001

I was never an active reader, and I never was someone who particularly felt like reading books aside from scrolling through them idly.

I do not think I’ve ever really had initiative to do anything.

Nothing was permanent or long-lasting.

No element of my life stood out.

There was nothing worth detailing.

At this point, it’s worth saying that I barely viewed myself as a human.

No eye contact.

Avoid the topic.

I still am like that now, but I suppose I have a deeper interest in human culture now.

I wrote down the shit I thought about.

Here’s some of it, properly formatted.

No, wait.

Before that…

I want to warn you that the following material is messy.

It’s very, very incoherent.

The scenarios here are entirely fictional.

None of this has happened.

002

The following is an excerpt from a book that never was finished.

I was.. I was.. Who was I? I was awake.

It’s just that I’m not sure if I was asleep at that point. The fact still stands, I was conscious.

A moment of lingering consciousness that felt like an eternity before my vision and my brain just started working.

A blurry flash, like my memory just vanished out of existence.

Okay. I shouldn’t panic.

I’m laying on what appears to be green grass, with a beach ahead.

 I can probably see myself in the reflection of the water.

There’s a bag nearby.

Maybe I should check its contents.

 A phone, a driver’s license with garbled text, a credit card and some cold cash.

Thousands upon thousands. An ID with a picture of someone  I assume is me.

The text was or is unreadable, almost just randomized blocks, paragraph upon paragraph of garbled maybe-not-wisdom.

Issued February 29th, 2012.

 I’m not even sure what the date is at this point.

By the looks of it, it was around 2 PM, due to the near scorching heat.

 But it’s as if the heat vanished just now. In fact, I can only feel the breeze.

I see myself in the reflection of the water.

Seemingly fatal injury upon fatal injury, healing like it was nothing within seconds.

I was more alive than alive, no matter what method I tried to get myself out of this bizarre lucid dream.

 Drowning? Didn’t work.

Jumping off a mountain? Nope.

 I am more alive than any human on this planet.

The things around me felt entirely like placeholders, until my cognitive abilities just came back.

I was able to fully process visual data.

Hm.

 I guess there is no reason to panic just yet, right?

 I mean, it’s nice to see the things around me.

I was alone, with a place as isolated as a mythological paradise left for me to explore.

There were no people or animals around, or rather I didn’t feel the need to see them.

 I guess I have become what could be the lone wanderer.

 Next thing you’re gonna tell me is that my name will be “Bag”* for now or something.

Well, I’ll let that slide.

Really, I can’t even be sure what I’m doing here.

 There is no signs of civilization around here.

Out of boredom, let me try something.

I thought about building an extremely fancy house on a floating island.

And here it is.

 Is this what you would call godlike powers?

 It’s pretty nice to be a human, but being a God won’t be the worst either.

Wait, no.

How can I say that if I feel like I just started to exist today?

But that can’t be the case, I probably have been injured before.

As if I died before.

A phoenix that rose from the ashes of her previous self.

Wait, her? I mean.. I guess I’m a she.

 That’ll do for now.

There is nothing about my identity that is clear enough to piece together.

It probably isn’t anything symbolic in the first place.

It’s oddly quiet and I feel lonely.

A curse, isn’t it?

My mind isn’t clear enough for me to piece anything together.

 You know that bag I talked about earlier?

 All of that stuff was in a wallet along with pictures of an odd-looking woman that probably was or is  me, no, wait, that can’t be me, ah well, along with a few other faces I don’t recognize.

 God, how fucking long ago was that?

003

Was it long ago or was it recent?

My thought process isn’t exactly cohesive and ultimately feels mashed together.

 I don’t think this is how it’s meant to work.

 I mean, when you try to get something together on what seems like your first day of being alive with the processing abilities of a human being probably much older than you are.

A world that is still confusing.

 Like I still haven’t stopped crying on the first hour of my lifetime, not able to see anything until much later.

 Maybe that is my disadvantage, too much to work with that I’m supposed to know while not knowing what it is.

 Hell, I don’t even know where I got half of the stuff I know from.

Overwhelming, way too overwhelming.

I probably am just talking to myself again.

Shattered glass.

I feel like I’m supposed to know what glass is.

 A transparent material, probably made from liquid sand.

That definitely is how it’s made, I’m sure.

Amorphous like… a crystal?

I think that’s how it works.

 I feel like I’ll be able to think straighter as time goes on, right?

No, really.

 Isn’t that how it should work?

 I’ll restore enough memory to work with the world.

More alive than alive, no matter if I liked it or not, I was alive.

And I needed to be alive in order for my life to work properly, right?

I mean, that’s probably how it should be.

Except it isn’t.

If I was able to recover that quickly from what seemed like fatal injuries, am I even human?

Am I a being that relies on its inner organs being functional?

Am I a new species related to humans?

Am I just a moderately-complex organism that appears to be able to live without oxygen?

I have been able to store memories.

 So, that’s what’s important.

Right now, I can remember things.

004

Say, would I be an interesting research subject for some scientists looking to make cash off some bullshit theory and present me like a freak of nature?

I mean, that’s probably how it would play out, realistically.

Sorta disappointing, but oh well.

The one thing I know for now is that I’m alive and I should be thankful for that.

It’s nice to be alive.

I should just ignore the fact that my entire existence is not realistic.

It wouldn’t make sense for me to just go along with it.

I’m not sure what it was that moved me so much to feel a strong emotional response.

Maybe I forgot something again.

 Maybe this whole life has nothing to do with me.

Wait, no, I think I’ve heard that line somewhere before.

 Am I some MIT student’s project to prove a theory of superhumanity?

Wait, no.

 It wouldn’t make sense for someone in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to come up with something like this, unless I’m artificial.

I’m not exactly sure where these thoughts are coming from.

 I don’t think I can properly articulate any of the things I’m really saying.

It’s just confusing to be alive.

I’m not sure who or what I am, still.

Am I some occult club’s idea of a sick joke?

Wait, no. I mean, that seems much more realistic than my previous theory, but it’s still purely hypothetical.

Are you sure it’s even a realistic scenario for someone to wake up with zero memory of their identity?

I’m not sure what exactly could be happening.

Xylene vapor.

No, wait, that has no relevance to anything.

It’s as if my thoughts are just garbled.

Next thing I’ll say is that I hear the voice of God or something.

Whatever.

I created that house, right? I guess I’ll enter it. Need a place to stay the night anyway. Looks like it’s fully furnished.

Opening the window.

I am opening the window.

I am conscious enough to create thoughts. I am making up an internal monologue within my mind, probably soon transformed into a written record.

 There is a specific sequence of events that is supposed to make sense in life.

 No, no, this isn’t it.

 I feel drained all of a sudden.

005

 A shift of location.

 Suddenly I’m in a city with the memories of the previous, maybe not even previous location still in tact.

 Life as a placeholder of a person.

I want to crank a joke, but a genuine sort of concern fills me.

 Or maybe just disappointment with myself.

 How disappointing.

 No, wait, that isn’t my line, is it?

 Whose line is it?

 Is my memory still distorted?

It seems entirely possible.

Nothing makes sense.

I feel alone in this crowded world.

 In a split second, crowds of people were visible. First time I’ve seen any other living being aside from myself.

 The things around me felt like they just finished rendering. Or maybe it’s just me distorting reality again.

 See, even I can’t rely on my descriptions and perception.

There’s a cafe nearby and I got tons of cash on me, so I’ll probably just use that chance to live life out somehow.

Come, open this door to a mystery full of contradictions.

 Open the curtain on the stage.

 Another opera with a libretto by an anonymous author, whose name has been lost in the sands of time.

 Come, come, I’ve got things to show you.

Like circular rooms with random conveyor belts and stop signs.

Cars racing through walls with no one paying mind.

Hell, say, wouldn’t you like this to gain a real story instead of the oh so great Miss Exposition just filling your mind up with abstract concepts that seem vaguely suspenseful?

Ah well, fuck you then.

Pssh, that’s what I’d like to say anyway.

 Seriously, who even thought up this stuff?

Definitely not me!

Hell, who is the narrator?

Probably not me either!

 Her?

 Me?

 Who?

Is it you or is it the random people in the corner over there whose faces and general appearance no one will bother describing seeing as background characters are ultimately worthless unless they wield a certain author’s gun, say you know that one.

006

 Though, it’s sorta disappointing it’s not a Cherry Orchard case. Isn’t the title of that actually Cherry Garden?

 I mean, there is no real distinction to make in the end. Quite the spectacle, wouldn’t you agree?

 Instead of trying to actually do something, I’m just talking to myself again.

 What a brilliantly counterproductive waste of time!

It’s like crossing the Atlantic Ocean on a single piece of wood that you have a high chance of falling off and drowning.

 Or even better, swimming in a subglacial lake.

 I mean, what the hell would you be doing over there?

Freezing to death?

 Oh, I did mention entering a cafe.

Well, I did do that.

Ordered some food and stuff.

Eating it. I don’t think it’s necessary to go into vivid detail about such a thing.

The food’s good.

I already paid the bill.

 Moving on. There’s such a thing as a pink sea, right?

 It’s cool.

Pretty damn cool, considering it’s entirely natural.

Here’s another even more pointless idea: drinking the water of a hypersaline lake.

 No like, really, it’s just pure salt.

 There is nothing else to it.

I talk to myself too much, but there’s no one else to talk to.

Ah, I guess I am just droning on about pointless things.

“Um, hi.”

A woman whose face I wasn’t fully able to register came along and sat down.

“I’ll just let that one slide for now. What business do you have with an amnesiac?”

“Ah, um.

 This may seem extremely sudden, but you did save my life a few times and I did want to thank you.

 I just happened to be here and when I saw you, I swore to god it couldn’t be anyone else.”

 “Say, if that were true, isn’t it still an incredible waste of time telling a woman who probably won’t even remember you all that?

 I mean, it’s like telling an animation studio with zero budget to work with to crunch through 2 commercially successful and 1 terribly niche show, in hopes that it’ll all work out in the end.”

 “But in that case, the employees were dedicated enough to make that terribly niche show you speak of become another commercial success and a fair source of income, a mega franchise.”

 “Damn it, why do you have to understand my jokes?

“Maybe because it was my joke initially?”

“Alright, riddle me this, riddle me that.

I guess in the end it’s like how Sanrio has over 400 characters and a good bit of them are fairly obscure.

 Like, you have the crocodile Big Challenges or Hopty Copty, or just a horse.

 Literally, just a horse.

 Not everyone is Hello Kitty.”

 “It did take us a while to get to this conversation, so let’s say.

 Would you be willing to buy someone’s trust for less than a penny?”

“Literally? That’s far more exaggerated than any situation I could come up with.

 It’s like how you can buy really obscure books sales of were insanely low on Amazon.

Books that are ultimately pointless information-wise.

Things not even worth digitizing.

But when it’s something really fancy that it’s worth picking up for ridiculous prices due to its sheer presentation value?

 Like a book the pages of don’t actually fit the cover.

 And an entire chapter just titled Yggdrasil.

