Waitaminute... this isn't Temperance!

While writing my other story I came up with this one. I'm not really sure why I did, it just kinda... exists. I guess it was because I had writer's block with Temperance a couple of times and needed to focus on a different idea to cleanse myself of it.

I was going to hold back on this because running two stories at the same time is hard but it turns out I have no restraint. Expect bare minimum updates.

TW for suicide mentions and related themes. This one is designed to just drip with angst.

.

.

.

The anti-void was a strange place. It was a bright white and completely endless; at least, that's how it felt some of the time. Other times you wondered if it was in fact colourless (like a polar bear's fur) and shockingly small. It wasn't as if you could tell when you were left alone there for long periods of time.

During the rare times you saw other entities you could gain some clarity and perspective; maybe even a little bit of your sanity back. Unfortunately that kind of thing didn't really matter to you any more. It wasn't as if that kind of stuff ever changed anything.

All you could do was sleep. All you could ever do was sleep. Closing your eyes helped to block out the unnerving and impossible combination of claustrophobia and agoraphobia that the anti-void gave you. Sometimes you were lucky enough to dream.

Like now, you were dreaming of a memory.

It was the kind of memory that you'd long forgotten; back when you had lived in a world that no longer existed. It was a completely normal world in your eyes. Then again, anyone would claim that their world was 'normal' if they had spent the entirety of their existence there.

You did the things that you did, no more, no less. Sometimes you laughed and had fun. Sometimes you cried and lamented your life choices. Sometimes you simply existed and that was fine too. They were all things you had taken for granted. Right up until the day that you were ripped away from your world, or more accurately, your world was ripped away from you. Your entire universe was destroyed, leaving you with no chance to ever have those experiences again.

Your subconscious mind brought the scene to life for you.

It was winter and you'd just arrived home. Your clothes were ruined and you had the faint memory that your day had been pretty mediocre, if not terrible. After finding that nothing in your home was clean enough to wear, you stripped out of the ruined clothes and grabbed the first half-decent items you could get your hands on; a pair of shorts and a plain shirt. Obviously that wasn't enough for you to keep the cold at bay. You could recall the feeling of goosebumps on your skin as you threw on the fluffiest jacket you owned and a pair of slippers to protect your feet from the chilled floor.

Being too lazy to do much else you sat as close to your heater as you dared. As warmth filled the house you felt your body loosen. Being home was great; you couldn't remember what your home looked like or if anyone else lived with you, but it was great. It was your space; a place to wind down. Your home was somewhere you belonged and your dreamy mind took the time to revel in the memory of the feeling. You were ready to sit back and relax after such a hard day, maybe read something, have a nice nap and all that jazz.

You never had the chance.

The world around you became darker as your dream took a sudden (yet unfortunately expected) turn. The hiss of static made you snap your eyes open. Wavering blocks of white consumed the furniture around you, leaving nothing but darkness behind. You remembered the feeling of panic; though, being both a memory and a dream, the feeling was not nearly as powerful as it had been the first time. Back then it was raw. You had feared for your life as your home was pulled piece by piece into the static, leaving behind only the darkness of the void. As much as you tried to escape it, the white mass and expanding emptiness was taking over the entire world. Soon you ran out of space and the static was lapping at your skin. You knew then that it would consume you too.

But then something strange happened. The crackling static ate the world out from under you, but it did not harm you at all. In fact, you didn't even fall to your death once the ground disappeared. For a long while you were left suspended in the darkness, shivering from the lack of warmth, but also aware that the cold no longer existed either. When the static finally vanished from the edges of your devoured world, the void began to peel away. As the darkness gave way to bright white you thought you had died and were seeing 'the light' that led to the afterlife. You had never been so wrong.

That brightness had been the anti-void and from that moment on it had become your personal hell. You couldn't tell how long you'd been there, but it felt like forever. Not only was there no day or night cycle but you also did not age or require food and drink. The 'ground' only existed if you believed it did and if you didn't you would get the sensation that you were falling without ever really going anywhere. There was no up or down, no noise or temperature, no gravity, no substance- nothing.

