《A Man》 Additional Comments This first chapter will be dedicated to various ideas, comment, or problems with the story. Also anything that I want to mention here will be included into here. I will say that this story does have a plot of sorts. The beginning is... well, there, at least it should be posted soon. The ending is determined, but the story is by far not finished. I will post all of the chapters that I currently have written, and anything that I add will be done later, obviously.The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation. This story is written in Google Docs and is copy and pasted here. Prologue Darkness surrounds me, covering me as if it were a blanket on a cold night. Silence caresses my face, like a pillow on a bed. I feel neither cold, nor hot. I do not feel hungry, or thirsty. This has been my environment for a long time. So long I don¡¯t even know how long. I long stopped counting the seconds, the minutes, the hours I started here. What was the number I stopped at? What it a billion? No¡­ Was it a trillion? I feel that I was closer, but that wasn¡¯t it. I don¡¯t know, but why should I care. An even longer time has elapsed. Or was it a second? Time marches forward leaving me to wonder. Nothing to break the ever darkness, or the ever silence. Normal people would have gone crazy¡­ No, any person would have become mentally insane with this constant environment. Luckily I was already insane long before I was imprisoned here. Or was it unluckily¡­ Why does it matter to me? Another time had passed¡­ I think? I started to think about why I was in here. Was it for murder? Was it for the destruction I had caused? Was it the destruction I could have caused? Did I put myself in here? Well it doesn¡¯t matter if I think about it I am in here and that is what matters. Had time passed? I feel sorrow. Why am I feeling sad? When was the last time I had emotions? If I could feel sadness then could I feel other emotions? Am I allowed to feel emotions? No, wait... I was always feeling sad¡­ It never left me. I have had it since I had entered this area. No, I have had it since long before I came here. What was I doing?The author''s content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. Sleep? No I have never slept since I have been in here¡­ I think? It gets hard to distinguish between dream and reality when all you see is darkness, all you hear is silence. There is a reason why I can¡¯t dream¡­ Wait, that¡¯s not right¡­ I can sleep but I choose not to¡­ Why was that again? Is it related to my feelings? Wait... I also feel something else¡­ What is it called again? Despair? No that can¡¯t be right, I have always felt sad¡­ So what was it? Happiness? No, I cannot remember when I had last felt that. Anger? What is there to be angry about? Anger is not what I am feeling. No I recognize this feeling, I have had it since that incident. It''s something that no human being, if I can still be called that, wants to feel. This feeling¡­ This emotion¡­ Is emptiness¡­ ¡°I feel empty¡­¡± I said after a long time, breaking the ever silence that surrounded my entire being. Chapter 1: I Felt Happy My family. Oh my lovely family. I loved them dearly. My cute little daughter, adopted from China, and when she was younger couldn¡¯t speak a single word of English. My wife, the woman who I had found love with on one fateful night due to my little child bringing us together. My daughter, Lillian was her name, was the very thing that kept me alive, the reason why I didn¡¯t fall into despair the years I had been with her. I remembered the day I got her. I entered the orphanage that held custody over Lily, she was 3 years old at that point. When I saw her adorable eyes, her baby face, I knew I wanted to bring her into my family. At that time I was living by myself, no wife, no girlfriend. The entire reason I adopted was because I was worried I couldn¡¯t have a family. Someone that I could raise and give my wealth to. I was working as a successful AI developer for a famous computer company, the name escapes my mind at the moment. Living a modest life, I grew bored of the daily routines of going to work and coming home to find it empty. I couldn¡¯t find a person to love, although it''s not like I didn¡¯t try. I have been with many women, some just wanted the wealth, others having little to nothing in common, so it became hard to marry someone who I couldn¡¯t love. So I decided to get a child by adopting. Actually my friends at my work ended up suggesting adoption. Initially I was going to adopt a boy, as adopting a girl seemed a bit inappropriate, but when I saw Lily that idea flew out the window faster than a bird being set free of a cage. She stole my heart with the look that she gave me. With the legal papers being dealt with, eventually I was finally able to bring Lily to my house, one that I built long ago. With the wealth I had accrued I bought a piece of land and had my house constructed from the ground up. Although it was large, enough to fit a regular family, to me, by myself, felt extremely lonely.Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings. When Lily first got to my house she couldn¡¯t speak a word of english and as a result we had a hard time communicating, not to mention that I am a guy, and she a girl. I thought this might have been a problem so I asked one of my friends who knew Chinese, and which happed to be female, if they could come over every so often to help me take care of her. My friend would deal with the various translation problems as well as the girly stuff I couldn''t do as a I am a man. Since she was not married she lived with me as a guest. Eventually we got married after falling in love. My wife was one of my coworkers who I knew at the company. We didn¡¯t really think each other as romance partners until one fateful night at my house. I remember that night like it was yesterday. We had just put Lily to bed and we decided to have a bit to drink. We drank because that was the same day that was the anniversary of when I got Lily, which had happened a year before. Let me just say that various things ensued, and I felt extremely glad that I had the great thought of making the rooms a bit more soundproof, and my friend ended up becoming my girlfriend, and after a few more years of living together, she became my wife. My wife¡¯s name was Emily. During the wedding her family was the only one who came. My family didn¡¯t come not because they didn¡¯t want to, but it was because I didn¡¯t have any. Like Lily, I was an orphan ever since I could remember, but I never became adopted. When I turned 18 the orphanage basically kicked me out with nothing. Anyway the wedding was beautiful, and I could remember the face of Lily as she was coming down the aisle with flowers. Her face smiling from ear to ear as she trailed behind my lovely wife throwing flowers. It was one of the many happy days I had and I had to thank Lily for bringing it all together. But like all good things it came to an end and it was a day I truly never wanted to remember. Chapter 2: I Felt Despair Chapter 2: I Felt Despair The day started like any other. My wife and I taking Lily for a small hike that we do every so often to get away from the secluded house. We were happy because the day before I learned that Emily was pregnant. My elation couldn¡¯t be described as I was in pure bliss. We were walking near a cliff to look at the beautiful scenery there. All of a sudden an earthquake had shook and the cliff started to crumble. Lily was a little too close to the edge and almost fell, but I ran forward and pulled her back, resulting in me falling instead of her. The last thing I said to my wife before I fell was ¡°I love you¡± before I fell. Although I knew I was going to die, I felt happy knowing that my two lovely girls will live, I decided to look back, so that when I die, I didn¡¯t know what happened. But instead of that I saw the part of the cliff that my family was standing on collapsed. That was the last thing I saw before my entire world snapped into darkness. I awoke to find that I was still alive, I have no idea how I survived the disaster, but I didn¡¯t worry about that as I was more worried about my family. In the entire destruction I looked around hoping I wouldn¡¯t see any corpse. I did. My knees crumpled as I saw the lifeless body of my wife clutching the equally lifeless body of my daughter. I crawled through the rubbled to my dead family, shock completely plastered on my face. Everything happened so fast that I couldn¡¯t think straight. I was finally at my wife¡¯s corpse. The reason I knew it was a corpse was because when I made it there I held them and felt the ever coldness of a dead body. I sat there in shock, my family in my arms. After who knows how long, I got up and carried the body of my wife and child back to the road. Some hikers saw me and called the local authorities. After that everything felt like a blur. The hospital trip, the police interrogation, the funeral. Days passed and I felt empty. I couldn¡¯t take it anymore. I purchased a gun, I held it to my head and shot myself.If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it. I awoke again on the ground, blood splatter all over the floor. Fear started to come over me. I looked in the mirror to find a grotesque head staring right back at me. On the side where the bullet entered was a small hole, on the other side, a large explosion of brain matter and bone. I did not and I could nto die. Believe me I tried. The sadness, the despair finally kicked in and water from my eyes came down as if it were a dam trying to stop a raging river. I stood in my house, alone, with no one but my own thoughts. The only sound coming from my mouth. The wails of grief and sorrow echoing throughout the hallways of my empty house. I tried suffocation, to learn I didn¡¯t need oxygen to live, I just felt uncomfortable. I tried starving, to learn that I didn¡¯t need to eat, at most I had no energy. I tried dehydration, to learn I didn¡¯t need to drink water, only to learn that I would only have dry throat, mouth, and my eyes would sting a bit. I tried to not sleep, to learn I didn¡¯t need sleep, but felt tired everyday. I tried over eating, to learn I had an endless stomach. At one point I tried to leap off a skyscraper, landing on the ground in a bloody mess. All that did me was learn that I can still reform. I awoke to see a crowd form around me, when they saw me they thought I was a monster. A nearby officer even pointed his gun at me. I went closer to him and he unloaded his entire clip into my body, each bullet hitting a vital organ. From that I learned I didn¡¯t need a heart, brain, or really my body itself. Every wound I had ended up healing at an astonishing rate. This didn¡¯t deter me in the slightest. I continued to try and kill myself. I tried everything I could think of, but everything didn¡¯t work. Even the deadliest poison known to humans couldn¡¯t kill me. I was imprisoned, released, tortured, and examined by various doctors and scientists, but they were no help. Despair once again