Like, you know that one?”

 “I can’t remember the title.

Or you know, something that obviously feels like its characters are a placeholders with the protagonist constantly changing design with the changes getting ever more bizarre.”

“Or, you know.

Down five times being the same as ‘you’ve misunderstood’”

“Are we just pointing fingers at others at this point?”

“Don’t know, don’t care. Not that this is gonna sell anyway.”

007

“I mean, you obviously know. Hey, say, should it be big, exaggerated moe eyes or real-looking people?”

“I mean, as long as it’s not a 90s shoujo style, I can probably roll with it. Don’t want this mess to look too alien. Maybe no faces at all would do the trick.”

“True, true. Maybe have our conversation just played back on top of completely unrelated visuals with reverb and delay effects slapped on our voices?”

“Or ya know, bitcrushing. Lots of bitcrushing. Maybe just chop our words and have the actual conversation be displayed as text on screen.”

 “Sounds practical too.”

“Hey how about a sentence entirely without punctuation?”

“Does the question mark count?”

“Dunno, probably not.”

“Say, shouldn’t we just have a punchline for this conversation?”

“Maybe the joke is that there is no punchline.”

 “I have a feeling this conversation will drag on through multiple chapters.”

 “I mean, why not?”

 “Meh, it’s done for now.”

“Nah, let’s not call it off for now. Say, we should just write down the entire lyrics to Bohemian Rhapsody here.”

“Why would that be necessary?”

 “Don’t question it just yet.”

“You know it’s sorta funny to hear shit like Russian being spoken with an obvious exaggerated format.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Fucking bears and vodka and shit. Fucking exaggerated bullshit. Oh well. I guess it’s probably not the point here.”

 “How long is this conversation so far?”

 “Uh, long?”

 “Cool, cool. We’ll roll with that for now.”

“Yeah. I mean, it’s not that it matters much. The entire brand of this is just mildly confusing narration and really long drawn-out conversations. That’s how we do it.”

“Truth. Say, should I just write out a paragraph of entirely random words?”

“Nah, you’ve already done that in these last few chapters.”

 “Fuck, you got me.”

“Black cats are cool.”

 “That’s true.”

 “Memory Bread, Jelly Translator, Time Cloth, Dress Up Camera, Take-copter, Anywhere Door.”

“Wait, isn’t that just a list of Doraemon’s gadgets?”

“I mean, that’s the joke.”

“You’re running low on material here.

You could as well be a news reporter.”

“Fire breaks out on Hell Street 666. Citizens not surprised. We have yet to receive confirmation on what the hell happened. In other news, Heaven to pass law banning angels to fly.”

“Isn’t the whole gag is that we just keep this conversation going on for way too long?”

“Alright, let’s see what else I can cram into this. Here’s a list of ways you can make eggs: hard boiled, soft boiled, hard scrambled, soft scrambled, omelets & frittatas, scrambles and hashes, sunny side up, over easy, over medium, over hard, poached, baked or shirred, basted.”

“I have a feeling you stole that list from the internet. You filthy thief.”

“Oh, really?”

 “I mean, this conversation really is going nowhere. We are just listing things.”

“I feel like doing whatever I feel like doing. There’ll be no plot developments until I deem it necessary.”

 “That’s an incredible waste of time.

 How disappointing.”

“That isn’t your line, is it?”

 “Not yours either.”

“Yeah, it’s not mine but it’s not yours either.”

“Whose line is it then?”

 “I don’t know!”

 “I don’t know either!”

“Aren’t you supposed to know?”

“Not really!”

008

“Damn it! Why don’t you know?”

 “Right back at you.”

“Aren’t we making too much noise?”

 “I guess so, but this isn’t even really an important conversation and we are just overdramatizing a minor thing for the sake of it because the whole premise is really dumb and nonsensical and this isn’t gonna go anywhere.”

 “That’s some loss of spirit if I’ve ever seen some.”

“Guess we gotta have that comedic moment where it plays out like a child pretending to be sad for you not giving them a cookie and then you’re like ‘okay, fine, you can have it’ and they’re all so happy for whatever reason.”

“That’s already been done so many times.”

 “We can do it as well too, not like comedy has copyright, right?”

“Ladies, there’s a package for you?”

 “How’d you find us?”

“That doesn’t matter. Would you mind signing here?”

“I guess. Okay, that’s done.”

“Shit, this is just a box of cease and desist letters. Along with even more DMCA complaints. We’re in trouble now, aren’t we?”

“Yeah. Oh well! Guess we just burn these now. I got a fireplace to work with.”

“We also gotta play Chopin’s Funeral March over it. No fake dramatic moment is complete without it.”

“That’s actually a good song.”

“Yeah.”

“Well, what else is there to talk about?”

“Not much probably.”

“Well, yeah. I guess we’ll just call it off for now.”

“Nah, wait, we got a quota to fill.”

 “3 thousand words, huh?”

“Alright, alright, alright. What the hell do we say?”

“Just stay in character, I guess.”

“That’s the plan!”

 “Yeah, definitely.”

Author’s note: Hey.

This format is rather obtuse and hard to follow.

But at the same time it’s fun to write drawn-out conversations.

In the next probably few chapters, let’s demonstrate this same style but now with monologues.

Could be fun.

So yeah, you’re gonna get that.

Enjoy.

Or not yet.

Nah, nevermind.

009

The following is a rather bizarre exercise in vague fantasy.

No. It’s not a tale you have to piece together. In fact, there won’t be character introductions. There will only be ambiguity. There will be a series of nonsensical metaphors thrown at you. This won’t be readable material. This will only consist of broken chronology. This will consist of realities falling apart, deformed tales that only make sense vaguely, lies I told you. Lies the narrator told you. This will be a dense wall of pointless garbage.

Maybe I died? Maybe I died and went to Hell?

 Nah, that is not possible. Hey, where’s that end card, damn it? If I were serious about

this, there’d be a lot more buildup...

 Say, am I a reliable narrator? Or an unreliable one?

Not that you have to answer.

A man swimming in a pool of blood.

 Someone as hopeless as me taking a deep dive into an ocean of delusion.

 Humans tell stories and use complicated metaphors.

Perhaps, I shall get to the real meaning of this.

Maybe not.

Hell, do you enjoy reading long, drawn-out…

No, wait, I’ve already said that.

Where’d all those ideas go?

My name is my name, a name that I know..

That is a certain fact. That is a fact you, the reader, know.

This is a tale that might have some sort of logical structure but due to its purely episodic nature.

Say, this is nearing 200 words.

Shouldn’t I say something of more value than just telling you everything that I feel like telling?

 Does it make you feel bad for me?

There is a new future, forever looming.

Eternally, I tell a ton of lies.

Goodbye. A word that makes sense, right? It appears that it does make sense.

It is an empty effort to tell you all this.

Let us get into the real happenings.

“It’s sure taking Her Pettiness a while to get here.”

 “Pssh, that’s a title reserved for you.”

“Forgot you can mimic voices. That one was a bit too real. Don’t scare me like that!”

“Ryoko Tachibana, wasn’t it? At this rate, the House of Kamida will fall apart and a new dynasty will blossom like roses during a nuclear winter.”

“The House of Tachibana will probably be more powerful than any other clan in the history of Heaven.

So that’s why, we must stand until the very end. March on until victory. March on until death do us part.”

 Soon, the sound of thousands of structures collapsing. Heaven was falling, and it was falling rapidly. Soon, in front of me, a familiar grin. One that is absolutely distinct from any other. Asami Kamida, or rather, Ryoko Tachibana, her original identity.

 “Perhaps I’ll show mercy.”

Those words were said in a voice so cold that it would make the demons of the lowest circle of Hell jealous.

A voice with no emotion.

 A bloodthirsty grin.

 A terrifying smile.

“My name is Ryoko Tachibana. I demand to see the current heir of the Kamida clan. That fake shall receive some special treatment.”

None of us could possibly comprehend what was going on, and so we had no will to disobey her orders.

A woman whose power rivals the idea of sheer force itself.

 A deity that reigns in a castle sculpted out of the flesh of her enemies.

The quiet girl, consumed by anxiety, when granted powers due to her omnicidal fantasies, had ultimately reached her goal.

To kill mercilessly, to reign over the multiverse itself, the nice girl that lived in a bay of secrets, the girl that threw millions of disconnected puzzle pieces at you and walked off with that same expression, never showing any concrete emotion, the girl that terrified others with her presence even as a human.

The heir of the new era.

 Heaven’s future Queen.

 Her Holiness, a woman that was able to take down entire armies of deities much more powerful with her sheer will.

010

Heaven’s strongest and most loyal were brought out. They fell quickly.

“Oh my, oh my.

Weren’t you so ready for this day?

Weren’t so you fucking ready to die?

Where’s your fucking will to do anything?

 You disappoint me.

I’m so disappointed I could give you a long speech consisting of nothing but personal attacks that’d take up 7 A4 pages for no discernible reason other than just because.

Doesn’t that sound fun, you fucking rats?

 You’ve got no spirit, you’ve got no will.

You have less worth than garbage.

You’re fucking failures.

All of you.

You were so ready to kill me, now what the fuck do you think you’re doing?

If you want to fall in battle, fall a hero.

Show your loyalty to some bullshit goal you set.

Fucking die if you wanted to do it so much.

Come on, come on, come on, come on.

Show your fucking uselessness.

 You’re a fucking waste of my own time unless you fucking do something.

 Come on, come on, come on, come on, come on. Just do something.

You should be doing something.

You’re really wasting my time here.

Seriously, what’s holding you back?

You don’t have to finish listening to my speech in order to attack.

 Or are you trying to use some bullshit strategy here? I’ve already seen right through it.

 Fear not, ye mighty, I will not hurt thou. My only goal is the destruction of the current heir and the higher government.

You’ll be taken with them if you resist, though.

 So, all of those who wish to face me, what are your last words?

Your immortality is ultimately useless in this situation.

So, step up.

Do your fucking best!

Let us construct a funeral pyre just for all of you.

Your names will be forgotten.

You’ll be the unknown soldier.

So, come on, what are you waiting for?

 You came here to die. Your wish was death. Are you too afraid to act?

Boring, boring, boring.

 I demand you act.

011

So, come on up.

 I mean, fucking hell. How much time are you gonna waste? Are you trying to reenact a certain battle between Russia & Mongolia, where they just stood for a few weeks until the Mongols backed out?

 I see, I see.

I suppose I could take the position of the winner here.

 Come here, if you dare.

 Up my sleeves I got a ton of tricks. Your own included.

So, are you scared?

I’m sort of getting bored of just telling you to act.

 Shall we settle this battle with silence?

Which usually means, I’ll just kill you all and be done with it.

Pssh. As if it’d be that easy.

 Really, if someone wishes to die a noble death, step up”.

 And so a few did.

A respectable fight.

Some of them did damage to Tachibana, but it wasn’t enough for her to admit defeat.

 A few ties happened, but I think it was because she let her guard down.

