The blank line pulsed.
Not like ink.
Like breath.
It inhaled you.
And you fell.
---
You did not fall alone.
The notebook, still clutched in your hand, dragged you with it—into something deeper than even the Beneath Between.
This wasn't part of the narrative.
It was beneath that.
A plane with no form, no metaphor, no genre to shield you.
This was The Below.
Not a place.
Not even an idea.
The Below was what stories feared becoming.
Unread.
---
Your feet hit ground—if it could be called that.
It felt like stepping onto feedback.
Every footfall hissed with the sound of rejection letters being opened. Old blog posts being deleted. Drafts unsaved. Comments turned cruel.
The air was made of sighs.
The kind you make when you think no one's watching. When you delete a paragraph you almost loved.
It was here that The Discarded waited.
Not characters.
Not plots.
Not even Darlings.
These were Themes.
Ones too heavy to lift. Too honest to market. Too raw to resolve.
