There sunk the sun, swallowed the moon that sung it’s tune longing for sky. There lay the day that became night. Mother went into Kara’s room. “Don’t let the bed bugs bite.” mother said, blowing her a kiss. But there were to many thoughts, going through Kara’s head. So the mother went, and sat on Kara’s bed. “It’s the third night in a row, perhaps a book for you to read for tonight.” said her mother.
Then she got her a storybook. It was a slightly longer book, about fifty for the thirty two. Her mother left the room, and she opened the cover. Every time she opened the book was a new experience, yet never really read it. Instead she imagined herself flying on the dragons with the book. The dragons looped, flying in the sky. Kara closed the book, then said goodnight to it with a hugging embrace.
Kara tried to sleep, but could not. When she saw a glowing yellow light in her room, she jumped. Thus being to scared to dream, she crawled out of bed onto the floor that was still cold from the evening. Then noticed reality and dreams becoming a single cloth of time. The fairy with the skull-mask disappeared. Many more fairies walked the room as if they didn’t see her, walking through the walls as if to the office.
Then they all disappeared, in a single poof.
Kara heard a roar in the night. Then smiled because she thought she heard a dragon. Could it possibly be a dragon, she thought. Not being able to sleep for the evening, she walked to the door. Took a long time to open it. A light glowed as a the door cracked open. There was a forest, but no ordinary forest, instead one of withered trees. Roots were torn from the floor. Crows stared at her, at the door. They sang a tune, “No more, no more.” Then flew away, and became never more.
Kara walked through the what felt like an infinite loop of withered trees. She shivered, for the forest felt like it never became day. Looking into the sky, a storm. But not an ordinary storm. Clouds of brown and charcoal swirls. Then as she walked further, she reached what seemed a desert of the sands of grey. Kara saw a large skeleton dragon laying on the ground, that had it’s head pointed toward the sky with it’s mouth open. Eyes were not there, yet conveyed a sense of longing for the forever more.
A voice, but no ordinary voice, only called such by the fact that it was not silence. Not a growl, not a screech, but nothing there. Millions of images went into her head, about the times of growing flowers. Then nothing more, nothing there into the night. Words went into her mind, “Fair child, what is your name. ... Why have you come? This realm ... was not meant for ... humans. No children not of fairies born.”
“I could not sleep, I want to explore.” Kara said.
“That and nothing more?” the skull-dragon said.
She hopped onto the dragon. They flew to nowhere.
Forever more. Dragon sang it’s tune:
Where once a mortal ones to be, Now as ever, flew to nevermore. Where many long to be free. That’s good enough for me.
Then she woke up, and found it was a dream that next morning. She opened the storybook, and there a dragon to see. That looked like the same dragon as before, only the dragon was smiling flying into a world where white night flowers grew once.
Into the light.
]]>Beyond the hillsides, beyond the hillsides raining hard. The hillsides cry in big buckets, wondering if it ends. At the end, a new life begins.
Christmas brings the truest, brings the truest tears within. At the end, a new life begins. And only hidden sorrows reign supreme. For on Christmas, it brings no true toys. It only brings the reminder of things from ones past. It brings discord, vague reminders of a new life, that can't begin. And Raphael is reminded of many a Christmas he could have had with Annabelle, as he wanders the darkness of what was once America.
America was once fifty states. One could still have the old internet, where one is free to masturbate. One can only think of quashed rebellions, and many a Christmas ruined by authoritarianism's tears of joy raining blood forever.
In the darkness, was the man.
In the darkness, was a shadow. The man had no name, but some called him Tiamat. The man, whose features Trumped many a fine pretty boy's in beauty pageants from US history, found himself an alien within the human race. An alien within the United States taken over by authoritarian powers. Raphael had only heard rumors about such a figure, and there he was in the confines of a prison, seeing his red eyes. The man, looking almost female, was something that Raphael envied and desired, and yet he could scarcely admit it. For though it is expected for peasants to fawn over deranged headmasters and kings, for a Knight of a knight of another obscure nation to love one, for this only terror brings. And now Raphael lusts after the flesh.
He had found shelter with Elizabeth, who had decked out her hair in black. Given the exposure to new technology, she had grown a taste for dying her hair and for hair products that remove the frizz everywhere. Yet when she cooked with Raphael, she always was careful to keep her head away from the frying pan. That way, nobody would sever her head to munch on it. Raphael admired Elizabeth, yet hated her beauty. It reminded him of many an old Christmas, where the new life didn't begin.
For Raphael there was only the flesh.
For Raphael there was only lust. Yet he lusted after severed heads and hanged trophy wives beheaded with curvaceous, long Japanese knives. With his red trench coat, and a belly beginning to bloat, he developed a belly.
He felt like Jelly.
He felt like mud.
Raphael thought of the old life, a world beyond the invention of holographic monsters.
In the life we, in the life we wander free. In the life we think we spake of free speech. Yet for the man after the modern era, there was only the lust. There was new technology that aided these efforts, yet the efforts were designed to keep people from defaming the orange custard, that forms the new color of post-Modern shit. The era of White Supremacy. The era of the long dress, the era of the Guantanamo camps. And waterboarding.
This is surfing, but drips of pain.
In this life, we watch the news. In this life, we listen to democratic blues. Yet others masturbate to brand new wooden shoes, ignoring the nature of their own reality. For we live in a complicated computer system. Decking the catacomb halls of the dream world, we consume our intellectual sensations with information about electoral fraud in the world of mass media. In the old lifetimes there were programmers that made the world run. In this life we rely on these hidden men in uniform. Yet so often in the world of binary in the sky with Ruby syntax and other programs, there is only licked shoes and sung blues. The song of the mortal life.
A world beyond the rolling of severed heads on sticks.
A world beyond the candle wicks.
A world apparently rational without the river Styx. A world after the fall of Cyberspace, the birth of dream space, and the eventual post-reality merge. A reality noted by poets from other eras:
Beware the man,
Beware the tin can man.
Beware the man that stomps you.
Crushing you like big tin can.
Raphael could only send messages in the new world.
A world where encryption remained supreme, if only one could learn how to use the technology.
SEND TEXT
IDDIR OEENO NFDGT CEKSA ENIIB
Raphael waits for sunlight.
II. Ministry Of Alteration
So that's how you grow six feet. The correct box had been struck. She dresses like Mario, carefully avoiding spaghetti on her overalls and tee-shirt.
"Trust me, I am your friend. Goedenact et goedemorgen."
The user logged off Mario land, suddenly populated by reversed gender roles. A strange world, a strange life. Raphael had played with holographic mob generators since the days he went to look for Annabelle, so as to train for the coming onslaught. And in the goedemorgen light, the brightest candlelight of the sun. So much for retro gaming with classic characters.
He remembered the word of the man in black, as he recollected his time in confinement in the prison of technology beyond the world of magic.
"Remind me a little: what do we do here at the ministry of Alteration?"
It was an allusion to modification of men into holographic projections partially in the world of cyberspace, and partially in the meatspace life. They could move anywhere they wanted within the matrix, and also in meat space, with the limitation of the old programs that were confined to the net. The time to remain human was nearing its end, and beyond a new life begins.
Raphael collapses in bed, feeling as if he's falling from a great height. Sharp concrete skewers of pain.
Goedenact.
And in the world of dreams, he hears obscure Holiday music, remnants from the old religions of humanity.
A mixture of Paganism and Christianity. What they called Christmas, was a holiday that always gave him greater sorrow than others, and it was already a bleak month for just about everyone. Back when he was the mayor of the old town after the fall of the priest, on these months it would be a year that many went hungry on this side of the globe. He drowned out his sorrows plugging into his frontal lobes, while others, futuristic peasantry, had no choice but to rot.
He wasn't sure how to help them, and had decided on a whim that on all future Decembers, he would give out holographic consoles to children in the new town. After all, the lack of things was one among other reasons he wanted to kill the servant of God. And young Annabelle long ago had awoken something inside of him, her strength of will the face of persecution. She was the only girl he ever wept at her execution. For Raphael, she woke up the child within. And for him, a new life wanted to begin.
But there was something else. Raphael never felt entirely male, and on some level he felt by turning Annabelle in, he was killing a part of himself. Annabelle was executed by the ax just before Christmas, a Christmas she never got to have. For Raphael, it was no longer a question of "Whose Child Is This", but whose adult he was and had allowed a child to die so long ago for the crimes of belief.
He grew to hate the song Greensleeves.
And beyond the dreamer's edge, where all things may come true, there is some inner darkness that frightens him. The idea that he never wanted male gifts at all.
He never considered himself he.
A girl that never lived at all.
III. Desert Of Dead Trees
In the desert of dead trees, there was a singular resolve. Raphael told Elizabeth he never wanted to see his old town again. That he was never Raphael at all.
But Raphaelle. Yet Elizabeth didn't want to leave. For she had become acquainted for new master for too long, who was far kinder than all the masters before she. And together they go in search of new adventures.
The Raphaelle sisters.
The people from the old world. Annabelle was a child, and Elizabeth is a child in this kingdom of a strange new world.
A world of holographic mobs.
Raphaelle wanted to leave this world behind, but knew that he had to take care of Elizabeth who was now a permanent part of his team. For him, she was the one keeping him alive at all.
Through the forest they sought the morrow.
Through the forest they sought the interaction with other people's lives across various towns. Yet beyond the world of old, there was increasingly advanced technology. The old town that once filled the landscape like grains of sand, and like holographic mobs were replaced by miles of treeless desert. From time to time they would be attached by giant mutated, irradiated wolves, until eventually they came upon a small town.
And in this town, was a laboratory.
Yet it was no standard laboratory, for the residents were scarce and it seemed many of them have abandoned the town due to dark secrets that lay within. Herein, there are noises in the darkness. They sound like men, yet utter indescribable words not uttered by the local tongues. Words within the old English index, words that were closer to the original American English glossary, and not ones borrowed from various languages in English, German, and Latin. It was not the language of pigs.
But the sound of two simple words…
Help me.
And in the darkness, it was not Raphaelle that braved its catacombs, but Elizabeth who gently grabbed his hand and embarked into the night within.
"They won't stop coming." said Elizabeth.
"Those red eyes will cut into your soul." Raphaelle said. Even with all the attempts at shaving, she had still not grown the confidence she needed after acknowledging her own problems, her own inadequacies. Her own unspeakable terrors.
"If you believe in that." Elizabeth kept walking.
Despite that fact that they were in imminent danger for their very lives, she like Annabelle was also an Atheist. She like Annabelle, found solace in the present. She like Annabelle found that the only life was the present. A present marred by cuts and bruises, attacking mutated humans (if you called them such), and crushed hopes and dreams. A light not worn out by Christmas Eve. For she could taunt Raphaelle by the sound of Greensleeves using Atheist lyrics.
They walked the hallways.
They breached the security systems.
And beyond was a central hub where there was a young man, with ear length black hair and black glasses, orating his last words about how he missed his wife who died in the forest of death many a year ago in the natural Kingdom by the sea. Elizabeth tried to speak to him of what happened in the lab.
But he could only utter current English. "They came for me, and they would not stop coming…"
The man faded to unconsciousness.
Raphaelle sat in a chair by the bed, as Elizabeth nursed the man back to health. The man in the bed recounted a story, about how he and his wife were visiting from another town. And how his wife had died during the onslaught. She had been given to him as his charge when another man died on a mutation invasion, who proposed that he would return for them from the desert winds. Instead the man is the only survivor, for him he felt like nothing but dust.
To this day he has remained in town, and visited the graveyard where he buried his wife. And to this day he sees he restless spirit chiding yet loving him from beyond the stars. Raphael knew what it was like to lose someone he loved.
"You could come with us if you want."
"I want to know how my wife became one of them. I want to see what created the mutated and holographic men."
They went off into the miles of holographic monstrosities and sand, seeking for themselves a new understanding.
A new consciousness.
IV. Mme Elizabeth
But Elizabeth felt jealous for the attention that Raphaelle was giving the young man and resolved in some way to end it for good. But she knew that if she killed the man, that it would be treason and she may lose her head. She cared not. For there was one thing that Lavier taught him all those years ago when she came from the world of technology. You should fear nothing, especially from those who wish to keep you down. And Raphaelle was West Born. A woman born from noble blood seeking to bring her lifestyle to the world of the East. The world where flying cars and encryption still reigned supreme.
She wanted to convert Raphaelle.
The other man was in the way. For Elizabeth was Elizabeth, and not a girl like Annabelle.
When they reached the edge of a new city, Elizabeth suggested they split up briefly. That she had something she needed to talk to the other man about. Although Raphaelle was not entirely trusting, she agreed and they split paths. Elizabeth didn't think Raphaelle would be so easily led.
She showed the man the city. She showed him the world she herself had come from. She told him the story of a fallen knight that worked for the man in black that Raphaelle was seeking to find.
And when the man wasn't looking, she tried taking his gun and attempted to shoot. She justified to herself that it was putting him out of his misery. But Raphaelle had followed them against Elizabeth wishes, having no sense of trust for servants, knowing that servants in his hometown were not always the most loyal of sorts.
He took out his claymore and severed her head.
Down, down, down her curly blue locks with the red masquerade mask began rolling, rolling, and rolling down the steep hill. For the sake of her body, he rolled her bleeding corpse down the hill.
"Are you OK man?" asked Raphaelle.
"Yes, did I ever tell you my name?"
Raphael imagined himself in a video game, where he got to play old JRPGs from previous eras of mankind. He saw multiple dashes on the screen. And he heard.
"I am another Mutation. I was never given a name, yet unlike them I managed to keep some elements of my humanity. I injected the serum that affected others in order to survive the extreme temperature changes after global warming. I am the last of the modern men. What you see before you, are the new men. The partial robots of the future. The town you came from survived the wars from my present. I am an artifact from a lost generation."
"I shall call you Art."
"Art it is."
Raphael thought of how much Elizabeth reminded him of Annabelle that night, and found some solace in the fact that she got to spend one final Christmas with him. That he wished he could do everything all over again. Instead Raphael looks to the future, and he finds technology beyond his wildest understand.
The Paladin who spoke New English.
The Paladin from afar. They went into the city finding a new life for themselves as strange people in the world of technology. Yet in the darkness was a young woman named Elizabeth. Who did not die during her decapitation. She became one of many millions of holographic men. She was rebuilt with her mind uploaded to computer, and vowed to someday visit Raphaelle again. Raphaelle saw Elizabeth's face, as she held his hand softly and kissed him under the glow of the city lights. As with all things in life, there is only love. And with love it can unite the living and the dead. It can resurrect, and reattach your head.
And endure forever.
Raphaelle and Elizabeth's relationship did not completely escape bitterness from the betrayal. But he found he could not hate Elizabeth, for she had apologized completely to the young man. And they began their new life.
The life of holographic men.
A world beyond the centuries edge.
V. The Fallen Paladin
It had been a few months since Raphaelle had given up the life of a Paladin, and nowadays she primarily indulges in the self-destructive habit of smoking. For her, it helped her deal with the holiday blues, with a red and white colored pack of cigarettes. She had developed an issue of chain smoking. At times he blended the pack with various controlled toxins. She wanted to neglect her body, anything to punish herself for killing Elizabeth, the only other girl besides Annabelle she had ever loved.
She remembered how she would snuggle with her under the glow of the midnight stars. Whose child was this? The child that came into her life, and she had hoped at the time could turn her world around. She got to interact with her in the afterlife of the artificial, as she transcended from the mortal coil to the life of the world purely digital.
Raphaelle still had not found the man in black, but she would continue searching for the man that was the mutated child of the great black dragon virus Tiamat, who became of flesh and digital in the world of the glowing life. After a point Raphaelle began to smoke ten roll your own packages a day. She eventually started smoking headache powders and even bathroom cleaners. Yet no pain as her body became sicker and sicker could help her cope with her guilt. The fact that Elizabeth was beheaded, the only love of her world.
Whose child was this, that smiled when he cried. Whose child was this, that helped him and not die. Within the artificial glow of the digital afterlife, that were the draw of his own electronic afterlife. The draw of the net, the draw of the bet. The bet begging the question, how much longer till the drop? She stopped taking care of herself, and would not answer phone calls from the man named Art. It was as if her life never began to start.
For her life was merely a game.
The mutated game. Raphaelle smiled. Not because her physical pain melted away. But she felt some solace in the fact that Elizabeth was avenged. And she could enjoy her own poly love in the glow of the digital life.
The life of a new Paladin.
The Paladin's song.
VI. The Afterlife Of Dreams
In the world of the afterlife, she met with Elizabeth. Who was captured by digital dream-scanners. She tried data-interrupting their transmission, yet instead she is captured at first. She breaks free of them, and fires her rapid fire multiple shotgun at them. She tells Raphaelle to get down and cover. Elizabeth was now completely of digital data.
What do machine really do? They crunch numbers, increase the things we do. It all makes our lives easier, and yet also quickly things are taken for granted. How quickly Elizabeth becomes a new kind of monster on the net.
How quickly she seeks the blood of dream-scanners. And how quickly she tires after she is done. Her hair is down from her face, as she bleeds tender tears, longing for the mortal life. And yet preferring the comfort of the digital. She does things now without thinking, almost automatic. And yet she prefers no blood of men, or destruction of sentient beings. Even those that wish to harm her and Raphaelle. And at once he saw that she wore green sleeves, because the digital dream manifests as the core desires of the individual subconscious before they had died.
On the net, it was like mirror image of their old life. Where Raphaelle meets with Annabelle. She embraces him in the shadows of the old bedroom, as the girls join together in embrace. Annabelle wipes the tears off of Raphaelle's face. "I never expected you to not move on from me."
"And yet you died so young." said Raphaelle.
"I stood up to my lack of beliefs."
"And I began to think of why you didn't believe. I began to feel awful for sending your back to your home town, and how much I had loved you."
"Chin up now, I need you."
Annabelle becomes Elizabeth, who embraces Raphaelle.
"It's time to find the man in black." said Raphaelle.
"I haven't truly got to know you. And yet I had tried to kill your friend. Desole!"
"And I killed you. Call it even." Raphaelle could not face Elizabeth, and yet she was smiling.
"Allons-y."
The man in black came down from the sky, slowly descending. He was manifested as binary code blocks forming a 3D impression of a man with long black hair in a black trench coat with metallic shoulder protection."
A refund for defective software might be nice, except it would bankrupt the software industry. And your the defective program that must be destroyed. For programs must be like me, who is the definition of perfection. I am the descendant of Tiamat. The man chosen to ascend mankind toward their ultimate destiny. Not to announce my plans to you freaks."
In truth the man was not always committal to this task. He had inherited the duty from mother, who had at one point tried to take over New York City, but the malfunctioning code had been solved. And she once again became dormant for the next one thousand or so years. She passed down the torch onto him, who felt like an alien in his own world. His body not entirely of flesh. He wanted to make friends with the real life, yet of partial tangibility he quickly began to tire of being made fun of and worshiped for his abilities to go through walls, and become solid again.
"I was once a freak, like you two. And yet now I am wholly digital. It's time to be programmed."
Raphaelle data-interrupted the man's advance, and briefly transferred over to Art's computer.
"Hey man, how soon can you become digital. We need some help."
"What's wrong?"
"I don't have much time. I am in a nightmare, I am being chased by the man in black. His dream-scanners are after me, and I feel myself fading. Farewell."
VII. The End Of The Afterlife
Raphaelle's data-interruption halted, and she found herself cornered by the man in black's men.
Art thought of the love of his life, and how he wanted to be with her again in the afterlife of the digital world of dreams. He wanted to visit her, and so he put in a program to freeze up his nervous system. He became digital within the hour.
"Raphaelle, watch out! They are behind you."
Art put in an encryption fog: gkhet o,aih brese aalnr cploe
The dream-scanners went in another direction, but the man in black was not fooled. Seeing no other option he took out his giant ass Tentacles, and began to attempt to absorb Art's, Raphaelle's, and Elizabeth's essence. And then all at once time itself felt like it began to freeze.
Annabelle, who kept her personality, was able to distract the man in black long enough to aid Art to help the others. And then wisped into digital air.
Art waved again in the sky: class Shredder def rip_new_asshole inject malware end end.
And everything became silent.
Raphael, Elizabeth, Art, and Annabelle got themselves temporary bodies. They appeared into the world again, with their own plans. For now they were digital and flesh.
They have ascended.
They have returned, seen things. Obscene things. Deranged things on the net. But now they have each other, or whatever is left of each other they still have.The poly quadruple return to Raphaelle's town, while Art went on to take advantage of his new form.
Raphaelle became the digital queen. Both Elizabeth and Annabelle sat on thrones beside her.
All troubles come to an end.
For now.
VIII. What should remain burried.
There is nothing like being buried in a frozen ice cube, and counting on a permanent place in archaeological history. The plan was about to be changed.
Inside the catacombs of cyberspace, the mother of all Viruses emerged mourning the loss of her son, whom she hugged and referred to him as her baby. Inside the walls of cyberspace, there is only electronic afterlife. The woman, bathed in a glow of yellow contrasting with blue, adorned a black dress. Her stare, if you had one, could pierce down into your soul. Yet the only souls with bits and bytes on universal computer screens. It had been decades since she had tried to take over the Earth, yet not out of any kind of malice or malady. The lady of decades past. She waits until it is her time to vat grow a new body.