“Those who did step up did quite great, actually. I was expecting this, honestly.

 Say, maybe I’ll save your talent for my own reign?

Not exactly my own reign.

More like, the reign of Ami Amari.

The true previous Reigning God.

Think of me as just her messenger.

 I will rule alongside her, but here and now, I am nothing more than a prophet. A prophet who refuses to hear anything else.

Foolish, aren’t I?

If I vanish in battle, it will ruin her and ultimately make her more vulnerable, and at that point you bastards could take her away from me.

So, that’s why I’m not letting that happen.

No matter through what methods.

I will fucking fight until the very end for her.

The one dear to me, the one truly above any of you. The one being in this whole multiverse that makes me genuinely happy to be around aside from Fujiwara.

And so, Heaven goes down with me.

You are hiding the successor, right? Give her to me. I need to have a talk with her.”

Everyone in the crowd facing Tachibana were hesitating to do anything.

And within a second, many vanished.

 “Let me give you a reason to do anything. You want to avenge them, right? You want me to die the most horrible death, right?

Good.

012

Then if I’m defeated ,I’ll be sure to go out in the flashiest, most memorable way possible.

I will make sure that the name of the grotesque woman I am is carved into history as a sinful fool, literal garbage.

I will make sure I go down as a figure worse than the Devil Himself.

I will make sure to be known to be as evil as all false prophets.

 I will be the fucking incarnation of all evil that has existed and will ever exist.

I will make sure my name no longer remains a proper noun.

 I will make sure it becomes an insult.

 I will make sure that all you in Heaven hate me.

I will make sure to die as the most horrible evil to ever exist.

I will be the worst there is and will ever be.

 I will be as bad as all of the dictators of human history combined.

I will die in an ocean of sin.

 I am a fucking threat to your existence. Heaven’s greatest enemy.

 Are you happy now?

 Are you happy with how fucking disgusting and atrocious I am?

 Don’t you hate me with your whole heart?

Don’t you want to fucking rip me apart into a river of blood and flesh?

Don’t you fucking want to kill me?

Are you fucking happy with the fact that my existence is so fucking absurd and contradictory?

Are you fucking happy?

 The things I believe are fucking bullshit.

I’m shouting at a fucking mirror, pretending I’m standing in front of an audience of millions.

I’m a fucking frustratingly disgusting, useless being.

 I am fucking no one but an idealist whose unrealistic expectations are far from anything real.

 I am just a fucking naive, worthless piece of shit.

Are you fucking happy with that?

Are you fucking happy with how I much hate myself?

 Are you fucking happy you will have something to hate as much as I hated myself?

 ARE YOU FUCKING HAPPY?

Don’t you want to fucking shout at the top of your lungs for me to fuck off and die in an exaggeratedly detailed and grotesque way?

 I’m on my fucking way out. I’m just a fucking sick joke of a person.

 You never had to worry about me, because you I was just someone you should be fucking terrified of.

That’s a fucking persona I took up because I had some fucking control when I acted like that.

None of that has fucking happened.

 None of that will fucking happen.

013

 I’m just yelling at a fucking mirror.

None of you are gonna fucking speak up, none of you are gonna feel fucking anything but contempt.

 Of course, that’s what I want. I want you to hate me.

I want you to hate me in the most irrationally passionate way you can. The purest hate you could express.

I could fucking call myself Asami , but yet I’d still be this fucking gross shell of a shit person.

You want me to say that. I want to say that. I want you to fucking hear everything I say. I’m on the fucking way out.

 All of this is probably just entertainment to you.

You just want me to fucking get it over with.

There is no fucking green grass anywhere.

 There is nothing worth talking about.

 I could fucking cry and express genuine emotion, but you’d just consider that a tactic just like I consider any of your fucking attempts to work with me.

I’m a fucking worthless hypocrite.

Maybe I should just get it over with.”

At that moment, there was red.

 Red stains.

Oceans of red blood.

There was nothing else.

 Pure, crimson red.

 Dark red.

Blood pouring on your face and below your feet.

 In that red, there was a smile filled with the purest of hate.

The bringer of Hell had gone above and beyond in act of pure insanity.

Transcending the idea of a physical form.

 Destroying the idea of humanity and godhood.

Creating something entirely new.

 In those oceans of red, thousands of new entities formed.

Smiling faces with cold eyes, staring directly at you.

In the center stood the girl covered in her own blood.

 A memorable moment.

 A purely horrifying moment.

“Are you happy now?

Are you so fucking happy you could die?

Are you fucking happy?

How fucking happy are you now?

How fucking happy are you?

I was near to fucking dying.

014

Now, laugh.

Come on, fucking laugh. Come on, make fun of me.

That’s your only fucking goal.

Display your contempt.

Hate me.

Just fucking do it. Get it over with. Get it over with.

 Cue the fucking card that says END on it.

 Announce your fucking victory.

Be fucking sure to celebrate.

Pour the fucking champagne.

Organize a fucking two year long seventy six million course feast.

 Celebrate fucking forever.

 You fucking won the war.

All of us are nobody at all.”

 And so she had vanished into the seas of blood.

On the balcony of the castle stood the heir, not doing anything.

 Heaven’s own government made sure for her to not get involved.

And so the people grew increasingly bitter, having fully realized what the “traitor” was building up to.

 “I see. In the end, the words of the traitor were much closer to our own hearts, to what we wanted.

 Our enemy had become the voice of the masses.

 Those feelings we never displayed.

 We just sat down and blindly followed.

Are we fucking happy with her death?

 We aren’t.

The person who knew us best had sacrificed herself for our own survival.

 She brought out the hatred in all of us, while we stood there and hesitated.

 Are you all fucking happy now? ”

 “No one is happy with this conclusion.

No one could possibly be happy with this conclusion.

 No one.”

 “We never had to worry about this.

 We’re just fucking stupid.

We will fucking avenge someone who died in an act of heroism.

Let this blood become the most fucking important liquid to exist.”

 In an instant, millions gathered at the gates, killing guards on sight.

 The castle was trashed, destroyed thousands of times over and its ruins cut apart.

 The royal family had been murdered, with the current head of the Kamida clan taken hostage and tortured.

“This is for Tachibana.”

 Killed thousands of times over, cut with glass, flesh ripped apart, beat up, tied up and humiliated, weakened to the point of just being a mortal, treated like humans treat cattle, murdered a million times over.

Finished off, abandoned and dismissed.

An unmarked, shared grave in the lowest circle of Hell.

 That grave soon vandalized.

No respect was paid, and there was no need for it.

 All government employees soon subjected to the same fate.

Eyes used as props for caricatures.

Paintings done with blood.

 3 years of mourning for Tachibana organized.

Heaven restored and handed over to Ami Amari, the first in the Tachibana-Amari dynasty.

A truly worthy leader.

Heaven’s updated, much more democratic nature also quite appealed to its residents. And so, peace was snatched back from the jaws of a greedy beast.

015

The following is more monologues.

More seemingly fatal injuries.

 Alright then. I don’t care that much at this point.

It’s not like those will do anything.

 Woke up in what looks like an abandoned house.

 Date unknown.

Don’t give a fuck at this point.

It’s like being the last living human on an abandoned earth that has reverted to prehistory with giant insects.

Okay, I’m just scaring myself again.

 Let’s see here.

 Humans are odd with how recent we are compared to a good bit of life on Earth and yet we praise ourselves as the ultimate, perfected being.

 Maybe I drank the water from the river of forgetfulness and reincarnated.

Though that theory is doubtable at best.

 Cocytus, the river of lamentation.

Lethe, the river of forgetfulness, of oblivion.

 Same word anyway, isn’t it?

 Sort of disappointing how many synonyms language has.

But I mean, even the colorless repetition of life can become colorful and engaging if you describe it with tons of words that seem different but are literally the same in meaning. I guess it’s the curse of how humans work.

 The wind is cold and the Earth is old.

 What were the Seven Seas?

Does anyone really know?

I mean, it’s probably just oceans and some other areas.

 Uh.

I think I’ve run out of ideas of what to say again.

 It’s purely for the spectacle to write such meaningless, drawn out narratives.

 Yet it helps the episodic nature.

There is no cohesive story to be told here, only a set of situations.

 Perfectly sane aside from sudden mood swings, extremely exaggerated reactions, irrational fears.

Act of the act.

 Trying to appeal to people.

Rather, I was awake again.

 Should I be awake again?

 I mean, hell.

Standing in the middle of someone’s backyard.

 I look around and then another location.

016

 The middle of a highway at night.

 A woman sitting on a moving car seemingly with no driver.

 An odd weakness.

My vision gave out again.

I was looking at my own self crying through the eyes of someone else entirely.

Mouth moving on its own like my consciousness merged with someone else’s.

 “Almost entirely according to the script. Brilliant performance, isn’t it?”

A voice that clearly wasn’t my own.

How boringly terrifying.

“So, how are you enjoying it?”

 No answer. I couldn’t answer.

“Think of life as a theatrical piece with 7 billion stages.

 An infinitely expanding theatre, with a stage for each story with the audience slowly becoming less and less.

A pitiful stage.

Humans appear to dictate life as theatre, with each event clearly having some sort of symbolic, concise meaning.

But what if it’s not it?

Say, haven’t you told white lies before?

Haven’t you tried to act like you don’t usually act?

Have you tried stylizing, idealizing yourself, robbing yourself of any personality just for the approval of others?

A character with no personality aside from being there, or being someone’s love interest.

I can tell that’s how you view people.”

Tons of cars circling around, running me over while I just stand there.

“You feel no pain and you can’t die.

Your life drags on, with your story arc obviously making zero sense and your bland refusal to give up forever being a pivotal part of how you narrate things.

 What’d the audience think of you?

Of course ratings would drop if someone this annoying became the main character.

Ah, whoops! Not that you have a viewer base either.

 Pssh, who told you that?

No one other than yourself.

 Baseless statements.

Seriously, do you just live life by avoiding the topic? Shit like ‘either way’.

 God, you’re not even worth giving a lecture to but that’s my job, so you better fucking listen.

 Seal yourself off and stop thinking.

 Heartless?

Probably.

 You’re mad, aren’t you?

017

There is no aesop, there is no moral.

In fact, I speak just like you in a slightly incoherent fashion.

You wear a hero’s cloak with grandiosity being your only nature.

 Wait, who am I referring to?

Perhaps not even you.

There is no ending, it’s not much.

The main story is occurring  somewhere else.

 There’s no narrative.

There’s a lot of things that happen for the sake of happening.

I mean, there won’t be anything like giant robots or actual fight scenes.

 There won’t be any complex metaphors.

 There will only be unfiltered, pure rage.

 And repetition, perhaps too much repetition.

 How disappointing.

That’s your line, isn’t it?

Ah, too bad, it isn’t yours.

 Or is it?

 Maybe it is.

 Say, wouldn’t you like to be dead at this point, it’s just pointless to talk about such things.

It’s not even a main story arc, this is only just episodic.

 There is not much point to it.

 Say, aren’t I just making the same point again and again?

