Chapter 1

I have never been suicidal. Sure, I’ve had dark thoughts in my life, but who hasn’t? They were never more than just a passing thought that swooped into my mind and left as quickly as they came.

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The Void Calls Us Home is a YA dark fantasy, LGBTQIA+ paranormal love story. It deals with suicide, depression, and abusive relationships. You can find more of my work on my website.

Rebecca never thought she was suicidal. However, that didn’t stop her from jerking her car off the side of the road last night.

Everybody thinks she swerved to hit a deer, but she knows the truth. She did it because a giant flaming being called from the void and beckoned to her to join it in the darkness.

Was it a manifestation of her unconscious desire to die? Could the being really exist? Did it have anything to do with her sister’s suicide just a year before?

When Rebecca starts seeing the creature every time she closes her eyes, she has no choice but to find out the truth before it drives her mad.

If you like H.P. Lovecraft, psychological horror, coming of age stories, or deep explorations of grief, loss, death, and junk, then you'll love this world.

If you are a paid subscriber, you can read this story from the beginning, and my entire archive. If you are not a paid subscriber, you can access my back catalog library with a 7-day free trial.

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I have never been suicidal.

Sure, I’ve had dark thoughts in my life, but who hasn’t? They were never more than just a passing thought that swooped into my mind and left as quickly as they came. I was a relatively happy human female, all things considered, and yet…

I think I tried to kill myself last night. I hate using the word “think”. I mean, if I tried to kill myself, that’s the kind of thing I should know, right?

It is, but that didn’t change the fact I just wasn’t sure.

God, that sounded so moronic. Even stupider than it sounded rattling around in my brain. It’s just that, one moment, I was driving along, minding my own business. And then, I was off the side of the road, plummeting down an embankment, and slamming into a tree. The rest of the car ride I remembered vividly, but that last moment...

The reason that I jerked the wheel to the right on that lonely, dark, mountain road…that’s what was fuzzy.

I remembered singing along to Kesha’s “Rainbow”, where she goes, “I’ve found a rainbow, rainbow, baby Trust me, I know, life is scary, but just put those colors on, girl. Come and play along with me tonight…”  Suddenly the temperature in my car plummeted. The hair on my arms stood up on end and I felt as if my insides were being hollowed out, as if every good thought in my body had been stripped away from me.

 I stopped singing. I stopped everything and stared blankly out into the dark night. It was rainy, and the thick drops fell onto my windshield. The wipers whipped across the glass as they struggled to keep the water at bay. I should have replaced them months ago, but it always slipped my mind.

The music must have still been on right before the car jerked to the right, but I couldn’t hear it anymore. All I heard was the rhythmic wiping of the windshield as I peered out into the dark beyond my headlights. The darkness hypnotized me. Hopelessness washed over me, utter hopelessness; despair that felt eternal.

Then, I spun my wheel to the right…

…and I fell…

When my head slammed into the steering wheel, the darkness engulfed me. I drifted through the nothing like some dark, underwater pit, except that I wasn’t drowning. I wasn’t gasping for breath. I wasn’t even frightened. I was one with the black. Without hope, fear, or happiness. I just…was.

I heard the muffled sounds of the medics prying me from the car, and later the voices of doctors as they worked to save my life, but I couldn’t see them. I couldn’t feel them. I was numb, completely and utterly without feeling, left with nothing but the frigid cold. 

I don’t know how long I floated in the emptiness. I swam in every direction, looking for a flicker of warmth that eluded me. I longed for comfort, for heat, for answers, but no matter how far I travelled, there was nothing around me. I screamed into the abyss, but there was nobody there.

Without warning, a great force jerked me by the throat and pulled me out of the darkness. I woke up gasping for breath. My eyes fluttered opened, and I sucked in oxygen as if I had come back from drowning.

Nurses and doctors flooded into the room as I spasmed uncontrollably on the bed, kicking off the fresh linens. A needle jabbed in my arm, and then, it was quiet again. This time, I did not fall into the hopeless void, but into a pleasant dream, where I was a pony.

The second time I woke, my eyes focused on my mother. She looked as though she hadn’t slept in days. Her short, blonde hair was tangled, and her face was greasy. Dark circles rested under her eyes. I hadn’t seen her without make-up once in my entire life, and the sight was enough to jar me awake.

“Mom?” I asked, weakly. I tried to push myself to my elbows, but the pain in my chest burned and I collapsed back onto the hospital bed like a ten-ton rock.

 “Becca!” Mom said, her voice cracking with excitement. “Becca! You’re awake!”

She jumped up and wrapped her arms around my neck. She pressed herself closely and my chest throbbed again.

“Ow,” I said to her. My mother was not an emotional person by any stretch of the imagination. I couldn’t remember her ever hugging me like that, and yet she held me so tight I thought I would burst.

“Sorry,” Mom said, pushing herself back and wiping the tears from her eyes. “I didn’t know if I would ever see you again.”

“It’s okay,” I said, taking a deep heave of air. Every breath was agony, but I couldn’t stop taking long inhales and exhales, enjoying my breath in a way I never had before. “How long have I been…how long have I been out?”

“Four weeks,” she replied. “They told me you would never wake up, but I knew. I just knew that you would. I…knew.”

Mom swallowed her sadness as the tears came again. Mom hadn’t even cried at my sister’s funeral, and yet here she was, sobbing at my bedside. She tried to talk but it was no use. All that eked out where mumbled syllables that I couldn’t understand. She collapsed back onto the chair and wept into her hands.

 “You’re up!” I heard from the doorway.

I turned my aching head to see my father standing at the door with two cups of coffee. He was a big man, and broad. He could have played linebacker in the NFL with his massive size, except that he had the coordination of a running camel.

“Hi, Dad,” I replied, groggy. “Ignore Mom. She’s having a moment.”

Dad smiled at me. “She’s emotional, kiddo.”

“I know,” I said. “I don’t know what to do. This is a foreign experience to me.”

“Just give her a minute.” 

He barreled forward to give me a hug, but I held out my hand to stop him. My arms throbbed as they swung above my body.

“Please, no,” I said. “I don’t think my body can take one of your bear hugs right now.”

He shrugged, disappointed but understanding. My father was not emotionally stilted like my mother. He was responsible for most of the affection I received in my life. My sister accounted for the rest, but…

“I get it,” he said, holding up his hand. “I’m just, oh, I’m really glad to see you, is all.” He leaned forward to place a gentle kiss on my forehead.

My vision swirled and crackled, and my eyes turned up into my head. I tried to keep my head up, but it was no use. I collapsed back in bed and drifted off, hoping I would dream of kittens and not the black nothingness I had been trapped in for so long.