Thrall

[[Return to Main Menu|start1]] <h3>About</h3> An interactive story about vampires made for the <a class="outsideLink" href="https://itch.io/jam/gaming-like-its-1929">Gaming Like It's 1929</a> and <a class="outsideLink" href="https://itch.io/jam/shufflecomp-2024">Shufflecomp 2024/2025</a> game jams in two weeks. Around 5000 words. Two endings. <a class="linkReplaced removedOnClick" identifier="contentNotes">Click for content notes.</a>Personality death, mental manipulation, violence, allusions to nonconsensual activities and NSFW acts, suicide. No explicit content. Author's Note: I'm not entirely satisfied with the story. The writing could use more work. But I don't have the time or energy to improve it at this point, so it remains in its current state. <h3>Shufflecomp Songs</h3> In Shufflecomp 2024, participants were given a playlist of eight songs, each submitted by another participant, and had to make a game based on at least one of them. The songs I used are below. <details> <summary>Undead by Marcus Whale</summary> <a class="outsideLink" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cuHzxj1uptI">Link</a> Submission notes: Comes from a concept album about a vampire and his familiar. In this final track, the vampire has turned the familiar and died. The familiar-turned-vampire sees his master/lover's face in dozens of men over the centuries. <blockquote> The sanctuary’s white columns Each with a letter Spelling his name Like the cubicle door - 0 4 3 1 3 0 1 0 9 1 - its numerology, some measure of God Like how you let the car run until you’re smog And I’m the distance And from afar, the glint ricochets Every surface curved so the light could be from anywhere. A lens is part residue, part threshold And this is where I find you, limpid, crystal Limpid, crystal Limpid, crystal Limpid, crystal You have his mouth Talk with his tongue Can I call you dead? Limpid crystal Limpid crystal Limpid crystal Limpid crystal Bathe in the milk Of your becoming Can I call you undead? Limpid crystal Limpid crystal Limpid crystal Limpid crystal Gouge out a way Right through the skull Can I call you dead? Limpid crystal Limpid crystal Limpid crystal Limpid crystal See yourself dead </blockquote> </details> <details> <summary>Fingers Crossed by Agnes</summary> <a class="outsideLink" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWrJq9cbRIE">Link</a> <blockquote> [Chorus] I got my fingers crossed You're not a holy ghost Too good to be true Can't take my eyes off you My fingers crossed Your heart is the answer Too good to be true Can't take my eyes off you [Verse 1] Be in love You're already close to me I can't fight it or deny it no more But it seems I find it so hard to feel Is it real or is it just make believe? Oh, oh, oh Are you that somebody? Are you? [Repeat chorus] [Verse 2] Sonny boy I'm rolling in the deep I can't fight it or deny it no more Like a dream My mind is spinning out of control Is it real or is it just make believe? Oh, oh, oh Are you that somebody? Are you? [Repeat chorus x4] </blockquote> </details> <details> <summary>Heat Lightning by Mitski</summary> <a class="outsideLink" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvIkcN5YMH4">Link</a> <blockquote> [Verse 1] Heat lightning running outside the window I've laid awake since one and now it's four o'clock Though I've held on, can't carry it much longer On the ceiling dancing are the things all come and gone [Chorus] And there's nothing I can do, not much I can change So I give it up to you, I hope that's okay There's nothing I can do, not much I can change I give it up to you, I surrender [Verse 2] Heat lightning, watch it from my doorstep Sleeping eyelid of the sky flutters in a dream Well, I've held on, but feel a storm approaching Trees are swaying in the wind like sea anemones [Chorus] And there's nothing I can do, not much I can change Can I give it up to you? Would that be okay? So I give it up to you, I hope that's okay There's nothing I can do, not much I can change I give it up to you, I surrender There's nothing I can do, not much I can change I give it up to you, I surrender </blockquote> </details> <details> <summary>Birds Falling Out Of The Sky by Lauren Bousfield</summary> <a class="outsideLink" href="https://deathbombarc.bandcamp.com/track/birds-falling-out-of-the-sky">Link</a> <blockquote> The world is full of loss: a ward, a furnace lining Heart stuffed with ashes - a carousel Are you ever really there are you always fucking scared And there’s no audience here - stop crying The moon is beautiful and I want to see you hope Where am I buried It’s okay if you didn’t know what to do and the world didn’t have room for you We make so much from how little we have It’s hard to imagine growing old and contented Shouldn’t take the form of a song The landscape changes every fucking dayaching everyday It’s okay if you didn’t know what to do And if the world didn’t have room for you we make so much from how little we have The barometers of freedom are mostly ads And the language is caught up in everything I don’t want for us Do you see your trauma in a narrative? I wish you didn’t yeah I wish you’d stop naming it Putting borders around it Branding it Weaponizing it I miss wanting to go outside I don’t want to do this Hope </blockquote> </details> <details> <summary>Dance Dance Dance by Marta Acuna</summary> <a class="outsideLink" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AeJ66lAf8s0">Link</a> Submission notes: disco, baby! / sweaty, electric, pulsing / bursting with joy & goodwill towards your fellow human / whirling around like one of the facets on a disco ball / dj play my song / mesmerising beat / riot of colour / the neon demon (2016) No lyrics. </details> <details> <summary>System by Shook</summary> <a class="outsideLink" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=my66TH02r8U">Link</a> <blockquote> Transmission Transmission The system in control We have lost control We need to shut it down Turn it back around The system in control We have lost control We need to shut it down We need to shut it down The system in control </blockquote> </details> <hr/> [[Return to Main Menu|start1]] <% $(function () { mainScript.globalScript(); }); %>

