Erebus / Έρεβος

COLLECTIBLE SOULS (200 words)

Welcome to COLLECTIBLE SOULS.

Here you will find fragments of stories about the old gods that still walk among us today.

Some are benevolent, some are cruel, others are purely selfish, but in the end, they all take what they need to survive.

Image credit: Kyraxys on pixabay.com

I was born in the dark, child of chaos and dirt.

My sister left to take darkness into the world, but I stayed,

Crafting it into something less—

Into nothing at all.

A nothing with boundless dimensions, with untold weight and infinite depth.

It is my gift to you: the gaping chasm that opens,

Not before your feet,

But in your mind.

It is the oblivion that flows from bottles and needles,

Hours lost in chemical sleep.

Some fear it, others crave it.

It is all the same to me.

For me, there is nothing but the void,

Endless and formless.

I do not seek out souls to harvest like the others.

They come to me of their own volition, broken and screaming,

Hollow-eyed and silent, begging for something to quiet their minds.

I give them what they desire:

Emptiness.

Nothingness.

With my gentle fingers, I wipe away all feeling,

All memory.

I cleanse them of their stories, of everything they ever knew or believed in,

Of love and pain, the hungry sunrise and the silver mystery of the stars.

I am the antithesis of time, of chaos.

I am the silence after the scream.

I am the gap between breaths—

Nothing and nowhere,

Everywhere and everything.

Thank you for reading!

Do you have a story of a forgotten deity you want to add to the COLLECTIBLE SOULS INDEX? Check out this post for details of how to be a part of the project.