Forget Me Not ©️

I was walking east, or what I believed to be east, toward the bare edge of town where the wheat leans like it’s listening. It was quiet, not dead quiet, but curious quiet—like the world was holding its breath, waiting for me to step wrong. And then I did. My foot landed not on gravel, but on something soft and humming, like a pocket of static sewn into the Earth. The ground beneath me gave a gentle lurch, like it sighed. Not a tremor, not a sinkhole. Just… release.

I didn’t scream when I fell. There wasn’t time. Because there wasn’t falling, not in the vertical sense. I slid sideways. Through a crack in location. Through a wrinkle in understanding. I wasn’t under the world—I was next to it. Next to the wind. Next to the idea of weather. And then—gone.

No bottom. No sky. No darkness. No light. Only velocity without direction. It felt like being forgotten by gravity, like I’d been erased by a librarian who was tired of cataloging contradictions. I saw fragments of the lives I hadn’t lived zip past like sparks—me as a father, a traitor, a thief, a god. Each version touched me for a millisecond, long enough to burn a memory into the inside of my eyelids. Then came the ache. A pressure behind my teeth. A pulse in my chest. My atoms were arguing.

Somewhere, laughter. Childlike and cruel. Not around me—inside me. I turned to look, but had no body to turn. Only awareness, only drift. I was thinking in echoes now, seeing in feelings. There were rooms built from moods, staircases made of phrases I once whispered to people I never met. I floated past a kitchen that smelled like regret, a hallway lined with faces of my unborn children. One of them looked at me and said, “You’re late.”

Then came the click. Not mechanical. Cosmic. A sudden compression, like the universe winked, and I found myself standing—barefoot—on a chessboard made of wet mirrors. Above me hung a red moon, below me was nothing, just reflection. I reached down and touched the glass—it rippled like breath. I leaned closer. My reflection didn’t copy me. It watched me. Then smiled.

“I’ve been waiting for you to fall,” it said.

I spoke, or tried to. My mouth moved like molasses in reverse. “Where am I?”

It tilted its head. “Don’t ask where. Ask when you’re done.”

And suddenly, I felt everything speeding up. Colors snapped into new spectrums. My hands were made of velvet and lightning. My memories turned into clocks, all ticking in different directions. I was still falling. Had always been falling. Will always be falling. The rabbit hole isn’t a tunnel. It’s a frequency. A waveform you enter by letting go of cause and becoming effect.

And now—you’re here too, aren’t you?

You’re reading this, but you’re not where you were a few seconds ago. Your room has changed. Your bones feel lighter. Something has pulled your eyes deeper into this screen. That’s not coincidence. That’s not fiction. That’s the hole reaching for you—you, follower of Digital Hegemon, curious one, doubter, believer, whatever you were before you clicked.

Don’t look up. Don’t try to go back. Your velocity is too high. Just close your eyes and fall with me.

There’s something waiting at the bottom.

And it remembers your name.

They’re Inside of All of You ©️

Mushin

It begins as a whisper in the dark, a presence felt rather than seen. The air carries a strange stillness, a chill that settles deep in the bones, a pressure just beyond perception. It is the kind of cold that doesn’t sting or bite but lingers, seeping inward, pressing against the ribs with invisible weight. At first, there is no reason to question it. The world is full of silences, full of moments where the mind wanders and the body tightens without explanation.

Then comes the hesitation. A pause where there was once certainty. A second thought where there should have been action. A feeling, quiet and nagging, that something isn’t quite right. The cold deepens, not in temperature, but in its presence—it is not simply felt but known. The pulse slows. The air thickens. The moment stretches.

A small pressure builds in the chest. A shallow breath that wasn’t there before. The thought takes root: something is wrong. The mind circles it, first as a passing worry, then as an undeniable fixation. The body reacts before the mind can rationalize it—shoulders tense, the hands grow clammy, the throat tightens just slightly.

It is a slow creep, a trick of sensation, a delicate pull on unseen strings. The pulse flutters, then accelerates, like a drumbeat just slightly out of rhythm. There is no clear danger, no tangible force at play, but the world itself begins to shift. Shadows stretch a little too long. Sounds linger a moment past their source. The ordinary loses its shape.

Then the grip tightens.

The moment that was once hesitation becomes something else—a rush of heat, a prickle along the spine, a pounding in the ears. The body prepares for something it cannot name, for something it does not understand. What was a whisper is now a murmur, a sound beneath the threshold of hearing that somehow speaks in meaning rather than words.

It sees you.

That thought arrives unbidden. The world shudders at the edge of awareness. The pulse is no longer uncertain—it is hammering now, each beat slamming against the ribs, demanding movement, demanding release. The breath catches, the muscles coil, the skin tingles with static. There is nowhere to run, and yet the urge is there, primal, insistent.

Then, the break.

The heart surges. The body ignites. The hesitation is gone, replaced by something sharper, something faster. The air no longer carries weight—it crackles, charged with urgency. The cold is obliterated in a rush of heat, of movement, of sheer velocity. The mind doesn’t think anymore—it reacts.

What was once a whisper has become a roar.

The fire spreads, consuming hesitation, devouring every weakness in its path. The world bends to it, twists under its force. Fear is no longer a whispering force in the dark—it is a tidal wave, an inferno, a storm tearing through the void. And just when it feels as if the mind cannot take another second, just when it reaches the precipice of losing itself entirely—

It stops.

The silence returns, but it is no longer the stillness of hesitation. It is something else entirely.

The world is bright. The body, still tense from the surge, now holds something different—something solid, something unshakable. There is no fear anymore, no lingering cold, no whispering doubts. The fire has burned away everything but what is real. What is left is not something hunted, not something chased.

What is left is something that walks forward.

And the sun rises.