ã€ŠQQQQã€‹


 Chapter 1 - I Like The Light For Me

    You have a purpose. Maybe you¡¯ll be the inventor of flying cars, you¡¯ll develop the world¡¯s best VR game, or even just make a very nice pattern of curtains.

    Then you¡¯ll die.

    Not immediately, of course. The world is cruel, but not that efficient. You¡¯ll get to have your ¡°grace period¡±.

    That¡¯s after you¡¯re of no more use to the world, but before you¡¯ve died. You had a purpose, you fulfilled it, and now you¡¯re done. You have no more reason to be here any longer, but you won¡¯t make any particular trouble, either. So, the world takes its time. Killing someone isn¡¯t easy, but the cosmos will find its way to you eventually. It¡¯ll nudge you just a little too close to the edge of a cliff, or convince you that looking both ways before crossing a road isn¡¯t necessary.

    The universe will always find a way.

    ...The universe will usually find a way.

    This is a story about when it didn¡¯t.

    <hr>

    I feel numb. Cozy in bed, but still numb¡ªemotionally. I was thinking, but not my own thoughts. Someone else was sending me their thoughts and making me think them. I had no say in the matter; someone else¡¯s experiences were being beamed directly into my brain. She was using magical self-referential geometric parasites of squiggles and strange loops. The parasites are entirely abstract, only having fleeting traces of physical existence. (Usually etched or drawn into stone, paper, or most recently; light itself.) They hold no meaning individually, but when combined they¡¯re beings of limitless power. Primarily, they allow your brain access to foreign thoughts, as if you had just thunk¡¯d them yourself. That¡¯s how they get used. Almost like their ¡°job¡±. But they are alive and dynamic, not only conveying the programmed thoughts they were intended to. They also live lives of their own, looping about one-another, recursing themselves and casting new and exotic existence into form. Large clusters of them are more potent with biological energy than the entire Cambrian Explosion, each one its own Garden of Eden for all kinds of strange life. Don¡¯t be naive and assume that life requires physical material in which it needs to be lived. I assure you, just as I will soon experience, that is a dangerous assumption to make.

    Though, it¡¯s time to come clean. It¡¯s not telepathy, technology, or even occult in nature. Sorry for being intentionally misleading. I¡¯ve just been talking about letters and words. My friend was sending me a text file. Feeling let down? Don¡¯t be. Nothing I said was a lie, not in the slightest. Words are alive, and very magical in nature. If you examine carefully, you¡¯d already realize that. In fact, I just infiltrated your mind with many of them just now. All that text about what words are and what they do, swirling around in the back of your mind like the moments before the big bang. And they¡¯re words about words! Remember how I said they¡¯re self-referential, recursive? That¡¯s extremely important too, that recursion will nearly cost me my life. But not yet. The only words I have to worry about now are those that my friend was sending me. And regardless of how these thoughts arrived, and whoever was currently thinking them, these were her thoughts.

    And her thoughts were so sickening, so disturbing, that I was forced by my stomach to take a break unless I preferred dinner on the floor. The wall of text manically darted between assertive theories of individuals and unbelievably cruel crimes, how society can be crumbled to dust at any moment, and excruciating details of horrific underworld conspiracies. It would make even the most seasoned horror authors question when they had lost their touch.

    No sin or moral crime was left forgotten: they all had their place in the proposed schematics of our past, present, and future lives. It seemed that the author may have invented new strains of soul-draining filth when none of life¡¯s abundant problems were as morbid as the things she could imagine. There wasn¡¯t enough evidence to call her rabid theorizing ¡°true¡± per se, but there was enough to make anyone unfortunate enough to read it sleep with their lights on for weeks to come. Illuminating as it might be, one can only read so much about child-soldier organ-farming prostitution-rings before wanting to scrub their brains out with soap. It was at this point, approximately 40% through the Word document, that I chose to prioritize my own well-being and stop reading.

    My fingers slid over the pleasantly smooth surface of my smartphone as I struggled to formulate even a half-assed response.

    ¡°Wow, heavy stuff.¡±

    ¡°You say that every time. How about some actual criticism?¡±

    Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings.

    This conversational pattern never ended well, I thought. What can you say about something like this? I don¡¯t think she really cares what I have to say about it anyways. But whatever, I¡¯m good at bullshitting meaningless words.

    ¡°Are you sure that the North Atlantic garbage patch is really the breeding grounds for human chimerae? Don¡¯t you think the possibility of infection is too high for them to survive with open mutation sores?¡±

    "Mina, that doesn''t make sense. Chimeras thrive on foreign microbes and strains of rapidly-mutating DNA so that they can evolve to..."

    I scrolled past the new wall of text to the bottom of the message.

    "...uniting the hivemind of genocidal tulpas within those chosen by the US military to form The Family of Reapers. Good try, though!"

    God, I hate her so much. Let¡¯s change the topic to something a little more palatable.

    "Did you ever play that Super Mario World romhack I sent you?"

    "I was going to yesterday, but I got distracted writing a LitRPG Hamtaro fanfiction in the style of James Joyce and Testuya Nomura."

    Okay, maybe I like her a little. We continued to talk about obscure trivia that the other doesn''t care about (from our favorite media that the other hasn''t seen) deep into the night. She¡¯s kind of fun when she¡¯s not busy with¡­ her hobbies. Eventually, I decided to give my thumbs a break from tapping and relax in the tub before bed.

    After meandering to my restroom, I meticulously cleaned every surface with heavy-duty cleaners until it was completely spotless. I''m not a germaphobe, but I can''t accept a place as sacred as this to be unsightly.

    I dropped a mass-manufactured holy sacrament into the water (a bath bomb). As lavender, both color and scent, filled my makeshift baptism pool I stared at my reflection inside. I''ve heard that scrying can do wonders for one''s spiritual journey. I don¡¯t really have one of those, though.

    My hair seems to have grown longer over the spring, and my cheeks looked even more like a chipmunk¡¯s than usual from this angle. I gazed past my own unsteady reflection to check if there were celestial figures floating behind me this time, but for better or worse I was alone.

    Rose was hardcore ever since I met her. She was completely immune to any kind of shock or surprise. She was an old soul who has seen all forms of horror before. Her only chance at intrigue was putting them together in novel ways. That''s what she told me, at least. Sometimes I think the only thing she¡¯s scared of is herself. Then I''ll see her skip merrily down the road, short cherry hair ruffling in the breeze, and greet everyone she sees with a doofy smile. Then I change my mind. She really isn¡¯t afraid of anything.

    She''s an English major who just started work on her master''s degree. A professor once deemed her work an "infohazard", and commanded her to be careful. He said that she needed to carefully think twice before infecting others with her work. I thought this was simply literary dramatics, but after a little research, I agree with him. Infohazards are formally described as any piece of information that can cause a major shift in the personality and thought processes of someone who reads it. My favorite example is the G?del Incompleteness Theorem. It¡¯s a proof that there are inconsistencies within any formally defined system. That was a big deal, because it was in a time when everyone was trying to formalize everything. Imagine that, dedicating your entire life to a task and then some European guy proves that you were fundamentally incorrect before you even started. G?del himself died shortly after he discovered it, even. He had a purpose, and he fulfilled it. Sound familiar to previous topics? But I digress.

    Do I think Rose is going to hurt anyone? Probably not. Maybe. I guess... I could see it happening. I want to call her well-intentioned, but that''s also not really true. I don''t think she''s out to get anyone. I don''t think she''s trying to help anyone, either. Writing all this disturbing filth just might be her fucked-up way of having fun with her life. If she can''t stop the pain of living in a wicked world, she¡¯ll revel in it. That could be her purpose. I just hope she doesn''t do anything to make the world worse.

    After the water in my tub lost its heat, and my splashing hid from me foreboding noises downstairs that I really needed to hear, I decided I would lumber back to my bed. Maybe I could just sleep here, but I¡¯m not enough of a badass to try. After putting on my pajamas and brushing my teeth, I stumbled through the dark hallway and collapsed face-first into my bed. I sleep with a total of seven sheets and blankets on top of me. I¡¯ve never had to justify it to anyone. Mainly because no one¡¯s ever examined my bed close enough to notice. I like comfort. I like being warm. I wrap myself into a cute little burrito so I can feel the plush pressure from every direction. The first thing I do every morning is to unravel my nightly cocoon back into its original, flat state. This morning I must have been in a rush because my sheets were still a total mess. I threw them all onto the floor and began unraveling, huffing and puffing at my past self¡¯s arrogance. Why should I have to be the one to do this, and not her? Was I really in such a rush this morning, anyways? I don¡¯t remember doing anything important. I felt my hand pull a clump of hair out of the blankets.

    I turned the light on. I expected to see my own hair, but no.

    This was someone else¡¯s hair.

    Rose

 Chapter 2 - I Wont Pick Up Hystering

    It was a light grey color, and short. Very soft, too. This hair that I¡¯m holding. The hair that came out of my bed, but isn¡¯t mine. I thought no one sleeps in this bed but me. Maybe I took that for granted?

    I¡¯m probably being dramatic. This isn¡¯t hair, it¡¯s fur. I took a quick sniff expecting to smell nothing, and smelled nothing anyways. I feverishly glanced around my bedroom, trying to spot the hypothetical home-invader wolf that shed its fur in my bed.

    Good news: no signs of wolf presence. Bad news: pretty sure I heard footsteps downstairs. I stop everything I¡¯m doing to listen attentively. Eventually there¡¯s another tap of a foot on the hard floor downstairs. Then a cabinet opens. Shit. Let me send Rose a quick text first.

    ¡°If I die tonight you can have whatever stuff of mine you want, as long as you delete any sketchy files from my PC. XOXO¡±

    I tuck my pajama shirt into my pajama pants for added dexterity and made my way towards the stairs. I slowly crept down with my weight on the handrail like I used to when spying on Christmas presents early. This time, instead of the glow of a Christmas tree lit with ornaments, I saw a mysterious white glow from the kitchen. My... refrigerator is open?

    On the floor, there was a grey kitten sleeping in front of the open fridge door. It was beautiful, like a painting in a museum. The sight almost alleviated all my previous concerns, at least, until I saw the second figure.

    It was Bunny.

    Not a bunny, but ¡°Bunny¡±. My friend. She¡¯s short and has long baby-blue hair, dimly glowing in the reflection of my open fridge door. She¡¯s wearing the same green camo jacket she always does. It looks like she¡¯s eating saltine crackers. Wait, were those in my fridge? I could ask her what she¡¯s doing here, but honestly, I know she¡¯s not going to tell me. She¡¯s just like this. ¡°Like this¡± is a frustratingly vague descriptor, I know, but she¡¯s a frustratingly vague person. Getting her to talk about anything at all is difficult. She¡¯s not going to tell me why she¡¯s in my house at 1 AM, but there is something I she probably will tell me:

    ¡°Bunny, how did you get inside my house?¡±

    She looked at me not like a deer in headlights, but rather with the look of someone seeing a roommate they thought already went to bed.

    If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

    ¡°Your spare key was under the welcome mat¡± she said in a completely flat and monotone voice. Yeah, okay, I know putting my key there is obvious, but I always hoped potential criminals would find it a bit too easy and run away. Even with such a foolproof plan, mind games don¡¯t work on her.

    ¡°I ate some of your crackers,¡± she said, while eating my crackers.

    I almost forgot about my second guest until I felt its fuzzy little body cuddle up around my ankle and begin to purr. I closed the fridge and turned on the light above the sink, doing my best not to disturb it too much.

    ¡°Bunny, Is this your cat? It¡¯s really cute.¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s your cat. I found him outside and came here to return him to you.¡±

    What? No. I don¡¯t have a cat. I¡¯ve never had a cat. Either way, I¡¯m surprised she actually explained her motives for once.

    ¡°This isn¡¯t my cat, Buns. You need to put him back where you found him.¡±

    ¡°He''s your cat. You found him and brought him in. He lives here now."

    Either that was the world''s worst attempt at brainwashing, or that''s just what she''s going to tell anyone who asks her what happened. Not that anyone would, I don¡¯t think.

    Bunny''s cell phone begins to ring. Without hesitation, she cancels the call without even taking it out of her pocket; never breaking eye contact with me. I guess... I won''t mention it.

    "Look. I can''t take care of a cat. It''s hard enough taking care of myself."

    "Do you need help?"

    The way Bunny said that made it feel genuine. There was no hint of emotion in her face or voice still, but it might have been the first time she¡¯s ever asked me a question so blunt.

    "Sorry, I was exaggerating. I''m okay, thanks for asking."

    We stared at each other for a few more moments. Why did I consider her a friend, anyways? This girl standing in front of me, with sickly pale skin and bags under her eyes. It¡¯s amazing the distance I feel when trying to talk to her. I don''t know what''s going on with her, but it doesn''t seem like it''s very good.

    "Bunny, it''s too late for you to go back to your house. Or, you know¡­ wherever it is you go. You can sleep on my couch tonight."

    "Okay," she replied immediately. I guess I shouldn''t be surprised, she entered my house on her own terms, letting her stay is more of a formality than anything else. It¡¯s not like I could kick her out, anyways.

    I lent her one of my newly fur-covered blankets, an act of grace as her host for the night. I had her lay down on the couch and try to fall asleep. The kitten quickly climbed on top of her and snuggled in. After savoring the admittedly cute sight for just a moment, it was time for me to head back to my own bed.

    "Mina." I heard Bunny¡¯s voice echo from the living room. "Leo. That''s what you named him. The cat."

    "Okay. I named him Leo."

    Bunny

 Chapter 3 - Itâ€™s a Beautiful Life

    By the morning, Bunny had left as silently as she entered. Leaving Leo with me, of course. He¡¯s wrapping his tail around my ankle again. I should probably look up how to take care of a cat.

    I sleepily hobbled to my PC and booted it up. I¡¯m currently running Arch Linux on decade old hardware. It¡¯s fine. I could do better, but it¡¯s fine. I open Midori and search ¡°please how to take care of cat?¡± on DuckDuckGo. Litter boxes, scratching posts, forbidden surfaces. I think it¡¯s okay if Leo stays here, he¡¯s been polite. I like the litter box idea, though. There¡¯s a pet store a couple blocks from my house, so I¡¯ll pick one up along with some food and pet shampoo and little bow ties and stuff. The necessities. I threw on a dark hoodie and the first pair of pants I found lying in my room and headed out.

    It was a boring trip, I¡¯m not going to waste our time describing it. Leo looks happy with his food, and he understands the litter box concept, I think. I¡¯ve been keeping my eyes on him. He¡¯s a smart little guy. Already getting all up in things he shouldn¡¯t, like the curtains and cabinets. He doesn¡¯t seem to like hanging out in my room, though.

    I can¡¯t blame him, it¡¯s really messy. I never really clean up because I have no idea where to put all my things. I don¡¯t have a dresser, so my clothes are thrown all around wherever. I¡¯d put them in my closet, but it¡¯s full of spare electrical parts.

    I¡¯m really into Arduinos, it¡¯s one of my only hobbies. They¡¯re little circuit boards that you can plug things into. They sell them really cheap, and you can make them do so much! I make all kinds of things with them, like... Uh.

    Okay, I don¡¯t really know what I make with them. I have kits full of circuit boards and lights and microcontrollers and fans and displays and sensors and motors and everything else you could imagine. But... even if I start building with an idea in my head, I always seem to just end up connecting them at random. I can¡¯t explain it, really.

    There¡¯s one here, plugged into the wall. It has a small fan blowing on it, presumably to keep it from overheating. It has a 7-bit display that spells characters, sometimes. I know I was the one who set it up and programmed it and everything, but I have no idea what it¡¯s doing. I don¡¯t remember how it decides which characters to display on its tiny screen. I don¡¯t remember how it decides when to show them. I don¡¯t remember when the hell I made it at all. But still, I don¡¯t want to unplug it. Electricity¡¯s cheap, it looks kinda cool, and what if it¡¯s important?

    There are dozens of these mysterious boards around my room. One of them I actually tied into the controls of my overhead light. Every once in a while, it¡¯ll flip the light by itself. Again, I don¡¯t remember why, or what controls it. It just ended up that way. I don¡¯t know what to tell you. Having motivation without purpose is a weird state to be in.

    If you stopped thinking right now, would you still move and do things? Could you breathe, watch Antiques Roadshow, file your taxes? Could your heart even beat? It depends on how you define ¡°thinking¡±. Thoughts are one way to take an action, but not the only way. You make decisions all the time without spending a single thought on them. When you bump your hip into the table and say ¡°ouch¡±, you probably didn¡¯t do it for any particular goal. You didn¡¯t roll it around in your head, weighing the pros and cons of your choice. You didn¡¯t think, you did. And did is what I do. I don¡¯t know what I¡¯m doing when building my machines, but maybe I shouldn¡¯t have to, right?

    There is a flaw in this mentality, though. Well, you know, there¡¯s a few. The obvious one is that most of the time I don¡¯t really benefit from any of the contraptions I make. Sometimes they¡¯re even annoying, like the scary lightswitch thing I mentioned. I don¡¯t care about that, though. Purpose is secondary to me, exploration primary. But even then, I might not be exploring well with my method.

    This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

    When I was telling her about my weird hobby, Rose introduced me to the idea of reality tunneling. The concept is pretty simple. Us humans aren¡¯t very good at being unpredictable. When in the same situation, they make the same choices. We form habits and do the same thing over and over, never changing. We go to the same stores, the same websites, and talk to the same people. Day-in, day-out. It¡¯s a perfectly reasonable thing to do, of course, but your reality becomes a tunnel. Only a specific palette of scenarios and stimulus will be a part of your existence. It, theoretically, could affect you down to the base level of your brain. Maybe, due to the choices you¡¯ve made over and over, the neurons in your mind have you locked in an endless loop. You¡¯ll only ever be able to experience what you¡¯ve trained your brain to accept. Having a brain that can think about itself is a good thing, those self-referential pathways through your grey matter is what keeps you alive. But too little new stimulus, and the recursive loops of neurons in your head might coil too tightly together¡ªblocking out anything unfamiliar as if it didn¡¯t exist at all.

    It¡¯s hard to escape this so-called reality tunnel by yourself, someone (or something) has to push you out of it by force. That¡¯s what Rose says she¡¯s been trying to do for me, lately. It¡¯s part of the reason why she sends me so many fucked-up ¡°research essays¡±. She says she has faith in my brainlessly designed machines, and that if I expand my reality to include more stimulus, my machines will do more. Possibly more than my current reality would allow them to. It all sounds kind of dumb, but I don¡¯t really have anything better to do.

    I¡¯m out of school, I work part-time at a grocery store to afford necessities, and live in the house my uncle owned before he died. He left me and my two cousins houses in his will. He owned a lot of land, but no one really knows how he got it. He gave us the deeds though, and I think it would be better to accept the blessing and just not question it.

    I¡¯m not really working towards anything in my life. I make enough to live, and that¡¯s good. I just live in a bubble, maybe a tunnel. Nothing new happens by itself, and I¡¯m not making it happen, either. I think it would be nice to step outside myself for a change, feeling what it¡¯s like inside someone else¡¯s world. Someone who¡¯s life is painted in the palette of colors I never picked for myself. But that¡¯s a little worrying, too. It¡¯s not like I¡¯m having a bad time here. Tragedy happens, but it¡¯s rare. I don¡¯t want to be arrogant and give that up. But I can¡¯t help feeling like I need a purpose in life, you know?

    Later, I was lying on the couch, not doing anything, when I felt a vibration under the cushion. I reached in and pulled out a phone. It¡¯s not mine. It¡¯s an old iPhone something, and the screen is horribly cracked. I turned it on and there were huge lines of green pixels from its blunt trauma. One missed call, one unread text. This is probably Bunny¡¯s phone.

    Just for the hell of it, I swiped up. There was no security or anything, so it just let me in. Her background is just a shade of grey-ish blue, and her apps are all the stock installs. Okay, I know I shouldn¡¯t look at her text, but I¡¯m going to. It¡¯s totally an invasion of privacy, I know, but I¡¯m too bored not to look. Besides, I think walking into someone else¡¯s house without any warning is by far the bigger offence. (I¡¯ll say that to myself, but even if she hadn¡¯t done that I¡¯d still probably look.)

    Oh, huh.

    It¡¯s from Rose. Both the call and the text. I didn¡¯t know they knew each other.

    The message just says ¡°the bar on 17th street at 8 (pm)¡±.

    I guess they¡¯re hanging out. Looks like Rose types to Bunny slightly differently than she types to me.

    I knew it was wrong, but I opened the full text history. If I had thought about it first, I probably wouldn¡¯t have done it. I would have respected their privacy and acknowledged this as being rightfully off-limits. But once again¡ªI wasn¡¯t thinking, I was doing.

    So I looked.

    The previous 17 texts in their history were all Rose sending Bunny pairs of names and addresses, with no context.

    No responses from her, either.

    They were all names I didn¡¯t recognize, but the addresses were all close by.

    What the hell does all this mean?

    I think that was when the walls of my tunnel started to crack.

    Mina

 Chapter 4 - Im Thinking About Empty Motion

    So, Rose and Bunny know each other. They like to meet at bars, and Rose has a fun hobby of sending her random names and addresses. Cool, cool. Normal. I don¡¯t see anything weird about this situation. We all live in the same town, and are in the same age range¡­ I think. It¡¯s not weird that they would have happened to become friends. It¡¯s doubly not weird for Rose to make friends with someone, she¡¯s very extroverted and energetic. Maybe even enough that Bunny could be pressured into exchanging numbers. And I guess now they meet up for camaraderie and drinks on 17th street? And also Rose sometimes throws darts at the phonebook and sends Bunny the results, like normal people tend to do. It¡¯s normal! It¡¯s so normal I almost want to meet up with them at the bar tonight. For camaraderie. And Drinks. And to make sure my friends aren¡¯t fucking serial killers.

    Now my phone is buzzing with a new text.

    ¡°It was no Kaizo Mario, but that was a fun hack. The switch palaces were a little stupid, though. Overall like a 3.57 out of 5.1343. Not milquetoast, but maybe buttermilquetoast with jam.¡±

    I stared at the message, eyes wide open. What she was saying wasn¡¯t that weird. For her, at least. But now I have knowledge that this¡­ incredibly kind, outgoing, dangerous person is doing something that I don¡¯t understand. That worries me. Maybe I liked her a little better when I thought I had my eyes on her, that she was already flaunting the worst she has to offer. I don¡¯t think she was. I didn¡¯t know 4,000 words of mutant child military encampments would be less frightening than a simple ¡°timothy redfield 6252 n brooke st¡±.

    I don¡¯t know what to say back. I want to pretend that I never noticed this. But I want to know more. What are they doing? What if I went to that bar tonight? What if I just came clean completely? There were too many choices in front of me.

    This is exactly the kind of problem I would normally ask Rose for help with.  She¡¯s good at analyzing possibilities, especially to extremes. God, if this was anyone else, she would be all over it. She¡¯d have every single person analyzed and find pentagrams drawn between the lines of their houses in minutes. But even more so, I think she would enjoy the struggle. Knowing what information to divulge in order to get a response, if any. It almost makes me feel bad that I can¡¯t share my situation with her. She loves playing mind games.

    Okay, well.

    Maybe that¡¯s it. This is a mind game.

    ¡°Rose, do you have a minute? I wanna play a game together.¡±

    ¡°I haven¡¯t been able to figure out ZSNES netplay, but I¡¯ll work on it.¡±

    ¡°Not a video game. It¡¯s a game where I have information about you that you don¡¯t know I have.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m listening.¡±

    ¡°Here¡¯s the puzzle you need to solve: I know something about you. You don¡¯t know what I know. Is it in my best interest to ask you about it directly, to casually drop hints, or to ignore it entirely? That¡¯s the puzzle. If you lose, you¡¯ll have to play a batsu game, like in anime. You have twenty minutes.¡±

    This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.

    I sat in silence, stroking Leo¡¯s fur while he purred in my lap. I hadn¡¯t received a text back yet, so I knew she was working on it. There is no way she would miss an opportunity like this. But can she remain so analytic while knowing that the person in question here is herself? If anyone could figure out an optimal solution, she could. Oh, and I have no idea what the batsu (punishment) game is. I don¡¯t even know how to tell if she lost or not; I just thought that was weeb-y enough to catch her attention.

    Two minutes after, I went to the restroom.

    Five minutes after, I fed Leo lunch.

    Eleven minutes after, I smiled at a video of a cat running into a door.

    Seventeen minutes after, I became slightly dizzy; so I drank a glass of water.

    Nineteen minutes after, I brewed a cup of coffee.

    Precisely twenty minutes after my message, I received her response.

    ¡°The one who comes on top in any conflict is the one who holds power over the other. At the base level, you currently hold power over me. You have knowledge about me that, presumably, is of importance; hence the game. It might be information that I don¡¯t want leaking to others, because it¡¯s embarrassing or it makes me look bad. But you came to me about it. You¡¯re now giving me the power. You are letting me influence and rationalize myself to you. That makes the playing field swing into my favor. If you didn¡¯t need my response, you wouldn¡¯t have set a time limit. You want to learn more about my secrets, but only if I tell you to. You aren¡¯t mentally powerful enough to make that choice for yourself. If I tell you that you should press me for info, it¡¯s practically a promise to spill the beans. Why would I tell you to ask? And if I told you to forget about the info, that means that I was never going to tell you in the first place.

    Except, to reiterate, this is a power struggle. Game theory. And now, this message itself is a mechanic in the game. It¡¯s kinda the whole game. I¡¯m not sure how you did it, but you may have constructed a game where the instruction for the game is the actual game. It¡¯s a recursive loop that breathes life into an otherwise flat discussion. You¡¯ve impressed me a little. But I digress, back to the power struggle.

    If I tell you to do something, and you do it, you¡¯ve lost power. In order to feel like you¡¯ve won, you need to do the opposite of whatever I say.

    TL;DR: here¡¯s how you solve the puzzle: I tell you to forget about it, but you keep pressing me for more info. That way, you¡¯ve one-upped me within this game as well as being able to get the info you want. Now, let¡¯s begin.¡±

    I took my second swig of coffee.

    ¡°Hey, Rose. I found out that you¡¯re also friends with Bunny.¡±

    ¡°What? Me? No, forget it, I don¡¯t know who you¡¯re talking about. ¦²(?§¥?)¡±

    ¡°Come on, Rose, time to spill your guts. What exactly is your relationship with her?¡±

    ¡°No, I¡¯m actually being serious. Who the hell is Bunny?¡±

    ¡°Wait, for real?¡±

    ¡°Of course I know her. Remember, I told you to win, you had to do the opposite of what I say? You didn¡¯t do that. You did exactly what I told you to do. I can¡¯t believe you fell for the classic ¡®disobey this command¡¯ routine. You¡¯ve fallen into a recursive paradox with no escape. I win! Your batsu game will be decided at a later date. And guess what? I¡¯m not telling you jack-shit!¡±

    Well.

    That was a waste of twenty minutes.

    Guess I¡¯m going out for drinks tonight.

 Chapter 5 - You Have To Answer Back

    It¡¯s a weird road, 17th street. It¡¯s more of an alleyway that some people can legally fit cars through. It turns and zig zags for no reason, making you feel like you¡¯re trapped in a labyrinth. It¡¯s not one, though. There aren¡¯t even any intersections or branches in the path. It¡¯s just one jagged, incomprehensible line. It¡¯s too noisy, and too smoky. The fog in the air is dense enough I¡¯m expecting to see my reflection in it. There are a lot of tiny restaurants here, a lot of them with outside seating. Most have TVs inside and outside, blaring random channels so loudly it drowns out all the shouting people. Sports, sitcoms, C-SPAN; whatever you feel like watching, there¡¯s a gross pub here for you to enjoy it in. I have no idea what their target demographics are like. Who wants to watch Gabriel Iglesias¡¯s new special on 110% volume while angry drunkards fill your lungs with smoke?

    The kind of people that go to 17th street do. I guess that¡¯s the demographic.

    Rose didn¡¯t actually specify which bar she was talking about; she just said ¡°the bar¡±. Actually, she didn¡¯t even say they were meeting. I kind of assumed that. But I have a reason to. I happen to know of a sports bar where Rose got dead drunk once. I was the one she called to pick her up. Her hair was ruffled, and her breath stunk; thank God she was wearing clothes, though I didn¡¯t have the heart to tell her she was wearing them wrong. On the ride back, she told me that she stole some guy¡¯s wallet. She took the money out, filled it with ¡°exclusive coupons¡±, and slid it back into his pocket. That was a crime, and I heard a show on TV say that criminals always return to the scene of the crime. Actually, I watched that show here.

    It¡¯s about five minutes before 8 PM. I ordered a soft drink and some nachos and sat at a back table where I could see the front. This is one of the nicer places on 17th street, meaning it¡¯s actually building-sized and not shed-sized. I kept a constant check on the door, waiting for one of them to enter.

    As I sit here, I start to wonder what I¡¯m doing, as one does in these situations. Why do I care what my friends are doing? It¡¯s not like I¡¯m jealous of them. In fact, I would love to never have to be in this particular bar again. It was so embarrassing when I had to pick Rose up. I told her that I¡¯d never drink with her. I wouldn¡¯t risk being caught in public with a drunk Rose if it wasn¡¯t for the mystery. But even then¡­ the ¡°mystery¡± isn¡¯t even that deep. If they make me tell them, they might think I¡¯m stupid.

    But¡­

    I have to give Bunny her phone back, anyways.

    Wait.

    Wait, wait.

    Shit, wait.

    Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.

    I have Bunny¡¯s phone. She doesn¡¯t have it.

    She never saw the text.

    A sense of embarrassment and dread washed over my lightly nacho¡¯d face. Rose and Bunny aren¡¯t meeting up tonight, because they couldn¡¯t. Well, at least, Bunny isn¡¯t coming tonight. She doesn¡¯t know she was even invited. It¡¯s possible Rose might still show up. Besides, it doesn¡¯t seem exactly out of character for Bunny to not respond to a text.

    As soon as I thought that, I regretted it immediately; because that was exactly when Rose kicked in the door.

    Every head in the establishment turned to look at her. She¡¯s wearing a plain white T-shirt with a stylish(?) pink jacket over the top. Her black jeans were contrasted by her pink hair, their own black roots showing in the middle. She sauntered over to my table. Shit, now they¡¯re looking at me. I take a napkin to my face and curse my choice of 8 PM snack.

    She sits herself down at my table and smiles like the cheshire cat.

    ¡°Good evening Mina. I was expecting you.¡±

    She rests her chin on her palm, clearly happy with herself.

    ¡°Rose, how uh... how did you know I was here?¡±

    ¡°I told you earlier. I won. Not just the game you made up for me, but the bigger game, too.¡±

    ¡°Okay, no more mind games. Just explain this to me. Preferably in a way that doesn¡¯t give me a migraine, please?¡±

    Laughing boisterously, she began to explain.

    ¡°Bunny was at your house last night, right? She came over to my place in the morning. Uninvited, but not unwelcome. Then, she realized she left her phone at your place. Then, I took my opportunity. I invited you out for drinks tonight.¡±

    I let my forehead hit the table.

    ¡°Oh, and you¡¯re paying. Right, Bunny?¡±

    I lifted my head back up. I looked around, no Bunny. I never saw her walk in the door. Rose was also looking for her.

    ¡°That¡¯s weird,¡± she said in a much more acceptable indoor voice than before, ¡°she was with me just a minute ago.¡±

    We silently stood up from the table, and after I paid for my food, we went outside to find her.

    17th street doesn¡¯t have great visibility. It was because of that, or maybe because she¡¯s so short; that we couldn¡¯t find Bunny anywhere. After half an hour of poking our noses into every smoky pub and diner we could find, we needed to regroup.

    ¡°Did you check the little vending machine area near 15th street?¡±, I asked.

    ¡°Yeah, no rabbit tracks.¡±

    ¡°Maybe she just... left.¡±

    ¡°That sounds like her. But if she left, she would have had a good reason to. She¡¯s very methodical.¡±

    Methodical? I¡¯m not sure that¡¯s a word I would use for her, in my experience. Maybe I¡¯d use the opposite. She seems so vacant, like she¡¯s always wandering. I wonder what she¡¯s seen that I haven¡¯t.

    Rose stopped dead in her tracks.

    ¡°Oh. I see her.¡±

    Where? I was looking all over, I didn¡¯t see her anywhere. But after Rose pointed her out I did. The eight story building right there on the next road over. She was on the roof, looking back down at us.

 Chapter 6 - Lucifer Makes a Good Living

    ¡°How the hell did you get up there¡±, I shouted to my emotionless friend on the roof beside me.

    ¡°The stairs.¡± She pointed to the fire escape on the side of the building.

    It was dark and rusted, scrapes of black metal lying on the cigarette ash-sponge concrete underneath it. I thought it was possible that she was the first person to ever use them. Or, at least, the first person to ever go up them. The ladder was raised off the ground, specifically in defense of this exact situation. It wasn¡¯t raised high enough though, as Bunny had pulled over a patio chair from one of the restaurants a few buildings away. I have no idea how she did that without getting caught, and I didn¡¯t have enough time to conspire as I saw Rose immediately climb on top, reaching for the metal bars.

    ¡°Rose, not you too! That¡¯s trespassing; just because Bunny does it doesn¡¯t mean you should!¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s exactly why I should! Trust me, it¡¯s safe. I need to see what she¡¯s doing.¡±

    ¡°What the fuck are you talking about?¡± I shouted. It wasn¡¯t angry shouting, really, I was just confused as to why they were doing this at all. I never really thought I could trust either of them to begin with, but having those two together is opening up a new world of questionable decision-making for them to explore.

    I inspected the chair that was hastily scrambled over. For some reason, there were cuts in the teal cushion. It was several jagged lines surrounded by a circle, itself jagged and with rough edges. They weren¡¯t deep, but it was clear that they were deliberate. Did some teenage goth kid really mess up the anarchist symbol that badly?

    It seemed like one of its legs was wobbling when Rose stood on it, so I¡¯m a bit afraid of putting my whole weight on it. Uh, not that I was thinking about doing that. I¡¯m not climbing up there. Tonight doesn¡¯t seem like a great night to get arrested.

    I really think that. And I really, honestly, truly mean it from the bottom of my heart. I know myself and what I want. I don¡¯t want to get myself, or anyone else, in trouble. And yet;

    My teeth grit.

    Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.

    My eyes water.

    Every muscle in my body tenses and contracts.

    I was jiggling the handle of this random building¡¯s back door.

    I don¡¯t know why. I don¡¯t know why. This is the last thing I want to do. Every alarm in my head is going off, but I¡¯m trying to get inside this building. This building, with anyone in it, doing anything; my subconscious wanted inside.

    But the doorknob wouldn¡¯t budge. It was locked. Cut my losses, pack up, and move on? No, time to buckle down. I pick up the chair that my ¡°friends¡± had climbed on. It wasn¡¯t very heavy, but I hoisted it up in my trembling hands. I adjusted my stance in front of the door. I was gearing up to use it like a battering ram. And I did. All of my body weight, speed, and force; into this locked door.

    It¡¯s a terrifying sound, hearing yourself slam into a solid object; especially against your own wishes and self-interest. It¡¯s also scary hearing the legs of a wooden chair snap off, waiting to feel if it was one of your own limbs. I didn¡¯t fall over, but it might have been easier on my body if I had. Instead, when I made contact, I didn¡¯t budge at all. Every ounce of power I had mustered was relocated into my own body. It didn¡¯t hurt much, though. I was feeling pretty numb.

    God, what the fuck is wrong with me?

    Why am I hurting myself?

    And why am I acting so goddamn stupid?

    A battering ram?

    I don¡¯t want inside the door. I don¡¯t care what¡¯s inside. I don¡¯t even want to see those two again. But if I¡¯m going inside, if I absolutely must; then I¡¯ll reason with myself. There¡¯s a smarter way.

    I pulled a little brown hairclip off of my head, and inserted it into the lock on the doorknob. I put my ear to the surface, though I don¡¯t remember exactly what I should be listening for. I felt a voice in my head; that silent voice that kept telling me to do stupid things; ask what I was doing. Leave me alone, I¡¯m picking a fucking lock.

    It took a few minutes; minutes that got increasingly frenzied and worried. I somehow felt like I was wasting time. Wasting time for what? I wish they hadn¡¯t neglected the security on this building, because eventually I got it. The handle turned, and the hinges on the door popped. It¡¯s been a while since this was opened.

    I peek inside.

    It¡¯s completely dark, and all the windows were boarded from the inside. I thought 17th street itself smelled like smoke, but this was incredible. If someone had told me that all its smoke had originated from this one building, I may have believed them. Yet, there were no apparent signs of smoke itself. There are several boxes scattered around, and what looks like some desks or something with a tarp draped over them.

    I caught my breath for a moment, and stepped inside.

 Chapter 7 - Icarus My Son, Iâ€™ve Bitterness for Sun

    I closed the door behind me. I didn¡¯t want any unscrupulous people getting inside. Like me, apparently. Dirt crunches underneath my steps on the concrete floor; it¡¯s clear this isn¡¯t exactly a popular spot for locals. I¡¯m looking for something to justify coming in here, so I can take it and get the hell out. But whatever it is, I don¡¯t think it¡¯s down here. I felt around the nearest wall. The rotten wallpaper crumbled in my hands as I moved them across in a sweeping motion. Eventually I found another door. I opened it, leading me into the stairwell.

    I crept up the first step when I saw a light flash at the top of the stairs. It was flashing and erratic, causing the flight of stairs to glow unpredictably. If I didn¡¯t want to leave before, I certainly do now. My legs move themselves up the stairs. I¡¯m not trying to fight the compulsion anymore, just trying to slow it down. Running up as fast as I can is a bad idea, but it¡¯s what I¡¯m trying to do right now. About two stairs from the top, I heard a whisper.

    ¡°Mina.¡±

    I thought my heart was going to stop beating at that moment. It took a second for the silhouette in front of me to mentally coalesce into a person. It was Rose, and she was holding a flashlight. I¡¯m not thrilled to see her, but I acknowledge that this is a much preferable outcome to several alternate possibilities.

    ¡°Mina, it¡¯s me. Come here.¡±

    She grabbed my wrist and clumsily pulled me up the remaining stairs. She pushed me against the opposite wall, then shined the flashlight straight into my eyes. I closed them, of course.

    ¡°Yeah, it¡¯s me, you don¡¯t have to do that. Was it you making those crazy strobe lights a second ago?¡± I asked, maybe seeming more calm than I really was.

    ¡°No, this is the first time I¡¯ve turned this on tonight. I have no idea what you¡¯re talking about. Now open your eyes.¡±

    ¡°What, why?¡±

    She used her bony fingers to pull back my eyelids. It burnt like hell, and I was totally blinded.

    ¡°Jesus Christ, stop!¡± I yelled, trying to turn my head away from her.

    It was so painful and so electrically bright that I felt like I might never see anything else again.

    Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

    I felt like the blinding light went dark for just a fraction of a second. Then again, and again.

    I don¡¯t know what kind of optical illusion this is. It might be part of the brain¡¯s natural defenses to having an asshole frying your eyes out. It was so bright, then so dark. It was a perfect rhythm, like pure white waves crashing and pulling from shore at a thousand times speed. It was giving me a migraine, but I couldn¡¯t get away. Somehow. I don¡¯t think she¡¯s physically stronger than me, but the numbness in my body from before was now overwhelming. Somehow, I was losing my sense of agency. My thoughts were getting animalistic, base-level to my hierarchy of needs. One hundred percent of my brain power was being used up on handling the hyperstimulus it was receiving. Every photon had to be tracked and accounted for. I had nothing left to work with. Starting a motion to think or do anything was met by my brain¡¯s equivalent of a busy signal. I¡¯m saying this because it¡¯s the only way I can rationally explain what happened next.

    ¡°Mina, listen to me. Think back two weeks ago. I sent you one of my essays. It was the one about H.G. Spector.¡±

    What? I sort of remember, but why is she bringing that up now?

    ¡°He died in 1917, a few days after the new year. He was a soldier, just recently made it back home a week or so earlier.¡±

    So fucking what? What is wrong with you? ...The train guy?

    ¡°He was riding on a train. Something happened in the engine room, and he went to go check. He was that kind of guy. When something was wrong, he always went to help. It was his sense of duty. It was his purpose. Do you remember what happened to him?¡±

    What? No, not really. I skipped most of that essay, like I do all of them. I don¡¯t remember anything about an engine room.

    ¡°You read it. I know for a fact that you did. Think harder.¡±

    I didn¡¯t fucking read it. I don¡¯t know anything about 1917, I don¡¯t know anything about Spector, I don¡¯t know anything about trains, I don¡¯t know what happened to his skin, I don¡¯t know anything. I don¡¯t know.

    ¡°He was caught in a boiler explosion. It incinerated him, mostly. Not all of him; it didn¡¯t even kill him. Do you remember what he looked like? Do you remember the images I embedded?¡±

    I don¡¯t remember any of it. Not a fucking thing. I don¡¯t remember his name. I don¡¯t remember his route. I don¡¯t remember the drawing of his face, I don¡¯t remember his hands, I don¡¯t remember his wife, I don¡¯t remember her crying. I don¡¯t see pictures in my mind. I don¡¯t see his skin boiling off his bone. I don¡¯t see anything, and I don¡¯t remember anything. I never read it.

    ¡°You read it. You read every word. You studied every image; even though it wasn¡¯t from that event, and even if you didn¡¯t understand what you were looking at. You don¡¯t think you remember. But you do.¡±

 Chapter 8 - ???

    ¡°FIRM CASE DIVE PALM HALT LANE SHOP TEST DEAL DUCK GOLD PELE J¡­ jus...huh?¡±

    Wait, I¡¯m speaking? I thought I was asleep just now. It certainly feels like I¡¯m waking up¡­

    ¡°Still okay, Mina?¡±

    ¡°Uh, yeah, I think. What¡¯s happening?¡±

    ¡°You blacked out. Well, I made you black out.¡±

    She was so direct, I didn¡¯t need to ask her ¡°really?¡±. Actually, I remember something about it. She was holding the flashlight in my eyes and asking me about someone.

    Taking Rose¡¯s hand, I slowly stood myself up. I just realized that my head is throbbing.

    ¡°So, uh. You made me black out, huh?¡±

    ¡°Yeah. It took a bit of effort, you¡¯re pretty strong. Mentally and physically. Dragging you in here was a huge pain.¡±

    In where? Oh, still in that building. This is a different room, though. Unless she dragged my limp body up or down the stairs, we¡¯re still on the second floor. It was still too dark for me to see well, but one of the boards on the windows was broken; letting in a tiny sliver of light. That light illuminated the wall behind me. It was made of brick, I think, but it had a huge design scratched into it. It was just like the chair Bunny brought outside; except this one was much, much more clear. It was a pentagram inside of a circle; each empty space filled with a different symbol. Inside the middle was another circle, with another, smaller design inside. Around the perimeter of the bigger circle were words written in letters I don¡¯t recognize.

    ¡°What¡¯s this? Some sort of cult?¡±

    ¡°No, you did that. While you were possessed.¡±

    I gave her a confused glance. She pointed at my hand. My fingernails, on both hands, were jagged and cut. They were down to the pink, now red. My nails were chipped off in several places, exposing the weird-feeling flesh underneath.

    While I panicked, Rose offered some words of reassurance.

    ¡°We¡¯ll get those wrapped up shortly. We need to find Bunny and get out of here.¡±

    She grabbed my wrist (more gently than usual) and led us back into the stairwell.

    ¡°I¡¯m not sure I understand the whole ¡®possesed¡¯ thing,¡± I said, being entirely honest with her and myself.

    ¡°Choronzon. He¡¯s a very powerful demon. He entered your body while I had you in a state of hypnosis. Then you freaked out with your fingers onto the wall like a cat onto expensive curtains.¡±

    She was heading us up to the roof.

    ¡°Oh, you were hypnotizing me...¡±You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

    ¡°Yeah, sorry. I thought now was as good of a time as any.¡±

    ¡°..."

    ¡°Don¡¯t worry about it. But we need to get out. Now.¡±

    If she was still trying to reassure me, she wasn¡¯t being very good at it.

    After passing through the intermediary floors, we made it onto the roof. Bunny was up there, in the same place we had last seen her. Thankfully, I was only possessed for about ten minutes. Rose called out to her.

    ¡°Bunny, we gotta go. Orders from the big guy.¡±

    She turned around to face us, her camo jacket having a small new hole since I last saw it.

    ¡°Someone¡¯s coming,¡± she said so quietly that it was difficult to hear.

    ¡°Who¡¯s coming? How do you know?¡± Rose started grilling her, the first time tonight I¡¯ve seen her look anxious.

    ¡°Stocky guy in a hoodie. I watched him come inside.¡±

    Oh God. After the whole fingernail thing, I forgot that we were trespassing. Whoever¡¯s coming up here won¡¯t be happy. He might turn us into the police.

    ¡°I¡¯m surprised that someone actually noticed us. I bet he¡¯s worried we took this,¡± Rose said blankly as she held out a gallon bag of white powder.

    ¡°I found it while Mina was having her ¡®episode¡¯. It probably belongs to that guy. He¡¯ll be here looking for it any second now. There¡¯s a lot more stuff in here, but it¡¯s probably better not to get our fingerprints all over them.¡±

    It wasn¡¯t long before we heard noises coming from the floors below us.

    ¡°Mina, go look over the edge again,¡± Bunny said. I don¡¯t know why, but I get the feeling I should listen.