[[Return to Main Menu|start1]] All visual and audio assets used are public domain. Lyrics from the some of the songs I was assigned for Shufflecomp were used in the text. See the [[About|about]] section for more. No generative AI technologies were used. <details> <summary>Image Credits</summary> Candles originally from <a class="outsideLink" href="https://codepen.io/Akash_Ramani/pen/PoKEqBm">Akash Ramani</a> on Codepen under the MIT License, modified by me. Other gifs were originally public domain videos and photos found on Youtube, Wikimedia Commons, Pexels and Unsplash, which were then edited with <a class="outsideLink" href="https://github.com/kadw108/image-converter">my image converter program</a>. All visual assets in this game are public domain. Assets used include but are not limited to: <ul> <li>Frame from <a class="outsideLink" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmB60kIFRbI&list=PLC-jgCpswnLN5iTz1skm_5I7LT3elf-Eb&index=71&t=153s">A Ride Down Broadway in 1929</a>, a 1929 film (Youtube)</li> <li><a class="outsideLink" href="https://dolanmaxwell.com/content/feature/104/artworks-10437-gan-kolski-the-l-1929/">The "L" by Gan Kolski</a>, a 1929 lithograph</li> <li><a class="outsideLink" href="https://americanart.si.edu/artwork/allen-street-14957">Allen Street by Louis Lozowick</a>, a 1929 lithograph</li> <li><a class="outsideLink" href="https://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.146030.html#inscription">Untitled (New York scene) by Roger Buck</a>, a 1929 woodcut</li> <li><a class="outsideLink" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVMDg_vv-3o">"smoke, ascending, haze" - Free Public Domain Video (Youtube)</a></li> <li><a class="outsideLink" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsDCz_JTpXA">Vintage Nightclub and Dancers, stock film footage public domain (Youtube)</a></li> <li><a class="outsideLink" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Victoria_Harbour_skyscrapers.jpg">Victoria Harbour skyscrapers.jpg (Wikimedia Commons)</a></li> <li><a class="outsideLink" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:TAHIR_SHAH_COLLAGE_3.jpg">TAHIR SHAH COLLAGE 3.jpg (Wikimedia Commons)</a></li> </ul> </details> <details> <summary>Sound Credits</summary> All sounds used are public domain. Sources are mainly freesound.org and <a class="outsideLink" href="https://loyaltyfreakmusic.com/">Rrrrrose (Loyalty Freak Music)</a>. <ul> <li>Main menu: <a class="outsideLink" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ta3Etc8IIxE">Excerpt from the soundtrack of Brothers</a>, a 1929 German silent film that is public domain in both the US and Germany.</li> <li>Story: <a class="outsideLink" href="https://chezmonplaisir.bandcamp.com/track/youre-magic">You're Magic - Rrrrose</a></li> <li>Story: <a class="outsideLink" href="https://chezmonplaisir.bandcamp.com/track/i-am-the-spider-on-the-ceiling">i am the spider on the ceiling - Rrrrose</a></li> <li>Story: <a class="outsideLink" href="https://chezmonplaisir.bandcamp.com/track/4-in-the-afternoon">4 in the Afternoon - Rrrrose</a></li> <li>Story: <a class="outsideLink" href="https://chezmonplaisir.bandcamp.com/track/exploding-head-revelation">Exploding Head Revelation - Rrrrose</a></li> </ul> </ul> </details> [[Return to Main Menu|start1]] <% $(function () { mainScript.globalScript(); }); %>

<div id="container" style="text-align: center"> <h3>...LOADING...</h3> [[CONTINUE|start1]] </div> <% $(function () { mainScript.globalScript(); mainScript.preload( ['assets/9bedroom.gif', 'assets/9car.gif', 'assets/9church.gif', 'assets/9city.gif', 'assets/9dangersB.gif', 'assets/9disco.gif', 'assets/9question.gif', 'assets/9smoke.gif', 'assets/9stall.gif', 'assets/alternate.gif', 'assets/border1.png', 'assets/border2.png', 'assets/border3.png', 'assets/bordera.png', 'assets/continue.gif', 'assets/continue2.gif', 'assets/mall.gif', 'assets/postdead.gif', 'assets/smoke.gif', 'assets/surgery.gif'], () => {} ); }); %>

<div class="coolBorder" style="position: absolute; text-align: center; top: 5%; left: 10%; width: 80%; padding: 20px;"> <h3>Thrall</h3> Game by <a href="https://kanderwund.neocities.org">KADW</a> | v2.0.0 [[Begin|mall0]] | [[About|about]] | [[Credits|credits]] </div> <% $(function () { mainScript.globalScript(); mainScript.createMarquee(["Thrall"]); window.story.history = []; window.story.state.visitNumber = 1; }); %>

Picture: Chains, whips and screaming, as in the popular imagination. Visions of being driven to your knees and weeping before the lash. Was it more subtle than that? Perhaps there was [[intoxication|alternate1.1]]. A [[charm|charm1]]. <% $(function () { mainScript.globalScript(); mainScript.createMarquee(["This could have happened"]); }); %>

Something in your drink. Hard to think now. Everything is blurred. Your body weak, as if your will has evaporated from the flesh. You've forgotten how to move. You've forgotten how to speak. When you try, the muscles do not respond. You are as an empty vessel, a living corpse, a stiff body lying prone on your [[deathbed|alternate2]]. <% $(function () { mainScript.globalScript(); mainScript.createMarquee(["This could have happened"]); mainScript.createMouseoverMarquee([["To speak", "To scream"] ]); }); %>

You never did anything like this when taking blood. You lack the inclination. So would HE? Did HE? This is what they want you to believe. Is it [[true|alternate3]]? <% $(function () { mainScript.globalScript(); mainScript.createMarquee(["Buried alive under history"]); }); %>

Perhaps it is true. Perhaps you did scream, but your words were swallowed up by the oncoming storm and the soundproof walls. Perhaps there were restraints. Imagine them if you care to: thin but solid manacles chaining you down. Put them on your wrists. Your ankles too, if you prefer. Then HE approached and pressed a bottle of blood to your lips. [[Made you drink|alternate4]]. There was screaming and coughing. Choking on foreign liquid. Poison through your veins. A poisonous kiss. <% $(function () { mainScript.globalScript(); mainScript.createMarquee(["This could have happened"]); mainScript.createMouseoverMarquee([["You would not have recognized HIM as HIM"], ["Or a cup", "Or a chalice"] ]); }); %>

