Chapter 1: The Void and Its Spark – The Empty Space: Spark of Madness
The Silent Madman by Saqlain Tasawar
Full Chapter 1 | October–November 2025 | 2500+ words
There is a void inside me.
A void that is not just empty space—no, it is a living, breathing entity. It has weight, it has hunger, it has teeth. This void is not the silence people imagine when they speak of inner peace. This void is the exact opposite of silence. It is a continuous, deafening clamor that no ear except mine can ever hear. It swallows the light of my mornings, devours the calm of my nights, and with every breath it whispers the same cruel truth: You are incomplete.
People believe a void is like an empty room. Bring in furniture, hang pictures, play music, invite guests—and the emptiness disappears. They think it works the same way inside a human soul. But my void is not a room. My void is a beast. A black, patient, grinning beast that grows fatter every time I try to starve it.
The more I laugh in public, the wider it grins behind my eyes. The more sincerely I bow my head in prayer, the tighter it coils a silent noose around my throat. It walks when I walk. It sits when I sit. It sleeps beside me, and sometimes it wakes before I do, licking my dreams away before I can taste them.
I have tried everything to kill it.
I tried love. I poured myself into another person, hoping their warmth would burn the darkness out of me. I held them close, whispered promises into their hair, believed that two hearts beating together could drown out the roar inside my own. But the void only watched, amused, and when the love ended—as love often does—it grew heavier, as if it had swallowed that relationship whole and was now digesting it slowly, turning even the sweetest memories into ash.
I tried friendship. I surrounded myself with noise—late-night gatherings, endless jokes, music loud enough to rattle windows. I wanted the roar of laughter to overpower the scream inside my skull. For a few hours it almost worked. Almost. But when the last friend left and the last song faded, the void was still there, larger than ever, mocking me with the echo of all that false joy.
I tried faith. I stood in mosques and churches and temples, I knelt, I prostrated, I begged. I repeated holy words until my tongue went numb. I wanted divine light to flood the corridors of my chest and chase the darkness away forever. But the words floated off my lips like weightless feathers, and the void caught every one of them, crushed them, and laughed—a low, guttural laugh that only I could hear.
I even tried touch. Skin against skin. The desperate, ancient belief that another human body could anchor me to the earth, could remind me that I am real, that I am here, that I am not alone. For a few fleeting minutes the illusion held. Then the void slid between us like cold smoke, untouched, untouchable, eternal.
There was one night I will never forget.
I sat across from someone I trusted—someone who had seen me smile a thousand times and believed the smile was real. I decided that night I would finally speak. I would open the cage and let the scream out. My hands shook. My voice cracked. I told them about the beast. I told them about the noose. I told them how sometimes breathing felt like swallowing broken glass.
They listened. Their eyes softened with sympathy. They reached across the table and placed a gentle hand on mine. And then they said the six words that cut deeper than any blade the void had ever used:
“Everyone goes through this. It’ll pass.”
In that moment I understood something terrible: the void had won again. Because even when I showed it, raw and bleeding, to another human being, they could not see it. They saw only a sad friend having a bad day. They saw only a phase. They did not see the beast grinning behind my eyes.
I smiled. I nodded. I said, “You’re right. I’ll be fine.” And I swallowed the scream back down, deeper than it had ever gone before.
From that day on, the void was no longer just my enemy. It became my only honest companion.
It never lied to me. It never pretended everything was okay. It never told me tomorrow would be better when it knew tomorrow would be exactly the same shade of black. In its brutal honesty, it was more real than any person who ever claimed to love me.
The void taught me how paper-thin the world’s colors truly are.
Laughter that rang like bells yesterday becomes a hollow echo today. Prayers that once set my heart on fire now fall like dead leaves into a dry well. Achievements, awards, applause—cotton candy that dissolves the moment it touches the tongue, leaving only the sickly sweetness of knowing it was never real nourishment.
The void strips away every illusion. It tears the painted scenery from the stage and reveals the rotting wood underneath. It rips off every mask and forces me to stare at the raw, bleeding face beneath.
And the strangest part? I began to respect it.
Because in a world full of liars—people who lie to themselves most of all—the void is the only one who never flinches from the truth. It never says “You are enough” when it knows I am not. It never says “This too shall pass” when it suspects this is permanent.
It simply is.
And in its terrible presence, I began to see something I had never seen before: every human being walking on this earth carries their own void. Some feed it with money. Some drown it in alcohol. Some bury it under marriages and children and careers. Some post smiling pictures on Instagram and call it happiness.
But the void is patient. It waits. It knows that one day the money will run out, the bottle will be empty, the children will leave, the career will plateau, the filters will fail—and it will still be there, grinning, unchanged.
The difference between me and them is simple:
They still run. I stopped running.
They hide their wounds behind makeup and promotions and motivational quotes. I look directly into mine and call them by name.
They pretend the beast does not exist. I sit with it every night and share my silence.
And in that sitting, something strange began to happen.
The more honestly I looked at the void, the less power it had to terrify me. It was still enormous. It was still hungry. But it was no longer unknown. Naming a monster is the first step toward taming it—even if taming only means learning to live beside it without being devoured every single day.
There are nights when the void swells so large that it fills every corner of my chest, when breathing becomes a battle and sleep is impossible. On those nights I do not fight anymore. I simply sit in the dark and say:
“I see you. I know you. You are part of me. And I am still here.”
And somehow, miraculously, morning always comes.
Not brighter. Not happier. But it comes.
And in that stubborn act of continuing to exist—of waking up, of breathing, of putting one foot in front of the other even when every step feels like walking on broken glass—something tiny begins to glow.
A spark.
Not a bonfire. Not a sunrise. Just a spark. Barely visible. Easily ignored. But undeniably there.
The spark of madness, perhaps.
Or maybe the spark of something truer than sanity ever was.
This is only the beginning. The void is still here. The beast still grins. But now there is a spark.
And sparks, left unattended, have been known to set entire worlds on fire.
End of Chapter 1
The Silent Madman – A Journey from Darkness to Light
Saqlain Tasawar | November 2025
Continue reading:
Chapter 2: Daily Hell – The Chains of Constant War
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