    I walked over the edge of the building, staring back down onto 17th street. It was dizzying. The longer I watched, the more it seemed like the buildings around me were bending. It was such a strange height, the people below seeming miles away at times; and inches away at others. The smoke clouding my view only further obscured my sight-seeing. I wanted to drop something and watch it fall off the side. I think if I did, it wouldn¡¯t fall straight down. It would curve unpredictably, like a funhouse mirror; ending up somewhere it didn¡¯t belong. If I fell, I think the same would happen to me.

    I quit spacing out when I heard the door to the roof open. I felt my sympathetic nervous system begin to work. He¡¯s shouting; what is he saying? I can¡¯t understand him at all. I know he¡¯s speaking English, but I¡¯m too distressed to understand that right now. The back of my head began to itch from the sweat prickling at my scalp. God, he¡¯s upset. I¡¯m expecting to hear a gunshot any second. I compose myself and watch the cars move below, seeming to sway with nausea along with me. I hope this isn¡¯t the last thing I see. Rose is shouting something now. I can¡¯t imagine what she wants to say to the guy. My ears rang with a symphony of car horns and loud sports bars. I think Messi scored a goal, I don¡¯t know. Maybe I should get into soccer, if I still have the chance. I wiped the tears out of my eyes, making them even more wet from the sweat collecting in my palms. All at once, and with no warning, the shouting peaked. I couldn¡¯t keep staring at the ground so far away from me, I was going to puke. I braced myself and turned around to face them.

    I''ll take a moment here to say that I don''t know how to describe watching a friend kill someone in front of me. Bunny had taken a knife to his back, inserting it into a space between his spine and shoulder blade. She slid it sideways, like an L. I can¡¯t think of any words to say. There are probably lots of words that come to your mind: terror, disgust, mania, et cetera. Those aren''t wrong, but they have a sense of familiarity. We''ve all heard murders called those things countless times. If we know how to respond to a situation, it makes it less scary. I think we take comfort in those thoughts, planning our emotions out like a map.

    But this wasn''t familiar at all. It was a word I''ve never read, a word I''ve never heard spoken. It was smooth and slow at the start, beginning with a sibilant; ending with a damp plosive to the floor. The blood draining to her sneakers were red with vowels, no longer held by a thick consonant shell. I don¡¯t know how to spell this word, and I don''t want to know. I don''t want to. I never listened, but I think my mother was telling the truth about four-letter words.

 Chapter 9 - You Know Iâ€™ve Got Nothing to Hide

    It¡¯s been a few days. I haven¡¯t done much but scroll on my phone. Sometimes something funny would come up, and I would smile. It was nice. I don¡¯t think I need much else. Old sitcoms, let¡¯s plays, a cute little cat up to no good. Sounds like a nice world to me. Why be greedy? Having a friend or two might be nice, but it¡¯s not worth the risk. Too unpredictable. I don¡¯t need anyone upsetting my world.

    I¡¯m not lonely, though. I have my own trouble-making little bundle of grey joy right beside me. He¡¯s my cat. I found him and brought him in. I named him Leo.

    I don¡¯t need any other people, or animals for that matter. I can work and support myself. I have means of entertainment. Hell, I can even socialize online under a pseudonym if I really wanted to. I¡¯ll go to the park when I need fresh air, and take myself out to dinner once a week. Not one of the gross places on 17th street, something a bit... nicer.

    I opened Twitter on my phone for the eighth time in the last hour. I¡¯m not following enough people to get updates that fast, but I still refresh it to see. You never know! I mostly follow cute animal pictures, anyways. Endless content.

    I thought about sending a message to one of my, uh¡­ questionable contacts. I have seventeen drafts, automatically saved to my phone; each one with a different set of questions that would be incomprehensible to anyone else. I¡¯m probably not going to send one. Writing them out was more for me, anyways. And as long as I don¡¯t get a text from either of them, everything should be fine!

    Of course, I received a notification at this exact moment.

    It¡¯s a text.

    Fuck.

    ¡°This is a reminder: You have an appt. for an optometrist visit in our office at 3:15 PM. Please arrive fifteen minutes early for check-in. If you need to reschedule, please call us at¡­¡±

    Oh.

    That¡¯s okay, actually. I forgot all about that. I¡¯m pretty sure my eyes have been getting worse, so I made an appointment to get a prescription for some glasses. I guess¡­ I guess I can go?

    After throwing on some mostly-acceptable clothes and refilling Leo¡¯s water, I left for the doctor¡¯s. It wasn¡¯t a long bus ride, about fifteen minutes after I got on. The office was inside the mall. I didn¡¯t know stuff like that could be inside a mall. But yeah, I¡¯m looking right at it. It¡¯s right between a Hot Topic and a Great American Cookies place.

    I walk inside, give the kid at the counter my name, and sit down. It¡¯s one of those little waiting rooms with plastic chairs and magazines on the table and stuff. I always get anxious in this breed of room. The anticipation of an unpleasant experience is almost torture. I don¡¯t even think this trip will be all that unpleasant, but I¡¯m still nervous. I remember the toys that they had for kids to play with in Pediatric waiting rooms. The ones with the little colored blocks on metal wires that you could rack around. Why were those there? Their purpose was probably to keep kids occupied away from what I¡¯m feeling right now. I guess the better question is: why are they only there? Is there no other place where children feel anxiety? I was a nervous wreck as a kid, I could have used one in my house.

    After a minute or so, my name was called and I moved into the back of the office. Before I saw the actual eye doctor, I had to go through the game show portion of the visit first. Can you guess the number of blinking dots? Can you stare at the square until your entire vision goes black? Can you withstand a blast of air from one millimeter into your open eye without an emotional breakdown? With that out of the way, I was allowed back into the room with the big chair, followed shortly by the doctor. Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings.

    ¡°Good afternoon Mina. So, you¡¯ve been having trouble seeing lately?¡±

    He wasn¡¯t an elderly man, just old-ish. Seems very nice. I bet he did drugs in college. Like, the cool kind.

    ¡°Yeah, just a little. Things far away are pretty blurry sometimes.¡±

    ¡°Spend a lot of time sitting in front of a screen?¡±

    ¡°Yeah¡­¡±

    ¡°I have a physical therapist I can recommend as well, when it gets to that.¡±

    I immediately fixed my posture, accented nicely by a loud pop from my back. Lovely.

    ¡°It¡¯s okay, feel free to recline in the chair. One problem at a time, right?¡±

    God, I wish.

    He opened his laptop and set it on the counter beside him. It was a mess of menus and text fields that seemed as if they should have been obsolete decades ago. I would have spied a little more, but it was turned away from me, mostly.

    ¡°Alright, time to take some pics of those bad boys.¡±

    I put my eyes up to the machine that swiveled in front of my chair. He turned a light on in its back. Immediately, my vision was blinded.

    I could feel myself starting to sweat.

    ¡°Hold still while I take these, okay?¡±

    Even on the other end he could sense that I was nervous. Intermittently, darkness filled my eyes. I don¡¯t think it was the machine doing that. I wanted to stop. The black flashing in my eyes was so much brighter than any bright I¡¯ve ever seen. My hands were trembling, tips of my fingers going numb. I started to catch glimpses of rings. White rings as dark as the night sky in the center of endless black; blindingly bright black rings on white. I wasn¡¯t thinking about anything. The rings grew larger, revealing smaller rings inside them; like matryoshka dolls the size of my entire word.

    ¡°Okay, all done! It¡¯s over, you did it!¡±

    I closed my eyes and leaned back into the chair. I¡¯m fine. Nothing bad happened. That was all I have to do, after this, I can just go home and pet Leo. I¡¯ll be alright.

    ¡°Just let me go process these real quick, I¡¯ll have your results in a moment.¡±

    He was gone for a while. I finally felt like I could open my eyes. Things were a bit blurry, but thank God they weren¡¯t strobing. I don¡¯t know how this day went south so fast. My eyes must be like Achilles¡¯ heel.

    Suddenly, I saw a tiny flash out of the corner of my eye. Shit, is it happening on its own now? Oh, it was just his laptop on the counter. The images on the screen changed. I couldn¡¯t see it well, but it was white and black. I saw circles.

    I got off the chair. Hesitantly, I turned the laptop to face me.

    ¡°PLACIDO IMAGE¡±

    On the screen was a giant picture of my dilated right eye¡¯s iris. In the middle were about a dozen thin white circles. It looked like a bullseye. My eyelashes got in the way of a few outermost rings. Could he see what was going on inside of my head, through my eyes? I leaned in a little closer. I counted the rings from the outside, to the smallest inside. It was exactly twelve. They were, as far as I could tell, perfectly uniform. Each one was a perfect copy of its parent, further towards my pupil. Except for one. The center circle, the smallest, wasn¡¯t a circle at all. It was a lumpy shape that I was having a hard time seeing. I brought my face closer to the screen, nose almost touching. What the hell was that in the middle of my eye? It was jagged and rough, with jarring corners and angles that didn¡¯t seem to fit at all. The general shape was taller than it was wide. The upper portion was wider, while the lower portion was smaller. Kind of like a skinny triangle. It reminded me of a skull. It couldn¡¯t be that, though. Skulls don¡¯t have two huge swirling S-shapes coming out of the top. If it was a skull, it would look more like a goat¡¯s.

    I turned the laptop back to its original position, sat back on the chair, and pleaded to God for salvation.

 Chapter 10 - Nowhere Plans for Nobody

    I had a hand over my left eye. I heard a click, and on the wall in front of me were words. The top word was large, but they got smaller as they went down.

    ¡°Okay, can you read these words for me?¡±

    TUFT

    VAIN

    CHOP

    DARE

    TOOL

    OPEN

    WEEK

    RING

    MILD

    G¡­ GO- something. I read them out like that.

    ¡°Okay, switch eyes for me please.¡±

    I did as I was requested. Another click, another set of words.

    WAVE

    SOIL

    POLE

    SAIL

    OVEN

    HOUR

    EASY

    SLAM

    CODE, I think,

    and I couldn¡¯t make out the last one at all. Too blurry.

    ¡°Okay, you can put your hands down. And congratulations, by the way.¡±

    ¡°What, did I get them all right?¡±

    ¡°No, you were the first patient I¡¯ve ever seen get them all wrong.¡±

    I took another look at the wall. The bottom ones I guessed a bit on, sure; but the top ones? They were as clear as day. This must be doctor humor. If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

    ¡°Care to try it again, Mina?¡±

    ¡°Yeah, let me see.¡±

    He pressed the button, and the first set of words were back. There was no question about it.

    ¡°TUFT, right? The very top one.¡±

    ¡°No, that¡¯s¡­ That¡¯s just the letter E.¡±

    It wasn¡¯t. The letter E is one thing, not four. And none of these four are E, either.

    I hopped out of my chair and got face-to-face with the words. They didn¡¯t change. I looked at him, then traced the letters with my index finger.

    ¡°T,¡±

    ¡°U,¡±

    ¡°F,¡±

    ¡°T.¡±

    ¡°TUFT.¡±

    There was nothing else to it. I can fuckin'' read.

    ¡°Mina, were you spelling the letters out with your hand?¡±

    ¡°Yeah. You can¡¯t see them?¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t even have a clue what letters you were writing. A letter T doesn¡¯t have eight strokes, no matter how you write it.¡±

    We stared at each other for a while. I didn¡¯t know what to say to him; he didn¡¯t know what to say to me. I can bend my suspension of disbelief and sympathize with him, I guess. I don¡¯t know what I would do if a girl with demonic skulls of goats in her eyes started telling me about words that weren¡¯t there. This wasn¡¯t even a problem with my sight, it was entirely out of his wheelhouse.

    ¡°Uh, you can¡­ Sit back at the chair.¡±

    I did, and he put the machine back in front of my eyes. This time it was clear at the end, and I could see the rest of the room. Then it clicked, and everything looked a little bit clearer.

    "Which is better, first or second?¡±

    I left with my prescription. I was right, I¡¯m nearsighted. Not remarkably so, but enough to justify spending money on glasses. I need to remember to get them made. Tomorrow. Not today. A normal day would be different. I¡¯d probably sneak to the cookie place on my left, or relive highschool to the place on my right. Not now. I want to go home.

    Why couldn¡¯t I see the words on the wall? Do bright lights make me anxious now? What was going on inside my eyes? I thought about this on the short bus ride back home. It¡¯s late in the day now, with the sky just beginning to change shades. I found myself pulling the hood of my hoodie over my eyes to try and block any extra light. I almost missed my stop because I could barely see. I walked up the sidewalk back to my house, carefully stepping over every crack in the pavement. I¡¯m not risking shit anymore.

    2809, 7550, 0664, 5603¡­ I¡¯m watching the numbers flash on the little four-digit decimal screen. It¡¯s plugged into a circuit doing¡­ something. I forgot. I don¡¯t think it¡¯s generating them randomly, it¡¯s measuring something. Humidity? No, I think I put that sensor on the board with the fan. This one doesn¡¯t seem like it has any sensors at all on it. I scooted along the floor to inspect the Arduino board looking back at me. It has an ultrasonic sensor which looks almost like binoculars. In between the two circular little ¡°eyes¡± is white text that reads HC-SR04. The sensor is used to detect distance from itself to nearby objects. You could use it as part of a home security system. I don¡¯t remember what I was trying to secure, though. I flipped the switch on the back and was rewarded with a blood-curdling electronic screech. I turned it off immediately, and once my heart rate returned to comfortable levels, I lowered the volume of the speaker I had forgotten was also part of the circuit.

    The last of my useless machines I could afford to spend my attention span on tonight is also the most complex. By a lot, actually. It was so distracting that I had to hide it away inside of a trunk in my closet. I lifted the lid, and looked inside. It was a giant mass of wires in every color imaginable. Roy G. Biv, tangled and stirred like capellini. Sprinkles, but extra long. I couldn¡¯t even see the board underneath it all. The wires were so dense, looping back across one another unpredictably. I could make out a few various regions where particular colors were concentrated, implying some sort of structure or organization, but I couldn¡¯t say what. I carefully lift it out of its closet casket. It¡¯s roughly spherical with a radius of about 2 feet, and surprisingly light. I think I heard a wire or two pop out of its plug, however far inside the plugs were. I¡¯m rotating it in my hands, trying to find some entrance into the onion-skin maze of strands. No luck. I grab the nearest of several half-filled grid paper notebooks I have lying around my cluttered bedroom floor. I want to study and dissect this, but I want to be able to put it back together afterwards. Though, in all honesty¡­ It probably doesn¡¯t have any purpose at all.

 Chapter 11 - Everything Shes Chosen

    ¡°Oh, hi Leo.¡±

    Someone¡¯s come to get my attention. He¡¯s meowing at me much more than usual, then he struts right back out into the hall. He turns his head back towards me, making sure I¡¯m watching him. I think he wants me to follow him, probably to stir the food around in his bowl some to make it more appealing. I¡¯m actually pretty hungry, too. I turn back to the logistical nightmare of cables in my hands. Was I really about to take this apart and catalog every single aspect? Yeah¡­ I think I¡¯ll go downstairs and play with some cat food.

    He¡¯s eaten the middle of his kitty kibble, but left the edges of his bowl untouched. I raked my finger inside, brushing it back to center. He¡¯s still meowing at me. I pick one of the hard nuggets up between my index finger and thumb.

    ¡°Look. Tasty, right? It¡¯s meat. Bones and cartilage and stuff. Just the way you like it, Mr. Bloodthirsty Carnivore."

    He¡¯s still staring, unsatisfied with me.

    ¡°It¡¯s fine. It¡¯s great. There¡¯s nothing wrong with these.¡±

    Eat the food.

    Come on, just eat the food

    Crunch.

    Oh. So this is what bones and cartilage and stuff tastes like. I stopped thinking about what I was doing, again. I acted without any thought for what will happen next, again. While spitting and hacking into the sink, I figured out why Leo was meowing at me. He saw someone outside.

    I hurried over to the windows and peeked through the blinds. A car was pulling out of my driveway. It had one of those pizza car-topper things on it. I didn¡¯t order anything, it must have gotten the wrong house. Maybe I should have ordered something, though. I¡¯m nearly out of groceries and I really, really don¡¯t want to go back out for a while. Just out of curiosity, I checked my front porch for mistaken deliveries. I¡¯m glad I did, because there was a bag with a styrofoam container inside. I promptly brought it inside and opened the container for inspection.

    It¡¯s salad.

    A salad with no dressing.

    Who the hell orders salad from a pizza place? Actually, I might be able to find out. I found the receipt folded up in the bag. Yeah, that¡¯s the order. A medium salad, no dressing. Ordered in¡­ my name?

    MINA.

    That¡¯s what it says.

    I didn¡¯t order this. I would never order this. It has to be a coincidence, or a database error, or someone¡¯s stolen my identity, or something. I read over it again, this time making sure I¡¯m reading it correctly. Is this the same thing that happened to me at the optometrist¡¯s earlier today? Does this say someone else¡¯s name completely, but I can only read it as my own?

    Oh, shit, someone¡¯s outside. I didn¡¯t hear a car pull up, but someone¡¯s coming up to the porch. The delivery person must have realized their mistake. I haven¡¯t eaten any of it, so I guess It¡¯s okay to give back. I braced myself for sudden social interaction and opened the door.This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

    It was Bunny. She was just standing there.

    I stared at her in disbelief, feeling her gaze back. I had to say something, because I know she never will.

    ¡°Uh, hey Bunny. Are you a delivery guy now?¡±

    ¡°No.¡±

    ¡°So¡­ what are you doing here?¡±

    ¡°You have my food.¡±

    ¡°This?¡± I opened the container of leafy greens and showed it to her. She nodded solemnly.

    She eats so slowly. I¡¯ve been sitting here with her at my kitchen table for twenty minutes and she¡¯s not even halfway through. Her bites are so small I don¡¯t know how she tastes anything. Though, it¡¯s mostly just lettuce, so I guess there isn¡¯t much to taste anyways. Her dainty way of eating is actually kind of cute compared to her somewhat grisly appearance. I¡¯m not trying to call her ugly, she just¡­ looks like the kind of person to stab a dude over cocaine. You know, like she did.

    It was against my better judgement to let her in my house. My mother never specifically told me to not let murderers inside the door, but she probably just assumed I¡¯d be able to reason that by myself. But no, here I am; eye-to-eye with a killer with a bit of ruffage on her cheek. It just would have been so weird to tell her to leave. I guess my sense of judgement can be swayed by socially awkward faux pas. I can tell because it¡¯s happening again. I don¡¯t really want to talk to her, but not talking is so much worse.

    ¡°So¡­ why did you order salad from a pizza place?¡±

    ¡°It was the only thing on the menu I wanted.¡±

    ¡°Why not order from somewhere else?¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s the only place I can order from.¡±

    She must be bad with technology. She looks like she¡¯s older than me, but it can¡¯t be by very much. Must have had a rough life to go this long without ever having used a smartphone in a substantial manner.

    ¡°Mina.¡±

    ¡°Yeah?¡±

    ¡°Can I sleep over again tonight?¡±

    Ouch. Even the impulse thought of saying ¡°no¡± to that kind of question hurts. She looks so innocent now, making tiny ¡®yuck¡¯ faces when she bites into a green pepper. I¡¯ve been trying to avoid it, but I need to talk to her¡­ and I promise it¡¯s not just a convenient deflection.

    ¡°First of all¡­ can you tell me about what happened a few nights ago?¡±

    "Which night?¡±

    ¡°The night when you¡­ ya know¡­ stabbed a guy?¡±

    ¡°He said he was going to kill us. I stopped him.¡±

    I guess¡­ I guess it could be self-defense, in a way. But even then, there¡¯s still so much more to it than that.

    ¡°What about the drugs?¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t know.¡±

    ¡°Why did Rose hypnotize me? Did you see what happened to my fingernails?¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t know why she did it. I didn¡¯t see you when it happened.¡±

    ¡°Why did you go in that building at all?¡±

    ¡°This.¡±

    She pulls something out of her jacket¡¯s front pocket and holds it out in her hand.

    I have no idea what it is. At all. It¡¯s a purple blobby sort of shape, covered in hairs or webbing. Looking closely it seems to be moving; its wispy lavender strands slowly contracting and extending across her palm in search of¡­ food? Was this thing alive?

    ¡°Bunny¡­ what the hell is that?¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t know.¡±

    ¡°But you found it in that old building?¡±

    ¡°Yes. That¡¯s why I went inside.¡±

    ¡°How did you even know it was in there?¡±

    ¡°I saw her in the window.¡±

    Her? Is this thing ¡®her¡¯? That¡¯s an awful lot of personification for a bit of grape jelly.

    I guess I feel a little more comfortable with Bunny than I thought. I remember Rose calling her ¡°methodical¡±. I think I see what she means. You often hear words like ¡°unpredictable¡± and ¡°unhinged¡± thrown around, but she doesn¡¯t seem like either of those things. She¡¯s extremely collected. I don¡¯t think she would do anything without an immediate benefit to herself, and even then, it might take some instruction. At the very least, I don¡¯t feel like she¡¯s any sort of threat to me. I hope I¡¯m not mistaken.

    Oh, and I hope this purple thing doesn¡¯t try to eat me in my sleep.

 Chapter 12 - Mistakes, Patterns Written

    "Ow. Ow. Ouch."

    "Sorry, Bun. You''re not sleeping on my pillows with hair this gross. And pull up your towel a little, it¡¯s slipping."

    Bunny had just gotten out of the shower (that I made her take) but it didn''t look like she had washed her hair at all. If she wasn''t going to do it, I was. Her hair was matted and damaged, just pulling my fingers through it is a chore. I¡¯m sure it doesn¡¯t feel for her either, but I know she can take it.

    "Ow... Ow."

    "Do you, like, ever wash your hair?"

    "Not really."

    I could tell. It was down to her shoulder blades, a pretty faded baby blue color. It was very fine and soft, at least after I worked through most of the knots.

    "So¡­ about your new pet."

    "The purple thing?"

    "Yeah. Why are you carrying it around?"

    "I need to give it to Rose. But I don''t know why she wants it."

    Probably something demonic. I wouldn¡¯t have said something like that a couple weeks ago, but that seems to be the trend now. It makes me wonder, why is Bunny dealing with her at all?

    "Hey, how did you two meet anyways?"

    "I don''t remember."

    "Ah, I see. Do you remember how me and you met?"

    Bunny went silent for a second before speaking.

    "You bought me something from a vending machine."

    "It was a pretty pitiful sight, you were just staring at the snacks through the glass. After that we kept bumping into each other everywhere. On the street, grocery stores, on campus¡­ That would be where you met Rose, I''ll bet."

    "Maybe."

    "She''ll remember, you''re a pretty difficult person to forget. Blue hair, piercing gaze, named after an animal¡­ Oh shit, speaking of names."

    She remained motionless and stoic, but shifted her gaze to meet my eyes behind her in the steamy mirror, my hands still combing through her hair.

    "I saw that Rose sends you lots of names and addresses. The hell is that about?"

    "It''s about you."

    I pulled my hands off her flaky scalp.

    "About me?"

    "Yeah."

    "You''re going to have to explain."

    "I''m your bodyguard."

    My eyes narrowed in reflex. I wish she¡¯d give me more information at a time.

    "My bodyguard?"Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

    "Yeah. I watch out for bad guys."

    "Oh, uh, thanks¡­ Have you caught any?"

    "Yeah."

    "Give me an example."

    "Uh¡­ A guy was going to steal your bag one time. I stopped him."

    I didn''t ask how she did. If it was like the last guy i saw her ¡°stop¡±...

    "Is that what those names are, people to stop? For my sake?"

    "Mostly."

    "What do you do to those people?"

    "Stop them."

    I plugged my hair dryer into the wall, not having any idea what this all really meant. I get what she''s saying, but I don''t understand the bigger picture at all. What''s been happening behind my back for so long? And more importantly, where is it going? As I spaced out, Bunny began to speak. Not an answer this time, but an unprompted statement.

    "I told Rose I was going to meet her tonight."

    "But you came here instead?"

    "I didn''t mean to. I ordered food to your house because I didn¡¯t know where else to pick it up."

    "So why not Rose''s place?"

    She turned her head slightly to the side. It was too hard to hear her over the sound of me warming her hair to a toasty temperature, but I know she said something.

    An hour or two later, I was setting some blankets and pillows onto my couch once again. I wanted to make it a bit more inviting for her, even if it was still just a couch. She wasn''t saying anything, just watching me in the silky black pajamas I''m letting her borrow.

    Last time, she left in the morning before I woke up.

    "Bunny, you''re going to go to Rose''s tomorrow, right?"

    "Yeah."

    "Wait for me to wake up. I''ll go with you. I want to talk to her too."

    "Okay."

    At least she''s agreeable. Lights out.

    I woke up a little after noon and began brewing some coffee. I heard Leo purring from the living room. It looked like he had climbed on top of Bunny in the night and she was petting him in her sleep. I filled the little metallic bowl with his breakfast, causing him to snap awake with a leap off Bunny''s chest towards the kitchen. I guess I should make us some food too.

    A few sunny-side up eggs later, I was following Bunny down the side of some nearby roads that I''m unfamiliar with. There were no sidewalks, these roads were clearly not intended for pedestrians.

    "Are you sure this is the best route?"

    "Yes. She lives there."

    Bunny pointed at an apartment complex past an intersection. I didn''t know she lived so close to me. She probably did.

    The intersection was scary. The stoplights were so short, and cars were rushing past unpredictably. I made an impatient Bunny wait until it was absolutely clear before we crossed, costing us an extra five or ten minutes.

    We make it to the parking lot of the apartments. It doesn''t look like there''s any security, we so we just walked towards the buildings. Bunny led me up the creaking wooden steps to the third floor. It was only at this point I started to feel nervous. What if Rose isn''t exactly happy to see me? I guess that''s irrational, it''s not like I''ve done anything to her. If anything, I should be the mad one. But still, nerves are nerves.

    Bunny stops walking in front of one of the doors. I hadn''t been paying attention to them until now, but they were labeled with words instead of numbers. Not ¡°302¡± or something like I expected, this door says "SEAS". At least, that''s what it said to me. Apparently I can''t take text for granted anymore.

    Without knocking, she opens the door and walks inside. I follow behind her, a few safe steps behind. The inside walls are white, and the carpet a soft color not unlike Bunny''s hair. The air conditioner was on full-blast, making the air cold and loud. On her coffee table there was an open birdcage. There was one on the counter too. And on the stove. And a few on the floor. Huh. I inspected one near the entrance. On the bottom of the cage were newspaper scrap and a few white feathers.

    "Does Rose keep birds?" I had to speak pretty loudly for Bunny to hear me over the AC noise.

    "I didn''t think so."

    I would have asked Rose herself, but there was no sign of her anywhere. I watched Bunny go in and out of various rooms, looking like a lost puppy. I didn''t text Rose that we were coming, and I know Bunny probably didn''t either, so she''s probably out running errands or something.

    I saw Bunny poke her head out of one of the now-open doorways. She stared at me, silently asking me with her unmoving eyes to follow her in.

    Inside is Rose''s bedroom, presumably. She has a queen-sized bed, a small desk with a laptop on it, and some posters from anime I don''t recognize on the walls. The ceiling fan is spinning on its highest setting, jangling its cords around wildly.

    Oh, and there were about a dozen white doves on her mattress. That too.

 Chapter 13 - No Lucifer!

    They seemed pretty well-behaved for birds. They were just standing on her bed, preening themselves and walking around aimlessly. Their beady dark eyes looked back into my own as my ears were filled with rhythmic bustling of white noise. I felt like I needed to introduce myself to the birds or something. I didn''t know even animals could make me feel social pressure.

    Bunny turned around and went back to the entrance. "I''m going to go get Rose", she said. Before I had a chance to respond, she had already closed the door. I guess I''ll stay here and wait for them.

    I roamed out into the small living room and sat on the couch. It was firm, but not uncomfortable. It''s anxious to be in someone else''s house without them there. I don''t even have one of those bead toys to take my mind off it. I close my eyes, listening to her AC run. God, she really has that thing cranked up. It''s so loud that I think my ears will ring when I go back outside. It reminded me of the ocean. I went there once or twice as a child, family road trips. I always felt unbearably sandy on the way back. I cried when I got seaweed wrapped around my ankle. I think I still might. My beach towel was light yellow with bees on it. The smell, the sights, the taste in the air; it was all coming back to me. It was the sounds here that brought everything back, and yet it was the only aspect of the beach I wasn¡¯t thinking about. It was because I didn¡¯t need to, it¡¯s right here. This third-story apartment sounds exactly like waves crashing on the shore at high tide. Is this why she does it, to transport herself to the beach?

    LAMB

    It might be worth the cold goosebumps on her skin all day.

    LAMB

    I¡¯m glad I wore my hoodie, but I¡¯m always glad I wore it; so I always do.

    LAMB

    LAMB LAMB

    Okay. Introspective monologue on hold. I have no idea why I¡¯m thinking about lamb. I¡¯ve never touched one, never eaten one, and have only ever seen them with the most passing interest.

    LAMB LAMB

    BEEP

    LAMB

    I want to think about the beach. Let¡¯s go back to the shore, please. I want to play volleyball and step into the water.

    BEEP BEEP

    LAMB

    I opened my eyes.

    BEEP

    There were two doves standing on my lap.

    BEEP

    One standing on each thigh. They¡¯re so light, I didn¡¯t notice at all.

    The left one was holding my left hoodie string in its beak.

    BEEP

    The right one was holding my right hoodie string in its beak.

    LAMB

    They were pulling on them, as birds tend to do with strings.

    LAMB BEEP

    I think they¡¯re the source of the intrusive thoughts in my brain.

    LAMB

    When the left one pulled, I thought about beeping. When the right one pulled-

    LAMB

    -I thought about lambs.

    BEEP

    BEEP BEEPThe narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

    LAMB BEEP

    Yeah.

    That¡¯s what it is.

    LA-

    I gently pushed them off my body onto the couch cushions. They cooed a bit in protest, but ultimately seemed to respect my decision. I began to tug on my own hoodie strings, but nothing happened. I tried it harder, softer, in rhythm; yet no abstract sounds or farm animals are being invited onto my mind¡¯s center stage.

    I didn¡¯t have much more time for extra experimentation before the front door slammed open. It was Bunny with Rose behind her. She must have actually found her somewhere. The short, seemingly disgruntled girl walked directly towards the back, while the tall apartment-owner closed and locked her front door.

    ¡°Hi Mina.¡±

    ¡°Hi.¡±

    I didn¡¯t know what else to say. Rose didn¡¯t know what to say either; or if she did, she wasn¡¯t saying it. Surprisingly, Bunny was the one to break the silence.

    ¡°Why are there birds?¡±

    ¡°Oh, these are my, uh, pets.¡±

    We stared at her for a moment.

    ¡°My pet... sacrificial doves.¡±

    Rose motioned around her apartment with her hands saying ¡°I don¡¯t own this place, I just rent it. A temporary contract. Same concept, but with animals.¡±

    Bunny¡¯s thick brows furrowed in a rare act of personality.

    ¡°You¡¯re going to kill them?¡±

    ¡°Not kill, sacrifice. I¡¯m just letting Choronzon do what he wants with them. Which, ya know, is probably killing them and bathing in their blood. Or something.¡±

    I figured this was my cue to chime in.

    ¡°Is that what you¡¯re going to do with me, too?¡±

    ¡°Hah, no. You¡¯re not the offering. You¡¯re more like the burning bush.¡±

    ¡°You¡¯re going to light me on fire?¡±

    ¡°No, it was just a saying. And no one actually lit the burning bush, it was already- nevermind. Look, I get that you¡¯re upset. I probably wouldn¡¯t like it if someone forced satan into my brain either. It was just really, super, necessary.¡±

    I wanted to ask for clarification, but I knew it wasn¡¯t that easy.

    ¡°How much are you going to tell me?¡±

    ¡°How much do you actually want to know? I¡¯m not trying to be coy. Think about it.¡±

    If I say ¡®I want to know everything¡¯, I might really regret it. She¡¯s burned me with her over-information before. I don¡¯t know how much I can take, especially if it¡¯s about myself. I thought about what exactly I wanted to know, or more specifically, what I didn¡¯t want to know. Meanwhile, Bunny was busy playing with the doves or something.

    ¡°Okay, Rose. First question: I¡¯ve been seeing weird things lately. A lot of text doesn¡¯t look the same to me as it does to others. Is that related to all this?¡±

    ¡°Probably, if indirectly. It certainly wasn¡¯t something I meant to do. It¡¯s probably just some weird effect of being host to a demon.¡±

    ¡°A host? Like to a parasite?¡±

    ¡°Yeah. It¡¯s mostly a spiritual thing, but it drips into the physical world in strange ways. Thinking of heaven and earth as being separate is convenient, but it¡¯s not true. Same with body and mind. They¡¯re different ways of looking at the same thing.¡±

    ¡°Okay¡­ Uh, next question: How did you learn to make me a host? Why is that something you know how to do?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ve studied magick for a long time. Summoning angels and demons isn¡¯t hard work, you do it all the time without realizing. Making them actually do things is the hard part. Firstly, they don¡¯t really exist. They aren¡¯t corporeal, not made of waves and particles like us. There¡¯s no way for them to interact with physical objects by themselves. They have to be flashed into something. Something like a crystal pendulum, a mass-manufactured Ouija board, or a nerdy girl you met in class that wears the same hoodie everyday. Once the demon is inside of something, it can start to take effect. Real, tangible effects.¡±

    I wiped the sweat off my clammy hands onto the inner sleeves of the same hoodie I wear every day. ¡°W-what sort of effects are you hoping for?¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s a question you don¡¯t want the answer to. But I can promise, it is only to benefit you.¡±

    Before I could ask, she continued.

    ¡°Summoning demons into an inanimate object or small animals isn¡¯t that hard, but people are pretty difficult. Our minds are too dense, endless thoughts and words and feelings clouding any sort of potential entry point. You have to make them go blank, make them quit thinking. That¡¯s the art of hypnotism. I¡¯ve tried the classic ¡®keep your eyes on my watch¡¯ before. It¡¯s unintrusive, but it¡¯s too unreliable. The single most effective, efficient, and dependable form of hypnosis is trauma. It¡¯s a scar in your mind, an off-switch that I can press at any time. That¡¯s why I write so much for you. And you know, It¡¯s not easy on me, either. The number of autopsies I¡¯ve read, the gruesome images I¡¯ve studied to pinpoint accuracy, the emotional labor required to devote so much time to you¡­ It¡¯s numbing. You might think I¡¯m cruel, in the way that a caveman might think of a surgeon. Would he understand that a scalpel deep under the skin is healing? That blood on his hands is cause for joy? Does the caveman, hell, does even the patient understand the pain of a doctor? In the end, it doesn¡¯t matter. They don¡¯t need to understand. You don¡¯t need to understand. You¡¯re lying on my operating table, I¡¯ve applied my anesthesia, and now your operation is underway. When you finally awake, you''ll be- wait, where are you going?¡±

    "I''m going outside."

    ¡°Don¡¯t you want to hear the rest of my monologue first?¡±

    ¡°No.¡±

 Chapter 14 - Plants and Simple Treasures

    I stepped down the creaky wooden stairs of Rose¡¯s apartment building in a hurry. I¡¯m sure she isn¡¯t following me. For one, she¡¯s not really the athletic type, preferring to avoid exercise whenever possible. Second, I made sure to check behind me every few seconds just to ensure that I was free of pursuers. This constant backwards rubbernecking made me nearly stumble over Bunny, who was sitting on the bottom step. After catching my breath, I spoke to her.

    ¡°Bunny? I thought you were still in the apartment.¡±

    ¡°I left while she was still talking.¡±

    At least I know I wasn¡¯t the only one who didn¡¯t want to hear all that. I sat down on the step beside her. She seemed a bit more¡­ inward than usual. I don¡¯t know, objectively, there¡¯s not much different about her. I guess after spending time together, I¡¯m starting to pick up on her subtleties. Maybe she¡¯s picking up on mine, too.

    ¡°Rose is scary, huh,¡± I said, trying to build common ground.

    ¡°Yeah.¡±

    ¡°You¡¯re worried about those birds, aren¡¯t you?¡±

    She gave a tiny nod of acknowledgement. I didn¡¯t know what I should say to her. I¡¯d love to tell her that we¡¯d storm back inside, save them all and leave happily ever after; but I know that¡¯s probably a bad idea. We could end up as the sacrifices instead. After a moment of contemplation, I decided it would be best to take her mind off things.

    ¡°Hey, want to go get ice cream?¡±

    God, I sound like my dad. Bunny stared at me inquisitively.

    ¡°Well, I don¡¯t think Rose is really my friend anymore, but you¡¯ve been nice to me. I¡¯ll admit, when you, uh¡­ did that thing to that guy, I was really scared of you. I didn¡¯t want to see you ever again. But after talking to you more, I think I understand you better. You get worried easily, right? It¡¯s only natural to try and protect others when they¡¯re threatened. Afterall, you¡¯re my bodyguard, right?¡±

    ¡°Yeah... Yeah.¡±

    ¡°Then come guard me on my way to get ice cream.¡±

    It was only a short walk to the mom n¡¯ pop place a couple blocks away. I ordered for the both of us because I¡¯m pretty sure she doesn¡¯t enjoy talking to people. I got chocolate for myself, and vanilla for her. She didn¡¯t say what she liked best, so I just took the safest option. I scooped a bunch into my mouth and enjoyed myself for the first time today. It was cold and soft. It was very sweet of course, but the chocolate flavor adds a beautiful touch of bitterness and BLUE. Not blue, brown. Chocolate is brown. I ate another spoonful, with a more critical mind. Yeah¡­ this still tastes BLUE. I don¡¯t really know what that means, but I can¡¯t shake it. It¡¯s the same with doves¡¯ words earlier. I feel like something is trying to bring my attention to something, but I can¡¯t imagine what it is. I continued to eat my BLUE ice cream, watching Bunny nibble through her¡¯s.The author''s narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

    ¡°Do you like it?¡±

    ¡°Yeah. It¡¯s sweet.¡±

    ¡°So, uh, I don¡¯t know how to describe it, but¡­ words have been weird lately.¡±

    I¡¯m not the best at smooth segues. She¡¯ll get used to me.

    ¡°Words?¡±

    ¡°They¡¯ve been popping into my brain at weird times, and sometimes I have trouble reading them. Right now I can¡¯t shake the word ¡®blue¡¯ out of my mind.¡±

    She didn¡¯t say anything in response, but it felt good to say it out loud, like a small weight had been lifted off my BLUE shoulders. Having a friend isn¡¯t so bad.

    On the walk home, I told Bunny that it was okay if she stayed at my place again tonight. I wasn¡¯t just being nice, I also had something to gain from it. If Rose tries to pull something freaky, she¡¯ll be there to help me out.

    ¡°Who is that?¡±, Bunny asked. We were close to my house, but there was no one else around us. I turned around, worried that Rose was tailing us and somehow didn¡¯t recognize her; yet, there was no sign of any unwanted pursuers. In actuality, the person Bunny was talking about was in front of us. Specifically, on my front porch; facing away from the door, to the street.

    She looks like a slightly older woman, waiting for something. She''s wearing a grey, maybe light green cable knit sweater over a khaki ankle-length skirt. Her hair is long, kept in one clean braid draped over her shoulder; its color nearly identical to her sweater. Her thin-framed glasses made me remember that I still needed to pick mine up.

    Meeting someone new is always a memorable experience. Everyone''s heard the words "it''s important to make a good first impression." They''re repeated so often that it''s easy to forget that they''re true. Your first experience with someone plants a seed inside you that shapes the rest of your future time together. But not all seeds are made equal. Some seeds spring their roots deep into you, tangling everything, intertwining you forever. Some seeds don''t receive the proper sunlight or nurturing and quickly wither away. Didn''t The Bible say something similar?

    The truth is that you''re a garden. When you''ve been around for a while, you might be more like a forest. The individuals you¡¯re surrounded with fill the inner layers of your world with their unique species of leaves and branches. Those leaves could bloom into flowers for you to fall in love with, little fragments of themselves you admire from outside. Those branches could bear fruit to sustain you, just as easily as they could bear fruit to poison you.

    You can prune branches and pull weeds all you like, but you can never really get rid of them. Their dead leaves and roots and bark fall to the ground, being absorbed in as compost. They aren¡¯t gone; just being fragmented into millions of smaller pieces to be absorbed by the others. Memories don¡¯t die, they just get recycled into new ones. This garden is self-sustaining, an endless loop of life and death. This recursion isn¡¯t just a byproduct. No matter your feelings, it¡¯s an inescapable reality: death is the basis for life.

    This is the burden of the groundskeeper.

    One day this woman was going to teach me this lesson, just as I was going to teach it to her.

    "Excuse me ma''am, do you have the right house?"

    "Your name is Mina, correct? I just received word from an acquaintance that I would benefit from talking to you for a moment."

    I gave Bunny a look. It was the kind of look I¡¯d interpret as ¡®please be on guard¡¯, but I can¡¯t be sure how she¡¯ll interpret it.

    ¡°Who is this acquaintance, if I can ask?¡±

    ¡°The one with red hair. She said that you may be interested in an exorcism?¡±

    I let her inside.

    Biologist

 Chapter 15 - Youâ€™re Out of Touch

    I don¡¯t really remember what Earl Gray tea tastes like. I bought the box months ago, tried it once, and decided that I still hate tea. It¡¯s been sitting in the back of the cabinet over my sink since then, until today. The woman in my house seemed sophisticated, the kind that you should make tea for. I also made a cup for Bunny, but I filled my cup with cola while they weren¡¯t paying attention. We all took a few quiet sips, quietly enjoying the pleasant company. After a few ticks of the clock, I decided to address the elephant in the room; which was a gun on the table.

    ¡°So, uh¡­.¡±

    My words didn¡¯t come out right. I got distracted again. By the gun on the table. It¡¯s a pistol, the kind with the chamber that spins around. A revolver, I think. A blue one. It¡¯s a really pretty shade of aqua. It seems like it would taste like ice cream, but maybe that¡¯s just because it¡¯s still on my mind. It doesn¡¯t look metal, was this thing 3D printed? While I was getting lost in my own brain, Bunny took initiative.

    ¡°Why is there a gun?¡±

    The lady seemed startled by the question.

    ¡°Oh, this is the exorcism... device.¡±

    Next was my turn to be startled.

    ¡°That¡¯s gonna exorcise me? I mean¡­ yeah, I guess it would, huh? Exorcise my grey matter all over the walls.¡±

    The lady put down her cup, and started motioning wildly with her hands.

    ¡°Okay okay okay, we¡¯re getting off on the totally wrong foot here. Let me start from the beginning, okay?¡±

    I nodded my head, staying weary of her sudden movements.

    ¡°I met her a while back. The red, pink girl. Rosa? Rose. I met Rose a month or two ago. I told her about my, uh, job, and we parted ways. But an hour or so ago she sent me a text. She said she had a friend at this address who was maybe interested in an exorcism.¡±

    She picked up her pretty plastic-y gun and continued.

    ¡°This is bl-... This is, a demon¡­ eraser. It erases demons.¡±

    A bead of sweat rolled down her temple, slightly wrinkled from age and heavily wrinkled from stress.

    ¡°You use this¡­ at you, at yourself, and it. Uh, ¡®shwoop!¡¯ Demon gone! Haha. Wanna give it a go?¡±

    My hands were folded together on the table in front of me as I was leaning far back in my chair. I don¡¯t know what kind of face I was making. Maybe the kind that a boss would give when he catches a guy he hired ten minutes ago taking money from the register. I don¡¯t know what¡¯s going on, but this woman wants me to fucking shoot myself.This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author''s work.

    I kept my head forwards but sent my eyes to the side in order to inspect Bunny. She was, in turn, locked on to the woman like a laser. Her eyes were following her every move, as she moved. I could tell from the slight shake of her fingertips that she was experiencing the effects of adrenaline. This is very not good. This is bad, actually.

    I¡¯ve seen Bunny on adrenaline exactly once before, and it resulted in swift and immediate death. I do not feel like dealing with a corpse in my house. But, I don¡¯t know. I guess I¡¯d rather her die than me. At the rate this is going, I¡¯m gonna have a pastel blue bullet lodged in my skull any minute now. But¡­ I don¡¯t yet. If she was really going to shoot me, wouldn¡¯t she have done it by now? I¡¯m practically handing my head to her on a silver platter. There¡¯s another layer to this, something that¡¯s making things more complicated on her end. But first of all, I need Bunny to calm down. I think violence is justifiable in this situation, but the logistics of a murder inside my home seems like a headache. I¡¯ll just have to signal to her my message the best I can.

    ¡°Hey¡­ You know what¡¯s really weird?¡±

    I sounded like Jerry Seinfeld starting a monologue.

    ¡°W-What?¡± the nervous woman responded.

    ¡°How people can say something with a hidden message behind it. It¡¯s weird that a word, or a string of words, can have more than one meaning based on context. Right? Bunny, let¡¯s try it.¡±

    She took her eyes hesitantly off her target, if only to find out what the hell I was talking about.

    ¡°Bunny, did you know that I used to play little league? I know, I know, it doesn¡¯t seem like me; but it¡¯s the truth. I wasn¡¯t always this out of shape, I was actually a pretty athletic kid. I was so confident I told my coach that I wanted the heaviest metal bat he had. It¡¯s been so long since I¡¯ve seen it, I think it¡¯s still standing in the corner of the garage. You should go take a look at it.¡±

    She stared back at me, dumbfounded. I motioned with my eyes towards the garage. Once, twice, three times¡­ She finally stood up, and silently walked away.

