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Elena gripped her glass of coffee, raised it to her lips, and tilted her head back. The remaining coffee sloshed as she guzzled it down to the sediment, a sludge that must have smelled of earthy, singed beans. She set the glass down with a hollow clink, then paused to swallow. Her tongue flicked across the surface of her lips and disappeared between them.

“I didn’t conclude my talk about the unnamed void. In case you’re still game to continue this tour of the netherworld.”

“If you’re willing to share, I’m willing to listen.”

“Alright. As the darkness fills every corner of your mind, as it eats away at everything that made life bearable, you spot a yellowing scrap of paper at the bottom of the abyss, so small you’d miss it if you didn’t squint. You lean to make out the words scribbled on its crumpled, dirty surface, and they read: ‘This is not temporary. This is not an anomaly. This is the true state of being.’ You integrate a realization that the majority of humanity has been spared: the void existed from the start, and only the evolved chemical balance, the lies your brain tells to keep you alive, had shielded you from confronting it. But my safeguards had failed. As if the Earth’s magnetosphere had collapsed, the solar winds had blasted away the atmosphere, and the planet had become exposed to a torrent of radiation. The void can never be vanquished; it can only be delayed. Down there, the notion that such a nightmare could end doesn’t make sense. The mocking voice repeats that this is how it’s always been and always will be. But you’ve escaped before. The only way out of that black hole is to hold on tight and wait until it spits you back out. Your mind has been reduced to a whirlwind of razor blades. Your body is made of lead. You retreat under the covers, curl into a fetal position, and await a new birth. You wait through the night. You wait through the morning. You wait through the afternoon. You wait through another night. Days pass, but you perceive them in increments: the space between one breath and the next, one heartbeat and the next. One day, the abyss feels shallower. The cold begins to thaw and the darkness retreats, dragging with it the voice repeating that you’re useless, rotten, unwanted, a cancer to all those close to you. Your inner theater lights up with a faint, fuzzy memory of sunlight. A song. A line from a book. A hand on yours. The brain’s machinery churns out its magic again. Inhibitors and disinhibitors toil overtime to rebuild the protective illusion. The veil of normalcy falls back in place, allowing you to resume the masquerade. It’s not a victory. You haven’t slain a dragon or stormed a castle; you survived yourself. You emerge from the underworld, your face smudged with ashes, your eyes haunted. Then you remember the voice that has been your lifeline. You reconnect with the artists that have seen through the cracks of the world, who helped you understand yourself, and made you hope to survive long enough to light your own candle in the dark.”

The breeze had grown colder as the sun struggled to pierce through a sheet of darkening gray overhead, the color of corroded silverware. Elena tucked her almond-blonde locks behind her ears, then rubbed her palms against the thighs of her jeans. After a quiet sigh, she continued.

“You may have noticed that my tolerance for bullshit is low, which is funny considering what we all swim through, which is liquid bullshit, from the moment our ears are developed enough to process the noise spouted from our parents’ mouths. That’s why we need to learn to distinguish the sound of the wind rustling through the leaves, or the raindrops pattering on a window, or the symphony of a band we like, or the voice of someone we love. To have a few sounds in our lives that break through the fog of bullshit to mean something.” Elena’s left hand drifted up to her sweatshirt and sought her metallic moth pendant, thumb and index fingers encircling the sculpted insect. “Sadly that is a precarious, temporary healing. Eventually, a shift of weather and a misfiring of synapses will drag me down to that dark place, to that ancient void waiting for me in the caverns of my mind, that reminds me that my joy has always been an illusion. Each cycle of darkness scraping precious matter from my brain that I will never recover. Until one day, that black hole will return and there won’t be enough of me left to claw my way back into the light. So there is no happy ending. Not in this life. My best answer to your original question, Jon, is that I’m not actively suicidal but I’d prefer not to exist. I’d rather be a book on a shelf than a living human.”

I pictured Elena as a child, alone in her darkened bedroom, huddled in a corner. Her knees hugged to her chest, her arms wrapped around her legs. Her eyes squeezed shut, tears streaming down her cheeks, her body trembling with each ragged sob. The tiny figure in a vast and uncaring world rocked back and forth while muttering to herself, “I want to die. I want to die. I want to die.” But no matter how fervently she wished, the world refused to let her slip away. It clung to her like a parasite, feeding off her misery. Meeting Elena meant brushing against a profound sorrow, to trace one’s fingertips along a fault line.

My throat felt dry and constricted, and my vocal cords struggled to produce words.

“Live for today, Elena. Keep going as long as you can, and keep enjoying what you love.”

She dipped her chin and furrowed her brow, her pale blues fixed on my eyes. A faint smile tugged at a corner of her mouth; she might as well have told me outright to come up with better lines.

“Sometimes I think Siobhan had it right. At least she knew what she wanted: oblivion, peace, whatever you want to call it. Me? I’m stuck in this loop of wanting to disappear while craving something to tether me here. Like my favorite songs, or…” She gestured vaguely at the printouts. “Or these words I keep bleeding. I’m a junkie who needs a fix to prevent her from falling apart. So yeah, the only question is whether anyone’s going to be there to drag me away from the edge when I finally give up. Right now, though, I’m here, in a fancy coffee shop, with a guy who has long eyelashes and a strange fascination with my stories, and who is probably a serial killer. That’s about as good as it can get for me.”

