It was as if he never opened his eyes at all. Every direction he looked was pure darkness. He even looked down at himself only to find that emptiness stared back at him. He called out into the void, loudly. There was no echo, and there was no response. He wasn't even sure he heard his own voice or if it was just in his head. 

Taking a step forward, he reached out, his hands trying to find some sort of object to ground him. To give him some kind of idea where he was and where he should be nothing. Only air greeted his fingertips as he pulled them back around his own body, finding solace in the fact that at least he still existed. 

He took a few more steps forward, slowly and cautiously into the blackness, turning his head in every direction merely out of habit, for there was nothing to see at all. Pitch darkness greeted him in every direction he desperately gazed.

His thoughts fired off now, trying hard to stay sane, his focus bouncing off dread after dread. Was this what it was like to die? "No..." he thought. "I can't be dead... I still exist..." 

He began to panic, and recall the last few things he could remember. Christmas Eve... Bad decisions... The thought process eventually turned to sorrow and he began to weep to no one. 

Wherever he was at wasn't hot... It wasn't cold either. The temperature was as neutral as it could be, tempting his mind even further toward chaos. A frigid blizzard or even even a sweltering heat wave would be welcoming compared to this. 

As the nothingness seemed to drag on forever, he began to trudge. His body became heavy and his movements sluggish, as if the gravity increased with every silent step he took. His mind was numb and empty now, and his eyes stayed shut, as if it actually mattered. At least then his brain could make sense of why there was no light of any kind. 

Voices in his head began to creep in, remarking on how pointless everything was, and how he should just give up. Was his life over? Was he doomed to wander the rest of his "existence" in a state such as this? 

His persona shouted down the voices, tearing through them with a simple thought. "What matters, is that I keep trying to do what I believe is right..."

He pressed his hand to his heart and focused on the beating. Yes, he was still alive. Trudging along, time seemed to stand still, the weight ever increasing as he journeyed. Was he crawling now, on his knees? Maybe... It didn't matter. To give up would be to die at this point. 

Without hesitation, he searched through the lonely void for a light, the weight crushing down upon him more heavily with each passing moment.