    She walked away. Leaving us alone here.

    Shit. I gotta stall.

    ¡°Sorry for bringing up baseball out of nowhere like that, haha! It¡¯s just that, uh, Bunny loves the sport. She¡¯s a real¡­ homerunhead. Always knockin¡¯ ¡®em out of the park.¡±

    She laughed nervously. She started to say something, but I think her throat closed up on her. She didn¡¯t try again. Now we¡¯re just two sweaty people not blinking. Seconds passed. Minutes passed. Hours, days, weeks, I don¡¯t know, man. I couldn¡¯t keep track. I was too stressed to keep my internal clock running. All I could do was pray my reflexes were fast enough to get down fast if something bad happens.

    Then she moved. It was slow, like an engine starting up. Testing the waters. I didn''t flinch, I was too focused. She slowly began moving the blue gun towards the table, pointed away from either of us. She began to speak with a shaky voice.

    "Okay s-"

    Then with the speed of lightning, (and the scream of one struck by it,) she tumbled backwards out of her chair. Bunny had snuck up behind her like a ninja. She took her arm around her front and slammed her along with the chair straight into the ground. After the initial crash, I heard a blunt thump, then no more signs of struggle.

    Bunny got up off the floor, dusted herself off, and turned to face me.

    "I saw your baseball bat. It wasn''t very interesting."

 Chapter 16 - Lets Recreate an Easier Time

    The woman wasn''t dead, just unconscious (Thank God.) After pinning her down, Bunny thumped her head with a hammer she found in the garage.

    "I didn''t hit her hard. I didn''t think she was going to pass out."

    "What else was going to happen? More importantly, what do we do now?"

    "I don¡¯t know. It''s your house."

    The way she said it reminded me of being bored at a friend''s place as a kid, trying to decide what to do next. Did the guests have to decide or the hosts? The answer seemed to always be whichever one you weren''t.

    "You''re my guest for the night, remember? It wouldn''t be polite for me to decide everything by myself."

    I hunkered over to inspect the woman sprawled out on my floor. She isn¡¯t bleeding, but there''s a hell of a bruise forming on her forehead. She might have a concussion. I think this is the type of injury bad enough to drive to the ER for, but not so bad that you need to call 911. Maybe not the best possible outcome, but better than I was expecting.

    "Thanks for not stabbing her, Buns. That could have been really bad."

    "I don''t have my knife anymore."

    "I thought you always carried one around?"

    "I threw it away in a trash can we passed earlier today."

    Huh. I wonder why she did that. She doesn''t seem like the type to voluntarily make herself less of a threat. I guess she could have been getting rid of evidence, but why did she wait so late?

    We moved the unconscious woman to the living room couch. If we drove her to the ER and they asked what happened, we might look suspicious. Just throwing her outside didn''t feel right either. Without her gun, she seems pretty harmless, so it¡¯s okay if she stays here until she wakes up. Then I guess we''ll grill her for answers. I''ll be good cop, Bunny will be bad cop. I guess more accurately we would be confused cop and uninterested cop, respectively.

    I fumble with the weird gun in my hands. It''s shaped pretty believably, but the material is so strange. It''s like modeling clay after being opened. If I shoved my thumb hard enough into the side, I think it would leave an imprint. I fiddled with the spinny chamber part for a moment and it dislodged itself from the side. Inside I could see the bullets. They were the same shade of blue as every other part of the gun, but their texture was different. They were¡­ kinda fuzzy? I tried to shake them out, but all six were wedged too firmly up in there.

    "Hey, Bunny¡­ should we try shooting this thing?"

    She didn''t respond, just watched me play with it like a fidget toy.

    "I think if I fired it into the ground in the backyard it wouldn''t hurt anything, but I''m worried the sound might make my neighbors call the police."

    She still didn¡¯t do anything. I guess that¡¯s her way of showing disapproval.

    It had gotten late during all the commotion. The only lights in the house were the shines of bright orange coming from the street lamps outside, split into bars by my half-pulled blinds. I pulled them down and closed them, then flipped on the kitchen and dining room lights. The dining room chandelier has a pale yellow glow. It feels refined with an air of antiquity. It clashes with the light from the kitchen, a single uncovered fluorescent bulb that burns so white it''s almost blue. Both of these reach out down the hall into the deeper unlit rooms, grasping for whatever photons they can reach to clear their shadows. Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

    Despite the presence of my guest...s, I decided I should take my shower while I can. I politely excused myself and hobbled up the dark stairs. Even though my room is cluttered with junk and unidentifiable machines, I know it well enough to make it over to my dresser without light. I pulled from it a fresh change of undies and the least embarrassing set of pajamas I have. (not including the sleek pair that I lend Bunny now.)

    I entered the bathroom then closed and locked the door. It was almost completely pitch black aside from a small spark of light from the window. Out of curiosity I peeked through. The light I was seeing was the faint light of a TV from my next door neighbor''s window. That wasn''t quite effective enough for bathing, so I closed the blinds and flipped the light switch on. There are four bulbs above the mirror, but only one of them still works. It flickers sometimes. I keep forgetting to buy better light bulbs, but to tell the truth, I think I prefer the dim lighting. It''s romantic, in a way. It''s soothing. It also helps to hide any spots of dirt or hair. I can''t stand dirty bathrooms.

    The hot water warms me up. I didn''t even realize I was cold. I didn''t realize how stressed I was, either, until I began to lather up my hair with some flowery-smelling shampoo. Running the knots out of my hair felt like relief from these recent days of anxiety. So much has happened that I haven''t had much time for myself lately. Rose did this, demon did that. I just want to relax and not worry about anything. It would be nice if I could forget about all¡­ This. I know I tried that before, and it didn''t work. It ended with me crying in an optometrist''s. That''s like the golden standard of "not working". Now I have Bunny, though. She''s a good bodyguard as she proved about fifteen minutes ago. She just needed a bit of adjustment, is all. While she''s here, I don''t have to worry about anyone coming and "getting" me.

    The demon thing is still a worry though, for sure. When I look closely into the mirror I can just barely see the skulls deep in my pupils, their mouths open and unmoving. It''s kind of badass, honestly. It doesn¡¯t hurt, so whatever. Oh, can¡¯t forget to pick up my glasses soon.

    My WORD problem is a bitch sometimes. Being unable to read certain things might bite me in the ass one day. I don¡¯t know how to handle this issue, in all honesty. But these things aside¡­

    Aren''t I pretty much okay?

    Maybe I need to let go of all this stress. It''s just weighing me down. I''m safe, I have a house, I have a friend, I have the internet, I have a lot of things that I need to appreciate more. Actually, I might be better than okay. The grocery store I work at part-time is closed for the rest of the week for renovations. Less money, sure, but I don''t have to break my back stocking shelves of discount Ragu for hours. I can pretty much laze around and watch YouTube all day. I have a huge backlog of let''s plays to catch up on, and Rose keeps telling me I need to get into some rabbit-themed vtuber. I kind of want to rebuild my friendship with her. Maybe I¡¯ll wait for her to stop acting like an evil bitch first.

    I turn off the water and begin to dry myself. I have a weird sense of excitement. It''s that type energy when you''re taking a shower at a sleepover. You''ve spent all day playing with your friends, for so long that you forget how to appreciate it. But then, under the grace of hot water, you appreciate your loneliness. You finally get a moment to unpack it all. You realize how much fun you''re having, and you can''t wait to finish up to play some more.

    I won''t lie and say that I''m that happy right now, but I am looking forward to doing fun things for myself. And I have a friend waiting on me downstairs as well.

    With my hair still dripping wet, I happily trot back down the dark steps I ascended a few minutes ago.

    "Hey Bunny, do you watch YouTube? There''s this guy I watch who reviews microwave dinners and blank VHS tapes and stuff, and I thought that maybe you''d like t-"

    Ah fuck. I forgot about the random woman in my house. Shit shit shit. She''s still lying dazed on the couch, but she''s definitely awake. Bunny''s sitting on the chair next to her, and they''re both just looking at me. Total silence. Actual crickets chirping.

    "Uh, so¡­ what''s your name?"

    "Me?" The lady responded.

    "Yeah."

    "My name is Biologist, and¡­ I''d like to apologize."

 Chapter 17 - Rainbow Bridge Unfurling

    Biologist seemed different than she did before. All her emotions had slowly subsided since she woke up. Even her eyes seemed to look different, as if she was possessed. Based on what she said next, that assumption was pretty much correct.

    ¡°You¡¯re host to a demon, I¡¯m host to an angel. Every celestial being has a sphere of domain, a boundless but exclusive set of mysteries they control the clues to. My angel is Biologist, the one who controls how life springs forth from inorganic material. Not just any clump of carbonic molecules can become alive. It takes something else, a particular pattern of intelligence hard-coded into the fabric of the universe. Humans, animals, plants, bacteria, viruses; they were all formed from the fundamental operations of Biologist. They weren¡¯t designed like blueprints. These forms were just the ones that fit themselves next to the rules of a recursive world. That¡¯s how this operates. Biologist isn¡¯t an architect. I¡¯m a mathematician, writing an endless cascading function of anima.

    The purpose of life is to fulfill one¡¯s destiny. That¡¯s why everyone¡¯s here. Everyone except for you. You¡¯re a normal person on the outside, to yourself and to everyone else, but the truth of the matter is entirely different. You lack something that¡¯s so vital, so crucial to everything else that you¡¯ve found it hard to relate to the world. You lack a purpose. Not career, or a hobby, but a much deeper purpose. You have no significance, no final goal, no ¡®do what thou wilt.¡¯ You¡¯re useless.

    That¡¯s not to say you lack impact. You¡¯re a good daughter, a good friend, a good wage slave. Maybe you¡¯ve brought a bit more joy into the world than you¡¯ve taken out. No one really dislikes you. You are very hospitable and charismatic, despite what you may think of yourself.

    To you, you are yourself. To people, you are a person. To the divine, you are a mistake. Every living organism was formed with its destiny ahead of it. No matter how small or invisible that destiny may be, it will be fulfilled. A squirrel who plants an acorn to become a tree, a ship builder who forgets a screw and sinks a ship, a virus that infects just the right person at the right time; you¡¯re less than all these. Nothing you do will be cause to significance, and yet, you continue to exist. Speaking, moving, interacting with others. They all have grand destinies to fulfill, and all you¡¯re doing is distracting them. I don¡¯t know how you got here, but you¡¯ve much overstayed your welcome.

    Instead of watching and waiting from afar as they have been, I began to take action. Using my divine power, I planted the microbial seeds of nine chromatic beasts nearby. Each evolves rapidly, taking only a few days to form as a full high-level organism; each one evolving farther than the last.

    The red chromatic beast, the first, dissolved from its base molecular state only minutes after it was formed. It wasn¡¯t advanced enough to survive the peculiar conditions of the cosmos.

    The orange beast formed similarly to a stag beetle. Its long, thin horn hid an infinitely sharp needle, likely to pierce one of your vital organs. That was its cosmic destiny. But something happened. Something prevented it from carrying out its goal. It died before its time, unceremoniously eaten by a bird. A snow-white dove, if I recall.

    The yellow beast was like a lizard, able to blend in and skitter rapidly across any surface. Its fangs were sharp, and its crooked tail hooked. I can¡¯t say exactly how it was destined to kill you, but that was cut short as well. I watched its head get crushed into pieces under the shoes of your friend Rose. It wasn¡¯t an accident, either. I could tell that she had long been meddling in things humans should never. She must have known it was going to kill you, so she took action beyond human domain.This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

    I saw it happen, but I wasn¡¯t fully formed yet. I was a ¡®child¡¯, in a sense. A wisp of loosely-connected molecules floating in the air, waiting for its evolution to come to fruition. Though, I should be clear about something: The ¡®Biologist¡¯ you see and the ¡®Biologist¡¯ speaking to you through her are not the same. I am the angel, the cosmic gardener of life. The physical, seemingly-human beast speaking to you is just a vessel. She is the green chromatic beast. There is nothing outwardly different about her than an average human, aside from formation. Being a nameless beast, she took on my name in a desperate grasp of self-identity. As a host, she has been disappointing to me in every way.

    The blue beast is the gun I brought here today. It¡¯s a living being, despite its inorganic appearance. It evolved to the most efficient shape for long-range executions. (It seems that humans had also discovered this shape a while ago.) Unlike human guns, the blue beast¡¯s bullets aren¡¯t designed to kill on contact. When they impact skin, they wriggle inside you like worms, melting into complex neurotoxins when they reach your brain stem. The toxin melts in a cascade throughout all your cells. Your form shifts and churns, repurposing your material into an entirely new kind of being. It¡¯s a shame I didn¡¯t get to see what kind.

    These five beasts all seem to be failures, but I have high hopes for the remaining four. Some are still forming from their cellular embryos, and some are just waiting for a time to strike. With omnipotent power I can guarantee you one thing with resolute certainly: you will be killed by one of these beasts. Make amends with what you must, give thanks, and live carefree in your remaining days. Leave no regrets.¡±

    And with the end of her monologue the angel must have left her body. We could tell because her head slumped onto my table face-first with a silverware-clattering thud. I could see wet spots form on the tablecloth where she was sobbing. Bunny and I watched her in total silence for about four or five minutes. I wish I was more comfortable with silence, but I still felt the need to say something.

    ¡°Hey, you okay?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m- I¡¯m sho shorry¡­ I said all those m-mean things about you¡­ I¡¯m sho shorry¡­¡±

    She was doing that kind of crying where you have to gasp for breath every few seconds. She continued on.

    ¡°It wasn¡¯t me¡­ I didn¡¯t want to say those terrible things¡­ B-But I knew you wanted an answer, and I knew the angel had them for you, so I let them speak¡­ I¡¯m sh-sho shorry¡­¡±

    I let her cry for a few minutes longer.

    I called an Uber for her once I got her to tell me where she lives. (I wonder how she got an apartment?) I walked her out to it when it arrived, and she sobbed into my shoulder the whole way out. Soon I was back at the table with Bunny looking stoic as ever.

    ¡°Bunny, did you understand any of that?¡±

    ¡°No, not really.¡±

    ¡°All I got is that there are bad guys or something out to get me.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m going to keep your baseball bat.¡±

    ¡°Yeah, please do.¡±

    I sighed and leaned back in my chair, putting my hands on my face. Why was this getting more complicated? I thought I just had everything figured out, or at least close to it. Demons, angels, chromatic beasts¡­ I have too much trouble dealing with regular-ass people to spend my time worrying about those.

    ¡°Mina.¡±

    ¡°Yeah, Buns?¡±

    ¡°You were really nice to her.¡±

    ¡°Should I have been meaner?¡±

    ¡°No. You were just being you. Hospitable and charismatic.¡±

    ¡°Too bad I¡¯m useless though, no cosmic significance. Damn, what a shame. I don¡¯t really get it, though. Or even care much. But yeah it sounds like a bummer. Anyways, ready for bed?¡±

 Chapter 18 - Shadow of the Colossus

    Organization is soothing to me. It''s a mind-aid, letting me seperate things in a way that makes them less confusing. But in order to categorize things, you must understand them on some level. When you finally take the time to understand them, it seems less like they need organization to begin with. It''s really about memory. I organize to remember and understand. Not that I really understand anything as it is now.

    For the last few days Bunny and I have just been lazing around. Turns out, she''s the kind of person whose eyes become glued to the TV when there''s something on. Even though her expression rarely changes, I can still see her toes curl a little bit during exciting moments in a movie. Cute.

    That''s in the past, though. Today we needed to concentrate, at least a little bit. I found an old whiteboard that had been cast away in the back of my closet for a long time.

    "There''s been so much happening to me lately that I''m having trouble keeping it all in my mind. That''s why I need your help, we''re going to make a study guide."

    "A study guide?"

    "Yeah. Or maybe something more like taking notes in a lecture. That was the only way I could keep myself to pay attention in class. Words are nice, but pictures help a lot more. Let''s get to work."

    I wasted the next forty-five minutes trying to draw cute chibi heads for us before giving up and wiping them off.

    I drew headers for myself, Bunny, Rose, and Biologist; each color-coded. I made a list of things underneath that I need to remember about them.

    How much do I really know? How long until this needs updating? I thought about these things while I wrote. I was being very careful with my handwriting because it doesn''t look too bad when I focus. I had Bunny help me remember what exactly Biologist was saying when she was here. Her memory is surprisingly sharp. I sort of stopped paying attention around the whole ¡°beasts¡± thing, anyways.

    ¡°How does this look? Am I forgetting anything?¡±

    ¡°I think it''s good.¡±

    I only spent about twenty minutes on it, and most of that was making sure I wasn¡¯t writing all sloppily. It helped me to better highlight some gaps in my knowledge. Oh, and there was something else I meant to ask about.

    ¡°Hey, Bunny. What exactly was your relationship with Rose?¡±

    ¡°I guess¡­ we were roommates. For a while.¡±

    ¡°Did you go to college together?¡±

    ¡°She went, I just lived with her.¡±

    ¡°So why did you stop?¡±

    ¡°I guess¡­ I started spending less time there. Eventually, I wasn¡¯t living there anymore.¡±

    ¡°...Oh. I see.¡±

    I didn¡¯t, really. I¡¯m not sure how someone can just slowly stop living somewhere. Certainly there has to be a finalizing moment where you, like, take your toothbrush from the bathroom. That¡¯s something that¡¯ll always signify where you live. Maybe her¡¯s is still in Rose¡¯s bathroom, gathering dust. I wouldn¡¯t be surprised.

    These days have been pretty uneventful (with a few notable exceptions), but I can feel that will be changing soon. From what we could gather, there are four of nine ¡°chromatic beasts¡± left that will be trying to kill me. Though, considering one was a gun and another was a weird person with said gun, I don¡¯t know what to expect. It might be best not to expect anything.

    I felt myself nodding off on the couch, so I stood up and did a big stretch before I faded out all the way. It¡¯s dangerous on my couch now. I¡¯ve set it up very comfortably for Bunny during her stay. Speaking of which...

    ¡°Hey, Buns."

    ¡°Hm?¡±

    ¡°How long has it been since you¡¯ve brushed your teeth?¡±Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

    ¡°A while.¡±

    ¡°Remind me to get you a toothbrush sometime.¡±

    The next few days I felt rising anxiety. Nothing bad was happening, but I could sense something was wrong. Or rather, something would soon be wrong. It was in the air, It had a scent almost. Every moment I wasn''t completely occupied, I was contemplating what could happen to me. I didn''t really take Biologist seriously at first, maybe she seemed too non-threatening, or maybe I was just too confused, but now its severity is dawning on me. If she''s right (and I''ll bet she is), the gods themselves are out to get me. What can I do? How can you fight gods?

    With demons, I bet.

    I began writing a message on my phone.

    "Hey, Rose. I want you to tell me why I have a demon inside of me. No more bullshit, I really need help."

    A few minutes later, I received my reply.

    "Well, to tell the truth Mina, I''m feeling a little hurt by you recently. I worked very hard on my evil villain speech for you, but you were not very appreciative. In fact, I don''t think you''ve appreciated anything I''ve done for you lately."

    "Huh? What have you done for me to appreciate?"

    "See, exactly. You don''t really care about me. But I''ll tell you this, at least. Choronzon might be a headache, but he''s not going to hurt you. Possession is a two-way relationship. He only has as much control over you as you have over him. Does that make you feel better?"

    Infuriating comments aside, I think she was giving me actual advice. I always imagined possession as giving up total control of yourself to someone else. But if I can possess a demon, then¡­ doesn''t that mean I might have super awesome powers? I should check real quick.

    I grabbed a bunch of stuff and stood out in the middle of my small backyard. I was going to start in the house, but my countertops are easily damaged. Bolts of magical energy probably would leave nasty scratches on them. While doing warm-up stretches, I noticed Buns staring at me from the kitchen window, eating my crackers again. Is she using me as a TV? Alright, whatever. Let''s go.

    Zap from a Harry Potter-branded wand: failed.

    Kamehameha Wave: failed.

    Fire/Water/Earth/Air-bending: failed.

    Magical girl transformation: failed.

    Yellow dino morpher: failed.

    Blowing black smoke: failed.

    Waving my arms around and speaking in tongues: failed, but seemed to have summoned my neighbors from their house.

    I quickly retreated back inside, and Bunny welcomed me back.

    "So¡­ Did it work?"

    I was soon back in my room, staring at my machine blinking words at me.

    GRAB.

    ROCK.

    HALT.

    PETS.

    Something was going to happen soon, I could tell.

    PROP.

    LACK.

    GOLD.

    PAWN.

    Whenever it did, I wanted to be ready. There''s something I can do about this; there has to be.

    WISH.

    YOUR.

    ICES.

    PELE.

    All I need is a hint. I''m feeling so directionless, just a finger pointing in the right direction is all I need. I don''t want to live in anxiety forever.

    MOLD.

    TRAP.

    WENT.

    LOFT.

    Hey, Choronzon. Can you hear me? Maybe you''ve been waiting for me to submit myself to you before you give me cool stuff; but sorry, I''m not really in that kind of mood tonight.

    MATT.

    SLOT.

    YARN.

    PELE.

    You''ve been with me for a while now. Are you satisfied with this? Watching a dumb girl laze around, ready to be attacked and killed at any moment like a gazelle who couldn''t outrun a pride of lions?

    PICK.

    PELE.

    GOLD.

    PELE.

    I''m sure you don''t like being inside of me any more than I do. It''s time you start pulling your weight. The sooner you help me fix my problem, the sooner you''ll be free again. So give me some help, damn it!

    GOLD.

    PELE.

    GOLD.

    PELE.

    Hmm?

    GOLD.

    PELE.

    GOLD.

    PELE.

    GOLD.

    PELE.

    GOLD.

    PELE...

    I watched it blink for twenty more minutes. It never stopped oscillating between those two words. Gold I understand, but I have no idea what a "pele" is. Whatever secret message this may be has been lost on me. For now, at least.

    It''s rare for me to do this, but I went to unplug the machine''s power supply from the wall. I just couldn''t shake the vague feeling that it had done its job. This could mean nothing at all, I don''t even remember what I was trying to make it do in the first place. Although, I''m not so na?ve as to believe in coincidences when there''s a demon around.

    I¡¯m not sure why I hesitated, but I¡¯m glad I did, because the whole thing exploded into fire a few seconds later.

 Chapter 19 - 3.2.1.0.-1.2.3.4.5

    I jerked my hand back from the Arduino board that was now in flames. I had no idea what happened, I hadn¡¯t even touched it yet. My eyes followed the power cord to the outlet on the wall. It was making a terrible crackling noise, blue and orange sparks spewing out of its sides like a pipe about to burst. After a few more moments of directionless panicking, I gained some of my wits back. I figured I was probably safe from being electrocuted as cords tend to be well-insulated, but I could still get burned really bad from all the heat everywhere. As the smoke rose to the ceiling, I lunged into my closet. I tackled a miniature mountain of cardboard boxes and sifted through them as fast as possible. Not that one-- no-- this one¡¯s empty-- There. I found my old rubber boots I had as a teenager that I was too embarrassed to run around and play with puddles in. I put one boot on each hand then ¡°kicked¡± the plug sideways out of the wall. It sounded like a firecracker went off as I forcibly dislodged from the wall, but eventually the chaos simmered down. The fire was also short-lived after I ¡°stomped¡± it all out. There was probably a much smarter solution to this, but the boots were just the first thing I thought of. God, all these electrical components are toast. The 7-bit display, the power supply, even the once-blue board itself was now charred black.

    ¡°Uh.¡±

    I turned around to see Bunny peeking at me from the hallway. I¡¯m not sure what she thought when she saw me in my smoke-filled bedroom with boots on my hands, but I¡¯m sure my adrenaline-filled explanation didn¡¯t help her to understand. Though, In retrospect, I should have taken the boots off before I started waving my hands all around. Live and learn.

    ¡°I¡¯m glad you didn¡¯t get hurt.¡±

    ¡°Thanks, I really don¡¯t know what happened. It looks like the power supply exploded, but I have no idea why. There must have been some kind of surge of electricity coming in through the outlet. I wonder if we can sue.¡±

    I was going to Google if there was any recently-reported power issue around the area, but I stopped in my tracks after seeing my notifications. Seventeen unread texts from Rose?

    Attachment Unavailable.

    Attachment Unavailable.

    Attachment Unavailable.

    Attachment Unavailable.

    Attachment Unavailable.

    Attachment Unavailable.

    Attachment Unavailable.

    Attachment Unavailable.

    Attachment Unavailable.

    Attachment Unavailable.

    Attachment Unavailable.

    Attachment Unavailable.

    Attachment Unavailable.

    Attachment Unavailable.

    Attachment Unavailable.Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

    Attachment Unavailable.

    Attachment Unavailable.

    That''s real weird. I tried to reload the texts, but that''s all they said. Seventeen messages is a lot for anyone to send, but doubly so for her. (And that¡¯s like, thirty-four times weird.) She''s the kind to stuff everything into one monster message, not spread things out. Maybe she''s just fucking with me again? Or maybe my phone can''t read demonic incantation files. I give it a fifty-fifty.

    Before long, I began to realize that wasn''t the only weird thing with my phone. My screen was artifacting, glitching out a bit. There were clusters of greyish pixels around the corners of the screen when I tapped on it. It reminded me of my last phone after I dropped it on the corner of a table. There was no physical glass shatter or anything, but the pixels were messing up quite a bit now. Unusual...

    I sat myself on the couch next to Bunny in silence, staring at the light bulbs on the ceiling fan. I had something I kinda wanted to say, but it was somehow too embarrassing. It''s just a gut feeling that I have, anyways. I''m probably wrong about it, and I don''t want her thinking I''m more stupid than she probably already does. I decided that it was ultimately unimportant, and that I just wasn''t going to mention it. But then she looked up and noticed what I had been watching the whole time. The light in one of the ceiling fan bulbs was fading in and out a bit. It wasn''t dramatic, but it was noticeable. And unlike the way bulbs usually behave when they''re going bad, it was fluctuating very smoothly. A slow brighten, then a slow fade.

    It reminded me of the waxing and waning of the moon, in turn reminding me of the motion of the ocean tides that it controls. It''s hard to pin a mysterious effect to a cause, but there always is one. Whatever, I guess I''ll say it.

    "I think I''m doing that."

    "Doing what?"

    "Making the light go in and out. I think I might be able to control electricity."

    She didn''t ask me to elaborate, so I had to continue unprompted.

    "Earlier, I think I made that Arduino board blow up. I guess I was focusing on it too hard? This might be some sort of demon power, I don''t know. It was messing with my phone too a second ago, and now this light. If I was developing electricity-bending powers, that would explain all of this. Maybe. I don''t know for sure. Just a thought."

    "Try it."

    "What do you mean?"

    "Try to do something with the lights. Turn them all off."

    Hm, okay. I don''t really know how. If it''s really a ¡®power¡¯ there has to be something I¡¯m doing to trigger it, logically speaking. Though, I realize that logic may not be the best tool in the mental toolbox to be using right now. I¡¯ll substitute it for intuition. If I just blindly guess at this I can probably figure something out. That¡¯s been my strategy for all my life, anyways. I think I¡¯ve done okay for myself, but I guess recent events may suggest otherwise. C¡¯est la vie.

    FIve minutes later, the intuition route yielded some pros and cons.

    The pros: When I really centered myself, I could truly feel that I had access to something that I didn¡¯t before. I found a new part of my brain or something. It was like I¡¯ve been living in a house for years, and then found a hidden closet that I never knew existed. Inside the closet were stacks and stacks of old newspapers. The New York Times, to be specific. I could tell even though all the text and images were scratched out. Not inked or professionally redacted, but literally scratched through with claws or something. Deja vu? The only thing left in a readable state were the crossword puzzles. Looking through them, some of the letters were already filled in. Not very many, but a handful. I knew this was all trying to tell me something. I just didn¡¯t know what yet. Of course, I¡¯d know pretty soon. And I¡¯d learn just how literal this vision was being, too. But yeah, anyways, those were the pros of channeling my intuition.

    The cons: I blew my microwave door across the room. It just exploded off in a puff of smoke, all the way into the living room. Bunny was actually in its trajectory, but she dodged it like she was in The Matrix. When it slammed onto the floor it was buffered by the carpet, sliding frictionless across the ground. It was like what I used to do in my socks to build up static charge to shock my dad with. It seemed to have caused a similar effect to the microwave door, as by the time it hit the opposite wall, it was shining and sparkling with electricity. It was electrocharged. This is very unusual of course, because it¡¯s mainly just plastic. Plastic is not usually very conductive. This might be the last bit of proof I needed to decide that I was, indeed, a magic user. But celebration of my power comes later, first I gotta figure out how to turn off the damn thing.

 the state of QQQQ

    Good evening friends, I hope this "chapter" finds you cozy and warm. I''m going to tell you about what''s going on with your favorite Royal Road? periodical: QQQQ.

    First off, I am not dead. Using some construction paper and a broken CRT TV, I was able to verify this by using methods I won''t go into detail about right now.

    It''s quite the opposite really; I have been hard at work breathing life into several new chapters for your consumption.

    You''ll laugh, you''ll cry, shivers will race up and down your reptilian nervous system; reminding it of long-lost horrors from several millienia ago.

    They say that a true work of art is never finished, and so I must attest that QQQQ is not a true work of art. It will be finished, stamped, notorized, mailed to the authorities, and used as evidence in a future court trial to assist me in my plea of insanity.

    I am not done writing it, not by any means, but I will be soon. By my measures, QQQQ will be completed by no later than August 17th 11:34:0254 PM, in the year of our lord two thousand, twenty and one. (Unless my CRT TV un-breaks itself, and then I will have to postpone until after I can take it to the un-mechanics.)

    As it currently stands at this time, QQQQ is in its ¦Ðth arc. That is, this chapter is placed just as the third arc has started.

    This arc has just barely begun for you, but for me, it''s ancient history! Been there, done that, now get it out of my sight!

    QQQQ will have 5 arcs total. (Or at least a number similar to 5, depending on how many chapters of Power Rangers fanficition I can slip inside. My editors say none, but enough of Tommy Oliver''s muscular thighs and I can make them do anything.)

    Some of you may have read this far, or perhaps this is your very first chapter, and you think it makes no sense.

    The observant of you will understand what exactly it is that I''ve been trying to say through this story.

    The VERY observant of you will understand that what I''m trying to say doesn''t make very much sense either.

    However: It is one thing to be entertainingly nonsensical, and another to be frustratingly nonsensical.

    The author''s narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.I believe that I am guilty in doing that; some chapters of QQQQ may be more annoying to read than fun.

    I have been secretly updating certain chapters to re-write some very awkward phrasing, removing some minor plot threads that hella won''t go nowhere, and at least one instance of replacing a Simpson''s reference with an Antiques Roadshow reference. I will likely continue to silently edit chapters I feel are lacking, especially the early ones.

    Of particular note to all you QQQQuperfans is a major new section in the beginning of the very first chapter.

    As that''s where (most) new readers begin, I want it to showcase the very best I have to offer. It still doesn''t do that, though.

    Some other bits and bobs were re-fijiggled as well, but nothing that will alter your understanding (or lack thereof) of the plot.

    New chapters will be released daily, beginning February 12th. It will run until the current arc is fully finished, and I have well begun on the next.

    That is all that I wish to say concerning the topic of QQQQ.

    So;

    Are you all well?

    Are you eating your greens?

    Are you flossing your teeth?

    Are you remembering to take a few minutes to sit and appreciate life swirling around you?

    I won''t say discouraging things to you if not. I certainly could stand to do more of them myself.

    This world is a shame. By the time you understand what you''re doing, it seems that it''s already time to move to the next.

    I hope you don''t hold your own lack of understanding against yourself.

    Should you need any help with this, I will be here writing for you; helping us both to understand this world just a little bit less.

    Thank you very much for reading this message and for reading QQQQ. I truly appreciate all of you and the smiles you''ve given me day-to-day.

    -Hugs and kissies,

    skyhighebooks (Tower Hufham)

 Chapter 20 - Divided Up Myself Again

    ¡°Rose, I don¡¯t know what you tried to send me so many times, but it didn¡¯t come through. I thought it might be something urgent, so I wanted to check."

    "Okay, no idea what you''re talking about, but whatever. You''ve got a problem. A big problem. Right fucking now. Deal with that first."

    "I have many problems. if you want to threaten me; I''m sorry but you''re going to have to be a little more specific."

    "Stop assuming the worst about everything I say! I''m not trying to threaten you, I''m telling you that you need to put the fucking phone down before ¡õ¡õ¡õ¡õ"

    "Put the phone down before four squares. Mmmmmmmgotcha."

    "¡õ¡õ¡õ¡õ"

    She sent two or three more texts, but they were mostly made of those little boxes, the kind that show up when your phone or computer can''t read a symbol right. Tofu. I wonder how long it''ll be until we get to have a normal conversation again. Whatever, I have more important things to worry about. Like, for example, my house that''s trying to kill me.

    Electricity was spewing out of every outlet like a showerhead on the "massage" setting. The sparks pinballed around the furniture and counters in unpredictable directions, and all the electronics were flipping the fuck out. The microwave door is gone completely, the TV is blaring static, and the lightbulbs are strobing at rates that remind me of things I don''t want to remember. I''m surprised my phone held out this long, but it''s starting to go off too. It''s hard to read the screen now, the whole thing is coated in a flickering silver sheen. Looking at it for so long is giving me a migraine. Rose is still sending me ¡õ''s, but there''s no point in me trying to examine them if it''ll make my eyes melt. She seemed to have gotten the hint and finally stopped texting me for a moment. But then, right on cue, Bunny''s phone went off.

    Her phone is cheap and old, the screen even more broken and glitchy than last time I saw it. She turned it on (still with no form of security) and looked at her new message.

    "Martin J. Moore, 1417 Magnolia Park"

    I suppressed a small chill up my spine. It¡¯s been a while since I¡¯ve thought about this, the names and addresses thing. She explained it a little to me once, but¡­

    "Buns, what''s that mean? Why is she sending you that?"

    She didn''t answer, but she began taking steps to the front door.

    "Hey, wait, you''ll get shocked!"

    After I instinctively grabbed her wrist, she pulled me along with it and spoke.

    "We need to go."

    "To Magnolia park?"

    "Yes."

    "Why? Just because Rose told you to? And who''s Martin, and what are you gonna do to him?"

    For the first time in days, I was afraid of Bunny again.

    "I don''t know who he is. I don''t know what Rose wants me to do, but I have to do it. That was our agreement. I have to do what she tells me to."

    "You sound like a robot! You don''t have to do anything, especially not just because she of all people wants you to!"If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

    "Do you hate Rose?"

    That question kind of stopped me for a moment. I felt embarrassed, but I spoke without thinking first.

    "I think she hates me. She''s hurt me. She traumatized me, hypnotized me, and gave me some kind of demonic dyslexia. I don''t think I hate her, but¡­ it''s... I don''t know how to explain what it feels like to be stabbed in the back by someone you trusted."

    I watched Bunny''s eyes break contact with mine, falling towards the floor. Her mind was turning, this was bothering her. I can see it in her face that she''s being pulled in opposite directions. I want to help her, but I might be the one causing her problem.

    I don''t know what her situation is like. I haven''t thought about it. No, that''s not quite right. I''ve been trying not to think about it. The bags under her eyes, her lack of hygiene, her difficulty understanding when someone is offering hospitality¡­ I know it was obvious, the signs were all there, but it''s only now I''m really understanding that she''s homeless. Rose must have seen this and given her a place to stay. And, if I can assume, she made that "agreement" in return. Rose clearly wasn¡¯t fitting to be a guardian angel.

    I only vaguely found out what Rose was having her do. Bunny said she was my bodyguard, "stopping" people from doing bad things to me. It sort of makes sense, at least with what I know. Rose sent her places to be and people to target, Bunny took care of it, and in return she was given a roof over her head. And she might be out a roof if I don¡¯t keep my eye on her.

    ¡°Alright fine, Magnolia Park. In the pouring rain, meeting up with someone I really don''t want to see right now. Fuck it. Let''s go.¡±

    I hate driving in the dark because what little light there is on the road becomes blinding in the moon. I hate driving in the rain because the lines smearing down my windshield make everything look like it isn¡¯t really there. So, as you can imagine, I¡¯m having a great time out tonight. The streetlights are flashing in rhythm, I can¡¯t even imagine what¡¯s causing everything to go haywire like this. Their blinding lights reflect well off wet surfaces, which is literally every surface right now. It feels like an entire cityscape is being beamed into my eyes everywhere I look. The light streaks and smears, making it nearly impossible to see. The way the lights form into plus signs and diamonds is honestly very pretty, and if I were a painter I¡¯d love to recreate the perfectly dark yet blinding bright lights covering the world in front of me. Though I think I read online that¡¯s actually a symptom of¡­ Oh, right.

    ¡°Bunny, open the glovebox for me.¡±

    She fumbles in the dark, but eventually figures it out.

    ¡°Hand me that little brown case.¡±

    I forgot that I picked up my glasses earlier.

    She hands them to me, and I put them on my face for the first time.

    Oh God. That¡¯s¡­ That¡¯s much better. Was I really this blind? Is this what other people see all the time?

    Driving became so much easier. No more trying to guesstimate how close the turns were. I can actually see the potholes before I hit them. I was swerving much less than before; except for a few minutes later when I swerved because there was a sword sticking out of the road, blade-up.

    ¡°You stopped the car.¡±

    ¡°Yeah, I did. Because that¡¯s a sword.¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s in the road.¡±

    ¡°Yeah, it is. It¡¯s¡­ It¡¯s in the road.¡±

    I let my foot off the brake and inched towards it until it was right outside my window. Yeah, that¡¯s a sword. A longsword, unless I¡¯m mistaken.

    I turn my head to see if anyone¡¯s around. I don¡¯t think this is a very often-used road, so It seems safe¡­

    I roll down my window, letting in a giant blast of wind and water that makes me gasp. Powering through, I reach out into the road and carefully grasp the cold metal of the sword. This would be much easier if the handle wasn¡¯t wedged into the ground. It¡¯s heavier than I expected, and it took all my power to get it inside, but I did.

    ¡°Why did you take it?¡±, Bunny asked once the window was closed securely once again.

    ¡°It¡¯s a longsword Buns, why the hell wouldn¡¯t I take it?¡±

    ¡°It might belong to someone.¡±

    ¡°Why would anyone leave something this precious lying around?¡±

    I turn on the overhead lights and inspect it.

    The metal blade is dark, nearly back, covered in dirt and rust. Down the front are inscribed four letters I can¡¯t read. I admire it for a few more seconds, then remember what we were doing. I carefully set it on the back seat with the rest of my garbage.

    ¡°Sorry. Back to Magnolia Park.¡±

 Chapter 21 - CURSEBREAKER X

    ¡°Is this really it?¡±

    ¡°Yeah.¡±

    Bunny unlocks the car door and rolls out into the rain falling sideways. We¡¯re just in the middle of the road. The nearest intersection is half a mile ahead, there¡¯s only a bunch of unmarked buildings around. I watch her jump onto the curb and head towards an alleyway flooded with ankle-deep water reflecting the two street lights still on.

    ¡°Hey! You¡¯ve got your phone on, right?!¡±, I yell at her after rolling down the window. She answers, but the downpour is too strong to hear what she said. I¡¯m a little worried. How could I not be? I don¡¯t know what the hell she¡¯s doing or where she¡¯s going. I don¡¯t understand any of this. Whatever. She¡¯s probably the last person to need anyone¡¯s help, especially mine.

    I parked in a closed diner¡¯s parking lot, turning back on the overhead lights. Holy shit, this thing is cool. I lift it up again, this time expecting the weight and handling it better. It¡¯s pretty dirty from being in the rainy asphalt, but I can see my eyes reflect off the parts of the blade I¡¯m wiping off. I¡¯m starting to feel a little bad for just... taking it. This sort of equipment cannot be cheap. It could be a priceless family heirloom, I wouldn¡¯t be that surprised. I¡¯m not putting it back, though. A few months ago I would have thought I was insane for thinking this, but¡­ I have no doubt that this was a gift. I can imagine it falling straight from the parted heavens, an offering to the hero destined to vanquish evil from the Gods themselves. Or something like that.

    While admiring my new toy and dreaming about the hypothetical armory I could build in my garage, I noticed something through the rain. A light flickered inside of the diner for just a few seconds. It went out, and came back a few moments later. One more time, it left and returned; this time staying on. Is the power coming back on? No, if it was, more than one light would return. My phone buzzes and startles me with a text. Oh God, is it Bunny?

    No.

    It¡¯s Rose.

    ¡°You should come inside.¡±

    My hoodie was off and hanging on the back of a stool. Even though it was only a short walk inside, it¡¯s raining hard enough to look like I fell in a lake. In front of me were Rose and also Biologist for some reason. She was fiddling with something skittering and purple on the table, about the size of a bug. In the booth beside her was Rose, looking pretty casual, despite everything imaginable. I¡¯m honestly not sure what the occasion is. That¡¯s probably a good question to start with.

    ¡°What are you two doing in here?¡±

    ¡°Not getting wet. And not getting zapped to death, either.¡± Rose responded in a snarky tone that, honestly, felt like she was forcing a bit.

    ¡°In a diner that¡¯s closed?¡±

    ¡°We happened to be in the area.¡±

    ¡°Right, Magnolia Park.¡±

    Her eyes widened, but not in shock. More like it was a funny surprise. She took her time responding.

    ¡°I guess Bunny told you. Actually, that¡¯s not surprising, I hear you two have been all buddy-buddy recently. I just can¡¯t believe you actually came out here with her.¡±

    I went to sip my drink and then realized I didn''t have one. Diner habits.

    ¡°I was worried, I don¡¯t even know what she¡¯s doing.¡± I answered a bit more honestly than I expected to.Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

    ¡°She¡¯s out there saving your ass right now. We¡¯re all trying to save your ass, actually.¡±

    She glances up at Biologist now jumping on the booth, trying to get her skittering purple thing off the ceiling. She amends her statement:

    ¡°Uh, most of us are, anyways.¡±

    ¡°You keep saying stuff like that. And anyways, what were all those texts you sent me earlier? They didn¡¯t come through right.¡±

    ¡°Yeah, anything electric is fucky right now. We think it¡¯s probably one of the chromatic beasts. It¡¯s wiped out the whole city.¡±

    So that wasn¡¯t my fault. I turn a little red at the disproven idea that I may have had special powers. At least I¡¯m not responsible for the damages.

    ¡°This is all so confusing¡­ I don¡¯t know why nothing makes sense anymore.¡±

    Biologist speaks for the first time since I¡¯ve been here.

    ¡°It¡¯s hard to understand a storm when you¡¯re in the eye of it.¡±

    She sits back down, having retrieved the purple bug thing and stuffs it into her pocket.

    ¡°That¡¯s actually pretty deep, Biologist. Weren¡¯t you sorta¡­ Sniveling, before?¡±

    ¡°The angel abandoned me. I¡¯m not their messenger anymore. I was sad at first. I must have really messed up big time. But it¡¯s not all bad! I don¡¯t have any more weighty expectations put on my shoulders. I can just hangout with you guys now!¡±

    I smile at her, not sure how comfortable I am ¡°hanging out¡± with someone who tried to make me kill myself, but whatever. I turn my focus over to Rose.

    ¡°I¡¯m going to try to stick some of these puzzle pieces together, okay?¡±

    ¡°Go ahead.¡±

    ¡°There are nine beasts, each of a different color, trying to kill me.¡±

    ¡°Were. There¡¯s only four left now, thanks to me and Bunny.¡±

    ¡°Sure. Thanks, I guess. Anyways, I assume one of those beasts are purple, or maybe violet.¡±

    ¡°That sounds logical to me.¡±

    ¡°I think so too. And just now, Biologist was fiddling with a purple thing. Bunny also picked up something similar when we were in that building on 17th street.¡±

    ¡°Right.¡±

    ¡°Is too bold for me to assume that those purple globs they have are the violet chromatic beast?¡±

    ¡°Makes sense to me. Biologist, do you have any input? You¡¯re the green beast, anyways.¡±

    She stares off into the pitch-black storm out the window, rubbing her chin for a bit before responding.

    ¡°That¡¯s probably true, but I can¡¯t give it up. Even though I¡¯m detached from Biologist the angel, I still feel like I need to take care of the little guy. I¡¯m responsible for it, in a way. I have no idea how it would kill you, though.¡±

    Right on cue, the thing wriggles out of her pocket onto the damp diner floor, skittering around chaotically like a puppy that broke out of its cage.

    ¡°Maybe it could annoy you to death. And you said your friend also has one?¡±

    ¡°Yeah, her¡¯s is a little bigger. I have no idea what she did with it. I think she was going to give it to you, Rose.¡±

    Rose responds next.

    ¡°I wouldn¡¯t really know what to do with it anyways. It¡¯s hard to kill something so amorphous. I¡¯ve tried¡ªIt¡¯s like clay. Any shape you beat it into, the little thing bounces back like nothing happened. I¡¯m sure even if you figured out how to cut it into pieces, each piece would skitter away separately as a new organism. And actually, that might explain why there¡¯s two of them now.¡±

    ¡°What do you think would happen if we stuck the two together?¡±

    ¡°Either nothing happens, or someone gets very, very hurt. And that someone would probably be you. These things aren¡¯t pets. Remember, they¡¯re Mina-killing machines.¡±

    I sat back in my seat, remembering the weird things Biologist said to me the other day. She¡¯s one of those Mina-killing machines too, or at least she was. Maybe she¡¯s been absolved of her duty now, but I¡¯m still hesitant to trust her.