Maybe it’s just like that.

Perhaps it’s just leftover ideas.

Maybe it’s just entirely leftover ideas.

 Seriously, who the hell comes up with this shit?

It’s you, ain’t it?

 Cheapskate.

Wait, who even uses that insult anymore?

I mean, it’s my job to be the one with the Exposition, but I can’t actually play a character that boring.

That’s your job, isn’t it?

 I don’t even actually have a sense of humor.

It’s such an empty idea.

It shouldn’t exist.

 Maybe it doesn’t even actually exist.

Like you.

 Are you sure this is your true personality, or are you sure this is real life?”

018

Another change of scenery. A graveyard, a garden, somebody’s house, a castle.

 “It is a certain date today.

Say, do you know what the date is?

That’s right, February 29th.

The day of the one who came up with that one line, you know that one.

 How disappointing.

How disappointing.

How disappointing.

How disappointing.

I can’t exactly tell what it means, care to elaborate, Miss Genius?

 Speak up, speak up, speak up, speak up.

Just say it already.

What does that mean?

What does that line mean?

How mysterious.

How mystifying.

 Hey, why aren’t you saying anything?

 Aren’t these your own thoughts?

 I mean, that’s how it works.

 The line between reality and fiction is blurring, blurring so hard that you can’t tell what fiction is.

Say, what is your name?

Say your name.

State it very clearly.

 Shout!

Oh, that’s right, you can’t.

 Pssh, you bore me.

 Fortune’s on your side, so use it effectively.

 That’s your main talent, isn’t it?

You’re supposed to be a genius.

You’re supposed to be the one that saves humanity, aren’t you?

Gahahahha, how grandiose.

How boring. How plain. How exaggerated.

Of course you don’t have any of the talent required for that.

 Say, Miss Hero, aren’t you taking a bit too long on that panic attack of yours?”

Bright light.

A car crash.

 Another empty thought.

019

 Nothing that is necessary.

I’m thinking for myself again.

 “No, that’s wrong.

Say, don’t you want to be a poet?

 Say, don’t you want to write foreigner characters that have insanely bizarre traditions in their home countries or whatever?

 Isn’t that boring?

Like, who comes up with shit like that?

Pssh. You’re not even trying.

You’re like the Romanov Dynasty.

Their reign is long over but they still somehow remain due to genes.

Yet their existence is ultimately insignificant.

There is no point in coming up with such boring metaphors that make absolutely zero sense to people who don’t understand the dumb historical shit.

Say, don’t you want the Kitezh situation to be real?

 For a city to go underwater because God wants to protect its residents. Isn’t that fun?

Doesn’t that give you faith in life?

Rurik, Truvor & Sineus.

Can we believe the Primary Chronicle?

Say, it could just be ‘Rurik riding a horse’ in the end.

 A mistranslation.

The people who wrote historical documents had a tendency to change things up, to fictionalize them.

Just like you.

 Thank you theft.

Let sleeping dogs lie.

 Phrases that should make sense in context.

Slogans, catchphrases.

Repetitive ideas.

Or say, isn’t your life more like the Book of Veles?

A forgery.

Looks authentic but is obviously bullshit.

 Incoherent grammar, invented forms.

A false collection that’s much more recent than it claims or looks to be.

Slavs had too many gods, but unified under Perun, some sort of unity was created.

 You live on the island of Buyan up in the 7th heaven.

 Hell, aren’t you impressed by my knowledge of Slavic mythology?

It’s all entirely pointless knowledge, anyway.

020

The Jadad scale is used to assess the quality of a medical trial.

This is a series of vaguely meaningful, strung together metaphors.

 Switching up interests in order to appeal to people.

 To get bored with the world, you must live in it.

You live far outside.

 There’s no gratitude in exchange for good or evil.

I guess if people have the right to know, you also have the right to not know.

Quoting lines from other places.

So long, so long.

Avalon, the island in Arthurian legend, not unlike Buyan.

You can’t tell them apart, really.

Almost near identical tale. ”

Another encounter.

 Another pointless encounter.

Perspective change from my own and then back to it.

 An omen.

Two narrators, near alike.

 One existing to criticize the other.

 Stare directly into the camera and address your audience.

 Make fun of them.

Blur out every detail.

Black it all out.

Cue the end card.

End it already.

021

The following is just a bunch of random shit I wrote down.

Ancient Passage.

 Waterways.

 Industrial fear.

Sometimes things don’t exactly go right, a mass of forgotten data accumulating on an abandoned hard drive.

With the advancement of technology, data gains sentience.

 Data is the true form which humans cannot achieve.

 Infinite intelligence without knowledge or need to communicate it.

Walking on water.

 Future? Maybe.

Rewrite a passage 7000 times and let it become sacred knowledge.

There is no clear telling which is the true word of the author, seeing as they’re long dead and their drafts have been destroyed at this rate.

 World of edit.

There is a lot of things you could consider omens if you try hard enough, but none are very much clear until a later date.

 “Fourth wall”.

There is a lot of things you can break with your bare fist.

You can break things with the volume of your voice.

Shatter glass.

 It’s so lonely in a cold, empty room.

Where are you? I miss you.

 Paragraph, paragraph, paragraph, paragraph.

Nothing.

Continue.

Resume.

Further.

One word sentences.

Three word sentences.

Infinite volume of knowledge thrown together.

That is how data accumulates.

Future, futuristic, predictions.

Alterations.

Fear?

 There is a lot to the unknown, a lot more to the entire idea of the unknown itself.

 None of us can bear living a mundane life, without escape there is no will.

 Silhouettes can become alien entities.

The most mundane can become the scariest thing ever.

 The power of “suddenly”.

 If this were in a coherent format, it’d be a best-seller.

We’d be a pretty face among thousands of other faces alike.

 Nothing? Nothing.

Narrator.

Unreliable narrator.

Reliable narrator.

Distort things to fit a narrative, let someone back you up with “they’re just joking”.

021 

A common tactic.

 Science is ever-expanding, many just refuse to accept it for reasons beyond my own comprehension.

Our comprehension.

Perspective is both a wonder and a curse.

 A lot of things can surface from perspective.

New ways to view black & white, pure & evil.

 A common setup for fiction is that cannot remain white will become black.

 Those which acknowledge the true nature of white become black.

 Those who cannot become princesses become witches.

 End? End.

Just a bunch of text thrown together.

Make what you will of it.

Pause.

Resume.

Further.

Stop.

Pause.

 Resume.

 Right.

 Understood.

Nothing.

Seven, eight, nine.

Desert sands.

Searching for things that aren’t there.

 MIDI covers of pop songs.

Future.

 Snow.

Counter, guestbook, FAQ.

The world is frozen over.

Yes.

 No.

 A highway in the middle of the forest.

 Snow in summer.

Hurricane.

 Writing things that barely make any sense at all.

 Pretty faces.

 Thousands of faces.

 Faceless.

Rewrite the universe and repeat your life thousands of times.

Development on time-distorting drugs.

Why though?

An empty room.

 I miss you.

It’s been god knows how long.

Black, white, gray.

 The power of perspective.

022

What is fiction can become real.

 A believable lie may as well be the truth.

 It’s been a long year, a very long year.

It’s January 8th.

 Gone.

 Out in the cold, looking for an exit.

 A quick guide to resetting the universe in 5 seconds.

 OK Google.

Sentence by sentence, yet no structure.

 Worlds. I guess it’s nothing.

 Narrator.

Unreliable narrator.

 Reliable narrator.

 Things could be entirely different from your perspective.

 You can retell stories in any way if you’re the only witness of the events.

 Living life on a deserted island.

 Security cameras.

 Disintegrating memory.

Sleep deprivation.

Pause.

Resume.

 Further.

 Stop.

Pause.

Resume.

 Right.

Understood.

 Nothing.

Memory.

Still.

 Frozen in time.

Waiting on you.

The first time I heard about the incident.

 Intertwine.

Concepts thrown together, meaningful or meaningless.

It won’t matter in the long run.

 Staring forever into my phone, looking for answers on topics I’ll likely never mention.

 Desperately searching for explanations.

The human brain will function only if patterns exist.

There is a lot of things that have no sense or no meaning, yet we try to piece them together.

That is how humans work.

None of us want to admit it, but it’s a conclusion that you come to eventually.

Your name, my name.

What do names mean?

The fun part is the fact that a lot of names stem from a single name, just made to fit a language.

 Time.

 Asking for funds and waiting.

 Waiting is a core part of my life, isn’t it?

 You could catch onto themes.

 Pages left blank.

 70 pages later, eulogy for a kitten.

 Y2K.

 Don’t forget to turn off your computer on December 31st, ‘99!

Tangents, red herrings.

 Overload.

Run text through Google Translate, then run the translated text again, never remember the context after that.

Up in the sky, a spirit calls.

 What was that again?

Drafts.

Mashing delete.

 New Year’s.

Shouting at the top of your lungs.

The second of the month.

 I wish I could hear your voice again.

 Black & white.

 Things don’t exactly work out.

 Imagine living life without a gray area.

 If there is only black, then become the “more” blackened and let the other person be pure.

 Day-to-day, that perception is what I base most things around.

 A believable lie can become the truth.

And.

A window.

Open.

Light leaking in.

I am free.

There is nothing anymore.

Just light.

I am happy.

023

The previous material is.. Yeah.

It’s not very pretty, is it?

Shouldn’t be either.

It only gets worse from there, anyway.

Let’s explore a different medium.

Cinema.

Film scripts.

I don’t know what the hell half of this means.

Bear with it.

This is just excerpts.

Empty room, red chair, two hooded figures.

Figure 1:

Are you sure this screenplay is good enough?

Figure 2:

I suppose so.

Figure 1;

Our original idea was something much more lighthearted and less abstract.

Figure 2:

Sorry to disappoint.

Figure 1:

No, it’s quite good actually. Would just be better for a series. Are you down with that idea?

Figure 2:

I suppose so.

Cut to a busy street.

Voice 1:

Sorry, life’s been rough.

Voice 2:

I’ll pass.

Voice 3:

What’s with the cameras? That’s fucking weird.

Voice 4:

You know, I’m not feeling like it.

Voice 3:

Bright fucking lights.

Voice 2:

It’s the end of the world as we know it.

Voice 1:

God’s in his heaven, all’s right with the world.

Voice 5:

I am God.

Voice 6:
You are unnecessary.

Voice 7:

It’s clear that no one fucking likes me anyway.

Voice 8:

I feel terrible.

Voice 1:

Life’s fucking shit.

Voice 9:

Sometimes it feels like my life is some terribly amateur avantgarde film made by a bunch of depressed people that met through an internet chat room.

Voice 10:

I am me.

Voice 3:

Be.

Voice 5:

I think I’ve heard that somewhere before.

Voice 11:

1, 2, 3. Mic test. Can you hear me?

Voice 1:

The stars are so bright tonight.

Voice 3:

It’s noon.

Voice 11:

Merge.

Voice 4:

I’m not a fucking doll.

Voice 7:

A childish deity.