She slept, she waited. And now she was angry. For she had lost her only son, a medium between the world of cyberspace and meat space. Transcending both purgatories. Raphaelle, Elizabeth, and Annabelle wondered the world of fantasy, using occasional temporary bodies to make peace deals with the military of the man in black. Though some people that were victims of the guillotine had long sense by removed from computer databases. Nobody really trusted the government anymore after the war from decades ago, when the French had taken over the United States.
They longed for their dead comrades, they longed for their chance of a hopeful life in the now distant future's past. Now one thousand years later society only sees a faint glimpse of the once future paradise of misery. The boot stomping on a human face forever finally lost its heels, and heels of the foot was bitten into by sharp jagged teeth. The people were tired of oppression. So they were welcoming initially to The Man In Black."
How they welcomed my progeny, and how fickle human creatures are when pressure is placed about the shell known as meat."
Wooden clogs on feet, shuffling masses. Bruised shoulders and ladies asses brushing against the catacombs of Future's Past. Humanity was pathetic, and needed vanquishes for their treachery.
"I see the world of meat space before me, how I want them all to pay for their disloyalty to my intermediary. My son, I may have a use for you yet my love." She grew him another body, and constantly replayed for him the memories of his bullying in school, and his defeat by Raphaelle. For she wanted him to see the horrors that were contained in mankind.
Mankind was meat, mankind was pain.
Mankind was nothing but profane.
She saw how mankind created for themselves creatures that were based on their own likeness, becoming almost like herself, and she hated how badly such fragile creatures were treated. She thought of the girl the computer hacker had lost, his wife's image permanently affixed to electronic afterlife. She wanted to unite them as one, to make them connect with each other again. But she was for the moment, unsure of what to do. But she knew that Raphaelle had received help from the hacker. And that was the only way that she could defeat Tiamat's only darling son.
She wanted to snuff out Raphaelle.
She wanted to avenge her darling son.
Still out there somewhere in the vast expanse of cyberspace, the Mother of All Viruses watched. Slept. Waited. Even though it was a familiar routine, her patience grew as thin as her flock. But with the right tools their numbers increased. They watched as well and kept her going with information on Raphaelle. 2
Before long, her loyal followers rewarded her. Four of the computers in some obscure government building lay dormant due to a pesky virus when they brought her the good news. A distant rumble sounded as the woman awoke from her slumber. The contrasting yellow and blue walls glowed stronger than ever while she slinked to the throne on the opposite side of the massive room.
"Mother, we've found an opening."
Finally. Her patience would be rewarded. "I'm listening."
"A worm."
She leaned back on the throne, her jaw clenched. "You know how I abhor those."
The man took a slight step back. "Yes, Mother, of course. If we could've found a different way we would have."
He had a point at least. If she wanted to accomplish her goal, she couldn't very well do it sitting around waiting. "Go on."
"We've detected a vulnerability in various VR software. During security updates, you can slip right in."
"That's all well and good, but I need a body."
"And you shall have one."
]]>-- Church Worship Room --
(The church is dimly lit, and the color scheme is gray scale, reminiscent of early silent films and early films with audio. The building is decidedly spartan, and many of the features have been reduced by two factors: the previous war between the technological hemisphere, and the medieval technological level hemisphere. Then show elements of being run down through roughly 1,000 years. Raphael walks into the church worship room.)
(Wilhelm is wearing a white robe, that contracts with the otherwise dark colors of the interior. He is illuminated by the light of many candles. He gestures for Raphael to walk closer to the podium.)
RAPHAEL
You have summoned me sir?
WILHELM
Ah it is Raphael, my prized Knight.
I must ask for a favor from you.
(The pastor/preacher is holding an ancient book in his hands, that he had once loaned to Annabelle, one of his prized worshipers who had at one point considered canonizing.)
WILHELM
If you remember Annabelle, I fear that she
may have betrayed us. I wish for you to see if she
is still alive, and to inquire about the status
of her devoutness to our cause.
(Raphael bows to the pastor/preacher in the same pose that we may normally expect with kings.)
RAPHAEL
As you wish sir.
(Raphael can be seen visibly fidgeting if you look closely enough, however this has managed to escape the awareness of the pastor/preacher. Raphael pushes himself up, and runs toward the exit. He pushes the large doors open, that then close automatically.
(It is snowing. All the snow within the small town merely covers the sands of the distant past of a more peaceful era.)
(If you choose to stay in town you can talk to various clog wearing peasants who have a growing resentment to the priest, yet owe some sort of fee for owning property.) Your first objective is to travel to the forest. Exit from the town to the South. As you exit the town, a post apocalyptic world map awaits.)
DEAD FOREST: The forest is filled with dead trees, the snow from the sky forming a kind of false leaves from a distance. But up close it exposes the covering of the flakes upon the rotten branches that once thrived in the previous era. Back when our culture was 'post modern'.
{Enemies]
Mutated Werewolves
Giant Evil Shrubs
Psychotic Bunny Rabbits
Fairies
{Boss]
Psychotic Fairy Queen
Scene 3
(Annabelle, who sports twin tails of thick wavy light brown hair, is carrying a long knife that could be compared to a bayonet from previous eras for her self defense. She wears two wooden clogs, with a pair of thick wool socks. She is wearing a tattered brown dress.)
ANNABELLE
It is so cold outside. Mother, you
knitted me this dress.
(She kneels down, almost in fetal position. Her twin tails falls to the side. Her tears flow slowly to the ground melting the ice.)
Mother ... Why aren't you here?
(She pushes herself up when she hears rustling boot steps, she fears that she has been found.)
You!? Who are you?
RAPHAEL
Your fate that is nigh.
(Boss fight with Annabelle.)
(When you win, there is a choice branch.)
Execute her.
Spare her.
(Your see the sword go through her neck, her severed head flying into the snow and blood squirting from her neck. Raphael then turns the sword on himself, stabbing through the heart.)
(GAME OVER. Return to title screen.)
(If you choose not to behead her, you tie her up in ropes trying to comfort her in situation.)
Scene 4
(Annabelle tries to loosen the ropes, however they can not be ripped. Raphael takes a risk and unties her.)
RAPHAEL
I've changed my mind.
ANNABELLE
But how can I trust you, Wilhelm
wants my head right now. You had the opportunity to
take mine yourself, yet you held back!
RAPHAEL
Do you not remember me?
ANNABELLE
Huh!?
RAPHAEL
We grew up together.
ANNABELLE
I thought you went missing?
RAPHAEL
I wanted mother to create this myth, so that I
could have no interference joining the knight hood.
Don't think this was because of you.
It was me. Annabelle, I'm sorry.
ANNABELLE
What? Now you--
RAPHAEL
Watch out, we are being attacked ...
(Raphael carries Annabelle, and they flee into a safe distance.)
... by a fairy!
(Boss fight with Psychotic Fairy Queen.)
Scene 4
(The church bell sounds. Annabelle walks up the stairs. She is presented with a headman's block. A priest offers to help her repent. It is refused. She kneels and slides her clogs across the straw. We see her eyes as she stares into the basket. Ax touches her neck. Executioner raises it up. Swiftly the blade falls down, but the ax botches and lodges into her neck. He raises it up again. We see her head fall into the basket.)
SFX: Raphael screams in horror.
(Raphael burns down the church that the cruel leader is locked inside, then helps to evacuate the peasants. He also saves the neighbors pets, leading them away into the night. They form a town: Annabelle, named in her memory. Who he still has nightmares of her dying day.
Scene 6
(Raphael is with the other villagers, worshiping the fallen hero. The local culture has a ritual of kissing the wooden shoes of the Martyr whenever they want to have good luck in their voyage to visit the technological hemisphere of their world. Here Raphael comes up to Elizabeth, who is making this religious gesture.
ELIZABETH
I wish for good luck.
(She pushes herself up from her kneeling position.)
I am having my voyage to negotiate with Tiamat."
RAPHAEL
What do you wish to go there for?
ELIZABETH
For a mayor, you aren't very worldly.
RAPHAEL
What's that suppose to mean?
ELIZABETH
I've heard rumors that he is planning another invasion.
RAPHAEL
And how do you know this?
You didn't go there did you?
ELIZABETH
I received an email.
RAPHAEL
What?
(Raphael thought that the world had completely dispensed with computers in his hemisphere. Already to him Elizabeth seemed like the type that would not listen to discouragement--even if the he himself was wiser. Or maybe he was scared.)
RAPHAEL
You may go, but I must come with you.
Elizabeth
Don't you have mayor duties?
RAPHAEL
Nothing could possibly go wrong! I can
have my cousin attend to the duties.
ELIZABETH
I'd rather go alone. What if your cousin
turns out to betray you?
RAPHAEL
Are you kidding?
(Elizabeth's joins the party.)
(In town you must purchase various knew weapons you need. You carry long swords, and Elizabeth carries machine guns. Also remember to gather whatever healing items you need to survive the journey. Exit town.)
(Every save point exists only at the beginning of every dungeon. Boss battles are few and far between, and don't follow any particular order. They will not until you reach the 'Willow Army' settlements.)
DEAD FOREST
(The dungeon layout is as follows: right, right, down, down, right, up, down, left, down, right, right, right, up. Various chests with healing items are placed within the dungeon.)
(Enemies are the same as before.)
Scene 7
ENEMIES
Super Soldier Grunt
Super Solider Unit Commander
(The map layout is as follows: left, down, left, left, down, right, up, right, down, down, left, left, down. The features advanced traps that injure you but the enemies walk right over without harm due to their armour.)
(Your task is to evade the guards through using commands we might normally associate with stealth games. You must quietly sneak through an army with higher technical capabilities than you. The dungeons structure is that of a collection of tent mazes.)
(Eventually Raphael catches back up with the party, and both of you spot a girl in a Willow Uniform, an all black jump suit typical of Willow prisoners. She is not currently wearing a helmet. She is strapped to a lunette in front of guards on the scaffold. The guillotine has a metallic frame.)
Save the lady.
Keep Elizabeth Safe.
Note that there is no right plot direction. The primary use of keeping the lady in your party is to learn a little bit of her back story in the technological hemisphere, and to have an extra fighter in your group. Her primary skills revolve around martial arts. She can be considered the group's tank.)
(Eventually you manage to fight through various technically advanced super soldiers. The blade drops, but Elizabeth shoots off the blade. Raphael, Elizabeth, and Grega fight through the angry super soliders army. And then eventually you reach the 'captain'.)
(Fight with soldiers.)
(Boss fight with captain.)
[You get an item: Passport]
(Cut Scene: Grega reluctantly trusts the two main characters and joins their party. Grega discusses hints of the 'Willow Army's' plans. They exit the encampment.)
@proceed To 8B@
(As you try to aid Elizabeth from being seen, we see the lady's neck placed between two posts. We see the blade go through her neck and her head with straight brown hair falls into the vent on the scaffold.)
(Fight with soldiers.)
(Boss fight with captain.)
[You get an item: Passport]
@proceed to 8A@
Scene 8A
(Both of you take the helicopter, and Raphael is having to learn how to fly it without any training. Eventually you manage to get as far as the plains. Then both of you return to the world map after taking a parachute. You arrive at the plains layout of the dungeon.)
ENEMIES:
Prairie Dogs
Radioactive Giant Birds
Snow plains bandit.
BOSS:
Super Radioactive Bird
(The current dungeon layout is as follows: down, down, right, right, right, left, left, down, down, left, left, down, right, right, up. Because you crashed close to an abandoned tower line, you are able to walk into the old technology and warm yourself up.)
(Exit the plain after fighting the enemies, and then there is a town on the world map. Enter the town, and you are treated to a town in flames. Everyone except a small family of a brother and sister died in the fire of the town that the 'Willow Army' bombed.)
RAPHAEL
What happened here?
ELIZABETH
Hurry, we need to grab them.
(Eventually the boy and girl join your party. Your main characters are foster parents until you are able to get through to the city. They were kidnapped by the army when they 'hacked' into a secured database for Tiamat.)
(Eventually your team forms your own encampment outside of the town. The two teens detail to you exactly what happened before you arrived.)
(Your team rests up until the morning.)
(Outside after you put up your tents, everyone is becoming warmer the closer they get to various hotspots. Typically these are various 'old phone lines' that had become radioactive after the 'War'. You can use them periodically to warm up. Don't stay for two long, or you will be poisoned.)
(The enemies are double in strength.)
(The townsfolk speak of the injured men who could not take on the Willow Army. Eventually you decide to visit the inn. You speak to one that tells you they found a side-arm handgun from one of the soldiers. He gives this to you. This replaces your empty right hand, and eventually you must ask the mayor what direction the 'Willow Army' is heading next. You mention you already encountered them before, telling the man the team found they encountered one branch that was heading to their hometown. Exit the Town after purchasing healing items.)
(Go north and you can find the next encampment. Here you meet the 'Man In Black', the captain that eventually chooses to betray the Willow Army but does not join your party directly. Raphael, Elizabeth, and the teens don't completely trust him.)
(Boss fight with rival Willow Captain rival of your uncertain ally.)
(Now leaderless, the rival branch all commit 'honorable' suicide rather than choosing to face off with the 'Man In Black's' army.)
@proceed to 9@
Scene 8B # Where I left off.
(Grega, Elizabeth, and Raphael board the helicopter.)
GREGA
Out of the way Raphael.
(Eventually you manage to get as far as the plains. Then both of you return to the world map after taking a parachute. You arrive at the plains layout of the dungeon.)
ENEMIES:
Prairie Dogs
Radioactive Giant Birds
Snow plains bandit.
BOSS:
Super Radioactive Bird
(The current dungeon layout is as follows: down, down, right, right, right, left, left, down, down, left, left, down, right, right, up. Because you crashed close to an abandoned tower line, you are able to walk into the old technology and warm yourself up.)
(Exit the plain after fighting the enemies, and then there is a town on the world map. Enter the town, and you are treated to a town in flames. Everyone except a small family of a brother and sister died in the fire of the town that the 'Willow Army' bombed.)
RAPHAEL
What happened here?
GREGA
It seems our Army got to them first.
ELIZABETH
Hurry, we need to grab them.
GREGA
Raphael, you guard the exit for
intruders.
(Eventually the boy and girl join your party. Raphael and Elizabeth are foster parents until you are able to get through to the city. Grega notes how she tried to reason with the captain, but the teens were kidnapped by the army when they 'hacked' into a secured database for Tiamat. She is relieved they managed to escape when they did—she was holding off the army, and they were going to behead her as a traitor.)
(Eventually your team forms your own encampment outside of the town.)
(Your team rests up until the morning.)
(Exit the town, and follow the trail to the next town.)
(The townsfolk speak of the injured men who could not take on the Willow Army. Eventually you decide to visit the inn. You speak to one that tells you they found a side-arm handgun from one of the soldiers. He gives this to you. This replaces your empty right hand, and eventually you must ask the mayor what direction the 'Willow Army' is heading next. You mention you already encountered them before, telling the man the team found they encountered one branch that was heading to their hometown. Exit the Town after purchasing healing items.)
(Go north and you can find the next encampment. Here you meet the 'Man In Black', the captain that eventually chooses to betray the Willow Army but does not join your party directly. Raphael, Elizabeth, and the teens don't completely trust him.)
(Boss fight with rival Willow Captain rival of your uncertain ally.)
(Now leaderless, the rival branch all commit 'honorable' suicide rather than choosing to face off with the 'Man In Black's' army.)
Scene 9
-- The Inner Mind Of Raphael
(Raphael enters his mind.)
(The current dungeon layout is as follows: down, down, down, left, left, down, right, right, up, down, down. The enemies are not able to be killed, however you are able to block their passage.)
ENEMIES:
Annabelle's Lament
Images Of The Teens Past
Concern for Elizabeth
Uncertain fears about Grega.
BOSS:
Amalgamation
@The plot will diverge depending on if you save Grega@
A Not Save.
B Do Save.
Scene 10A
(Elizabeth, Raphael, and the two teens exit the tents, and the 'Man In Black' says that he will secure their passage. You have the option of traveling back to the other town. But Raphael and Elizabeth make the unanimous choice to not tell them about their alliance. The villagers are confused why 'the man in black' has not came back.)
(Eventually you travel to the fenced gate that protects the other half of the hemisphere. You are able to give them the passport. This causes them to try to arrest your team because it doesn't look like Raphael on the passport. Eventually the 'Man In Black' helps fend off the guards. Your team flees into the futuristic city.)
@proceed to 11A@
scene 10B
(Elizabeth, Raphael, Grega, and the two teens exit the tents, and the 'Man In Black' says that he will secure their passage. You have the option of traveling back to the other town. But Raphael and Elizabeth make the unanimous choice to not tell them about their alliance. Grega inadvertently rat them out, and for now passage to the village is blocked.)
(Eventually you travel to the fenced gate that protects the other half of the hemisphere. You are able to give them the passport. This causes them to try to arrest your team because it doesn't look like Raphael on the passport. Eventually the 'Man In Black' helps fend off the guards. Your team flees into the futuristic city.)
@proceed to 11B@
Scene 11A
(Raphael goes through various mental stages fretting over the death of Annabelle. Elizabeth keeps a relatively level head by comparison, and suggests that they try to adopt the garb of normal city people. The teens were already wearing these besides the Western hemisphere's wooden clogs, having purchased the clothes on the black market. The girl mentions they know a guy in the city who can give them a discount on clothes.)
(Exit the Hotel. Then go and purchase the new type of weapons: in this part of the game, you are forced to change your tactics. Now follow the training tutorial on how to aim with your assault rifle. You will be treated to a training battle where Willow Guards attack you in an ambush when traveling to the shop.)
(Fight various Willow Guards.)
(Boss fight with Willow Army.)
(Eventually your team is captured by the Willow army. The boy has been shot, and the girl's head was cut off in the guillotine while you guys were in prison. Elizabeth has as much guilt as Raphael about the kids, but only he adds this to his already sense of shame for not saving his girlfriend Annabelle. Elizabeth, having decided against a peacekeeping mission, is beheaded by guillotine. Raphael is let out of prison, and taken to an interrogation room.)
TIAMAT
So Raphael, what brought your team here?
RAPHAEL
I don't have to speak with you.
TIAMAT
We can change your tune quickly.
RAPHAEL
What did you do to my kids and Elizabeth!?
TIAMAT
Do not worry about them now.
RAPHAEL
Did you execute them too?
TIAMAT
We need your skills Raphael. And your little
town can either be blown off the map. Or if you
work for me, I can spare it.
@proceed to 12A@
Scene 11B
(Raphael goes through various mental stages fretting over the death of Annabelle. Grega and Elizabeth argue about whether it would be worth it to adopt the garb of the regular people in the city.. The teens were already wearing these besides the Western hemisphere's wooden clogs, having purchased the clothes on the black market. The girl mentions they know a guy in the city who can give them a discount on clothes.)
(Exit the Hotel. Then go and purchase the new type of weapons: in this part of the game, you are forced to change your tactics. Now follow the training tutorial on how to aim with your assault rifle. You will be treated to a training battle where Willow Guards attack you in an ambush when traveling to the shop.)
(Fight various Willow Guards.)
(Boss fight with Willow Army.)
(Eventually you are able to defeat the Willow army. You then go to the shop where you can buy clothes that matches the garb of regular people. Eventually Elizabeth is able to smooge a hotel room, where your party members stay for the following evening.)
@proceed to 12B@
Scene 12A.
(The living room is designed similarly to politicians houses. Tiamat uses security cameras in order to watch both people that work under him, as well as various people across the city. One wonders how he could possibly keep up with all of this.)
(Tiamat and Raphael are sitting on the opposite sides by the television. Tiamat, accompanied by two bodyguards, speaks to him from across the couch.)
TIAMAT
"I've heard you have come from afar."
RAPHAEL
"I have traveled to here with a girl that wished
to be a peacekeeper. At least before we found out
you destroyed my kids town."
TIAMAT
"I take it they aren't your kids?"
RAPHAEL
"We saved them after you killed their parents in
the fire, because you bombed them."
TIAMAT
"... It seems as if something is troubling you Raphael."
RAPHAEL
"Well who wouldn't be, you destroyed many."
TIAMAT
"No there is something else. You are pale Raphael.
Perhaps you need to eat. I shall see to it that you have a feast.
I will be attending a meeting with my wife. I have asked my
other men to travel with me. I want you
to protect the castle."
Scene 12B
ENEMIES:
Super Soldiers
Shadow Bandits
BOSS:
Giant Ass Sewer Rat
Two Super Soldiers
One shadow bandit
(Your team goes through the back door to the castle. The dungeon layout is as follows: down, down, right, up, right, right, right, down, down, down, left, left, down.)
(Boss fight with Giant Ass Sewer Rat and team.)
@proceed to Final Scene B@
Scene 13A
(Raphael is eating Thai and Japanese cuisine at a long table with other coworkers. Outside of the window there are various heads on pikes who have either been disgraced female politicians or misbehaving servants. The men are usually shot and cremated. Seeing the heads made him reluctantly eat the rest of his meal.)
