The Basement Nightmares

October 30, 2019    Bookmark    https://www.thestranger.com/features/2019/10/23/41756216/the-basement-nightmares

Curious, heavy with dread, I decided to walk down to the basement. There I found the presence of an evil that was concentrated and coldly alien. It was not an animal hiding in the dark with red eyes and sharp teeth. It wasn’t satanic, or anything like the demon in the famous Amityville house. It was not one thing, nor was it many things. I could not see it. But it had a smell. The closer I got to it, the more musky and musty it became. The evil was by a few sacks of rotten potatoes, and beneath me, and behind me.

[…]

And this no-thing is the ultimate horror. I understood then what it is we fear most about death. It is the ultimate paradox. You can know death, but death can never know you. You can think about death, but death cannot think about life. What this means is: In death, you never existed at all. The nothing in death fuses with the nothing before life. And nothing becomes all there ever was. To exist is only to exist. To not exist is never to have existed.

Charles Mudede