Voice 5:

Humans are the childish deity in our world.

All simultaneously:

Tomorrow will be a fucking awful day.

024

Shot of a TV.

Host:
It’s a lonely night out there.

Audience member:

It is.

Host:

Sometimes, things stop making sense.

Audience member:

Life is complex, isn’t it?

Host:

Sometimes I think about how I could be all the people in the world, and yet I chose to be this.

A dark room. The walls are screens, flashing gradients.

Guy A2:

Don’t wait.

Guy A3:

We are one.

Guy A4:

I am Me.

Guy A5:

You are Me.

Woman A2:

Seventy seven.

Woman A3:

Leave.

Woman A4:

You have no purpose in this world.

Woman A5:

Nine, eight, twelve, five, four. Seventy seven.

Woman A6 (Child):

Shut up, shut up, shut up!

Woman A7 (Masked):

The lines have been blurred.

Woman A8 (Teenager):

No one. No one wants to understand. No one will ever understand.

Woman A9 (Covered in blood):

I am just like him in the end.

Woman A10 (Old):

It doesn’t matter if I die. I can just be replaced.

Women A11, A12, A13 and A14 simultaneously:

Now I understand. I know the answer. I know the solution to this mystery.

025 (Afterword)

Hey. Can I consider this a chapter?

I guess.

Thanks for reading this… whatever.

Nothing here is coherent and I’m honestly surprised anyone would want to pick this up.

But I guess this bizarre self-indulgence and lack of actual retrospective…

I guess it may just be interesting to some.

These are all drafts.

Nothing here is concrete.

It’s just dumb shit I wrote.

But I guess thank you for picking it up.

I might write something that isn’t… this next time.

It’s dumb and unprofessional and just..

Um.

…

Yeah, I think you know what I’m gonna say next.

It’s all done.

Thank you.

Thank you and thank you and thank you.

Yes.

001

I was never an active reader, and I never was someone who particularly felt like reading books aside from scrolling through them idly.

I do not think I’ve ever really had initiative to do anything.

Nothing was permanent or long-lasting.

No element of my life stood out.

There was nothing worth detailing.

At this point, it’s worth saying that I barely viewed myself as a human.

No eye contact.

Avoid the topic.

I still am like that now, but I suppose I have a deeper interest in human culture now.

I wrote down the shit I thought about.

Here’s some of it, properly formatted.

No, wait.

Before that…

I want to warn you that the following material is messy.

It’s very, very incoherent.

The scenarios here are entirely fictional.

None of this has happened.

002

The following is an excerpt from a book that never was finished.

I was.. I was.. Who was I? I was awake.

It’s just that I’m not sure if I was asleep at that point. The fact still stands, I was conscious.

A moment of lingering consciousness that felt like an eternity before my vision and my brain just started working.

A blurry flash, like my memory just vanished out of existence.

Okay. I shouldn’t panic.

I’m laying on what appears to be green grass, with a beach ahead.

 I can probably see myself in the reflection of the water.

There’s a bag nearby.

Maybe I should check its contents.

 A phone, a driver’s license with garbled text, a credit card and some cold cash.

Thousands upon thousands. An ID with a picture of someone  I assume is me.

The text was or is unreadable, almost just randomized blocks, paragraph upon paragraph of garbled maybe-not-wisdom.

Issued February 29th, 2012.

 I’m not even sure what the date is at this point.

By the looks of it, it was around 2 PM, due to the near scorching heat.

 But it’s as if the heat vanished just now. In fact, I can only feel the breeze.

I see myself in the reflection of the water.

Seemingly fatal injury upon fatal injury, healing like it was nothing within seconds.

I was more alive than alive, no matter what method I tried to get myself out of this bizarre lucid dream.

 Drowning? Didn’t work.

Jumping off a mountain? Nope.

 I am more alive than any human on this planet.

The things around me felt entirely like placeholders, until my cognitive abilities just came back.

I was able to fully process visual data.

Hm.

 I guess there is no reason to panic just yet, right?

 I mean, it’s nice to see the things around me.

I was alone, with a place as isolated as a mythological paradise left for me to explore.

There were no people or animals around, or rather I didn’t feel the need to see them.

 I guess I have become what could be the lone wanderer.

 Next thing you’re gonna tell me is that my name will be “Bag”* for now or something.

Well, I’ll let that slide.

Really, I can’t even be sure what I’m doing here.

 There is no signs of civilization around here.

Out of boredom, let me try something.

I thought about building an extremely fancy house on a floating island.

And here it is.

 Is this what you would call godlike powers?

 It’s pretty nice to be a human, but being a God won’t be the worst either.

Wait, no.

How can I say that if I feel like I just started to exist today?

But that can’t be the case, I probably have been injured before.

As if I died before.

A phoenix that rose from the ashes of her previous self.

Wait, her? I mean.. I guess I’m a she.

 That’ll do for now.

There is nothing about my identity that is clear enough to piece together.

It probably isn’t anything symbolic in the first place.

It’s oddly quiet and I feel lonely.

A curse, isn’t it?

My mind isn’t clear enough for me to piece anything together.

 You know that bag I talked about earlier?

 All of that stuff was in a wallet along with pictures of an odd-looking woman that probably was or is  me, no, wait, that can’t be me, ah well, along with a few other faces I don’t recognize.

 God, how fucking long ago was that?

003

Was it long ago or was it recent?

My thought process isn’t exactly cohesive and ultimately feels mashed together.

 I don’t think this is how it’s meant to work.

 I mean, when you try to get something together on what seems like your first day of being alive with the processing abilities of a human being probably much older than you are.

A world that is still confusing.

 Like I still haven’t stopped crying on the first hour of my lifetime, not able to see anything until much later.

 Maybe that is my disadvantage, too much to work with that I’m supposed to know while not knowing what it is.

 Hell, I don’t even know where I got half of the stuff I know from.

Overwhelming, way too overwhelming.

I probably am just talking to myself again.

Shattered glass.

I feel like I’m supposed to know what glass is.

 A transparent material, probably made from liquid sand.

That definitely is how it’s made, I’m sure.

Amorphous like… a crystal?

I think that’s how it works.

 I feel like I’ll be able to think straighter as time goes on, right?

No, really.

 Isn’t that how it should work?

 I’ll restore enough memory to work with the world.

More alive than alive, no matter if I liked it or not, I was alive.

And I needed to be alive in order for my life to work properly, right?

I mean, that’s probably how it should be.

Except it isn’t.

If I was able to recover that quickly from what seemed like fatal injuries, am I even human?

Am I a being that relies on its inner organs being functional?

Am I a new species related to humans?

Am I just a moderately-complex organism that appears to be able to live without oxygen?

I have been able to store memories.

 So, that’s what’s important.

Right now, I can remember things.

004

Say, would I be an interesting research subject for some scientists looking to make cash off some bullshit theory and present me like a freak of nature?

I mean, that’s probably how it would play out, realistically.

Sorta disappointing, but oh well.

The one thing I know for now is that I’m alive and I should be thankful for that.

It’s nice to be alive.

I should just ignore the fact that my entire existence is not realistic.

It wouldn’t make sense for me to just go along with it.

I’m not sure what it was that moved me so much to feel a strong emotional response.

Maybe I forgot something again.

 Maybe this whole life has nothing to do with me.

Wait, no, I think I’ve heard that line somewhere before.

 Am I some MIT student’s project to prove a theory of superhumanity?

Wait, no.

 It wouldn’t make sense for someone in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to come up with something like this, unless I’m artificial.

I’m not exactly sure where these thoughts are coming from.

 I don’t think I can properly articulate any of the things I’m really saying.

It’s just confusing to be alive.

I’m not sure who or what I am, still.

Am I some occult club’s idea of a sick joke?

Wait, no. I mean, that seems much more realistic than my previous theory, but it’s still purely hypothetical.

Are you sure it’s even a realistic scenario for someone to wake up with zero memory of their identity?

I’m not sure what exactly could be happening.

Xylene vapor.

No, wait, that has no relevance to anything.

It’s as if my thoughts are just garbled.

Next thing I’ll say is that I hear the voice of God or something.

Whatever.

I created that house, right? I guess I’ll enter it. Need a place to stay the night anyway. Looks like it’s fully furnished.

Opening the window.

I am opening the window.

I am conscious enough to create thoughts. I am making up an internal monologue within my mind, probably soon transformed into a written record.

 There is a specific sequence of events that is supposed to make sense in life.

 No, no, this isn’t it.

 I feel drained all of a sudden.

005

 A shift of location.

 Suddenly I’m in a city with the memories of the previous, maybe not even previous location still in tact.

 Life as a placeholder of a person.

I want to crank a joke, but a genuine sort of concern fills me.

 Or maybe just disappointment with myself.

 How disappointing.

 No, wait, that isn’t my line, is it?

 Whose line is it?

 Is my memory still distorted?

It seems entirely possible.

Nothing makes sense.

I feel alone in this crowded world.

 In a split second, crowds of people were visible. First time I’ve seen any other living being aside from myself.

 The things around me felt like they just finished rendering. Or maybe it’s just me distorting reality again.

 See, even I can’t rely on my descriptions and perception.

There’s a cafe nearby and I got tons of cash on me, so I’ll probably just use that chance to live life out somehow.

Come, open this door to a mystery full of contradictions.

 Open the curtain on the stage.

 Another opera with a libretto by an anonymous author, whose name has been lost in the sands of time.

 Come, come, I’ve got things to show you.

Like circular rooms with random conveyor belts and stop signs.

Cars racing through walls with no one paying mind.

Hell, say, wouldn’t you like this to gain a real story instead of the oh so great Miss Exposition just filling your mind up with abstract concepts that seem vaguely suspenseful?

Ah well, fuck you then.

Pssh, that’s what I’d like to say anyway.

 Seriously, who even thought up this stuff?

Definitely not me!

Hell, who is the narrator?

Probably not me either!

 Her?

 Me?

 Who?

Is it you or is it the random people in the corner over there whose faces and general appearance no one will bother describing seeing as background characters are ultimately worthless unless they wield a certain author’s gun, say you know that one.

006

 Though, it’s sorta disappointing it’s not a Cherry Orchard case. Isn’t the title of that actually Cherry Garden?

 I mean, there is no real distinction to make in the end. Quite the spectacle, wouldn’t you agree?

 Instead of trying to actually do something, I’m just talking to myself again.

 What a brilliantly counterproductive waste of time!

It’s like crossing the Atlantic Ocean on a single piece of wood that you have a high chance of falling off and drowning.

 Or even better, swimming in a subglacial lake.

 I mean, what the hell would you be doing over there?

Freezing to death?

 Oh, I did mention entering a cafe.

Well, I did do that.

Ordered some food and stuff.

Eating it. I don’t think it’s necessary to go into vivid detail about such a thing.

The food’s good.

I already paid the bill.

 Moving on. There’s such a thing as a pink sea, right?

 It’s cool.

Pretty damn cool, considering it’s entirely natural.