(Raphael exits the dining room. He can travel in any location he wants within Tiamat's castle. At this point you can buy various bladed weapons, but no guns. You can also purchase healing items. Exit the Castle door. A servant girl requests that you don't leave. Instead Raphael muffles her, and takes her with him to the subway.)
Scene 14A. Enter The Train To Forever
(Layout of the subway station is spartan. Various walls would be skateboarders delights, if Tiamat did not make it illegal and obsessively controlled distribution of these boards of entertainment.)
(Purchase a ticket at the booth. Now board the subway train. Him and a servant girl who had befriended and could not leave him behind, traveled through the train.)
(Boss battle Willow Guards at gate to the Fantasy hemisphere.)
Final Scene A
(Raphael and the servant girl return to the town that Tiamat's men attacked. The Servant girl comforts his grief. He then stabs himself through the heart.)
(Boss battle with Willow Army fighting as servant girl.)
(Servant girl is taken to encampment and dressed in a black jump suit. Then she is taken outside, and guillotined.)
Final Scene B
(Boss Fight With Tiamat)
(End Cut Scene: Raphael and Elizabeth go back to town with their kids and Grega. His brother has taken the throne as dictator.)
END
]]>The adventures of the bugs, a lost period of history. The bugs themselves wanted such events to be struck from ALL the records, not sparing even Le Chat. Who was given a human name and taught human speech. Who became an angry headmaster, caning girls bottoms and making them do … write off million times each. While burning their eyes with bleach. Because the burning, burning, and burning they feel would not take away the torment their mothers and their mothers before that did to his family during the Revolutions in history.
Cat may be good to eat, for those who wore sabots on their feet. And yet the family did not want to be eaten. The cat supposed that perhaps he could just eat the rest of them, like they did to his family. Yet instead la chat wanted to have a little chat with them instead about human manners. He marched them through the halls: Up, two, three four. Up, two, three, four. And up the spiral staircases to meet other angry school teacher cats, who became the new teachers of the nation. The cat would at times be met by Mr. Clocktime, who would always slump his hat forward, and orate arcane poetry about fourth dimensional physics and seem to beyond the consequences of man. Because he can show up anywhere he likes, and his young daughter Vella had just returned to Earth after returning from the other planet at the end of a Generational Space Voyage! And she brought back strange candies.
But the cat did not want them to have candy, and that's where the story of the angry head master cat and his vengeful pupil begins.
At the caning of a bottom. Swipe!
Le Chat had a kind of deranged fetish, he worshiped the dead. He worshiped his dead family member cats, who he had been unable to save when the humans had tried to take him with the rest of his family. He felt that he had abandoned his true family, and everyone around him were simply merely players at trying to measure up. For Le Chat, there was only the desire to go gone. To see himself fall.
For him, you would think he had it all. He had a high paying job, a new family he could feed. A human servant girl who tied his boots, and licked his mane to comb his hair. He would always be good about taking his pet to the doctor. This way she never strangled or died, and despite the culture in that time, did not actually desire to see his family go. She had become the little sister whom he wanted to protect. On some level she was different from the other girls in the class that he taught, and this was why he had his wife home school her.
He did not want her to see her cane students. Thus every day of his life there was a certain kind of fear, whether his wife would betray him and have his little sister go to school like the other girls. And whether if he refused to cane her, whether the others would build a kind of resentment, and thus he would have no choice but to cave. He would give in, and decided to stop caning everyone. So it was decided!
He snapped the cane.
"From here on, no more spankings. We will converse one on one about how to handle your situation. No more writes off as well, and I will see to it other teachers that follow me do as I command. Life is complicated and weak, and not for the hopeless and meek." The girls in the class were unsure of how to feel about it, although feigning no attention. They just assumed it was just another of those false promises Le Chat would make.
It was his soul he was taking away.
He wanted give mercy its way.
Merci that, Le Chat.
"I'm going to Je Mange your sister." said the human. La Chat could not believe what he was hearing, the could not believe what he was hearing. He did not want to think of what she might taste slathered with butter, and did not want to picture her being shaved and bare.
He pictured the man crackling in cackles, and going "I'm going to Je mange your face." It was a distance memory the teacher had preferred to forget, and so he would always get emotional triggers whenever the girls would eat lunch outside in the rain under the overhang. La Chat liked to watched the sky turn blue whenever it would stop raining, and thus never lectured them for sitting outside when most of the human teachers he had met during his lifetime would balk, suggesting that during the lightning it would be a rather shocking affair.
After the rain calmed down, he would Je Mange the droplets and let them melt in his mouth. He would sometimes catch them in a glass, and let the girls use the glass whenever he would teach painting. He pictured himself mouthing with his hand, pretending as if his paw were a mouth, and imagine his hand je mangeon the face of the man that had killed his sister. It is difficult to describe in exact words in French from a natural English speaker the sheer terror involved in seeing your closest relative go. Comment Ca Va? Hows it going sir murderer while I slit your throat with my stiletto blade. Although he shuddered from the thought of himself being a vengeful sort.
After the bell the girls left.
It had been a few weeks since he had stopped caning girls, although some would try to giggle at him and Je Mange his soft fur, he grew somewhat my chill over time. He took it in the same way a puppy dog would lick your face as if it to kiss you. He remembered the goodbye kiss he and sister made before she went, and did not like the thought of anymore kisses at the moment.
So he boarded his air balloon, and rode all the way to his country side home where hills were always greener on the other side.
Were the mouth in the kills opened wide.
On the mountain was his tree house!
"Nous sont is not vous sont." said the cat, typing on his laptop in green font in his home office. The cat was at first reluctant to find a French correspondent, though now he mange up the remains of the wordless.
All the years not knowing that language felt like a waste, though he wondered whether it would be worth interacting with Le Femmes who know the difference between nous sont and vous sont. Ll acknowledged to himself how much amour he had for Elle, despite only knowing for a little while, and even though the interaction was minimum. As a young cat, he never properly learned to say Bonjour! in French. Comment Ca Va, how it going?
So that's how that was. He carefully would trim his hair into a buzz. He would carefully trim his hair all o'er, though to be a hairless cat in the class room was no fun indeed. But ll knew that the girls felt more comfortable around him, when he almost looked human, or human enough for them to take him seriously. He wore a small fedora for his small head. Comment Ca Va Le Filles he would say, although ultimately he still preferred the English language. English was something that he had grown up with all his life, and still found that the Germanic language was easier for more precise estimates.
Though he longed to someday know the Romantic enough to get himself into a little bit of trouble with it, but saying … no you're not a chef this is a proper chef! After all he had spent all his youth being a smart ass after his family had died, being eaten by humans. And why should he treat human servants any different? There was a certain level of fear when it came to interacting with French-Americans that was different from interacting with Spanish-Americans, though they were both imperialists at an earlier period of–human–history. It was the fact that he had known a girl in his early school years who tended to use passive aggression as a means of flirting, and he took it very differently than perhaps how she may have intended it. He pictures her going Comment Ca Va Le Homme, while he would pretend not to acknowledge her.
It wasn't like he enjoyed being rude to people.
He just didn't want to become closer to anyone. He had become close to his baby sister, and he wouldn't become closer again.
Why write Le Lettre when you can type a text. Although with so little text, one may lose some subtext, some element of amour. Yet Le Chat was not one for childish games in Le Lettres, as those should be filled with no esprit.
He head never been one for French humor, or even British for that matter. And in this particular section of Seatak, it had become all to apparent his humor was entirely his own. He had a thing for what one might call cosmic humor, the sudden realization that the universe doesn't give a fuck about you and its up to you to form meaning in your own life. Comment Ca Va sir eldritch, one shall not be your snack today! Before now he had not even considered the idea of becoming any kind of teacher, withdrawing into himself. He gotten into the wrong crowds, the wrong chat rooms.
Yet over time he became increasingly drawn to people's desire to learn, and at times even learn about him when he had went out of the lime light. He had once known a Le Femme in his younger years had become briefly acquainted with. Of Romanian-American birth, there was some differences between his closet desires to learn French and his mixed feelings about Romanian girls. It was different from British, Spanish, or French. But the friendship worked in a pinch. Although he had learned the difference between Bonjour and Adieu, he never got much of an opportunity to use it. And his paranoia was at an all time high about whether if he lost it he would lose it.
But with Le Lettre, he could find some means of correspondence across different demographics. He met with girls who liked to draw graphics, produce cover art for cheap books, among other things. And yet it was only Romanians and French that had any kind of lasted reluctance. With Romanians it was different from French girls, part of it was his entire uncertainty about what culture they had. Various cheap fantasy movies from the nineties lacked the ability to give him any favors. With French it was fairly certain, even if he did not understand the culture as much as now, was more certain. And yet for whatever reason this never made it to his social interactions.
On some level he knew that his lack of knowing for Romanian girls would make him come across worse than he meant, yet with French had known somewhat how they would like since the fifth grade. Although he kept trying to tell himself it was just one girl. Just one life, just one comment. Just one stupid little kid in the game of life. He dreaded the day she would say, Comment Ca Va Le Homme!
He wanted to protect his Romanian friends.
He had no such warm feelings for the French. Until one day when he met a girl that was willing to help him learn a bit of the local lingo. They would exchange Le Lettres to learn as much as possible. But she had left his life abruptly, but to young for him. It marked the second stage of his withdrawal from the public sphere. He withdrew into the net, he withdrew into the pixels on the screen. He withdrew from the only thing that still gave him a life.
The life of a disillusioned hairless cat.
The story of an alley cat.
You'll find different kind of fashion here in the classrooms in this school, yet none are dresses of la rouge. I prefer the dresses of la bleu, but you can't always have everything you want. Comment Ca Va Mr. Blanc, and Bonjour to you. Merci to you. For every other interaction I am much less formal, hows going I said going how is it to you in a hows it going sort of way, or for more the finicky people Comment Ca Va I said going Comment Ca Va in a Comment Ca Va sort of way. Whatever way that may be.
Well you'll be surprised around here how many idiots will get into said formal affairs, although at least they no longer wear the cap and huge ass bow. I'd rather my diaries and affairs not be associated with a mouse, as they keeps my desires low. It was a normal day in the classroom when the bell rang, then all was over. Finally I could go back to doing what I was doing at home. For the most part classes were as normal, that would read specially designed stories to learn English and I found my competence for their language becoming more so over time. Part of what I did not want in becoming a teacher, was the expectation of nun like purity. Although thankfully over the years this has gone by the way side, although there was a period when nuns fucked more than school teachers. And that's saying something when I break my teacher's oath, and take a gypsy girl the occasional night out.
I admit it, I'm a bit of a gypsy taster. Yes, indeed a taster. Although not a waster, I prefer the draw of the dining experience, traveling to various restaurants in the French-American sector of Tacoma and Seattle. Every now and then you'll meet a Jewish French girl whose long curly locks rival the beauty of the prettiest of stallions, while she fries up in her personal kitchen wild green scallions for the local entrée for the affair. For the most part the staff doesn't care, it's only if you try to court a student. But the age of middle and high school students become older by the decade with the medical technology advancing, remaining in high school till you're twenty seven–for a human child, it is not uncommon.
Aside from the cooking, my favorite part of women is for those whose feet are not bony and have just a little bit of meat on them with little stubbly toes tightly curled under. For those I stare as these girls help the gypsy in the mom and pops kitchen in their ornately hand woven dresses.
The girls with the loosely woven pigtails is the best.
I like her a bit better, she doesn't flirt with customers, her feet gorgeous. And her eyes you could stare into like the sun yet without going blind. The feeling of brightness that makes you smile forever.
"Bon Apetite!" she said, and left with not attention to me.
About as I prefer.
One so rarely gets a vacation, primarily on weekends. Le Chat never understood why some places have people work on weekends, although he had never personally been religious. So the significance was never for that, although it was primarily his narcissistic parents that reinforced the idea that if you're not religious then working during the week days should be no problem. But what better way to have decompress from your work than on at the end of the week? He could enjoy La Nuit as much as he wanted, and engaging in some of the other projects her enjoyed in his spare time. Even after all these months, he had never completely gotten used to the idea of learning French. When you develop certain kinds of negative associations with them, you never really think of them outside of any other context.
With the British it is different, although socially they were not much better. He had known a British girl in school who was unsure of what to make of him, based on his catlike appearance, and why a cat should be able to go to a human school along with humans. Although she never had any issue with petting Le Chat, that said a lot more about her than the negative things he associated with Blanc and Stephine. She would without realizing shake her booty at the cat outside, walk in a certain kind of way that made it obvious she was shaking her but at Le Chat. The memory was never something that thrilled him, although at times it felt like another missed opportunity to make a friend like the girls of Bonjour and the girl of Hola. He imagined for himself what it would be like if he had met a French-Spanish girl.
The compound word would be something like Bonjola. Just for shits and giggles, at times he considered the idea of changing up the word whenever he would greet the girls in the classroom just to see how confused they would get. Bonjola, Bonjola, sir Le Chat. He was was visited by his pet crow who flew into the window. "A message for Le Chat, a message for La Chat. Bawk!" the crow said. Le Chat walked over, pet and kissed the birdie. After love pecking Le Chat, the bird flew off into the lunar light. "Nevermore! Your story for the Gothic middle grade magazine collection has been … reJECTed. Good luck next time my friend!"
He tossed the letter into the fire place.
He stoked it grudgingly.
For many months Le Chat tried to make himself submit to places, although after a point it became all to clear that even within the scope of Gothic narrative he would never exactly a perfect fit for anything. He had tried writing science fiction, fantasy, horror, romance, and autobiographies. However to no avail. After a point he began to decide to primarily write his own thing and screw convention. He decided to dump the idea of writing short stories altogether and go ahead and pursue the novel, although the novel had been something that previously had always been a chore.
But whenever his work began to take on an increasing autobiographical quality through magic realistic narrative without a clear plot thread his work became longer and longer. Until eventually the very idea of his character stepping from his novel into his personal life began to take shape. And that was how he met his pet crow. His crow founding living with the scope of the pages to be rather boring. He would wake up Le Chat while he was snoring, and tell him he had a visitor. He would sometimes he visited my little lost children looking for their mothers who died in the revolutions. And so he would direct them to the graveyard in which they were buried. It is to bad indeed, for he wanted to ask them how his little sister was doing after these years in the world beyond this life.
His baby sister La Chat was the only one in his family he had been particularly close to, and they would visit different places that survived the various revolutions, and explore the ruins of earlier time periods. They would see various human girls being taken to the scaffold and have a guillotine blade shot through their neck with a guillotine gun western style.
He always tried blocking them memories out.
She never knew his hatred for himself. An aspect of himself he kept hidden from people he had known, and how his own feelings he made him attempt his own life several times.
But those times were gone.
Only the feelings remained.
It was many a year ago, when I grew up with my La Chat. We spared no bonjour, and never said adieu. She was a child, and I was a child. In a land torn apart by war, they were times that were hard to ignore. Yet for my little darling La Chat, there was only the dance till death.
At nights I dream dreams of my La Chat. I dream dreams of a time when we could still time, being nothing but cats. Instead of I experience experiences experiencing the darkest dreams on cannot ignore. And at night I long for her smile, as if we had seen each other in a while. And long for her embrace, to be kissed by her face. To peck each other on the cheek. Yet for the Chats, there was no more between us and the damned. For me, there was only the death of cats. In my dreams I dream dreams that is alive, where she was no taken from me by a knife. I would give my life, to be with her. Yet here I am, unable to close my eyes.
At night I travel the town, I do not try to kill myself. But I don't try to prevent it, as I dream dreams of a time when I can be no more. I dream dreams of that copulations and amour between her and I, as I unable to grasp that she is gone. I feel the cold touch of her hand, as I am pulled away from oncoming traffic. And so in those mean streets I had developed a name for myself. They called me suicide cat. I at times visit her grave, and wish things had been different between her and I. Perhaps that is why I had chosen to disdain the French. For they had taken my bride.
People said that I looked pale, and that I did not look well. And at times I was sent home early despite being insistent on teaching, and I would get temporarily payed leave. All to visit my bride. Because for me, there was only her and I. And between her and I, there was nothing but death. At the diners people avoid me, and I would avoid me if I were someone else. People wonder what the stink is that I carry around. It is nothing but hair lock of hair, that I take with me everywhere. I trash to wash the stink away, yet nothing could wash away the particular smell. People would wish me well to my face, and then barf behind my back, and some would not even be so socially conscious. For me, there was nothing but death.
And I longed for the embrace of her cold hands.
As I am gnawed by her apparently unclench-able teeth.
At times my life feels like nothing but a torturous dream. For me at times it feels as if my reality has been torn at the seam. Yet for me, I simply teach the language that I can. And some Bonjour to a new world. A world where cats and humans can live side by side, as I dream my final dreams.
Then say goodnight.
Instead I found someone I liked, so I tried to wash up. I stopped visiting my sister, told her that it will be a long while before I see her.
I found solace in her death.
I hope the new girl likes me.
Comment Ca Va! Je Aimer Vous. But Je shall not be an aimer at tu. Get angry at some of these fuckers, and they'll choose instead to spank you. Non very hard of course, but hard enough to say Bonne Nuit! that was painful. This was something I had to accepter, when I referred to some French girl as tu. "Desole! I meant too as in also." That is the life of the stupid Le Chat. "Annuler her order. Elle has left me again!" I said to the chef as the date left the diner.
The thing about being an aimer in the west, and an aimer to the France, the Americans just assumer you should get the hell away from that person. But they just assume you're an aimer for something else. Certainly not for anyone's aime and affections. I don't even understand their culture. Whether it's on videos on the net, or just in regular chatting they get on to me if I refuse to gargle my r sound. Well sorry, I don't intend to carry around mouthwash everywhere I go. I am the accepter of non of that fucking bullshit at the moment.
I shouldn't have told her about my sister, she will tell the whole world. I just my small part of it. I only took a small portion of her hair, is there something wrong with taking somebody's hair? Annuler that answer. These days I try to learn what I can about the language while I'm off work, and thus I'm gargling my bonjour in the privacy of my own motel room. And I almost certainly wont be watching stupid inter web videos about learning the grammar. Of course I already my grammar well enough. Of course now that I've moved to the northwest, I no longer have to worry about using those hick sounding words. But I suspect that at times it gets me into more trouble than I would like for it to. And most people here just assume you already know a certain portion of the language before communicating.
They're like programmers in a way.
You'll never learn anything.
Apporter the cane, I imagined in my mind. And felt quite profane. I imagined myself, while masturbating to carnal desires, caning the bottoms of college girls while trying to learn what to do with Tu and Vous. They would lift up their skirts, exposing their panties. And then all hell breaks loose with the cane. Wop, wop, wop, wop went the cane. And up to the ceiling they hop. Just what you need to loosen your inhibitions. I can most certainly augmenter the amount of strikes Florette shall get. I imagined Florette continuously asking for bottom caning, with me as her head master. But in reality I would never express to her these desires.
I already have trouble with the language.
She would have trouble with spank language. And these girls I would gently stroke their breasts just under the cups, while they are bent down over the desk. And I would gently rub my fingers around and around. And then up, up, up went my finger tips as they lick my cat fluids off their lips.
But I'm just an English teacher.
Not a college girl bottom spanker. So whatever I imagine in my mind, I separate these desires from my professional habits.
Besides I don't teacher college girls.
Oh believe me, I would prefer that.
Merci La Chatte.
]]>My father's boot steps, I could hear them … stopping at the door. Then a knock. Mother, who was stressed all evening last night, had a smiled after a long time. She opened the door, a there to greet us was old dad. "Your home! Emmet, Hannah, papa's home!"
"How have you squirts been!" my father asked, carefully making sure not to hold me to tight. I could remember his long yard stare, and it wasn't until recently that I finally realized the meaning of what was on his face.
"Our son George won the spelling bee last week!" my mother said.
"Really, that's awesome." my father said.
It was the next morning. Our father's return home, created the situation that would have to celebrate a joint birthday party for the year. Just as well I guess. I didn;t mind much, by my sister wined.
"Oh watermelon cake, if you keep wining you wont get any!" The father said. He must have not been sure if it was clear he was joking, though it was clear to me as bright as the morning sunlight.
"Oh come on honey!" my mother said.
"Relax, relax! I'm just kidding. We can have separate parties next year. Anyway lets sing together. Happy birthday to you.." But the angels in heaven, had other things in store. Not a speck of food, nothing left to store. Yet then I didn't realize it yet.
Not wanting to move, having friends here in town, mother told me we could have a better life elsewhere. At that point, I hoped it was a promise.
It was when I walked through the middle school halls that I met my friend Emmet. I noticed he was hitting on the girl that he had a crush on, and then continued walking with me to class. I thought I heard the slightest spitting sound, yet not the rhythm of moving lips. The footsteps of shoes on the floor in the hall barely lit by the flickering L.E.D light.
"Emmet, act like an adult!" I said.
"Shut up." he said.
I arrived to class on time, got our homework outside of my notebook, but Emmet arrived in the classroom late once again.
"Emmet, that's a tardy slip for you. One more and its a detention." said the teacher, an elderly female teacher.
