With little more than our skin, we made our way through the sweating crowd. Each body a needle poking into our sides, as we tried to escape without leaving. But it was not possible, for the lights in the room weren’t dim enough. The music faded into a background of static and cursed laughter. We were no longer safe and content, we were open. Open to the injuries the mob inflicted on us as we grappled for a reason to this gray insanity. We held each other close like a lifeline above the water as the sharks swam below us. Our hearts joined in spiritual lament, our unsung song lifting up above the lights, up above the clouds, beyond the stars. The blackness crowded us on all sides as the mob got more and more obscene. We knew this was the end, the last curtain call, and all the actors had left. Their blood-stained bodies lay backstage, the script forgotten like a child’s toy. And we stood there, unwilling to give in, but the water was too deep. Slowly we sank into the crowd. Their arms grabbing us, pulling us in, their eyes glittering with empty life, greeting us with a cough of laughter. Our bodies became their body, and we were no longer one but many, but the many itself was one. The massive broken clock from before still chimed, the rusted gears screeching out their joy as it continued the insanity. Our hearts trapped in the mechanism, we never knew when the world ended. We never knew when the stars cried and drowned the universe. We never knew what it was that brought the broad and bleeding emptiness, but we gladly reached out to it, wishing there was more pain. But as the mob stabbed us, we realized that there was no more escape. So we drank, and fell to the floor. Our spirits went to the void, and our great journey, we found, would never end, and as we laughed we cried. The clock ticked on, and the mob still danced, but we moved on, wishing there was more pain.