I almost feel like I understand now. I can feel the wild, crackling energies of anticipation surging in my head as I get closer and closer to the revelation that's waiting for me, the secret I've been trying to uncover by studying the spiral all this time. Not the little shimmers of text I keep seeing out of the corner of my eye, mind you, or the synthesized voice that drones on endlessly in my ears through the headphones clamped into place around my head. They're not important. I've learned to tune those out. I'm talking about the true secret, the grand and joyous understanding I've been working toward all this time. I don't know what it is, yet. But I know I'm close.
I won't deny that I've had that thought before. This entire process has been a series of false starts and backtracking, certainties that I once held unraveling as I learned something new and wonderful about myself with each turn of the mesmerizing wheel of light. When they first strapped us into these chairs, I can actually remember thinking that the spiral was going to brainwash us somehow, strip away our wills and leave us blank and obedient sex slaves for our kidnappers to use at their leisure. I can remember calling out to Julia, "Don't look at the spiral! Look away! Close your eyes! Fight it, Julia!" I was so young and foolish then.
The spiral doesn't strip away your will. The spiral doesn't take away anything. The spiral gives. The first gift it provided me was time; when I let my eyes follow the twisting, winding curve of blinding white light as it swirled around and down and vanished into the warm, comfortable darkness at the center of the screen, I found out for myself how easy it was to let go of the silly, uncomfortable, artificial rituals of minutes and seconds. How little I cared that there was no clock to slice the time into neat, tidy segments for me to impatiently consume. The spiral taught me how to relax and live in the now, and that led me to every other revelation I now understand.
Not that I understand everything I see in the wheel of spinning light just yet. Even though I feel so close to that moment of transcendent, impossible bliss, I know that there's still some part of me learning the lessons that the twisting, turning patterns have to teach me. I would have called it resistance back at the beginning, back when I still thought that there was something to resist. It seems so strange, looking back on the self I was just a short while ago and seeing someone who thought of the spiral as an adversary, an intruder on my thoughts to be struggled against. Then again, I thought then that our captors had sinister plans for us back then, too, and they've been nothing but kind to me now that I understand why I'm here.
They had to restrain us at first. It was the only way we'd ever sit still long enough to open our minds to the spiral's messages. Again, I don't mean the silly, obvious blurbs that pop up every so often, telling me nothing I don't already know and vanishing before I can focus on them properly. I mean the... the spiritual messages, the truth of my existence as a human being. I've gone my entire life seeking meaning, but nothing has ever brought me as close to true fulfillment as my time in this chair. I've got to keep watching. I've got to see this all the way through to the end. It's the only way to truly be happy.
Oh, I thought I was happy before. I fooled myself into thinking that foolish things like friendship, family, laughter and physical companionship were all paths to personal fulfillment. But I can see now looking back on them that I only deluded myself into believing that any of it meant anything to me. The slightest curve in the rippling patterns of light is more important than a year spent living the life I once knew. The softest hum of the voice in my ears makes me happier than I ever felt with friends, with family. I know they'll worry about me, and a part of me wishes I could at least tell them what happened to me. But sometimes you have to leave the things you loved behind to find something better.
And I have. Seeing the spiral like this, watching it turn and swirl and pull my gaze ever deeper into the endless darkness at its core, it's... it's like seeing a secret map of the universe. Every time I think I've seen everything there is to see, understood everything there is to know about existence and my place within it, the lines of white precess and dive and spin again and I see some new transcendent beauty unveiled before me. Sometimes it slips past me again-my mind isn't ready to take in everything, not all at once like this. But it always returns to the same place. I know I'm getting closer.
I can feel my fingers tracing a spiral pattern on my vulva, teasing the sensitive flesh closer and closer to my clit in ever-descending circles until they brush against my slick, throbbing, needy little nub and I gasp with pleasure. I feel like there are even tighter spirals within that warm, twitching button, and my hand aches to rub them into my dripping pussy, but... but not yet. I know that I'm not ready yet. Not when there's still some part of me that isn't ready to accept the fullest revelations the spiral has to offer.