Sometimes you wondered if the dark void that had disintegrated would have been more welcoming than the anti-void. At least it had been a part of your universe; even if it existed simply to fill in the negative space of your world's structure. In the brief moment you had felt your universe's void before it dissolved because of its lost connection with the reality it was attached to, you had felt a pressure in it and heard a wind that wasn't technically present. That was at least something. In the anti-void you had nothing, except for the rare times when-

"Oof!"

Something landed hard on your back, waking you up from your dream. You were irritated at the interruption. The dream hadn't been pleasant but it had at least distracted you. How often was it that you could relive your old memories? The answer was not often. You'd forgotten most of your past, the world you had lived in and how you had come to be. Heck, you weren't entirely sure that the dream you'd been having was completely accurate; maybe you didn't like your old home or you hadn't been relaxing that day and actually cleaned your clothes like a boring and responsible person. But allowing your mind to conjure up mixtures of various fragmented memories and comfortable lies was the only way you could actually feel anything anymore. You didn't care how real it was, only that it helped you to stop thinking about your surroundings.

"Y͟ou͝ ca̢n͘ s̨tay h̴ère w̴i͜t́h ͜t͡he͘ ̧ot͢her ͠glitch unt́il̴ I͢ ͡d͜ec͏įde̡ w̵hat ̨t͏o̧ ͟d͞o̧ ̨wit͟h ̧y̨ou.͢ O̡r̵ you ̀c͢an̷ ́j̡u̷s̵t ḑi̢e. You̸r c͜hoi͡ćè."

Ignoring the weight that had landed on you and was now pushing itself off, you kept your eyes firmly closed and tried to will yourself back into the dark and merciful depths of slumber. Whatever or whoever had been thrown at you started to yell as your captor disappeared.

You inwardly groaned. It seemed the new trophy had some anger and denial still in them.

You pulled the hood of your coat over your head and pulled your body tighter into itself to block out the noise; it would only keep you awake.

Unfortunately for you, the movement drew the attention of the new arrival. As soon as they worked out they wouldn't be able to track down their captor (which was pretty quickly; whoever they were they must be a smart cookie) they turned to you and began to do the thing you hated most: grab and shake you.

"what's going on!? where is this? how do I get back?!"

You groaned and pulled yourself into an even tighter ball.

"oh, sh-shit, sorry, are ya hurt?"

You grunted in response and dared to hope that it was enough to get the new guy off your case.

You really needed to stop hoping for stuff.

Either out of genuine concern or selfish desperation they circled around you and tried to quickly but gently roll you over onto your back. You hissed with irritation as you tried your hardest to stay curled up in yourself. Annoyingly, the more you resisted the more persistent the nudges became.

Eventually you became so irritated that you said screw it and used the one trick that always guaranteed your escape from situations like these; utilising the strange rules of the anti-void to free fall away from your problems.

As soon as you imagined the feeling of yourself falling, the invisible ground you had been sleeping on ceased to exist. As the hands gripping you gave another strong push you allowed it to roll you over into the nothingness and began to drop. Unfortunately, contrary to your plan, the hands didn't let go of you as you began to plummet through the vast whiteness, dragging your new and terrified 'friend' with you.

"shit, shit, shit!"

You let out a huff as you felt another body pressed itself terrified against yours. Pointy fingers quickly skidded around from your arms to dig into your back, hugging you in a death grip. Despite your earlier internal complements on the person's quick deductions, you got the feeling that the new trophy wasn't as level-headed as some of the others who'd previously been trapped in the anti-void with you. You did nothing to struggle against the vice-like embrace as you continued to plummet to nowhere, your unwanted passenger cursing and flailing as they rushed to think of a solution to your seemingly unstoppable freefall.

Ugh. Well, if your go-to plan of dropping out unexpectedly wasn't going to work, you'd have to take the direct approach.

Even though you really hated the direct approach.

