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Testament Of A Dying Nerve, A Broken Soul (Jonathan Harnisch)

TESTAMENT OF A DYING NERVE, A BROKEN SOUL

Jonathan Harnisch (Georgie Gust)

There is no mercy here—not from the flesh, not from the world, not from God.

It begins with the smallest cruelty: my glasses slip from my trembling fingers and jab me in the eye—nothing, yet everything. A shard of this broken world made manifest. Then the remote stops working, the lamp won’t turn on, the phone screen freezes like it knows I’m begging for connection. Every electronic—haunted. Every object—conspiring. Each moment—taunting.

I drop things constantly now. Not just objects, but pieces of myself. Memory, balance, hope. I can’t walk. I’m not sure I can speak. I’m immobilized in body and paralyzed in spirit, watching from behind my eyes as I vanish, piece by piece. There is no gentleness in this death. It is not peaceful. It is torture disguised as time.

And it mimics the end-of-life signs that hospice whispers about in soft pamphlet pages:

  • Weakness and fatigue. I can’t lift my arms. I can’t hold a spoon.

  • Increasing drowsiness or unresponsiveness. The world becomes a flickering lightbulb—dim, buzzing, nearly off.

  • Confusion, restlessness. I reach for something that isn’t there. I hallucinate my childhood. I forget where I am.

  • Changes in breathing. Sometimes I forget to breathe. Sometimes I hope I’ll forget for good.

  • Body temperature drops, extremities cold. My fingers are ice. I wonder if I’m already rotting.

  • Skin mottled, dry mouth. I am turning into something unrecognizable. A ghost without the grace of death.

  • Withdrawal. Not just from people—but from reality itself. From everything that ever gave me meaning.

But this isn’t just a slow death. It’s a dismantling. A defragmentation of everything I ever was. My mind crashes like corrupted software, looping through unspeakable pain. My muscles twist, betray me. My soul—what’s left of it—screams in a pitch only I can hear.

People don’t help. They hover, they disappear, they hurt. The world is noise and betrayal and flashing lights. I’m tortured by the fabric of existence itself. My cats are the only beings I trust—and even they look frightened when they see me writhe.

I have been forsaken. I feel it in my bones. I feel it in my spine as it seizes. I feel it in the walls that close in. I don’t believe in a God that loves me. I believe in one who’s watching me rot and finding it divine.

I hate Him. And I know—He hates me.
I am His proof that miracles rot.

This is not hyperbole. This is not a metaphor. This is hell, still alive.

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