Or perhaps you were too hazy to deny HIM the satisfaction, and there was no struggle when HE [[bent close|alternate5]]. <% $(function () { mainScript.globalScript(); mainScript.createMarquee(["This could have happened"]); }); %>

The blood entered your throat, seeping through you, and you felt yourself [[dissolve|heaven0]]. <% $(function () { mainScript.globalScript(); mainScript.createMarquee(["This could have happened"]); }); %>

Wind and darkness outside. A drizzle: needles of water over streets choked with traffic and smog. [[You went with HIM.|bedroom1]] <% $(function () { mainScript.globalScript(); mainScript.createMarquee(["Sleeping eyelid of the sky flutters in a dream"]); }); %>

Balcony light. Warm bulb glow. Wind over the distant hum of city streets. Palm trees trembling in the parkway. You leaned on the railing and witnessed distant flashes of light playing above the skyline. Spires pierce polluted air—above them the storm. Above you [[HIS presence|bedroom2]] looming, a living corpse. A forgotten conversation was held, a death-cool hand placed on your shoulder. <% $(function () { mainScript.globalScript(); mainScript.createMarquee(["Heat lightning, watch it from my doorstep", "Sleeping eyelid of the sky flutters in a dream", "Feel a storm approaching", "Trees are swaying in the wind like sea anemones"]); }); %>

Lying in the bedroom, a softness. Sweeping silence and the storm outside muffled by glass and distance. HE approached for the kiss. [[Bent over you, undead.|bedroom2.5]][[Bent over you, undead.|bedroomC]] <% $(function () { mainScript.globalScript(); if (window.visited("charm1") > 0) { document.querySelector(".charm").classList.remove("hidden"); } else { document.querySelector(".nocharm").classList.remove("hidden"); } mainScript.createMarquee(["Though I've held on, can't carry it much longer", "On the ceiling dancing are all the things come and gone"]); mainScript.createMouseoverMarquee([["Holy ghost"] ]); }); %>

HE approached and you allowed HIM, the way a priest bends the knee before divine decree. [[HE pressed HIS lips to you|bedroom3]]. HE took and sanctified you, made you anew. You were as smoke, you flew up and outward; you were as a vessel, filled; HIS will sang through you like the sea. <% $(function () { mainScript.globalScript(); mainScript.createMarquee(["I give it up to you"]); mainScript.createMouseoverMarquee([["I surrender"] ]); }); %>

Consider the human as container, which imperfectly holds together such disparate concepts as mind, heart, body and soul; the human as container, which can be opened and filled with whatever is proper, whatever is loving, whatever is right. The kiss plants a seed at your neck which blossoms in your brain. It forges the bond that links two together, forever, unto death and beyond. In this, everything you had ever wanted was granted. You became HIS recipient; you became the message HE sent to the recipient; you became the paper on which HIS message was written. The abjuration of self was [[complete|bedroom4]]. <% $(function () { mainScript.globalScript(); mainScript.createMarquee(["Surrender"]); mainScript.createMouseoverMarquee([ ["righteous grace", "gracious righteousness"] ]); }); %>

The umber haze of heat lightning. Shadow and light melding together. Photographic film quality. A softness. This is the dream you have yearned for. Now it has [[descended upon you|heaven0]]. <% $(function () { mainScript.globalScript(); mainScript.createMarquee(["Forever and"]); mainScript.createMouseoverMarquee([ ["Is it?"] ]); }); %>

Perhaps a part of you remained, buried deep, remained aware of the charm. Inner instincts screaming to run. Get up. Climb out the window. But HE looked at you, and something of your consciousness found itself [[trapped in HIS eyes|eyes1]].

Perhaps HIS charm was [[laid upon you|charm2]] the moment you saw HIM, though you didn't yet realize it. You only recognized HIM as something holy, descended from a higher plane. What HIS physical features were then are lost to you, drowned in that memory of first love. For vampires, deceiving the mind is natural as drawing breath, and HE was always a keen hand at clouding others' senses. HE could have looked like any man. Perhaps <a class="cycle" choices='["broad-shouldered and confident, with a dazzling array of piercings and a glittering gold watch", "boyish and ethereal, appearing almost younger than you, but for the uncanny age in those eyes", "the spitting image of an enterprising businessman, tall and severe, in a grim black suit"]'></a>. Vampires cannot be photographed, and of the few small portraits you have, none look the same. HIS true face is unknown to you. <% $(function () { mainScript.globalScript(); mainScript.createMarquee(["Forever and"]); }); %>

In HIS presence, the rest of the world seemed to dissolve into smoke and drift away. You were already lost, then, without knowing it. You would have let HIM do anything. Lapped from HIS hand. It is a curious effect of the thrall that your memories of what HE actually said and did are so vague. The dominant emotion overrides all. With HIS every word an idol's kiss, a lover's caress. Hang onto HIS every action. [[Follow HIM home.|bedroom0]] <% $(function () { mainScript.globalScript(); mainScript.createMarquee(["Forever and"]); mainScript.createMouseoverMarquee([ ["You did later", "Sipped rich vermillion from HIS palm"], ["love"] ]); }); %>

<h4>[[<% print(window.story.state.visitNumber) %>. The Dangers // 19XX-21XX|dangers1.1]]</h4> <% $(function () { mainScript.globalScript(); mainScript.createMarquee(["Of Vampirism"]); window.story.state.visitNumber++; }); %>

Never a shortage of agitated news articles, studies, television ads, speeches read off teleprompters, blogposts and internet comments. An age-old furor carried on wind and radio waves. <blockquote>It is true that vampires do not age, but they are relegated to a pitiful half-life. They must shirk the direct touch of the sun, for it burns them. They must avoid silver and holy water. They can never see themselves in reflections, photos or videos. They must subsist on the [[blood|dangers1.15]] of others, at least once per month, and can consume nothing else. They find it impossible to experience human pleasures. They deserve our sympathy.</blockquote> <% $(function () { mainScript.globalScript(); mainScript.createMarquee(["Transmission"]); }); %>