Here’s another even more pointless idea: drinking the water of a hypersaline lake.

 No like, really, it’s just pure salt.

 There is nothing else to it.

I talk to myself too much, but there’s no one else to talk to.

Ah, I guess I am just droning on about pointless things.

“Um, hi.”

A woman whose face I wasn’t fully able to register came along and sat down.

“I’ll just let that one slide for now. What business do you have with an amnesiac?”

“Ah, um.

 This may seem extremely sudden, but you did save my life a few times and I did want to thank you.

 I just happened to be here and when I saw you, I swore to god it couldn’t be anyone else.”

 “Say, if that were true, isn’t it still an incredible waste of time telling a woman who probably won’t even remember you all that?

 I mean, it’s like telling an animation studio with zero budget to work with to crunch through 2 commercially successful and 1 terribly niche show, in hopes that it’ll all work out in the end.”

 “But in that case, the employees were dedicated enough to make that terribly niche show you speak of become another commercial success and a fair source of income, a mega franchise.”

 “Damn it, why do you have to understand my jokes?

“Maybe because it was my joke initially?”

“Alright, riddle me this, riddle me that.

I guess in the end it’s like how Sanrio has over 400 characters and a good bit of them are fairly obscure.

 Like, you have the crocodile Big Challenges or Hopty Copty, or just a horse.

 Literally, just a horse.

 Not everyone is Hello Kitty.”

 “It did take us a while to get to this conversation, so let’s say.

 Would you be willing to buy someone’s trust for less than a penny?”

“Literally? That’s far more exaggerated than any situation I could come up with.

 It’s like how you can buy really obscure books sales of were insanely low on Amazon.

Books that are ultimately pointless information-wise.

Things not even worth digitizing.

But when it’s something really fancy that it’s worth picking up for ridiculous prices due to its sheer presentation value?

 Like a book the pages of don’t actually fit the cover.

 And an entire chapter just titled Yggdrasil.

Like, you know that one?”

 “I can’t remember the title.

Or you know, something that obviously feels like its characters are a placeholders with the protagonist constantly changing design with the changes getting ever more bizarre.”

“Or, you know.

Down five times being the same as ‘you’ve misunderstood’”

“Are we just pointing fingers at others at this point?”

“Don’t know, don’t care. Not that this is gonna sell anyway.”

007

“I mean, you obviously know. Hey, say, should it be big, exaggerated moe eyes or real-looking people?”

“I mean, as long as it’s not a 90s shoujo style, I can probably roll with it. Don’t want this mess to look too alien. Maybe no faces at all would do the trick.”

“True, true. Maybe have our conversation just played back on top of completely unrelated visuals with reverb and delay effects slapped on our voices?”

“Or ya know, bitcrushing. Lots of bitcrushing. Maybe just chop our words and have the actual conversation be displayed as text on screen.”

 “Sounds practical too.”

“Hey how about a sentence entirely without punctuation?”

“Does the question mark count?”

“Dunno, probably not.”

“Say, shouldn’t we just have a punchline for this conversation?”

“Maybe the joke is that there is no punchline.”

 “I have a feeling this conversation will drag on through multiple chapters.”

 “I mean, why not?”

 “Meh, it’s done for now.”

“Nah, let’s not call it off for now. Say, we should just write down the entire lyrics to Bohemian Rhapsody here.”

“Why would that be necessary?”

 “Don’t question it just yet.”

“You know it’s sorta funny to hear shit like Russian being spoken with an obvious exaggerated format.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Fucking bears and vodka and shit. Fucking exaggerated bullshit. Oh well. I guess it’s probably not the point here.”

 “How long is this conversation so far?”

 “Uh, long?”

 “Cool, cool. We’ll roll with that for now.”

“Yeah. I mean, it’s not that it matters much. The entire brand of this is just mildly confusing narration and really long drawn-out conversations. That’s how we do it.”

“Truth. Say, should I just write out a paragraph of entirely random words?”

“Nah, you’ve already done that in these last few chapters.”

 “Fuck, you got me.”

“Black cats are cool.”

 “That’s true.”

 “Memory Bread, Jelly Translator, Time Cloth, Dress Up Camera, Take-copter, Anywhere Door.”

“Wait, isn’t that just a list of Doraemon’s gadgets?”

“I mean, that’s the joke.”

“You’re running low on material here.

You could as well be a news reporter.”

“Fire breaks out on Hell Street 666. Citizens not surprised. We have yet to receive confirmation on what the hell happened. In other news, Heaven to pass law banning angels to fly.”

“Isn’t the whole gag is that we just keep this conversation going on for way too long?”

“Alright, let’s see what else I can cram into this. Here’s a list of ways you can make eggs: hard boiled, soft boiled, hard scrambled, soft scrambled, omelets & frittatas, scrambles and hashes, sunny side up, over easy, over medium, over hard, poached, baked or shirred, basted.”

“I have a feeling you stole that list from the internet. You filthy thief.”

“Oh, really?”

 “I mean, this conversation really is going nowhere. We are just listing things.”

“I feel like doing whatever I feel like doing. There’ll be no plot developments until I deem it necessary.”

 “That’s an incredible waste of time.

 How disappointing.”

“That isn’t your line, is it?”

 “Not yours either.”

“Yeah, it’s not mine but it’s not yours either.”

“Whose line is it then?”

 “I don’t know!”

 “I don’t know either!”

“Aren’t you supposed to know?”

“Not really!”

008

“Damn it! Why don’t you know?”

 “Right back at you.”

“Aren’t we making too much noise?”

 “I guess so, but this isn’t even really an important conversation and we are just overdramatizing a minor thing for the sake of it because the whole premise is really dumb and nonsensical and this isn’t gonna go anywhere.”

 “That’s some loss of spirit if I’ve ever seen some.”

“Guess we gotta have that comedic moment where it plays out like a child pretending to be sad for you not giving them a cookie and then you’re like ‘okay, fine, you can have it’ and they’re all so happy for whatever reason.”

“That’s already been done so many times.”

 “We can do it as well too, not like comedy has copyright, right?”

“Ladies, there’s a package for you?”

 “How’d you find us?”

“That doesn’t matter. Would you mind signing here?”

“I guess. Okay, that’s done.”

“Shit, this is just a box of cease and desist letters. Along with even more DMCA complaints. We’re in trouble now, aren’t we?”

“Yeah. Oh well! Guess we just burn these now. I got a fireplace to work with.”

“We also gotta play Chopin’s Funeral March over it. No fake dramatic moment is complete without it.”

“That’s actually a good song.”

“Yeah.”

“Well, what else is there to talk about?”

“Not much probably.”

“Well, yeah. I guess we’ll just call it off for now.”

“Nah, wait, we got a quota to fill.”

 “3 thousand words, huh?”

“Alright, alright, alright. What the hell do we say?”

“Just stay in character, I guess.”

“That’s the plan!”

 “Yeah, definitely.”

Author’s note: Hey.

This format is rather obtuse and hard to follow.

But at the same time it’s fun to write drawn-out conversations.

In the next probably few chapters, let’s demonstrate this same style but now with monologues.

Could be fun.

So yeah, you’re gonna get that.

Enjoy.

Or not yet.

Nah, nevermind.

009

The following is a rather bizarre exercise in vague fantasy.

No. It’s not a tale you have to piece together. In fact, there won’t be character introductions. There will only be ambiguity. There will be a series of nonsensical metaphors thrown at you. This won’t be readable material. This will only consist of broken chronology. This will consist of realities falling apart, deformed tales that only make sense vaguely, lies I told you. Lies the narrator told you. This will be a dense wall of pointless garbage.

Maybe I died? Maybe I died and went to Hell?

 Nah, that is not possible. Hey, where’s that end card, damn it? If I were serious about

this, there’d be a lot more buildup...

 Say, am I a reliable narrator? Or an unreliable one?

Not that you have to answer.

A man swimming in a pool of blood.

 Someone as hopeless as me taking a deep dive into an ocean of delusion.

 Humans tell stories and use complicated metaphors.

Perhaps, I shall get to the real meaning of this.

Maybe not.

Hell, do you enjoy reading long, drawn-out…

No, wait, I’ve already said that.

Where’d all those ideas go?

My name is my name, a name that I know..

That is a certain fact. That is a fact you, the reader, know.

This is a tale that might have some sort of logical structure but due to its purely episodic nature.

Say, this is nearing 200 words.

Shouldn’t I say something of more value than just telling you everything that I feel like telling?

 Does it make you feel bad for me?

There is a new future, forever looming.

Eternally, I tell a ton of lies.

Goodbye. A word that makes sense, right? It appears that it does make sense.

It is an empty effort to tell you all this.

Let us get into the real happenings.

“It’s sure taking Her Pettiness a while to get here.”

 “Pssh, that’s a title reserved for you.”

“Forgot you can mimic voices. That one was a bit too real. Don’t scare me like that!”

“Ryoko Tachibana, wasn’t it? At this rate, the House of Kamida will fall apart and a new dynasty will blossom like roses during a nuclear winter.”

“The House of Tachibana will probably be more powerful than any other clan in the history of Heaven.

So that’s why, we must stand until the very end. March on until victory. March on until death do us part.”

 Soon, the sound of thousands of structures collapsing. Heaven was falling, and it was falling rapidly. Soon, in front of me, a familiar grin. One that is absolutely distinct from any other. Asami Kamida, or rather, Ryoko Tachibana, her original identity.

 “Perhaps I’ll show mercy.”

Those words were said in a voice so cold that it would make the demons of the lowest circle of Hell jealous.

A voice with no emotion.

 A bloodthirsty grin.

 A terrifying smile.

“My name is Ryoko Tachibana. I demand to see the current heir of the Kamida clan. That fake shall receive some special treatment.”

None of us could possibly comprehend what was going on, and so we had no will to disobey her orders.

A woman whose power rivals the idea of sheer force itself.

 A deity that reigns in a castle sculpted out of the flesh of her enemies.

The quiet girl, consumed by anxiety, when granted powers due to her omnicidal fantasies, had ultimately reached her goal.

To kill mercilessly, to reign over the multiverse itself, the nice girl that lived in a bay of secrets, the girl that threw millions of disconnected puzzle pieces at you and walked off with that same expression, never showing any concrete emotion, the girl that terrified others with her presence even as a human.

The heir of the new era.

 Heaven’s future Queen.

 Her Holiness, a woman that was able to take down entire armies of deities much more powerful with her sheer will.

010

Heaven’s strongest and most loyal were brought out. They fell quickly.

“Oh my, oh my.

Weren’t you so ready for this day?

Weren’t so you fucking ready to die?

Where’s your fucking will to do anything?

 You disappoint me.

I’m so disappointed I could give you a long speech consisting of nothing but personal attacks that’d take up 7 A4 pages for no discernible reason other than just because.

Doesn’t that sound fun, you fucking rats?

 You’ve got no spirit, you’ve got no will.

You have less worth than garbage.

You’re fucking failures.

All of you.

You were so ready to kill me, now what the fuck do you think you’re doing?

