"I never wanted this!" he screamed. But its voice was infinitely louder than his ever could be.

"YOU WANTED EVERYTHING!" It howled "You conjured me with your convoluted rules and deprecation....tortured me to the surface...ALL YOU HAD TO DO WAS EXIST!!! THINK!!! Do you wish to be punished? Is that what will satisfy you and silence you at last? I'll eat your muses. I'll suffocate your ambitions. I'll tire you down, I'll whittle you into a corner. I'll snuff any hope you fooled yourself into having! I am your wall. The mountain you cannot climb. The end of the road. I'll drag you down into apathy and drown you in despair. You're a misery needing to be put down. An illness to fiction and reality. YOU MADE ME!!! Now I'll unmake you..."

An inner darkness within eats away at us. To an undisciplined eye it comes to them in bitterness and frustration, cast like a theater's projection onto others and the outside world.

All the while the shadow had its hands around our throats, tortured by a self destructive need we gave it. Fed years of neglect and abuse. Made to make us undone. Its eyes are upon us. It didn't deserve this and we didn't deserve this.

...Yet here we are...

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inspired by Okapi's 2013 mashup set, with the section in question used for this piece that can be found here https://youtu.be/LzVWYydjYmQ?si=yzjrhdSq9y2XTQaH