<blockquote>Bud, lemme tell you, vampirism is here to kill, steal, and destroy. Trying to live with it is like trying to live with cancer and calling that the natural state of affairs. It's a disease. What do you do with diseases? You [[cure|dangers1.2]] them. Vampires are reduced to skulking around in the margins of society, sucking other people dry. I pity them. You know, every vampire first suffered under another's hand.</blockquote> <% $(function () { mainScript.globalScript(); mainScript.createMarquee(["We need to shut it down", "Turn it back around"]); }); %>

<blockquote>Vampires? They are dangerous beasts, in possession of a supernatural charisma which they use to enthrall their hapless victims. The condition of thralldom is one wherein the will becomes subordinate to the other. It is a cruel slavery. Once overwritten, your emotional centers are no longer entirely under your own control. Thoughts and sentiment, memory and personality, all the things that comprise a human soul, go under the other's [[command|dangers2]].</blockquote> <% $(function () { mainScript.globalScript(); mainScript.createMarquee(["We need to shut it down"]); }); %>

<blockquote>They prey on the [[weak and lowly|lowly1]], and make of them marionettes.</blockquote> <% $(function () { mainScript.globalScript(); mainScript.createMarquee(["Shut it down"]); }); %>

<h4>[[<% print(window.story.state.visitNumber) %>. You chased HIM long after HE was gone // 202X-212X|death2]]</h4> <% $(function () { mainScript.globalScript(); mainScript.createMarquee(["The world is full of loss: a ward, a furnace lining", "Heart stuffed with ashes - a carousel"]); window.story.state.visitNumber++; }); %>

HE died venturing into sunlight. A choice made the [[same day|death2.5]] HE turned you. The day you became full-fledged was the day HE decided to disappear. <% $(function () { mainScript.globalScript(); mainScript.createMarquee(["Where am I buried"]); }); %>

Search your memories for the reason and find nothing. Did HE ever tell you? Were you unworthy of being told? You do not remember existing as a confidant, or someone to exchange words with. Any conversations you did have are sundered away. Your relationship never needed words; it was beyond them. You remember seeing HIS body vaporize in the direct sun. HE allowed you that: the privilege of witnessing how the light seared away skin and blood until nothing was left. Through the shaded window glass you saw HIM dissolve. [[Surely that was a decision made from kindness.|death3]] <% $(function () { mainScript.globalScript(); mainScript.createMarquee(["Where am I buried"]); mainScript.createMouseoverMarquee([ ["governed by love", "by the push and pull of blood", "sweeter than words"], ["Was it?"]]); }); %>

In HIS absence, you live like a ghost. HIS money sustains you, supplemented by what you achieve with your own powers. To use it is to keep yourself protected, safe in this [[bubble|death3.5]] that separates you from the rest of humanity. Vampires are known as isolated and asocial individuals, night dwellers and hermits. You, too, are a hermit, and your connections to the outside world shriveled with HIS passing. There is no need for others when HIS memory alone is enough. <% $(function () { mainScript.globalScript(); mainScript.createMarquee(["Holy ghost", "Where am I buried"]); mainScript.createMouseoverMarquee([["Gathered over how many centuries?", "You were never told HIS age"], ["Supralegal activities"], ["Had shriveled long before HIS passing"] ]); }); %>

Castles are for bygone eras; high-rise suites are now in vogue. You still inhabit HIS. An condominium whose furnishings were modern when purchased and became antiquated with the passage of time, whose mirrors never reflect you. In HIS absence, the long halls became cavernous, the rooms too high and empty. If you could, you would weave together the lingering smoke of HIS being and bring it all back together into the shape of HIM. HE lives free in your heart. The tether connecting you will never snap, not even when HE has long dissolved into the toxic air, the deadly sunlight[[deadly sunlight|dangers1]]. But you cannot pull it and bring HIM back[[bring HIM back|postdeath0]]. <% $(function () { mainScript.globalScript(); if (window.visited("dangers1") > 0) { document.querySelectorAll(".dangers").forEach((el) => { el.classList.remove("hidden"); }); } else { document.querySelectorAll(".nodangers").forEach((el) => { el.classList.remove("hidden"); }); } mainScript.createMarquee(["Holy ghost", "The world didn't have room for you"]); mainScript.createMouseoverMarquee([ ["Mind", "Heart", "Soul"]]); }); %>

<h4>[[<% print(window.story.state.visitNumber) %>. Encounter // 197X|disco3]]</h4> <% $(function () { mainScript.globalScript(); mainScript.createMarquee(["Be in love"]); window.story.state.visitNumber++; }); %>

You were a ghost haunting the dancefloor, drifting through bars and discotheques, searching for that elusive love they said could be found in this world. The one and only dream you had, in your solitude. What you wanted was to be subsumed by something greater, to touch the face of the divine, which is to be annihilated. That was your dream. That was what you [[chose for yourself|question1]]. <% $(function () { mainScript.globalScript(); mainScript.createMarquee(["Electric", "Riot of color"]); mainScript.createMouseoverMarquee([ ["To be annihilated"] ]); }); %>

You knew immediately what HE was. Always easy to tell. The way they move, with such inhuman fluidity. There are quite many of them in these places. They stalk the night, frequenting the same bars you would frequent in the future, the same blank spaces. You sought them out. HE was [[beautiful|disco7]]. <% $(function () { mainScript.globalScript(); mainScript.createMarquee(["Can't take my eyes off you"]); }); %>

HE was the dream incarnate, pulling you towards HIM the way a satellite is drawn fatally towards a star. You knew there would be the inevitable collision. The moment when the orbit destabilizes and you crash into the center, consumed. HE waved you over. There was a conversation had, though the words have been forgotten. You made the [[request|bedroom0]] of HIM. <% $(function () { mainScript.globalScript(); mainScript.createMarquee(["Incarnate"]); mainScript.createMouseoverMarquee([ ["Patron of your rebirth"] ]); }); %>