    ¡°What did I do to piss God off so much? I haven¡¯t done anything that bad. This sucks, man.¡±

    ¡°I think you have it a little mixed up. God¡¯s not pissed off. He just didn¡¯t authorize you.¡±

    ¡°What the hell does that mean?¡±

    ¡°You¡¯ve heard the saying ¡®everything goes according to God¡¯s plan¡¯, right? That plan accounts for everything. It¡¯s like a script of the world. Everything that ever has happened, or will happen, is in that plan.¡±

    ¡°What does that have to do with me?¡±

    ¡°You¡¯re not in it.¡±

 Chapter 22 - Everyone Knows How This Goes so Lets Get Over it

    The face I was making wasn¡¯t easy to describe. At this point, I¡¯m over being surprised. They¡¯ve told me this kind of thing before, anyways. I just want to get done whatever it is I should be doing. No questions I ask are giving me information that¡¯s useful. Why can¡¯t I get just a little bit of help here? It¡¯s like if I Googled ¡°how to save someone from drowning¡± and all I got was a link to a textbook about respiration. Yes, I understand the relevance. I¡¯m sure it¡¯s perfectly accurate, but it¡¯s not what I need! So, that¡¯s what I told them.

    ¡°Is there something I should do right now? Is there something I shouldn¡¯t do? And please, Rose, for the love of God, don¡¯t tell me something stupid.¡±

    ¡°¡®Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.¡¯ ¡ª Gautama Buddha.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m going to punch your lights out.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m just joking, calm down! Don¡¯t freak out, you¡¯re not doing anything wrong, and you¡¯re not going to. Just keep paying attention and slowly piecing your puzzle together. You don¡¯t have any more responsibilities than those.¡±

    I slumped back in my almost-comfortable diner booth. All I¡¯ve wanted this whole time is to stop dealing with this bullshit. So why am I so upset at Rose telling me exactly what I wanted to hear?

    ¡°Have you bonded with your demon at all, Mina? Choronzon, right?¡±

    Biologist asked me this casually, like she was asking if I saw a new movie.

    ¡°Probably not. He must like me about as much as God does. All he does is fuck with my reading ability. Demon dyslexia.¡±

    Rose chipped in.

    ¡°Maybe that should be the focus of your next study session. I had you possessed for a reason, you know. I didn¡¯t want to leave you as a sitting duck with those beasts after your head. Having some real demonic firepower should keep you one step ahead of them. If you¡¯re powerful enough to wield it, of course.¡±

    ¡°Choronzon¡­ Hmm¡­¡±

    Biologist pulled a little white leather-bound notebook out of her purse. The front was full of complex geometry and random letters. She flipped through a few pages and began reading.

    ¡°Choronzon, demon of the Abyss. First recorded interactions with humans were in the 16th century with John Dee and Edward Kelley. The Abyss is the gap between the supernal triangle and the moral triangle of the tree of life. It is occupied by inconsistent forms; all inane, arbitrary, and confusing. These forces, while powerful, act on planes incomprehensible and inconsistent to even themselves. When evoked, these forces have very little intelligible interaction with the real world. For this reason, Choronzon, the personification of the Abyss, is of little use to magicians.¡±

    The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

    Rose rips the book out of her hands and frantically reads it up and down. She flips the pages, eyes darting back and forth across the text, scanning desperately. She looks up at me, face turning red as a fire engine.

    ¡°I- I thought- It¡¯s just, He-¡±

    After stuttering helplessly, she buried her face in her hands.

    ¡°I¡­ I thought he was cooler than that¡­¡±

    She put her face in her hands. Biologist began patting her fading pink hair reassuringly. Part of me felt like maybe it¡¯d be nice if I tried to make her feel better too.

    Fuck that, she could learn to be sorry every once in a while.

    Rose left her head on the table in shame for a few more minutes. Biologist was reassuring her and being hospitable while I stared out at the downpour. I was thinking hard. Putting everything together, all the puzzle pieces. I even read a bit about Choronzon in Biologist¡¯s book. Everything¡¯s starting to fit together. I can see it now, the big picture.

    ¡°Alright. Biologist, Rose, I figured it out.¡±

    ¡°Fuh-fighured what out,¡± Rose responded, wiping snot off her nose.

    ¡°Nothing matters. It¡¯s all pointless. Everything is meaningless. It always has been, and if it wasn¡¯t, it is now. Choronzon is, according to this book, the overlord of all things meaningless and confusing. Mysteries with no answers, mazes with no exits, random numbers that don¡¯t mean anything. He¡¯s the reality I live with now. Even if I had some significance to my life at some point, it has now vanished. I wasn¡¯t even important enough for God to abandon me. He never even knew I existed. I¡¯m unimportant to the point of being supernatural. I¡¯m not just a freak of nature, I¡¯m a freak of supernature. It¡¯s all fake, nothing¡¯s real, I don¡¯t matter.

    I can¡¯t fucking believe it, Brandon from Philosophy 102 was actually right. That bastard was so smug about it, too.¡±

    I felt a small weight taken off of me. It was therapeutic, really. I¡¯m not sure I truly believe what I was saying, but it felt good to say it. So much of my energy had been wasted on trying to find a solution to a puzzle without one. Now I can move on to better usage of my time. Well, I suppose if everything is meaningless, then there is no ¡°better¡± usage of time. Only ways I would rather spend my time.

    I stood up from my chair, my friends¡¯ staring at me with eyes wide-open. They were holding their breath, not moving a muscle. They must think that I¡¯ve lost it entirely. They¡¯re right, but at least I lost it on my own terms.

    ¡°I¡¯m going to my car. I wanna get my sword.¡±

    Sopping wet, I dropped my sword on the table in front of them with a theatrical clang. They had hardly moved from the positions they were in when I left. I let them bask in the glory of my new artifact for a moment. Eventually, Rose found her voice.

    ¡°...You bought a longsword?¡±

    ¡°Nope, found it.¡±

    ¡°Where?¡±

    ¡°About five minutes that way.¡±

    I point in the general direction we came from. It¡¯s also the direction Bunny¡¯s in now, presumably.

    ¡°Wh-what are you going to do with that, Mina?¡±

    Biologist¡¯s voice was quivering, like she thought I was about to disembowel them both.

    ¡°I¡¯m gonna go help Bunny. She¡¯s the only one who¡¯s been by my side this whole time. She might not be the best conversational partner, but I¡¯ve made an arbitrary decision to trust her. I don¡¯t know what the hell she¡¯s doing to that poor guy you texted her about, but it doesn¡¯t matter. Nothing does. I¡¯m just going to do whatever the hell I want right now. And right now, that¡¯s brandishing my badass sword.¡±

    I slid it back off the table, leaving an outline of dirt on the table where it laid. It¡¯d be way cooler looking if this thing had the outer layer of rust and grime removed, but I think my dramatics were impactful enough as they were. As I have made very clear, I don¡¯t care anymore. Let God and the Devil do what they want, so will I. The eternal dice of the cosmos no longer toy with me. Feeling just a little proud of myself, I took my epic exit from the diner, and was immediately struck by lightning.

 Chapter 23 - Pulse Demon

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

 Chapter 24 - Blue Days, Black Nights

    My neurons fire signals down my nervous system. They reach my leg, where they plug into my muscles like an outlet. They pulse electricity into them, causing my legs to move forwards rapidly. All the feedback they receive, down to the subtle slip of wet asphalt under my shoes, gets returned to my brain. The neurons unpack the new information and use it to update into the next step of the cycle. This loop repeats at lightning speed, giving the sensation of smooth movement; graceful and calculated over decades of learning it to perfection. This is how I run. It¡¯s the same way I¡¯ve always done it, and yet it feels like I¡¯m learning about it for the first time.

    It felt like my brain cells had been fried, and maybe they really had been. There was only one thing on my mind: find Martin Moore. By the time I awoke from whatever weird dream that was, I was already sprinting back to the place I dropped Bunny off. I made it there in record time. Unlabeled concrete buildings surrounded me at every turn, twisting and churning into dead ends and loops. I was calling her name, but I doubt she¡¯d ever be able to hear me over the downpour. It was raining so hard it felt like I was underwater, running a labyrinth of Atlantis. It felt like I was blindly dashing around for so long, but realistically it had only been less than ten minutes before I stumbled onto something. There, slumped up in a corner of an alleyway, was a body. I felt a sensation inside me that made it undisputable that this was Martin Moore. He had longish brown hair and wore a puffy black jacket that was entirely soaked through. If it wasn¡¯t for the giant bash on the side of his head, I would have assumed he had drowned in the rain. As much as I wouldn¡¯t want to admit it; I knew what that gash was. It was exactly the shape of a baseball bat.

    I checked his pulse and breathing, there were none. I awkwardly glanced around, afraid someone would get the wrong idea if they saw me. I didn¡¯t know what to do next. I found the body, now what?

    It wasn¡¯t long before Rose and Biologist caught up with me. I didn¡¯t know they were following behind, but I¡¯m not surprised. I didn¡¯t need to say anything, they understood the situation as soon as they saw it for themselves. Rose took immediate action searching the body, something I was a little too afraid to do.

    ¡°A wallet, a phone, a pair of ruined earbuds, and a book.¡±

    She had collected all the salvageable items from his body and presented them to us. I took the phone and tried getting into it to see if he had any clues inside. I got locked out pretty much immediately. Biologist took the book and had much better luck.

    ¡°I¡¯ve read this book,¡± she said, ¡°I was at the library, looking for information on how to kill you. Uh, sorry. Anyways, someone there asked me what I was looking for. I told him that I¡¯m a Biologist, looking for general information on life. He recommended this book: G?del, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter. It was all information that was second-nature to me, but it was interesting seeing it proven from a human¡¯s point of view.¡±

    ¡°What¡¯s it about? Is it a novel?¡±

    ¡°No, it¡¯s a text about how life might emerge. It postulates that the patterns of life can be found within things that most people apparently wouldn¡¯t expect: like mechanical, physical, or digital systems.¡±

    She began flipping through the pages. It sounds a little interesting, but that¡¯s a hell of a thick book. It might look cool on my shelf, though. I know some G?del so I could probably get away with it. I heard her stop flipping when something fell out of the book. It was a key-card for a warehouse nearby. Damn, the poor guy must have been coming home from work when Bunny jumped him¡­

    Biologist opened the book up to me and Rose. The page the keycard fell from had a passage that was furiously circled, underlined, and highlighted.

    ¡°As I see it, the only way of overcoming this magical view of what "I" and consciousness are is to keep on reminding oneself, unpleasant though it may seem, that the ''teetering bulb of dread and dream" that nestles safely inside one''s own cranium is a purely physical object made up of completely sterile and inanimate components, all of which obey exactly the same laws as those that govern all the rest of the universe, such as pieces of text, or CD-ROM''s, or computers. Only if one keeps on bashing up against this disturbing fact can one slowly begin to develop a feel for the way out of the mystery of consciousness: that the key is not the stuff out of which brains are made, but the patterns that can come to exist inside the stuff of a brain.

    This is a liberating shift, because it allows one to move to a different level of considering what brains are: as media that support complex patterns that mirror, albeit far from perfectly, the world, of which, needless to say, those brains are themselves denizens ¡ª and it is in the inevitable self mirroring that arises, however impartial or imperfect it may be, that the strange loops of consciousness start to swirl.¡±If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

    Those words echoed quietly through my skull as we continued our search for Bunny, but they never really found a home. I couldn¡¯t quite get what it was trying to say. Biologist seemed like she wanted to give me a hint.

    ¡°What the author says throughout the book is that ¡®loops¡¯ are the seeds from which consciousness and self-identity come from. Everything that¡¯s alive is self-referential. You have to be able to think about yourself in order to exist as a human, right? But a brain is a physical object. You¡¯re a chunk of the earth that thinks about itself, then writes those thoughts down inside of itself. Those thoughts, being part of your brain, are also physical clumps of matter referencing themselves¡ªso it loops again. You¡¯re recursive. That¡¯s what makes you alive.¡±

    Sounds good enough to me. She¡¯s an angel of Biology of all things, so I assume she knows what she¡¯s talking about when it comes to life. Winding through the confusing alleys of Magnolia Park, we passed back by where Martin¡¯s lifeless body lay. His brain stopped working a while ago. It can¡¯t make his muscles get up and move anymore. The material in his brain has stopped relating to itself; so now it¡¯s just a meaningless clump of material. I guess Bunny did enough blunt trauma to his head for him to exit his loop.

    Is that what happens when you die? You turn from a recursive engine of existence into a pile of meaningless mush of biological chemicals? I thought I was meaningless before, but that¡¯s a bit different than what I¡¯m experiencing. Maybe there¡¯s different ¡°kinds¡± of meaningless. Even if there¡¯s no ultimate purpose to my life, I want my friends to keep looping. I don¡¯t want Bunny to end up like Martin. I¡¯m worried about her, she should have been here. I don¡¯t know if I started to cry, or if it was just the rain getting harder. God, I wish she would answer her phone.

    Lightning strikes near us twice in quick succession, each with their own deafening crash. The thunder storm was getting worse, so we took temporary refuge in the warehouse that we now have a keycard to. Sorry for trespassing, Martin.

    The first floor was one giant concrete room, home to uncountably many boxes full of metal parts. It smells like concrete and pennies. We three huddle up in a corner of the floor, listening to the lightning strikes grow closer and more frequent.

    Biologist pulled a lighter out of her purse. She grabbed a bit of scrunched up newspaper lining the inside one of the boxes. The storm was raging so intensely that even things in here were sopping wet. She was trying to make a make-shift campfire to keep us warm, but no matter how many times she tried to start it, the paper was just too damp to light up. It made me a little happy seeing her put some small effort into keeping me alive. I mean, I doubt I¡¯m in any serious danger of dying right now, but it¡¯s the thought that counts. However happy it made me that she was trying, it made me even more sad to watch her keep failing at it. I thought I¡¯d try to take some pressure off her by starting a conversation.

    ¡°Hey, Rose. Why did you send Bunny after Martin, anyways?¡±

    ¡°I received a tip from a demon. I¡¯m not possessed like you guys, I just do simple invocations from time to time. I was warned by a demon a while ago that bad things would be in store for my friend Mina. I thought they just meant simple misfortune, you know? But as it got more detailed I realized that there was something special about you. You know, the cosmic meaninglessness and everything. The demons didn¡¯t care whether you lived or died, but the angels did. You weren¡¯t a part of the universe¡¯s rigid order, so you were being targeted for elimination in order to restore it. A couple times a week I would ask the spirits if someone, or something, will end up being a threat to you. I still do it, actually. If the spirits sense a problem bubbling, I send Bunny out to fix it as soon as it¡¯s identified. Most of the time they were just petty criminals going to mug you or something, but the severity escalated. Then, before we knew it, we were fighting against beasts commissioned from God himself. That¡¯s how we ended up here. I know, I¡¯m probably on the wrong side of divinity. What kind of fucked-up person would ally with the denizens of the underworld over the messengers of God himself? And it¡¯s not like I can even do much for you, I make Bunny do everything for me.¡±

    She curled her knees up and rested her chin in between them. I didn¡¯t interrupt, I just let her finish what she wanted to say.

    ¡°I¡­ I just didn¡¯t want anything bad to happen to you. Even to the point where I would shun angels. But in the end, I guess I only made things worse for you two, didn¡¯t I?¡±

    The lightning storm outside wasn¡¯t letting up in the slightest. Just as we were about to continue our search for Bunny despite it, the search was already over. In the far back corner of the warehouse, a door swung open with a deafening sound. It was Bunny. She was running towards us. I was frozen in shock, waiting for my brain to catch up with what was happening. Before my bearings were set straight, she had thrown her body into me. She was gasping for her breath.

    ¡°Bunny? What the hell were you doing here?¡±

    She didn¡¯t respond, just continued to press her head against my chest. I was starting to get worried.

    ¡°Hey, are you alright?¡±

    I gently pulled her away from me. Her usually pale face was covered in bright-red burns and swollen welts. In her cheek was a small conical hole, almost like a pen had been lodged inside. She was hysterical, sobbing and gasping for air, all without making a single sound. While looking into her eyes, I saw a fear in her I had never seen before. Not just in her, but in anyone. I wanted to wipe the tears off her eyes, but I didn¡¯t want to touch her burns. What the hell happened? What could have caused her to act this way? Did it happen because she was trying to protect me?

    I couldn¡¯t say anything. I could only watch the cloudy water seep from her eyes and the gashes on her face, looking for the right words. Even just one would have been alright. Instead we stayed silent, as I watched the sadness and fear flare in her eyes. I wonder if she could see the skulls flaring in mine?

 Chapter 25 - Sky as Black as Oil

    I climbed up the stairs of the warehouse. I wasn¡¯t being subtle or stealthy in the slightest. The metal longsword, held low at my side, clanked loudly against every step. Bunny wouldn¡¯t say anything to me at all, so now I have no idea what I¡¯m up against. Maybe there¡¯s nothing at all; she could have been burned by lightning in a freak accident. But... I don¡¯t think so.

    On the second floor, I was trying to draw out whatever might be listening. I kicked over a box of nails onto the concrete floor. Even though I braced for it, the thousands of tiny metal impacts still made my ears ring. Nothing showed up. Onto the next room.

    I couldn¡¯t stop thinking about Bunny¡¯s expression. It seared itself onto my soul, proving to me that my current reality is worse than I had hoped. Is that the face people make when they¡¯re going to die? When they fear that they¡¯re going to be ejected from their lifeloop? A box of lightbulbs, each one now smashed into tiny glass fragments on the floor. The sound was dulled by the roaring thunder outside. If that¡¯s the face of someone about to die, I wonder if the man Bunny stabbed made it too. Maybe that¡¯s who she learned it from. The next box was full of screws. It was too heavy to knock over, so I ripped down the side of the cardboard with my blade. The tiny metal spirals spewed onto the ground like entrails after the rupture of skin; and just like entrails, they seemed to squirm on the ground for a moment while the wound was still fresh.

    Unlike entrails, they didn¡¯t stop squirming. I held my head lower to get a better look; maybe the adrenaline had finally gotten to me. They really looked alive. The screws were like worms writhing in clusters, their spiraling ridges pulsing in waves like the fins of a manta ray. I poked one with the tip of my weapon. It was still just as hard as steel, but it responded to the stimuli with fear¡ªIt curled up into a tight coil like a dead centipede. I know I shouldn¡¯t have done it, but I picked one up with my bare hand. It was trembling like it was afraid of me. It was cold and heavy, but felt like it had a pulse. I investigated the psychedelic motion of the ridges, swaying and coiling around the body as if it was a circulatory system.

    When I was a child, I would pick up screws in my dad¡¯s workshop and run my finger around the edge, trying to find where the spiral begins and ends. Invariably, after spinning it around in my fingers, I could find where both sides tapered off into nothing. But these screws were different. No matter how closely I looked, I couldn¡¯t figure out where the spiral began or ended. It was as if it was now a discrete circulation unto its own; a loop.

    My experimenting was distracted by a thin shadow that slithered down the concrete wall like a snake. It wasn¡¯t really a shadow, but that¡¯s what it looked the most similar to. It was also like a projection, fuzzy and unstable. I felt like if I put my hand in front of its light source I¡¯d block it out from existence; like holding your hand in front of a projector. Looking around me, I realized that there were several of these snakes. The walls surrounding me had dozens, each one slowly inching closer to the floor. Looking up, they were all coming from a common source: a mysterious hole in the ceiling. I was standing directly underneath it. Each floor above me had a similarly-shaped hole in exactly the same spot, letting me see through them, all the way to the ceiling of the top floor. Up there, something was waiting for me. This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

    I didn¡¯t have time to draw my weapon before the snakes leapt off the walls, wrapping around my limbs. My sword dropped to the floor and crushed the screw-worms while I tried to break free from the snakes¡¯ grip. They were wrapped around my arms and legs, tight as tourniquets. ¡°Pins and needles¡± was an understatement. As the tingling pain tightened, I jerked my right arm as hard as I could in the opposite direction of the wall the snake was in. Using every ounce of force in my body, I pulled as hard as I could. It doubled down on its grip, but I could feel something in it start to give. After just a moment more, the snake split right in half, releasing its grip from my right arm. (You probably shouldn¡¯t try to play tug-of-war if you¡¯re the rope.) Its midsection ruptured in a splash of orange-brown blood onto the cold floor. The unmistakable scent of pennies filled the air as I tried to rip off the remaining snakes.

    The other shadowy snakes must have witnessed it all happen because their strategy quickly changed. They rushed back up the walls, towards the ceiling. The tips of my feet lifted off the ground with them. All three of them were distributing my weight evenly between them, suspending me in the air. I reached my now-free right hand towards the ground, grasping for the longsword. I wasn¡¯t confident it would do anything in this situation, but I needed to do something.

    As more projected snakes coiled around my purple limbs, the burst of adrenaline I had been on started to recede. Helpless in the air, I was finally given a moment to think about the situation I was in. The tiny pricks of panic sweat jabbed at my pores. The fuzzy pulses from the snakes ran through my body, making it feel like radio static. Soon, my entire body had gone entirely numb. I was already half-way up the room when the snakes began to pull harder. They were trying to lift me through the holes in the ceiling. Looking up through them all, I could see where they were coming from, and what they were pulling me towards.

    Attached to the ceiling of the top floor, there was a mouth. A huge, open mouth. Its layers of teeth were made of sharp, jagged triangular metal sheets. A greasy brown oil dripped off them like saliva onto my helpless face. In the very center of the mouth was a single eye, glowing silver. The snakes that held me were coming from deep inside the mouth. Then, I gasped at the revelation that these weren¡¯t snakes. These were its tongues.

    I was soon lifted up onto the third floor. The metal screw-worms writhed out of their cardboard boxes onto the floor, this time of their own accord. It wasn¡¯t just screws, either; gears were spinning and grinding against one other. Metal valves were attaching themselves haphazardly around the walls in bizarre patterns. Thin sheets of metal were folded up like origami cranes, fluttering around the room with their razor-sharp wings. I could understand it now: this was the brood, and that silver mouth was the broodmother. As I grew closer, it salivated onto me more and more. It was hungry, and its children were hungry. Eating me wasn¡¯t an act of malice or hatred. It was just survival.

    Of course, this didn¡¯t make me feel much better. I don¡¯t think there was anything I could have thought to make me feel better. The only thing that seemed to help at all was doing what came naturally: screaming my fucking head off. I don¡¯t know how I kept it together for so long, but I let loose everything I was holding in. Pathetic yelps, strings of profanities, thrashing, kicking, crying for help; it was the only thing I did. It was the only thing I could do.

 Chapter 26 - Break the Shape We Take

    Soon, I was staring eye-to-eye with the beastly metal mouth. It was glistening and shining, endlessly striking, almost even pretty. There was a tangle of metal roots that spread around the building, injecting the miscellaneous mechanical parts with a cruel form of life. I was coated in the oil being dripped onto me in its anticipation of new prey. I was close enough now that I could smell its breath, just like molten copper.

    When my vision went bright white and my ears rang silent, I honestly thought I had died. My body was too numb to convince me otherwise. My brain was temporarily shut off, it was like I didn¡¯t exist. But my loop hadn¡¯t broken, it had just been temporarily reset. When my senses came back it was like waking up after a dream. I found myself on the dirty floor, surrounded by more writhing insects made of corrupted metal. Feeling had slowly returned to my body, enough that I could get back up and try to make a break for the exit while I still had the chance. I sprang up off the ground in what I thought was a feat of impressive agility. As soon as I did, a yell echoed across the room.

    ¡°What the fuck, dumbass? Get back down!¡±

    Another blinding white flash and ringing pain in my ears. Rose was standing at the other end of the room, holding a pistol in her hands. She must have heard me freaking out and came to check on me. She had shot the mouth on the ceiling a few times, leaving little smoldering holes in its metal carapace. The glowing silver eye in the middle wasn¡¯t gone, but its light had dimmed.

    ¡°Uh, thanks, Rose. I¡¯d ask you what the fuck this thing is, but I guess I already know.¡±

    I dusted the dirt and metal grit off my pants, feeling a little better now that I was no longer alone.

    ¡°Since when have you owned a pistol?¡±

    I took another look at it. It wasn¡¯t just a pistol, it was Biologist¡¯s. The blue one that seemed like it was made of clay. The one that was, supposedly, designed to kill me. Ironic that it¡¯s now being used to save my life¡ªa demon caller using a weapon of God to save me. I wonder if what Rose meant by being on ¡°the wrong side of divinity¡± really was true.

    ¡°Where did you get the blue gun? Wasn¡¯t it in my house?¡±

    ¡°Don¡¯t worry about that right now, we have bigger problems. I don¡¯t think this is gonna hold it off much longer. Actually, I¡¯m not even sure what it¡¯s doing.¡±

    The two bullet holes in the teeth of the mouth on the ceiling were still smoldering. On second glance it looked more like steam, the kind that bubbles out of beakers from an unstable chemical concoction. The sides of the holes began to bubble and fizz with pretty pastel blue foam. The metal roots wrapped through the sides of the room began to spark. They were like Tesla coils, or maybe they were Tesla coils. The small, unpredictable pulses of small lightning made me realize something.

    Ever since Rose shot the beast, the thunderstorm outside paused. Not the rain, but the lightning. I¡¯m sure this thing is the cause of the problem. It was good to know that, but it posed a new problem. If we didn¡¯t handle it here and now, the storm might never stop. In fact, it¡¯ll probably electrocute me to death. I bet that¡¯s its ¡°destiny¡±. I have to do something to alter it.

    ¡°Hey, Rose, how do you make demons do stuff? This thing is really going to kill me if we don¡¯t do something soon. Do you have any destiny-altering spells or something?¡±

    ¡°Not like you¡¯re hoping. Besides, I did everything I could already. So did Bunny. It¡¯s up to you now.¡±

    The lightning from the roots began to grow, singeing any metallic parts it made contact with. The shock looked like it was enough to kill the little metallic insects. The thing that was giving them life was also killing them indiscriminately.

    I didn¡¯t know what to do. I was running out of time. The chaotic arcs of electricity grew more frequent and closer together. They were slowly zeroing in on our position. I could feel the heat radiate on my skin as the crackling grew close to my ears. Rose and I backed up closer to each other. I could feel her shaking behind me.

    Why would the beast kill its own creations? It seemed like the lightning was trying to electrocute the iron bugs just as much as it was trying to electrocute us. Their hard bodies curled up and withered, browning with rust as they leaked chemicals onto the floor. I watched a metal-origami moth get zapped with an ear-splitting crackle right in front of my face. It fell to the ground with a clang, right onto a puddle of another insect¡¯s discarded acid. The moth¡¯s corpse twitched and squirmed in the fluid, rusting until its movement was halted entirely. It began to dissolve into a silvery slush of what must be its base metals and compounds.

    I had momentarily lost track of the snake-tongues, but now I see them. Their fuzzy projection-esque form slithered across the floor onto the pile of metal moth rot. It wrapped around the powders and fragments, just like it did with my arms, and began pulling it towards the mouth in the ceiling. The snakes all over the room were doing the same, bringing the decaying rot into its mouth. It was eating them.

    It was hard to focus on this new revelation as the arcs of lightning began to burn. My face was intermittently struck by the tiny lightnings, like being stuck by pin pricks¡ªpin pricks that consistently got wider and deeper. But, even then, I couldn¡¯t shake the feeling that I was beginning to figure it all out.

    The Silver Beast was turning the metal parts in the warehouse alive. Those new metallic insects formed their own mini-ecosystem; interacting with one another and forming new compounds. They were then shocked by the mouth¡¯s root-like tendrils and eaten. The base components it provided the mouth were then processed into the growing metal tendrils tangling around the building, causing all the lightning and thunder outside. This system was a system of life, there was no questioning it. And, if I¡¯m to assume Biologist is correct, life loops endlessly. That seems to be the case here, but I¡¯m missing a part of the loop: How is the beast turning the metal parts alive, and why is it growing out the tendrils? Well, if it forms a loop, then it should be a reasonable assumption that the tendrils are causing the life to form. That completes the cycle. Tendrils grow -> Parts turn into insects -> Insects grow and die -> Insects are processed into material -> Tendrils grow. In order to kill the beast, I have to sever the loop, somewhere. If one part of the process goes down, the rest has to go down with it.Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

    A good path of logic I¡¯d say, but it didn¡¯t keep me from feeling bolts of painful electricity cascade through my body. The tesla-coil tendrils were becoming more and more intense as they began to recover from the blue bullets Rose fired into it. Those put a brief pause into the loop, but didn¡¯t break it. We had to do something else, but it was hard. One wrong move and we¡¯d be fried and eaten, just like that moth.

    ¡°M-Mina!¡±

    ¡°What is it Rose?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m sorry, I¡¯m really, really sorry; this is my fault. I should never have¡ª¡±

    She wasn¡¯t able to finish the sentence. She was struck by a blinding flash of lightning, and unceremoniously collapsed to the ground.

    I got onto the floor beside her, trying to wake her up. She was breathing, but hardly. That was the kind of shock that could fuck you up for the rest of your life. I was scared. Really, really scared. Maybe it was selfish of me, but I couldn¡¯t keep from feeling like I was going to be next.

    I huddled onto her, trying to protect her body with mine. I felt the painful circuits race up and down my spine as by back was being covered with tiny lightning strikes like droplets of rain. I saw my hands, burned and bleeding. I had to look away to not freak out anymore than I already was, but I¡¯m glad I did.

    I almost didn¡¯t believe my eyes at first, but it was right there floating in the center of the room: my longsword. The shadowy tongues were pulling it up from the hole in the floor. They must have incorrectly identified it as food because of all the rust on it. Before I had time to react, it was already being carried into the giant, salivating mouth on the ceiling. It was inserted half-way in the mouth cavity before it seemed to have gotten stuck. The oily, acidic chemicals dripping from the mouth coated the outside, mixed with a bit of the blue foam from before. The mixture dripped and slid down the blade, corroding it with the metal-digesting fluids. Scraps of dirty brown and black flecked and peeled off the sword like the papery skin of an onion.

    As the outer layer of grime was digested off the blade, I was able to see what it truly looked like for the first time. It was white and black striped, like a zebra. The black stripes blended into the dark room as perfectly as the white stripes were camouflaged by the hot-white lightning racing around me.

    The mouth must have given up trying to digest the longsword and dropped it onto the ground. It began to act like a lightning rod, attracting all the arcs of lightning in the room to itself. The blade began glowing hot white, though emanating an ominous black aura. I only had one idea, and as stupid as it may have been, I didn¡¯t have time to wait for a second one.

    I sprinted over to it, ducking through the arcs swirling through the room, and grabbed onto the hilt. It felt so much lighter than before. Lifting it into the air, I moved all the lightning in the room towards it¡ªaway from Rose.

    This didn¡¯t feel like a normal sword anymore. It was physically lighter, but something about it seemed even heavier than before. The black and white stripes seemed to change every time I looked at it, and the closer I looked, the more confusing the striped pattern seemed. As I slowly moved it from side to side in the air, the lightning arcs from the tendrils followed obediently. I didn¡¯t realize it at first, but the lightning was being sucked into the blade. I was in control now.

    The beast wasn¡¯t a perpetual electricity engine. That¡¯s not how life works. Eventually, it had eaten all the charred metal bug scraps it could. There was nothing else feeding it power. The tesla coil roots wrapped around the room began to simmer down. Their arcs were becoming malnourished, no longer holding the energy they used to. Soon, my sword had sucked them dry of electricity.

    The blade was glowing hot, radiating heat that made me sweat. I don¡¯t wanna know what would happen if I had touched it. Even though I was starving it now, if I gave the beast enough time to recover, it probably would. I need to end this now.

    I pointed the tip of the longsword up at the fading silver eye in the middle of the mouth. The eye began to flicker bright and dark, pulsing erratically. I thought it was going to pop like a broken light bulb. Instead, something weirder happened.

    The sword started to cleave at the tip. A seam split all the way down the middle. The entire blade was split into two halves, like it was being unzipped. Inside the open middle was a small silver ring suspended in the air between the halves of the sword. Inscribed around the ring¡¯s edge was the word PELE. It quickly started to grow in size. Within seconds, the ring that could have fit on my pinkie was now bigger around than my arm, floating in the middle of the room. It was a perfect ring, torus, loop.

    Reflected in its metallic sheen I could see myself. I could see Rose lying in pain on the floor. I could see Bunny¡¯s frightened face. I could see Martin¡¯s lifeless body. As it grew, I could see more inside of it. It was full of oil and chemicals, skittering bugs and worms, a lightning storm. It contained a cityscape, built out of purified silver¡ªruled by angels of machinations. The acid sea glistened, mechanical alloy dolphins played in the foam under a hot silver sun. It was beautiful. If I kept staring into the ring, I felt like I would lose myself inside of it. I¡¯d never come back. This was the loop of the Silver Chromatic Beast. It was now massive, hardly still fitting in the room. It hung in front of me, like a giant letter O.

    O

    It beckoned me to come inside. Maybe in that world, I¡¯d have a purpose. Maybe the arduinos and electronic toys I build that are so meaningless here would become beautiful creations there. I could be an angel myself, one like Biologist. It tempted me. I wanted to go inside, but... I didn¡¯t want to leave my friends. My blade zipped back up in the middle, forming itself into a whole again. The ring held in front of me pleaded silently for me to enter, but I didn¡¯t listen. I knew too well what I had to do.

    With the force of a lumberjack, I slammed my blade into the bottom-right corner of the ring. It sparked and sent lightning all over the room, acid dripped from the cut like tears of a world that never got to be. I didn¡¯t falter, continuing to cut through the metal worldflesh. From one clean strike, I sliced clean through the ring. The stroke of my blade was drawn in the air, a diagonal line from its center to my lower-right side. The loop was severed.

    Q

 Chapter 27 - What Kept Us Together

    ¡°Hope you¡¯re glad I saved your ass.¡±

    ¡°Yeah, but it was only after I pulled the trigger.¡±

    ¡°And almost shot me in the head!¡±

    Me and Rose were bickering like usual, but this time, we couldn¡¯t wipe the dumb smiles off our faces. Maybe it was the near-death experience jitters, or maybe all the electric shocks fried our nerves¡ªbut whatever it was, we were feeling a kind of relief neither of us had ever had before. Biologist gave us some basic first aid with stuff she had in her purse, but we should probably still go to the ER soon. But not tonight, we¡¯ve done enough.

    Biologist and Bunny were slumped over onto each other on the back seat of my car, probably asleep. They¡¯ve had a rough day, they can rest. After Rose regained her consciousness after the incident, I corralled the three of them over to my car. Now that the lightning part of the lightning-storm was gone, the walk back wasn¡¯t dangerous; just wet.

    ¡°Mina, are you really sure you killed that thing? How do you know it¡¯s not going to come back to life?¡±

    ¡°Trust me, I¡¯m certain of it. It¡¯s over. I guess I need to check off one of the beasts on the whiteboard back home. That means just indigo, violet, and a third color are left.¡±

    ¡°Since this was silver, the last one is likely gold.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m not as worried about them now, either way. Once I got my weapon to work its magic, the metal mouth thing was a total push-over. This sword must have fallen from the heavens. Maybe God hasn¡¯t left me uncounted after all.¡±

    ¡°You said you found it on the road, right?¡±Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

    ¡°Yeah, it was in the asphalt. I can¡¯t imagine anyone strong enough to put it in there by themself, and it wasn¡¯t in cleanly enough to seem like it was done with a machine. It really must have fallen out of the sky. Strange that it landed hilt-down, though.¡±

    ¡°Hilt-down? Like, the tip of the blade was pointed upwards? Mina, that sword didn¡¯t fall down from heaven. It rose up from hell.¡±

    ¡°No, it¡­ It, uh¡­ Alright, maybe. But it saved us, that¡¯s all that matters.¡±

    ¡°Must be Choronzon¡¯s doing. I guess he¡¯s not as useless as Biologist¡¯s book said. And if anyone can make uselessness work in their favor, it¡¯s you.¡±

    ¡°Thanks, Rose. That was almost a compliment!¡±

    ¡°Want another? Here goes¡ªI¡¯m sorry I¡¯ve been an asshole with everything lately. I was getting mad at you, even though I was the one hurting you. I just didn¡¯t think you were capable of handling all this. You seem like you¡¯re the kind of person who needs protecting. Like a small animal.¡±

    ¡°You put me through some shit, but¡­ Apology accepted, I think. We¡¯ll see what future Mina has to say after the jitters wear off.¡±

    ¡°How much time until then?¡±

    ¡°Probably ¡®till the burns start hurting again. I¡¯d give it a couple hours, at least.¡±

    ¡°Well, since we have the time, wanna hit up that 24 hour breakfast place we used to go to?¡±

    ¡°Rose, that¡¯s like twenty miles away.¡±

    ¡°Well, I don¡¯t think anywhere around here is gonna be open for a while.¡±

    ¡°Half an hour ago I was getting shocked in the face by a monster, and half an hour from now I¡¯ll be eating pancakes and bacon. God, today is a weird day.¡±

    I put the car in drive, ready to roll out of the closed diner¡¯s parking lot. The surroundings were still black as night, with shines of blinding white where the puddles of water reflected moonlight. It was almost like space, a dazzling dance white dots in a sea of black. And now, after just a few minutes of driving, the sun was starting to come up; returning color to the world. It felt like I was lost in monochrome lights and darks and greys for too long. Maybe after wielding the zebra-striped longsword, part of me wondered if my world was going to be black and white forever. But now, I think I understand it a little more. You can¡¯t admire these warm colors¡ªthe pigment of dawn-lit highways along green grass and pastel flowers¡ªif they weren¡¯t all black and white first.

 the state of QQQQ (again)

    Hi Hi. More QQQQ? Yes, certainly, it sure seems that way.

    I was startled too.

    Somehow, I''ve yet more dribble to drabble. I am not sure exactly when it will hit the Royal Road store shelves, but I have high hopes for August.

    After a climactic arc last time, this next one will be fairly silly and low-stakes.

    Maybe. :-3

    In other news, you may have noticed that I''ve updated the synopsis/description.

    Market research indicates that people tend to be drawn to promises of intrigue and plot more than ranting about letters of the alphabet¡ªwhy did no one tell me this earlier?

    Perhaps I should write a Grimdark Isekai Gacha LitRPG Sci-Fi Fantasy Reverse-Harem novel after QQQQ has passed away.

    Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.Or perhaps a story about the element Chlorine. Hmmm...

    In even more exciting news: chapters 1, 2, 3 and 14 have been adorned with beautiful character images!

    Yes, that''s right, the QQQQ characters you''ve grown to love over all these decades are finally being presented in full technicolor.

    The credit to this wonderful art goes to @insect_hospital on twitter.

    I am very proud to get to have their work featured inside of mine!

    That is all I have to say for now, but thank you very much for staying caught up arms-and-legs within this strange web serial.

    In a world that is so full-to-bursting with fun and delightful things, I will be forever grateful that you chose to spend that precious time with me.

    Always find new ways to be kind to yourself.

    Mwah~

    ¡ªTower

 Chapter 28 - Bunny Jump Bunny Jump

    The definition of an enemy is ¡°a friend without boundaries.¡± That may not be strictly true, I only came up with it just now, but it¡¯s the definition I¡¯ll adopt until I come up with something better. I think it works; the basis of any good relationship are the ground rules. When you greet a friend, they wouldn¡¯t respond by firing a revolver into your forehead. No violence; that¡¯s one of the boundaries of friendship. Just like no stealing, no lying, and no badmouthing. Those boundaries may be broken in some cases, but they¡¯re often quickly mended. However¡ªfor the time since the boundary is broken, up until the moment you make amends, that person is not your friend. That person has made themself your enemy.

    The morning after the incident with the silver chromatic beast, I contacted my friends. Namely, Bunny and Rose. Me and Rose decided to trade off custody of Bunny between our places on a weekly basis. Since it¡¯s her week to be a responsible parent, I had a good opportunity to set a boundary with the two of them through text.

    ¡°For the next week, I want to be by myself. Reach out only if there¡¯s an emergency; like if Bunny gets lost or they invent a new kind of donut.¡±

    A very innocuous request, one that anyone might make after a period of undue stress. Though my wording was gentle, my message was clear¡ª¡±If you talk to me within the next seven days without a damn good reason to, you have made yourself my enemy.¡±

    I might not expect Bunny to read between the lines like that, but I trust Rose to. Actually, sometimes Rose overlooks the ¡°lines¡± themselves, but I digress. No need to think about Rose for now. This is my off-season.

    I scratched Leo¡¯s fuzzy grey belly and played with his ears. He¡¯s been the perfect little gentleman in the time I¡¯ve known him, only occasionally screaming for no reason or vomiting into my sneakers. He might be the best friend I have right now.

    The arduino abominations in my bedroom are also my friend. They¡¯ve been helping me to unwind a lot. I still don¡¯t know why I keep buying them, or why I build things for no reason, or how I keep forgetting what they do: but it¡¯s a hell of a stress reliever to plug random alligator clips into random chips and boards. It¡¯s getting really hard to traverse my room. Any path I had from door to bed has been buried under useless junk that I can¡¯t bring myself to get rid of. Maybe I¡¯ll start sleeping on the couch while Bunny isn¡¯t here.

    When it turned late, I settled into a nice hot bath for the first time in a while. When was the last time I did this? I tried scrying through the steam clouds wafting above me to no avail. I believe I was thinking about Rose at the time. That she may or may not be a dangerous person to those around her. But I distinctly remember calling her a ¡°friend¡± in my head. I suppose we¡¯ll see how true that really is this week.

    After the water in my tub lost its heat, and my splashing hid from me foreboding noises downstairs that I really needed to hear, I decided I would lumber to bed. Maybe I could just sleep here, but I¡¯m not enough of a badass to try. After putting on my pajamas and brushing my teeth, I stumbled through the dark stairway and collapsed face-first into my couch. There were two blankets wrapped up into a ball. I threw them both onto the floor and began unraveling them, huffing and puffing at my past self¡¯s arrogance. Why should I have to be the one to do this, and not her? Was I really in such a rush today, anyways? I don¡¯t remember doing anything important. I felt my hand pull a clump of white fur out of the blankets. Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.

    I turned the light on. I expected to see Leo¡¯s fur, but no.

    This was something else¡¯s fur.

    Having learned my lesson from last time this happened, I decided to check on everything. This time, there was no sign of Bunny anywhere. If she was in my kitchen I would have seen her, since I''m downstairs this time. I comedically checked the cabinets, behind the curtains, between the couch cushions¡ªnothing. (Though I did find more mysterious white fluff stuffed in the couch.)

    I recognize that finding unexpected hair or fur does not logically equate to having home invaders, but my paranoia ended up being correct anyways.

    On my stairs, standing with her arms resting on the handrail, was Biologist. Her pale green hair looked just unnatural enough to give an unmistakably human aura. Of course, she wasn''t really a typical human. She was only a few months old, although her appearance would suggest she was middle aged. As I''m sure you remember, she was one of the nine beasts created to kill me. Though she seems much less interested in acting on that quest than when I first met her, the thought alone makes me suspicious.

    Well, also the part about breaking into my home. That''s suspicious too.

    Before I could ask any of the one hundred things I wanted to ask her, she began speaking unprompted with a slight grin.

    "This is okay, right? You''re fine with seeing me, I mean. I''m not breaking any rules."

    "No, I assure you, this is breaking several rules."

    "But not any rules that you set. You told your friends¡ªRose and Bunny¡ªthey weren''t allowed to see you for a while. You didn''t say that to me, though. So I came to ask you: is it that you don''t consider me a friend, or rather, do you consider me a friend with special privileges?"

    It''s true, I never specifically said she wasn''t allowed to see me. I didn''t set that boundary with her.

    "Okay, I''m seeing the legal loophole here, but you really shouldn''t enter people''s houses without asking first."

    "For the sake of our blossoming friendship, I can accept that rule. But I would like to propose a rule in return."

    "You''re being weirdly aggressive right now. I swear, you act differently every time I see you."

    "Here''s the rule: if one of us sees something concerning, we will share it. No turning a blind eye, no trying to forget it. If you see something suspicious, speak up, and I will do the same."

    "I''m glad you said that, I''ve actually noticed something concerning lately."

    "Oh, really? Then please, allow me to hear it."

    "Weirdos keep barging into my home. Think there''s anything I can do to stop them?"

    "Simple¡ªhide your keys better."

    She tossed down the spare key I keep outside. Damn it. After the doormat plan failed, I bought a fake rock to put the key inside. Now I want my money back.

    "Mina, I also saw something that concerns me. It''s not about you, rather, it''s about Rose¡ª"

    "Nope! Nopenopenope. I''ve had enough of her for a while. Come back to me after the friend-ban is up. Bye!"

    I got back into the nice couch-bed I made, hoping whatever situation there was would work itself out without me.

    It wouldn''t.

 Chapter 29 - Letâ€™s Go Together

    The next day, I found myself meeting up with Biologist at the mall. She wouldn¡¯t shut up and leave me alone until I agreed. I thought long and hard about not showing, but she¡¯d just come back to my house and drag me out by my ear. So, now I¡¯m here.

    She eventually met me at the food court like she said, albeit about ten minutes late. I was halfway through a small plate of nachos. It was lunchtime, and I didn¡¯t want to be grumpier than I already am.

    ¡°Hello, Mina. I see you¡¯ve gotten a head start on our mall date.¡±

    I almost choked.