If you want to fall in battle, fall a hero.

Show your loyalty to some bullshit goal you set.

Fucking die if you wanted to do it so much.

Come on, come on, come on, come on.

Show your fucking uselessness.

 You’re a fucking waste of my own time unless you fucking do something.

 Come on, come on, come on, come on, come on. Just do something.

You should be doing something.

You’re really wasting my time here.

Seriously, what’s holding you back?

You don’t have to finish listening to my speech in order to attack.

 Or are you trying to use some bullshit strategy here? I’ve already seen right through it.

 Fear not, ye mighty, I will not hurt thou. My only goal is the destruction of the current heir and the higher government.

You’ll be taken with them if you resist, though.

 So, all of those who wish to face me, what are your last words?

Your immortality is ultimately useless in this situation.

So, step up.

Do your fucking best!

Let us construct a funeral pyre just for all of you.

Your names will be forgotten.

You’ll be the unknown soldier.

So, come on, what are you waiting for?

 You came here to die. Your wish was death. Are you too afraid to act?

Boring, boring, boring.

 I demand you act.

011

So, come on up.

 I mean, fucking hell. How much time are you gonna waste? Are you trying to reenact a certain battle between Russia & Mongolia, where they just stood for a few weeks until the Mongols backed out?

 I see, I see.

I suppose I could take the position of the winner here.

 Come here, if you dare.

 Up my sleeves I got a ton of tricks. Your own included.

So, are you scared?

I’m sort of getting bored of just telling you to act.

 Shall we settle this battle with silence?

Which usually means, I’ll just kill you all and be done with it.

Pssh. As if it’d be that easy.

 Really, if someone wishes to die a noble death, step up”.

 And so a few did.

A respectable fight.

Some of them did damage to Tachibana, but it wasn’t enough for her to admit defeat.

 A few ties happened, but I think it was because she let her guard down.

“Those who did step up did quite great, actually. I was expecting this, honestly.

 Say, maybe I’ll save your talent for my own reign?

Not exactly my own reign.

More like, the reign of Ami Amari.

The true previous Reigning God.

Think of me as just her messenger.

 I will rule alongside her, but here and now, I am nothing more than a prophet. A prophet who refuses to hear anything else.

Foolish, aren’t I?

If I vanish in battle, it will ruin her and ultimately make her more vulnerable, and at that point you bastards could take her away from me.

So, that’s why I’m not letting that happen.

No matter through what methods.

I will fucking fight until the very end for her.

The one dear to me, the one truly above any of you. The one being in this whole multiverse that makes me genuinely happy to be around aside from Fujiwara.

And so, Heaven goes down with me.

You are hiding the successor, right? Give her to me. I need to have a talk with her.”

Everyone in the crowd facing Tachibana were hesitating to do anything.

And within a second, many vanished.

 “Let me give you a reason to do anything. You want to avenge them, right? You want me to die the most horrible death, right?

Good.

012

Then if I’m defeated ,I’ll be sure to go out in the flashiest, most memorable way possible.

I will make sure that the name of the grotesque woman I am is carved into history as a sinful fool, literal garbage.

I will make sure I go down as a figure worse than the Devil Himself.

I will make sure to be known to be as evil as all false prophets.

 I will be the fucking incarnation of all evil that has existed and will ever exist.

I will make sure my name no longer remains a proper noun.

 I will make sure it becomes an insult.

 I will make sure that all you in Heaven hate me.

I will make sure to die as the most horrible evil to ever exist.

I will be the worst there is and will ever be.

 I will be as bad as all of the dictators of human history combined.

I will die in an ocean of sin.

 I am a fucking threat to your existence. Heaven’s greatest enemy.

 Are you happy now?

 Are you happy with how fucking disgusting and atrocious I am?

 Don’t you hate me with your whole heart?

Don’t you want to fucking rip me apart into a river of blood and flesh?

Don’t you fucking want to kill me?

Are you fucking happy with the fact that my existence is so fucking absurd and contradictory?

Are you fucking happy?

 The things I believe are fucking bullshit.

I’m shouting at a fucking mirror, pretending I’m standing in front of an audience of millions.

I’m a fucking frustratingly disgusting, useless being.

 I am fucking no one but an idealist whose unrealistic expectations are far from anything real.

 I am just a fucking naive, worthless piece of shit.

Are you fucking happy with that?

Are you fucking happy with how I much hate myself?

 Are you fucking happy you will have something to hate as much as I hated myself?

 ARE YOU FUCKING HAPPY?

Don’t you want to fucking shout at the top of your lungs for me to fuck off and die in an exaggeratedly detailed and grotesque way?

 I’m on my fucking way out. I’m just a fucking sick joke of a person.

 You never had to worry about me, because you I was just someone you should be fucking terrified of.

That’s a fucking persona I took up because I had some fucking control when I acted like that.

None of that has fucking happened.

 None of that will fucking happen.

013

 I’m just yelling at a fucking mirror.

None of you are gonna fucking speak up, none of you are gonna feel fucking anything but contempt.

 Of course, that’s what I want. I want you to hate me.

I want you to hate me in the most irrationally passionate way you can. The purest hate you could express.

I could fucking call myself Asami , but yet I’d still be this fucking gross shell of a shit person.

You want me to say that. I want to say that. I want you to fucking hear everything I say. I’m on the fucking way out.

 All of this is probably just entertainment to you.

You just want me to fucking get it over with.

There is no fucking green grass anywhere.

 There is nothing worth talking about.

 I could fucking cry and express genuine emotion, but you’d just consider that a tactic just like I consider any of your fucking attempts to work with me.

I’m a fucking worthless hypocrite.

Maybe I should just get it over with.”

At that moment, there was red.

 Red stains.

Oceans of red blood.

There was nothing else.

 Pure, crimson red.

 Dark red.

Blood pouring on your face and below your feet.

 In that red, there was a smile filled with the purest of hate.

The bringer of Hell had gone above and beyond in act of pure insanity.

Transcending the idea of a physical form.

 Destroying the idea of humanity and godhood.

Creating something entirely new.

 In those oceans of red, thousands of new entities formed.

Smiling faces with cold eyes, staring directly at you.

In the center stood the girl covered in her own blood.

 A memorable moment.

 A purely horrifying moment.

“Are you happy now?

Are you so fucking happy you could die?

Are you fucking happy?

How fucking happy are you now?

How fucking happy are you?

I was near to fucking dying.

014

Now, laugh.

Come on, fucking laugh. Come on, make fun of me.

That’s your only fucking goal.

Display your contempt.

Hate me.

Just fucking do it. Get it over with. Get it over with.

 Cue the fucking card that says END on it.

 Announce your fucking victory.

Be fucking sure to celebrate.

Pour the fucking champagne.

Organize a fucking two year long seventy six million course feast.

 Celebrate fucking forever.

 You fucking won the war.

All of us are nobody at all.”

 And so she had vanished into the seas of blood.

On the balcony of the castle stood the heir, not doing anything.

 Heaven’s own government made sure for her to not get involved.

And so the people grew increasingly bitter, having fully realized what the “traitor” was building up to.

 “I see. In the end, the words of the traitor were much closer to our own hearts, to what we wanted.

 Our enemy had become the voice of the masses.

 Those feelings we never displayed.

 We just sat down and blindly followed.

Are we fucking happy with her death?

 We aren’t.

The person who knew us best had sacrificed herself for our own survival.

 She brought out the hatred in all of us, while we stood there and hesitated.

 Are you all fucking happy now? ”

 “No one is happy with this conclusion.

No one could possibly be happy with this conclusion.

 No one.”

 “We never had to worry about this.

 We’re just fucking stupid.

We will fucking avenge someone who died in an act of heroism.

Let this blood become the most fucking important liquid to exist.”

 In an instant, millions gathered at the gates, killing guards on sight.

 The castle was trashed, destroyed thousands of times over and its ruins cut apart.

 The royal family had been murdered, with the current head of the Kamida clan taken hostage and tortured.

“This is for Tachibana.”

 Killed thousands of times over, cut with glass, flesh ripped apart, beat up, tied up and humiliated, weakened to the point of just being a mortal, treated like humans treat cattle, murdered a million times over.

Finished off, abandoned and dismissed.

An unmarked, shared grave in the lowest circle of Hell.

 That grave soon vandalized.

No respect was paid, and there was no need for it.

 All government employees soon subjected to the same fate.

Eyes used as props for caricatures.

Paintings done with blood.

 3 years of mourning for Tachibana organized.

Heaven restored and handed over to Ami Amari, the first in the Tachibana-Amari dynasty.

A truly worthy leader.

Heaven’s updated, much more democratic nature also quite appealed to its residents. And so, peace was snatched back from the jaws of a greedy beast.

015

The following is more monologues.

More seemingly fatal injuries.

 Alright then. I don’t care that much at this point.

It’s not like those will do anything.

 Woke up in what looks like an abandoned house.

 Date unknown.

Don’t give a fuck at this point.

It’s like being the last living human on an abandoned earth that has reverted to prehistory with giant insects.

Okay, I’m just scaring myself again.

 Let’s see here.

 Humans are odd with how recent we are compared to a good bit of life on Earth and yet we praise ourselves as the ultimate, perfected being.

 Maybe I drank the water from the river of forgetfulness and reincarnated.

Though that theory is doubtable at best.

 Cocytus, the river of lamentation.

Lethe, the river of forgetfulness, of oblivion.

 Same word anyway, isn’t it?

 Sort of disappointing how many synonyms language has.

But I mean, even the colorless repetition of life can become colorful and engaging if you describe it with tons of words that seem different but are literally the same in meaning. I guess it’s the curse of how humans work.

 The wind is cold and the Earth is old.

 What were the Seven Seas?

Does anyone really know?

I mean, it’s probably just oceans and some other areas.

 Uh.

I think I’ve run out of ideas of what to say again.

 It’s purely for the spectacle to write such meaningless, drawn out narratives.

 Yet it helps the episodic nature.

There is no cohesive story to be told here, only a set of situations.

 Perfectly sane aside from sudden mood swings, extremely exaggerated reactions, irrational fears.

Act of the act.

 Trying to appeal to people.

Rather, I was awake again.

 Should I be awake again?

 I mean, hell.

Standing in the middle of someone’s backyard.

 I look around and then another location.

016

 The middle of a highway at night.

 A woman sitting on a moving car seemingly with no driver.

 An odd weakness.

My vision gave out again.

I was looking at my own self crying through the eyes of someone else entirely.

Mouth moving on its own like my consciousness merged with someone else’s.

 “Almost entirely according to the script. Brilliant performance, isn’t it?”

A voice that clearly wasn’t my own.

How boringly terrifying.

“So, how are you enjoying it?”

 No answer. I couldn’t answer.

“Think of life as a theatrical piece with 7 billion stages.

 An infinitely expanding theatre, with a stage for each story with the audience slowly becoming less and less.

A pitiful stage.

Humans appear to dictate life as theatre, with each event clearly having some sort of symbolic, concise meaning.

But what if it’s not it?