[[END|start1]] <% $(function () { mainScript.globalScript(); mainScript.createMarquee(["END"]); }); %>

Perhaps you couldn't look away. Perhaps coherent thought dissolved before that gaze. Words were spoken, but your mind could not register them. You only found yourself sinking back down. Consciousness scattered like a school of fish fleeing, torn apart by the riptide current. Down and [[down|bedroom2.5]]. <% $(function () { mainScript.globalScript(); mainScript.createMarquee(["A lens is part residue, part threshold, and that is where I find you", "Limpid, crystal"]); }); %>

Without HIM there is an absence, a burning hole inside. The want to turn back time. The want to reach inside and find the emptiness and pull it out, unspool it, replace it with the missing component that would complete you. But only HE could complete you, and HE is [[gone|leuketomy2]]. <% $(function () { mainScript.globalScript(); mainScript.createMarquee(["Where am I buried"]); }); %>

<h4>[[<% print(window.story.state.visitNumber) %>. Heaven // 197X-202X|heaven1]]</h4> <% $(function () { mainScript.globalScript(); mainScript.createMarquee(["Heaven"]); window.story.state.visitNumber++; }); %>

Recollections of [[paradise|heaven2]] are disparate, abstract: hazy moonlight through curtains, gauzy strips of neon, the kiss of lifeblood flowing outward and toward. Softness, a touch, the electricity of skin-to-skin contact. <% $(function () { mainScript.globalScript(); mainScript.createMarquee(["A dream"]); mainScript.createMouseoverMarquee([ ["False heaven?"] ]); }); %>

No distance between yourself and HIM. You became two souls threaded into one, you became a river flowing into the sea. HE was the sun in your heart, the sun in your sky; your world compressed down to a single point. In the [[dream|heaven4]], there is room for nothing but love, injected into your veins. HIS blood mingles with your own. <% $(function () { mainScript.globalScript(); mainScript.createMarquee(["Like a dream", "Two become one"]); }); %>

The dream is of a love that is all-consuming, that reaches into your skull and brushes through your neurons to show you the holy way. This is your romance: You need to open the door and let HIM in. You need to open your heart and leave room for the divine. You need to open your mind and touch the face of God. [[If any of it was real.|heaven5]] <% $(function () { mainScript.globalScript(); mainScript.createMarquee(["Like a dream", "Is this real or is it just make believe?"]); }); %>

But did any of that [[truly happen|heaven4.0]]? <% $(function () { mainScript.globalScript(); mainScript.createMarquee(["My mind is spinning out of control", "Is this real or is it just make believe?"]); }); %>

Impossible to separate memory from reality from desire. Impossible to unravel the truth. Tug at one thread and it all dissolves. The [[visions|heaven4.1]] are endless, fetched from the dual wells of memory and imagination. You can no longer distinguish which is which. Everything becomes everything else. Everything melts into everything else, as smoke into air. <% $(function () { mainScript.globalScript(); mainScript.createMarquee(["Is this real or is it just make believe?"]); }); %>

A memory vivid enough to hurt, though you can no longer be sure if it happened: Sharing a sofa, plush, dark. That one you have lying downstairs, dust-coated since HIS death, the television also left unattended for years. The fireplace was crackling. So it was winter, or close to it; the logical mind can fill in where memory fails. Imagine fallen snow outside. The frigid chill of frost when your fingertips graze the window. "[[Come here|heaven4.2]]," HE said. <% $(function () { mainScript.globalScript(); mainScript.createMarquee(["Incarnate"]); mainScript.createMouseoverMarquee([ ["Nothing to watch anymore"] ]); }); %>

Sharing a blanket. Feel HIS heartbeat as easily as your own. Fingers tangled in your hair. With HIS touch, thought dissolves, and your consciousness [[melts|heaven3]] into the warmth of fire and crackling embers. <% $(function () { mainScript.globalScript(); mainScript.createMarquee(["Incarnate"]); }); %>

Perhaps all of it is only the accumulation of false memory over the centuries. Perhaps all of it was only a sweet dream woven for you while you slept a decades-long sleep in that bedroom, living dead, blood ripe for the taking, awaiting your becoming. Perhaps memory is an imposition. Your memories of thralldom are the attempts of a mind to map a structure onto an experience that ought to be beyond such things, a brush with the divine. Remove yourself from memories, then. No concrete images. [[Nothing could describe it|heaven6]]. The words used ought to be abstract and conceptual: a completion, an immanent perfection. A lovely scraping against your skull. Your old world coming to ruin, scraped away. <% $(function () { mainScript.globalScript(); mainScript.createMarquee(["Is this real or is it just make believe?"]); }); %>

In the end, words fail. In trying to remember, you forever circle the elusive center, failing to capture what cannot be described, only eternally [[rediscovered|death1]][[rediscovered|postdeath0]], again and again without end. <% $(function () { mainScript.globalScript(); if (window.visited("death1")) { document.querySelector(".death1").classList.remove("hidden"); } else { document.querySelector(".nodeath1").classList.remove("hidden"); } mainScript.createMarquee(["We have lost control"]); }); %>

The old is continually obscured by the new. Your own history is a covering up, your life a palimpsest of undead layers. New impositions cannot be peeled back. The past is obscured, and you no longer remember where your memories end and HIS begin. You no longer remember where you end and HE [[begins|implanted1]]. <% $(function () { mainScript.globalScript(); mainScript.createMarquee(["Palimpsest"]); }); %>

The possibility remains. Perhaps this is only the narrative HE wanted you to believe. Perhaps you were another victim like all the others, abused and taken advantage of. But when you consider yourself alone, as a individual, all you can really understand is the truth of a life devoid of meaning. It is HIS presence, even now HIS memory, that gives you purpose. Make your own meaning? [[HE was your meaning.|disco2.5]] <% $(function () { mainScript.globalScript(); mainScript.createMarquee(["Vivisected", "Destroying the youth"]); }); %>

