The Spiral

​It's an alluring tunnel, a cave, a mouth wide open. It's a warm and enveloping darkness that promises a sacred inner light. Mankind is but children, young to the Earth, fresh-faced and naive, eager to explore. We are moths to a blue flame, drawn to go in.

​We strut where we should walk, and tower when we ought to crawl. Whoever allowed us to breach the darkness? To travel in and downwards evermore, a never-ending spiral slick with liquid shadow, down, a tiny splinter of time and matter sliding into the belly of a beast?

​I see this again, and again, and again. ​Sometimes, I am the child, blissfully ignorant until the end. ​Other times, I am the darkness. Greedy and waiting, observing the still waters from below - the silent predator crowded with invisible bodies at the bottom of a sunless sea. Calm, and so, so far away.

​Again, and again, and again.

​The spiral pulls inwards ​Winding down ​Unknowable configuration, each curve more twisted than the last ​A corkscrew slowly digging into flesh ​A snake eating the world ​And devouring itself, until it can feast no longer ​Again, and again, and again. Until the world forgets, for it leaves no trace of itself but a lingering allure.

​The pressure mounts as I travel below. A world that's no longer mine towers above me, suffocates me, pushes me down. I press my hand against the walls of the spiral so I don't lose myself in the descent. ​Its sides are moist and glistening.

​It twists more with every turn, uneven, irregular, and mangled around itself. It leads me ever downwards. The deeper I dive, the more I understand its rhythm. It's fleshy, breathing, vibrating. It becomes alive at depth.

​I awake at the bottom of the spiral, at the core of the Earth. Around me, a writhing mass, a mess of limbs, a mound of flesh. It forms the vortex that connects the here and the before.

​The mass gazes at me. I glare back, torn inside by the selection of faces, all broken, shattered, and realigned.

​It is a grotesque imitation of life where eyes melt to cheeks, lips liquify, and heads split to bloom into something new.

​One seems estranged, yet familiar - a fleeting thought, a newspaper clipping, a whispered word. He is one, but he is many. He is a wanderer, as I am. He is all around.

​Too humanoid to be born from the mist ​Too suffocated, too glistening to be human ​Or human, still

​He is like morning dew ​The dawn of a new day ​The start of every spiral, waiting to be found

​The faces twist into each other, and all breathe as one ​Some have scars, growths, and fevers ​Maddened eyes or shrieking voices ​But they were all him, and he was all of them ​And for a moment, I thought I would become him, too. Or he would become I. ​To form a new spiral. To lie underneath the water's surface in wait, mouth agape. To be forgotten, and emerge to eat the world anew.

​Reflections of reflections ​A kid following a cloud on the face of a silent pond ​Mistaking an image for another, and another, and another ​The memory of a specter, half-forgotten, but ever haunting ​A fraction of what once was, a shadow of the self reshaped and remade

​Every push and pull prompts a soft groan, a shimmering tear, a pearl of sweat. ​The spiral torments itself to face me as one. The spiral torments the world. ​The spiral is the faces of the bodies on the sea floor. The spiral is what blooms below. ​The spiral is alive, is a snake, is a maelstrom, is a mouth, is the curiosity that feeds on us. It waits for us, ensnares, chews, devours, and rebirths us.

​The spiral is our end, and our new beginning