Inky’s Journal

Where Nothing Stares Back

Lala says writing is for those who wish to be remembered. But I am not sure I wish that at all. To be remembered is to become a statue in someone else’s mind, unmoving, fixed forever in their idea of you. Memory is not freedom—it is a cage carved from whispers. To be forgotten, perhaps, is closer to being alive. A shadow does not beg to be noticed; it simply drifts and dissolves, unburdened by legacy.

Today the dice betrayed me. It did not tumble into chance, nor rest upon a number. Instead, it rolled into silence, as if the air itself held its breath. When it stopped, no side revealed itself. There was no dot, no mark, no symbol. Only a smooth face, polished into nothingness. A blank. A void disguised as a side that should not exist. For a moment I thought I had imagined it, but the longer I stared, the more certain I became that I was the one being imagined.

How can nothing be written down? The page resists it, yet my hand betrays me, sketching the outline of emptiness as though it were real. The word appears, thin and trembling at first, then darker as I press harder, as if it demands weight. And the more I write it, the heavier it becomes. It is not an absence—it is a presence that consumes. It takes up space like a shadow that cannot be dispelled, a silence so loud it drowns out every sound. Nothing has length, depth, and gravity. It is a word that grows teeth the moment you try to name it.

I see it now for what it is—not a lack, but a place. A chamber that cannot be entered because it has no doors, no floor to step upon, no ceiling to shelter beneath. Yet I feel myself standing inside it, though I have never moved. A room where walls are made of the endless stretch of nowhere, where time does not flow but pools like stagnant water. My footsteps make no echo here, and yet I hear echoes—echoes that are not mine.

And then it stares. I do not mean I stare into it, though that is true. I mean it stares into me. The blankness watches, patient, merciless. It sees through bone and thought, stripping away the little scaffolds I cling to for meaning. I feel hollow beneath its gaze, as if I have been mistaken for the void itself. Perhaps I always was. Perhaps the dice did not create nothing—it only revealed what I truly am.