<h4>[[<% print(window.story.state.visitNumber) %>. Gouge out a way right through the skull // 212X |leuketomy3]]</h4> <% $(function () { mainScript.globalScript(); mainScript.createMarquee(["Can I call you dead?"]); window.story.state.visitNumber++; }); %>

So here you are. In the dead shadow of the mall. Fifteen floors of concrete and glass. LEDs on the wall glitter, tracing out names, places, faces, which swallow each other and disappear. The billboard beneath flashes images which too disappear, pixelating, becoming digital debris, receding into the aether as you step away. Replaced soon enough by [[others|leuketomy3.1]]. <% $(function () { mainScript.globalScript(); mainScript.createMarquee(["The system in control"]); }); %>

These people are hardly real. You have past memories of flickering faces in suits, glimpsed through digital screens. Software for e-meetings. Corporate shadows that glide above the world like sharks and dive in when prompted to take what they may. You could you return to that world. The legal system has numerous pathways in place for thralls and vampires to regain their ideal place in society. And though your documents are gone, but HIS still exist, and you could easily [[use them|leuketomy3.2]]. <% $(function () { mainScript.globalScript(); mainScript.createMarquee(["The system in control"]); mainScript.createMouseoverMarquee([ ["Or false implanted memories"] ]); }); %>

To share blood is to share secrets, to glimpse the innermost workings of another's mind. HE guarded personal details, and shaped your memories, but all HIS formal and technological learning is still within you. You have HIS degrees and HIS knowledge, which are your degrees and your knowledge, and you could step into HIS lonely skin as easily as HE stepped into yours. Goodbye to immortality, exsanguinated from you. You would be an [[ordinary human|leuketomy4]] again. Sit at desks and break rooms and conference tables. And perhaps then you would be happy. <% $(function () { mainScript.globalScript(); mainScript.createMarquee(["The system in control"]); mainScript.createMouseoverMarquee([ ["Extinguished within you", "His breath removed"] ]); }); %>

Leuketomy: a surgical removal of vampirism. It injects new cells into old veins, overwrites thrall neurons with healthy independent ones, and makes incisions into bone and blood and brain, all to conjure [[the citizen you should have been|leuketomy4.2]] into reality. <% $(function () { mainScript.globalScript(); mainScript.createMarquee(["Shut it down"]); }); %>

You will always be incomplete, they say. There is something empty in you, a hole in yourself where other people desire companionship and love. True love, not this shadow of dominion you cling to. As long as you long for the shadow of death, you will never be a real person. You ought to fulfill yourself. You need to hold onto this world, not what you've loved and lost, not what once loved and lost you, not what forced you to love it. [[Isn't that true?|leuketomy5]] <% $(function () { mainScript.globalScript(); mainScript.createMarquee(["Turn it back around"]); }); %>

Clinic six blocks down from your apartment. [[Go.|surgery0]] [[No. Don't go.|continue0]] <% $(function () { mainScript.globalScript(); mainScript.createMarquee(["The system in control", "We have lost control", "We need to shut it down", "Turn it back around"]); }); %>

[[You choose not to go.|continue0.5]] <% $(function () { mainScript.globalScript(); mainScript.createMarquee(["No"]); }); %>

All things wish to [[perpetuate|continue1]] themselves. You, too, must act in self-preservation. <% $(function () { mainScript.globalScript(); mainScript.createMarquee(["Perpetuity"]); }); %>

You will cling onto your love because it is all you have left. This iteration of you is defined by [[HIM|continue2]]. You could no more give HIM away than cease to breathe, to be. You will keep existing as a living ghost, superimposed above the person you used to be, rewritten by HIS hand. You will exist as the ghost of HIM, the last lingering shred of HIS will before HE departed, vaporized as smoke into the air. <% $(function () { mainScript.globalScript(); mainScript.createMarquee(["Superimposition"]); mainScript.createMouseoverMarquee([ ["As dust", "As ash"], ["Limpid, crystal"] ]); }); %>

HE imprinted HIMSELF upon you; you imprinted upon HIM; you became mirrors of each other, two souls clasped together. To deny HIM is to deny yourself. Another version of you might have done something different, but that version of you is [[not here|continue3]]. It may never have existed. <% $(function () { mainScript.globalScript(); mainScript.createMarquee(["Reflection"]); }); %>

You will live without a solution. You have existed this way for a long time already. A parasite on the world, descending to take your fill before you retreat back to your eternal shelter. You have seen countless anonymous faces come and go, live and die, and cared for none of them. Perhaps HIS death sealed off the one spot in your heart that was left open to love of the living. Perhaps you never could be someone who loved the living. Only the dead find room in your heart. And isn't it [[enough|continue4]], to live this way? Aren't you fulfilled? <% $(function () { mainScript.globalScript(); mainScript.createMarquee(["There's no audience here", "Stop crying"]); }); %>

<h4>[[<% print(window.story.state.visitNumber) %>. // XXXX|continue5]]</h4> <% $(function () { mainScript.globalScript(); mainScript.createMarquee(["The years pass"]); window.story.state.visitNumber++; }); %>

The old cities are gone now, replaced by other cities that look more or less the same. The human spirit continues to struggle forward, though continually daunted by the specters of greed and death. Billions have died and billions more will. Yet there has been no apocalypse. Everything struggles forward as it always has. You, too, persist. The waters may drown out the land and the air may become poison, but once the smog begins to choke out sunlight, the world will only be more inhabitable to those like you. You are perfectly suited for this kind of world. [[Nothing will change|continue6]], and you see no reason for it to. <% $(function () { mainScript.globalScript(); mainScript.createMarquee(["There's nothing I can do", "Not much I can change"]); }); %>

You think HE is looking down at you even now, from HIS ethereal perch. But that may only be the cold smile of all these stars. Soon they, too, will be [[extinguished|end2]] by the smoke. <% $(function () { mainScript.globalScript(); mainScript.createMarquee(["There's nothing I can do"]); }); %>

