I climb out of my grave and I stumble across three bodies. Their eyes locked into steely pain. They died suffering, electrecuted. Apparently, to free me. 

I do not have a clear memory of anything. I look at the empty glass coffin, from the side of the room a large window overlooks planetary explosions. Volcanic eruptions of war, I shudder at my newly found world.

My limbs are limp with cathartic pain, my body fragile as crystal. My friends are dead. I recognize the nun, the soldier, the student. Their eyes look at me from beyond. Carefully, I crawl forward, no strength in my flesh. I am the will to exist. One side of the tower overlooks the abyss. Needlessly, I look into it and remember the ocean, and the depths of fear.

Slowly, each feeling is coming back to me like a chain, roaring sea-waves crashing into my numb and stupid self-shore.

The bitch of living. I am utterly alone. I drag my limp carcass down the staircase, one stump at a time. I bleed against the rough surface of the floor. My knotty hands claw my headfirst downfall. I hit my head onto the first bend of the stair. 

I lost consciousness, perhaps hours have gone by. What are a few hours, in the general scheme of my sleeping entombed for years. I refuse to give up. I am so fucking hungry and tired. I hate all this breathing, it is so very, very hard. I wonder for a second if I should crawl back upstairs but there is no way I can turn my body around. I use heavy gravity to come crashing further down. Only one way to go. 

Hours pass. I know that years are yet to come, and decades of more pain lie in wait if I can survive this ordeal. There is only one way forward. There is only one way forward. There is only one way forward. 

I look at the explosions out of my body, the empires at war destroying every living creature. Life in the multiverse stands on the brink of annihilation. The sound of bombs dims my senses. Moulds growing on the staircase smell of rot. My nose sharpens its focus. Somehow, looking at the whimsical nature of these lichens, spreading in all fashions and colours, somehow I am reassured that life will endure.