CW: severe leg injury, gore.
As much as I want to say I've been walking down these stairs for as long as I can remember, I know that's too inaccurate. I am a person without memory. A person without a beginning, history, or birth. I have no recollection of when or why I was put on this earth, or who I was before this point. All there has been is the present and, along with it, my senseless existence. The present is all I have and likely all there will be. How can there be a future, when all I know and ever will know are these stairs?
The stairs are the only meaning of my life. I spend every day of every year walking down them, blind to where they may lead. There is never a moment, not a single second, where I cease to move. It's always one foot after another, the repetition that carries me downward. The only thing I know, and the only thing I can do.
Where are these stairs leading to? I could never tell you. I wouldn't be walking down them if I knew the answer. Or at least, that's what I'm assuming. Maybe at some point, long ago, I was curious about where they'd take me. The person I was before might've seen them and wondered if they paved the way to something marvelous. I envy that person, who now no longer exists. It must've been lovely to live with so much fascination and wanderlust in my heart. But now I am all that remains. All that is left of that naive soul is a machine. A lifeless husk performing a series of repetitive motions.
These stairs have carried me far, yet I never seem to get anywhere. They've taken me across mountains, cliffs, and ledges of all kinds. They've formed spirals and bridges, and have twisted in every possible direction. I've been walking down them through rain, snow, hail, and worst of all, fog. Fog so thick that I could barely see whatever was two steps ahead of me.
And yet I persist.
I persist and continue to travel one step at a time. Mindlessly, I trudge forward with no end in sight and without a single goal in mind. It all happens like clockwork, as if I'm a single gear performing within a giant mechanism. The only difference is that a gear has a role. A gear has a purpose, a responsibility, and a function. Sadly, I have none of those things. I am but a wandering fool. Blind, numb, and directionless. Something alive but barely living.
Currently, I am trekking across the downward edge of a great summit. As always, the stairs are safely guiding me along, protecting me with a sturdy railing and solid marble steps. One slip over the edge could easily spell my doom, and yet I progress without fear. I keep moving on, advancing down as naturally as breathing, blinking or pumping my blood.
But by pure chance, I make a mistake; my eyes shift, and as punishment, are met with the obscured abyss below me.
For the first time in god knows how long, I have a thought. A realization and a sudden moment of awareness. There is nothing but a pure white void below my feet. A great height shrouded in mist, cloaking whatever ground lay beneath. From this, an uncomfortable reality reveals itself to me; I really have no idea what lies beyond. The ground could be thousands or even millions of miles from where I stood. One mistake and I could be plummeting to a grisly, unfortunate demise. There might not even be a ground at all. Who's to say an accidental fall wouldn't leave me floating in an endless sea of vapor? Or the end of the world altogether? And if there is a ground, there could be anything waiting there. There could be sharp rocks, ravenous beasts, or an entire ocean to plunge into. So many possible fates await me, and none would be a kind way to go.
I stop dead in my tracks.
Somehow, my thought takes total control and takes hold of my body. Almost instinctually, my feet seize all momentum and freeze completely. My hands tightly grasp onto the railing, pulling myself back.
For a while, I'm frozen stiff. I stand in place and stare ahead, fully allowing my realization to soak into my brain. An emotion, a sensation I was once acquainted with, fills my mind. I remember this emotion as dread, a feeling of pure anxiety, hopelessness, and terror. It strikes me right in my heart, and yet I dare to turn my body towards the railing. As I look down at the drop lingering before me, I begin to shake. I quiver and quake all over just from the sight of it. It's like knowing exactly how I'm going to die. It feels like a near certainty, with the only real mystery being when it'll eventually happen.
I move back from the railing and kneel down to lower myself. Slowly, I sit myself down on the steps and wrap my arms around my knees, forming a curled-up position. I take a few minutes to think, silently mulling over where life has brought me. Hundreds of questions flood through my head. Is this a safe thing to do? Is it too late to turn back? Why haven't I stopped myself yet? But amongst them all, one question gnaws away at me relentlessly.
Why am I doing this?
What am I getting out of this? Do the stairs ever end? Do they even reach the ground? Was there ANYTHING waiting at the end? Is this even all worth it?
I remain in this position for hours. My body remains paralyzed as my mind races without restraint. Internally, my thoughts roar and rampage from within my skull. Some demand me to move, while others keep me in place. Do I stay here? And succumb to the inevitable dead end of my life? Or should I keep moving? And risk an eternity of chasing an unpromised reward?