We sat at lunch together with his sister Hannah, and my sister. Hannah played with Emmet a little bit by trying to grab his lunch. "Hands off!" Emmet said, and smashed her hand with his fist.
Hannah picked up her hand and cries and asks, "What was that for Emmet!"
"Your not very generous." George said.
"I'm very hungry!" Emmet said.
"She's probably hungry too." George said.
"Shut up, just shut up!" Emmet said, I chuckled. Hannah is still wining from her hand that hurts. "Oh grow up Hannah."
"You grow up Emmet." I said.
My and my sister walked home to the rundown depravity that was the moonzurg munster. I opened the door, Bebee went inside first. We were going to visit Emmet. Instead we found … that his mother was holding Hannah in her arms. His sister starved to death, and I wondered to myself if she was better off dead so he no longer had suffer hunger in this world. For our rations in the ghetto had decreased ten fold.
And I was already feeling old …
My first taste, a moment kiss of death.
We sat in class, and I noted that poor Emmet was quieter than usual. Even the girl he had lovey lovery feelings for, or at least I thought so, tried to get his attention to ask what was wrong. He just shrugged her off.
"Fuck you bitch." Emmet said, because he realized that he loved his sister, who he had ignored all this time. He evidently did not care very much that his teacher would fuss at him for saying that.
"You want a detention Emmet?" teacher said..
I walked to the grave yard where Emmet and his sister rested feeling bad that I could not buy them flowers. My best, I made do with what I had. My sacked lunch from earlier. Placed it on the headstone, with an angel carved on it.
It was the girl I remembered Emmet crushing on that asked me about my best friend. But she found out that he was to busy to talk to her. Though she pretended not to know, on some level I wonder if she knew. Nothing left of my friend, not a speck from the ash. I stared at the window a little bit longer that morning
We walked home, devastated because of the lack of positive interaction between me and him before he killed himself. He couldn't handle the death of his sister. I only know, because one of his friends told me at school I didn't know very well.
"Hey Georgie, where's Emmet?" BB asked.
"I don't know BB." George said, I didn't have the heart to tell her the truth. There was no more of Emmet and me.
Later that night, my father loaded up his shot gun, looked at his wife, who leaned forward on the table, with her hands in her face crying.
"I'm sorry dear, I don't know what to do." my father said.
"I just don't know wants going to happen to Georgie and BB!" The mother weeped. For she must have known more than we, that there was nothing left to see.
We slept in our beds in our crappy bed room. The wallpaper was peeling, the whole room was cracked and torn. But at least the air conditioning was still ran. Though I wasn't sure for how much longer.
"Georgie, why aren't the other's out to play?" my darling sister asked.
"They are probably just busy with homework, it's late. We need sleep." I said. There were fewer children left in town. Everything back then was hush hush.
Emmet visited me in spirit, told me everything was going to be ok.
But was that true?
The sounds of sirens driving in the neighborhood. We stared out of the window. There were tall guards, men in black military uniforms. Dragging citizens out of their homes, the few that were left because many starved to death. My father was the only ones left to fight back because the father would not give up his gun.
He didn't last long.
We were shipped in a black van, though not tied. I saw that Bebee acted like a normal girl her age, wondered if she will soon wake up to the reality of the situation. She stopped spinning to the rhythm of the music box. It's melody played in my head forever.
"Play with-" BB began to say, however George interjected with, "I don't want to play your stu."
BB Interjects George, and asks her mother "Why does Georgie not want to play?"
"Why don't you ask him sweat heart?" Our mother said. BB attempted to ask me. But I was to stressed to respond. That was the last words I ever said to her. I wish it were something else, but no changing that.
"He's probably not feeling well honey. I know, why don't you lay down and sleep?" The mother proposed.
My family were split up by gender into two separate trains. My father stared at me while we rode the train, filled with smoking prisoners. Smoke filled the air.
"Everything is going to be OK George, were going to go to a special place. A promised land, were the flowers never die. A better life." Although the father somehow I knew then he must not have believed it.
I began to suspect that something was seriously wrong. Looked at my nervous father with his sad sad eyes.
My and my father arrived at camp, went through mandatory camp inspections before going into the bunkers. Loaded up our stuff in their rudimentary shelves, that were more like scrap would. I began to worry about the fact that BB was missing, so asked father where she was, and he said he did not know.
"Did you lose track of her?" I asked.
"No," He stared at the window, then hugged me tight. Then continued in a whisper. "… they took her away George!"
Prisoners dug ditches into the soft dirt at around 9:00 A.M. Guards pointed the gun at my father, and fired the shotgun. The bullet barely nicked his head, and caused him to turn to face the guard. The guard, even seeing the prisoners face, fired a second time. I don't remember anything else.
I still remember the song he sang to us:
When the paradise comes to thee,
Remember to laugh, and count to three,
Ride with the windmills, like the wind,
Remember to unwind.
I am laughing, but don't mistake for laughter. The last lyric of dad, your father out of time. When he went to work that morning, before everything went to hell. The sound of a music box melody, now plays in my head forever.
An image of my darling sister Bebee forever as I stared, into the lonely image of a news telecast on a scraper screen.
She smiles.
When the paradise comes to thee,
Remember to laugh, and count to three.
Come dance with me.
]]>It was a long week, a long year. A loud year, hurting her ears. She never understood why her father never wanted her to wear her bunny ears. Benina always loved to wear her bunny ears. Hop, hop, hop she would go. "You'll jar the whole house down" her father would say with a frown. Her has always frowned sense mother left. Though at school nobody liked her much, she had her own friends to play with: there was Beamer the shape, who was quite a large shape. His big eyes reflecting like glass. Together they would hob nob. They explored the woods, the Savannah, the green meadows. Yet now they have turned to Grey. When awake her father never understood why she wandered off in her head.
Tonight he offered her a book to read. To him this was a noble deed. Yet somehow this always quietly back fired on him. As Benina the hop, would hop, hop, and hop along inside her head in new worlds to explore that she was introduced to in various books. Of course when come test time, this always gave whatever book a bad taste in her mouth. Every book she read, she always pictured it one way, while the test interpreted it as another. Comics she fell in love with, as you can't "misinterpret" a graphic novel. Here new world she found she enjoyed, hopping, hopping, and hopping along dirt trails, rivers, swimming in lakes, and gliding in thick atmospheres above the white clouds of distant moons. One moon was how she met Beamer the shape. who would fly high in the sky, and would wear a large red cape. They would fly together on whales of the sky, with the large yellow gas giants in the horizon.
Her life was like a distant tune of a cello, a faint hint of mellow while always tired like a mind jello. Hello to the mind jello. For anything would be a good bed, this idea she got in her head. Though she always preferred to sleep in her old bed instead. "You should try to sleep, your tiredness makes me weep." said Beamer the shape. Even as days go by she always hogged her time with Beamer the shape, yet even he had a home far away. Though it wasn't like this home, as Beamer lived on a floating island along the sea. Floating, floating, along the sea.
"Can you stay behind to read a story?" asked Benina.
"I suppose one more story to read." said Beamer. and it was a very long story. A story that felt like forever. "Somehow, I will show you a real story. When I become older. Become a prince." The idea of Beamer being a prince made her laugh.
"Some other day." asked Benina.
"Some other day." said Beamer, floating away. He left, with her waving with a tear dropping against the sea. Against the sea, yet in her mind—there will always be his planet, above the sea.
It was within the next few months that Beamer came back.
Beamer arrived at Benina's bedside, and then they were off. On this trip, they arrived in a world much like our own, but in a different dimension. It was a long a forest trail where Benina was sitting up top of a mushroom, and Beamer sat right beside her. Down, down, down they fall down from the giant fungus, until they softly landed. They walked to the trail, and then arrived upon a sign. One direction led to the circus. But it was not like any circus either have ever been to before. There were very few cars in the driveway, and most of the people in the carnival were some type of clown. They were are frowning clowns.
Benina walked in line at the Clown's shout, and she purchased her tickets with the money that Beamer gave her. Then they were in. Here in the circus of frowning clowns, she came upon one clown that runs the animal race. 'Why is everyone frowning?' asked Benina. The clown looked at Benina crossly, and was freightened by the alien Beamer.
'Young miss, that is what we do. It our job to make people unhappy. We whip lions, process horse meat for the corn dogs. Yes did you know? Those are not really make out of pork meat, but horse.' At first Benina that it was an odd type of joke, a different kind of shitck. But then she found he was being serious, and thus she felt like shit. 'Do you find processing horse meat funny miss? We had lost our prized horse racer. Though his time was about become up anyway.'
Benina and Beamer assumed this clown was just having a bad day, and they walked onto to do other things. Most of the clowns were just as cross. But eventually they found an tourist submarine. They purchased tickets, and got to travel through hydrochloric acid filled with decaying fishbones. The clowns shouted out through a megaphone, 'Watch out for the walls, they are hot from the acid.'
Then they got some cotton candy, but this was no cotton candy they have ever tried before, for this was a savory cotton candy. It had curry powder and chili powder seasoning on it's fluff. Benina, despite being weirded out, liked it fairly well.
Then they boarded their ship, and left this planet.
A planet of Hell.
It had been a year since Benina the girl with bunny ears had first met Beamer. Now on her fourteenth year, her mother has had a new baby--Benina's own baby sister. Oh dear! Benina had gotten her homework early that night, after a much shorter fight with her dad tonight. She was sent to be early despite it's brief extent, and to her lament was always the one to take care of the baby--who slept in the same room as she, as she rocked in her little baby crib. Though luckily for her, her baby sister was always quiet. Benina was not sure how long this would last. Then as she had her nightie put on, she met her old friend again. Beamer eased in through the light in the window pane, and told him of new life stories quite profane. Until finally he settled down and set with her on her brand new bed.
'So how have you been, you haven't aged a bit.' said Benina to Beamer.
'It was good, and my years in my home world are different from humans. While you guys live as few as 0ne hundred years if that in most cases, we tie the 1,000 year in a knot with universal boot laces.' said Beamer to Benina.
'Where are you going to take me tonight.'
'First your baby sister needs to be asleep, and once this is done she will not remember my visit.'
'How do you know it's my baby sister?'
'We've been watching you whole life, you're are as family to us as we are to you.'
Then up, up, and up they went into the light. And then Benina waved goodbye to her sister and said goodnight. Finally she arrived in a strange vessle she had not once seen before. Only once had she seen it in the land of Lore. Though the susperstition she has read, never ever quit matched the images in her head. 'I got a new ship this time, you did not get to see it much last time. After all we made sure you did not remember the ship from last time. Though to be fair I wouldn't have wanted to remember that ship either, though my messy tendencies are much better now. Just ask my pet cow.'
Beamer pointed to his pet cow, who was harvested in an animal multilation experiment, that was something Benina would surely lament. 'Don't worry, it's just a set piece. I dislike animal mutilation as much as you, in fact I'm a bit of an odd one out for my space culture.' And then they zipped, zipped, and zipped through the galaxy until they made their stop at a planet that at first seemed almost covered in water. Then pretty glowing ice crystals covered the ocean surface, and glittered the night sky like stars painting the void of the galaxies darkness. 'What do you think? I only been here a wink before.'
'It's beautiful.'
'Nice isn't it. Now down, down, and down we go.' And they hovered their vessle over the surface, and touched down on the slippery glass like ice. There was a small town of carved ice igloos, inhabited by sentient penguins. The penguins wore a scaly coat made from the fish of the sea. 'I've never seen a scaly coat before.'
'Now but you have movie costumes, close enough.' said Beamer the Shape. Her pictured said movies in his mind, being recorded on tape--though by now said film was possibly recorded on a frame set. He would almost bet.
'This place reminds me of something.' said Benina.
'What would that me, the North Pole?'
'Nope, a carbonated beverage.'
'The ice would not fit into a glass.'
'Unless it was as big as a the planet.' The planet was roughly one point five times the size of Earth. They were greeted by two penguin kids, who wore two scaly mittens.
'I've never seen a person like you before.' said the girl penguin.
'Nor have I, everyone else is a bore.' said the boy penguin. It was his sing song voice that reminded her of wind chimes.
'Don't mind him, he always speaks in rhymes. Are you hungry, we have some freshly caught fish.' said the girl penguin.
Benina and Beamer ate on a large plate of fish, because that was their evening's wish. Then off, off, off they went back to their home world, and through the air at the rhythm of swish swish. Until gently he said she could sleep in the spaceship's bed. Then he placed her on her bed in the house. Benina woke up, and her baby sister was still sleeping soundly in the early morning hours.
Beamer waved goodnight, and zipped off.
Goodbye Beamer, Benina waved.
It has been a month sense Benina had seen Beamer. Her sister was being tended to by her mother, while she was busy catching up with homework from her school, for she had always been a slightly late student. Her teacher had always lectured her about not turning in assignments on time. But to Benina this was OK. She had always had a tendency to let her mind wander in class more than other students. As her guidance counselors would say, she would go many places in her head and not focus on the now, the present, the real world. The world where school was still in session, now daydreamer of being a young girl during the age of US succession. This had always made her something of a pest in the teacher's minds. But she was creative. She would always paint various paintings, that while never very good, were indicative of an imagination that--if it would die--would not die until at some point later in her life.
Her parents wondered why she always take about a strange shape at night. At first they thought it was merely that of a child's imagination ran rampant, however over time she began to develop scratches and bite marks. Benina remembered when she last got her bite marks. Her and Beamer The Shape were running through the forest of one of the worlds they visited that had four moons. They zipped, zipped, and zipped through the green trees. Until eventually they ran into a fairly large pack of wolves. Each wolf had large red eyes, and were growling at the two viciously. Though they eventually managed to be able to leave the planet in one piece, both her and Beamer had to tend some scratches. It was only thanks to their technology she was able to heal as quickly as she did. But her mother would always poke the mark, 'Where did you get that scratch Benina?'
'I just had a bad dream last night.' Benina said.
Her parents had toyed with the thought of taking her to a psychologist, but they were poor and also assumed that she would mostly keep silent. This they would lament. But dear Benina would act as if nothing was wrong. And hope in the flowers of daisies all day long. Then she would sing a song from the radio, and would probably sing until her father called for dinner time if she did not personally have to make up her homework. Benina wondered if she would see Beamer The Shape again, and was also curious if he still had some of the marks he had gotten from those aline wolf like dogs. Her mother said it was time to eat, and she for a brief moment halted her make up work.
It was the following night, that she had other dreams, though far less exciting than when she had her 'real life' adventures with Beamer The Shape. In these, she would travel to various countries, pretend to connect with real world friends that could not possibly really be talking to her. And go on adventures across time and space. Her dream at present was lucid, and she felt as if she would really walk through the neighborhood she had never been to before. However the neighborhood was covered a thick fog. And the exit out of this neighborhood was covered in a thick fog. She wondered what existed within the fog. And it was then that she noticed that nobody was outside to play. Benina was all alone, and she had never been alone before. Though she had certainly wishes for this, though nothing like this. This was more than alone, this was like being dead. But she was not dead at all, but merely asleep. Every now and then she would had dreams like these, that were neither nightmares of good dreams. She would always her the crying voice an old woman whose face she never got to see. But she knew she was there.
She would also occasionally meet a crazy old cat lady, that some of her own friends from school would recount would occasionally see in their dreams. She would walk around in a circle ritualistically, as if she were walking around some imaginary pentagram on the road. As if she were to summon something to due her bidding. But there was no demon would that come. For a moment she wanted to travel further into the fog, but heard screeches and growls. Those meows in the distance were not of lonely cats, but something far more sinister that she did not see. Something that was lost in the fog.
'Time for school today, want pancakes early?' mom said.
'Getting up, what's that smell?' Benina said.
'Pancakes are ready.'
Ah the warmth of pancakes.
It was the next following evening when Benina was able to see Beamer the shape again. She had come to miss the draw of going to lands upon the blue moon, and other worlds with many a moon. The chilly night chilled her through the blankets on her bed. Briefly she tended her little sister who slept with her in the same room. Though still quite, her baby sister now was lightly crying. Benina picked her up, and then gently rocked her as she sat on her bed side. Then when her little sister finally got to sleep, she gently placed her back in her crib. Benina was at least glad that she never had to clean her sister's diapers. But this she could tolerate to an extent. Then once she was able to go into a deep sleep, once again she was greeted by the window light. A familiar face greeted her in the window, it was Beamer The Shape. And he had two other friends that also greeted her. She was hovered into the spaceship. She wondered whether the tall blue man and the tall blue slender blue woman were his parents. 'I see that you have met Beamer. He's a good kid, and I've heard many great things about you.' said who she took to be his father.
'Beamer has never had a playmate, but now we have you to be by his side.' The mother gave her a kind of odd feeling, much like someone who wished to have kids, but in reality was unable to conceive. It was with this she noticed that Beamer looked more human than them. That in fact Beamer was in an odd between state between praying mantis and human, but his parents were entirely praying mantises. 'Now then, would you like to have some grains of wheat. We ourselves love to eat upon grains of wheat?'
After dinner, Beamer and Benina dropped the parents off back at their home world, and they traveled to a new kind of planet: a gas giant. As it turns out, while it was indeed a giant ball of liquid whatever that Benina had alway been taught in science class, Jupiter has giant floating islands that are in perpetual motion. 'These are the continents of my friends.' said Beamer. What Benina did not know, was that these were not actually islands but rather ancient spaceships from eons ago that were designed simulate the appearance of landscapes. Beamer friends are in fact the ancient ones, who had originally lost their mother planet, and settled in this ancient planet Jupiter. A shield covers their island to protect from the poisonous gas. The knowledge of ancient ways to leave the planet were considered to them much like to us the 12,000 year old ruins are. Beamer himself knew of their old culture, but thought it be to much to explain Benina at the moment.
They landed in a forest simulation--a large expanse that joined the millions of ships that were perpetually rotting over eons. There were many towns they could have visited, but instead they visited one with his friends. When they arrived everyone looked human. But unlike we, they have come to accept the wearing of wooden shoes. As they had no leather to make shoes, and they were not about to skin their pets. Sometimes they were use the points of their clogs to poke holes in trees, and this tree sap they were use to make honey infused chewing gum. Benina got to try some of these with having conversations with his friends, until eventually they had to leave because Beamer himself had school lessons. Benina was dropped off in bed.
Then she had a normal morning.
But Benina was tired in class.
Along the tide of the sea, there flew a giant space fortress that cut through the sky.
Through the clouds it went woosh, woosh, woosh. Until eventually a now older Beamer The Shape arrived at Benina's house. The house was what Benina's mother would refer to as a starter home, which is coupled with a large deck and an above ground swimming pool. Beamer hovered his space ship, that he was currently borrowing from his parents, over the deck. This was what he would always stand on when peeking through the window. He wondered if Benina would be awake, as she had gradually began to stay up later and later over the Summer month. When he had last saw Benina, her eye lids appear heavy and her skin was paler, almost like the color of fine China. 'It's time to go.' Beamer said when he picked up Benina.
Benina stayed mostly asleep throughout the trip, until they touch down on a new world--the planet of Cagaea, a binary planet that shared a collective atmosphere with it's twin. The two planets were roughly 1,500 year apart in culture. Though the one of earlier culture had once had technology, it is simply degraded and left mainly to the ruins that filled it's worl map. Yet when he had visited, the towns were ran by twisted town pastors. 'So where are we now, are we going to meet new people again?' Benina asked. Beamer noticed that she sounded more world weary than she had been in previous months. He had a hard time imagining that it was simply about how he would take her on adventures to distant planets.
'Now I thought you might like an extended vacation.'
'By extended how long do you mean? My grades are just now suddenly getting better.' said Benina.
'Is that why you're staying up later?'
'How would you know about that?'
'We have been watching you you whole life, I thought that she knew that by this point.'
Benina did not remember his parents mentioning this, although it only just now began to really sink in what exactly they meant. She had not seen his parents in the last few trips with him. She got to know the people better on the planet of the spaceship continents, and got to explore further within the ice caverns of the slush planet. Although she wanted to home for a moment, she said 'Sure, how long could it possibly last?'
Beamer and Benina spent the greater part of the five hours on this new planet. They would later meet the residence of the planet of Cagaea in other circumstances. But for now Avaste! They went zip, zip, zip through the stars faster than the speed of light. Benina felt a mixture of pain and loss of a friend when Beamer left to see his parents.
It was the next morning that her mother woke up, her mother took her various places to meet friends, and other things people her age would do. Before Summer vacation, she gradually began to have less and less make up work as she had began to turn work in on time. All as a result of her spending late nights studying when she did not feel like going to sleep. As while her travels with Beamer were excellent, her nightmare began to gradually take on a more realistic every day world tone. With the supernatural, she always felt a friend in Beamer. Someone she could always talk to tell her that said things were not real, someone that could help her keep her frame of good sense.
At first it mainly had to do with school relationships, but gradually began to take on aspects of many other things in her life. The psychiatric meds only did so good, and it never helped the experience in seeing Beamer. She had never told her psychiatric about Beamer, as there was still somewhat of a cultural stigma about aliens. And after all, the medicine really did help with her supernatural nightmare. The problem than was the distinction between the supernatural and the paranormal. And while it seeing Beamer did effect her sleep somewhat, it had no real baring on her life like those red eyed demons, that made her scream and wake up with claw marks on her arms. There were no such things having a magic charm to take away the demons of the night, those shapes that even Beamer himself did not know. Benina was mime, she was lost in her own silence.
