Forward.

When did a bright future get as heavy as a death sentence? How can you be nervous about succeeding properly, but not worried about failing? This is stupid. It’s stupid. Above all else, it’s exhausting.

Frigid lake water splintered and cracked with that aquatic echo usually reserved for the most daring of skaters; She was wearing sneakers. The ice held her weight, but only just. Running across deep blue ice with a molecule thin layer of water across its top. Each fifth step an embarrassing slip, a brand new demand from nature to maintain her balance or End.

Where exactly do I get the nerve to suffer in my circumstance? I have the nerve, not the right. The only two options are fill the air with plaintive trash or stay quiet, weird, with a storm made of spoiled-rotten insights. This too, is stupid. It’s stupid. It’s so exhausting.

Several yards out on the lake now. Sticky, oppressive darkness with a curious lack of moonlight on all sides. Don’t mess up those fifth steps. Don’t mess up those fifth steps… Her lungs burned with boiling cold. Ignore it. You have to ignore it. The echoing fractures below her feet threatening to swallow her. Those fifth steps…turning into fourth steps? Don’t stop. You can’t stop. Or you could End.

It’s fucking funny. To hate the sound of your own voice so much, but be incapable of shutting the hell up. A punishment in the style of the Greek gods. This one is so banal, though. So mundane. Shutting up sounds like bliss; Am I really so easy to please after all, then? I could always keep blathering, or End.

Freezing is not in its vocabulary. Not something it feels. Nor is slippery. These traits so fundamental to her current state so wildly irrelevant to it. Imagine attempting to reason with Being. Nonsensical, irrelevant. Its speed constant, gaining on her gradually. Not a thought, not a head to have one, not a question. It does crave, however. All it does is crave. We know this lake has no opposite shore. Doesn’t seem like she does. Inside her vocabulary rests freezing, slippery, reason, and persist. Persist, maintain, or End. She seems exhausted.

To pine for some sort of meaning, a purpose that’s already assigned, is a form of giving up. Weakness masquerading as introspection and despair. What’s really worthy of despair is how empty you must be to yield such a vacuum of purpose. So empty you’ve never know filling anyone else. Anyplace else. Anything else. And if you think you have filled, you can’t think very highly of those three Any. Odd. Again, if you think you do, then what you long for isn’t a purpose, you say you’ve had that; You want to know the End.

Fourth step… Fourth step… Fourth step… Third step… She knows she’ll reach the opposite shore.