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I peered into the icy blackness looking for a sign, a glimmer, even the slightest hint of an answer to my pleading. There was none to be found. Utter despair filled my being at the very thought that the emptiness would be forever unfilled. Any thoughts of hope or pensive determinations thrown into the void were devoured and torn apart by a bottomless pit of deathly indifference. An inescapable intent of complete and utter contempt at the will of man threatened to devour my being and trap the very essence of my existence.

I resisted it.

I listened to the darkness in the hopes that perhaps my sight was betrayed by manifestations of illusion clouding my vision with a faux blindness. I could hear nothing. There was only silence. This was not however the calm of peace but the stillness of pending destruction – the quiet before the storm. The lull was a portent to an evil that the world had not seen. It was a terrifying tranquillity of horrendous scope that was ever so tangible despite its avoidance of detection within my realm of sense. Although I heard nothing it called me to join it and forever suckle at its teat of despair.

I defied it.

I turned my attention to the sensation of my body. Could I feel the fell beast? Was it breathing on my skin? Was it touching me with tentacles of dread, and trying to pull the warmth of my heart into a sink of absolute cold, below the null of the universe itself. Though in some manner I knew this was what it desired I could feel nothing. My life force remained intact, protected by a frightening thin veil of faith that light would ultimately prevail. Beyond that wafer thin shield of hope I was in no doubt that fangs of fear were waiting looking for a dent in my resolve.

I withstood it

I lifted my head and parted my quivering lips. Perhaps this demon of the apocalypse was riding upon a wave of scent and taste. Could I detect the desire for blood by the bitter smell of death on the air? Could I taste the fumes of decay? I could not. All that was available to me was the ever increasing stench of my own fear – pouring out of my pores with every frantic beat of my heart. Even if I could not smell it, surely it could smell me and could thus pounce and sink it treacherous claws into my flesh and tear its meal from my very bone.

I opposed it.

For eons I was held in limbo between the realm of life and extinction. My demise was ever so present but detestably incoherent to me. How is one to protect themselves against an adversary that fails all detection? You cannot reason with such a fiend. You cannot predict its action and thus cannot prepare a defence. The only thing keeping me from falling into the belly of pure malevolence was the result of instinct – programming of mind and body to ensure the survival of the host known as Duff. It was not a fight that I was winning, nor was it even a stand-off of equilibrium. I was ever so surely descending into the known unknown and my very existence would soon be the vaguest of memories to even those I held dear.

I succumbed.

Tears began to well in my reddened eyes as the reality of my hopelessness was hammered into my mind. I could not win this and my life force was sucked from me by a formless ethereal vampire that was as old as the earth itself. I sunk to the ground and all will left my being as I lay on the earth in the vain hopes it would engulf me and resurrect me within the bosom of a rose. I stared to the heavens and behold – a light began to form. It grew stronger and it was without a shimmer of doubt that its purpose was me. I reached out and an angel of supreme beauty was presented. All I could offer was a minuscule “please…” to which the angel replied “Your large flat white is ready sir”. Without the slightest hesitation I took my coffee to-go and was for this day, again, saved from a fate worse than death.