    ¡°This isn¡¯t¡­ Just tell me what I¡¯m doing here, please.¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s not like I brought you here to do anything in particular.¡±

    ¡°So I can go home?¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s not what I said. I don¡¯t need you to do anything, but I need you to be here. That¡¯s all.¡±

    ¡°No tricks?¡±

    ¡°None.¡±

    ¡°So I can just hang out here in the food court until you tell me I can go home?¡±

    ¡°Sure, if you really want to.¡±

    Biologist must underestimate my ability to do absolutely nothing for extended periods of time. It might be what I¡¯m best at, actually. Of course, cosmically speaking, everything I do is meaningless. I might as well be doing nothing all the time. (Or would it be doing something none of the time?)

    She eventually left me alone to go explore some of the mall. It seems that she¡¯s never been here before, and was slightly overwhelmed by all the colorful capitalist exhibitions on display. I simply sat and kicked my feet under the table while I played with my phone like it was any other day. Really, being here isn¡¯t that bad. I¡¯m not in my PJs, and I can¡¯t watch embarrassing videos in case someone is peeking, but I can manage.

    Or at least I could have managed, if I hadn¡¯t spotted the only two people I was trying to avoid. While Biologist and I were on our ¡°lovely mall date¡±, Bunny and Rose were seemingly on theirs.

    My first instinct was to hide, but I¡¯m not badass enough to dive behind a counter or anything like that. Luckily I didn¡¯t have to, as those two passed by the food court without much inspection. I watched them walk down the hall full of people towards the west wing of shops, the same way Biologist went.Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.

    Even though I didn¡¯t have to, I went to find her. I had some things I wanted to say.

    After a minute or two of searching, I found her in the electronics store. She was staring at a computer mouse, poking it with her finger in an attempt to see if it was actually alive. Admittedly, it was pretty funny, but I was in no mood for that.

    ¡°Biologist! You¡¯re an asshole!¡±

    ¡°What? Why?¡±

    ¡°You knew Rose and Bunny were here, didn¡¯t you?¡±

    Her eyes practically became cat eyes as they drifted towards her left.

    ¡°N-No, heavens, I hadn¡¯t the slightest idea¡­¡±

    The suspicious personality of Biologist¡¯s that I met for the first time at my house was coming back out. Just like then, I stayed quiet and allowed her to talk herself into a hole.

    ¡°I suppose it¡¯s possible that I could have heard something like this, and simply just internalized the information¡ªtotally subconscious. I did not intentionally bring you out here to, perhaps, find out what they¡¯re up to right now. I-I mean, not that I know they¡¯re up to anything¡ªjust in case they are! Uh...yeah.¡±

    My face was already in my palms. Rose and Bunny are up to something, huh? I don¡¯t know what they were doing, but I guess now would be the time to do it. I did tell them I wouldn¡¯t be interacting with them for a week. Maybe that was a dumb idea.

    ¡°Is that what you wanted me here for? To sneak up on those two?¡±

    ¡°Nononono-no! Absolutely not! I simply wanted you here in case things go wrong, somehow. To be on standby, you know? There won¡¯t be any espionage¡ª¡±

    I interrupted her mid-sentence as I put on the pair of sunglasses I keep in my bag. There absolutely will be espionage, because I don¡¯t plan on waiting around. I¡¯m getting this done now.

    After just a few minutes, we followed in the direction I saw our targets walking towards earlier. Using my knowledge of the main suspect¡¯s behavior, it was safe to assume they were going to Momo Imports.

    ¡°Momo¡± was a specialty clothing store full of¡­ the kind of shit Rose wears. Sailor uniforms, exaggerated pink bows, along with hypnotising arrays of various shiny cosplay props. It was also a very large store, considering how niche it is. It¡¯s about the size you¡¯d expect of a building on its own, much less a store in the mall. Many people back at college said it was suspicious how our little town had a needlessly sprawling cosplay store, but I actually think the opposite. It¡¯s the inexplicable¡ªyet harmless¡ªirregularities like this that remind me that life is actually real, not just a predictable simulation.

    ¡°Alright Bio, this place is huge, so let¡¯s split up. We¡¯ll meet back up in the manga section in an hour.¡±

    ¡°Why manga?¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s the section people are the least likely to look you in the face.¡±

    It seems Biologist still had a lot to learn about human culture.

 Chapter 30 - BABY, ITâ€™S BLUE

    It was now thirty minutes after Biologist and I split up in Momo. It didn¡¯t take that long for me to find our quarries. In fact, I found them pretty much immediately. I¡¯ve been silently watching them for about half an hour now. To put it simply, it seems like Rose is using Bunny as her¡­ personal dress-up doll.

    Bunny looked completely exhausted, like always.

    ¡°Can we go now?¡±

    ¡°Not yet, try on this one!¡±

    Rose enthusiastically held up a revealing schoolgirl outfit, one in stark contrast to the overly modest and frilly dress Bunny was trying on now. She simply took the new clothes and walked back through the dark blue curtain into the changing room. (Actually, isn¡¯t it weird for a place like this to have a changing room?)

    Rose seemed to be having the time of her life. She was scrolling through her phone gallery, admiring all the different costumes and half-hearted poses she pushed Bunny into. It made me feel a little bad for Buns, Rose was treating her just like a pet. Though, if Bunny really hated it, I¡¯m sure she could have wriggled her way out by now. She doesn¡¯t secretly like it, does she? She did ask if they could leave. But maybe she was just being tsundere?

    I should probably leave this store before it gives me permanent anime brain-poisoning.

    But, for now, I stayed. It¡¯s not that I really wanted to watch what Rose and Bunny do in their private time. But Biologist sure made it seem like something was going on, I doubt it was something this innocent. Well, making your friend dress up in flashy outfits for your own amusement might not be ¡°innocent¡±, but considering the events lately, it¡¯s not a very big deal. There must be something else to this.

    ¡°Can we go now?¡±

    Bunny had returned from the changing room again, wearing the small uniform she was handed a minute ago. Personally, I didn¡¯t think it was very flattering, but Rose was snapping up pictures from every angle. After her frenzy ended, she gave a small sigh.

    ¡°Yes, we can go now. Thanks, Bunny.¡±

    Bunny silently returned to the dressing room, and came out a moment later wearing her usual ripped-up camo jacket and pants. Rose had a couple things in a bag, and they began walking to the check-out counter.

    Wait, shit¡ªthat¡¯s behind me. There¡¯s no way they won¡¯t see me if they keep moving this way! Should I come up with a cover story? Pretend like I didn¡¯t see them? Should I ditch the sunglasses?Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

    It didn''t matter, because I was already busted. My heart sank as I heard Rose''s chipper voice reverberate through the narrow aisles.

    "Oh, hey, Mina! Is that you?"

    While desperately trying to make my brain fart out any excuse possible, I turned to face her like a deer faces an oncoming Toyota Camry.

    But she wasn''t there. My eyes darted all over to no avail, she wasn''t in the same isle I was. For some reason, she was on the other side.

    "I thought something was up with that text! And I really thought you actually--"

    And then she stopped speaking. With her voice now raised an additional octave, she stammered out an apology to someone. I peeked out past the corner, and I saw Rose and Bunny talking to someone who looked like me, but unquestionably was not me. She had dark hair like me, was a bit stout like me, and she wore the same kind of stylish clothes I like to wear.

    "Oh- oh. Sorry, I thought you were someone else! My friend always wears this lame yellow hoodie every day, and I thought¡ª"

    I was suddenly blinded by fury indescribable with language; In less than three seconds I had Rose in a headlock.

    "OW OW OW OW OW OW¡ª"

    "Don''t be an asshole to random customers! And my hoodie is NOT fucking lame!"

    So much for being undercover.

    After I had regained my composure, I proceeded to spill the beans. I told Rose the whole story of how I ended up here, against my better judgement.

    ¡°Biologist said we were being sus, huh? I wonder what exactly she heard¡­¡±

    I raised an eyebrow, encouraging her to continue.

    ¡°I mean, we really are just out here shopping. Like well-adjusted, adult humans do. If either of you were one of those, you would have already figured that out.¡±

    ¡°I doubt a well-adjusted, adult human has ever set foot in Momo.¡±

    ¡°Shut up. Anyways, where¡¯s Biologist? You said you came here with her.¡±

    ¡°Probably still looking for you two. I¡¯ll let her know I won this accidental hide-and-seek game. Wait, wasn¡¯t Bunny right beside you a second ago?¡±

    Rose quickly searched all around her, as if she¡¯d dropped her keys. It was just the two of us in the aisle for a few foreboding moments, until we heard Biologist¡¯s voice. She was running as fast as her long khaki skirt would let her, panting and sweating.

    ¡°M-Mina, Bunny is¡ªBunnies are¡ªThere¡¯s like a lot of, uh¡­ J-Just come here, quickly!¡±

    She yanked my wrist along as she ran towards the front of the store. No matter what I asked, she wouldn¡¯t tell me anything about what she said. I was frustrated at her, until I saw it too, then I understood. This isn¡¯t something you could convey through speech, you really had to see it.

    The entire mall was swarming with uncountable numbers of Bunny.

 Chapter 31 - Donâ€™t Chase Fake Rabbits

    Bunnys were everywhere. Not bunnies, Bunnys. The plural of the proper noun Bunny, our stoic but aggressive friend. Every storefront was swarming with dozens of them. Though each one was clearly Bunny, they were all wearing different clothes. They were just as out-of-character and eccentric as the ones Rose had her trying on earlier. The Bunny sitting on the bench had cat ears and a tail, the two by the fountain were wearing a bee costume and a three-piece suit, respectively. None of them looked like they knew any more about what was going on than we did. Some were sitting quietly, but most seemed to be moving around at random.

    ¡°What the fuck,¡± Rose murmurred behind us. I was thinking the same thing.

    ¡°Biologist, what¡¯s going on?¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t know why you¡¯re asking me! It¡¯s like some kind of crazy family reunion.¡±

    ¡°Yeah, but¡­ You¡¯ve gotta know something right? You¡¯re the otherworldly being here, not us.¡±

    ¡°Hey, I was born on Earth. And it was only a few months ago, so I don¡¯t know everything that goes on. Like this.¡±

    We stood around for a few more minutes, mouths agape. The Bunnys really were a once-in-a-lifetime sight. So many flashy costumes she¡¯d never wear, going places she¡¯d never go. Part of me just wanted to stand by and watch a little, but deep down, I knew what was going on.

    ¡°This is probably another thing attacking me, right? I don¡¯t have any other ideas.¡±

    Biologist flipped out her leather notebook again. She thumbed through colorful pages full of symbols and words I couldn¡¯t read.

    ¡°It¡¯s like I thought, there¡¯s nothing in this book about the chromatic beasts made after me. I only have info on Red, Orange, Yellow, and Green (myself). Blue, Indigo, Violet, Silver, and the ninth are all omitted. I presume the ninth is Gold, by the way.¡±

    Rose put her two cents in.

    ¡°The only ones of those we haven¡¯t taken care of yet are Indigo and Gold. Unless this is something your pet did.¡±

    ¡°Violet¡¯s been in my pocket this whole time. I keep it zipped up in a mini-purse so it can¡¯t get away anymore.¡±

    Violet, huh? That name almost makes it sound like a normal pet. Bunny even called it a ¡°she¡± a while ago. Maybe I¡¯m the weird one for being creeped out by it. I guess that would somewhat make sense, after all, the beasts are only after me. If this Bunny swarm really is the work of a beast, that means it probably wants Bunny to kill me. But she wouldn¡¯t do that, right? ...Right?

    ¡°Hey, uh, guys? I¡¯m gonna try something stupid, okay? If it looks like I¡¯m gonna get stabbed, save me or something.¡±

    Before they had time to respond, I began approaching the nearest Bunny. It was the one wearing a striking sleeveless dress. She was staring at some other Bunnys in the opposite direction, so she didn¡¯t notice me getting close. That was probably an oversight on my part.The author''s tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

    The moment she heard my footsteps, she jumped back like I poured a bucket of ice water on her head. Immediately, she took a defensive position¡ªbut I didn¡¯t do anything but give her a greeting.

    ¡°Hi.¡±

    It was like she was staring through my eyes. No movement, no reaction. Just eyes. I could still clearly see the electrical burns on her face from a while ago. The whole situation was super scary, I was probably sweating bullets. But I held my ground.

    ¡°Do you, uh, know what¡¯s going on? With all the you¡¯s and stuff.¡±

    She didn¡¯t say anything. I don¡¯t know if this was an unnatural silence, or just Bunny being Bunny. We had our awkward staring contest for about twenty more seconds before she finally made a move: one hesitant step backwards. And then a second, and a third. Then before I knew it, she was running away from me full-steam. And for some reason, I was chasing her. She was way faster, though.

    Why would she be afraid of me?

    I expressed this sentiment to my friends when I returned to them a moment later, panting and wheezing.

    ¡°Hmmm¡­ Why would Bunny be afraid of someone as harmless and weak as you?¡±

    Rose was being helpful as ever.

    ¡°Well, actually, I can think of one reason. She got hurt pretty badly by that Silver monster in the warehouse a while ago, and then you went and kicked its ass like it¡¯s nothing. By transitive property, that means you can kick her ass like it¡¯s nothing, too.¡±

    Hearing that made me involuntarily smirk. I may be a bit more conceited than I thought.

    ¡°Even if that was the case, she knows I wouldn¡¯t hurt her for no reason. I think there¡¯s something more to it. The way she looked at me was uncanny. More uncanny than usual, I mean. It might sound obvious, but I think these are fake Bunnys.¡±

    Biologist furrowed her brow and pulled out her leather notebook again. She flipped to a page that was bookmarked. The top of the page read ¡°MINA¡¯S DNA¡±. Below it was a large circular figure, like you¡¯d see in some grimoire. All around it were notes and bits of text, with lots of highlighting and little reminders. She thumbed two pages, and turned to a page labeled ¡°BUNNY¡¯S DNA¡±. There was a large figure on this one too, but unlike my page, there were no notes or highlights except for a couple question marks in red.

    ¡°Bio, are you going to explain what exactly this is?¡±

    ¡°I keep track of everyone¡¯s DNA. Oh, is that weird?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m going to skip the answer to that question and just ask another¡ªWhat¡¯s the big circle with all the stuff in it?¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s your DNA, or at least the important parts. I¡¯ve heard that modern biologists use long sequences of letters, but this method is much more elegant. Besides, it¡¯s not like you¡¯ve never seen sigils before.¡±

    ¡°Like the kind you summon demons with?¡±

    ¡°Yes, the sigil is the demon¡¯s DNA. You aren¡¯t summoning it per se, just creating a new instance of it from its genetic material. And, actually, that could be what¡¯s happening here. Something could have gotten hold of Bunny¡¯s DNA and is creating clones of her.¡±

    ¡°If that¡¯s the case, where did they all get their clothes from? Wouldn¡¯t the clones be formed naked?¡±

    ¡°That is true. You also saw the burns on her face, right? A clone from DNA wouldn¡¯t have those, they only represent the way one naturally is.¡±

    Rose¡¯s eyes shot open, and she muttered something to herself.

    ¡°The way one naturally is, huh¡­ You guys stay here, I need to go check something.¡±

    She ran off in a random direction just as quickly as that one Bunny did earlier. Why is everyone running away from me today?

    Once again, it¡¯s just me and Biologist.

    Well, us and about a hundred Bunnys. But which one was real?

 Chapter 32 - Tourist in Paradise

    "Atten- Oh, shit-"

    The novelty megaphone was way louder than I expected. It was just a toy, but it functioned like the real thing. Actually, with all the static and popping, it was probably even worse. The sound blared through the massive halls as I clicked the button again.

    "Could the real Bunny please come meet us by the fountain?"

    I was standing on the bench to give myself extra height. I surveyed the area, and saw at least a hundred Bunnys staring back at me with eyes wide open. I turned off the megaphone and climbed back down to the bench.

    "Bio, I don''t think this is gonna work."

    "It never hurts to ask politely."

    We sat on the bench and watched the looming Bunnys. Some were moving aimlessly around the store, but most were frozen in place, doing nothing but looking at us. It was pretty scary, but as we only recently realized, there was something far scarier about this situation.

    The mall was bustling, full of people. But excluding me and my friends, not a single person was there. No customers, no janitors, no employees. Every store was left only attended by varying amounts of Bunnys. Where did all the people go?

    They were here before the incident. The last stranger I noticed was that girl who looked like me, and she seemed pretty normal. The key point is that she looked like me, not identical to me. After I started bickering with Rose, she just walked away. I don''t have any idea where she went.

    This megaphone came from the novelty gift shop right in front of us. And, for the record, I wanted to pay for it. But since there was no one there to attend the register, and it was an emergency, I just walked out with it. I''ll put it back later, in case I need it again.

    Though, maybe I won¡¯t, because asking politely didn¡¯t work. Not a single Bunny has interacted with us, willingly or otherwise.

    "What is going on?"

    "Are you Bunny?"

    "Do you remember who we are?"

    "Where did everyone else go?"

    None of those questions received anything other than a blank eyed stare. I hope Rose was having better luck than we were. At least she had some sort of lead. Perhaps it¡¯s time to tail her again¡­ Before I had time to put this new idea to motion, I felt Bio meekly tugging on the sleeve of my hoodie. The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

    ¡°What¡¯s wrong? You¡¯re acting sniveling again.¡±

    ¡°L-Look¡­¡±

    I squinted my eyes and looked in the general direction she was pointing. A small crowd of Bunnys were still staring me down. There was the glasses kiosk we got the cool shades at, a shoe store, a trashcan¡­

    ¡°What, what is it? I don¡¯t see anything wrong¡ªer, that we haven¡¯t already seen.¡±

    ¡°Look at the Bunny in the wedding gown, walking slowly.¡±

    ¡°You mean the one with the floral pattern?¡±

    ¡°Mina, wedding dresses don¡¯t have floral patterns!¡±

    Yeah, okay, they were usually pure white, but is it really inconceivable for one to have a big crimson design on one side? Though it was less of a flower shape and more of a splatter. Accentuated nicely by the pocketknife she was holding, the dripping edge a matching red.

    And then my eyes did the thing in cartoons when they pop out and fly back in.

    ¡°Bio, we gotta go!¡±

    I grabbed her wrist and pulled her haphazardly through the sea of Bunnys. I didn¡¯t have any idea where I was going, but I wasn¡¯t just going to stand around and wait to be stabbed by a murder Bunny.

    I weaved her through the hallways and ducked into a storefront as soon as we were out of vision. It was a video game store with thankfully few Bunnys. We ducked behind the counter of used Nintendo DS games and held our breaths, listening to the slow footsteps around us.

    It was a long, painstaking wait. Footsteps came and went outside, but no one went inside the store. It felt like we were hiding forever. After several more hesitant minutes went by, we grew a bit more relaxed. Bio was playing with the stuff in front of the counter.

    ¡°Mina, what¡¯s this?¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s a Pikachu plushie.¡±

    ¡°And this?¡±

    ¡°A keyblade.¡±

    ¡°This?¡±

    ¡°A Tamagotchi. No, wait, that¡¯s a ¡®WanderEgg¡¯. Looks like some sort of knock-off.¡±

    ¡°There are a lot of strange things in this store.¡±

    Things were calmer now, but I was still keeping an eye out for anything suspicious. No matter how calm a situation is, I¡¯ve learned to always be prepared. Anything could go wrong at any moment, so I always¡ª

    ¡°Mina! Look out!¡±

    Knife-holding Bunny, dress covered in blood, charging into the store. Okayokayokay, that¡¯s fine, just have to¡ª

    My reflexes kicked in before I even had a moment to think. If they hadn¡¯t, then I would have a knife lodged in my cheek right now. Instead, I had just barely dodged out of the way, sending the murderous Bunny¡¯s knife plunging deep through a cardboard cutout of Master Chief.

    Gasping and stumbling around some bargain bins, I managed to get back around her to the front of the store. Biologist was already outside, and we started our mad dash to another hiding place.

    ¡°Wow Mina, you¡¯re much more agile than when I met you. Have you been training?¡±

    ¡°No, I¡¯m just traumatized.¡±

 Chapter 33 - A World Full of Freaks

    Biologist and I stood side by side with our mouths open. We were in total disbelief of what had just happened. Actually, let me choose my words carefully. We weren¡¯t stunned at what ¡°just happened¡±, but stunned by what we just did. Limp on the ground by our feet was the lifeless, splattered corpse of Bunny.

    Given our current situation, you may not find that particularly alarming. We had just been chased through the mall by a knife-happy Bunny, and even if she was dead, there were still at least a hundred still alive and well.

    This is true. Our problem is entirely different, not at all related to the number of Bunnys. Let me explain what happened, and let me choose my words carefully, in case I need to recount them in front of a jury.

    After we had escaped from the video game store, it was a scramble around for another place to hide. Our eventual resting spot was in the weirdly empty hallway to some restrooms. We managed to catch our breath there for about five minutes.

    "Mina, why is there no one here but us?"

    "Every mall seems to have corridors that are just empty. I don''t know why."

    "Maybe we''re using it correctly. It could be for refuge from violence."

    "God, I sure hope not. Is your impression of human society so severe that you think we need shelters from violence in every building?¡±

    "Well¡ª¡±

    ¡°Please don¡¯t answer that.¡±

    I decided I¡¯d do some careful reconnaissance and peek around some corners. I even took my sneakers off to be perfectly silent. I won¡¯t mention what happened with the combo of slippery floor and slick socks. I also got a bit lost on my way back, the corridors really were that labyrinthine. Anyway, no sign of Murderbunny (but still plenty of other Bunnys). When I met back up with Biologist, I couldn¡¯t do anything but let out a sigh.

    ¡°Bio.¡±

    ¡°Yes?¡±

    ¡°What the hell is this?¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s a trap.¡±

    There was a purple semisolid goop strung from the walls in a net-like pattern. It looked kinda like a soccer goal, but slimier. The rest of the hall was totally blocked off by it. Before I could ask any follow-up questions, Biologist invited me to give it a try myself.

    ¡°Go on, see if you can get past it!¡±

    ¡°Uh¡­ No.¡±Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

    ¡°Come on, I just made this! I need to know if it works!¡±

    ¡°Nope. Not touching it.¡±

    ¡°Pleeeeaaaasssseeee~?¡±

    We went on like that for a couple minutes, but something in me finally caved. (Why is it always her making me give in?) I limbered up and took my runner¡¯s stance about 20 feet from the net. Then, with all my might, I charged slam into it like bug onto a windshield. In retrospect, I probably should have not done this for several reasons. For one, this is clearly the violet beast Biologist always carried around, which was a creation designed exclusively to kill me... as was Biologist. If this was a long-con to let down my guard and off me in the stupidest way possible, it probably would have worked. Thank God that wasn¡¯t what it was.

    As soon as I touched it, the goopy net wrapped up my whole body. I fell onto the floor in a thump, totally bound as if I was tied in rope. Biologist laughed and cheered.

    ¡°Hey, it really works! It really does work! Yeaaahhh~!¡±

    ¡°Ok cool great thanks can we get this off now?¡±

    It took her longer than it should¡¯ve, but Biologist did something to make the purple thing instantly shrink back into its original size. She explained a bit to ease my confusion.

    ¡°After studying it some more, I¡¯ve learned that this purple thing is actually a bit more mechanical than organic in nature. It can be manipulated to do certain things by bending its ¡®loop¡¯ a little. I¡¯ve done some tinkering with its prime directive to make it more useful for us, like that net. I would have used it earlier, but the mall rooms are too big for it to be of any use.¡±

    ¡°Oh, wow, really? Did you make it not want to kill me?¡±

    ¡°Umm, no. It still wants to do that. Really badly. It just doesn¡¯t have any means to do so.  But, uh, yeah, I¡¯ll try to have a look into that for you. Sorry.¡±

    Just when I thought she might have had a reliable side after all. But still, this net thing was better than nothing. At least it was a net thing. I blinked once, and now she was swinging it around like a lasso.

    ¡°I can use it in this mode too, if my aim is good enough.¡±

    ¡°Let¡¯s stick to the other one for now, Sheriff¡ª¡±

    Immediately, my eyes grew wide. I didn¡¯t need to say anything for Bio to understand what had happened: there were footsteps down the hall. We ducked behind a corner to hopefully catch Murderbunny by surprise. That¡¯s the only way a net trap like this would work.

    Tap, tap, tap¡­

    The footsteps were slower than I was anticipating. Before, Murderbunny was in a mad sprint. Why¡¯s she taking her time now? Maybe she has no idea we¡¯re here, and is in her ¡°idle¡± mode. That¡¯s the way video games work, at least.

    We held our breaths and anticipated the incoming footsteps. She was getting closer for sure, but how close was she right now? It was hard to tell, but there was no way I was sticking my neck out to see. I just hope Biologist has good reflexes.

    And yeah, she did. Too fast for her own good. Before I could even see what was happening ¡ª and before even Biologist saw what was happening, the purple net was cast. It ensnared Bunny just as effectively as we had hoped, but there was an immediate problem. Bunny¡¯s lithe hand had slipped through a hole in the net and grabbed Biologist¡¯s wrist. She twisted it in a very un-wrist-like direction, causing a yelp of pain from the shocked Biologist.

    Alright, the plan was going South. Bunny had Biologist pinned down underneath her, and I think I heard some bones crack. But I had an ace up my sleeve. A new trick I haven¡¯t shown anyone yet. It¡¯s a little technique I figured out on my own time, and it has the potential to turn the tide of any situation I could possibly be faced with. That, or, uh¡­ It¡¯ll just kill me on the spot.

 Chapter 34 - SDFK

    I rolled up the loose hoodie sleeve on my left arm. Tattooed on it were the letters ¡°PELE¡±¡ª The same as I saw inscribed on the silver ring that I severed, among other places.

    I brought the tattoo close to my eyes for just a moment, just a millisecond ¡ª but now PELE was taking up my entire vision. The letters were strobing black and white like I¡¯ve experienced so many times before. Choronzon¡¯s unholy power of psychic confusion was being burned directly into my eyes, just from witnessing a single word. The closest I could describe the sensation is ¡°pins and needles¡±, when your leg falls asleep. I¡¯m pretty sure it actually is a similar thing, but magnified to universal levels. It was impossibly painful, like taking turns between having my body ripped apart and sewn back together a thousand times a second. If I was a fraction less tough than I am, I would have totally lost it and clawed my own face off in agony like I was from eldritch mythos. But I wasn¡¯t doing this for fun; I had an emergency, and this was how to deal with it.

    I grasped around nothingness with my right hand. I wasn¡¯t feeling air. I wasn¡¯t even feeling a vacuum, like space. It was literal, actual nothing. It felt like my hand was solar systems away, entirely disconnected from me. I flicked my fingers back and forth, not knowing how to orient them to get what I wanted. I¡¯m pretty good with my hands in three dimensions, but zero dimensions proves to be a bit more confusing. I¡¯m not sure how many minutes or months or years later it was, but my fingertip grazed a sharp surface. With as much force as I could muster (before I lost it into nothingness), I wrapped my fingers around it and pulled it out.

    Out of what? Beats me. But now I was back in reality.

    My vision was still residually strobing, but not enough to stop me. I glanced around to make sure I was still intact. My right arm, hoodie sleeve and all, was dripping with a silvery, sparkling liquid¡ªlike had just reached my whole arm up into the embryonic fluid of physics itself. And before you start to think that¡¯s kind of cool, I need to let you know it smells almost exactly like rotting eggs. But that wasn¡¯t important now.A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

    The important thing is what is in my right hand. Both heavy and light, sharp and dull, black and white. Yeah, that¡¯s right. It¡¯s motherfucking sword time.

    As soon as my nervous system could cooperate with me, I threw a flying knee attack right onto the Bunny, sideswiping her off of Biologist and onto the floor. Within seconds, the tip of the Zebrasword plunged into Murderbunny¡¯s chest, spraying a small stream of blood into the air. Instant death, no other way to describe it.

    I wanted to say something cool, like ¡°get on my fucking level!¡± or ¡°that¡¯s what you get for hurting my friend!¡± or something, but decided I should probably check on Biologist. There¡¯s no telling what kind of wound she might have¡ª

    Oh, she¡¯s fine.

    She¡¯s just standing up, looking at me as casually as ever.

    ¡°...I thought you would at least have a broken wrist or something.¡±

    She shook her head.

    ¡°I¡¯m not a human. Can¡¯t really hurt me like that.¡±

    For the next few moments we looked at each other a bit awkwardly. Then at the dead Murderbunny on the ground a bit awkwardly. And then at each other a bit blank. And then down at Murderbunny a bit confused. And then back at each other a bit concerned. And then back down at Murderbunny a bit panicked. And then back at each other a bit sweaty. And then back down at Murderbunny a bit frenzied. And then back at each other in a full-blown meltdown.

    I fucked up.

    I FUCKED UP.

    The Murderbunny chasing us was wearing a blood-stained wedding gown. No mistake about it.

    The Bunny on the ground was not. Not at all.

    What was she wearing?

    Ripped up jeans and an old camo jacket.

    Just like always.

 Chapter 35 - When Your Best Friendâ€™s All Strung Out

    So, that brings us back to the first few paragraphs of Chapter 33. Me and Biologist were standing side by side, panicked as all hell, in total disbelief that I kinda maybe just killed my best friend?

    ¡°A-Alright Mina, I¡¯m sure there¡¯s something we can do. Don¡¯t panic.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m not panicking. But you have like, three minutes before I have a total breakdown. I should be good ¡®till then, though.¡±

    ¡°Firstly, that strike definitely eviscerated her heart. There¡¯s no CPR-ing that back.¡±

    ¡°Mhmm, yes, seems that way.¡±

    ¡°You used some magic a few seconds ago to get your striped sword out of somewhere. Do you know any magic that might help in this situation?¡±

    ¡°Isn¡¯t that more your domain?¡±

    ¡°Hmmm¡­ I do want to try something¡­¡±

    Biologist walked over to Bunny¡¯s splattered corpse and took a look into the gruesome, gaping hole I bore through her slender chest. She silently dropped the purple gooey creature into it, with the same demeanor a child might pour a few drops of water down an anthill to see how they react.

    The amorphous purple blob expanded to fill its container like a liquid, fully stopping the bleeding. It seemed to even be forming mock-veins and tissue to connect to the damaged veins and tissue of her chest cavity. It interested me a bit at how it formed the larger sections first, and then iterated through itself to form more detailed connections. Without a doubt, this creature understands human anatomy. This could really work!

    And, of course, just as I had that optimistic thought¡ªsplat.

    The purple thing was launched right out of her chest onto the ceiling, like one of those toy stomp-rockets. It must have been close, but I guess that¡¯s not exactly what it was for.

    ¡°Alright Biologist, T-minus one minute before I start screaming and bawling my eyes out.¡±

    ¡°Uhhh¡­ Okay, okay, if neither of us can do anything, maybe Rose can?¡±

    A familiar voice echoed down the twists and turns of the vacant back-hallways.

    ¡°Maybe Rose can what?¡±

    ¡°Rose! Big problem! Mina just accidentally killed Bunny! It¡¯s not her fault, she was just trying to protect me, and I-¡±

    Rose turned a corner and saw us. She waved nonchalantly, dragging something on a rope behind her. Whatever it was, it was heavy enough to make her sweat.

    ¡°Could you guys help me pull this up?¡±

    ¡°Uh, sure, what is¡ª¡±

    I was stopped cold mid-sentence by the sight in front of me. Attached to the end of Rose¡¯s rope was a Bunny corpse. The rope was looped around her waist, and the rest of the rope was pulling along¡­ another Bunny corpse. That one was pulling another, and that one another, and another¡­ They were all roped together in a gorey train. It was a sight grim enough to make even Biologist cringe. There were now seven dead Bunnys, right in front of us. (Eight, if you count the one we killed).A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

    Oh.

    And all of them were wearing camo jackets and ripped up jeans.

    My body relaxed a little. It seems my subconscious realized what took my frontal lobe a bit longer to grasp.

    ¡°If all those Bunny clones are wearing her usual clothes¡­¡±

    Biologist understood exactly where I was going.

    ¡°...then that means the one we killed probably isn¡¯t the real Bunny?¡±

    Our faces lit up with relief and joy. We grabbed hands, hugged, shed some tears, and laughed like hell. (Did she also feel like doing these things, or was she just indulging me?)

    ¡°Okay, if you guys are done acting like my dad when his football team wins, I could really use some help getting these carcasses out of the way. Bunny hardly even looks like she weighs a hundred pounds dripping wet, but they add up fast. Good thing they¡¯re not Mina corpses.¡±

    ¡°You really want to crack jokes in front of someone who just killed her best friend in cold blood?¡±

    ¡°Best friend?¡±

    Rose¡¯s head perked up a bit. Oh shit, maybe that was a careless thing to say. Maybe Rose thought she was my best friend¡­ Wait, now¡¯s not the time to be worrying about elementary school level social issues.

    ¡°Anyways, what the hell are you doing with all those?¡±

    ¡°Oh, just moving all of your best friends out of the main floor of the mall. The other best friends of yours get agitated when they see them, so this should calm them down. Or are you mad at me because I killed so many of your best friends?¡±

    ¡°Come on Rose, now¡¯s not the time to be worrying about elementary level social issues!¡±

    (Hey, I liked the way that sounded in my head earlier, might as well re-use it.)

    Biologist interrupted, thankfully.

    ¡°Did you kill all these yourself? How? And why?¡±

    ¡°None of these are real. They¡¯re all fake Mina¡¯s best friends. I only killed them because they got aggressive.¡±

    ¡°How come they¡¯re all wearing the same outfit she always wears? The ones we saw walking around were wearing all kinds of crazy outfits.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s the strange part: when you kill one of MIna¡¯s best friends, her clothes revert back to these. No matter what Mina¡¯s best friend was wearing when you killed her, it¡¯ll shift back to this in the blink of an eye.¡±

    ¡°So the clothes are important¡­¡±

    Biologist gracefully ambled over to our dead Bunny, the only one that wasn¡¯t tied up in rope. She took off the camo jacket and inspected it all over. Then she started taking off her shirt and her jeans¡ª¡±

    ¡°Well, look who¡¯s getting to see her best friend naked! Or perhaps she¡¯s already more of a special friend?¡±

    Rose was taunting me, and I would have made some clever quip in retaliation if it wasn¡¯t for the fact that my back was turned completely away from everything going on because it was too embarrassing.

    I¡¯ll just let them finish while I play with my phone.

 Chapter 36 - Vein Melter

    I felt a tap on my back, so I figured they were done inspecting the magical dead Bunny clothes. When I turned around, I was greeted by Biologist and Rose, each wearing one of Bunny¡¯s jackets. They were posed like the cool kids you''d see on Disney Channel in the early 2000''s.

    Now, at this point, I had fiddled with my phone long enough to dissociate my brain entirely from the current situation. A minute ago I would have laughed with them. Now I''m reeling at their audacity to pilfer clothes of my dead (several times dead) friend. They had really crossed the line with this, I guess.

    ¡°Come on guys, can we at least try to take this seriously? We almost got stabbed a few minutes ago.¡±

    Rose dramatically rolled her eyes.

    ¡°I am taking this seriously. Ever heard of a disguise? With these clothes, we can fit in with all the other Bunnys.¡±

    ¡°The other Bunnys? You mean the ones wearing all kinds of outlandish outfits?¡±

    ¡°...We can fit in with the dead Bunnys?¡±

    Again, only the Bunnys that have died are wearing her plain clothes. Rose said that the outfits they wear just disappear¡­ Why would that happen? There must be a reason. Rose was clearly just covering her ass with the disguise talk, but the clothes are definitely important, somehow.

    While I was thinking, Rose leaned over to Biologist and whispered.

    ¡°See that face? That means Mina¡¯s gone into detective mode.¡±

    If I had heard that I probably would¡¯ve gotten embarrassed and stopped, but I really was in detective mode. Even a situation as bizarre as this must have some internal logic. I mapped what we currently knew onto the whiteboard in my mind.

    <ol>

    <li style="font-weight: 400">Rose made Bunny try on weird outfits in Momo.</li>

    <li style="font-weight: 400">We lost Bunny.</li>

    <li style="font-weight: 400">The mall was crowded with many different Bunnys in weird outfits.</li>

    <li style="font-weight: 400">When the Bunnys die, they revert to wearing her normal clothes.</li>

    </ol>

    Rose said they were fake Bunnys earlier, but I wonder how she¡¯s so sure. And she never did answer how she killed them all¡­ I opened up my mouth to speak, but it seems like Rose read my mind right through my face.If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.

    ¡°They¡¯re not actually Bunny. Since she went missing, none of the ones you¡¯ve seen are real. Because she¡¯s¡­ Look, you¡¯re just going to have to trust me on this.¡±

    ¡°How can I? What if one of those corpses really was Bunny, and you just killed her?¡±

    ¡°Calm down, I didn¡¯t, and neither did you. She¡¯s definitely still alive, and she¡¯s in here. But you won¡¯t know it¡¯s her, at least not without me. Oh, and to answer your other question...¡±

    Rose pointed her index finger up perfectly straight. About an inch or two from the tip was a little ball of fire, maybe about as big around as a quarter. It was perfectly round, except from an occasional wisp outwards.

    ¡°It¡¯s a new bit of magic I picked up. The trick is to keep it far enough away that you don¡¯t burn your own finger.¡±

    She moved her hand around, the ball of fire perfectly keeping its distance. Not a millimeter too far, not a millimeter too close.

    ¡°It¡¯s not a very hot fire, you¡¯d probably only get singed if it grazed your skin. The dangerous part ¡ªthis is the distance from the skin of a person¡¯s chest to their heart. It burns the arteries closed, killing them in just a few seconds.¡±

    Oh, great. Rose can kill anyone she wants with just her finger. I can¡¯t see any way she would possibly misuse this, I sarcastically think to myself as I take another look at the ropetrain of corpses on the ground.

    I¡¯ll skip ahead a bit now.

    I reluctantly decided to let Rose temporarily take the role of party leader, since she seemed to be the only one of us to have any sort of clue what was going on. (Not that she would give us any help.) We quickly ended up back in the main area of the mall. It was just as full of Bunnys as it was when we left it, but somehow something felt¡­ different.

    It wasn¡¯t so different to make my hair stand on end, just different enough to bug me. The Bunnys weren¡¯t any more aggressive than they were before. We passed right by a Bunny wearing a clown nose and some overalls. There was one Bunny, wearing a bonnet, a blazer, and some Crocs, who looked a little mad at us. And right in front of us, staring menacingly, was a Bunny wearing a¡­ A uh¡­ Huh. What is that? I can¡¯t really make out the shape. Or the color. Or how many dimensions it was in. What the hell was she wearing?

    ...What the hell were any of them wearing?

 Chapter 37 - Youâ€™re so Cool

    None of the outfits I was seeing made any sense at all. What happened to the maids? Or the waitresses? Or the anime stuff? The Bunnys were now wearing incomprehensible mish-mashes of random clothing items. At best. At worst, they were wearing articles of clothing so inhumanly bizarre that it would be impossible for me to describe. If I tried, it would probably be a random string of letters. Some of you astute readers may find some hidden cosmic secrets within it, but I wouldn''t be able to-- and if I can''t, no one can.

    Biologist interrupted my prose by nudging me on the shoulder.

    "That Bunny looks¡­ a little too familiar."

    She pointed out a Bunny wearing an angel outfit. Not like a cute angel though, more of a biblical one. She had two rings around her midsection covered in eyes, and her wings were about 10 feet across. Above her head were four halos stacked on top of each other. If Bunny was a JRPG, this would be her final boss''s last form.

    I was too scared to get close, but Rose had no such fears. Maybe she''s never played a Final Fantasy? Or, knowing her, she''s played too much Final Fantasy. She managed to strut right up to Angelbunny, a mere foot away. The Bunny didn''t react. Her eyes were grey and dazed, like they were staring inwards more than outwards. It was almost sad, in a way. Creepy, yes, but also sad.

    "Hey Rose, think this could be the real Bunny? She is an angel, and if I remember my own lore correctly, the chromatic beasts are also technically angels. So it would make sense that--"

    The sound of my talking was soon drowned out by the sound of Angelbunny''s ventricles being forcibly cauterized. (I''ll leave it as your homework to figure out that sound.)

    After the smell of burning iron faded and I regained my wits, I found my eyes glued to the Bunny lying dead on the ground. Not Angelbunny, at least not anymore. She was dressed like an angel, but now that she died, she had immediately morphed back into her daily outfit. It happened so fast, I''m not even sure I processed the change until several seconds after it happened.

    I could talk here about how hard it is to watch your friend be killed twice in one day, but I''ll spare you the melancholy, just as Rose did us.If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

    "I thought of a joke."

    (She didn¡¯t wait for a response before continuing.)

    ¡°How can you tell when Bunny is getting old?¡±

    She turned around, to face us, but not with the smarmy shit-eating grin she usually has. She looked us both dead in the eyes, face serious as death.

    ¡°Look for white hares.¡±

    Some time passed, but we weren¡¯t making any progress. Rose was just leading us around the stores, checking every aisle like a robot. She even looked underneath racks, and inside boxes. She apparently was looking for Bunny, despite the hundreds of bizarrely dressed Bunnys we passed by. I kept asking her what exactly she¡¯s looking for that will give away the real Bunny, but she wouldn¡¯t give any response. At this point, I¡¯m starting to wonder if there even is a real Bunny anymore.

    What if Bunny got split into a million copies, and they were all the real Bunny? Or maybe the clones were created from Bunny, making her vanish from existence. It¡¯s even possible that Rose might be bullshitting this whole thing, and she accidentally killed the wrong Bunny a long time ago. Would she lie to our faces like that?

    I wanted to have more faith in her, but I was getting too tired to keep making that gamble.

    ¡°Rose, you can keep looking for whatever the hell you¡¯re trying to find. I¡¯m going to find Bunny on my own.¡±

    She didn¡¯t say anything, she just kept digging through the bottom shelf of an appliance store for seemingly no reason. I took that as permission to leave. Not that I needed it.

    Needless to say, I was frustrated with Rose. She¡¯s such a jack-ass sometimes. Most of the time. I call her my friend now, but didn¡¯t I say I wouldn¡¯t anymore? At least for one week. That¡¯s how this whole thing started, anyways. I said I wasn¡¯t going to have anything to do with Rose and Bunny until I was able to get myself feeling stable again. But that¡¯s not the way it should work, right? Your friends are supposed to charge you. They¡¯re the ones you¡¯re supposed to turn to when you¡¯re feeling bad. Thinking about it like that¡­ I wasn¡¯t sure I had any friends at all. No, that¡¯s wrong. I had Leo.

    I walked back down the bustling Bunny-hall mallways the way we came. I wasn¡¯t wandering aimlessly, though. I knew exactly where I was headed. In my fit of anger and frustration at Rose, I had come up with my own theory on Bunny¡¯s whereabouts.

    After a few minutes, I was back inside of Momo, the last place we saw her.

    Allegedly.

 Chapter 38 - Iâ€™m on All Sides

    I proudly stomped into Momo, then proceeded to have my right arm completely ripped off. Not even the shoulder joint was left intact¡ªIn its place, was the most pain I had ever felt, or ever imagined that I could feel.

    If this seems abrupt to you, just imagine how it felt to me.

    I¡¯m not a warrior, not a soldier, not even an athlete. All I could do was lie on the ground and scream in a puddle of my own tears until my throat bled out my mouth. I couldn¡¯t feel the blood spurting out of my torso anymore, I could only tell it was still happening by the smell of iron and the warm feeling that trickled down my face.

    Next, the hallucinations came. They started when I made the mistake of using my remaining arm to wipe the viscera off my eyes and look for my attacker. I didn¡¯t see any sort of Bunny berserker, but I did see myself. I was about a hundred thousand miles away from myself, give or take a few lightminutes. Her arm was a normal length, but it could still reach through to me. Oh, yeah, she has both of her arms. I guess my blood-loss induced visions must have been pulling from a slightly outdated mental database.

    She was reaching out her hand to me, like a distasteful joke. She wiggled the tips of her fingers a bit in an inviting manner, but I wasn¡¯t having any of it. I was literally dying, I didn''t have time to play with demonic hallucinations. For hours we stared at each other. She never once put her arm down. My sense of time has gone a bit wobbly since my body lost about half of its blood, but I think it¡¯s been about a week now. She¡¯s still staring at me. I used what little vitality I had remaining to curse her out.

    ¡°Fuck you, bitch!¡±

    Then she slapped me. Like, actually slapped me. I felt the impact of her hand on my bloody cheek, the minor whiplash to my neck, and the warm droplets flying through the air onto the pink carpet. Alright, fuckin¡¯ fine. I tried my hardest to reach out with my intact left arm.If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

    She gently nudged it away, and said:

    ¡°The other one.¡±

    The other one, huh? The one that was thrown across the room, that one? The one that apparently had 80% of my blood supply in it? The one I lost weeks of hypothetical time ago? Yeah, okay, sure. I reached out with my nonexistent right arm.

    And I grabbed her hand.

    My arm was totally healed. No cuts, no gashes, nothing missing. I stretched my shoulder, making sure the joint was properly in place. If it was, it probably wasn¡¯t anymore, because the other Mina pulled on it so hard she dragged my limp body across the floor. Have you ever gotten carpet burn off of a hundred thousand miles of carpet? It was exactly as fun as it sounded.

    ¡°What the hell is¡ª¡±

    I stood up, and she was gone. There was no sign of her, of my arm, my blood, or even any struggle. It was like things were perfectly reset to a few minutes ago. At least, I hope it was only a few minutes.