Was that [[you?|lowly2]] <% $(function () { mainScript.globalScript(); mainScript.createMarquee(["Was that you?"]); mainScript.createMouseoverMarquee([ ["That was you"] ]); }); %>

What do you remember? A desire for oblivion, the mechanistic endpoint of a life wrung dry by drudgery. A world that folded in on itself and became smaller and smaller every day. Exponentially smaller. Until you were a rat caught in a trap. People have ways of dealing with it. They buy one-way tickets and sell their possessions. They disappear. Leave friends and family and start anew. You don't remember your old friends or family. If they were ever there, the memories have vanished, like smoke into air, like dust effaced by a cleansing rain. You bought no tickets. You wanted something else. You knew what you [[wanted|lowly3]]. <% $(function () { mainScript.globalScript(); mainScript.createMarquee(["The world didn't have room for you"]); mainScript.createMouseoverMarquee([ ["Burn it all down"] ]); }); %>

Escape the trap. Vampirism is a monster of hearsay and horror stories, and also the feeling that rises in you upon hearing those stories, a sickening that might be called desire. That was how it began for you. Storybook romance left you cold. In all your human connections, something was missing. You needed something else—not stolid courting rituals, but a love that consumes. Devours. You were always this way. Or is that only an [[implanted memory|implanted0]]? <% $(function () { mainScript.globalScript(); mainScript.createMarquee(["We make so much from how little we have", "It's hard to imagine growing old and contented"]); mainScript.createMouseoverMarquee([ ["A warmth"], ["Called love"], ["Or were you?"]]); }); %>

<h4>[[<% print(window.story.state.visitNumber) %>. BetterWorld Shopping Mall // 212X|mall1]]</h4> <% $(function () { mainScript.globalScript(); mainScript.createMarquee(["BetterWorld", "Another World is Possible"]); window.story.state.visitNumber++; }); %>

Constructed over the ruins of derelict apartments. Go at evening, when the sun's dying rays find it harder to touch your skin. Surveillance cameras stare. Fifteen floors of boutiques and restaurants cast a deepening shadow. Within the shadow a digital billboard glows, flashing targeted ads at the nearest passerby: smartphone becomes electric car becomes credit card. Images surface and resurface. AI-generated faces break apart and meld into each other. [[Approach|mall2]] <% $(function () { mainScript.globalScript(); mainScript.createMarquee(["Disparate dreams woven into the digital", "Melding fantasy with reality", "Pipe dream", "Selling lost potentiality", "Images surface and resurface"]); }); %>

The man on screen is a more photogenic version of you. You've tried to look good before. He is trying harder. He has the same hair and eyes, but HIS skin is flawless, HIS chin chiseled. He says, [["I realized that vampirism destroyed me."|mall3]] <% $(function () { mainScript.globalScript(); mainScript.createMarquee(["You", "Not You"]); mainScript.createMouseoverMarquee([ ["Winning Smile 5% More Winning"] ]); }); %>

"I'd grown used to living paranoid and hungry, avoiding people and shirking the sun. I couldn't even think about how much I'd been hurt. Or how I was hurting others. "It was only when I took a step back and assessed the situation that I realized how bad things had gotten. You may not remember what it's like to be happy and healthy, but I promise you it's better than this. Vampirism eats you from the inside out. It destroys you completely. I knew I [[needed help|mall3.5]]." <% $(function () { mainScript.globalScript(); mainScript.createMarquee(["The barometers of freedom are mostly ads"]); }); %>

Screen transition: sunlight and a happy family. "[[Victims of vampirism|mall4]] don't recognize how they've been damaged until it's too late. You can start your healing journey today. "Ask your local clinic for a leuketomy, scientifically proven to erase all vestiges of vampirism and restore humans to a normal psychological and physiological state." <% $(function () { mainScript.globalScript(); mainScript.createMarquee(["The barometers of freedom"]); mainScript.createMouseoverMarquee([["Cure yourself"] ]); }); %>

Screen transition: earnest medical professional. "Please don't wait. One in five thralls don't make it to the end of the year once [[abandoned by the one who turned them|death1]]. "You [[don't have to live like this|dangers1]] anymore." <% $(function () { mainScript.globalScript(); mainScript.createMarquee(["Freedom"]); mainScript.createMouseoverMarquee([["Cure yourself"] ]); }); %>

<h4>[[<% print(window.story.state.visitNumber) %>. To feed is to chase HIS shadow // 202X-212X |postdeath3]]</h4> <% $(function () { mainScript.globalScript(); mainScript.createMarquee(["Talk with HIS tongue", "All the things come and gone"]); window.story.state.visitNumber++; }); %>

Blood is a necessity. There are people who seek out those like you. Encounters arranged on apps. Signals surrepitiously swapped. Swipe left or right. The years pass, the interfaces come and go, but the desire stays the [[same|postdeath4]]. <% $(function () { mainScript.globalScript(); mainScript.createMarquee(["See yourself undead", "See yourself dead"]); mainScript.createMouseoverMarquee([["As your past self did"] ]); }); %>

Church. Bright pillars and bygone memories of holiness. Closed now, but you slip through, a shadow, to where the other man awaits. Livid red and breathing. His blood sweet. Pews in silent repose frame the location where you pull him down and [[take what is yours|postdeath6]]. He lives to leave. They all do. No sudden violence or murderous turn, as there is in the popular imagination. You are a gracious parasite. <% $(function () { mainScript.globalScript(); mainScript.createMarquee(["The sanctuary's white columns", "Each with a letter", "Spelling HIS name"]); mainScript.createMouseoverMarquee([ ["Pragmatism shuns needless violence", "Most of your kind are gracious"] ]); }); %>

Stall. Framed by the cubicle door. Tapping underfoot, the sound echoing in the dense space. The opaque glass of the window, smudged, letting in that tawny light. Come closer. [[Closer still.|postdeath6.5]] <% $(function () { mainScript.globalScript(); mainScript.createMarquee(["Like the cubicle door", "- 0 4 3 1 3 0 1 0 9 1 -"]); }); %>