At last, I make my decision.
My arm pulls me back onto my feet, with my legs weakly shaking as I arise. Hesitantly, I move my feet, walking down one step at a time, the same process that I've come to know. Somehow, this natural rhythm I had perfected just a moment ago now comes with a great struggle. My limbs rattle with resistance, with my legs feeling like they're bound to collapse and my arms clutching to the railing for dear life. I do my best to ignore my physical reluctance and continue my journey. I tell myself that it's just one step after another, on an endless repeat. I've mastered this pattern and nothing has changed. Just one foot after the other. That's all it is.
Some time passes as I push myself to go forward. I go through another hour or so of walking, and it seems like my default state has returned. There's still no end in sight, but I'm beyond used to it by now and pay it no mind.
Crack.
Once again, I become frozen in place. In a panic, my head darts all around, frantically searching for the source of the noise. It isn't until I look down that I'm able to find it.
The current flight of stairs I'm on is fracturing. Long, diverging lines begin to spread through the black marble glass, making loud snapping sounds of the surface splitting and fracturing. I realize that it's rupturing from underneath my weight and worse, that it would take me down with it.
My adrenaline kicks into overdrive, but to no avail. By instinct, I scramble to safety and attempt to run towards safer ground. Instead, the flight snaps, shattering into ginormous uneven pieces, leaving me within the cruel hands of gravity. Before I can even process it, I sink. I drop suddenly and without mercy, like a rock. I'm pulled down at a great speed, and I feel the cold wind brushing past me as I dive through it. My stomach turns and flip-flops a million times over, and my heart pounds against the walls of my chest in a frenzy. I fall for a great amount of time, plunging through the sky for about a half hour or so. As I descend, one thought inside of me screams the entire time: This is how I'm going to die. This is the end. I have taken my own life away from me.
Suddenly, I land with a thud...and a snap
An indescribable pain spreads through my leg and throughout my entire body. It's like I've been struck by lightning, with a great bolt of energy scouring through every one of my nerves. The agony is so immense that I don't even have the strength to scream, and my vision is soon enveloped by my unconsciousness.
I can't even guess how long I've been out for, but finally I awaken. I slowly lift my head, gradually inching myself upward due to my remaining pain. Once I pull myself up, I'm met with two discoveries: not only was I still on the stairs, due to my body landing on another flight down below, but that I had severely broken my leg. It lies there before me, twisted and mangled from my own weight smashing against it. A sharp, protruding bone sticks out amongst my flesh, leaving a gaping wound and blood pooling all around me.
Crushed.
That's the only accurate way I can describe it. It's the one word that fits my mind, heart, spirit, and any will I had left in me. It's a feeling that engulfs my very vessel. It's strangling the breath and life out of me, like two firm hands clutched fiercely around my windpipe. My entire being is crushed. Without something to hold onto, my mind slips away and falls back into the feeble comfort of the dark. My head falls back onto the cold, hard staircase with a thump. A pathetic thump of audible defeat, before succumbing to another slumber of misery.
Somehow, I have awoken again.
I honestly expected death to take right then and there. The sleep was deep enough that I could've sworn that it was, and yet here I was. Still breathing and pulsating, and my eyes weakly fluttering open. I lift my head up once more, checking to see if maybe my mutilated was just a dream or a hallucination caused by my unbalanced state. To my misfortunate, it's still very real. Still throbbing, still maimed, and possibly infected by now. I continue to lie for a bit, and do nothing much else other than think. I think about whether surviving was a blessing or a curse or not, or if maybe God was toying with me through this cruel act of mercy. But after my brain cycles through every possible prompt for reflection it can muster, there's only one question left for me.
What should I do now?
My arm reaches out. And although frail and shaking, I drag myself down the steps.
My body slides down the steps one after another, completely limp. It slumps down each ledge, burdening my right hand as it pulls it along. I am once again moving down these stairs, but far slower than I ever was before. The tedious but brisk method of moving my feet has been replaced with torturous edging and crawling at a snail's pace. This grievous existence is worse in just about every way possible. I have merely traded one cycle of torment for another, with little improvement
And yet...
Whether by some miracle, a random force of luck, or the loss of my dear sanity, I persist.