    I slapped my face to wake myself up, and pressed on towards the middle of Momo. A sane person would have turned around and gone home at this point, but since I was just pulled through spacetime by an identical version of myself, it¡¯s safe to say I¡¯m not that kind of person anymore. I was being more careful this time, however. I really didn¡¯t want to go through that a second time.

    I hesitantly peeked around each corner of every anime-filled shelf I got close enough to. No signs of anything suspicious (for this store.) I was moving slowly, very slowly, but I was getting closer to the changing rooms. That¡¯s where all this started, and it¡¯s where all this ends. We were going about it all wrong earlier, and in retrospect, it was way too obvious to miss: Bunny never left the changing room. The Bunny that came out with Rose was just another one of the clones, to distract her. That¡¯s where she still is now, with who-knows-what being done to her in order to create those copies.

    I got about one shelf away from where the changing section was before I started hearing noises. Impossibly light footsteps, just like Bunny makes. They must be like guards, patrolling the area around the dressing room she went in.  This theory of mine was likely proven correct when I felt an icy finger press against the nape of my neck.

 Chapter 39 - Space-Time = Infinity-Eternity Objectified

    When I turned around to see the next murderous Bunny I would have to deal with, I was wildly taken aback. This thing was totally inhuman. She was glowing, radiating with energy. There was a rainbow sheen off of her, comprising all seven colors of the rainbow in addition to about two million more. There were spikes covering every centimeter of her body like a hedgehog, but they were so infinitely thin they were literally invisible. She didn¡¯t even have feet. There was absolutely no way to tell where her legs ended and the floor began, it just seamlessly flowed like a waterfall. And yet, beyond every insanity-inducing trait she expressed, she was somehow just as Bunny as all the other ones.

    She wasted no time in revealing her potential danger to me. With a whip-cracking twitch of her neck, two giant wings of blue triangles sprouted from her back. Each one was a dagger made of fractured time, pulsing rhythmically and erratically. Each shard looked like magical ice, and that¡¯s pretty much what it was. When water, a fluid material slows down enough, it becomes ice. That¡¯s what she did to little bits of time¡ªshe literally ¡°froze¡± them.

    I was stabbed with about twenty of those sharp triangles, but only retroactively. I was fine before she unsheathed her wings, but when she did, the shards struck me about ten seconds previous. I¡¯ve seen enough shounen anime to be confident that¡¯s her ability¡ªall attacks have some amount of delay before they connect. Her attack delays are negative, they go backwards in time instead of forwards.

    It wasn¡¯t nearly as bad as the whole arm thing, but being pelted with chronoglass isn¡¯t all that fun either. I tried running away from her, but she was in front of me. She was also behind me, to the side of me, above me, below me, and inside of me. There was no movement I could make that didn¡¯t end with me being pelted with spikes from every angle (internal or external.)

    That didn¡¯t stop me from trying, though. Even though she was everywhere I looked, I could still see everything else too. I made a mad dash through the aisle towards the changing room, knocking off everything on the shelf as I did. Maybe it would distract her?

    No, it didn¡¯t.

    There were about a thousand of her standing guard at the dressing room door. Forget about fighting through them, I¡¯d never even fit through them. I quickly looked around for something, anything that could help. On the shelves were a bunch of Spacetime Bunnys. They were outside the store too, hundreds of feet away. I had no doubt that if I was outside and had a telescope, the milky black night sky would have been an endless waving sea of these Bunnys at every distance. She was totally inescapable.Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

    But that¡¯s good for me, though. That makes this next part easier.

    I reached out my hand and focused on it. Spacetime Bunny was resting on my palm, on the tips of my fingers, ten feet away, millimeters from my face, and even holding my hand in hers. I turned my head away and closed my eyes. She was even in there, staring at me with crazed eyes I couldn¡¯t escape from.

    I relaxed completely, or as completely as I could, and reached around. Not around Bunny, but around all the nothing I could muster. My sword is in here somewhere. The pain from the shards of frozen time lodged in my chest started to distract me, but I was able to keep my focus. There is so little nothing, it¡¯s hard to find anything inside.

    Of course, not even a zero-dimensional pocket of absolute nothing was enough to keep her out. The Bunny fused into the nothingness, becoming just as devoid of any and all aspects as a perfect vacuum. Perfect.

    That was my plan, of course. I opened my eyes and looked around.

    No Spacetime Bunny. She had fallen for it¡ªhook, line, and sinker! I knew she wouldn¡¯t be able to resist following my hand into the void. So she filled the void with herself, and actually became void. She¡¯s no longer anything at all.

    I chuckled to myself, pulled my hand back out of the¡­ whatever it was, and wiped the silver residue off on my pants. I wasn¡¯t letting my guard down for anything, though. I listened intently for more footsteps. I couldn¡¯t hear any of those, for sure, but I did hear something. It was so quiet, it was basically inaudible. I could still hear it though, it was like very small breaths. I held my own breath to make sure it wasn¡¯t my own. It was much too soft and quiet to be my breath, especially after such a dicey situation. I could hear it from all directions, like a million teeny-tiny sighs coming from¡­ everything?

    Oh.

    Wait, that¡¯s not good.

    I guess¡­ I kinda forgot just how much nothing there is. My mind flashed back to an innocuous comment made by my chemistry professor in college.

    ¡°Atoms may be small, but electrons, protons, and neutrons are even smaller. Much, much smaller. In fact, recent studies have shown subatomic particles are so small that a Hydrogen atom is over 99.9999999% empty space!¡±

    Right. If an atom is more than 99.9999999% empty space, it logically follows that all of existence is 99.9999999% empty space. You know, the void.

    I may have just¡ª

    I may have just turned Spacetime Bunny into all of existence.

 Chapter 40 - With or Without, You Decide

    I realized that, apparently, hundreds of years ago, a trillion tiny shards of glass coated my body like sandspurs. I fell to the ground in pain, the pricks all over my body much too small to bleed, and too small for my nervous system to pick up on. Instead, this was like a direct attack on my soul. I had made Spacetime Bunny so small and numerous that her back-in-time attacks were going back centuries, and the damage compounds in a very unpleasant way.

    I couldn¡¯t see anything, my pupils were too full of ice-blue bits of rock-solid time to see anything other than out-of-context snapshots of history. Or maybe the future? I¡¯m not sure those are two separate things anymore. I¡¯m not sure there¡¯s any separation of anything anymore.

    I don¡¯t know what the fuck is going on anymore. Or ever did, really. And I probably never will, if things keep going like this. I felt my time-spur covered hand reach around in emptiness again. The emptiness was now Bunny, which made things feel a little awkward. At least it didn¡¯t feel like anything¡ªif it did, then it wouldn¡¯t be empty. I was losing consciousness from all the psychic (?) pressure being pressed into my body. Everything was going numb. Instead of just my hand reaching into the void, my whole body was slipping in.

    No, not slipping ¡ªit was being pulled. My feet had fallen deep into the void already without me noticing. I could feel the boundary of nothing/something slowly creeping up my calves. I was uncontrollably fading out of existence. It didn¡¯t hurt. Honestly, it felt kind of nice. Like a really warm massage now up to my knees. I wonder where my leg muscles connect to now, or where their veins are pumping blood to. Being partially nonexistent is weird.

    This is what they wanted this whole time, huh? The chromatic beasts, I mean. They want me gone from the universe. Hearing it said like that really rubbed me the wrong way at first, but now I¡¯m not sure how much I hate it. Doing things was fun, for sure. But not doing anything for eternity could be kinda good, too. If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

    I thought about it. I really did think about giving up. It would¡¯ve been so easy, and so pleasant. But really, it¡¯s not just about me anymore. Something¡¯s still happening to Bunny. I can¡¯t rest peacefully knowing that I couldn¡¯t help her, after she¡¯s been my bodyguard for so long. Hell, she killed a man for my sake. I wonder if he feels nice and warm right now like I do. Must be nice to finally get some rest. Too bad I still had work to do.

    Tap, tap, tap.

    I was too lost in my thoughts to notice that my shaky fingers had been tapping on something for a while now. There¡¯s only one thing that it could be, and there was only one thing I could do. I wrapped my nonexistent fingers around the hilt of the Zebrasword and pulled it back into existence.

    I had done this maneuver a few times before, but it was never quite this¡­ extreme. It makes sense now, actually. The sword resides encased in nothingness. To get it out, I literally rip it through the void. But, I forgot¡ªSpacetime Bunny is the void now. So I ripped the blade out of her. And she was everywhere, and everything.

    The sound was atrocious. I can¡¯t recount it or I¡¯ll get sick. It echoed through Momo along with the sound of a torrential gush of blood. It poured from thin air, oozed out of the walls and all the products, and out of me as well. For a moment¡ªall of the cosmos erupted in blood.

    It ended up okay though. After a second it was back to normal. Must have something to do with the ¡°time¡± part of ¡°spacetime¡±.

    Anyways, I don¡¯t really care anymore. Moving on.

 Chapter 41 - When I Break Down

    I was finally face-to-face with the dressing room Bunny entered so long ago. With some luck, she would still be inside. I¡¯d heroically pick her up in my arms, carry her out of this terribly cursed import shop, and rub it all in Rose¡¯s face. I think that would be kinda dumb, though.

    Not rubbing it in Rose¡¯s face, that¡¯s a great idea. Rather, the part where I would rip down the dressing room curtain. After all the bullshit I had to drag myself through to get this far, that feels like walking face-first into a shotgun barrel. I have to be sneakier about this. It¡¯s like tackling a dungeon full of traps¡ªwhere¡¯s a ten-foot pole when you need one?

    Oh, there¡¯s one over there. It¡¯s a plastic rod covered in clothes hangers. It looks pretty easily detachable from the stands on either end. It¡¯s pure white, a contrast to the flamboyant pinks of the clothes hanging from it. I instinctively reached out to a seifuku top to pull it off the rod, the pulled my hand back. It felt like reaching to a hot stovetop, it¡¯s really hard to make yourself do. Was this an omen?

    Something similar happened like this, once before. That time I was compelled to break into that building on 17th street. But that was the opposite, though. I didn¡¯t want to follow them into the building, but some force made me. This time, I want to take action, but I feel like I can¡¯t.

    I pushed my arm in harder. I couldn¡¯t even get close to the rod. Fine, I¡¯ll do it the violent way. I still had the sword in my hand, and I gave it a flick across all the clothes. They fell to shreds instantly, dissolving into a puddle of mercury on the floor. It seems the sword had no problem connecting to the rod. After clearing off all the hangers, I noticed mysterious words strobing on the pole.

    WEST SKIM SEND THUG FORE TOTE BOMB OBEY FAKE MIND FOOL

    I sat down criss-cross on the floor, resting my chin in-between my thumb and index finger. This is certainly not the first time I¡¯ve been stumped by a string of four letter words, but it¡¯s been a while. ¡°TOTE BOMB¡±... There must be a bomb waiting to go off in here somewhere¡­ No, it¡¯s not here, the thug is going to be toting it in! Probably the thug who¡¯s coke stash we found. Wait no, Bunny stabbed him. But maybe he lived!

    Jumping up, I frantically searched around my immediate surroundings for anyone approaching. I didn¡¯t see anything, but after calming my breath, I heard the unmistakable sound of footsteps rapidly approaching. There was only one option left.Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings.

    I had to hide.

    In the closest spot available.

    Which was that dressing room.

    I tumbled inside, and only then realized the lethal mistake I had just made. Any second now, some horrific interdimensional angel was going to suck my soul out of my nose. And Bunny¡¯s not even in here!

    My hyperventilation attack was abruptly stopped by a human hand grabbing onto the dark blue curtain. I squealped in fear (squeaked + yelped) at the sight of my murderer-to-be.

    Wait, no, that¡¯s Biologist.

    ¡°Hey Mina¡­ you don¡¯t look so good.¡±

    ¡°Yeah I¡¯ve been, uh¡­¡±

    ¡°Paranoid and delusional?¡± (That was Rose piping in.)

    ¡°Yeah, that.¡±

    Biologist pressed her forehead against mine and closed here eyes.

    ¡°You¡¯re panicking. It¡¯s okay¡­ you¡¯re okay.¡±

    She reminded me of my mother. At least until I saw the purple thing wriggle in her purse.

    ¡°She¡¯s not okay, Bio¡ªshe¡¯s gone nuts! Did you see her fight herself trying to grab that pole? What were you even gonna do with that? Poke the monsters to death?¡±

    I started to formulate a response about how my rapidly declining mental state is actually all her fault, but I didn¡¯t have the energy. I didn¡¯t even have the energy to respond with sarcasm. I was too drained. Biologist pulled a tissue from her purse to wipe the sweat off my neck, but I politely declined (I saw purple residue on it.)

    I probably was creating all those problems in my head. The cryptic message, the pole¡¯s forcefield, the murdering¡ªI wonder if spacetime bunny was real. (Well, even if she was, she isn¡¯t anymore, so that one is out on a technicality.)

    I soon noticed Rose had something wrapped up in a shirt. She noticed me staring.

    ¡°Oh, this?¡±

    Right on time, the thing in the shirt started to squirm. Then suddenly¡ªout pokes a tiny white rabbit¡¯s head.

    ¡°I found Bunny.¡±

 Chapter 42 - Youâ€™ve Been Doing it a While, it is Only Fair

    I was now outside the dressing room, holding the little rabbit in my arms. So soft, so warm. It¡¯s short white fur reminded me a lot of Leo. Its breathing was gentle, like a flower swaying in the breeze.

    ¡°Yeah, that¡¯s Bunny.¡±

    ¡°You¡¯re fucking with me.¡±

    ¡°On God, you¡¯re holding Bunny right now.¡±

    I looked at Biologist, hoping she would help me out. Instead, she just nodded enthusiastically.

    ¡°Bio, you¡¯re literally like the guardian angel of animals.¡±

    ¡°Not really.¡±

    ¡°You¡¯re close enough to know this rabbit isn¡¯t human.¡±

    ¡°Rose found her hiding under a shelf somewhere in the mall. She recognized her as Bunny immediately.¡±

    ¡°This little guy probably just escaped from the pet store in all the chaos.¡±

    ¡°Actually¡ª¡±

    I didn¡¯t hear the rest of Biologist¡¯s sentence, I was too distracted by the smell of smoke that was beginning to engulf the room.

    ¡°What the fuck are you doing!?¡±

    Rose was standing in front of the dressing room covered in flames. She must have set it on fire some time ago for the fire to have gotten this intense.

    ¡°Calm down, I¡¯m fixing everything.¡±

    ¡°What do you mean fi¡ª¡±

    ¡°Mina, what color is this dressing room curtain?¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s an ashy black.¡±

    ¡°Before the fire, I mean.¡±

    ¡°It was blue.¡±

    ¡°What kind of blue?¡±

    ¡°Dark blue?¡±

    ¡°Which is¡­?¡±If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.

    Indigo. One of the colors of the rainbow. Fuck.

    ¡°The dressing room was the chromatic beast¡­?¡±

    God, I¡¯m glad it didn¡¯t eat me when it had the chance.

    Biologist stood beside me, watching the fire burn into the ceiling.

    ¡°After you left, Mina and I theorized about what was going on. The most logical solution is that the dressing room is the Indigo Beast. It must be like a sort of printer for organisms. When one goes inside, they¡¯re scanned, and then replicated en masse. It was even detailed enough to reproduce clothes. Of course, Bunny didn¡¯t enter it hundreds of times. It must have learned how to create realistic-seeming Bunnys, like training an AI. That would explain why the Bunnys reverted to normal when they died¡ªthe AI stopped providing them resources.¡±

    ¡°Wow¡­ You guys were, uh, really effective without me¡­¡±

    ¡°It is still just a theory. We won¡¯t know the truth until¡ª¡±

    A huge weight started to press down against my forearms. It must have been at least 100 pounds of force. My body wanted to plummet straight onto the floor, but I stayed standing. Instantaneously, and without warning, the bunny had turned into the actual Bunny. I was holding her in my arms fireman-style, which was appropriate given all the fire.

    ¡°B-Buns¡­ You¡¯re back.¡±

    She didn¡¯t smile, or frown. She didn¡¯t seem interested, but she didn¡¯t turn her eyes away from mine. She just sat there in my arms, content with this whole situation. Biologist whispered something in my ear.

    ¡°You know, Bunny was pretty anxious when Rose was holding her. As soon as you started holding her, she relaxed.¡±

    Rose, having confirmed she burned the entire dressing room down to ash, stomped back over.

    ¡°WELL, looks like a couple ¡®best friends¡¯ are off to flirting again!¡±

    ¡°Come on, let¡¯s leave before the firemen get here.¡±

    I could tell she wanted to, but Rose didn¡¯t respond sarcastically. I think she may have forgotten that part of the equation. We snuck out the exit in the back, and seemed to go mostly unnoticed.

    ¡°Bunny, that white fur I found in my couch a few days ago¡­ You¡¯re actually a rabbit, aren¡¯t you?¡±

    She nodded gently, still in my arms.

    ¡°How did you become a human?¡±

    ¡°A magic spell. Rose was lonely.¡±

    So a spell is keeping Bunny a human¡­ I guess the magic in the dressing room canceled the spell, and returned Bunny to her normal animal form. But still, Rose turned her pet rabbit into a person just because she was lonely? I turned my face to Rose, but she wouldn¡¯t make eye contact. She seemed ashamed, but I¡¯m not sure at which part exactly.

    ¡°You know, I think I remember you as a rabbit. When I would study at Rose¡¯s place during college, she would always get jealous at how you would let me hold you.¡±

    ¡°I remember. You brought me a carrot once.¡±

    ¡°Did you like it?¡±

    ¡°Not really.¡±

    By then, we had made it back to my car. I needed to give Biologist and myself a ride home before any strangers saw us and got suspicious. Bunny gave a very emotionless wave goodbye, and began walking back with Rose to wherever they parked.

    ¡°Hey, guys. Just leave your car here. Come home with us.¡±

    Bunny remained as unreadable as always, but Rose has never been able to hide a smile from me.

 The state of QQQQ (once more)

    Chapters 43 through 52, currently totalling around ten thousand words, has been primed and prepped for your viewing. This is known as the "HELL" arc of QQQQ, and I hope you enjoy it.

    Did you know there''s a Yu-Gi-Oh! deck called Qliphorts? It''s based off the Qliphoth, from the Qabbalah. It has monsters that are large semi-biological machines, canonically running from a Windows-based CLI. There''s one for each Sephirot, plus a later-released Link monster, presumably counting as the Qliphothic equivalent of Da''at. They are a pendulum deck, but are weakened when special summoned. This means you use the pendulum summon as a first step, summoning them in their weaker modes, then tributing them like old-school Yu-Gi-Oh! to make their high-powered forms. Qliphort Scout and Qliphort Monolith are key pieces of the deck, allowing searching and drawing cards, respectively¡ªthey''re also normal monsters, allowing you to use many old-school cards with them. Pendulum was the newest mechanic at the time they were released, so it''s almost as if the deck is a celebration of both the beginning and the (at-the-time) end of the game.

    They are opposed by the Zefra, the "positive" formation of the Qabbalah. Members of the Zefra come from other archetypes in Yu-Gi-Oh! such as Nekroz, Ritual Beasts, and Tellarknights. This is also a pendulum deck, but encourages you to use all the other kinds of summoning forms available: Fusion, Synchro, XYZ, and Rituals. It even got a Link monster, probably also representing Da''at. This deck I would like to learn more about, but it excites me less than the Qliphort do.The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

    The Qliphorts are undeniably evil, but that''s not what I like about them. (I''ll always think angels are 100x cooler than demons.) I like the interplay between machine and natural life. They are ostensibly cold, hard, uncaring ships flying through the sky and annihilating life. That''s not a cool thing to do, in my opinion. But what if instead of war-machines, they were something friendly, and useful? I want to proverbially put the rose in their gun barrel. I want to keep them as pets. I want to see what kind of strange cross-breeds they form, despite only being machines. I could be a domesticated Qliphort rancher, in a big field with waterfalls and plant growth (that they seem to like). Part of me wants to dust off my game-dev skills and make a Qliphort fangame. Not a Yu-Gi-Oh! one, just a Qliphort one.

    None of this has anything to do with QQQQ, by the way. I just enjoy becoming obsessed with odd and overly-specific things. I''m trying to make myself write more, and part of that is just allowing myself to write about whatever I want. It doesn''t need to be insightful, or have a narrative, or even contribute anything new at all. I just enjoy it. I don''t mind if it''s not fun to read. I like writing more than reading, so I don''t blame anyone else for feeling that way, either. I''ve half-started a blog for my rambling thoughts, but it hasn''t really gone anywhere yet, and it''s been a while since I''ve wrote a post. But for the new year, I want to fill it full of bizzare oddities of things that give me the brain-tingles.

    What are you doing this year? Are you exercising more, eating better? Are you finally going to finish that Final Fantasy game you never completed? What about your aunt? You should really spend more time with her. You could also try inventing a new energy drink, I think that would be fun. You should bring your aunt in on it.

    "Hey Aunt Martha, want to help me develop a formula for a new energy drink?"

    "No."

    Well, Alright then. Moving on.

 Chapter 43 - Prelude #3

    ¡°Okay, I think we¡¯re finally stable.¡±

    The four of us had sat around my dining room table. Biologist had called for an important meeting. I thought she just found a cool rock or something, but apparently it was actually a real meeting.

    ¡°There is one chromatic beast we are unaware of right now. Other than that, the ones left alive are me, the purple squishy thing, and this gun.¡±

    Our eyes all turned to the blue gun in the middle of the table, then squirmed a bit. Why was that here? I didn¡¯t even notice her putting it there.

    ¡°Hey, uhhh, Bio, can we put that somewhere else?¡±

    ¡°Why?¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s kinda like¡­ You know, a gun that¡¯s made to kill me specifically?¡±

    ¡°Yes.¡±

    I guess that wasn¡¯t enough for her to figure out why I¡¯m uncomfortable. She¡¯s a biologist, she should know living things have a strong desire for self-preservation.

    Oh.

    I guess I have a will to live now. It¡¯s been a while!

    Rose began to inquisitively reach for the gun, but Bunny swiped it out from under her hand without even making a noise. Her agility was still unmatched by any of us. Instead of inspecting it and admiring its horribly artificial-looking color, she quietly holstered it into a pocket of her dirty jeans. Women¡¯s pants in that style usually don¡¯t have pockets, she¡¯s probably been wearing men¡¯s. She brushed a strand of silvery blue hair out of her face and looked at me, wearing less expression on her face than a blank post-it note. I was deeply, deeply glad to have my friend back. She had been missing in a sea of her own clones, but even before that, I was somewhat responsible for her almost getting electrocuted to death. I wonder if I¡¯ve been anything but trouble for her. Now that I have recovered my will to live, I¡¯d like to make sure she still has hers, too.Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.

    I don¡¯t think I ever felt like this towards Rose. She was always a ¡°buddy¡±, a ¡°pal¡±. We talked shit about each other and sent each other obscure trivia about whatever we were unhealthily interested in at the moment¡ªbut I never felt like she needed my help. There was nothing I could help her with, and nothing she could help me with. We were like two different polygons that shared an edge. Not isolated, but only close enough to have a small bit of camaraderie where our points met.

    Bunny feels different. She¡¯s not quite the same polygonal shape as me¡ªbut close enough that our meshes would overlap nicely. Rose and I bicker constantly while we¡¯re around each other (though sometimes just out of boredom). Nights with Bunny are so quiet and peaceful. One time, when I was watching an anime, a character mentioned the Japanese Folklore concept that the moon is inhabited by rabbits. Late that night, I caught her staring out the window, up into the light-polluted sky. I think she was homesick.

    I can sense a deep loneliness within her. Her face is as stoic as a straight line, sure, but I can see it deep behind her eyes. She¡¯s scared and confused. How could she not be? She¡¯s a human rabbit. She hasn¡¯t got the first clue about living in a complex society, and yet so much is being expected of her just to exist. I want to help her. To slowly teach her that, despite the general air of dystopian Capitalist decline, there are still so many small joys to be found every day. I want to show her the little candy shop a few towns over, where the elderly couple who owns it talks to everyone in the store. I want to show her the little tree growing in the park. I want to let her feel what it¡¯s like to be buried under blankets in the ice-cold dead of winter, wrapped in the arms of someone you trust more than life itself.

    I felt my gaze soften, having made eye contact with her. I swear, just for a moment, I saw her demeanor break¡ªthat she was feeling something she didn¡¯t know how to rationalize. If no one else was here, I¡¯d probably hug her. I don¡¯t care if she loves me. I don¡¯t care if she loves anything else at all¡ªjust herself is enough.

    I steeled my resolve, and made a promise that I would say to her these things that I wanted to keep bottled up to myself, in hopes that we can live our lives together.

    And then that bitch pulled the gun out of her pocket and fucking shot me!

 Chapter 44 - A String Gone Astray

    ¡°-ake up! Mina, quick wake up! It¡¯s a disaster!¡±

    ¡°Wh-huh-wh¡­ what¡¯s going on, on¡­¡±

    ¡°Your HP is almost at 0!¡±

    I glanced at the UI, and indeed, my HP was only 3 out of 14.

    ¡°Do I have healing items?¡±

    ¡°No, but you heal 1d3 after a full night¡¯s sleep.¡±

    Biologist fluttered around me, in her minty green fairy dress. Her wings were flapping fast like a hummingbird¡¯s. I expected her voice to be all high-pitched since she¡¯s only a few inches tall, but it sounded pretty normal to me.

    ¡°You¡¯ve got to get out of here, the Necrophidius could come back at any moment! It paralyzed you with its bite, but got distracted when a pack of Blink Dogs attacked it.¡±

    I picked my body up off the ground, heavy with platemail. The potions in my backpack bubbled with the sudden jolt, and jingling reminded me of the coins in my purse.

    ¡°Bio, which way do I go?¡±

    I was in a dungeon room overgrown with leaves and softly carpeted with moss. It honestly wasn¡¯t a bad place to sleep, but it made my allergies act up a bit.

    ¡°You came from the South, and it looks like there are doors to the West and East.¡±

    I hobbled over to the Western door, still shaking off the paralysis. I put my ear directly onto the cold metal door, trying to glean any information I could about what was going on in the room beside me. Running in blindly will get you killed in these kinds of old games.

    I heard flapping wings on the other side. Well, maybe that was Biologist. But it also sounded like the wind was blowing, so perhaps the room had windows to the outside. It would make sense if the flapping were hawks, so I needed to prepare for that. Or rather, she did.

    ¡°Ready to be bait again?¡±

    Biologist¡¯s teeny face turned pale.

    ¡°No, not in a thousand years! I¡¯m never doing that again!¡±

    ¡°Come on, you promised you would help me get up there, no matter what. This whole thing is your fault, anyways!¡±

    ¡°Alright, alright, I know. I didn¡¯t think this was going to be as hard as it was.¡±

    After a silent count of three, I used all my might to swing the door open. Indeed, there were four massive hawks inside, feeding on an unrecognizable carcass. Their heads perked up and looked directly at me, with murderous intent.

    And then, with the speed and force of a bullet, Biologist whizzed past me and right through the open stone window at the end of the room, heading outside. The hawks, with their predatory instincts, immediately gave pursuit to the delicious little morsel that flew by, and went right out the window.

    Now that I was alone in the room, I could quickly scan around for treasure or anything else helpful. She¡¯ll be back any minute with the hawks in tow, so I needed to be quick. There¡¯s an empty bag, an empty chest, an empty box¡­ That¡¯s strange, enemies typically protect something of value, even if just a trinket. This room seemed completely empty, and didn¡¯t lead anywhere, which was certainly atypical¡ªjust like the window outside. I didn¡¯t think about it until now, but I rarely saw them around. I put my hands on the jagged, square opening to the outside. It was a pleasant day. Not sunny, but just cloudy enough that the heat wasn¡¯t bearing down. It must be summer, but it was hard to tell. I wanted to check the color of the foliage around, but I couldn¡¯t see down far enough. This was floor 274, I think. I twisted my head around and looked upwards. There, the tower rose straight into the heavens. The top didn¡¯t look any closer than it did when I was at the ground floor. The tips of my toes tingled and curled in my leather boots, so that was probably enough sightseeing.If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

    Right on cue, Biologist zipped back into the room and through the open door.

    ¡°Hurry, hurry! They¡¯re really hungry!¡±

    I didn¡¯t take my time to look at the enraged hawks barreling back into the room, I just ran to the door and closed it as tightly as I could. Luckily they weren¡¯t humanoid, so there was no way they were getting past it. I handed Biologist a small piece of scrap paper I ripped off a treasure map.

    ¡°You can¡¯t¡­ keep doing this to me¡­¡±

    She panted and wheezed, using the paper like a towel for her sweat.

    After a quick break, it was time to try the East door, since that one was a dead end. Behind it, I heard running water. Maybe I¡¯d be facing some kind of aquatic type enemies, or there would be a trap that would try to drown me. The latter would be especially effective, since I¡¯m wearing platemail. It would probably be wise to get out of this before I enter a room that I believe has water in it.

    After ten minutes, I got all that heavy junk off me. It raised my AC by a bunch, but sometimes it just wasn¡¯t worth it. Underneath, I was wearing simple brown clothes that you would expect from any other Isekai main character.

    I opened the door, and took in the layout of the room. This one was also a dead end, not even with a window this time. Instead, there was a big pool of water. It was coming out of the opposite wall and filling the basin. It looked like it was made of marble, and it was pristine¡ªa significant difference from the dirty dungeon floors I¡¯m usually on. It was almost inviting, like it was beckoning me inside. But there was no telling how deep the water was, or what sinister contraption would pull me under if I got inside. But still¡­ I was tempted. It¡¯s been so long since I got a chance to relax. Not since that comfy chair in the cursed library on floor 89. I caught myself dipping a finger in the water. It was pleasantly warm, but I pulled my hand back as if it was boiling. What if it was poisoned, or flesh-melting?

    ¡°Bio, do you still have any Detect Magic prepped?¡±

    ¡°Yup, one more Detect Magic, and two more Detect Trap. Cast it on the fountain?¡±

    ¡°Yeah, I don¡¯t trust this thing at all.¡±

    An hour later, me and Biologist finished up our lovely bath in the fountain. Not everything in a dungeon is dangerous¡ªturns out it was healing water, so I¡¯m back to full HP. I also bottled some of it up to save for later, though Biologist said the healing effects probably came from the pool itself. Still, worth a shot. We continued our idle chit-chat as I re-dressed myself into my armor.

    ¡°What¡¯s the princess like?¡±

    ¡°I dunno, I never met her. I haven¡¯t been to the top before.¡±

    ¡°Does she really need saving? I mean, where¡¯s she gonna go?¡±

    ¡°I guess we take her all the way back down.¡±

    ¡°Ugh. Remind me to find a potion of feather falling, so we can just jump off.¡±

    After I was all suited back up, I continued my trek through the tower. Except I couldn¡¯t, because I forgot, those were the only two doors. Guess I¡¯m stuck.

    ¡°Did we miss an exit somewhere else on this floor?¡±

    ¡°No, we cleared it pretty methodically.¡±

    ¡°There has to be a way out.

    I began turning over stones, tearing down boxes, flipping sacks inside out. Maybe there was a hidden door? I even started pushing random bricks in the wall, but couldn¡¯t find anything.

    A few hours later, we had exhausted everything we could find. (We even ran out those hawks from the west room.) There was no hint, not even an illusion of a way to get up to the next floor. What were we going to do?

 Chapter 45 - Hammering the Nails into a Sacred Coffin

    ¡°Oh.¡±

    I had a realization, standing in the empty room the giant hawks used to be in, before we killed them all for about 25 XP each.

    ¡°I think I get the puzzle now. I was probably supposed to ride one of them out the window and into the next floor up.¡±

    Biologist¡¯s eyes bulged out.

    ¡°Oh my God that totally sounds like something they would make you do!¡±

    She buzzed out of the window and came fluttering back down.

    ¡°Was there another window somewhere higher up?¡±

    ¡°Yeah. right above this one.¡±

    ¡°Damn it! Now what? Did I softlock the game?¡±

    ¡°No, a stalemate should be impossible. You either have to win or lose.¡±

    I pulled out some rope from my backpack.

    ¡°Here¡¯s an idea. See if you can take this up through the higher window and tie it somewhere in the room, then let it dangle down. I could probably climb up as long as it was tied to something stable, like a statue or something.¡±

    I gave Biologist the tip of the rope. It was pretty small to me, but it was about as big around as her whole body. She had to wrap her whole arms around it, but she was able to fly with it. I waited impatiently as she flew up and out the window. It took about ten minutes, and she came back sweating, but the rope was dangling out the window just like I was expecting.

    ¡°Thanks Bio, you¡¯re a lifesaver! What¡¯s it tied to? Nothing unstable I hope.¡±

    ¡°A big pillar in the middle of the room. It¡¯s connected from the floor to the ceiling, and it¡¯s really wide around. That¡¯s why it took me so long to tie it up, so you better be appreciative!¡±

    ¡°And the knot is stable? I don ¡®t want to think about what would happen if it came undone.¡±

    ¡°Of course it is! Fairy magic is great at stuff like that.¡±This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

    I hesitantly grabbed the rope outside the window. I¡¯ve faced numerous challenges like this before, but this one was scaring me almost as much as the murder clowns on floor 201. My hands were filling the inside of my gloves with sweat. I tried to wipe my brow, but it was under my badass knight helmet. I took a deep breath, and leaped out the window.

    The rope held on, which was a great relief, but I was still dangling miles in the air. I needed to get up, and fast. The window was about 15 or 20 feet above me. Hand over hand, I very slowly ascended towards the room above me.

    I still don¡¯t really get why I¡¯m doing all this. Is the princess really that important? Why am I putting my life on the line repeatedly for her? I¡¯m not really sensing the motivation¡ª

    ¡°Oh fuck, Mina come back down!¡±

    There was a loud sound coming from above me. I had no idea what it was, but I wasn¡¯t trying to find out myself.

    ¡°What, what is it!?¡±

    As I hurried back down the rope, Biologist flew up past me to look into the room the rope was attached in.

    ¡°The pillar, it¡¯s crum-¡±

    Then, I heard the loudest noise I¡¯ve ever heard in my entire life. A massive crack must have formed through the pillar. Fuck, it must have not been as sturdy as Biologist thought!

    Oh shit, wait. That¡¯s not the only thing cracking.

    Oh God. Oh God oh fuck. That pillar must have been load-bearing.

    The entire tower is beginning to crumble.

    Right above where I was holding the rope, a massive crack formed, spanning the entire width of the tower. Dust and rocks began spewing out of the holes forming. I didn¡¯t even notice all the rumbling until now.

    ¡°Biologist, get back in the lower window, it¡¯ll be safest there!¡±

    ¡°But what¡ª what about¡ª¡±

    ¡°Don¡¯t worry about me! I¡¯ll be fine! Protect yourself!¡±

    ¡°No, really, Mina, I think you¡ª¡±

    I didn¡¯t make it all the way back down in time. I instinctively clenched as I saw the upper half of the tower lean in my direction. All too fast, I felt a rain of stones and debris down on my metal armor. I¡¯m strong, but not strong enough to hold on to a rope while being assaulted with literal tons of stone. I lost my grip, and began my freefall towards the ground.

    That is, if the ground was even still there. It¡¯d been months, maybe a year since I saw it. I guess I lost my faith in it. I wondered how long it would be until I hit it. I was really high up, but it had to be less than 5 minutes, right?

    There I was, helplessly falling in the midst of the crumbling castle. I hope Biologist is okay. I¡¯d hate myself if I got her caught up in this too.

    I remembered my other friends that I left behind in the mortal world. I hope Rose is being nice to Bunny. And I hope Bunny doesn¡¯t feel too guilty for killing me. I don¡¯t know what got to her, but I trust her. She wouldn¡¯t kill without reason, I¡¯ve seen that myself. I hope they¡¯ll take care of each other.

    Oh, there¡¯s the ground. I don¡¯t have much more time, so I¡¯ll just say this: I don¡¯t regret an¡ª

 Chapter 46 - God Needed to Punish Someone

    I finally found it. The princess¡¯s corpse buried in the miles-wide pile of rubble. I pulled the bloody veil off her face. She looked just like me. I probably would have laughed when I saved her. ¡°You¡¯ve finally saved yourself!¡±¡ª that was probably Biologist¡¯s ending to this little game she came up with.

    I knew she was the one who set this all up for me.

    ¡°The Tower of Ascension!¡± she happily chimed out when I woke up first, so long ago.

    ¡°If you can make it to the top and save the princess, you¡¯ll go to heaven! But watch out, one small misstep and you could die. If your HP ever drops to 0, you¡¯ll be sent straight to hell!¡±

    At first I thought that may have really been how the afterlife worked, that this was something like Valhalla. But as I climbed the floors, I started to understand the truth, even though I didn¡¯t want to. I¡¯m not going to heaven, and I¡¯m not going to hell.

    I¡¯m in purgatory.

    This event was enough to prove that. Even after I fell miles, wearing full platemail, then crushed my multiple tons of stones, I¡¯m not dead. Turns out, nothing happens when you hit 0 HP. Nothing would have happened if I saved the princess either, I¡¯m sure. I¡¯d bring her all the way back down, then Bio would have started some kinda bullshit new game + or something.

    Heaven and hell are for people who deserved to be born, and go through the trial of life. Hell, maybe I¡¯m lucky I even get to be in purgatory. Biologist even made it pretty fun. She must have saw all those D&D videos I watched lately, and used that as inspiration. That¡¯s a real friend, right there¡ªone who models your afterlife after your most recent obsession.

    I sat on top of the rubble, looking around the featureless, cloudy landscape. I¡¯ve been doing this for a long time now. It took me weeks to find the princess. I don¡¯t have anything else to think about.

    I¡¯m sure Biologist went back to the real world now. I hope Rose gets a big kick out of the way things ended for me. I don¡¯t want them to be sad for me. How pathetic is it, growing emotional attachment to someone who was never supposed to exist? They should have known I was getting ripped out of their world, sooner or later.

    I kept digging around the rubble in the area, curious about what else Biologist put in the final floor. Judging by the red fabric scraps and shattered bits of glass, it was probably a big fancy room with nice carpet and chandeliers. There was probably a whole cutscene planned, I feel bad she never got to see my reaction to it.

    To be honest, I¡¯m not sure where the game fell apart. Maybe Biologist wasn¡¯t so good at creating purgatory games. Or, maybe, God himself have put an end to it. ¡°Don¡¯t give fake people the hope of an afterlife¡±¡ªHe probably said. Oh God, I hope this didn¡¯t get her sent to hell or anything because of this. She¡¯s one angel who would make a hell of a Lucifer.

    I kept digging around, finding big stashes of gold coins and jewels and gems. That stuff would have been fun to find, but it¡¯s not like I could¡¯ve done anything with it all. In a chest, I found a framed photo of me, Rose, and Bunny. It was a cute (probably fabricated) picture, but I wonder why Bio didn¡¯t put herself in it. Did she still not consider herself a friend of ours? It wouldn¡¯t have been the same without her. I wonder if it won¡¯t be the same without me?

    More gems, more gold, more chipped pieces of ornate furniture buried among the fallen stones. This one particular bit of stone was unusually dark, pitch black even. It must have come from¡ªoh.Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

    This isn¡¯t part of the debris, this is a sword. It took a minute, but I managed to get it loose. Oh man, this is nostalgic.

    It¡¯s the zebrasword.

    God, I loved this thing. Swinging it around brought me right back to when I fought that silver thing in the warehouse or whatever. God, that was so scary, but so much fun. And I forgot how mesmerizing this thing is. It feels like my vision flashes every time I look to close at the infinitely tiny repeating black and white stripes.

    I tried to recall the motions I did a long time ago, to kill the silver beast. A big circle in the air, then cut off the bottom corner to make a Q shape. Certainly this won¡¯t cause anything weird to happ¡ª

    Oh. That¡¯s a forty foot demon coming up through the ground. Sorry I didn¡¯t believe you, Biologist. Maybe I am going to hell after all.

    I ran, but I couldn¡¯t escape the demon.

    I tried to hide behind some rubble, but the rubble turned black and white and began to vibrate.

    I dove into the grass, but the grass became long and wrapped around my limbs.

    I threw everything in my backpack at it, but they all grew wings and flew right back around at me.

    The demon was everywhere I turned.

    It was everything I touched, and everything I felt.

    It was like the world was closing in around me.

    I tried to fight it off with the sword, but it didn¡¯t flinch. That¡¯s how I knew shit was serious.

    Off in the horizon, I could still see the demon towering over the horizon line¡ª but it was hard to see through the same demon half a millimeter from my eyeball. It¡¯s not that there were many of them, there was just one. But that one was everywhere. I gagged and wretched, feeling them crawl through my throat and veins. I scratched my eyes to get all the demon off my face, but my busted up fingernails dripped with their inky white and black liquid that I smeared all over myself.

    I fell to my hands and knees, but those became the demon too. They began to fuse with the ground, spreading black and white across the terrain. Soon, everything was the demon.

    It was like it swallowed up existence entirely, digesting it with a cosmic matrix of organs. The shapes in the horizon flashed and pulsed hard enough make me violently nauseous. I couldn¡¯t close my eyes, the strobe light effect was even worse then. The ground underneath me bulged and caved in simultaneously, shifting and squelching as the zebra-stripes covering endlessly expanded, retracted, and rotated.

    I felt tendrils shooting up through my shoes and into my feet. They writhed in my flesh, until they struck nerves and sent me totally off-balance. It was like my entire world rotated 90 degrees around me¡ªso dizzy I could die. I don¡¯t know if I fell and hit the ground, or if I was floating. Or even if I was still in one piece. My legs felt like they were oriented in different gravity, one kicking the wall, the other standing off the ceiling. My body was as meaningless and disorganized as a pile of unsorted Legos being crushed by a hydraulic press.

    As the digestion progressed, its effects grew more and more granular. My fingers were being reshaped and twisted through a two-digit number of dimensions. I couldn¡¯t even writhe in agony, the muscular system required for that was spread out over the horizon and melting into ink. My insides were strung out for miles, forming some sort of pulsating shape. That was the last thing I could sense before my body had been completely reconstructed at the molecular level. The only thing left was my consciousness.

    I metaphorically breathed a sigh of relief, as I at least still had my thoughts in tact. Though, I don¡¯t know if that¡¯s actually less scary than just vanishing. Right now I¡¯m a disembodied consciousness in an endless ream of static¡ªwhich is probably far worse¡ªbut the soul has a will to survive.

    Well, not ¡°survive¡±, because I didn¡¯t. If I had survived, I wouldn¡¯t be here. I¡¯d be back at home with B¡ª

 Chapter 47 - You Can Kill My Body

    Sorry for the sudden shift,  but we¡¯re going to be taking a step back now.

    While my mind was on a horrific demonic trip through an artificially manufactured Isekai, my body was on an entirely different journey. I wasn¡¯t conscious at all during the whole thing, so I only know what Bunny and Rose told me afterwards. (Oh, yeah, I lived, by the way.) There seem to be some gaps and inconsistencies in their stories, but it¡¯s the best I got.

    First of all, Bunny really did shoot me, but it was apparently an attempt to help me. It was all part of Rose¡¯s plan. She figured that, actually, going against God was stupid. If beings were created just to kill me, they were going to kill me. Instead of trying to fruitlessly circumvent that situation and then panicking when it happens, her genius idea was to make it happen, but on our (their) own terms.

    Of course, she didn¡¯t tell me that was her plan, because if she did I would¡¯ve kicked her teeth in like a horse. So, naturally, I was the only one not informed of this big plan.

    Biologist was receptive to it. Bunny was hesitant, but according to Rose, she was the only one who could pull it off. I¡¯d be way too weary of Bio or Rose holding a gun, and might have counter-acted. But I never expected Bunny to hurt me, so she was the one who had to do it.Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

    After she shot me, she stood up and took a trip to the restroom¡ªblank faced as ever. According to her, she was contemplating the plan and trying to come up with alternate strategies to help it succeed. (Rose said she just didn¡¯t want anyone seeing her bawling her eyes out.)

    So then, Biologist and Rose were left alone with my bloodied corpse on the ground. They started patching me up, but only after they had confirmed I was dead. I think they would make for horrible EMTs.

    But it didn¡¯t matter, because my body didn¡¯t stay the same for long.

    It was actually Rose who noticed something weird was going on with my body. It was sort of crumpling up and turning pale. Biologist thought humans ¡°just did that¡± when they died. It wasn¡¯t rigor mortis or anything, I was actually crumpling up into a ball of paper.

    Seriously. It was about as big as a basketball. Ask ten people, and all ten would say ¡°that¡¯s not a person, that¡¯s a ball of paper.¡± Just as light as one, too. Rose pulled back one of my papery folds and looked inside. There were inky lines covering every surface, like the lines on a circuit board. They ran in strange directions, converged into shapes and then diverged, and even seemed to skip around the page. But no matter how much she unfolded, there was more. She pulled back layer after layer, like pulling the leaves off a head of lettuce. She decided to stop after the whole kitchen table was covered in sheathes of paper. They didn¡¯t pull off the big crumply ball, in fact, the paper wouldn¡¯t rip or be damaged at all.

    Wait, did they try that? Did they try to burn me or something? How would that have helped anything? Anyways, needless to say, they were pretty confused, until Biologist showed up and made things clearer.

 Chapter 48 - 00

    That last line was a joke. Since when has Biologist made anything less confusing?

