a choice but how one handles it is. Oh, how I wish I heard those words before the eery creature uttered its finally capturing tune.

“I will never forsaken you. We can remain together indefinitely.”

Words such as those sound much more appealing when there is no one to utter them besides the one. I clung to it. I caved in to the demands it was asking of me. Finally, I could be like the rest of them. I would no longer be outcasted and Isolated among those I always assumed would never do it. After all the time that had transcended I would be able to achieve normalcy.

What

a

foolish

belief.

This of pages would not exist if I truly found the answers to all of my internal torment. There would be no purpose to write if the suffering did not exist. So why am I writing? What happened? I fear my time is running out to tell.

It got more and more hungry and I just couldn’t keep up anymore. Fear whelmed up inside me more than it ever did before. My friends never saw my pleas for help. I would have stopped if just one of them removed the pain they caused. Never. Never did I ever get an answer to my silent plea. So it just got more and more hungry until the point it acted.

It was them or me. However, I knew if I chose them it would ultimately end up back to me. Hence, I ran. I ran from the very thing I created because I could not handle my own pain that was inflicted upon me by life. I ran and still to this day I am running. Oh, how my Isolation has swiftly turned into Envy but I barely have time to relish in that fact anymore.

This note is my last-ditch effort to let my story be known.

Please, whoever finds this, find a way to stop it. No. Find a way to stop me. Find a way to stop all of those like me. Find a way to finally put an end to these stupid things we ultimately created.

They are not worth it. The Tenebris are the seeds of our undoing. Parasites that latch onto us and feed until there is nothing less but skin and bone. Leeches of negative emotions and instead of getting full they just get stronger. No matter how sad a person is, an emotional leech will run out of things to feed on eventually. Then they become the monsters they always were and chase us down and devour us; we who gave them life are their final meal to freedom.

Those fools at the agency would lead you to believe they are protectors. Please, the agency would not need to exist if we never created these blasted fiends in the first place. Using fiends to destroy fiends does nothing but get rid of the number of untamed fiends. How I am envious of the time before these things existed.

I am running out of time. I feel his approaching.

The agency will say I was an envious man who wanted everything. No, I was an Isolated man who just wanted to be normal. The agency will say I choose this fate to finally be better than everyone. No, I am choosing the fate to come in order to spare my life a little longer. The agency will call me Envy, a monster. This will be the only thing they will be right about.

It is our fault these things exist.

So please, end it all and finally get rid of the Tenebris before the Tenbris, one of who I will soon be, devour you all.

Goodbye, dear reader. I pray I never harm you.

Sincerly,

    -- Erik Indergen

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Author’s Notes

So this ‘story’, more like letter, is within the same world as the my novel i’m working on. The focus this time is on a character known as Erik. While I originally intended to focus all writing in this universe (one I’m trying to make a full-length book from), the concept of “there’s always two sides to the same coin” made me want to write from the perspective of someone who inherently is meant to be evil. Erik is not a protagonist. Yet he still has motives for his actions. This letter is an accurate recounting of his last moments being human. For an understanding of Tenebris and Tenbris simply ask. I will eventually have more on this soon. For now thank you for reading!

Word Count

1,568 words

Image Credit

unable to find, if you can find it let me know.

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