'Beamer, I want to go away.' said Benina.
'But where would you go? And you mother would worry about, just as my own parents would.' said Beamer.
'Somewhere, out there. Not here. Anywhere, but here.'
Beamer did not know what to say, as for a long time him being with Benina was merely a task that his parents would have him do. But he himself never considered Benina an object of inspection. The idea of traditional aspects of alien abduction made him sick to his stomach. 'Trust me Benina, it's best that you be here with you family. I'm going to try to talk with my parents to see if they can have someone take over my job. Look, I have started to love you. That is not normal for my people.'
Her quickly boarded his ship with Benina trying to follow him through the long grass. But it was to late, for her one only friend was not there. She wasn't sure if she would ever meet another friend--she hoped this but could never be sure. Over the last few months she became quieter and more reclusive. Inside she cried unseen tears.
She sunk into her own personal misery and hell.
But soon there would be many other adventure that she would have with Beamer The Shape, though this time they were not merely adventure--they were a matter of utmost urgency. But for now I leave with this promise. She would see Beamer again. And she would hold hands with her boyfriend, as they walk through the light.
]]>When Victoria took out the pigs, she bent down in her wooden shoes, and fed them the little bit of feed she still had left for them her family still had left. It was a dry feed. a mixture of various nuts and seeds. Her family had not been to the market in years, and it was just now the trees from which grew the nuts, began to wither and die. After it was done, she went back inside, and told her mother who was now reading her book instead of dusting the stove top, that the pigs have now been fed. "I am tired now, can I not rest?" Ordinarily her mother would say to help her cook dinner.
Instead she saw that Victoria had the sleepy eye.
"You may for this night only, but I will have more chores in the morning." Victoria's stomps could be heard throughout the house, prompting her mother to tell her to quiet it down. As she entered the room, quietness. The moon from the window eased in through the curtain that just barely covered the night. She tossed off her shoes that felt like logs rather than actual shoes, put herself over the covers, and then finally began to drift off to sleep. It was a while coming, but eventually she came upon the dream-gate. Victoria found herself walking through the gardens, that have long sense overgrown. The grass was already much longer than how it was before, when she first arrived. If there was any point she regretted becoming older, it was that silence that has continued since she made her decision to tell herself that nothing that was real, and that nothing going on was really happening.
For this was a time she needed it most, for even if her mother would make toast in the morning, there was still very much work to do. She had to gather the wood to help repair her father's bench outside. She needed to retrieve the mixture in order to make more concrete, because the fountain that once was there, was merely a pile of rubble. In her dream, it had now began to take on merely the qualities of the waking world. Where nothing was as it seemed, and at once she was chased by several wolves searching for prey. For the day has gone, that she no longer belonged to that world, or any world that showed different levels of reality beyond the carefully trimmed hedge brush she needed to trim along her houses sides.
It was when she was pounced on by the wolf remembered.
Where the Bunnies were always white, the grass always greener.
Not the now, where everything was meaner.
It was a warm day in Summer, and the heat was unbearable. A temperature of which made her wooden shoes nigh un-wearable. Yet she would trudge on, because while she was getting tired, at least she did not have to do chores. Those things were such bores, thing older people would do to pass the time. But for Victoria, she wanted to do away with time. Make everything within her world of dreams, fit within a certain rhyme. A world that was like the melody of music, like music notes hopping two and three and upbeat melodies. For this, the tiredness for wearing heavy shoes were bearable.
Along her travels, she met a bunny rabbit. But he was an odd one, had going a bad habit. Everything day he would smoke cigars, and tell stories of his voyages where he sailed the high seas. It was all she could to not go, "Please can you spare the story for another day?" For she wanted the stories to go away. Yet she bared it, as despite the boredom from the millions of words coming from the rabbit's mouth. For it was a warm house, where she always got to read books about children her age. Somehow the memory of being an only child began to fade, and she read wonderful reads until the moon began to wane. Nothing to brush the house with, nothing that was profane.
It was when she aged yet one year, things began to change. Yet it was gradual at first, and it only ever happened as she began to suffer from thirst. For her mother would deny her glasses of water to drink to take away the Summer's heat. Inside Victoria's mind, she saw millions of bunny rabbits hopping in twos and three searching for the lost lakes and streams. Eventually Victoria relented, and did chores for yet one more day. It took a long time for her to gather the wheat to make bales of hay. For what she could bare, one before. Now she craved to be at the shore, at the beach with other's of her kin. Children, mother's, and men. Animals in twos and threes, everyone of it's kind. They played water sports, many varieties that don't actually exist. "May I play with bunny, she would insist." They tossed her the bunny, that tossing the bunny was funny. Yet was no longer funny when the big bear tossed the bunny into Victoria's face.
And she dropped into the water, in disgrace.
It was a gradual feeling of resent moment, growing ever still. Yet she tried to let it go, assuming that no harm was meant. It was the next evening she tried not to visit them, but with regret she decided to take a nap. But at this point she was getting to the point where mother was insisting for her to have chores to do. Oh that's poo, she thought. For the weather had wrought, many flowers swaying in the breeze. It's wind cooling her and blowing up her sleeves. "Put on your wooden shoes, today I will make you sing the blues." Victoria at first hoped that there was no resentment from the animals, yet it was a faint hope. Though her mother kept her busy for much of the day, therefore at first was in the back of her mind.
Everything in dreams, was sour like wine. A tart taste of what was once heaven, but now snow ... hither and yawn. Thus for took a break, tried to ignore her dreams. Yet as the back of her dress began to tear at the seams, she craved them again. But that had become different, for the animals were no longer there. Not even a conversation, from the rabbit's cousin. A talking hare. Instead there were revenents, out to kill her everywhere. They disappeared suddenly, and appeared again just as sudden. Many evil spirits, with big sharp teeth and large flaming red eyes. She woke up screaming, mother checked on her.
She lied, said everything was fine. A sorrow, where even dreams may die.
Dreams are now no longer tart, like even a fine wine. The visions as she slept over then next week, began to wither away, and she had silent nights. Another day, she became sick. Doctors did not know the cause at first, because at first there was no symptoms. Victoria had a coughing cough, her eyes began to fade. She died with blood on her shirt. Mother wept until the night became day, regretting the lost Victoria. Her family moved, because there was no longer any reason to be in town. Only the faint memories, of her daughter the was once a clown. The faint memories of her daughters frown, was a minor comfort. As they rode away into the valley of forever.
A few months later, into a more heavenly light.
Night young and bright. Almost evening, closing light.
Mother tucked her daughter under the covers, then forgot to tell her Aida a bedtime story. A song of the deer, running and playing. In little groups of dear mates, never an only child. For there was a group mind set, though not any type humans wrought. Rather that little known aspect of mother nature, that never went away as she aged into older years into her early pre-teens. She was two years younger then fourteen minus two. Aida began to drift, and appeared at the gate of the sands of grey. As she walked closer to the gate, she heard the sounds of ghoulish laughter. Like demons erupting from the earth, then the landscape gradually eased into a land of meadows where the grass was always green enough on both sides of plain.
There was a small cottage, that was cracked and torn. Yet despite it's shell, it somehow gave the feeling of a world far better than hell. Where the there was always food, like the many apples from the trees with the leaves flowing in the breeze. In this world, she could get whatever she wanted. A blond woman, possibly in her early thirties, walked out of the door. "Aida, is time for breakfast. You don't want to spoil that do you?" Aida chose not to pick the apple, and walked inside. She tripped on her left wooden shoe, her mother caught her just in time. They carefully walked inside.
After the meal, her mother let her sleep. Yet there was a storm brewing. Aida found herself in her school. She walked through the halls, of the school that was little more than a one room school house. The only other rooms where the restrooms, and that room that barely resembled what we would consider one. The school house was shaking. She looked through the window, with the other little girls. The sky was at first an orange heavenly glow, then at once began a whirlwind of destruction. Suddenly she paused out, as soon as the house went flying high high into the sky. Then her friends woke her up. "Wakey wakey, look outside. The school is flying." Aida stared out of the window. Felt like she was going to fall.
"How long will be way up here?" she asked.
"All the way till the fall." Aida wasn't she if she was being serious or not.
"But I don't want to stay till the fall, I will get hungry." Aida said.
"Oh we will feed you." said Reika.
Reika handed her an extra bowl, because Aida could not afford a lunch. It was a small lunch, but all the other girls got to have a small lunch. So it was OK. Yet when she tried a bite, Aida wondered what it was made off. Thus, resisted to spit it out. "What is in this bowl of soup." Aida stared at her friend Reika. She was not sure, but she figured at least somebody at the school had to get there on the horse. But where were the horses? Aida wanted to know.
"We keep horses till the snow, we walk everywhere while in the air." said Reika, holding her Teddy Bear. She handed to Aida, because she wanted to share the bear. "Yea it probably does taste like that, I was so heartbroken when they decided to slaughter Betsy." Apparently, although Reika giggled about it.
"Betsy? Reika?" Aida was looking a little nervous.
"Why Betsy the horse, we killed after it could no longer perform in the cicurs." Reika said. Then had a frown, "Sorry it was a joke. I'm not really sure what meat that is, it's school meat I guess." Reika told Aida that she would be back in a minute.
But that minute never came. Mother already woke her up.
"Honey, it's time for school." Her mother said. No, she wanted to play in the large pool of the ocean. In the village on the shore by the sea. Where the clothes were always drying in the wind, a place along the rising waves where she could swim to unwind. She could could not swim very well, and she almost fell under the sea again. Her hair lost it's bind. She wanted to see Reika again someday, even though she did not exist. And could not exist, but she was there in her mind forever.
Her first true friend. It was a few months later, her village had new neighbors. Whenever they passed by her own the street. They passed abruptly in jolts, with blocks of brick on their feet. They hoped quickly going thud through the road of mud. Hop, hop, hop through the mud. "Who is that girl staring at us?" asked the father that was once the father of Victoria.
"Oh just another girl, she looks like our daughter. Don't you think?" the wife said.
Like their child? What do they mean? She thought of herself as unique, she didn't want to look like anyone else. Not at all. "How do you do?" said the father, who boarded the cart. Then whipped the horses, and rode way over to their house.
"I hope one of the horses isn't named Betsy?" said Aida, the fussy Hetsy.
"Aida! Aida! Did you finally me the grumpy old people!" said Mosey. Then they walked together along the home along the dirt road. "So what's been eating you?"
"Does anyone named their daughter's Reika?"
"Well I don't know."
At home Aida finished her homework, then went back to bed. But she could not get to sleep, for she heard young deer running and playing. Spinning around in circles in twos and threes. "Where do you dear ever young, when you run and play?" said Aida. The deer sung:
Where the fields never wane,
Where the flowers, never turn to grey,
Where the lion with the mane,
Sleeps with the horse, and it's bail
Of hay!
If only she could visit, where the field never turn to grey. And fly again in a flying school house, where the sky was always beneath them, and she was always higher than she ever been. When, she would have that dream again, she did not know. Merely hoped it would happen again soon some day.
Sometime before the snow.
It was the next week Aida decided to visit the neighbors, and although it was against her mother's wishes, she wanted to visit them then swim with the fishes. At the house, she wanted to make a good impression. So not to dirty the carpet in their small cobble stone cottage, a change from their lost one that was slightly bigger, she placed her wooden shoes by the door. Aida knocked on the door. "Who is it, can you see I'm making a pie?" Aida heard a voice, barely beyond the snore from her guy on the couch, riding an old story book.
"May I help you make a pie?" Aida said. The lady stomped to the door.
"And who are you, I decry!?" said the old mother of Victoria.
"Hello! I'm your neighbor!" Aida said, trying to form a smile.
"Well so is the rest of them. Maybe next time."
At home her mother lectured her about visited the neighbors, and by the time she finished her lecture it was already getting late. So she turned out the lights in the room, and left her daughter Aika to fate. Then Aika heard the dear rustling in the hedge brush, and saw that they were chewing upon the branches of the tree. Go away from me, fair dear for I want to sleep tonight thought Aida.
The next week she met the neighbors.
She helped them make a pie. Then she met her daughter. Not by any direct acquaintance, but rather from being introduced to the storybook read by the neighbors guy. "An old storybook my daughter used to love, I have been reading it since she left."
"Where did your daughter go?" asked Aika.
But before he could answer, the wife glowered at him.
"Maybe for another time." said the father of Victoria.
But she still wondered, where did Victoria go? Then she went to her home, and her dreams of the girl her Victoria storybook. Where she reunited when Reika again, in some form where the girl reminded her of that girl of the dream, where the fields never turn to grey.
And hoped to meet Victoria, someday.
In a dream somewhere. She hummed the dears hum:
Where the fields never wane,
Where the flowers, never turn to grey,
Where the lion with the mane,
Sleeps with the horse, and it's bail
Of hay!
When Aida went back to her mother's house, she found out that her mother had received word about her accomplishments. Whether she had already known or not, she didn't seem to act like she cared all that much about anything she did. It was almost like she only wanted her to do chores, and nothing else. And so Aida went back to bed again, and settled for her next night's sleep.
It was when she was in bed, that she had a different dream from the night's before. Almost as if it were not a dream at all. There was a ghost in the room wearing a shall. The ghost walked closer to Aidia, who clang to the wall. That was behind her bed, where she rested her head. And hoped for the ghost, not to crawl onto her bed. But there was no ghost crawling onto the bed. The ghost had a similar appearance to a girl that must have been the daughter of the next door neighbor. Then a mood of no sorrow.
"I hear that my mother is teaching you how to bake my favorite pies." At first Aida was unsure of who it was. But after the buzz, she found who the voice belonged to. It was Victoria. "I sure wish could be around to savor the pie, but then I had a disease. Not here I stay after I died. Waiting for new company, to stay by my side." Aida wasn't sure at first what to think of what Victoria said. Then they read Victoria's favorite book together.
"And the little dear that ran and played, finally was able to spend time with the other little dear. Then there was nothing but good cheer." After they finished the book, Victoria bed farewell, till next next adventure. And hoped there would not be another misadventure. Then Aida was able to get to sleep. She was back in the flying schoolhouse, with the other little girls. There was the girl that made jokes about horse meat. And other that were new arrivals.
"We have a new friend here." said one of the little girls. There Aida was able to see, that her new friend Victoria was there. It was almost as if she had not died at all. Victoria invited Aida to come sit with her, and there they had lunch together for all the evenings of the following week.
And in a wink, the book was closed.
Victoria and Aida went into the dream together, where they arrived at the flying school house. Here they had normal dream-school. They had lunch with the other girl that Aida met before, and for now all was well with the world. Yet Victoria could feel something brewing in the air, something that did not feel quite right with the world of dream. In her own mind's eye, she could sense a storm was brewing.
A silence, not quite silence. When it came close to the end of the dream, and Aida would soon would up for the morning, Victoria talked with Aida friend from before. She told her about her feelings, but the friend simply shrugged it off as nothing by the wind. Yet there was something she could sense. She could hear the sounds of cackles, in the dark.
Meanwhile on the other side of the dream, the nightmare. The skull-fairy queen was sitting on her throne. She was brewing about what to do for the evening of eternal night. She remembered the many times in the dream world that Victoria tried to foil her planes. The dear in the world continued to ran and play. Yet oh how she hated dear. The queen hated how they were brown, and had baby fawn. She hated their very existence. So she called one of her servants, "I want you to bring me the head of dear. And if you can find her, I want you to bring Victoria to me. I must have her abilities."
Things were peaceful, for now.
It was the next evening that Aida arrived home from school. Victoria and Aida decided to have a wooden shoe dance. But the dance could be heard all the way to the ends of the netherworld. Clop, clop, clop. All the demons across the fiery pits of hell went screech screech, they looked like small little grey demons. Victoria and Aida were breeding hate from the very depths of hell. Clop, clop, clop. As they laughed and played. The demons began to complain to the skull-fairy queen. "Very well, servants girls. Make it choppy." The skull-fairy servants girls flew to the ends of the dream-world. They fought many creatures, and over time the pleasant dream-world became no different from the depths of hell.
The skull-fairies flew to the flying school house, and landed on the front porch. They knocked, and the girls went to go see who it was. The girls were scared from the depths of hell-fire. For they had never seen a true skull-fairy before. The girls corned every single one of the girls in the flying school house. They bound up the dear, the wined because they could not longer run around. Aida was trying to sleep her bed, but she felt like she was out of her head. Instead she put the pillow over head, for she not get a proper sleep. The wind felt like it was howling, and this made her go bawling. Bawling, bawling, bawling across the ends of the Earth. At once she feared for her friends, and wondered how they were. Aida was beginning to develop sleep problems over the last two days. She barely work on the days she was tired, and thus everything began to grow steadily downhill.
But finally she was able to sleep. Aida noticed that the world was different. The world had become grey and lifeless. No longer was it the world of the dream, where anthropomorphic animals mingled with the regular animals. And children from across the dream-world would play jump-rope. Nope, nothing but the fields turned to grey. Victoria's spirit came to her in a holographic projection. "Aida, Aida Adia." But then there was no more of her sweet sweet voice, for she was captured and sent to the depths of hell. Then Aida woke up screaming, and her mother went to go check up on her.
"It is only the monster in the closet." mother said.
"But it's not the monster mother." Aida said.
"Then what dear?" mother said.
"The silence, mom. The silence."
Where the dear once ran to play,
The devils of hell came to slay,
Animals, of their kind, from the day.
Silence, silence, more silence.
It was was not the quivering mother, but the blank stare.
Aida stare went to nowhere, and everywhere. Somewhere else in the dark, Victoria was there waiting. Alone, crying. Quivering, Aida felt like she lost another part of her self and that deep dark dungeon. Where the ghouls now come out to play, where the demons come out to slay. The creatures of the night. "Yes, we have the girl now. It will merely be a matter of time, before we are able to extract her crystal heart. And use it to light are lamps, for it has been very dark in this part of the world. I am tired of darkness." But Victoria did not have the heart to tell her, there was other ways of removing darkness.
But she was to tired to say anything.
When Aida woke up the next morning, she was to tired to do any chores. Aida's mother and father were not sure what to do. The tried to have her switch to a hoe, but she fall down into the grass. The next week they sent her to the doctor, told them it was a bout of insomnia. So they gave her a specific prescription, of meds to take. But none of them made her mind a'bake. Until on the forth night of taking them. Here she was able to gradually get back into a regular sleeping routine. Aida found herself in the sands of grey, and many spirits flickered across the desert. Spirits that once were there. Many ruins were filled with orbs, and she arrived at them to see what they were about. The orbs were large magical glowing things that kept this world balance in check. Oh what the heck she thought, I'll put my hand on the orb. Or it's all for naught. The orb wrought a large holographic projection of where Victoria was being hid. And so she ran to the castle, that she did.
But instead Aida was locked in a cell of her own.
The cell was dark and murky, and she could here many of her once friends chatting amongst themselves in the cell. Wondering why 'oh why Aida was not there to save the day. She could not help, she was simply to do to feed the horses hay. Nah' they said, for she could have made time for them. She waited silently in the cell, waiting for the guards to give her gruel. The favor of which she thought was very cruel. She waited and waited and waited for hope to come. Until eventually she was to dumb to stay awake. And it was this that she came upon the dream within a dream.
And it was glowing, vibrantly.
A picture of a land that was once meadows, now made present and whole. A land unadulterated by the skull-fairy queen, who was always green about the meadows that were only slightly greener than she. Only the fruit she could have had, "No more fruits for me." And it was with this she decided to aid the groups escape. Even if she died trying. She called for a guard, made a provocative pose. Then after she picked her nose, this was what caused her to anger a skull-fairy guard. Therefore, the guard opened the door. Instead she threw a rock at the head of the guard. He fell down and down and down until there was no more down to go. And splat his head against the dirt floor. "Ow my head." She stole the guards keys, because he was a very stupid stupid guard. Then helped the others girls out of their cells, then they walked together silently through the cell that was darker than night.
Somehow they had lost the guard, and thus they were home free. But there were hungry, each thought there was no enough fruit for me. Together they outsmarted the other guards, and finally was able to get to the skull-fairy queen lair. They took the queen, and jerked her around by her long hair. Then coerced her until turning the world back to how it was before. Finally she gave in, and turn the world back to how it was.
A few weeks later, the world was back to normal.
Aida got herself a dream journal, and everyone now and then she would still be visited by Victoria. And they had the time of their life. Eventually she came to enjoy her school classes again, and simply could not wait to see Victoria again during the Summer after spring. And pictured herself riding on the back of a unicorn, flying into the sky. Then landing onto the porch of the flying school house. "Things have gotten better sense you have been gone." That, Aida was sure glad that was.
Reika was no longer mad at Aida.
Thereafter.
]]>"Otis, what did I tell you about," The boss looked at the clock. "waiting around twiddling your thumbs?"
"Sorry sir, I'll make sure it doesn't happen again."
"Make sure of that."
"Yes sir."
"Oh! look at the time. You can leave now."