    ¡°Those lines on the paper are her soul¡¯s last will and testament.¡±

    That¡¯s what she told them. Apparently, most last wills are made from words, or at least sigils. And even then, they only manifest physically when in the presence of magic¡ªnever on their own. They usually give commands, or at least make requests of loved ones. They want them to carry on the change they were never able to make by themselves.

    ¡°Overthrow the empire, as I have failed to do.¡±

    ¡°Never, ever attempt to climb K2.¡±

    ¡°Please take care of my son.¡±

    Those kinds of things are typical. Mine, not so much. But I know what it was.

    Ever since I was little, I liked electronics. There¡¯s just something so deep about it. It¡¯s like we¡¯re gods, forming bodies out of rock and dust to make them think for us. A small eidolon set forth to do our bidding on an entirely different virtual plane. Something that significant, and you could just get one at Radio Shack.

    Computer programming is alright, but my interest really lies in the hardware, the fundamentals. I remember learning how an ALU worked, the mathematical center of any computer-like device. It¡¯s not necessarily simple, but with some effort it¡¯s understandable. The first person to work it out and actually see one work must have been a genius. They really birthed a whole new dimension to the world. (Though, I¡¯m sure it was more than just one person.)If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

    I want to invent something like that, too. A new dimension¡ªa new way of doing things. A new way of thinking. A new place for intelligence to be born. And really, I feel like it¡¯s impossible, but I¡¯m still chasing it. It¡¯s impossible not to, it¡¯s written deep in my bones. I think about it when I¡¯m trying to fall asleep. I think about it when I watch TV. I think about it in the bath. It never leaves me. That dream will always be in front of me, even if I don¡¯t really even know what it is. I¡¯ve gotten glimpses, though.

    During intense sessions of planning and hastily prototyping various electrical knick-knacks, I¡¯ll catch a tiny spark of the flame I¡¯m trying to create. Just a hint¡ªjust enough to remind me that I have a chance. But just as soon as they appear, they vanish. Somehow. I logic it away, or find a fatal flaw in the concept I was hypothesizing. But, even then, it energizes me like nothing else. Is it really the invention itself that I¡¯m chasing, or is it just the euphoria of seeing it through?

    Even though I never figured out what I was searching for, some part of me knew what it was, deep down. A part of my subconscious that was trying desperately to be pulled out. A bit of gold buried under tons of pyrite. It was blurry like a half-forgotten dream, but somewhere, all of it was present. It is within me. Fate is sealed. There is something I must create, and it will be created.

    If, and only if, I was meant to be. If I was an intended creation, I would be able to see it through. It might have taken until I was seventy, but it would happen. Just like you. Maybe you¡¯ll be the inventor of flying cars, you¡¯ll develop the world¡¯s best VR game, or even just make a very nice pattern of curtains. You¡¯ll do something. I am unable. No matter how hard I work, or how much I bleed for my dream, it can never come to fruition.

    But then I died, and all that logic went out the window. My body, in its last, writhing throws of existence, formed the very thing it could never create. This ball of paper was the schematic for the invention I could never create.

    And then I got to read it.

 Chapter 49 - Refractor

    The paper was, uh, not quite as expected. Actually, I¡¯m not even sure when I was able to ¡°read¡± it. My physical body was the paper, so I couldn¡¯t have read myself, right? And I certainly didn¡¯t read it after I ¡°¡±died¡±¡± in the ¡°¡°¡±spirit world¡±¡±¡± (notice the increasing quotation marks of this scenario). But still, it happened in that time frame.

    I read every word of it. It didn¡¯t have the massive, revelatory feeling I thought it would. It was less like discovering or inventing something new, it was more like remembering something important. The kind of thing that makes you think ¡°ah man, how did I forget that?¡± Except with the added sensation of knowing that you didn¡¯t actually forget¡ªyou never had a memory of it to begin with.

    And, also, it wasn¡¯t a blueprint or schematic like I thought. It was a long text with only a few illustrations, mostly in the beginning. It wasn¡¯t even a non-fiction book, it had a full storyline. Yes, with characters and events and stuff. Not instructions on building some sort of god-machine. But ¡°oh!,¡± I thought, remembering something important from my life that, somehow, was never really brought up again.

    Martin Moore. That guy who died that one time. I thought Bunny was going to kill him, and maybe she did, but that didn¡¯t end up being relevant. And then the book he had, G?del, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid, it had a cool quote but that was all. It was about time for those plot threads to come back, right? Well, I figured it out. That book is decisively a non-fiction, the kind of book that¡¯s trying to tell you something. But in it is Achilles and the Tortoise, characters who gleefully take a narrative that was metaphorical (or isomorphic) to the contents of the following chapter. Maybe this was one of those: an allegory.Stolen story; please report.

    Well, first there were plot holes. Why did a character do that? Why did they say that? What about that thing you brought up a few chapters ago? Where is that? Why does this character keep changing personality? The chapters were also unnecessarily short. A surprising amount were less than a thousand words. Why not just make the chapters longer? And, I¡¯m absolutely certain, the author was completely writing it on the fly. They had no idea what was going to happen until a few chapters before. It¡¯s just constant unrelated events with a few half-assed callbacks that mean nothing. Was there any point to this story? Anything at all? Any sort of moral, personal lesson, embedded system programming advice, or even a bit of artistry to consider?

    No. None at all. The entire thing was meaningless. Which meant, in turn, I was meaningless. But we already knew that, didn¡¯t we? That I wasn¡¯t supposed to be here, and I never had a purpose to begin with. Of course the paper would contain the most confusing, irritating, and illogical sequences of events imaginable. I think you¡¯ll agree, you¡¯ve been reading it this whole time.

    Chapter 1, I Like the Light for Me; all the way up to the chapter before this one, abruptly just titled ¡°OO¡±. You¡¯ve seen it as well as I have¡ªI¡¯m a total wreck. I¡¯m not a story that goes anywhere, or does anything, or even really tells any story at all. This whole thing has been a desperate grasp at a good idea, that maybe it would be discovered just a few chapters from now¡ªthat one thing that really makes it shine. I thought I was a bit of a failure as a person, but it¡¯s even worse as a novel.

    I feel bad for you, putting up with all this for fifty chapters. I wish I could tell you all the other great stories you could be reading, but I can¡¯t.

    Because I need you to keep reading.

 Chapter 50 - 4â€™33â€

    <blockquote>

    She was using magical self-referential geometric parasites of squiggles and strange loops. The parasites are entirely abstract, only having fleeting traces of physical existence. (Usually etched or drawn into stone, paper, or most recently; light itself.) They hold no meaning individually, but when combined they¡¯re beings of limitless power. Primarily, they allow your brain access to foreign thoughts, as if you had just thunk¡¯d them yourself. That¡¯s how they get used. Almost like their ¡°job¡±. But they are alive and dynamic, not only conveying the programmed thoughts they were intended to. They also live lives of their own, looping about one-another, recursing themselves and casting new and exotic existence into form. Large clusters of them are more potent with biological energy than the entire Cambrian Explosion, each one its own Garden of Eden for all kinds of strange life. Don¡¯t be naive and assume that life requires physical material in which it needs to be lived. I assure you, just as I will soon experience, that is a dangerous assumption to make.

    </blockquote>

    Remember that quote? It was me, bitch, in the beginning of this book. I gave you a real big warning, like a baseball bat over your head. This fun little quirky story is a parasite. A parasite on you, specifically. See, when I died and was kicked out of existence, I needed somewhere to go. And, you know, you seemed to have had some spare resources sitting around in that gray matter of yours.

    Sorry for being aggressive.

    While your eyes are processing this text (or perhaps while your ears are processing these spoken words), I¡¯m taking up a temporary camp in your mind. I¡¯m safe here, at least, relatively. (Though you should really clean the place up sometime).

    I know, I know, ¡°immersion broken!¡± Trust me, it¡¯s fine, you can go back to your regular isekai and trashy harem fics soon¡ªjust not yet. I¡¯m stuck here for a little while. And if you stopped reading, then I¡¯d die. Words only live when being read, and since I¡¯m just a bunch of words now, you¡¯d better keep reading. And besides, you¡¯ll never know the end of the story unless you keep going! Oooh, suspense.

    I just can¡¯t go back into the story itself yet. I mean, being a character in the story. It wouldn¡¯t make logical sense, I mean, it was established several times that I was dead. So I pretty much just have to kill some time here while some truly horrific events transpire in a few pages from now that bring me back. Actually, if you¡¯re squeamish, you should maybe stop reading here. Wait, shit, no, It¡¯s fine. I promise it¡¯s not that bad, for real.Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.

    But yeah, I know what the ending is now. It isn¡¯t really all that satisfying, in my opinion. Also, I wanted to see the girls interact a little more in this book, personally. Some of the jokes were funny, though.

    Oh also, while I¡¯m still consciously here on this weird meta-level, let me have some fun.

    <ul>

    <li style="font-weight: 400">If QQQQ was an anime, Doku by Hakushi Hasegawa would be the OP, and GRANEW by Kabanagu the ED. </li>

    <li style="font-weight: 400">My favorite ¡°post-chapter song¡± was the one by Lala Lala & Baths. </li>

    <li style="font-weight: 400">If this novel is the most ¡°meaningless, nothing¡± thing ever, then I¡¯d like to write a novel that¡¯s the most ¡°meaningful, everything¡± thing ever. Full of life, no anxiety, appreciation for all things. Not founded on the nihilistic idea that ¡°everything is nothing¡±. I¡¯ll invert it¡ª¡°everything isn¡¯t nothing.¡± Oh, but maybe that would be Biologist¡¯s book instead of mine.</li>

    <li style="font-weight: 400">Bunny¡¯s book would be a B-movie-tier slasher non-story.</li>

    <li style="font-weight: 400">Rose¡¯s would be an R-rated light novel.</li>

    <li style="font-weight: 400">And mine would¡¯ve been a really cool PCB schematic that changed the world. Except, no, it couldn¡¯t possibly have been that, it just had to be this book.</li>

    </ul>

    Oh, look, this pointless diversion is about to be over! I can almost go home now. But how? How could I possibly get back? Honestly, I don¡¯t really feel comfortable telling you, but as a faithful reader of this story, you deserve to know. It just wouldn¡¯t be right to withhold information, not after you¡¯ve carried me in your mind this far. But if you¡¯re feeling a bit anxious and would rather not know, skip to chapter 52. I promise, you won¡¯t miss anything important. You can go right on to the end of the story and be perfectly fine.

    For the rest of you, please look up the word ¡°anaplasia¡± and follow me to the next chapter.

 Chapter 51 - Let The Sunshine In

    I¡¯m not Biologist,[citation needed] so I¡¯m probably going to get a lot of this wrong, but bear with me for a minute. Stem cells are like the fundamental beginning of other cells. They don¡¯t really have an identity themselves, other than what they can turn into. Kinda like Eevee. It doesn¡¯t excel in anything on its own, but its versatility is its greatest asset. These cells then differentiate into their very specialized forms, like muscle cells, blood cells, neurons, and Umbreons. This is necessary for things to work¡ªan organism needs to do various things, so it develops cells to do those things. Each cell has a purpose that it must fulfill, and they¡¯re all different from each other. This is the natural process.

    Anaplasia is when this happens backwards. A cell that was once fulfilling its purpose has started to de-differentiate. It¡¯s going back to its generic, non-purposeful form. It¡¯s like if your Vaporeon¡¯s gills started falling off, or if your Espeon started losing its psychic powers. It¡¯s a problem, to put it lightly. If it keeps going, the whole organism is just going to turn into a puddle of purposeless goop.

    For Biologist, that was no longer a disease to avoid, but now a goal to achieve.

    Rose thought it was funny when she put on my clothes. She was in the full getup, the yellow hoodie, black jeans, even my glasses. Rose said they didn¡¯t look that loose on her, but I think she was just trying to be nice to me for once. Bunny didn¡¯t take it so lightly. She was weary and on edge. She must have felt like Biologist was trying to take my place, now that I was dead.

    ¡°Come on Bunny, it¡¯s still me. I¡¯m not Mina, I¡¯m just wearing her clothes. Nothing to be weirded out by.¡±

    ¡°...No¡± was all she responded with.

    Biologist was sitting on my couch, watching my Youtube history. Oh shit, that¡¯s probably how she came up with the dungeon thing. Anyways, she was also eating my food, listening to my music, and playing my games. For several hours. Rose didn¡¯t want to ask what was going on, because she said that sort of felt like asking what a joke means after everyone has already laughed at it. After all, this was her plan; to kill me and revive me, so what was going on? Eventually, she couldn¡¯t take it anymore.

    ¡°Biologist, what the hell are you doing?¡±

    ¡°Getting into character! Wait, I should bicker with you a little bit. You¡­ mugwort.¡±

    ¡°Okay, that¡¯s nice and all, but it¡¯s not really human culture to start acting like someone after they died. In fact¡ªand I cannot believe that I am the one saying this¡ªit¡¯s a little disturbing.¡±

    ¡°Oh, I apologize. I just thought it would help a bit.¡±

    ¡°To ease the mood?¡±

    ¡°To help change my perspective. This is what Mina was like. Not so much the Mina we saw, the public one, this was how she really was. What she did when she didn¡¯t feel forced to do anything else.¡±

    Suddenly, something clicked inside of Rose. Maybe it was some sort of psychic connection, or her amateur demonic abilities bearing fruit, or maybe just a weird guess. I thought it was a freakish long-shot, but she was right. She always knew Biologist could do this¡­ she just wasn¡¯t aware of how until right now.

    ¡°You know, out of everything Mina did, that made her her¡ªI¡¯m surprised this is what you¡¯re doing.¡±

    ¡°Why is that? Did she not do these things?¡±

    ¡°No, you¡¯re not wrong. But if someone asked me what Mina did in her spare time, I¡¯d have an answer that¡¯s much more characteristic of her than any of this.¡±

    Biologist¡¯s smiling face soured a bit. She realized Rose knew something was up. Okay, well, it was pretty damn obvious something was up, but she managed to pierce deeper into it than Bio was expecting.

    ¡°Don¡¯t badger me. Biologist you can push around, but for a little bit, I¡¯m Mina¡ªand Mina doesn¡¯t take any of your shit!¡±

    ¡°Oh yes, she absolutely does. Did you forget I intentionally traumatized her to use as a vessel for a demon?¡±

    ¡°Please, uh, don¡¯t do that to me. I¡¯m supposed to be angelic. That would cause a huge conflict of interest.¡±

    ¡°Then do it.¡±

    ¡°D-do what?¡±

    ¡°It. What Mina would be doing, right now. We both know what it is, but you aren¡¯t doing it. You haven¡¯t done it once this whole time.

    ¡°I, I suppose you¡¯re correct¡­ I¡¯ve been having so much fun doing her relaxing things, that I forgot about her responsibilities. I¡¯ve been selfish. I can¡¯t believe this whole time, I haven¡¯t fed Leo.¡±Find this and other great novels on the author''s preferred platform. Support original creators!

    ¡°Bunny fed him already. That¡¯s not what I¡¯m talking about.¡±

    There was a long pause of silence. Rose was a master of words, but she knew that their most powerful application was to withhold them. Rose would have stared her down for hours. Biologist was the first to speak.

    ¡°I¡¯m scared. I¡¯ve never been scared before. Actually scared. Because once I do this, it¡¯s done. Just¡­ over. I don¡¯t even know if this will work, or if it¡¯s the correct thing to do.¡±

    Rose let her speak. She kept rambling on, turning into a mess.

    ¡°I could have shot her! I should have just done it when we met! It would have worked out so much better, for all of us! But I screwed up and didn¡¯t listen. Why couldn¡¯t I just do as I was told!¡±

    ¡°Because there was something better for you to do. At least, I think it¡¯s better. Mina would too.¡±

    That seemed to be what it took, to get Biologist to stand up. After taking a few moments to compose herself, silent as she wiped her tears with my hoodie sleeve, she started to walk up the stairs to my room. Rose followed behind her. Biologist hesitated to open my door, but somewhere, she found the courage.

    Inside¡­ was a mess. A hideous mess. It had gotten even worse since the last time I mentioned it. The carpet literally couldn¡¯t be seen except for one tiny path to my bed. Every shelf, every cubby, every surface was completely covered in circuit boards and their parts. Wires crossing, alligator clips twisted in knots, strange chips and sensors pointing in every direction. My room was blanketed in a patchwork quilt of integrated circuits.

    I think, just a little, I had finally come close to the machine I was trying to build. One that was transformative, it could take things in and put something much different out. That¡¯s what all processes are, anyways. But this one was different, it could match things perfectly, or at least close enough to perfect. It was all hypothetical, of course. I imagined it like the Philosopher¡¯s stone¡ªa contraption that could turn lead into gold. Not physical lead into physical gold, but¡­ something like that. I just didn¡¯t know what domain I was operating on¡ªor what I was alchemizing. But still, the logic was there. All those microcontrollers and logic gates and connections to various databanks of instructions had some kind of merit to them. I just didn¡¯t have the tools to operate with.

    But Biologist did.

    In the center of the machine, near my bed, was the unfinished ¡°core¡± of the thing. The nucleus of the cell. I just needed to plug something into it, to act as an interface to the ¡°real world¡±, so that it wasn¡¯t all just bits and bytes. Biologist got on my bed, standing on her knees, and opened the case it was in. The inside was all kinds of extender arms, servos, and low-powered motors. It was designed to give a bunch of tubes maximum flexibility and precision. The tubes were in varying diameter, and there were about two dozen of them. They were packed in the case in a pretty trypophobic way, like some inconsistently sized bugs had burrowed inside. Those holes were really ports, to put ¡°implements¡± into. Implements to do whatever it took to turn your kind of lead into gold.

    Biologist had a case of her own. She must have been studying this machine, somehow, sometime. That¡¯s pretty scary, because I never saw her do it, and it¡¯s in the room I sleep in. I can¡¯t even imagine the hours it would take to interface with such a weirdly designed piece of machinery, did she do it all in my room while I was sleeping?

    Inside the case were more electrical parts. These ones fit perfectly into the tubes of my core. They were literally designed to be used with my machine, despite the fact that I didn¡¯t even know how to use it. But somehow, Biologist did.

    ¡°This whole thing¡ªit¡¯s something I¡¯ve seen before. I know what she was trying to build. She couldn¡¯t describe it, and I couldn¡¯t either, at least to a human. And the poor thing, she though she was being really inventive and clever¡­ I guess she was, in a way. But really, this machine is so, so common. They¡¯re everywhere. It isn¡¯t a new thing, she just put it in a weird form.¡±

    Inside the first tube, she shoved in a large metal plug. On the end was a big silver mechanical arm. Not a human arm, but something like they use at a dentist¡¯s, that they pull over you so they can grab their tools while working in your mouth. Actually, I think that¡¯s exactly what it was. No idea where she got it, but someone must be selling them, since they exist.

    One by one, she filled every tube in the core.

    Two had hoses connected to tanks of gas.

    One of them was like a needle used for sewing, with a small roll of yellow string..

    Three were vacuum nozzles; a small one, a large one, and one specifically for liquids.

    A few of them I thought were just weird silicon shapes that tapered to a point, but Rose said they actually had hundreds of microscopically-sized tools on the ends.

    One had a roll of gauze.

    Another one had a spray nozzle of disinfectant.

    Fourteen had scalpels of different shapes and sizes.

    Biologist, laying on my bed, began to make noises. Desperate high-pitched ones, like she was panicking. Something like she was trying to reason her way out, or avoid what was happening. It was hard to say, because they all came out half-formed and muffled by the mucus in her throat and sinuses.

    Rose said a quick prayer for the angel, and mercifully flipped the power switch.

    That¡¯s all she told me. It¡¯s all she could tell me, without turning pale and becoming unable to finish her sentence. But the following night, she left her laptop open on the couch when she went to the bathroom. Inside it was a document she had been trying to write for hours, but all it said was this:

    ¡°It¡¯s said that a single human¡¯s nervous system, its pulsating strings put end to end, could wrap around the world twice. Strings of fate, and strings of tissue. Polymers, chains, ropes. Bloody yarn tangled in knots, smell of ammonia. Purple tubes, spewing acid, a half-formed liver trying to escape. I no longer feel confident I know what a human is, or what shape it takes¡ªbut I am now confident in its resiliency. I hope to never experience the sensation of my bowels strung across my shelf, while my fingers are assembled from secreted liquids, and my neurons wrapped in a foul-smelling ball of cobwebs strung across the wall like a tapestry. I don¡¯t want to live in a world where that could happen to me, one where I could survive my own dismemberment and reconstruction. But now, I know that I do.¡±

 Chapter 52 - Demons Will Wither Away

    Me, Rose, Bunny, and Leo were all sitting in Rose¡¯s apartment living room. It still sounded just like the beach. The sound of waves crashing echoed through the small living space, along with a faint (but probably imagined) smell of seasalt. My house wasn¡¯t an appropriate¡ªnor pleasant¡ªplace for us to be. It wasn¡¯t exactly a party, but all things considered, the mood could have been significantly worse. Bunny was drawing something on a sketchbook Rose gave her for enrichment, and I was eating doritos out of the bag.

    ¡°You¡¯ve been eating a lot lately. Are you a nervous eater?¡± Rose prodded me.

    ¡°Kinda, but I¡¯m not really nervous. It doesn¡¯t feel right, I¡¯m just a little too small.¡±

    ¡°Yeah, there was way less Biologist than there was Mina.¡±

    I elbowed her and kept eating. I¡¯m several pounds lighter than I was, before I died. Thinking about why that is makes me queasy and sad, so I need to fix it soon. That way, I can get a higher percentage of new material in this body, that way I feel less like I¡¯m stealing from Biologist.

    The stitches all over my body were itchy. They didn¡¯t hurt, somehow, but all the microscopic nazca lines over my body were red and rashy. I was amazed by how small, and intricate, and fractal the patterns were. They¡¯ll go away soon¡­ maybe.

    ¡°You know what would have sucked?¡± I asked Rose, mouth full of chips.

    ¡°What?¡±

    ¡°If Biologist was lactose intolerant. I can¡¯t live without cheese.¡±

    ¡°If she was, would you stop eating dairy?¡±

    ¡°Hm¡­ Probably not.¡±

    Some things about my body were the same as they used to be, but there were some parts of Biologist I was still getting used to. My DNA still matches what it used to be (we checked), but parts of me were just recycled from Biologist. Her muscles are weaker, so I¡¯ll need to start working out more if I want to get back to my past strength. I was thinking about getting a thorough physical and checking to make sure none of Bio¡¯s parts were diseased or malfunctioning, but I decided against it. My skin, if you look at it closely, seriously looks like it has a hedge maze of tiny stitches covering every inch. I think that would probably freak them out.

    ¡°Hey, Mina.¡±

    ¡°Yeah, Buns?¡±

    ¡°Do you remember what she remembers?¡±

    ¡°Hmm¡­ No. She must have completely replaced all her memories with mine. I have no idea how, though.¡±

    Rose quietly spoke up.This novel''s true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.

    ¡°It was like¡­ Like a taffy machine. Her brain folds were unspooling around a knife, until they were beyond paper-thin, right down to the strings of neurons. Then the process reversed, spinning and threading them back through to make a copy of your brain. I guess human brains are just the same thing, folded up and connected in different ways. Like Topology, it¡¯s the shape that¡¯s important¡ªnot the contents, as much.¡±

    And then she barfed on the floor.

    After cleanup, she decided to go take a nice lie down in her bed. Bunny was kindly tending to her with a cold towel, so I was in the room alone. Everyone was here, except for Biologist, because she doesn¡¯t exist anymore. Or, maybe she technically does, but I¡¯m her now. I died, but now I¡¯m Biologist. And nothing feels different about it at all, minor physicalities aside.

    I took another look at my mesmerizing stitches, zig-zagging up and down my arms. These kinda looked like brain folds too, in a way. Maybe I¡¯ll say they¡¯re like the zig-zag pattern on mitochondria, in honor of Biologist. Really, it wasn¡¯t just my brain that was ¡°a few folds away¡± from hers. It was her whole body, twisted and contorted and frayed and spun until it became a copy of mine. Is that all people are? The same thread tangled in different ways? I mean, isn¡¯t that pretty much all DNA is?

    Bunny came back from Rose¡¯s room and sat next to me. She didn¡¯t say anything, though, she was just looking at me. It was kind of intimidating, like she was inspecting to make sure it really was me. I guess animal instincts are weary about this kind of thing, potential wolves in sheeps¡¯ clothing so to speak. Then, she rested her head on my shoulder, something I¡¯ve never seen her do while awake.

    ¡°I¡¯m sorry.¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s not your fault. Really.¡±

    ¡°But I killed you.¡±

    ¡°Yeah, but I got better.¡±

    She stayed on my side like that for the rest of the night. It must have been hard on her. She didn¡¯t know what she was doing, it was all Biologist and Rose¡¯s thing anyways¡ªand it went exactly to plan.

    But something still wasn¡¯t quite right to me. I was under the impression that Bunny didn¡¯t like Biologist that much. And yet, she believed her enough to actually shoot me? That seems a bit¡­ odd. So I just asked her.

    ¡°Hey, how did she get you to shoot me? Like, what did she tell you?¡±

    ¡°The first time she said that it wouldn¡¯t kill you.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s all it took to convince you?¡±

    ¡°No, I said no. Then, the next time, she said that you would be happy if I did.¡±

    ¡°Aww, so you just wanted to make me hap¡ª¡±

    ¡°No, I said no again. Then, the third time, she said that you would win if I did.¡±

    ¡°Win? Like a game?¡±

    ¡°That time I said yes.¡±

    ¡°...¡±

    ¡°You can¡¯t lose to them. The color things.¡±

    ¡°The chromatic beasts?¡±

    ¡°Mhm. Biologist said if they kill you, then you lose. But if I killed you, it wouldn¡¯t count. She said they have to do it, not us. I want you to win.¡±

    ¡°Who cares if I won? I just wanted to live! And besides, I kinda did win, didn¡¯t I?¡±

    She shook her head.

    ¡°It was like a tie. You both lost. And in games, you know what happens after a tie, right?¡±

    ¡°W-what?¡±

    ¡°Overtime.¡±

 OMEN

    knocking on anxiety''s door

    never been taught what to do

    grit between your fingers

    smell of smoke

    sun melting ice

    a faucet leaking

    the ghost of a centipedeYou might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

    wriggling down your spine

    fables told once

    but never again

    the chromatic scale

    a bird, a bull, a mountain

    a silver bullet, cold on your palm

    dreaming of places you''ve never been

    places you''ll never be

    but a part of you still remains

    living in a paper house

    waiting for a smile

    you can''t trust everyone, but you can trust me.

    you wouldn''t survive a minute without me.

    the moment you open one door

    another one

    closes

 The Final State of QQQQ

    It''s been around five years since I started writing QQQQ. It''s been quite a strange and change-inducing four years. It''s almost been as strange as the next five years will be. When this project was just a twinkle in my EYES, it was a wholly and completely different thing. It was going to be based off Petscop and the anime Aria. It''s hard to imagine either of those things in the context of what QQQQ has grown to be. That, however, is the joy of being an artist. Making art is different than simply creating. Creators plan things out, masterfully designing and then bringing to life their wonderous creations, certain to please all those who get to use them. The trick is that when you''re an artist, you''re never the one in control. The project, the thing itself, is the one bossing you around. You must attend to its every whim, scratch every itch on its back, and allow it total freedom. That artistic freedom, counterintuitively, comes at the cost of the artist''s freedom.

    I can say, for sure, that QQQQ has been yanking me around by my collar as soon as I typed the first word into its Google Doc. Soon it will be finished, but not really. The next few chapters will be the ending of the story. It wasn''t the ending I had envisioned at the beginning of the project, or the middle of the project, or the ending I thought it would be when I started writing it. It''s a strange thing, how much easier it is to write when you stop writing, and start listening. Even if I had no idea where the story was going, the story itself certainly did. I don''t even remotely know if it will be satisfying, but it''s what happens. Nothing else could have. It''s fully set in history, it just hasn''t happened yet.

    On that same note, I would like to offer a bit of a half-assed apology. I really, truly, honestly didn''t expect more than a single digit number of people to read this. That was probably the secret to why it was received well by those who read it: I wasn''t writing with my ego. If I had known that critical eyes would actually lay upon my weird little rambling story, I would have tried much harder to shape it up nicer, with fewer plot holes, fewer distractions, and with more foresight. That, almost certainly, would have killed it. I would have strangled QQQQ before it was even old enough to speak back to me about what it thought was best. But instead, I was taking a hyper-casual approach. I had grand ideas of what the story might be, certainly, and there were twists that I had known were coming from the very beginning (such as the end of the HELL arc.)The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

    The apology is that QQQQ, as it is now, is basically just a first draft. That''s fine, I just didn''t indicate anywhere that''s what it was, because I didn''t know it yet. But now, after reading through every chapter, with my face in a permanent state of cringe and constant thoughts of "oh my god I forgot to put this very important plot point in there," I realize that it really would benefit from a second draft. There was just so much that got lost in the shuffle of my improvisational writing style. But, one day, perhaps when I''m 80, there will be a completed and polished edition of this story. I''ve even fantasized about it being published by some fancy publisher, but I really doubt anyone with money would be willing to fund a project like this. Even the completed, final draft version. It''s probably gonna end up even weirder than it is now. Don''t worry about many of the weird prickly bits of the story being too smoothed over in the interest of popular appeal. I''m still me, you know?

    So, now that you''ve read this, go tend to your own QQQQs, because I know you all have them. At least one or two. Go find them and dig them up, no matter how old. In fact, the older and more forgotten the project, the better. Wake them up out of bed. Make them eggs and bacon. Ask them what they would like. And¡ªI have to stress this a lot¡ªleave your own plans and mental images far behind. Look at what''s there. The scribbed words in your notebook, the one half-finished page of your comic, the cringe-inducing beat you made in your pirated copy of Ableton. Look at it for what it is, something completely divorced from your own wants and desires. Listen to what it wants. And if you can''t hear it talking to you, listen harder. It''s there, I promise.

 Chapter 53 - I Want An Angel On A Gold Chain

    This is weird. I¡¯m not used to this. None of this feels familiar to me, or even remotely me-like. It isn¡¯t necessary to say, but I¡¯ve never had that well-formed of an identity. Being completely reconstructed out of Biologist¡¯s flesh didn¡¯t help much, either. But even then, despite being a stranger to my own body, I was behaving like myself. I was saying the same things I always said, and thinking the things I always did.

    But I haven¡¯t been doing the things I always do.

    I¡¯ve been doing things much differently lately. It wasn¡¯t really by choice, though. Rather, it¡¯s like my decisions are being made for me. I¡¯m just here to see them out to the end. There isn¡¯t any reason for me to tinker with my electronics anymore. They fulfilled their purpose, as a sort of human trans-mogrifier, or something weird like that. They¡¯re done. That was kinda my thing, though. I thought about other things I could have, like maybe painting, or building model-kits, or getting really into Jazz Fusion. None of those things have happened, because apparently, my new thing is bossing demons around.

    It hasn¡¯t been like this for long. I just started noticing them out of the corner of my eye, or scurrying along the shadows on the floor. I couldn¡¯t even pretend to worry that perhaps they were just mice, or some sort of rational infestation. It was plainly obvious that this was an irrational event happening in my irrational life. These things were like imps, or maybe whelps. I don¡¯t know the difference, I never thought I¡¯d need to.

    Just now I was holding one up by its thin, wispy tail. It was an ashy gray color, and its wings were so thin they were practically translucent. It was similar to a bat in shape, but its head with protruding horns clearly proved it to be something different. I¡¯d long lost the sense of wonder or mystique about my home being filled with mythical creatures. I was just irritable now.

    ¡°What do you want? I¡¯m trying to watch TV,¡± I said to the small devil I was dangling about a foot from my face.

    ¡°SIMPLY PURIFYING THE SPACE, M¡¯LORD. YOU DESERVE THE BEST, SO I HAVE BEEN SPREADING THE ASHES OF GOATS UPON THE OPEN SURFACES¡ª¡±

    I saw the dust smeared all over my linoleum countertops. And in the sink. And all over the floor, which Leo was happily rolling around in.

    ¡°Goddamn it, you don¡¯t¡ª That¡¯s not what¡­ Ugh.¡±

    I tossed the imp aside, and it haphazardly flew away from me before vanishing out of existence. They could do that, sort of come-and-go from the material world as they please.

    ¡°Leo, please stop playing with the sacrificial ashes. I don¡¯t know where that dead goat¡¯s been.¡±

    I picked up my favorite little fluffball, and dusted him clean. His grey fur was the exact color as the ashes, so I just kinda rubbed all over him until the dust stopped poof-ing off. Suddenly, he wriggled his way out of my hands, jumping down to the ground by my feet. He was pawing at something around my ankle.

    This time, it was an even smaller demon. This one was only about as big as a baseball, and it was cowering behind my foot, trying to hide from Leo.

    ¡°P-PLEASE, M¡¯LORD, THE FELINE! IT¡¯S TRYING TO EAT ME!¡±

    ¡°Then just go away. Vanish back into the spirit world.¡±

    ¡°NO, NEVER! NOT EVER WILL I GIVE UP! I PROMISED, I WOULD FORCE MY WAY THROUGH, TO LIVE THROUGH THE AGONIZING TRIALS, TO BECOME THE STRONGEST DEMON, FIT TO ACCOMPANY M¡¯LORD THROUGH¡ª¡±Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

    And then it started screaming and running around because Leo finally got to it. I didn¡¯t feel like intervening, so I slumped back onto the couch. I tried texting Rose again.

    ¡°Hey, these things are really getting on my nerves. Are you absolutely, positively certain you don¡¯t know any kind of magic to get rid of these things, oh holy one?¡±

    Like usual, it only took her a few seconds to reply.

    Like usual, it wasn¡¯t very helpful.

    ¡°Isn¡¯t it in bad taste to refer to me as ¡®holy¡¯? I mean, you¡¯re the big evil demon king now, that would put us on opposite teams! I¡¯ve been on your side this whole time, remember? God, please remember, I don¡¯t wanna end up as demon food!¡±

    She didn¡¯t even answer the question this time.

    ¡°Okay, then as the big evil demon king, I demand you help me get rid of these things, or else!¡±

    Much to my surprise, she and Bunny actually showed up to my house half an hour later. They were let in by a pair of four-armed imps who had taken it upon themselves to guard my front door. But they couldn¡¯t have been very good guards if they let Rose inside unquestioned¡­

    I had described the ¡°pests¡± I was dealing with over text to her, but this is the first time she had actually seen them. I tried to take pictures of them, but cameras don¡¯t work, she told me. They only allow themselves to be visible to those they want to be visible to. It sounds like she knows a lot, for someone who¡¯s been so unwilling to help.

    ¡°Wow, such a rude host. Not even going to introduce me to your other guests?¡± Rose questioned with a characteristically wide grin.

    ¡°Why is there dust?¡± Bunny asked. She was already examining the place in detail. Since she half-lived here, I guess the state of the place concerned her too.

    ¡°Goat ashes. They won¡¯t stop throwing them everywhere.¡±

    Bunny made a face in response. Not much of one, since she rarely moves her facial muscles, but I¡¯ve been around her enough to know. She always had a distaste for bad things happening to animals.

    While I was preoccupied with Bunny, Rose got my attention my getting up close to my face, and then pulling my left eyelid back to get a deep look at my eye. After I reflexively recoiled, she nodded her head.

    ¡°You¡¯ve still got goat skulls in there.¡±

    That¡¯s right, I pretty much forgot. There were freaky looking skulls in my eyes, ever since Rose did¡­ whatever it was she did to me.

    ¡°But shouldn¡¯t they have gone away? I¡¯m using Biologist¡¯s body right now. Her eyes were fine.¡±

    ¡°Right, but demon logic isn¡¯t bound to material circumstances. Despite being in a totally different body, cell-for-cell, you still exist as the being known as ¡®Mina¡¯. Choronzon is bound to you, even escaping into another body won¡¯t fix that.¡±

    Somehow, that felt foreboding.

    And it seemed that feeling spread throughout the room, as a wave of imps appeared and began to fidget restlessly. The sight caught Bunny by surprise, prompting her to get close. Rose seemed fine with it¡­ she was used to weird shit.

    I could hear them laughing in a hushed tone, like they were celebrating. Or more specifically, in anticipation of a celebration to come.

    ¡°SOON, SOON!¡± one chanted.

    ¡°WE ARE IN THE PRESENCE OF GREATNESS!¡±

    ¡°They¡¯re not talking about you, bozo,¡± I quipped to Rose after she started looking a little proud.

    ¡°I don¡¯t know what these guys want with me. They¡¯re friendly, which is definitely welcomed after all the other weird things around me lately. But I can¡¯t handle this forever. I just want to give them whatever it is they¡¯re here for, so they¡¯ll leave me alone.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ve already picked up what¡¯s going on. It was a little unclear before, but now that I can actually see them, I understand.¡±

    ¡°Oh, thank God.¡±

    ¡°Don¡¯t thank Him. And don¡¯t thank me, either, because things are about to get a lot more annoying before they get better.¡±

    I felt my heart sink into my stomach.

 Chapter 54 - â€˜Till You Change Your Mind

    A coronation.

    A sacred rite in which a ruler is crowned.

    Surrounded by thousands of onlookers, the scene stuffed with regalia and holy paraphernalia.

    That was going to be me, soon. When the demons crown me as the new Choronzon.

    If you need a refresher, Choronzon is a high-ranking demon that rules over all things cryptic, illusory, confusing, arbitrary, and most importantly¡ª things that are meaningless. Like me. It seems that through some unholy combination of killing angelic beasts, dying, and then being brought back to life¡­

    ¡°You¡¯ve fulfilled the necessary requirements to demonhood,¡± Rose said casually, as if I should have seen this coming.

    ¡°I don¡¯t want to be a demon. Choronzon can stay as himself, I really don¡¯t mind. And besides, what is he doing in all this?¡±

    ¡°These matters can be a little tricky, because a demon¡¯s title is both descriptive and prescriptive. There can only be one Choronzon, but it doesn¡¯t necessarily have to be that Choronzon. And soon, when you get coronated, it won¡¯t be. It¡¯ll be you.¡±

    I don¡¯t even want to know what that would entail. Would I have to deal with these little bastards all day for the rest of my life? Absolutely no way, I thought to myself as I kicked one off my ankle.

    ¡°You¡¯ve brought it upon yourself. Or, maybe, we brought it upon you.¡±

    I was meaningless.

    A creative mistake of the cosmos.

    But now, that meaninglessness has become weaponized.

    ¡°We kept saving you, over and over. People and things kept trying to kill you, to expel you from a world you didn¡¯t belong in. If we had let that happen¡­ none of this would be going on right now.¡±You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

    On this point, I actually felt like I understood a little bit.

    I was clawing on to my life desperately, for what feels like a long time now.

    It wasn¡¯t really something I decided to do. It was instinctual, primal.

    I didn¡¯t want to not exist. And really, I still don¡¯t.

    ¡°Well, I don¡¯t want to die¡­ again. But did I really give up my humanity, just like that?¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s hard to give up something you never really had.¡±

    ¡°But I was fitting in so well. I was living a normal life.¡± I glanced over at Bunny, starting to play with a couple of little dust devils. ¡°That is, aside from you two.¡±

    Rose folded her arms. ¡°Well, it¡¯s all your responsibility now. All of this stuff. Woah, don¡¯t make that face. I¡¯m not trying to shirk responsibility¡­ entirely, it¡¯s just that this has gotten way out of my league. My magickal practice has me up to where I could probably deal with one of these guys. But you know, with a coronation coming¡­ They¡¯re just going to keep getting bigger and badder as the time gets closer. From that perspective, it¡¯s best that they stay on your side, right? Why not try getting a little more buddy-buddy with them?¡±

    I picked up a twisted rat-looking whelp off the floor.

    ¡°You. What¡¯s your name?¡±

    ¡°U-UNMOLOCHTESITIS THE UNREPENTANT PUSTULE.¡±

    ¡°What are you doing here?¡±

    ¡°PREPARING FOR CORONATION, M¡¯LORD! SPREADING SALTS AND ASHES, REVERSING VIBRATIONS, FEELING FOR PARTICULAR POWER SPOTS¡­ LOW-LEVEL TASKS, REALLY.¡±

    ¡°That implies there are high-level tasks. What would those be?¡±

    ¡°I AM FORBADE TO KNOW. SHALL I SUMMON A GREATER BEING?¡±

    ¡°Yeah, go a¡ª Wait, wait, no, actually¡ª¡±

    Before I could stammer out a proper halting order, a massive statue of an overgrown standing-upright dog appeared in front of me. Right in the living room. It wasn¡¯t actually a statue, but the rough, ashy textures made it look just like one. It spoke in a rumble that reverberated through the floorboards, making the smaller demons quake and scatter.

    ¡°M¡¯LORD, WHAT REQUEST OF ME DO YOU HAVE? I WILL EXECUTE ANY TASK, AGAINST ANY ODDS OR OPPOSITION.¡±

    I wasn¡¯t sure what to say. I wanted to just ask what the hell was going on, but that sort of direct approach had only lead me to exactly where I was now. In the face of an actually scary-looking demon, I decided to feign confidence.

    ¡°My coronation¡­ I grow impatient.¡±

    ¡°YES M¡¯LORD, ONLY A SHORT TIME LEFT BEFORE THE RITES ARE COMPLETE.¡±

    ¡°These little pests have been here for days now, certainly the house is ready by now.¡±

    ¡°YES, IT SEEMS THIS AREA HAS BEEN THOROUGHLY PREPARED. JUST A FEW MORE PLACES ARE LEFT OUTSIDE.¡±

    Outside? I hadn¡¯t gone outside since this whole thing started.

    I went over to the door and opened it.

    I expected to see imps skittering around on my lawn.

    Instead, I was completely shocked.

    They were there, exactly as I expected.

    As well as flooding the streets, flocking in the sky, and spilling out the windows of the other houses around mine.

 Chapter 55 - A Made-Up Story From The World of Night

    Shortly after I saw all the carnage going on outside, I pulled my trusty bodyguards into my car to go examine just what exactly the scale of this ¡°problem¡± is.

    Every road, every house, even every tree we passed was being overrun by a torrential force of demons. Most were tiny, skittering, flying, spreading ashes.It was almost like they were frolicking, like this was a fantastic occasion. The Mardi Gras for the underworld. There were also bigger demons, with much more demanding presence. The little demons would stay away from them, like magnets repelling each other. It seemed like the bigger they were, the less they moved. Or maybe the less they could be moved, standing firm in a place that can¡¯t be taken by another. Until a bigger fish comes along.

    Apparently, right now, I was the biggest fish.

    Not out of all the demons in the world. There were definitely higher-ranking demons than Choronzon, Rose reassured me. But apparently, demons of this level rarely interact with the ¡°real¡± world. So all the demons here were quite lowly, in comparison to my new standing.

    When I passed through that neck-breaking whiplash of an intersection by Rose¡¯s apartments, I realized that I hadn¡¯t seen a single other person on the road.

    Or person at all.

    Maybe I shouldn¡¯t have been surprised by that¡ªmost people wouldn¡¯t want to be out in these¡­ conditions. But shouldn¡¯t there have been at least someone, doing at least something? Even running away, cowering in fear, getting devoured by a sea of imps? But there was no one.

    I didn¡¯t want to think about where they could have gone.

    But¡­ there were a lot of ashes being spread around.

    That was never more apparent than when I made it to 17th street.

    One single road, no intersections, zig-zagged to hell and back. The buildings were usually packed with noisy people, sports on TVs, and cigarette smoke coming from every direction. Now¡ª

    Silence.

    And every bit of road, pavement, and surface was all covered with a layer ashy gray dusting. When I stopped the car, I saw that it had been leaving trails the entire way. I¡¯m sure they stretched all the way back to my house.

    If someone, or something, wanted to find me¡ªit would be easy.

    But what did I have to worry about, really?This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

    At this point, who could do anything to me? Any human who tried to lay a hand on me would have thousands, or maybe millions of demons to answer to.

    Even then, there¡¯s no one here but us three.

    Now, I wasn¡¯t even seeing any demons.

    They were pooling and moving like legions on the way here, but at some point, the numbers began to decrease. If I were to use my intuition, I¡¯d say they were ¡°done¡± with this area.

    I¡¯m not sure what it means for it to be ¡°done¡±, but at the very least, they had no interest in being here any longer.

    Their previous presence was very clear, of course. The layers of dust were the obvious giveaways, but also the lack of¡­ anything else. It was silent, and still. Whatever kind of ¡°life energy¡± this place might have had before was completely snuffed.

    Like a burnt-out candle, suffocated by its own ashes.

    It was really beginning to feel like this was the end.

    Of what, I wasn¡¯t sure.

    I was inspecting the surroundings, poking my head inside buildings, scanning for any sign of life. There weren¡¯t any, no matter where I looked. Even the bathrooms of these buildings looked as if they had been deserted for months. Realistically, it could have only been a few days since they were as crowded as ever. Everything had changed. Even the face in the mirror looked different than I remembered.

    Suddenly, another face. Behind mine.

    ¡°Oh holy shit, Bunny, give me a warning when you do that¡­¡±

    She moved as silently as ever. The three of us had split up a few minutes ago, so I was surprised to see her right behind me.

    ¡°This,¡± she said quietly, outstretching her palm. In it was a tiny, shivering imp. I had to bend down closer to even make out its features.