Drip of sinkwater, legs pressed into cold tile. Skin against skin, a shadow of what you used to have—biting, digging into the sweet lifeblood which flows out and around. The ghost of rapture as you chase after the lingering smoke of HIS presence. Glimpsed out of the corner of your eye, phone numbers clustering on the stall door, scribbled by phantom hands. Ghosts of the past. [[Seeking for completion.|postdeath7]] <% $(function () { mainScript.globalScript(); mainScript.createMarquee(["- 0 4 3 1 3 0 1 0 9 1 -", "its numerology", "some measure of God"]); mainScript.createMouseoverMarquee([ ["Conjunction", "Injection"], ["043-130-1091"] ]); }); %>

Car. Sliver of smog glimpsed past pulled-down shades. This is your capsule, your dark space inside yourself. Only now can you retreat back there, when the blood reaches your lips and you sip. A leech, a parasite engorged on their blood. Wanting to madly assimilate the flesh of the other into yourself, but the other you dream of is not this specter of a man in front of you but the real HIM, who is [[gone|postdeath8]] now, vaporized, floating gaseous in your dreams. Here everything collects to you and means nothing. The world in a drop of blood. Exhaust floating up from the tailpipe is the ghost of holy smoke, dissolving into the polluted sky. The asphyxiating specter of the past. <% $(function () { mainScript.globalScript(); mainScript.createMarquee(["Like how you let the car run", "Until you're smog", "And I'm the distance"]); mainScript.createMouseoverMarquee([ [ "HE opened a sanctuary within you", "Live there forever"], ["Fill your lungs"] ]); }); %>

Afterwards, the subjects depart. The names and faces fade away. You do not make of them what HE made of you. You haven't the will. [[The years pass.|postdeath9]] You are swallowing earthly blood, but thinking only of HIM, above, watching over you always. Your soul rotates in the palm of HIS hand. <% $(function () { mainScript.globalScript(); mainScript.createMarquee(["Distance"]); }); %>

[[The years pass.|postdeath10]] Acid rain wears old monuments to dust. Pollution fills the air and birds fall out of the sky. Still you are here, waiting, watching, repeating the same motions. Undead, a living corpse, you cannot live without HIM. How could you live without HIM? <% $(function () { mainScript.globalScript(); mainScript.createMarquee(["See yourself dead"]); }); %>

Or did you? They say [[you couldn't have|question2]]. <% $(function () { mainScript.globalScript(); mainScript.createMarquee(["Too good to be true"]); }); %>

This is what they say [[must have happened|question3]]: You were an innocent victim just looking for a good time. You didn't know what would happen. You didn't know that nobody would defend you there. The world closed around you like a vice, and your past was scourged away: personality, memory and desire, everything that comprises an identity, all lost. Torn out and replaced with an alien purpose injected into your blood. You screamed, but nobody heard you. You begged for deliverance, but there was none. <% $(function () { mainScript.globalScript(); mainScript.createMarquee(["Alternate possibility"]); mainScript.createMouseoverMarquee([ [ "Implanted into your soul"] ]); }); %>

You remember nothing like that happening. But how can you be sure it did not happen? What you remember cannot be trusted. How do you know who is lying to you? How can you [[recover your history|question4]]? <% $(function () { mainScript.globalScript(); mainScript.createMarquee(["Infliction of narrative"]); }); %>

There are no physical remainders of your past. You looked. All photos and documents have disappeared. You [[seem to remember|question5]] burning them yourself. Everything of your old self was scourged away. And do you even want to know? If you returned to the people who once knew you, if you even could, you would be as a stranger to them. <% $(function () { mainScript.globalScript(); mainScript.createMarquee(["Burn it all down"]); }); %>

Years have gone by. There are no more physical remnants of that evening. It can only be left to imagination. Visions and possibilities flourish, then die away. Imagined sufferings: vicissitudes of torment, trauma, struggle. You only know how it ended. You can never be sure how it began. What can you really be certain of? [[Nothing|question6]].

There is the [[pleasant dream|disco4]] you remember. But perhaps it is only the fragile verneer over an [[ugly reality|alternate1]]. Perhaps not. <% $(function () { mainScript.globalScript(); mainScript.createMarquee(["In a dream"]); }); %>

People become other people all the time. Your life is in your own control; you are the one to understand that the person you are now is [[hurting you|surgery0.1]]. The solution is simple. It is the same solution your past self sought out, once upon a time. Become someone else. Once your metamorphosis into a happier person is complete, and the fundamental facts of yourself have been shorn away and replaced with something better, paradise will finally be restored. <% $(function () { mainScript.globalScript(); mainScript.createMarquee(["Though I've held on, can't carry it much longer"]); }); %>

You are alone in a small, dark place. Alone even when you are accompanied by others. In the end, there is nobody you must justify yourself to, and you have made your decision. Why should you bother trying to cross the gulf between yourself and others as you are now? Why should you bother trying to interact with others at all as you are [[now|surgery0.5]]? <% $(function () { mainScript.globalScript(); mainScript.createMarquee(["On the ceiling dancing are all the things come and gone"]); }); %>

You wish only to eradicate yourself. Then eradicated alongside will be the uncrossable gulf between yourself and other people. There will be no distance when you are one with them, your vampiric remnants seized from you and set drifting loose through the air as dust or ash. [[There will be no distance.|surgery0.6]] <% $(function () { mainScript.globalScript(); mainScript.createMarquee(["There's nothing I can do", "Not much I can change"]); }); %>

<div class="sep">[[❉|surgery1]]</div> <% $(function () { mainScript.globalScript(); mainScript.createMarquee([""]); }); %>

Lying in the surgical ward, a softness. The doctors are standing over you. They place the mask on your face and tell you to [[breathe|surgery2]]. <% $(function () { mainScript.globalScript(); mainScript.createMarquee(["I give it up to you", "I surrender"]); }); %>

The [[kiss|end1]] of anesthesia is the sweetest you've had in many years. <% $(function () { mainScript.globalScript(); mainScript.createMarquee(["I surrender"]); }); %>