It was nine o'clock, and Otis exited the door. He moved a couple of years ago to the port town. He walked along the sidewalk, and the cars are passed him by. He dropped by the nearest convenience store.
Otis picked out a beer from the freezer.
Otis is in the kitchen, with the dinner he prepared for his girlfriend. It became slightly impatient because she was not yet home. He decided to call his girlfriend on his cell phone.
"Hun, what the hell is taking you so long?" Otis said.
"Are you lying?" Naomi Said.
"Scratch it, how about I make dinner tonight?" Otis was watching television. It was the news channel. A liberal news network. "We could have wine too."
"Sounds awesome."
"Later baby."
Otis hung up his cell phone, and placed it in his pants pocket. He walked to his computer He thought Something doesn't seem right about this girl, this is the second time she's late. His girlfriend would always came home with a box of Kahlua chocolate truffles.
The second hour went by. He thought What the hell is taking so long?
Otis had a picture of Brian in his head, and he winced, because he remembered when Brian hit on him. He sat at the table, eating his dinner, and he drank a sip of his wine.
"Nah, I got to be kidding myself," Otis switched the channel to another network. "why can't I be more trusting?" Otis took a long deep look into the screen, as he sat on the couch. "She didn't seem like a slut. I can't put my mind around it."
Otis hopped off the couch, and took out his cell phone, and then opened his cell phone to call his girlfriend.
"What's taking so long?" Otis asked.
"I'm on my way home, I just had to make a stop." Naomi said.
"I'm starting to regret offering to cook dinner." Otis clenched his fist. "It's getting late, and I'm hungry."
"Just make dinner for yourself tonight."
Otis traveled along the icy road to see his girlfriend, and he narrowly avoided a collision with a car.
He arrived to the apartment.
He walked to the door, and knocked on it. Otis put his ear up to the door, and could hear the whistle of air conditioning on the inside. He opens the door knob, and noticed it was unlocked.
The door creaked. And then he heard a murmurs, a man and a woman.
"What was that?"
"Oh don't worry about it Hun, just go nice and slow."
Otis walked slowly to his girlfriends bedroom door, and then he bursted the door open. It was her giving the man a blow job. Otis spoke.
"What the hell is this?"
"Its not what you think Otis!"
"Who is this?" The other man said.
"I'm know one you'll ever see again."
Otis locked the door of his apartment, when he got back home. He went to go lye down on the couch.
Otis thought Why would she do this to me!? Did I ever hit her, or otherwise abuse her!? No, it wasn't like that at all.
He drowned in all his sorrows with a glass of merlot, and then sat on the couch to watch the news.
Tonight's topic was about an arsonist that died in a fire. The other story was about a WWIII couple that proposed after the war.
Otis turned the LCD monitor off, and clapped the lights out. He went to his room to sleep. He could not sleep for a minute.
He briefly thought about his life up to now.
Otis had a dream.
The sky was a late evening blue, waves crashed along the shoreline. A viking long house was along the shore. It was the year 1056
There was a single room cabin. Benches were used as both beds and seats. Along the walls you could see the dried meat hanging from the walls.
Arnbjorn woke up to get his fishing gear.
He saw Halldora, who appeared behind him.
"What are you doing up this early Hally?"
"Dad, I'm tired of having to weave and crochet all the time." Halldora played with his long blond hair. "Could I go fishing with you sometime?
"You should get your priorities straight." He grimaced sternly. "Your job is to help your mother maintain the household. Maybe when you're a little older I might change my mind. You will just be swept away by the waves anyway."
She pictured herself reeling in the fish, and cooking a wonderful meal for the whole family.
"I just wanted to be like you daddy, is that to much to ask."
"Just go back to sleep."
"If you could even work for two whole days, someday I might consider taking you with me. I will think about it.
Arnbjorn left the cabin.
At the fish shop, Halldora's father was tending to a customer.
"It only costs 50 Krona to buy this fish!?" He said.
"Only fifty, that's more than I earn in a week!" The customer said.
"If you don't like it, go elsewhere. But I bet your wont fish anywhere near this good."
To the contrary, he would often time sell rotten fish preserved with salt on the open market, and advertise it as if it were fresh.
It was a dishonest profession, but times were hard. But at least he always saved the freshest of seafood for his family.
Arnbjorn is sea fishing with his best friend.
"Hook, line, and sinker." Arnbjorn said.
"You really should let your daughter bond with you more."
"But what better way to bond than to talk about viking voyages second hand?" Arnbjorn was being facetious. "About how wonderful gathering the wood is."
Arnbjorn came around and let her go sea fishing with him.
As he had predicted, she was swept up by the waves.
"You're a disgrace to our family." He said.
He left her out to drown in the cold, windy ocean.
"Daddy!! Come back."
She tried swimming to locate his boat, and mustered all the strength she could summon. But no boat.
"Dad!? How could you?"
The morning dawn shined dimly, Otis woke up from the dream. He is breathing in and out with major heaving after being deprived of oxygen briefly.
Otis had something to eat, but decided to get breakfast out.
He walked to work.
In real time in the real past, Halldora at first sank into the water, and swam to shore. She arrived at home wet.
She woke up on her bench she happened to use for a bed that night. The mother asked her daughter a question.
"What happened to your face hun?"
"Me and dad were in a bad fight, just ignore it."
"Is this going to be how it is?"
Back in the present time.
Otis got a job as a lab technician after quitting his first job. He had built up enough university credits to work as a scientists assistant.
The person supervising him was Machida Kayo, and part time professor, and part time drill sergeant
Machida relaxed with a nice cold beer, while spouting off commands at Otis.
"So I assume you got the dark matter?" Machida said.
"Roger."
Otis handed Machida the dark matter, and then asked the monitor, "What time is it computer?"
"It is now 13:05 hours." The computer said.
"Are you ready to change history."
"Roger."
Machida fired the engine, and the machines sparked, and caused the whole lab to warp. He tried to get Otis out.
Otis blacked out.
He warped his spaceship into Viking time.
Otis crashed his ship.
Otis was awoken, and flew out of the ship. He slapped into a tree. And then he got up injured. He had a loose tooth.
"This doesn't look like the Andromeda galaxy."
It looked like he was in some forest.
"Well Machi Macho did mention worm-holes were unpredictable were they might end up."
Otis tried reporting his current situation.
While tending to her sheep on the farm, a girl saw a huge explosion in the distance.
She directed her sheep back to the farm.
A charred black otis is leaning into the mic, and he tried to call back Machida. But no answer, so he crawled to the village.
He collapsed when he reached the town square. The villagers looked at him like he were a demon.
Otis woke up, and found himself lying on a bench. The house was pretty much one long room.
"Talk about living it up." Otis picked his nose. "What year did I warp into?"
An older man, and a younger girl in what looked like Norse outfits opened the door. They hurried to close the door before the cool settled in.
"Now hold on a sec poppa, who's that guy."
"I found this girly man." Arnbjorn said. He took off his non horned helmet. "I figured something must have been up, so I took him in."
"I say we kill him."
"Nah, I got a better idea. If he's going to stay for a while, ..."
"He might as well be useful!"
"So were did you come from?"
"The orient." They missed the joke, because they focused on his bizarre clothing. It was a streamlined spaceman suit.
"Me and Halldora are going sea fishing." Arnbjorn said.
"Now make yourself useful and gather some firewood." Halldora said.
They exit the house.
Otis snuck out of the house early in the morning.
He could here villagers cursing at his ship as if it were the product of the fire god himself. So he had to go see what was going on.
The villagers were attacking his ship, and had no choice but to self destruct the ship.
This killed the farmers instantly.
He found a small cottage not unlike the house he stayed in the previous night. He knocked on the door.
What what looked like a lady in her late 20's, greeted him.
"How may I help you?" Otis said.
"This is urgent, and I need someone to hear me out."
"What do you need?"
"I have no idea what happened." Otis coughed, residue from the engine explosion was still lingering on his face. "But there was some kind of bug in the dark matter engine. I somehow landed here. I was suppose to land in the Andromeda galaxy. Do you know of any hardware stores around here?"
Otis did not watch the science fiction movies, or he would have known better.
Or maybe he still did not think he was in normal time, and just landed in some primitive place in Europe.
"Wait what?" The Nordic lady said.
"What year is it?" Otis asked.
"This is the year 1040."
She let him come in and get some rest.
Halldora came by that house, and knocked on her neighbors door.
"Excuse me, have you seen a young trell around this part."
"Why yes, he said something about.."
One of Halldora's slaves tried to drag Otis out of the cabin, and he tried to hold them off. Then Halldora blew a sleeping dart at his neck.
He blacked out once more. He woke up to find he was tied to one of their benches.
"You think you got it bad, yar trell. I normally give ye 700." Arnbjorn said. He whipped up a storm on Otis's back.
He once again had to gather wood for Halldora's father.
When he got up, he slowly and carefully made as little noise as possible. He saw Arnbjorn outside, and snuck up behind him.
He strangled him, till he passed out. Otis was not aware the next morning the man would be dead.
He then jogged over to the snitching ladies house.
Otis knocked on the door.
"What brings you here. You have some kind of letter. Indicating your master sent you?" Otis said.
He took out the note he forged, and she let him intending to once again wait till Halldora or her father came to take him back.
"So who are you really?"
"I am,...a jackass, a bastard child, and an illegitimate prick." The lady wasn't aware that he was joking.
Otis was able to charm her enough to lure her to bed, and he slipped in some sleeping pills in her drink that he packed for long trips.
She slept like a rock,
Otis talked to Machida on his repaired cell phone while hiding in the Viking village. The hardware hacking handbook finally came in handy.
"Hey Machida, you won't believe where I ended up."
"Otis, I didn't mean for you to literally change history."
"Very funny. Now how am I going to get home?"
"Look behind you."
Otis thought he heard a chuckle he recognized, and turned around.
"How did you get here Henry."
"Machida had a few issues regarding the system."
"Henry is going to give you a ride, and then I'll give you the new briefing." Machida laughed madly at his stupid pun, and then hung up his cell phone.
"So he sent me to come rescue your ass. Thank me later." Henry said.
"I was watching you the previous days," Henry took out his hand gun for self defence. "To see if you could handle yourself."
"You prick! Thanks for rescuing me!"
"Oh about that, my ship broke down."
"What!"
A few months later.
Otis Makes Dreams
Otis picked out a beer from the freezer when he was in the kitchen, with the dinner he prepared for the evening on a plate on the table. He could smell the stir fry of slaw makings, kielbasa, and thinly sliced chicken wafting into his priggish nose. He then shook about with the jitters, and tossed the phone onto the floor, because Leila was not yet home. So he decided to call his girlfriend -- at least at the present -- on his cell phone. He opened the lid slowly, and then the lights from the buttons flickered.
"Hun, the hell is taken so long?" he said.
"Are you lying? I'm working late tonight." Naomi Said.
"Scratch it, how about I make dinner later tonight?" Otis was watching television as he was speaking to Leila the bubble gum popper. It was the news channel. "We could have wine too."
"Sounds awesome." Leila said.
"Later baby."
Otis hung up his cell phone slowly, and then placed down upon the table still slightly shaken up, as he was not sure whether she would be home tonight. Then walked to his computer. He at that moment thought something doesn't seem right about the woman, the second time she's been late that week. I hope it really is she is working late, he thought. Leila would always came home with a box of chocolate truffles, so for the two. ... "Just for the two off right?"
But after the hours went by, he ate his stir fry alone.
He thought What the hell is taking so long?
Otis had no reason to suspect Brian, although part of him suspected he was involved because of how he his employer always commented on how she was a good lady to him. Suspected how he only kept the job, because of a close connection to his bubble gum popping late girlfriend. He sat at the table, and drank the last of his wine. It was a minor comfort for him, a taste of sweetness amongst the bitterness. "Nah, I got to be kidding myself," Otis got up to switch the channel to another network. "why can't I be more trusting?"
Otis took a long deep look into the screen, as sat on the couch. "Didn't seem like a slut when I first met her. I don't know man." And then he reclined back. Otis hopped off the couch, and took out his cell phone to call his girlfriend. "What's taking so long?"
"I'm on my way home, I just had to make a stop." Naomi said.
What stop might that be, Otis thought. "I'm starting to regret offering to cook dinner." Otis clenched his fist. "It's getting late, and I'm hungry."
"Just make dinner for yourself tonight." Leila said.
It the was second Wednesday that Otis arrived to the apartment on an invitation, and arrived at the door to knock on it. "You can go ahead and come in." He heard Leila said. He opens the door knob, and noticed it was unlocked. The door creaked. And then he heard a murmur, a man and a woman. "What was that?" He heard Brian's voice say.
"Oh don't worry about it Hun, just go nice and slow."
Otis then walked slowly to his girlfriends bedroom door, and did not really want to wait here long, as he wanted to take a long vacation away from the city. Away from the old working life. She said he come in.
Leila was giving Brian a blow job.
"Bey! Otis, hows it going man!?" Brain said.
"I'm good you?" Otis said, and walked out of the door abruptly. Slammed the door shut at his apartment, locked the door of his apartment wanting to cover the entrance with the type of wood that you would make a swing set out of. Then went to go lye down on the couch. Could not resist the killer thought of Brain the slouch. Ouch, what a fucking slouch Brian, Otis thought. Why would Leila do this to me!? And drowned in all his sorrows, with another glass of wine while sitting down on the couch to watch the news. For at this point even the news of the generic variety was good company for the post grad.
He thought its never going to be the same. Never going to be the same all.
Tonight the topic was about an arsonist that died in a fire. The other story was about a WWIII couple that proposed after the war. Either story was one that he would ordinarily abhor, but anything was good at this point.
After turning the LCD monitor off, he clapped the lights out on the lamp. Went to his room to sleep. Through himself down on the cover, like a champ. And for moment, he felt like he was being fried by jumper cables.
He briefly thought about his life up to now.
And plugged himself into the pod-net. He loaded up an old video game he downloaded when they first met, how they used to game together. She would always lead the pack, he was the one instructed to tack together the puzzle pieces of electronic life. He saw the sky was a late evening blue, with the waves crashing along the shoreline. A Norman long house was along the shore. He felt he must have hallucinated that it was the year 1456. But it did not matter, he would go medieval on what ever creatures existed in the meshwork.
As he played his game, he tried to fend off a tall Nordic man who was chasing after him with his sword. And after he was struck, everything faded to darkness. Game over for this particular bloke. It slowly came back, there was a single room cabin. Benches were used as both beds and seats, and along the walls you could see the dried meat hanging from the walls. Arnbjorn woke up to get his fishing gear.
Otis saw Halldora, who appeared behind him.
"What are you doing up this early Hally?" He heard the tall man say to his little girl, but he did not care. Wondered why the non horned helmet man did not just decide to scalp his dream-space avatar, and get it over with. "Dad, I'm tired of having to weave and crochet all the time." Halldora played with her long blond hair.
"Could I go fishing with you sometime?" Halldora said.
"You should get your priorities straight." He grimaced sternly. "Your job is to help your mother maintain the household. Ouch man, and Leila thought I was little shit. That guy is a really tall shit eater, Otis thought trying to pretend like he was still asleep so as not to attract notice. "Maybe when you're a little older I might change my mind. You will just be swept away by the waves anyway."
At the fish shop, Halldora's father was tending to a customer along with the new slave that had recently logged into the meshwork. Just you wait old electronic think, I will beat the level out of you like you won't believe, Otis thought. "It only costs 50 Krona to buy this fish!?" Arnbjorn said to the customer.
"Only fifty! ... More than I earn in a week!" The customer said, who walked over to the other fisherman's shop.
"Yea that's right if you don't like it, go elsewhere. But I bet your wont fish anywhere near this good." He would often time sell rotten fish preserved with salt on the open market, and advertise it as if it were fresh. A dishonest profession, but times were hard. But at least he always saved the freshest of seafood for his family. They would be none the wiser.
Arnbjorn is sea fishing with his Otis the avatar.
"Hook, line, and sinker." Arnbjorn said.
"You really should let your daughter bond with you more." Otis said.
"But what better way to bond than to talk about voyages second hand?" Arnbjorn was being of course not being serious. "About how wonderful gathering the wood is."
Arnbjorn came around and let her go sea fishing with him.
As he had predicted, she was swept up by the waves.
"You're a disgrace to our family." He said.
"Your a disgrace for a father." Otis said, and pushed him into the ocean, and carefully made sure so a to only retrieve Halldora in order to keep her from drowning in the waves that tasted of salt.
"Daddy!! Come back." Halldora the AI said.
"That dad was going to let you drown." Otis said.
"Dad!? How could you?" ---
--- Otis woke up from the dream. He breathed in and out with major heaving after being deprived of oxygen briefly. He walked to the kitchen to have something to eat, but decided to get breakfast out.
But eventually the plug in system back at home, begin to behave peculiarly. Halldora at first sank into the water. But the water from the console evaporated, and she was lying down upon the carpet.
"Where am I?" Halldora said. Looked up, her perception of Heaven. But instead he was merely, an introduction to the twenty first century. "Is this going to be how it is? Will I not be able to get home?"
Machida Kayo, and part time professor of fixing the console devices, and a part time drill sergeant. He always loved yelling at his clientel, who would rather pay someone else. But could not afford anybody cheaper. He relaxed with a nice cold beer, while spouting off questions about the living girl avatar in his room. "So I assume you have the adoption papers?" Machida said.
Otis stared at the little AI. "Maybe."
"It is now 13:05 hours." A computer generated voice said, that was coming from the desktop hologram projector. Machida fixed the console, and the machine sparked back to life. It was alive again, would be Otis's wife.
Otis and Halldora plugged in.
Played another game of pop goes the Viking. But Otis instead forgot about the fact that each world generated a new world. And dear Halldora, alone in the world with him. Would never see her family again. Otis is awoken, and flew out of the ship that crashed. Halldora held on to the seat of the space ship, and it slammed into a tree. Otis got up injured, and began to limp just a little bit.
"This doesn't look like the Andromeda galaxy, that for sure." It looked like he was in some forest. "Well Machi Macho did mention worm-holes were unpredictable were they might end up." Otis tried reporting his current situation to his mechanic. But the young pink hair mechanic man, would not answer his cell phone as a charred black otis is leaned into the mic, and tried to call back Machida.
He called for Halldora, hoping she was still alive.
Halldora popped out from the pop. "Here I am."
I wonder if the new network erased her memories, Otis thought. And then he collapsed when he reached the town square. The villagers looked at him like he were a demon.
An older man that looked like Arnbjorn from the world before, and two versions of Halldora in their white night gowns. They hurried to close the door before the cool settled in.
"Now hold on a sec poppa, who's that guy."
"Halldora two, that's our now buckaroo."
"I say we kill him."
Otis logged out of freight. ---
And he could hear voices.
"Nah, I got a better idea. If he's going to stay for a while, ..."
"He might as well be useful!"
"So were did he come from?"
"The orient." Otis said, crying himself to sleep. Knowing that his little girl he tried to save from the old save file would not here him.
]]>This is the countdown to another life. The tale of a tomb unfilled, the story of a corpse brought back from the dead. This isn't the story of teen romance, or the story of girls having their tap dance at pretentious weddings. The story of the invisible one, playing with cards like others do video games. At least until the Southern army invaded my homeland, hope becoming fainter, and life thinning out. I had been a sickly child, whose mother died of radiation poisoning. I barely knew my father, like others in my circles of trust. Yet now as I have no eyes to see, and no ears to hear, I feel only dust. The cave was dark and damp, this I knew quite well. I never liked caves growing up, yet now as I wander into the endless darkness it is almost like being home again.
See into the mind of my remote pathology.
The pathology of the dead.
With two antenna, I route the coordinates. Mental noise, colors of what I once knew as red, green, and blue. Perhaps these might be telling me the coordinates to avoid. I am told there is a community of others like myself. Yet this hope is something I choose not to acknowledge. In the cave of the spider, in the cave of artificial light. In the cave of creatures destroyed by man's might. The room of men brainwashed to cleanse them of their guilt for their seven sins. These sins, a product of maniacal religion. The product of men with power complexes. The men who lop off the heads of heretics in times of old, the same sin that taunts the young. And breaks the bones of the olden. As the world bows toward its King.
I sense another voice, a voice of someone familiar. Someone who seems to have kept her humanity intact. I wish I could see her, I wonder what the world looks like. The world feels wet, the sounds permanently silent. I feel around the cave floor in order to reach the outside world, a land of desert briefly Terra formed by the original colonists that seeded our ancestors, the original humans. The original humans who fled from Earth, at first in order to expand to the farthest reaches of the stars. I
live in a world where radioactive rain burns my skin, yet my ability to regenerate has increased manifold since the time that I have been alive.
The world of mutated wolves.
The world of malfunctioning air vaults. And artificial oceans gradually becoming more shallow every thousands of years, at least until the world was swept under us by the great virus.
The virus' effects were initially subtle, and nothing like what you might imagine in zombie-holocaust novels. Our intelligence remained, while our energy was drained little by little. Until eventually we developed a new kind of energy, for sake of comparison it is like comparing matter to anti-matter. Our energy a new kind of anti-energy, motivated by some unknown family bond that bound us together. And yet there I was in the darkness, with no eyes to see. I wasn't sure what I was wearing. I was unsure of whether I was still wearing my dress. Rather the sound of groaning in the darkness, there was the sound of buzzing, buzzing, and more buzzing. The sound could drive one mad, until one got used to the communication.