The fingers of Elena’s right hand fluttered in a wavy motion. Maybe she caught my glance, because she balled that hand into a tight fist before withdrawing it beneath the table. With her head bowed, her eyes skittered over the table.

“You didn’t ask me to spill that much of my guts,” she said in a hesitant voice. “It’s just that, well, I’m on edge. Not used to sharing my serious writing or talking about anything that matters. I also have a hard time filtering myself.” Elena took a deep breath. She lifted her gaze to meet mine, her pale blues searching. “Let’s talk about you for a change. What do you like to do, Jon?”

“Masturbate.”

Elena smirked, then chuckled dryly. She uncoiled as if my reply had released the built-up tension, and her eyes twinkled with a conspiratorial gleam like an imp about to propose mischief.

“Oh, samesies. I don’t know if I have a sexual orientation so much as plain perversion. Do you ever feel ashamed when you molest yourself?”

“I only feel ashamed when I don’t.”

She snorted and shook her head.

“What other hobbies have you developed to cope with the misery of existence, Jon? Writing’s one of them, right? We met at a writing course, after all.”

“I used to. For me.”

“How long ago, and why did you stop?”

“Ten years, when I realized my words would be useless.”

Elena’s eyes searched my face. My skin itched as if I’d been bathed in toxic goo, and now I could feel every cell’s molecular structure degrading.

“Maybe you should give it another shot, Jon, for the sake of the lonely, invisible man behind your bullshit.”

“I also like to listen to a woman telling me the most intimate, horrifying things.”

She lounged back in her rattan chair, her head cocked slightly as she scrutinized me.

“Now seriously. Why are you here, Jon?”

“Because of you.”

“I’m not asking why you’re sitting at this table. I’m asking why you’re here in the world. What is it that keeps you from walking into the ocean and swimming until you sink?”

“I’m addicted to the smell of your hair. Honey-scented shampoo, right?”

“Whatever’s there when I reach for the shelf. And you know that’s not what I meant.”

“I’m also a sucker for a pretty pair of eyes, especially if they’re full of pain.”

“If you don’t answer truthfully, I’ll have to go with my serial killer theory.”

“I’ll say it again: because of you. The story of your existence.”

Elena’s pale blues narrowed as she stared me down, trying to figure out the angle.

“What a sweet lie.”

“You’re my motivation to stay afloat. You’re that guiding star on a stormy sea at night. That’s all there is.”

She exhaled deeply through her nose.

“Please. I’ve been dumping my depressing shit on you. I thought it’d be harder to open up, and I was sure that once you realized what you’d gotten into, you’d run away screaming.”

“I’m not going to leave. I’m here for the long haul. Even if you tell me fuck off, I may pretend I didn’t hear it.”

“Fuck, you’re an idiot. Why the hell do you want to hang out with a miserable bitch like me? I’m not even that hot.”

“My loins disagree.”

“The monster might emerge if you stick around. I’m radiation’s daughter. I can’t stop hurting people.”

“Someone needs to be there to drag you away from the edge. One day you may look back and be glad you didn’t jump.”

Elena’s shoulders slumped.

“Being someone’s only tether to the world. That’s quite the sacrifice, Jon. I doubt you’d benefit much from it.”

“That’s for me to decide.”

Her eyes bored into mine. She then hunched over, a loose almond-blonde lock spilling onto her forehead, and she rubbed her eyes with the heels of her palms.

“Late at night, when I’m listening to my favorite music, there are fragile moments where I believe life may be worth living. Just to hear what she’ll create next, to feel whole if only through my headphones. But that’s pathetic, isn’t it? Clinging to life because of an artist who has no idea that I exist. Who would probably hate my guts if she met me.”

“Your everyday life can erode even your sense of what’s meaningful. Jobs in particular excel at that. Everything becomes an unwanted transaction. But art is worth sticking around for. If you feel understood at least by some artists’ work, that means you’re not alone. And I care about what you write.”

“Do you have any idea how terrifying you are to me, Jon? Having someone want to read the darkness that spills out of my mind. I don’t know if I’m more afraid of you understanding or not. Because if you do understand, then what the fuck am I supposed to do about that? And if you don’t… well, then we’re two strangers playing at connection in an overpriced coffee shop, aren’t we?”

“When it comes to my role, Elena: the next time you find yourself at the end of your rope, if you can’t reach me with your hand, send me a text message that just reads, ‘Siobhan.'”

Elena tried to beat me in a staring contest, but she broke away and looked down at the second stack of stapled printouts. She picked it up and tossed it in front of me, letting them land on top of the first set.

“Something about you sets off alarm bells in my head. It makes me feel like I could fall deep into that dark, fathomless place within you, never to emerge. A strange comfort, to say the least. Like discovering someone who looks at the same bleak landscape, who feels the same cold, uncaring winds. Who’s heard the same whispers in the dead of night. But I’m afraid if we get closer, that place inside of you will pull me in. So here’s to this distance between us and these small steps, Jon. Now quit fucking around and move onto the second exhibit of Elena’s Dark Carnival.”

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Author’s note: today’s song is “Waitin’ for a Superman” by The Flaming Lips.