It's an alluring tunnel, a cave, a mouth wide open. It's a warm and enveloping darkness that promises a sacred inner light. Mankind is but children, young to the Earth, fresh-faced and naive, eager to explore. We are moths to a blue flame, drawn to go in. We strut where we should walk, and tower when we ought to crawl. Whoever allowed us to breach the darkness? To travel in and downwards evermore, a never-ending spiral slick with liquid shadow, down, a tiny splinter of time and matter sliding into the belly of a beast? I see this again, and again, and again. Sometimes, I am the child, blissfully ignorant until the end. Other times, I am the darkness. Greedy and waiting, observing the still waters from below — the silent predator crowded with invisible bodies at the bottom of a sunless sea. Calm, and so, so far away. Again, and again, and again.

The spiral pulls inwards Winding down Unknowable configuration, each curve more twisted than the last A corkscrew slowly digging into flesh A snake eating the world And devouring itself, until it can feast no longer Again, and again, and again. Until the world forgets, for it leaves no trace of itself but a lingering allure. The pressure mounts as I travel below. A world that's no longer mine towers above me, suffocates me, pushes me down. I press my hand against the walls of the spiral so I don't lose myself in the descent. Its sides are moist and glistening. It twists more with every turn, uneven, irregular, and mangled around itself. It leads me ever downwards. The deeper I dive, the more I understand its rhythm. It's fleshy, breathing, vibrating. It becomes alive at depth.

I awake at the bottom of the spiral, at the core of the Earth. Around me, a writhing mass, a mess of limbs, a mound of flesh. It forms the vortex that connects the here and the before. The mass gazes at me. I glare back, torn inside by the selection of faces, all broken, shattered, and realigned. It is a grotesque imitation of life where eyes melt to cheeks, lips liquify, and heads split to bloom into something new. One seems estranged, yet familiar — a fleeting thought, a newspaper clipping, a whispered word. He is one, but he is many. He is a wanderer, as I am. He is all around. Too humanoid to be born from the mist Too suffocated, too glistening to be human Or human, still He is like morning dew The dawn of a new day The start of every spiral, waiting to be found

The faces twist into each other, and all breathe as one Some have scars, growths, and fevers Maddened eyes or shrieking voices But they were all him, and he was all of them And for a moment, I thought I would become him, too. Or he would become I. To form a new spiral. To lie underneath the water's surface in wait, mouth agape. To be forgotten, and emerge to eat the world anew. Reflections of reflections A kid following a cloud on the face of a silent pond Mistaking an image for another, and another, and another The memory of a specter, half-forgotten, but ever haunting A fraction of what once was, a shadow of the self reshaped and remade Every push and pull prompts a soft groan, a shimmering tear, a pearl of sweat. The spiral torments itself to face me as one. The spiral torments the world. The spiral is the faces of the bodies on the sea floor. The spiral is what blooms below. The spiral is alive, is a snake, is a maelstrom, is a mouth, is the curiosity that feeds on us. It waits for us, ensnares, chews, devours, and rebirths us. The spiral is our end, and our new beginning