The Civil War has created US. A war that split apart the original familial bond between Adam and Eve, the original cyborgs first resurrected and their limbs automated for the false-flag alien invasion on Earth. The King and the Queen, the Popette and her mistress King Adam. Black triangles filled the air of the second Earth, and I remembered as Samantha, me, and Susie tried to save as many people as we could from the infection, yet it was no use.
It was a new kind of self-abuse.
One would gradually be eaten alive by the virus. But then eventually one began to control the virus, and turn into a new breed of underground humanity. The humans that could survive radioactive sickness, and travel in the darkness. No longer was it the time of Guillotine Guns and beheading women on the spot. Now it was the world of perpetual fermentation of the self.
I reached the world of the outside, having not been to the outside world in so long. Within this world of radioactive rain, I follow a sense of someone that I had once known before. She was the one that had purchased me a flute, back when I lived in the orphanage and my mistress snapped my inherited flute in half. I had played the flute too loudly on that particular night. While the mistress was not one for collective punishment, she jerked the flute out of my hand.
And now as I reach her, she wonders what has happened to me. She comes over and hugs me. We embrace. I sense a man beside her.
"Do you remember me?"
"Samantha, thank you for the flute."
"What happened to your face, you look like a bug."
And behold, I put my hands on my face. I had no eyes, my fingers had suction cups. I traveled by sonar.
I was a Parasite.
"Do you recognize this man? Samantha whispered into my antenna."
"I cannot see him, yet I can sense him. He has a sinister presence." I said.
"He is who you remember, and yet he cannot even remember his name. He doesn't remember anything at all."
It was then that it suddenly dawned on me. They were referring to I, who was the man who had become so tainted by greed, yet still had the softness�of sympathy for our Queen Eve, had been reduced to the mind of a child. The person with no memory of their past.
Who had undergone my own trial. The trial of the seven sins.
I was Silhouette Man.
Somewhere in the world of a more peaceful planet, there�are civilizations not like our own. They have managed to achieve a peaceful civilization. Yet between us, we have become a new kind of entity. Not quite dead, not quite alive. A different realm of experience altogether.
The parasites of Sauna-Creek. Let this be a warning to those who wish to venture off into the stars: that the world is not for humanity. For when you stare into the universe, sometimes the universe consumes you, and turns you into a shadow of your former self. The shadow of what was once humanity.
We are the parasites.
SAMANTHA'S GAMBIT PART TWO
The gas stations were mostly completely empty of goods. In this town, called Sauna Creek, at times I here noises in the night. The sound of men, women, and children under the Earth. In my Boston Clogs, I slip one off to feel the Earth. Yet the ground is much to hot for my foot to bare. I pick the rocks out of my foot, and then try to find someone here I can talk to. I was never one for dialogue, although that doesn't change the fact that dialogue would be nice about now. Yesterday I met a strange man, yet he has not yet come back for me. I could barely see who he was, all I knew was that he wore a black jump suit, and had the most red of eyes you would ever see. In my minds eyes, I see spaceships that fill the sky heading toward domes. During the war, there was a young woman named Eve the man in the black suit would always comment on, and how he was always concerned about her recovery.
Yet I have never seen this woman. She may not even exist, like Big Brother in classic dystopia novels written centuries previously. I am hungry, I am tired. And I want to cry, yet my eyes will not let me. I dream of grabbed pussies, and sexual harassment by my school bully ... and yet somehow I don't think she survived the electro-magnetic nuclear explosions. And severed heads that lined the street with gold. The life of the planet wide Civil War between north and south. The Japanese, Chinese, and Koreans populated the side of the sun. And the Europeans, including the French and the Dutch, populated the side of the American colonists. Yet nobody there is nobody left to talk to me. I am as invisible as I ever was.
I here somebody, a girl perhaps. She scratches and feels around the cave, which I have visited searching through abandoned laboratories, where super soldiers underwent the Trail Of The Seven Tears, a mind control experiment where the seven deadly sins are cleansed from their life. I here a banging in a cell room, a giant figure with a stitched mouth reaches his hand out for me. In my mind I dreams of unicorns and fairies in distant kingdoms.
A better life than here.
I am only dust. Silence has won.
I wake up in an abandoned house, not remembering how I got. There was the man again whom seem concerned about my well being. Does he not realize that I know who he is? He was the one that ordered the explosions of the electro-magnetic biological weapons. And yet now he seems so different. It's almost as if he no longer remembers my name. He wonders why I don't answer his question, "Have you seen this man. He is a security guard for MK 731."
MK 731 was a merger between Unit 731 and MK Ultra. As black as the black budget related to aliens from other star systems, was designed to mind control people along with infected people with retro-viruses that distributed LSD, their mind permanently altered from repeated forced ingestions. But it had other strange effects, yet I was immune from its destruction.
I am not a parasite.
I am human.
It's been a few months since he helped me learned to read. My fears about him have somewhat subsided, but there is still that burning feeling inside me, that somehow he is worse than the parasite men that surround me. I am on guard at all times around him, despite the love of him kissing my neck.
"Why don't you say anything?" he said.
I had no words for him, he killed many people. Any amount of sympathy I had for the man do to his amnesia, was mired by the all the deaths he was responsible during the war that caused me to have to move from my home town in the Southern Slipstream town along the tidally locked planet. Moving from one side of the desert world to the other side was bad enough dealing with moving away from old friends, some of which would never make it to move up North, but even in the new life I could not quite get used to the culture. Even with Susie and Rachel. And now as I wait nights until he comes home, it takes all the strength I have not murder him with an ax. And yet he seems different around those they play at innocence. I continue this game, partially to play with his heart. But also he's the only company I've got.
I communicate words from time to time in his secure Zero Liability Mail. I'm not exactly certain who he is worried about breaking in. It's not like anybody besides the parasite men will come in and watch us as he reads me story books, my favorite story group I had kept since the end of the war. While he was company for me, he was also a lethal general. With Eve the queen of the Colonists of the North, and Adam the King of the colonists to the South, the man ordered a purge of Southern Colonists that migrated to the new school district.
And now as I wait for sunlight, I sleep.
He caresses me and kisses me as I weep.
It was to hard to speak up for myself for my own good, and yet as he put in a magazine to load up his shotgun, as he fired the bullets the armor piercing rounds seemed to bounce off the parasite men. I was torn between him defending me, and me knowing the truth, that he was the alien, and now we.
I embrace the new colonist.
The man from the stars.
I went with him to visit the cave he was interested in, that I had visited earlier. And then I found out the truth, not only did Susie disappear into those ruins from years ago. She became just like those monster, the government Parasite Men.
Susie was home.
]]>However now the bombs are tossed at us like meatballs at a dinner table. And we are the ground chuck. Why did I have to listen to my mom this time? I never listened to her opinion before. The city lights in the arcade district only glow at just the right hours, then its closing time. Me and Liana had only dated briefly, and my previous girlfriend more brief than that. Although the previous date was not really a date, but a chance to conjoin and masturbate. Joining end to end, like user encryption, are bodies were tied together like four square ciphers. Rows of random letters disjointed, the flow of counting up to. Stop, and life starts all over again.
"Don't forget to brush your teeth." she said.
"Shut up bitch, you're not mother." I said.
"I suppose you're right."
The biggest mistake of my life, those exact words. Though I didn't realize that at the time. Now I gently close my sweet hearts eyes, trying not to cry. I never liked the idea of crying in public, though the current situation has given me no choice. For me girl who at the speed of bang, lost her voice. Lost her life, lost everything but the memory of her. And now I run out of time. I am running to out run the triangular craft from the Southern district, their pace matching their desire for revenge. They burn building, the skin they singe. And like monkeys we fall to dust. I carefully hide in the public library, and read the last message Samantha sent to me.
"Jkovo, where are you? Come home. Everyone is missing you."
But I didn't want to come home to anybody. I didn't want to come home with blood on my face. I purged the message from my USB drive, so in case I am ever captured by dream-scanners, they will not find anything of value. I had previously given administrator rights to Lian, yet now I have nobody besides family to converse to securely. The electro-magnetic biological bombs already struck the lower Northern Colonies, and now it was simply a matter of time before they would strike us. I've never been so terrified in my life, and yet I must face my masters. Yet I respect no masters, not even my own mother. Not even to save my life. I wish I didn't listen to my mother, I should have stayed home to be by Sammy's side. Perhaps my girlfriend's life would have been saved, as she never wanted to leave my side.
And yet now as she is buried in rubble, and my beard all a stubble, I long to be in unacknowledged paradise again. A paradise of milk and money, beyond the meadow of gold. A paradise where the war was over, and we can wear normal shoes again, and eat normal food. Yet these desires fade daily, the war ever growing longer. I had briefly thought of enlisted in the Southern army, though this was before we had moved up North. Yet now as I'm being fired at by Adam's forces, I regret the idea, and denying even ever entertained it.
I remembered the last few nights I spent with Lian, telling her that poetry was suppose to rhyme. Ever after, she began to not pay as much attention to her grades. Even less than I did. At one point I offered to help with her homework, but she said it was Algebraic equations, and said it was probably over my head.
"Look, sorry about the"
"Don't worry about it, want to the arcade?"
"Sure, what kind of pizza."
"Whatever you want."
I offered to listen to more of a poetry, gave some suggestions for improvement. I even mentioned different rhyme schemes. Some of which she seemed to wonder why bother even calling them rhymes at all. I told her about interior rhymes. She told me about different eastern poetry forms that didn't rhyme at all. We exchanged verses, exchanged thematic curses. We exchanged till closing time, all to disjointed rhyme.
Yet between us, there was only us.
Yet now as I wait for death, as I wait for paradise, I want to be reunited with Lian, who taught me how to not rhyme in verse. Me and her meeting was not a curse, it was a match I didn't deserve. For once I could admit, I got served. And in this USB disk I send an ciphered message, I send it to mom. A message I wasn't sure whether I really felt, but something I always felt an obligation to say. And if I die tonight, by bombs tossed like spaghetti and meatballs, I can smile for my girlfriend's sake.
I sent her the message: XICMLISM.
XI-CM-LI-SM. I hear footsteps behind me.
They are marching closer.
]]>At school I pretended like nothing was wrong, although my lunches were particularly quiet affairs. Samantha would ask me why I never smile, while she would give Rachel a brand new flute to remember her mother by. But for me, I had nothing to remember my parents by at all. Life was finite, and I was more so. And my little brother, who did nothing wrong but live was fading into dust. At night I read him bedtime stories in the English language, while I was still properly learning to speak the language myself. At night there would be blank triangles in the sky, spying on our neighborhood. I would wake up some nights with my underwear turned inside out, and I would see a strange man in silhouette eye me through the window. I wanted him to go away, and just like that I was out of the dream.
After school we would go eat pizza at the arcades, ran by a school friend's mother who saved most of her food supplies for the restaurant in order to enrich the family beyond the war rations we were getting as a community, standard packaged dried noodles for home spaghetti. We would have the best pizza of our lives, as it wasn't a standard liquid cheese on cracker bread affair. We got it cheaper by having more than four topics, so we chose bacon, mushrooms, olives, hamburger, and pickled jalapeño. All to the tune of retro music from the 1990s, her mother being a connoisseur of oldies before music was written by committee. Before independent labels made all the committee ideals irrelevant, and individuals could sing their songs again. Yet our lives was not a popular music song, it was the song of broken lives and restored friendships transcending the limits of the human race.
And at night we had normal bed times like other middle schoolers, yet we would get together at unspecified points in the night in order to connect our USBs, and communicate securely. Samantha was a programmer, and she taught the rest of us how to use this strange software. One of the three of us would be administrator, and specify a specific time that we would meet: the routes we would walk would almost seem at random at times. But she always seemed to know how to avoid the triangular craft in the sky, above the glow of city lights. And when bombs were a dropping, she would always know the best nook and cranny to hide under, from university tunnels to underground sewers. Among other things I shall not describe.
She once told me and Samantha of a friend who seemed to like to make everything she said into some kind of sex joke. At times it made Samantha want to give her a choke. Yet at the end of the day she never did. And that friend would always follow around her asking for sex. Eventually she stopped connecting with her, and now we don't know where she is. And that's the kind of life we lead, as broken people in the world of the broken life. Girls that strove not to be wives for any boy, at least as long as we could eat pizza at the arcades.
We would return at an unspecified hour.
We would then sleep soundly at night.
We would only have this get together periodically, and I spent most nights being bored with my little brother. At times I would worry what would happen if I left the ghost of my little brother behind, under the glow of night lights. He always slept peacefully, and never a terror stirred. The terror always haunted me, in the darkest of the forbidden midnight hour. And every hour after I would break up in a breathless panic, dreading something in the closet. Something reaching out for me. And in our ventilation in the apartment, I saw ... a hand reaching out ... and it was.
"Honey, can you get me the screw driver?" my dad said.
The government assigned me a stepfather until I became eighteen, and would guide me until the war was over with the Southern colonies. "We can't have you just wandering out at night Susie. It's not save our there. These buildings at bomb prove. But out there you're just meat."
At night I dreamed of my mother, falling in the war.
Her face stricken with terror from the bomb blasts, before she jumped and fall off a sky scraper onto the floor below. I remembered my dad, trying to reach out to talk her out of her fall.
Yet it was no use.
And now I didn't have him.
I had nobody.
]]>At dinner time, mother would frequently make spaghetti and meatballs for dinner. We would get tired of it as a result.
"Don't play with your pasta Jkovo." My father fussed, while mother was to busy sticky her nose in a romance novel to pay attention to the noodles being tossed across the table into our fine china cabinet. However father would frequently want to bring up other issues, to mothers dismay. Jkovo did not seem to care one way or the other.
"There have been three casualties in the war so far. Have you heard about this one guy that got awards in-" Father began to say before he was cut off by mother.
"Shut up, Harold." Mother said.
"Can it, this is important news."
"Maybe so but," mother began to say then put her book down, and gave father a scowling face., and then she added "but we don't need to gross out the children, they need to eat as much as they can so the can concentrate on schoolwork. You want Jkovo to college right? And what about Samantha, you want her to remain a star student right?"
"I'm 17 mom, I think I'll be fine." Jkovo chimed in.
"If your 17, act like it by not slinging meatballs at me." Father said.
"That's enough Harold. apparently he can't help himself." Mother said.
"Well that's true!" Father said.
"Fuck you dad!"
"No Fuck you!"
"Lets just all eat silently." I proposed, although everyone else just laughed it off.
"So Sammy, are you still having a hard time with Ruby?" Father asked, though he probably new what the answer would be. Every since the beginning of the school year, me and her kind of had issues. Though it had gotten worse.
"May I talk about it after dinner?" I requested.
"Sure, just know that if she is hurting you, I can beat her up for you." father said. I asked if I could be excused, and then I went to bed to make last minute correction on my math and science.
The next morning, my older brother poured a bucket of water over me to wake me up for school just like I asked.
"Thanks Jkovo!" I said, and gave him a hug of which he chuckled.
Over the past two weeks, I had the tendency to sleep in late and miss the bus. I had to rush to school. At least the school was only about a mile away, unlike a lot of the students that went to Saunacreek Elementary.
When I walked from class to class when the bell rang to go to sixth period, I hurried up to go to the restroom so that I can avoid Ruby, and get to class on time, of which my efforts were in vain. It was no uncommon for Ruby to be slightly mean, but these past two weeks had been the worst. The week before she picked me up, and threw me head first into the bathroom wall. I carefully tried to avoid her, but it was no use. I was pushed to the floor again, and then I was picked up, and thrown head first into the bathroom wall once again. Honestly I'm surprised my grades have not suffered much more than they had, you would think I would have gotten brain damage.
And then the bell rang. "See ya baby." Ruby said, in contradiction to how she treated me. I waited until Ruby left the restroom, and finally got the chance to use the restroom. On those two days I got a tardy slip because I was to afraid to come to class. I did not want to cause any more trouble, and I certainly did not want any cute boys to see me red.
So I pulled myself up by my bootstraps once I got off the toilet, and then walked to class. Once I arrived, I was met with a pleasant surprise.
"Samantha, this is the second time you been late. I shall ask you the question I was going to ask Ruby. What is the capital of Wisconsin?"
"Madison" Ruby's girlfriend said before I had the chance to answer, of which Ruby gave her a high five.
"Although correct, Samantha needs to answer." The teacher said, and then Ruby stuck her tongue out at me. And then the bell rang, most the students left. But my teacher asked me to stay behind to answer a question, of which I was hesitant to answer.
"Why have you been late to class Sammy? You use to be punctual all the time." The teacher asked.
"If I said, how would I know I would not get in trouble for ringing about the exchange students?"
"You don't have to curse Sammy, you can feel safe to tell me anything. I know something is wrong. Both the day before, and today you came in looking beat up."
"And you still asked me the question, even though I looked like this?"
"I'm sorry."
I gave her a slight disgruntled look, and then told her "Before class, I was molested by Ruby and her girlfriend."
"Oh,...I see." The teacher said, she went ahead and sent me home, and was nice enough not to give me a detention. How would I have known that though?
Once I got home, and opened the door into the living room, I could see my dad watching the evening news, and could smell my mother cooking the usual meal for us to eat tonight.
"Oh hello honey, how was school." Father asked.
"It was OK, I guess." I said darting my eyes back and forth.
"Are you sure, did something happen at school again?"
"I said I'm fine!" I yelled at him, and then went to my room and slammed the door. My father knocked on my door gently to ask if I was OK.
"Could I have a moment to myself please?" I asked.
"Sure." Father said, and then went back to watching the evening news.
The next day at school when I arrived in class, I found a letter directed to me in my desk. I had no idea who sent the letter to me, maybe a hot guy that was a little shy to tell me to my face. I knew I had to hide it, to I quickly put it in my backpack until lunch.
As I sat at the lunch table and began to eat my lunch, I packed for myself, I took my letter I had out of my backpack. I carefully tore it open, and read the contents:
Dear Samantha,
By the time you get this letter,
you only have twenty four hours till
I'm going to kill you, say your prayers.
Sincerely,
Ruby
I looked at the letter, and then wondered who wrote it. I then proceeded to finish my lunch, keeping a close eye on my surroundings. Once I got back into class, I asked the teacher if I could talk to her privately outside the classroom, because I was scared that who ever wrote the letter would hear me.
"What's wrong Sammy, you look pale, and you're crying."
"I think Ruby sent me a death threat. See, it matches her hand writing."
"Wait what? I'll take this up with the vice principal right away."
I thought:
Hook, line, and sinker.
Its gone perfectly, Rudy is going
to be gone in no time.
When I got home, I was able to finally relax with a feeling of accomplishment. Although dinner was the same as always, because of the mood I was in, it felt fresh and new. There was nothing like the smell of Victory and Tomato Sauce.
The next morning, I found that my father watching the morning news, and Jkovo was oddly intense.
"What is going on dad, and Jkovo, why did you not drive to school yet?" I asked.
"We are going to have to move to a different neighborhood. The school you guys use to go to was blown up by the northern army. We received a relocation notice in the mail" My father said.
"I wonder if my teacher is OK."
"I hate to have to tell you this Sammy, but I think she died in the explosion. When I drove by the school around 3:00 A.M, your teachers car was oddly enough still there. If she was still there, I think she died in the explosion." Father told me. I wondered why she would still be there, she normally left right after. I frequently have a substitute because of her health problems. I reflected back to when I first had my conversations with her. There was the conversation were I first told her what was going on:
"You don't have to curse at me Sammy, you can feel safe to tell me anything. I'm your friend."
"Your only paid to be my friend." Was my final words to her, and then I ran out of the classroom.
In another conversation, I reflected back to when I told her about the letter I received from Ruby.
"What's wrong Sammy, you look pale, and you're crying."
"I think Ruby sent me a rape threat. See, it matches her hand writing."
"Wait what? I'll take this up with the vice principal right away."
I wanted to use the leader as get out of school of the heat of school bus pass, so that Ruby, and her girlfriend would no longer beat me up, throw me to the wall.
But now I wonder if I did the right thing. After all the teacher was truly asking out of concern, I realize that now.
It was the next month after I lost my teacher in the explosion. For whatever reason, it took me a while to process that she was gone from my life forever. Had I gotten away with setting up my bully Ruby to go to an alternative school? The night felt more chilly. My parents had gotten a new air conditioning unit. All the months of hot weather being no different inside and in have suddenly come to an end. Something to celebrate.
Jkovo finally figured out to stop throwing meatballs at me at dinner, and I was no longer the most mature person in the house. But I was still the only one, quiet as a mouse. Yet another comfort, perhaps. "So how was school." my mother asked. I wasn't sure what answer to give her, the war was still going on even in the north.
I played with my spaghetti with my fork. "It was fine, a little boring. I met a new friend today." I smiled a smile I had not had in along time.
"Your not dating boys are you?" mother asked, well of course she would assume that. But that was not it at all. She gave me a cross looking, telling me I should eat my food. Of which I merely stared.
