He stood, waiting. Just as he had for years.

At the start, there had been a voice screaming in his head, urging him to leave. It had argued that he had no real obligation to be here, that he was free to leave, that nobody would stop him.

Now, the voice had almost faded to a memory. It still haunted him sometimes, whispering that he could still leave.

It wasn’t like he truly trapped.

It wasn’t like he couldn’t leave.

It wasn’t like he didn’t want to leave.

He just didn’t know how.

This place had built itself, and he didn’t know how to get out of it. Occasionally, he caught a glimpse of a lost memory, a broken dream, but every time he thought about getting closer, the memory would flee, darting behind another cloud or vanishing in a flash of lightning.

He vaguely knew that he was sinking deeper into the water. He didn’t know what the ground was made of, but it seemed to grow weaker every moment.

He found that the longer he stood there, the less motivation he had to move. He began to accept, even welcome, the gradual sinking.

Eventually, he knew, he would be swallowed by the earth, forever trapped in this mysterious place of lightning and solitude, but he couldn’t seem to bring himself to care. Everything that he might have cared about had faded long ago, leaving him an empty shell of a person, uncaring and without sympathy for his own situation.

The voice came more seldom now than ever, murmuring weakly desperate words or encouragement. It, too, seemed to struggle against the fog, but it tugged and pulled at the outside of the storm, begging him to come out.

He ignored it, for what was the use of just a voice? He stayed immobile, sinking, barely thinking, gradually dying. He stayed there, in his own mind, losing himself bit by bit until the day that he would be gone forever.