assaulted my body, my wails of grief eliciting some sort of reaction within me. The entire area around me became cold, unbearably cold. So cold that I was in a sub zero environment. Although this environment didn¡¯t affect me in the slightest. The country¡¯s army came and tried to kill me, I welcomed it of course, but all that occurred was the complete obliteration of that army. After a time my grief subsided, taking the cold with it. All that was left was emptiness. I didn¡¯t know what happened next, but I didn¡¯t really care anyway. All I know was that when my consciousness returned I was in this dark area, but I couldn¡¯t care anymore. Chapter 3: I Feel Confused I am still in this expansive darkness, however I noticed something that wasn¡¯t there before. I could hear noises. Noises? When was the last time I heard noises¡­ It doesn¡¯t matter. The noises started to get louder and louder. A hole could be seen, and muffled voices could be heard through this hole. Light escaped through the hole allowing me to see what I was imprisoned in. I look to be in a small cavern, large enough to fit about twenty people, at least if these twenty people were tightly packed amongst one another. The light from the entrance lit up the cave, albeit enough to distinguish some general feature of the cave. There seemed to be the reflections of ice in this cave. Was I in an ice cavern? The hole eventually started to enlargen, more and more voices could be heard through it, although I couldn¡¯t understand any of it. Occasionally I saw the heads of a few men pop up looking into the cave. The hole is now large enough for a man to enter through. A man cautiously stepped through the hole made of ice. Due to the darkness I couldn¡¯t see his features very well. Of the briefest of glimpses I was just able to determine his gender. Not that it mattered. As he entered, I noticed that the man had some cold weapons on him. To be more exact this man had a dagger at his waist and a sword drawn. He couldn¡¯t see me in the dark, he said something that I could here. ¡°Sior, so eok like oi uso oiuu hur ie id tw.¡± Said the man in an unknown language that I couldn¡¯t understand. What language is that? Another man appeared at the ice hole, this time bringing a torch. Why a torch? Couldn¡¯t they just use a flashlight? With a source of light, one could see the entirety of the cavern. How did I get in here? The two men finally noticed me and pointed their weapons toward me. ¡°Sior, ei sko li ohhy udoiske li ekit?¡± Said the man who entered first. Now that I could see him, he looked a bit androgynous. I wonder how I thought of him as a man initially? This person looked to have young features, along with a somewhat long blonde hair that reached down to the midsection of his torso. The other man that had entered with a torch is a muscular man with a thick red beard, his height only reaching the other man¡¯s waist, maybe just a bit taller than that. ¡°Oiy eyodu disl ioke diohsk?¡± Said the redheaded one. A small pause ensued. Was he talking to me? ¡°Uiey hsyou jlsuidby sholuld!¡± Said the redheaded one again, seeming to try and get the attention of someone else rather than talk to me. Although he never took his eyes off me. After some minutes, or was it a few seconds, some other men appeared. I didn¡¯t count because I didn¡¯t, or couldn¡¯t, care about the number. They all surrounded me and took out their weapons. With this many people there is a larger amount of variety among weapons. Some held daggers, some bows, some great swords, others maces, and other weapons. They all had a tired and weary look, but each person was aware and capable if I had made any sudden movements. Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences. I let them do what they wanted. Afterall why should I care, they don¡¯t have a reason to attack, and if they do, they don¡¯t have the means to kill me, and if they could, I would welcome death with open arms. I stood there¡­ no¡­ I wasn¡¯t standing. I just realized that I am floating a little bit above the ground. I have no idea how I am doing this. As I realized that I was floating, I started to descend, as if my realization stopped whatever powered my floating. When I reached the ground, the men, who were cautious, started to attack me out of the blue. Each weapon pierced my body, riddling me in holes. Two arrows in the back of the head, one in the chest, another in the leg. Three blades entered my body through my back, another two pierced the front. Some maces and other blunt weapons smashed and crushed my skull, and my two legs. A few more cuts around my body also appeared due to the other weapons. As the weapons pierced my body, I didn¡¯t feel pain. I haven¡¯t felt pain since the day I lost my family. A single tear dropped from my face. Although my head was crushed, one of my eyes were able to heal quickly. I could see the surprise on every man¡¯s face. They probably thought I was dead, and were surprised how easy it was. They each removed their blades and the like, the arrows still embedded in my body. I just laid there bleeding and dying¡­ No I don¡¯t die¡­ I just laid there recovering. A few left the room to heal the small injuries they received from friendly fire. Others stayed in the room, some looking around to find anything interesting, others still looking at me, wary for any movement on my part. None of the men noticed that my wounds were healing, albeit slowly, as the room was still a bit dark and there was no one with a torch close enough to witness my healing. Eventually all of