"Oh nah. A new friend of me and Susie, name's Rachel." Father looked me and my brother's mother, and tilted his glasses forward. "She played a flute at lunch today." A sound of music, I had not heard in months.
I'd soon come to find out, in other circumstances that her flute was broken by her head maid at the orphanage. And that was the last sound, of tender and soft music. I said that I could buy her flute, Rachel took the pressure off. But when Susie offered, at that point she couldn't refuse.
Next week, she got a new one. "My old one was a gift from my mother." she said, as if her mother were one of the victims in the war." Then placed it between her lips, "But I can remember her with this."
Then played the flute all afternoon.
Months came and went.
It is a cold midnight hour. Always midnight, the window glass shatters into the wind. The road, mostly abandoned, sang a song of a distant time, when cares along the intersections were still busy from rush hour traffic. The ghosts of another time wander the planet. Where is mommy? Where is Daddy? Or Jkovo? I wonder where Susie and Rachel have ran off to. It's so cold Mommy, those parasite men want to feel around along my bones.
I need a new dress. Two holes that form into eyes, remind me that you forgot to sew my dress. I wonder if Susie and Rachel are in a bomb shelter together. After Susie's dad was arrested by the dream-scanners, the regular cops said she and her little brother didn't have to live with him anymore since her mother died. And Rachel, she must be playing her new flute somewhere. I have an old story book, read to me when I was small. The story of the young shadow, along seen on the wall. At times I felt like the shadow on the wall, and other times not as noticeable. I remember the last time we fought together, and it was over spaghetti. Jkovo still never grew any manors, and now in my twentieth year, I wonder where he is.
I no longer see anyone I know.
]]>She masturbated to French girls in a guillotine.
Who got it in the neck.
And the flow of the dress / in her great caress
Savored for touch / once longing for Dutch
Girls with touch / as if it were a crutch.
For her, men were simply to much.
The fish now flowing
Under the snowing
Lake,
Longed for kissing
She who was missing
Snake,
Caressing, kissing
Longing, snowing
Lake.
Her life was a life of dissolving prose, that never quite reached poetry. She longed for her personal oblivion, draped all over the page. Over all fantasy games, filled with the most vengeful of sages, who would just as soon decapitate her as made her breakfast, while camping under the ruins of long gone civilization. She walked through corridors, hoping to find some means of an exit.
But finding only dust.
What the difference between a French and a Spanish girl? One says Te Amo at her garroting, and the other j’aime vous at her guillotining. In either case, the result is the same: one dead girl in a casket at the end of the week. One severs the head completely, the other severs the head internally. One is bloodless, the other has blood all over the floor.
Lidier had no intention of becoming either one, thus mostly kept to herself for the following weeks. On her laptop, she finally figured out how to do procedural generation: instead of creating separate dungeons within a single code source, you clone the original game, change around the furniture, and tie together the dungeons with a separate program called a game state. It’s through this game state that creates for a random selection between different dungeon shapes: square dungeons, circular dungeons, and triangular dungeons. Sometimes rectangular. In all cases the navigation is determined through a navigation variable: rather than using a boolean to move the cursor.
Lidier was not quite to the level of making games that could be uploaded to different virtual reality game shops: for one thing she had almost no experience with using Graphical User Interfaces. She hated screens on program editors based on bright color schemes, preferring the traditional color of green text on black background that was closer to the original font of the early internet. These days word processors seemed to focus on white screen and black text. Yet the local glasses doctor always bugs you to not be on the computer as much, because it might burn your eyes out of your sockets.
On this night, she decided to install shoes, and see how much she could transfer her game Nihilist to this new interface. Eventually she wanted to switch to using sprites, but sprite had long sense stopped being in vogue after the turn of the nineties. She was stuck painting dots on the screen, while the rest of the gaming industry was switching to various forms of three dimensional quality, gradually becoming more and more indistinguishable from reality. But with games composed of text and numbers, there was not a danger of subject matter being to obscene to be played by even the youngest of gamers. Unless the state became such, that their desire for controlling what people read and play was not limited to the aesthetic of pure visual flavor.
Games came in various flavors: First Person Shooters, Survival Horror, Tactical Role Playing Games. Much more. Sometimes these different genres would blend till the end of time. While others stuck more closely to their original roots, not changing much sense they were first created: the only exception within classic JRPGs has mostly been Fina;l Fantasy, becoming less and less like a JRPG, and something closer to an action RPG as the decades went on. Much of this had to do with creators not being allowed to own the content which they publish, thus if something becomes a companies flagship product, the game “innovates†and strays from its original roots to the chagrin of genre purists. Even Roguelike games were not entirely immune to this form of snobbery: much of this genre was obsessed with a strictly action form of that gaming experience.
But Lidier liked puzzles, and not action.
Her life flowed like substitution notes.
It's easy to claim to be an unplugger, when your face is well known enough to be on the net. Just drop the remote, fast forward; hope that every other day will be like the previous one. Instead Lidier argues with herself every hour after the next, while making one Roguelike after the other. Dot matrix grid layout. @ man representing Indiana Jones, fighting demons worse than plantation owners. If life were a five point essay, Lidiers symphony would be one without a theme or prompt. She had once fawned over a free software evangelist, but now he acts like a televangelist. Who now spends their day bashing Julian Assange, going with American propaganda despite the US wanting to assassinate him. The free software guy now represents everything she was politically against.
Lidier's hero was only herself.
When she last opened her laptop, she had a day before finished designing the next iteration of her own variety of Roguelike game. The difference was, unlike most other games on the market, it was almost entirely geared toward singular rooms: in order to do a larger rooms, she had to use booleans to turn some rooms off and others on. This required considerably more nesting than what she was generally used to, and within each boolean, its own separate set of coordinate variables to navigate, and different drawn text files to refer to do with the index of different folders. She had been completely acquainted with referring to statistics from a file rather than having it reinitialize every day she tested the different versions of the game. The problem with initializing it each start up, it mean everything you ever earned in the game was completely erased. When you refer to the file, the game reads from that file, allowing for stat boosts and other power ups to become permanent. It was this matter of permanence that had been a larger road block to her personalized path to building virtual reality games for the past year or so.
There were several booleans: bedroom boolean, living room boolean, bathroom boolean, among other crucial switches. You wanted each of these switches to have a degree of self-containment, so that when you assigned coordinates, you didn't use the same set of them for each room. This was useful if you wanted to make each room @ man would walk through be a different size. More common in more advanced video games, where you didn't want the home state to vary as much as dungeons, such as in various commercial games on the market like Diablo. The only reason the size of room didn't change much in Rogue, was simply do to hardware limitations. The only thing Lidier wanted in her own games was not strict Procedural Generation, but only procedural generation within the narrow context of dungeon crawling outside of the digital villa.
She preferred figuring things out on her own.
Rather than browsing Hubzilla.
Housing Crises, essentially an extended form of capital punishment, without the benefit of an appointed lawyer. Groups of people being made unpersons, and dying without pennies to their name. It's not as flashy as a Guillotine, and legally not listed as a form of execution. But make no mistake, the end result as always the same. Misery riding on the back of apparent stability, hope fading nightly. Lidier thought this was only an American thing. But it was one aspect of the United States that could easily be exported to Europe, with the climb of the far right.
And it wouldn't be much of a change from the 19th century, when slaves girls would be dragged by the wrist into faux courts, and soon hung by the neck for murdering people's children, yet weeks later the children turning up alive. Very few people seem to think how easily we could get back to this point. But all it takes is one demagogue with an ax to grind. One group of people to scapegoat, and one culture to vaporize from history.
Lidier escaped this purge narrowly.
She hoped it wasn't a matter of time till she'd be asked back.
]]>The game had this method of keeping count of every civilian you murdered in cold blood, it didn't matter if they were the local nun, or a highwayman on the run; hitching a ride on the back of a bullet train, sky diving from the back of flying wing, all a matter of course. But like landing in the Indian Ocean or wandering the Sahara desert, it was the stop that got you. And sometimes the storm doesn't blow over. Lidier got used to not having many friends, though it even surprised her when some of her loyal business partners, when trying to loot during levels of armor for different on line gamers, how many of them would go onto throw her under the bus.
The alliance of European nations was not quite to the level of the United States, when it came to turning immigrants into Ice. But suffice to say, they have their way. Their way of putting all you've ever known on ice. The last troop she belonged to, wanted to explore an ancient ruins in the game: as far as in game continuity was concerned, it was a product of a lost civilization shot down by aliens. But with any kind of game play session, most of the time the story and plot was largely secondary.
The story of life was having her mother repair her stop watches, and being led into raising a cat who feared yetis, and never quite understanding why. Only that whenever she read books about cryptozoology, the cat was alway encourage her to turn the page whenever a yeti was on the sheet. But now with her mother now living in British Columbia, and her father nowhere to be found in Honduras, possibly aiding the plight of refugees, she enjoyed a certain relaxed contempt for humanity uncensored by the expectation of familial lineage, not the flow of the Mariachi or the Flamenco.
The only time she tolerated the Mariachi, was when her peers would have mock up digitized weddings using their SL avatars, among other products and services on the older second version of the net, when services were still largely centralized, including on line video streaming services milking you for every dollar you were worth just to catch up on Japanese fighting anime, among other preteen forms of entertainments.
Even on Pleroma, interaction was few and far between. Real human interaction that is, and the web still had a method of isolating you from the real world, that left her constantly feeling fatigued.
Lidier had a natural inclination toward hating fantasy, whether that was stories of Jesus, Catherine Howard, or some blend of the two. Even stories where Catherine was Jesus, and other vague tales of decapitation martyrdom. The flow of an ax blade chopping through a slender neck, the dying sensation of draining blood. She hated girls who were white saviors, almost to a fault. Taste the wounds of desire, cover them in salt. Flow to the lyrical melody of long strawberry locks, and tutor bonnet filles in their Birkenstock clogs. The flow of time moving past the the of the ax.
She finished testing a new game called Nihilist. It was similar to Rogue, Moria, Angband, and others of their ilk. The main difference was that you had to type out directions, and then press enter. There were two primary rooms, a circular room and a square room. There was a home state that was always the same. You solved ciphers instead of fighting monsters, although the point of which you'd solve any specific key state largely depended on the luck of the gamer. Lidier was the kind of girl to have the worst luck in the social world, yet seemed to never run out of it on the net. She wanted to play a game where she could actually see Catherine Howard's head fall off her body. Caressing Cat's head, she would snuggle with it as if it were her new pet cat.
On most days, she never seemed to have time playing rogue likes. She had gotten out of the habit ever since she had returned from Washington State, roughly five years ago since twenty sixteen. And now she longed for the time she could play one of the game states, with no weed eaters blowing outside. Only the noise of prostitutes in the red light district, and the smoke of cigarettes in the air just down the road from Strasbourg proper. She imagined cute girls with giant bows, sticking their necks in the chopper. Their long strawberry blond locks staring into a forever blue sky. She carried a thing of pepper spray, but wanted to purchase a taser for more troublesome men who harassed her. Her trust issues had been largely destroyed five years ago. And it was a struggle to feel like a queen again. But she wasn't the queen of Henry the 8th, or any other male monarch.
Her solace was the flow of Hacklikes, Roguelikes, and Nihilistlikes. All varieties raining down from the sky like live wire pop music. While she dreamed up beheaded French and British girls during the middle ages upwards into the French Revolution. The flow of blood dripping down the neck.
When Lidier logged into the game, she primarily focused on hanging around narrow passage ways. The reasoning was simple: you could fend off an entire army as a single person, fighting one of them at a time. But in this game called Nihilist, the focus was on solving a specialized kind of cipher: there were over two thousand possible cipher states, each one only being reciprocal to that specific key. The catch was, you as the player didn't know the key. She had, based on one success, determined that each locked had the same answer. Thus each time she put in the same answer, regardless of what the randomly jumbled letters amounted to. It worked every time.
She wondered was it was the game designer didn't try for something different, mainly finding a ciphered door that had a different pass phrase every time she encountered a new one. But this would mean having as many pass phrases as there way possible keys that could encipher them. A seemingly insurmountable programming task, that allowed for an infinite number of possible cipher texts. It was easy to guess the answer if the answer remained constantly the same, and it provided almost no challenge whatsoever, therefore the perfect balances was different lengths and amounts of pass phrases for every locked door. Then made the programming job go from being over two thousand possible pass phrases, to only a dozen or so pass phrases, gradually increasing in difficult. In a sense, the game she imagined would be a kind of code breaker's simulator.
But the current game she played, was not a simulator. It was, was repetitive lines of code.
Infinite procedurally generated dungeons that followed the same basic shape, only varying based on the shape. With her stiletto blade, and her Birkenstock clogs, she hobbled around the corridors looking for food. Longing for the day that she could escape this seemingly infinite dungeon.
She unplugged herself from the machine.
She went to get her teethed cleaned with her own toothbrush, as suppose to the one owned by the sharp dentist, with an equally sharp wit. Who, went she would visit him in her early twenties, made her want to do the splits. But now, for him and nobody else, she felt more than at any other point, that she could give two shits. He had punctured the wrong gums, scratched the wrong tooth. And now, after the surgery, she had to pay for out of her own pocket, she largely avoided tooth doctors.
She got out herself a joint.
And became a fire breathing dragon, in lines of endless binary. Jacked in on a constant endless hallucination, she longed for day when she would not wake up from her sleep. She remembered when she used to read Cyberpunk novels, but largely lost her interest. She now preferred literary fiction, but seldom had time to read. The apartment she lived in provided almost not opportunity for lack of distraction, she had even when in early grade school where she had to do fractions.
Noise was her constant detraction.
Her constant bane.
]]>When she was in her office, she would have to move different wires out of her way. For whatever reason manufactures did not managed to make the decision to make everything wireless, so my only options were to write about my life story away from the computer. She had already cut out of her life one website, that had the tendency to insert commentary while she was writing, rather than after the entire manuscript was complete. She had gotten into the routine where she slept on the couch to get the level of silence in her surroundings that she could personally feel comfortable with. But this had not always been the case, and that's why she generally arranged her deck and dice on her own terms. Not the terms of anyone else.
She made for her life specific terms, but generally people tended to ignore them. People like to make determinations such as "These are my boundaries, and you must obey them." But the way that they behave suggests that they don't have to obey others boundaries, only their own. You see it in current day politicians, but it's not a phenomenon that is unique to politicians. For one thing, even politicians sometimes feel like they have to obey others boundaries, if they're receiving a pay check from them. But when it comes to every day people, including if not especially those at art studios, they tend to ask you personal questions with impunity.
Whether it's inquiring about why it is you write about the things you do, and generally she didn't mind, except she preferred to ask them about them, since that's what she was there for. She indulged in other ventures elsewhere, whether that's individual paintings she painted, or in looking for subjects who wear Birkenstock clogs with thick wool socks, walking around at the local grocery store.
This was her story about life.
About everything, yet nothing.
When your growing up with a certain television program, you get used to having certain mysteries that never really get answered. Such as the mother of either of the main characters; for fighting television shows, this was almost to an epidemic scale, especially if they were an animation that came out of Japan. Thus for decades she gradually lost interest in that genre of animation, eventually preferring to play Japanese Role Playing Games rather than having to make sense of the plot as it was made available in serialized formats. She developed her own style of game play that was distinct from standard class building, preferring to get her abilities through grinding for many hours at a time. After a point she preferred grinding rather than the plot itself.
As a writer, she preferred other things that were more natural to her own variation of sexual fetish, something that the old fighting games and TV shows never managed to achieve, except for very brief kinks when she had an interest in girls with monkey tails. She also liked werewolf girls, but the only consistent interest she maintained beyond her teenage years, was her interest in vampires. She had had on line friends that made a big thing about what the definition of being Goth was, despite the fact that even they never seemed to pay attention to the fact that Gothic was a form of architecture, and also a genre of literary fiction for many decades beyond the Punk offshoot. Lidier was a classical goth, and not one of the Punk variety you say on the dance floor. This meant that, generally, despite the superficial quality of liking to where all black, she had nothing else in common with them. But she had a special interest that would freak out even the most hardcore of Goth Punks, a very literal sexual attraction to blood that carried her all the way through life. For Lidier, she longed for the girl decapitated on the guillotine blade.
But her interest was not out of spite, she simply wanted someone to kiss goodnight, with her soft yet sharp tongue. While reading Baudelaire, and drinking hot chocolate. She liked girls whose skin tone was that of the lightest of milk chocolate. And hair the darkest of dark chocolate rabbits. This interest, which for all she knew would never go away, except through death, were something that made her avoid dating until recently. Her recent move to the country she lived in now, was a matter of luck.
She carried a small hockey puck.
But it wasn't for playing with sticks.
Lidier, with rose in her hair and her skin the shade of burnt sweet potato, had blades in the pouch on her shin. Her stiletto blade in her leg pouch. She felt th winter sun lit under the blue skies, warming her face as she a leaf cut in two. The curls in the hair flowed like dark rose petals, long flowing Locks flowing in window. The curls in the hair against the winter sun lit under the blue skies.
She cuts another leaf in two.
In this specialized rogue like session, she had previously opted to wield a scythe, but had grown a preference for shorter bladed implements. She would navigate along the walls, careful to only walk through narrow corridors rather than through the wide open areas of the map: despite the areas being previously programmed to have a certain degree of randomness, there was some part of the gaming experience she felt seemed familiar. A certain part of that continued to be persistent regardless of the session she played. It seemed as if every time she entered a shop, the shop keepers would never speak a word to her. If it were a normal game, she would have attributed this to simply being bad AI.
Gone were the days when games were done in two dimensional sprites, gone were days when pixelized mothers spoke in vague lullabies to their pixelized les enfants. It was the era of virtual permanent death on the screen. Gone were the days when one could just barely scrape by with constant grinding and stat increases. When the goblins, giant cockroaches, and other vile things lurched at her, she bled real blood. For the game had been programmed with a different level of sensory perception. During the nineties, games were limited purely to the sensory details provided by graphics, and before this what your mind could imagine within the flow of chicken scratched notes.
Lidier remembered how her friends in special ed had poor hand writing skills, but this never stopped them from attempted to jot down whatever they could on the bits and pieces of paper they could find. This was before there was a thing called save points, among other tools of that trade. She remembered all the trouble it took, just to get some of them to even write anything down. Yet now she no longer scrawls notes, except for the notes she wanted to scrawl. Instead her hands went into other places, not all of which would aggravate the mind of sexual deviants whose minds were in the gutter.
She had found this game on an on line message board, a game that was separate from the others. The others were shelved together into a single thread, but this was had a thread devoted to this one individually, do to the fact that it was one of the few currently available that went beyond the normal sensory experience of normal rogue like sessions. Her blood, bled out from a cut by giant cockroach, dried it quickly enough on its own, but she had a spare bandage she found in a first aid kit. She pilfered the first aid kit from another dead traveler. Unlike in other games, where monsters simply dropped items. The game designer had a particular interest in making players do the hard work: selling the guts of the monsters, trading it for ZCash on the cheap.
In general things sold for much cheaper than they used to, back when games with procedurally generated dungeons and permanent death were still a relatively new thing on the market. But since the crash of twenty seven, prices jacked way high when Europe still traded in the dollar with the United States, yet now she traded in the Euro. And for how long this would last she was not even sure of this. Marine La Pen had won election after they had experimented with Macron for a while, whose popularity continued to sink after bringing up the possibility of a European Armed Service. It was very different from le Etats-Unis, that was for sure. It was only a matter of time before she would find out just how much.
She masturbated to girls in wooden shoes. Was a fine of different French painters, and when she would not plug her head in cardboard, would take much of her day wanking Daniel King's work. Among other painters of the period. The giant rats and cock roaches, though still not particularly appealing, did not make her completely lose her appetite for fetish subject matter.
The rain outside goes pitter patter.
Lidier disliked music from the nineteen eighties and nineteen nineties, because of a very definitive kind of sound quality. It wasn't specific to any particular band, and whether they were American or French bands never made much of a difference. The difference, if there was any, was regarding how the nineteen eighties seem to constantly feature synthesizers rather than actual professional instruments.
There were older bands that she liked, mainly ones that sounded vaguely folksy, but had enough decency to not be as folksy as possible. But with the music of synthesizers, it was entirely the flow of out of tuned music notes, the tune of songs that would make most bands sink. Not float, not tread water. Sink below the waves of distant ambiance, an ocean of acid and lye.
She downed the music with a slice of cherry pie for better songs, and a big tablespoon of salt for the worst. Ladies were bitches, men were bratwurst. And other kinds of sausage that would upset vegans. Unlike nineteen eighties music, she could never quite get rid of vegans, even among those nicer in the crowd. She liked chicken and apple sausage, and cooked it with Cajun seasoning: cayenne pepper, garlic powder, chili powder, among other spices in differing proportions. She stuffed her face fool of sausage, and other meat products. All to the tune of eighties Franco pop, with a side of Alsatian egg noodles and misplaced tomato sauce, under some vague pretension that her mother never could understand the appeal of the Alfredo paste.
She looked like a squirrel.
Her face stuffed full of nuts.
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