I opened my eyes.
But there was nothing to see.
I tried to move my hand.
But nothing moved.
I was fixed in place, unable to do anything.
And so I understood.
Why the countless intelligent beings trapped inside this Garden Hymnist’s box had been tortured for decades, helpless, unable to use a single ability or object they had possessed in life, until the day they died.
‘I’ve been swallowed.’
I could not perform any action at all.
My body was tightly gripped by something and sealed inside it.
For meditation.
Digestive fluid was secreted.
-It’s hell, hell, this is hell. How can something hurt this much? I understood the horror of what primal pain is. Descriptions like your saddest memory replaying over and over, or your deepest trauma being stimulated, are only lukewarm and complicated, the comfortable exhibition of people whose bodies are at ease. I envy them. True pain comes from the body. This pain that destroys the mind.
-This pain, as if a needle were scraping off membrane and nerve one layer at a time! Pain through my whole body! The skin behind my stomach, my five viscera and six bowels whose very location I do not even know, twisting and burning. It feels like I am trapped in a hell that burns endlessly. My mouth, are they forcing my mouth open and pouring digestive fluid into it? No! Thank god I don’t have an esophagus, no, it feels like an esophagus is being drilled op—
A sound rang inside…