the men left the room, not finding whatever they were looking for. I heard a small explosion, and the entrance to the cavern collapsed, leaving me in darkness once more. I got up after all of the wounds had healed. My feet moving me to the former entrance to the cavern. Something within me didn¡¯t feel right. I blinked and suddenly the entrance opened up as if it were an illusion. I stepped through the entrance to see a large world of ice and snow encompassing the landscape. I could see smoke rising in the distance. I got out of the cavern that used to be my home and walked toward the smoke. Although it was freezing and I am naked, I felt no cold, and I didn¡¯t feel numb to any of the wind that raged near me. It just felt like a windy day. As I got near the wind I notice that the wind was carrying the voices of joyous laughter. I continued on my trek towards the source of the smoke and noise. The nearer I go the louder the voices. However once I got close enough to start making the actual distinction of voices, the noise went silent. I continued to walk on. Next thing I know a group of men, looking similar to the previous group, surrounded me, their hostility more vibrant and tangible than the previous time. They whispered among themselves. The wind blocking out their voices. One stepped up and stabbed me with no warning though the head. I stood there motionless, no inkling of pain coming from my mouth. The man removed the weapon that impaled my head and saw my head healing. All of the men were curious as to what I am, at least I think so thanks to all of their expressions. Another one stabbed me, still eliciting neither pain, nor reaction. Eventually the wound healed. I noticed some of the men shiver, although I don¡¯t know if it''s due to the cold or the wound. ¡°Nirye, so euid hysio eosy lsoeu oguys.¡± Said one of the men, in their unknown language. I saw one of the men run from the group back into their camp. After a minute or so that man came back with a collar of some sort. Similar to what a person might find on a pet. ¡°Nirye, osuye iygyso hye ouis iyseo utisydot.¡± Said the previous man. The man with the collar came up to me and timidly put the collar around my neck, no response was still elicited from me. ¡°Alright you blokes, he is under the slave collar, it''s time to get a move on.¡± Said the previous man, now I was able to understand him. Wait? Slave collar? What are they talking about? Chapter 4: I Feel Curious ¡°What are standing there for? Follow me.¡± Said the red haired man. I followed the man, I don¡¯t really care about anything, but I am feeling curious about my surroundings. ¡°Now you understand me!¡± The red haired man said. ¡°My name is Sior, but you will call me sir, or master. Do you understand?¡± I nodded. ¡°Good, now that we have that in order, what is your name?¡± I did not respond. ¡°What do you have a name or not? I order you to reveal your name!¡± Sior said. I felt something constricting my neck. Since I do not need oxygen, I have no problems. ¡°Does the slave collar not work, or does this guy not know his name?¡± Sior said to himself lightly. ¡°Whatever! Can you at least speak?¡± I did not respond. It wasn¡¯t that I didn¡¯t want to, but the collar is still constricting my neck, and so I am having trouble speaking due to lack of oxygen. ¡°Seems you can¡¯t speak. Whatever, we will just have you do some heavy lifting, and then sell you off to some scientist.¡± Sior said. During our conversation, I noticed my surrounding. The first thing I noticed that There are six large tents, all in a circle pointing to the center where there is a campfire. There are chairs around the campfire, and it seemed after meeting me, these men had returned to their boisterous moods. Now, however, I can understand them.If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it. ¡°Man I can¡¯t wait to leave this cold hell hole. My balls feel like they will freeze off.¡± Said one man. ¡°Ha, just be glad you have some warm clothing on.¡± Said another man looking at me while sneering. ¡°Look at ¡®im you can see his junk and everything. Does he not feel cold.¡± ¡°What are you suddenly into men?¡± The others around the campfire laughed. Their conversations continued, but I didn¡¯t really care for the contents. I did notice that there are about eight men who are having fun around the campfire. I did not see the androgynous man from before though. Sior lead me into one of the large tents, the room smells terrible due to the animals that live here. ¡°You will be taking care of the tasks set by this man.¡± Said Sior pointing to another man. I noticed that this man was the timid man from before who had put the collar on me. After saying this, Sior left. ¡°Welp, it''s just you and me now.¡± Said this man. ¡°The name is Dirk.¡± Then the man named Dirk stuck his hand out. ¡°Nice to meet you.¡± I did not move a muscle. Dirk awkwardly takes his hand back. ¡°Anyway, I am a slave, like Sir Sior had said and there is also Duncan who is the other slave.¡± Dirk said in a less friendly tone. ¡°You will be in charge of taking care of the horse crap and moving it away from the campsite. This job is dangerous as you have to move quite far so that the others don¡¯t smell it, and you could get attacked by monsters at anytime. But that does not matter to you oh friend who cannot be killed by weapons.¡± We both hear a disgusting noise that is accompanied by a terrible smell. ¡°It seems like you have your first job.¡± With that Dirk left. I started to get to work, not caring for the smell or anything.