With a thought you stopped your descent. The screaming bundle of limbs, however, didn't know that the anti-void was entirely controlled by internal perspective, and so continued to fall. The only reason they didn't continue speeding through the white nothingness without you was the fact that their grip was incredibly good. The sudden stop caused their arms to slip upwards from where they had been squeezing around your midsection and they flipped upside down before managing to snag onto your jacketed shoulders. For the first time you tilted your head back to look at the newcomer's face.

They were of a short and broad build and wore a plain shirt and blue hoodie. Their dangling legs were slightly covered by black basketball shorts and their feet by pink house slippers. A permanent grin covered their face but did nothing to hide the distress and alarm conveyed by their eyes and the sweat on their brow. The most noticeable trait about them, however, was the fact that they were made entirely of bones. The guy was a living, breathing skeleton; a skeleton monster in fact.

You were not surprised in the slightest.

"ah! h-hey, buddy, m-mind givin' a guy a hand here? 'm not usually the kind to go fallin' for someone when i've just met 'em, b-but, uh-"

"You're not falling." you said, barely amused. The skeleton stared back at you with panicked little pinpricks of light which acted as his eyes in his pitch black sockets. It was obvious he thought you were nuts.

"wh- yes! yes i am! i'm- you're not fallin' anymore but i am!"

"You're not falling," you repeated, "How do you even know that direction is down?"

There was a pause where your new skeletal shoulder accessory looked around at the anti-void. You could tell that it was the first time he was actually taking it in due to the expressions that flitted over his face in rapid succession. Fear, trepidation, curiosity, awe, unease- he looked at you and you casually tilted your feet so it looked like you were miming standing on solid ground. From another perspective it would look like you were standing normally and the skeleton was falling upwards.

Finally his features hit comprehension.

You almost could have applauded the guy as he gravitated himself towards your feet so he was standing on the same level of nothingness that you were; if not for him figuring it out so quickly, then for managing to do it gently (though you did use to get a kick out of the ones who realised all the anti-void crap too quickly and ended up smacking themselves hard into whatever surface they imagined there to be).

You stood silently and shoved your hands into your pockets as the rattled (ha...) looking skeleton breathed hard with his eyes squeezed shut. One of his bony hands was still clutched tightly onto the open end of your fuzzy coat and you allowed him the small mercy of continuing to bunch the cloth in his hand while he tried to mentally ground himself.

After a while (which could have been anywhere from a few minutes to several hours; time wasn't anything more than a concept, honestly) it seemed the guy had finally pulled himself together enough to speak to you.

"hey, s-so, heh, mind helping a guy out?" he wheezed, "i need to get back- back to where i was before. that guy swooped in, one who looks a lil like me, yeah?... not sure what happened, but he took me here and i need a way out."

You sighed heavily and gently pulled the skeletal hand off of your coat.

"Listen to me," you said seriously, "'cause I'm only going to say this to you once: there's no way out of here. This is the anti-void. This is out. Of Everything."

Wide eye sockets stared at you, fearful yet still uncomprehending.

"the void? but I should be able to-"

"No, not the void; the anti-void. A void would be a part of your universe's structure. It's right on the boundaries but it still belongs there. This is beyond that."

"... how do I get back?"

You closed your eyes. This was the part you hated the most, but maybe if you didn't look at the poor guy's face it wouldn't be so bad.

"There's nothing left for you to go back to. The only reason you can be here is if your universe was erased. It happens. But lucky for you, you're a monster; once you let that info sink in you'll be able to turn to dust. It'll feel like forever but there'll be an end for you."

You waited for a reaction. Screaming, anger, tears, cries of That's not true/fair! or You're a liar!- but nothing came. Maybe you had been right from the beginning; this one was clever and observant.

With your eyes still closed you turned away from the skeleton and began to walk.

"Maybe, if you wish hard enough, when you die you'll see your world again. It's not a realistic thought but..."

You shut your mouth. Why had you started talking again? Weren't you supposed to be walking off into the distance so you could sleep in peace like you wanted?

"Ha... nevermind."

You set off again, not daring to look back.

That guy wasn't your problem. You didn't need to console him with impossible theories. He was the same as everyone else who had been trapped with you in the past.

And like them, he wouldn't last for long.