the letter found

The room is unfamiliar. I don't know how I got here. I don't know how anything at all could find its way in here, it appears to have been quite thoroughly sealed up from all possible entrance points. There is nothing in this room, aside from myself and what few things I had stored away in my pockets - my notepad and pen, and a lighter that was infuriatingly without any fluid and so served little more than something I could feel the weight in my hand as a reminder there was something in the world still. The pale pink of the walls were not quite as smooth as I had initially thought it to be, the occasional bump or dent breaking the singularity in a way that I could not quite settle on mockery or reassurance. 

(Disregard this note if this is no longer applicable, and you have found yourself more fortunate than anybody who has come before us.) 

Upon my awakening within this room, if I am to be kind and refer to it as such when it has felt more and more like a prison with each breath I expel to play the role of my soul company, it was dark. Darker than blindness, a darkness that has never tasted the light of day and dreamed only of the impossible. I cannot say with any certainty when the light first crept in, whether it was truly there or nothing more than a trick of my ever more overtaxed mind, but it was a relief. Or rather, it was a relief until the light made apparent the impossible nature of my situation. 

I'm sure that, if you've of the same rational mind as I was (am?), you have come to the same frightful conclusion as I had.

If this chamber is as well sealed as I had suggested, how is it that one would find themselves nourishment, or any means of relief from the bodily affliction? But fear not, as of writing this I am sure several days have passed by (the precise amount, I must admit, is hard to say as there are very few ways to mark the passage of time) and I've yet to feel any bodily needs at all. Perhaps I ought to find some concern in this, but it does offer me a little relief when the turmoil of my mind has offered me nothing at all in the way of the relief I so desperately crave. While I hunger not, I have nothing at all to distract me from the eternal onward tick of my mind, a floodgate that, once it had begun to leak, it had been made impossible to escape the flood. 

I wonder if it is better to think and find no conclusions at all, or to not think at all? Do you know, my friend who shares my suffering? 

Are you real? Or has my mind finally snapped and led me to the belief that I cannot be the only one to live this torment of tedium? Surely it must be true that there were others to come before me, to come after me. I know not why it is I am here, but I tell myself that it was not only myself to experience this. I can think of no sin in life that I committed, or failed to commit, that could have trapped me here with no answer. 

Maybe it is not for you that I write this, but my own attempt to salvage my own feeble and fraying psyche. Would you fault me for it if that were true? 

I can only imagine you are wondering why it was that I chose today of all these infinite and endless days to being pen to paper to share this with you.

 Today, or as I have to consider the time in which I am awake as a day at a time, it has been made clear that the little graces I have been afforded in my nothingness will soon be denied me 

The lights flickered. At first, I wondered if my sight decided to fail me, exhausted as my singular sensory experience, but it has become more frequent. The pulse of my prison beating out the rhythm of a dying man's final struggle for life before it is finally and permanently snuffed out. The darkness brings a finality to it. I do not know what it it, but it is inevitable. What suffering I have lived through now shall undoubtedly be made anew. A torment that I have, perhaps, always known was looming over me from the moment I first greeted this impossible room. The darkness, once curious, now returns with the hunger that I could not feel myself.

 It wants to devour me. I know this to be true, and it shall be the death of me. It was inevitable. I was never to leave this place, not while I remain amongst the living. Perhaps this is why I write this for you now? To warn you, to pass along what little I know (do I know anything at all?) with the hope that you do not meet the same fate as I will. 

This is not a room at all, but a vile and wretched tomb for the sinless. This is clear. Death hangs heavy in the air. I wonder now if this is death, an afterlife of absolutely nothing at all. Am I already dead? I do wonder, but if it is true and death has already claimed me, what have I to worry about the darkness? 

But I do worry. I do not know what will come to pass once the light fails in its entirety, but I know my past trials will mean little by comparison. My wits, my mind, all that I am lost and I shall perish. But I've my faculties now, it has not bested me yet and I shall not give the uncaring forces that forced this hell on me the satisfaction of destroying me.

Whoever brought me here has made one mistake. One fatal flaw. They have left me here with this pen and my notepad. Once I have written this to you, nameless friend, I shall fall upon my pen. Is it true, as they say, that the pen is mightier than the sword? I hope it is so, but I suppose I shall find out soon enough. If I am dead already it shall mean nothing, and if I am alive, I shall not be granted the opportunity to lament my demise in death. 

I hope that our fate is kinder to you and you fare better than I have, and you find your freedom. I have found my own freedom, and what a happy day it is. I shall no longer be trapped by the walls of this terrible room. I am free, and so I must thank you for sharing this time with me.