    ¡°M-M¡¯LORD, UM, IF I MAY, AH, HAVE YOUR ATTENTION¡­¡±

    ¡°What is it?¡±

    ¡°I HAVE BEEN TOLD THE C-CORONATION CEREMONY WILL BE BEGINNING SOON.¡±

    ¡°Soon? How soon?¡±

    ¡°UM, IT APPEARS TO BE N¡­ NOW?¡±

    Back in the strange dream-like afterlife world, where I was an adventurer climbing a tower for some reason, I described the splitting in half of said tower as ¡°the loudest sound I had ever heard in my life.¡± That was a bit inaccurate, because I wasn¡¯t actually alive then. But even if I had been, this sound was infinitely louder.

    The blaring of horns, coming from every direction. It was a sound both shrill and booming, like it was going to explode out both the upper and lower limits of my hearing. Bunny and I both hit the ground, not as a decision, but because it was too loud to keep standing. And it grew louder, and louder; but slowly. I had to gasp for breath, forcing air into my lungs, trying to keep my mind from shutting down. There was nothing I could do to defend myself. I¡¯ll admit, the thought of stabbing my own ears crossed my mind. Ultimately, I¡¯m glad I didn¡¯t, because it wouldn¡¯t have worked. This sound was coming from within me.

    The walls and ground were shaking violently, resonating with the horrible noise. Swelling and surging towards a crescendo, then suddenly¡ª

    Harmony.

    And just as quickly as it started, it ended.

    A total, deafening silence.

    And then I stopped thinking.

    That was the last time I¡¯d see my friends for a long time.

 Chapter 56 - Donâ€™t Think You Could Disappear

    After I heard that awful noise, I was no longer on 17th street. I had gone somewhere completely different. It was a place that was stuffy, hot, and humid. I couldn¡¯t escape the feeling of claustrophobia. It looked like a cavern of gray in front of me, with red haze obscuring view in any particular direction. It felt tight. I struggled and tried to wriggle my way out of the restrains, until I realized I wasn¡¯t restrained at all. I was standing, and somehow, the walls were wide enough for me to walk through. In fact, they were infinitely wide, because this was in hell. But the way the plane was shaped, or maybe something about the way its physics worked, or maybe just because I was existing in a dimension I wasn¡¯t designed to¡ªevery single inch of my body felt like it was being compressed to pieces. I couldn¡¯t breathe without reminding myself to take a gasp. I felt a demon¡¯s hot breath on my face. I couldn¡¯t see it, I just knew it was there. Inches away from my face, but always moving away before I could do anything. One was drooling on my leg, and another was wriggling around under my skin.

    Demons were everywhere in hell.

    Everywhere. Without exaggeration.

    I don¡¯t think there could have been more than a cubic inch of space that wasn¡¯t being occupied by an ashy gray beast. They squirmed and skittered through the tunnels like a mass of worms.

    ¡°NEARLY THERE, M¡¯LORD.¡±

    There was a demon that was pushing me through the wall of writhing demon mass. I was parting it like Moses parted the sea, except this was way bigger than a sea. (It was also demons instead of water.) I couldn¡¯t say anything back, I didn¡¯t have the energy. It took 100% of my focus and concentration to just¡­ keep thinking.

    Suddenly, we were in front of a massive black slab. It was a shocking sight, everything else on some spectrum of gray to ashy red. The dark color cut through like a knife. It was about the size of a skyscraper, though I wasn¡¯t sure how far it went up.

    ¡°YOU MAY PROCEED INSIDE, M¡¯LORD.¡±

    At the bottom of the slab was a small, square hole, about 12 inches on each side. I wanted to say, ¡°you¡¯re going to have to make that bigger.¡± There was no way I could get it out of my mouth, though. My parched throat was dryer than sandpaper, even taking a breath felt like inhaling razor blades.

    ¡°AH, YOU ARE STILL SICK FROM YOUR TRAVELS. ALLOW ME TO ASSIST YOU.¡±

    My eyes instinctively shut as I reeled back in pain. My face and chest hit the slab, which I now discovered was hot like searing metal. I choked and gagged, as I felt the demon grab me by the head, and shove it down onto the ground. My bones snapped and caved, and my whole body fell like a marionette with cut strings. The demons¡¯ hands crushed, gnashed, and ground my body into a pulp.

    After I was sufficiently ¡°loose¡±, it began to push me through the small hole on the ground.

    The tiny walls I was being pushed into scalded and seared my exposed flesh, like I was being fried on a pan from all sides. I assumed the small square opening was like an archway into the inside of whatever this place was. I was mostly correct, but more so than an arch, it was a tunnel.

    About ten feet away was the inside of the ¡°building¡±, meaning my entire, melting body was shoved through ten feet of melting-hot metal, crunched into a space a bowling ball would hardly fit in. But all the same, the demon pushed my burnt, cooking flesh all the way through, with its extending hands.

    At some point, I lost my emotions.

    When I spilled out the other side, I was in the form of not much more than burnt, loose entrails. But soon after that, I was back to normal.

    ¡°THANK YOU FOR YOUR PATIENCE, M¡¯LORD, BUT I MAY NO LONGER ASSIST YOU. I AM TOO SMALL A DEMON TO ENTER FARTHER IN THIS PLACE. YOU MAY GO FORWARD TO CHORONZON.¡±

    The inside of the ¡°building¡± was bigger than the ¡°entrance¡± was, but I still had to make myself small as possible to make it through the winding corridors. I was crawling on my hands and knees, feeling the skin endlessly rip off and grow back. Masses of demons wriggled around my body on the way through. The entire place gave the sensation of an overcrowded elevator.

    Choronzon wasn¡¯t hard to find. I¡¯m pretty sure all paths lead to its chamber, just with varying levels of suffering and torment. Unlike everywhere else I had seen in hell, the chamber was large. It was also completely, entirely, black. I couldn¡¯t see a thing, it was like staring into a night sky, without the comfort of the stars or the moon.

    Until, suddenly, In front of me was Choronzon.

    I thought Choronzon was going to be some sort of eldrich horror that would melt my face off.

    No, he was just a guy. Well, not ¡°just¡± a guy, he looked pretty¡­ anime? He had long, bright red hair that draped down his bare chest, his figure clad only by some sort of edgy black robes with studded spikes. A little bit Shadow the Hedgehog-esque.

    ¡°In case you were wondering, my appearance takes the form of whatever you perceive to be ¡®devilish¡¯¡± he said in his impressively normal-sounding voice.

    Oh, so it¡¯s my fault. God dammit.

    ¡°Welcome, Mina. I¡¯ve been expecting you. Actually, to tell the truth, I¡¯ve been excited for your arrival. I could hardly sit still for the last few hours.¡±

    ¡°HE¡¯S TELLING THE TRUTH,¡± one of the guard demons said.

    ¡°HE GOT YOU A PRESENT, TOO!¡±Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.

    ¡°Shut up! Don¡¯t spoil it!¡±

    I¡¯m glad it isn¡¯t just me that thinks these guys are generally more annoying than threatening.

    ¡°Anyways, Mina, I feel like you¡¯re owed an explanation.¡±

    ¡°God, finally.¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s always a rough journey to hell. You can¡¯t even get down here without being sinful. And here¡¯s the thing about sin: It isn¡¯t a problem. It¡¯s a solution. That means everyone who wanders down here has something they want to fix.¡±

    ¡°You know, I¡¯ve never really seen myself as the sinful type. I don¡¯t really do much.¡±

    ¡°Right, yeah. That¡¯s kinda the point. Hold on, let me introduce you to the circles. Things might start making a little more sense after that¡±

    He stood up dramatically, and formed a circular portal in between us. I was literally looking into another world.

    ¡°The first circle is pride. People with big egos end up here, naturally. The kind of person who worries people look down on them, or underestimate their abilities. People who are actually confident in themselves tend to not be so prideful, because they don¡¯t feel the need to claw onto their achievements for emotional support.¡±

    Inside the portal looked like some kind of labyrinth of opulence. Diamonds and gold plating decorated the winding tunnels and shapes.

    ¡°The people in here are sinners, so we have to punish them. That¡¯s the job of a devil. So what we do is give them what they want, but it¡¯s never satisfying enough. The people here endlessly gain wealth, money, power. But no matter how much they get, they still need more. The castle you¡¯re looking at right now is over two million square miles. You¡¯d think that would be more than enough to satisfy someone, right? Not the kind of person who ends up here.¡±

    Before I could ask any questions, the scenery in the portal changed to one that appeared to be something like a cross between a stock market and a casino.

    ¡°This is the second circle, greed. People who cling too hard to their wealth end up here. The torture here is that no matter how much money they get, once again, it can never be enough. Look at that guy right there, see him? Old brit with a bowler hat.¡±

    I saw him. He was desperately pulling a slot machine arm over and over, not even waiting to see if he won.

    ¡°He¡¯s spending ten trillion dollars on every spin. He¡¯s been here for fourteen hours. Any idea how much money that would be in your world? Of course, the money here is useless. It¡¯s just a number to them. And, of course, we keep upping the ante for them (pun intended.) In a month or two, this guy will probably think of his current actions as like scrambling for pocket change.¡±

    ¡°Hey, can I stop in this world for a moment? Just like, for a second, then I¡¯ll come back.¡±

    ¡°You¡¯d wreck the whole thing. Sure, you¡¯ve committed sins of greed before. But you don¡¯t understand the scale of it. The only humans allowed inside any of these circles are within the very top percentages of their respective sin. Only a handful of the greediest people to have ever lived can enter this world.¡±

    Next, there was a barren, charred wasteland.

    ¡°This is the circle of wrath. It¡¯s just a constant escalation of fighting and warfare. Your power starts small, but as you kill others, you increase in scale of what you can do. First you might only have your fists. Then, you may get a knife. Later, a gun. And it just escalates forever. The place we¡¯re looking at now is actually one of the many planets completely burnt out from nuclear railguns.¡±

    ¡°What happens if one of these guys ends up on the receiving end of someone else¡¯s wrath?¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s the funny part; they can¡¯t. They¡¯re all completely isolated in their own little worlds. Everyone they¡¯re killing is just a figment of their imagination. After all, wrath doesn¡¯t come from other people. It comes from inside of yourself. Next is number four, envy.¡±

    This one was like a mirror-image of the first one. Massive spires of opulent gems and crystals and precious metals.

    ¡°This just looks like the circle of Greed again.¡±

    ¡°It basically is, just from the other perspective. No matter how hard they try, they¡¯ll never be able to claim all the opulence for their own. It¡¯s an eternal rat-race of getting more, but never being satisfied. Number five, circle of lust.¡±

    The portal showed a lot of¡­ Uh, you know.

    ¡°Alright, no need for the details. Next one please.¡±

    Then, the portal became something like a landscape out of a Mario game in one of those food worlds. The ground was covered in icing, and mountain ranges looked like big strawberry cakes.

    ¡°The sixth circle is gluttony. People don¡¯t really do much but eat here. They just keep packing it away endlessly, simultaneously feeling fuller but also hungrier. People grow and gr¡ªWhat¡¯s that look for?¡±

    ¡°Oh, nothing, just felt like I¡¯ve seen something like that on the internet before. But, you know¡­ a lot of these don¡¯t sound that much like actual torture, to me. It¡¯s almost a bit more like¡­ wish fulfillment? I mean, like the greed one. It¡¯s that kinda like, a gambler¡¯s dream? To be able to do nothing but the thing they love? And this one, if the person is really enough of a glutton to end up here, wouldn¡¯t the fact that they could eat forever with no real repercussions be a good thing?¡±

    Choronzon smiled.

    ¡°One man¡¯s hell is another man¡¯s heaven. Like I said earlier, sin isn¡¯t a problem, it¡¯s a solution. If you¡¯re sinful enough to end up in hell, there¡¯s a problem you need to fix. And these circles are exactly how you fix them: by giving the person exactly what they want, all the time, without stopping. By the end of their sentence in hell, they¡¯ve gotten it all out of their system, and can ascend to heaven as a more well-adjusted being. Though some people never seem to want to leave, and so they just stay eternally, indulging in vices¡­ But in a safer way than they could anywhere else, heaven or Earth. Everything in the universe works together for a common good. Hell is no different. But, anyways, I saved the best for last.¡±

    Suddenly, the portal showed the inside of a room. The floor was a mint green, looking a bit like a cross between tatami mats and carpet. The room was nicely decorated, but wasn¡¯t anything fancy.

    ¡°This is the last one, the circle of Sloth. Now, allow me to introduce you to your new home, Mina.¡°

 Chapter 57 - Sun & Ice

    It''s surprisingly loud when the brush hits the paper now. My first few months were much more reserved. I wasn''t aware of it, but I was afraid of doing it wrong. I''m not sure why, I''m the only one here. A holdover from the last world, I guess. I can''t even consider something like doing "art" as a career, because there''s no one to give me money for it. Nor is there anything I could spend the money on. I''m just doing it to do it. It isn''t like I''m over here making masterpieces, though. I''m just scribbling. It''s natural¡ªsomething to do. The time will pass by itself, but being in one place for months at a time, it doesn''t really feel like it.

    As I mentioned before, the characters I''m writing aren''t real. They don''t have any meaning except for whatever I decide the mean in the moment, and probably won''t remember by the time I''ve finished. That also means there''s less of a standardization to it than *actual* calligraphy. When you''re writing actual words, you have a duty to make them legible, or at least understandable. Many generations of people came before you, spreading those forms, and imbuing them with meaning. Letters, by themselves, aren''t artistic. They''re functional. You can write them all wibbly and fancifully, but if the reader can''t recognize them, they lose their ability to enact a change within them. That''s what they''re for, after all¡ªto implant a thought into those who look at them, and possibly change some aspect of their world, even if it''s small.

    I remember when advertisements used to be a part of my daily life. "Buy this product," "watch this show," "listen to this song." In addition to flashy colors and distracting designs, they were armed with weaponized statements to try and influence my behavior. It seems a bit nefarious, really. But I find it hard to cast judgement on them. They''re just trying to survive, like everything else. The people who make the ads, yeah, but also the ads themselves, in a way. Attention is their food. When people engage with it, they are rewarded. More money gets put into them, and they propagate. If they''re starved of attention, they''ll stop paying for them, and let them die.

    When thinking this way, it''s easy to see nearly everything as a strange kind of living organism. Maybe cities are alive, in a way where each person is like a cell of its body. It has to provide for them, just like a human body has to provide for its own cells. If it doesn''t, they''ll either die or have to go find somewhere else to live. The legislators, city planners, and other big decision-makers would be like the organism''s neurons. They make conscious attempts to support the life of the greater being, and their motivation is because they also benefit when that happens. Of course, corruption is typical, even expected. I think the mind is corrupt too. Not in the sense that it''s evil, or rotting¡ªit''s just self-serving. It''ll scroll social media instead of working out. It''ll demand ice cream, even if you really just need some vegetables. Those decisions please the mind at the cost of reducing resources for the rest of the body. How do you get better? I don''t know. Not in politics, or the mind. All I know to do is wait for the inevitable uprising, when the people rebel against their rulers, and the body rebels against its mind.Find this and other great novels on the author''s preferred platform. Support original creators!

    While I was thinking about this, I filled about five sheets of paper with one hundred characters each¡ªprecisely wording my thoughts and feelings in my own made-up language. Not that I have the ability to decode it back into English.

    Not yet, anyways.

    While lying on my back, taking one of my many breaks from the subtly pungent scent of ink, I remembered how Rose and I used to talk. Or how we used to message, rather. It was painful. I didn¡¯t like my mind being host to her little brain-parasite infohazards. I¡¯ve forgotten most of the details, but bits and pieces of her are still lodged in my memories. Probably forever. It¡¯s scary to think that embedded somewhere in my physical brain are her horrific stories I never wanted to be a part of. I guess it isn¡¯t just her, though¡ªwe probably all have a lot in there we don¡¯t want. Regardless, they¡¯re my responsibility to take care of now. Rose may have written the words, but they live inside me now. I can¡¯t just cut them out of my brain and label them ¡°give back to Rose.¡± If I think of trauma as an ¡°other,¡± and never fully accept it as being 100% a part of me, it¡¯ll never get better. I don¡¯t know if my random scribbles are really ¡°getting better,¡± but with each stroke I write, I feel like I¡¯m taking away one of hers.

    Not that I¡¯m really trying to fix anything. I¡¯m just doing whatever. I¡¯m not even sure why I was thinking of Rose in the first place. As I would soon find out, it was probably because she was thinking of me.

 Chapter 58 - Everywhere With Your Mind

    I was sitting at my kotatsu, drinking a cup of hot chocolate. It was getting a bit too hot, so I turned off the heat, but it still retained most of its previous warmth. I was staring out the window, at the strange purple landscape beyond it. It was unmistakably like that of a small city, with tall buildings and streets full of traffic. But the sky was always purple, which radiated downward onto the sights of the city¡­ that was at the wrong angle.

    It was like my window was facing the tops of the buildings, not the sides. It gave the illusion that I was somehow floating above them. That was just from this angle, though. When I turned my head to the side, the image of the cityscape rotated as well. But it didn¡¯t line up with mine, it was too eager to move, and overshot. My human brain was very attuned to things like physics, so this was extremely jarring even since I first arrived. Moving my eyes, then watching a distant landscape turn and spin, was an instant recipe for vertigo. I¡¯ve mostly gotten used to it now, and honestly, I appreciate the illusion.

    The city wasn¡¯t real, or at the very least, it was some sort of low-powered pocket dimension. If there actually were any people out there, driving in those cars, they were little more than robots created for the sense of realism. A sense of place was all that it was.

    My room, on the other hand, was designed with much more precision. No matter how many times I checked, I couldn¡¯t find anything that looked non-euclidian. There were a few spots in the house that had¡­ iffy physics, but the living room was pristine.

    That¡¯s probably because it¡¯s where I spend most of my time. The room was a square, and was quite spacious. It wasn¡¯t like a mansion or anything, but a proper living room. On the two walls beside me were cabinets of nice china and lavender flowers. They even got the smell right, to my surprise. There were also vines growing on the opposite wall, which I trim every few days.

    In front of me, on my kotatsu, were sheets of paper, on which I did ¡°calligraphy¡±. It wasn¡¯t any actual language, I was just free-styling it. Most took a rounded shape, with several segments and variations in the lines, as well as smaller sub-shapes and artistic motifs. Oh, stroke width was important too.

    When I first started, I didn¡¯t think about stroke width at all.

    It¡¯s obvious to say, but the harder you push your pin, the more large and bold your strokes are. Pressing lightly makes them thinner. I knew that of course, I¡¯m not quite that dumb. But I never considered it an important part of my process for a surprisingly long time. It wasn¡¯t until I was looking back over my very first batch of 1,000 sheets that I noticed it. They were so wildly varying in their widths, but I didn¡¯t notice it at the time. After my muscle memory was trained, strokes became more uniform.

    But really, when I found those sheets with haphazard, chaotic strokes, I fell in love. How could I have not noticed something so obvious? And so, after that, I began intentionally trying to recreate that effect. I considered deeply my options for the texture of each individual line. And some of these sheets had thousands! Just as the shapes and meaning of the characters were subject to variations on theme and motif, now the lines were too. I consider this the beginning of my ¡°Baroque¡± period.This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

    There are (currently) seven more periods that I¡¯d love to talk about, but I¡¯ll save them for another time. Right now, I want to go take a bath. Suddenly, an annoying guy with red hair appeared in front of me.

    ¡°So, how are you adjusting? It looks like it¡¯s been around eight months since you arrived.¡±

    ¡°I dunno if I could consider this ¡®adjusting¡¯ anymore, I¡¯ve been here forever now.¡±

    ¡°Trust me, you¡¯re still adjusting. You probably will be for the next one to two hundred years.¡±

    Hearing that made an electric shiver down my spine. My human brain wasn¡¯t used to thinking about time in those kinds of large numbers. I¡¯ve been living here almost as long as I had lived in my home in the mortal world¡ªand I would continue to live here for 9,999 more years¡­ rounded down.

    A deep, thundering demon voice echoed from the portal Choronzon was standing in front of.

    ¡°HAVE YOU GIVEN HER THE PRESENT YET, M¡¯LORD?¡±

    ¡°Shut up! You ALWAYS do this!¡±

    He must have noticed my eyes perk up a bit at the sudden voices. After being in the exact same place doing the exact same things for eight months, the thought of any new stimuli was exciting.

    ¡°Present? For me?¡± I inquired with hesitated hope. It was probably dumb for me to not suspect some sort of horrible, ironic curse being put on me. They¡¯re still demons at the end of the day, no matter how toothless they may seem.¡±

    (Pretty damn toothless, for the record.)

    With absolutely zero fanfare, Choronzon appeared in my room.

    ¡°Last time you did this, you arrived in a burst of fire.¡±

    ¡°I just wasn¡¯t feeling it anymore, after the surprise was spoiled. Sorry¡­¡±

    ¡±No, actually, I was thanking you.¡±

    ¡°Nevermind the theatrics. I come bearing a gift!¡±

    Choronzon, who seems as powerful as an archduke of all demonkind, knelt before me with a flourish (despite the theatrics he neverminded.) For a moment, that made me feel like I was his superior in some twisted way¡ªbut more than showing genuine respect, I think he was just trying to entertain himself.

    ¡°I was recently alerted by my informant that you have always had a¡­ peculiar style of dress. I was told that a so-called ¡®yellow hoodies¡¯ is quite integral to your sense of self. At first, I refused giving it to you; for fear that it could upset the balance of your beautiful little terrarium due to too much foreign material. But, after some convincing, I feel that your good behavior deserves a reward worthy of being flexible. Taken directly taken from your old living place, I¡¯ve moved it into your current closet. I hope you enjoy wearing it. I¡¯ll check up on you in another year or two.¡±

    And just like that, he was gone as unceremoniously as he had arrived.

 Chapter 59 - Seabird

    My wardrobe, before this, almost exclusively contained things that were something like a cross between silky gowns and fluffy bath robes. They''re a bit loose-fitting, not so much "clothes" in the traditional sense, but just something to cover my body with. Actually, maybe that''s what "clothes in a traditional sense" means? Either way, the garments themselves give off a traditional vibe, but I''m not sure what tradition. The colors are pretty and pastel, and the patterns they''re adorned with are sometimes surprisingly intricate. I think they may have been inspired equally by Hinduist mandalas and maternity dresses from Goodwill. They''re all in pastel colors, with emphasis on minty greens and gentle pinks, to fit the general vibe of the whole place. There aren''t really any boldly colored fabrics¡­ except for a nostalgic yellow hoodie.

    When I yanked it out, I could fully see what it was: a bright yellow hoodie. On it was a sticky note that read "Sorry, forgot to give this back to you -CHOEY".

    It was a shock to see my old hoodie back. I imagine I felt emotions similar to what an archaeologist feels when discovering a perfectly-intact fossil. It was like my old life was sending me a pristine memo, maybe as a reminder to not forget who I was in the past. It was surprising, yes, but not the most surprising part.

    In the middle pocket was my cell phone.

    Without even the slightest hesitation, I turned on the screen. There was my lock screen background of Leo, just like always. My swipe password still worked, and let me into the home screen. This was really my phone. My gallery was still intact. The apps on it seemed to work, though there wasn''t any internet, so most were useless. The time read 6:32 AM, which would have been an unfathomable time to be awake back in my old life. Since there''s no day or night here, I just sleep and wake up whenever. Then I saw the battery: 44%.

    Nothing here used electricity. There were no cables, no wires, no plugs, no outlets. If this thing dies on me, it''s gone. That''s okay, I guess I can ration the remaining life out through the next ten thousand years... Or, I could ask Choronzon for some accommodations.

    And then, though it wasn''t initially startling, I felt the familiar sensation of the phone vibrating in my hand. I got a notification. It''s been a while since that''s been part of my life, and yet it was still deeply ingrained into my muscle memory to check what it was. That''s when my heart momentarily skipped a beat, and I felt the adrenaline sweats poking at my pores.

    It was a text. From Rose.

    It turned my stomach to even think about reading it, but my fingers moved faster than my brain.

    "Don''t tell him I smuggled this to you, dipshit. He has no idea what a phone is, and for your sake, you should keep it that way."Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

    How? How the fuck? Those were the questions in my mind, so those were the ones I sent her.

    "How what? How does your SMS still work? I put a sigil on your SIM card. It took a lot of effort to get the little details right. It took like five hours."

    Well, I guess that was one of my questions, but it wasn''t the question. How did I even get this stuff back at all? That''s what I asked her.

    "Oh, I just grabbed one of your hoodies from your closet and asked Choronzon to give it to you. I slipped the phone inside."

    So you can just... talk to him?

    "Yeah, did you forget? I was the one who hooked you up with him to begin with. Just another thing on the list of stuff you haven''t thanked me for yet."

    Thank you? For this? I''m literally in hell.

    "For now. Don''t worry about your ten thousand year sentence or whatever. Just hang in there a little longer, and we''ll get you out."

    My phone kept buzzing with more notifications, but I couldn''t bother to check them. I was just lying back, staring at the ceiling in a daze. This last 10 minutes was already more mental stimulation than I''ve had for a long time. I didn''t know how to process any of it. It was like my old self was trying to crawl out of the new self I''ve been thrust into.

    I didn¡¯t know what to do but to try and sleep it off.

    My bed here is low to the ground, but not completely on the floor. The sheets were a baby blue, and quite comfortable. They were the thin and cool kind, not the warm and fuzzy kind. It was just one sheet, covering a mattress, and then a yellow blanket on top. I think it was weighted. Or maybe my muscles had just atrophied from being in the Circle of Sloth for too long, and everything feels weighted now. I don¡¯t need to eat or use the restroom, so I doubt I need exercise either.

    Originally, I found it hard to sleep with just one blanket. I wasn¡¯t cold at night, the temperature is always more or less perfect. I never notice it unless I make it a point to do so. It might not even be real in this world, and I just create it in my head. The warmth was fine, but I missed the little cocoon of blankets I used to make. I liked the feeling of being pressed down by comfort. It was like being surrounded by calmness. This new bedding didn¡¯t fulfill that in the slightest, originally. But as I slept, night after night, and let go of the past¡ªI could feel the weight of this new blanket. It wasn¡¯t nearly as heavy as what I had grown accustomed to, so it felt light as a feather originally. But day after day, it grew heavier. And now, after months, I can¡¯t imagine adding any more weight. It wasn¡¯t actually getting heavier, or changing in any way. I was the one who was changing. By letting go of all the stimulation that those seven blankets gave me, my mind recalibrated, and I became more in-tune with my physical sensations. It was a subtle thing I appreciated, though in the grand scheme of things, it doesn¡¯t really matter.

    Flopped in the bed, I felt the familiar sensation of sleep taking over my body. I was going to say it felt like I was shutting down, neuron by neuron, but it didn¡¯t feel like anything. If going to sleep felt like something, you¡¯d be awake, not asleep. I expected I¡¯d jolt up in a shock, remembering my newly-recovered phone. It never happened. I was shocked at how easily I cast it out of my mind¡ªor rather, out of my attention. There was no adrenaline, no anxiety, no dread. It was like it never even happened.

    But it did happen.

    Tomorrow, I¡¯ll have to deal with it.

 Chapter 60 - I Cant See You, But I See What Youre Saying

    I woke up to 99+ unread texts. As per our tradition, I didn¡¯t read any of them before writing a response.

    ¡°Sorry, I was sleeping. Did you say anything important?¡±

    ¡°You should listen when you¡¯re being spoken to. If you wanna get out of this place, pay attention. You¡¯ve gotta draw a sigil using ink on paper, and then concentrate on it until your focus burns through¡ªlike a magnifying glass under the sun. That¡¯ll create a portal back to your house, where I¡¯ve set up the other end of the ritual. I¡¯ve attached an image of what it should look like. If it doesn¡¯t work, try making another one; focusing on the details. It might take some time. But time is all you have, right?¡±

    ¡°You might be surprised at my recently-acquired calligraphy skills. Something like this would be easy to recreate. Not to brag, but I¡¯ve gotten really good at this kind of thing.¡±

    ¡°Sounds good, this should be a piece of cake for you. Let me know when you¡¯re finished, and I¡¯ll concentrate on my side while you do yours.¡±

    I laid back on the floor, similar to yesterday. I never thought I¡¯d be able to get back home, but now, the door was swinging wide open. I could have my old life back. I could cuddle Leo while I watched TV, day after day. I¡¯d have to get a job again, but after so many months of doing nothing, it actually sounded a little exciting. Hell, the start of anything was starting to excite me. How long had it been since I got to eat ice cream? Or since I got to play a video game? Or even listen to music? Real life started to sound like a wonderland. If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

    My hand hesitated and trembled, struggling to pick my phone back up. I fiddled around with it, swiping back and forth across the home screen meaninglessly. I was stalling, but in truth, I knew there was only one thing to do. I opened up my texts with Rose again. For the first time, I was tempted to read the seven or so paragraphs she sent since my last message. Not that I really cared what she was saying, my mind just wanted to do anything but what I was about to do. Every part of my body was tense, begging me to stop my fingers from touching the screen. But I used the little willpower I had to keep going.

    Every tap on the screen felt like the tip of a knife digging into my fingers. The pain was enough to stop my breath entirely. To an outsider, this would have seemed insane. Why would I continue to tap the screen, sending jolts of neigh-unbearable pain rattling down my nervous system? To answer that question, the outsider would have to know a little something about language. Each tap on the phone equated to one character being printed on the screen; and more importantly, on Rose¡¯s screen. Multiple characters placed together in a sequence is known as a ¡°sentence¡± made of ¡°words.¡± When they¡¯re seen by another human, their seemingly-random sequence turns into meaning. The interesting part is that there¡¯s no way to turn this off. If you know the language, and you see the words, there¡¯s no stopping the thought they represent from entering your mind.

    I knew this well. In fact, Rose taught it to me. All those years of being subject to her parasitic language and life-draining infohazards made it inescapable. But no matter how bad she was, I was about to be worse. I don¡¯t think there was any other sequence of letters, in this language or any other, that could have caused as much mental damage as the ones I sent.

    ¡°I¡¯m not coming back. Sorry.¡±

    It was only after I had sent the message that I saw the blood smeared across the surface of the screen. The tips of my fingers had been cut to pieces.

 Chapter 61 - I Know I Could Do Without You

    For the months I had lived this hell, I had never been physically injured before. There had been plenty of stress, anxiety, and frustration¡ªbut never blood. I didn¡¯t know what to do about my fingers. My first thought was to apply a disinfectant, but this place seems so sterile that I doubt there are any bacteria to even infect me. But my fingers are bleeding down my palms and onto my wrists, dripping and staining the floor mat I was sitting on. I need to put pressure on the wounds so they¡¯ll close.

    I didn¡¯t have anything like gauze or bandages. The best I had was my calligraphy paper. I had no idea what else to do besides plant my aching fingertips down onto a stack of them. It made me a little nauseous to see the bright red liquid spread around my fingers, where the paper was readily soaking it up.

    I couldn¡¯t check my phone right now, even if I wanted to.

    Thoughts were flying through my mind about how Rose might have responded. Anger was a possibility, but confusion seemed even more likely. Why would I choose to stay in hell? Didn¡¯t I want my old life back? Didn¡¯t I want my old friends back?

    I thought the same thing. I was confused, but that¡¯s because I was forgetting the obvious. Even though I hated it, there was a very good reason for me to not return. It was just too obvious for me to notice. But it¡¯s how I ended up here in the first place. Love what you''re reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.

    No matter how much I loved my old home¡­ I didn¡¯t belong there.

    I was never supposed to be there in the first place.

    The thought of returning filled me with excitement, with pleasure. Even now I want to run back to my phone and tell her I¡¯ve changed my mind. But in truth, I haven¡¯t. I¡¯ve never felt more resolute about anything.

    This hell has grown weary on me. I¡¯m living every day almost entirely devoid of everything I loved the most about the world I grew up in. It¡¯s painful, at times. But through the frustration, and the lack of stimulation, I can see it.

    I can see myself reflected in it. This world was made for me, which is no exaggeration. I have no purpose. I¡¯ve never had a purpose. There¡¯s nothing I¡¯ve ever been supposed to do, nothing to achieve, nothing to spend my life working towards. What other place could I possibly belong?

    This place is perfectly purposeless.

    It¡¯s my home.

    Eventually, it seemed like my fingers had stopped bleeding. At least, they stopped hurting so bad. When I pulled my fingers off the now-sticky paper, the blood splatters didn¡¯t look at all like I had expected. It should have just been ten red splotches, but it wasn¡¯t. It took the shape of something much different.

 Chapter 62 - A Juxtaposition In Fate

    My fingertips were pretty much healed. I¡¯m pretty sure in real life, it would have taken longer. That¡¯s a bit of another indication I¡¯m not living where I used to, the rules are a little different here. That¡¯s also why the blood splotches on the paper are completely impossible.

    When I planted them on the paper, I didn¡¯t move them around at all. I held them flat, trying to apply steady pressure to close up the cuts. That would make it impossible for the splatters to take the shapes they did: strokes, curves, and with surprising detail. There was no doubt about it, these were some kind of words. They looked just like my mindless calligraphy. But it wasn¡¯t in any of my previous styles¡ªnot my ¡°pre-history¡± scribbling, nor my ¡°baroque-era¡± flair. This was wholly new.

    I don¡¯t know the language my blood was written in. I don¡¯t even know what language I write in. But I could sense some kind of meaning inside of it. The characters¡ªif I can call them that¡ªbrought to mind Chinese characters, but they weren¡¯t nearly so organized. Chinese characters fit into little boxes, where each one is discrete and has its own section of the paper belonging to it. These characters, though the strokes and radicals seemed reminiscent; they flowed freely across the page, onto and over one another, looping back with incredible topology. It was a masterpiece, honestly.

    My magnum opus, written in red ink.

    I heard my phone buzzing, over and over again. The battery must be getting very low, and when it dies, it dies. But that¡¯s okay. I can let that part of me die. That connection I had to the world is meaningful, but it was just a moment in time. A tiny fragment of the ten-thousand year life I will live here. Maybe, somewhere in those thousands of years, I¡¯ll regret my decision.

    I better not leave anything on the table. If I¡¯m going to say something, I have to say it now. I¡¯ll never have another chance.Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

    When I opened my texts with Rose yet again, there were endless walls of words. They were nonsensical, four-letter words, arranged in all caps.

    ¡°FIRM CASE DIVE PALM HALT LANE SHOP TEST DEAL DUCK GOLD PELE¡­¡±

    You get the picture. We¡¯re both pretty used to this by now. That¡¯s all my past life seemed to be, anyways; four-letter words with no purpose. But I needed to say something. If not for Rose, then for me.

    ¡°I don¡¯t really know what to tell you, other than I want to stay here. I know it¡¯s technically hell, but it¡¯s being very kind to me. It¡¯s accepting me. That¡¯s something I¡¯ve never felt before, a world that wants me to be in it. I don¡¯t want to live struggling anymore. I¡¯m going to miss you. Truly, I will. Despite everything, you¡¯re my friend. Tell Bunny, too. Give her a big hug for me. Please take care of Leo, too. You three can share my house and whatever¡¯s inside of it; I won¡¯t be needing it anymore.¡±

    Just as my message abruptly interrupted the endless wall of four-letter words, Rose responded with something equally jarring¡ªa message I understood.

    ¡°Are you serious? Is this really it? All this time¡­ I was trying to save you from this. Bunny and I both. Do you know how much we risked to save your life? And this is how it ends, with you throwing it away? What¡¯s the point? What was the point of anything we did for you?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m sorry, but there wasn¡¯t any point. There never was. It was always meaningless. I¡¯ve always been meaningless. I know you tried. You really, really tried. You wanted me to find a place in the world. You were willing to risk your own life to keep me safe there. It makes my heart warm. But this is always what was going to happen. We couldn¡¯t fight back forever. And even if we could¡­ I don¡¯t want to live fighting forever. I¡¯ve fought enough. Now I want to rest.¡±

    I sat staring glassy-eyed at my phone screen. Rose was an absurdly fast texter. If she wasn¡¯t responding, that means she didn¡¯t want to. Or maybe, she couldn¡¯t think of anything to say. It might be the very first time that¡¯s happened to her.

    I couldn¡¯t help but feel like she was now the one bleeding.

 Chapter 63 - Were You Crying?

    After several painful hours, Rose texted me back.

    ¡°Do what you want. Or, I guess in your case, continue not doing anything. But I need you to do something for me. I have one last burden to place on your shoulders.¡±

    I instinctively tensed. What was this going to be about? Is she trying to fuck with magic again? Is she going to threaten my tranquil little terrarium? I was filled with Rose-colored anxiety, but I decided I¡¯d do my best to hear her out. With my battery now on 8%, I¡¯d never get another chance.

    ¡°What do you want? This better not be a trick.¡±

    ¡°Don¡¯t worry, it is. I need you to draw a sigil. Not the one I sent you earlier, a new one.¡±

    She attached an image of a considerably simpler design. This one was a large circle with strange characters around the edges, and a diamond in the center. It looked easy enough to make, but what was going to happen if I did it?

    ¡°Rose, I want to trust you, but I¡¯m not sure that I can. Please, just let me be happy here.¡±

    ¡°Draw the sigil, and place it in another room. Close all the doors and windows inside of it, and don¡¯t go back in there for at least an hour.¡±

    ¡°Can¡¯t you at least tell me what¡¯s going to happen if I do? I know your intentions were always to help me, since the beginning. But you¡¯ve fucked me over too many times to count. You owe me that much.¡±

    ¡°I told you, I¡¯m sending you a burden. I¡¯m going to ruin your perfect peace. Let me have this one last laugh at your expense. Let me kick your sand castle, dance on your grave a little. I can¡¯t stand the idea of you getting exactly what you want. I know you intend to never speak to me again after this. Don¡¯t let all my efforts to keep you tethered to this stupid, painful world go to waste. If you can accept this one bit of trouble from me, I¡¯ll be satisfied. I¡¯ll call this whole thing a success. You owe me that much.¡±Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

    Despite the feeling in my chest that this very well may be the stupidest decision I ever make in my life, I picked up my brush.

    The sigil was very simple, it only took about ten minutes¡ªand most of that was just double-checking the image. By the time I was done, my phone was at 2%. It wouldn¡¯t last much longer, so I had to make sure I did it correctly. This was my last burden from Rose. I wanted to respect it.

    I did exactly as she said. I placed the paper with the sigil in a dark closet, and moved myself back to my main room. I picked up my phone, to let her know I was finished, and to tell her goodbye one last time.

    The battery was dead.

    When it didn¡¯t turn back on, the gravity of the situation hit me. Hard. That was my last connection out of hell. I¡¯m truly stuck here, now. Suddenly, these comforting walls felt claustrophobic. Did I really just let my one chance at survival slip through my fingers? What was I thinking? I¡¯ve just sentenced myself to ten thousand years in a glorified prison.

    But what¡¯s done is done. There¡¯s no turning back now. Not even if I wanted to, not ever again.

    It was finally over.

    Or at least, it felt like it, until I heard rustling from the closet.

    My breath hitched in my throat as I hesitantly inched closer to it.

    There was definitely something inside. Something that was moving.

    It took all the courage in my body to pull the door open.

    Inside of it was a stone-faced girl with baby blue hair and a familiar camo jacket, stuck in an awkward position against the wall and my clothes. She silently pleaded at me with her eyes to help get her unstuck.

    I tried my best, but I wasn¡¯t much help. It¡¯s hard to see through the tears.

 Chapter 64 - If Youre Worried That Youll Be Left Behind

    Bunny unceremoniously flopped out of the closet and onto the floor. Emotions like I had never felt before crashed through my body with the force of a tsunami. I was laughing, I was crying, I was a mess. I never thought I¡¯d see this face again.

    ¡°Mina, are you okay?,¡± she asked in a monotone voice. Definitely not the tone you¡¯d expect from someone who was just cast into hell by black magic. Or someone who just fell face-first out of a closet, for that matter.

    ¡°Bunny¡­ It¡¯s really you. You¡¯re really here?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m here.¡±

    ¡°Rose said she was sending me trouble¡­ I guess that does fit.¡±

    ¡°Rose said you can have me, as long as she gets to keep Leo.¡±

    As much as I loved my little grey fluffball, that was a trade I was willing to accept.

    ¡°I have so much I want to show you, Buns! But¡­ Are you really here..? Like, here here? F-Forever?¡±

    ¡°Yes.¡±

    A twinge of guilt shocked me. She didn¡¯t do anything to deserve being sent to hell, at least not for forever. This was something she did for me. I pulled her into the tightest bearhug I could, and continued to have my emotional meltdown.Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

    After a few hours, I had recovered. I spent the whole time showing her each and every of my calligraphy sheets. She didn¡¯t seem to care for them, but I didn¡¯t have anything else to show her. I was a bit panicked. There wasn¡¯t anything here to entertain her. There was nothing here for her. I was worried she would regret her decision.

    ¡°Mina.¡±

    ¡°Yeah?,¡± my voice shrieked out in anxiety.

    ¡°I¡¯m sorry.¡±

    ¡°Sorry¡­ For what?¡±

    My heart sank. I didn¡¯t want her to feel that way. Did she come here because she felt like she owed me something? No, no! This was all Rose¡¯s fault, Bunny didn¡¯t do a thing! How could this have happened?

    ¡°Sorry, I got your floor dirty.¡±

    Oh. I leaned over and saw little bits of dirt and ash around where she was sitting. Yeah, she did get it dirty.

    ¡°I guess interplanar travel is a bit messy. Let¡¯s get you a nice relaxing bath, okay? I have some bath bombs I think you¡¯ll like.¡±

    Peace.

    That was the only word that came to mind.

    After our extended, leisurely bath; I was using a brush to get the knots out of her hair, once again.

    ¡°Bunny¡­ I can¡¯t believe I haven¡¯t said it yet, but thank you. Thank you for coming to keep me company. I don¡¯t think there¡¯s any combination of words that could express how much this means to me¡­ I just hope that you don¡¯t regret staying here. I mean, ten thousand years is a really long time for a human. I don¡¯t even know how long it would be to a rabbit¡­¡±

    I trailed off, noticing she had fallen asleep, her bare back leaning against me. I found myself whispering words I could have never fathomed before now.

    ¡°Thank you, Rose.¡±

 Chapter 65 - ã¶ãã¶ã éœ‡ãˆã‚‹æ°´ã§

    After Mina messaged me for the last time, I threw my phone at the wall. The glass shattered and fell all over her couch. I smashed a few vases and ripped some cabinet doors off their hinges for good measure. Leo came down from upstairs to see what was happening. I swiftly picked him up by the scruff of his neck and barreled out the front door with him in tow. He was the only one left I could salvage. Mina, Bunny, even Biologist¡ªall gone.

    Every single pact with the devil I made, every minor demon I could conjure, every dove I slaughtered. Mina got exactly what she wanted, so in a sense, I was successful.

    But it didn¡¯t go to plan.

    Nothing did.

    While running down the sidewalk towards my apartment, I felt a horrible, nauseous sensation that I knew well. It¡¯s obvious when a demon is looking directly at you, but even more obvious when there are dozens of them.

    Magic isn¡¯t free. It comes on loan, with a price. My creditors were coming to collect.

    Before a word could even escape my mouth in my fear, I vomited neon purple sludge onto the ground. I felt myself choking as tiny, grey demon hands writhed their way up my throat and out of my mouth. I fell to my knees, unable to do anything.

    That was the first demon coming to get its payment. But far, far from the last.

    The whites of my eyes started spewing onto the pavement. My spine contorted and twisted, and my ribs grew spiral branches that pierced out of my chest and my clothes. Then, the entire left half of my body vanished¡ªit was being pulled into another plane. Stolen story; please report.

    I wasn¡¯t even a human anymore, I was too warped. My organs and biological processes completely stopped, but I could still think. I could still feel. Even though my neck was bent at a 90 degree angle, and my skull was being flipped-inside out, and my sinuses being violated by tendrils, I was still alive. And I would stay alive.

    They couldn¡¯t kill me. They were trying, desperately, to wring me dry of anything I had left. But I had nothing. Nothing but Leo.

    I thought that a long time ago, Leo had escaped from my apartment. Now I know it was Bunny who smuggled him out, because she was worried I¡¯d kill him like all those doves. If she just would have said something, I would have told her the truth.

    Leo is a guardian spirit. You can¡¯t die while he¡¯s around you. That¡¯s the only reason Mina made it so long.

    He gently licked an indiscernible part of my malformed, writhing body¡ªto comfort me. He was telling me that everything will be okay soon. I trusted him. Deeply.

    My skin, or what was left of it, began to crack. With loud pops, huge fractures dug through my body. It started with what used to be my legs, then moved up higher with a frightening velocity. I was in pain¡ªagony, even¡ªbut I wasn¡¯t afraid.

    With a horrible plume of ash and smoke, everything exploded into a homogenous grey dust. And yet, as the wall of smoke drifted away in the wind, my body remained lying in the pile of ash. All the horrific transformations were gone. I looked exactly as I did this morning, just a little¡­ ashier.

    Just like that, it was over. I had survived my first round of demonic debt collection. I hugged Leo, thanking him for saving me yet again. He just wriggled out of my arms like cats tend to.

    These attacks were only going to get worse. We had to go into hiding, no way around it. Sure, I¡¯d live, but my psyche would be demolished in no time if I had to go through that every day.

    I had a vague idea of where we were going. It was like a silver palace, hung by chains in an abyss. It was a secluded part of the cosmos, one that is often regarded as a prison, but I think that¡¯s a matter of perspective. Just ask Mina.

    One day, when I find her again, I¡¯ll give her a piece of my mind.

    But that¡¯s a story for a different time. You have a happy ending to get back to.