Say, haven’t you told white lies before?

Haven’t you tried to act like you don’t usually act?

Have you tried stylizing, idealizing yourself, robbing yourself of any personality just for the approval of others?

A character with no personality aside from being there, or being someone’s love interest.

I can tell that’s how you view people.”

Tons of cars circling around, running me over while I just stand there.

“You feel no pain and you can’t die.

Your life drags on, with your story arc obviously making zero sense and your bland refusal to give up forever being a pivotal part of how you narrate things.

 What’d the audience think of you?

Of course ratings would drop if someone this annoying became the main character.

Ah, whoops! Not that you have a viewer base either.

 Pssh, who told you that?

No one other than yourself.

 Baseless statements.

Seriously, do you just live life by avoiding the topic? Shit like ‘either way’.

 God, you’re not even worth giving a lecture to but that’s my job, so you better fucking listen.

 Seal yourself off and stop thinking.

 Heartless?

Probably.

 You’re mad, aren’t you?

017

There is no aesop, there is no moral.

In fact, I speak just like you in a slightly incoherent fashion.

You wear a hero’s cloak with grandiosity being your only nature.

 Wait, who am I referring to?

Perhaps not even you.

There is no ending, it’s not much.

The main story is occurring  somewhere else.

 There’s no narrative.

There’s a lot of things that happen for the sake of happening.

I mean, there won’t be anything like giant robots or actual fight scenes.

 There won’t be any complex metaphors.

 There will only be unfiltered, pure rage.

 And repetition, perhaps too much repetition.

 How disappointing.

That’s your line, isn’t it?

Ah, too bad, it isn’t yours.

 Or is it?

 Maybe it is.

 Say, wouldn’t you like to be dead at this point, it’s just pointless to talk about such things.

It’s not even a main story arc, this is only just episodic.

 There is not much point to it.

 Say, aren’t I just making the same point again and again?

Maybe it’s just like that.

Perhaps it’s just leftover ideas.

Maybe it’s just entirely leftover ideas.

 Seriously, who the hell comes up with this shit?

It’s you, ain’t it?

 Cheapskate.

Wait, who even uses that insult anymore?

I mean, it’s my job to be the one with the Exposition, but I can’t actually play a character that boring.

That’s your job, isn’t it?

 I don’t even actually have a sense of humor.

It’s such an empty idea.

It shouldn’t exist.

 Maybe it doesn’t even actually exist.

Like you.

 Are you sure this is your true personality, or are you sure this is real life?”

018

Another change of scenery. A graveyard, a garden, somebody’s house, a castle.

 “It is a certain date today.

Say, do you know what the date is?

That’s right, February 29th.

The day of the one who came up with that one line, you know that one.

 How disappointing.

How disappointing.

How disappointing.

How disappointing.

I can’t exactly tell what it means, care to elaborate, Miss Genius?

 Speak up, speak up, speak up, speak up.

Just say it already.

What does that mean?

What does that line mean?

How mysterious.

How mystifying.

 Hey, why aren’t you saying anything?

 Aren’t these your own thoughts?

 I mean, that’s how it works.

 The line between reality and fiction is blurring, blurring so hard that you can’t tell what fiction is.

Say, what is your name?

Say your name.

State it very clearly.

 Shout!

Oh, that’s right, you can’t.

 Pssh, you bore me.

 Fortune’s on your side, so use it effectively.

 That’s your main talent, isn’t it?

You’re supposed to be a genius.

You’re supposed to be the one that saves humanity, aren’t you?

Gahahahha, how grandiose.

How boring. How plain. How exaggerated.

Of course you don’t have any of the talent required for that.

 Say, Miss Hero, aren’t you taking a bit too long on that panic attack of yours?”

Bright light.

A car crash.

 Another empty thought.

019

 Nothing that is necessary.

I’m thinking for myself again.

 “No, that’s wrong.

Say, don’t you want to be a poet?

 Say, don’t you want to write foreigner characters that have insanely bizarre traditions in their home countries or whatever?

 Isn’t that boring?

Like, who comes up with shit like that?

Pssh. You’re not even trying.

You’re like the Romanov Dynasty.

Their reign is long over but they still somehow remain due to genes.

Yet their existence is ultimately insignificant.

There is no point in coming up with such boring metaphors that make absolutely zero sense to people who don’t understand the dumb historical shit.

Say, don’t you want the Kitezh situation to be real?

 For a city to go underwater because God wants to protect its residents. Isn’t that fun?

Doesn’t that give you faith in life?

Rurik, Truvor & Sineus.

Can we believe the Primary Chronicle?

Say, it could just be ‘Rurik riding a horse’ in the end.

 A mistranslation.

The people who wrote historical documents had a tendency to change things up, to fictionalize them.

Just like you.

 Thank you theft.

Let sleeping dogs lie.

 Phrases that should make sense in context.

Slogans, catchphrases.

Repetitive ideas.

Or say, isn’t your life more like the Book of Veles?

A forgery.

Looks authentic but is obviously bullshit.

 Incoherent grammar, invented forms.

A false collection that’s much more recent than it claims or looks to be.

Slavs had too many gods, but unified under Perun, some sort of unity was created.

 You live on the island of Buyan up in the 7th heaven.

 Hell, aren’t you impressed by my knowledge of Slavic mythology?

It’s all entirely pointless knowledge, anyway.

020

The Jadad scale is used to assess the quality of a medical trial.

This is a series of vaguely meaningful, strung together metaphors.

 Switching up interests in order to appeal to people.

 To get bored with the world, you must live in it.

You live far outside.

 There’s no gratitude in exchange for good or evil.

I guess if people have the right to know, you also have the right to not know.

Quoting lines from other places.

So long, so long.

Avalon, the island in Arthurian legend, not unlike Buyan.

You can’t tell them apart, really.

Almost near identical tale. ”

Another encounter.

 Another pointless encounter.

Perspective change from my own and then back to it.

 An omen.

Two narrators, near alike.

 One existing to criticize the other.

 Stare directly into the camera and address your audience.

 Make fun of them.

Blur out every detail.

Black it all out.

Cue the end card.

End it already.

021

The following is just a bunch of random shit I wrote down.

Ancient Passage.

 Waterways.

 Industrial fear.

Sometimes things don’t exactly go right, a mass of forgotten data accumulating on an abandoned hard drive.

With the advancement of technology, data gains sentience.

 Data is the true form which humans cannot achieve.

 Infinite intelligence without knowledge or need to communicate it.

Walking on water.

 Future? Maybe.

Rewrite a passage 7000 times and let it become sacred knowledge.

There is no clear telling which is the true word of the author, seeing as they’re long dead and their drafts have been destroyed at this rate.

 World of edit.

There is a lot of things you could consider omens if you try hard enough, but none are very much clear until a later date.

 “Fourth wall”.

There is a lot of things you can break with your bare fist.

You can break things with the volume of your voice.

Shatter glass.

 It’s so lonely in a cold, empty room.

Where are you? I miss you.

 Paragraph, paragraph, paragraph, paragraph.

Nothing.

Continue.

Resume.

Further.

One word sentences.

Three word sentences.

Infinite volume of knowledge thrown together.

That is how data accumulates.

Future, futuristic, predictions.

Alterations.

Fear?

 There is a lot to the unknown, a lot more to the entire idea of the unknown itself.

 None of us can bear living a mundane life, without escape there is no will.

 Silhouettes can become alien entities.

The most mundane can become the scariest thing ever.

 The power of “suddenly”.

 If this were in a coherent format, it’d be a best-seller.

We’d be a pretty face among thousands of other faces alike.

 Nothing? Nothing.

Narrator.

Unreliable narrator.

Reliable narrator.

Distort things to fit a narrative, let someone back you up with “they’re just joking”.

021 

A common tactic.

 Science is ever-expanding, many just refuse to accept it for reasons beyond my own comprehension.

Our comprehension.

Perspective is both a wonder and a curse.

 A lot of things can surface from perspective.

New ways to view black & white, pure & evil.

 A common setup for fiction is that cannot remain white will become black.

 Those which acknowledge the true nature of white become black.

 Those who cannot become princesses become witches.

 End? End.

Just a bunch of text thrown together.

Make what you will of it.

Pause.

Resume.

Further.

Stop.

Pause.

 Resume.

 Right.

 Understood.

Nothing.

Seven, eight, nine.

Desert sands.

Searching for things that aren’t there.

 MIDI covers of pop songs.

Future.

 Snow.

Counter, guestbook, FAQ.

The world is frozen over.

Yes.

 No.

 A highway in the middle of the forest.

 Snow in summer.

Hurricane.

 Writing things that barely make any sense at all.

 Pretty faces.

 Thousands of faces.

 Faceless.

Rewrite the universe and repeat your life thousands of times.

Development on time-distorting drugs.

Why though?

An empty room.

 I miss you.

It’s been god knows how long.

Black, white, gray.

 The power of perspective.

022

What is fiction can become real.

 A believable lie may as well be the truth.

 It’s been a long year, a very long year.

It’s January 8th.

 Gone.

 Out in the cold, looking for an exit.

 A quick guide to resetting the universe in 5 seconds.

 OK Google.

Sentence by sentence, yet no structure.

 Worlds. I guess it’s nothing.

 Narrator.

Unreliable narrator.

 Reliable narrator.

 Things could be entirely different from your perspective.

 You can retell stories in any way if you’re the only witness of the events.

 Living life on a deserted island.

 Security cameras.

 Disintegrating memory.

Sleep deprivation.

Pause.

Resume.

 Further.

 Stop.

Pause.

Resume.

 Right.

Understood.

 Nothing.

Memory.

Still.

 Frozen in time.

Waiting on you.

The first time I heard about the incident.

 Intertwine.

Concepts thrown together, meaningful or meaningless.

It won’t matter in the long run.

 Staring forever into my phone, looking for answers on topics I’ll likely never mention.

 Desperately searching for explanations.

The human brain will function only if patterns exist.

There is a lot of things that have no sense or no meaning, yet we try to piece them together.

That is how humans work.

None of us want to admit it, but it’s a conclusion that you come to eventually.

Your name, my name.

What do names mean?

The fun part is the fact that a lot of names stem from a single name, just made to fit a language.

 Time.

 Asking for funds and waiting.

 Waiting is a core part of my life, isn’t it?

 You could catch onto themes.

 Pages left blank.

 70 pages later, eulogy for a kitten.

 Y2K.

 Don’t forget to turn off your computer on December 31st, ‘99!

Tangents, red herrings.

 Overload.

Run text through Google Translate, then run the translated text again, never remember the context after that.

Up in the sky, a spirit calls.

 What was that again?

Drafts.

Mashing delete.

 New Year’s.

Shouting at the top of your lungs.

The second of the month.

 I wish I could hear your voice again.

 Black & white.

 Things don’t exactly work out.

 Imagine living life without a gray area.

 If there is only black, then become the “more” blackened and let the other person be pure.

 Day-to-day, that perception is what I base most things around.

 A believable lie can become the truth.

And.

A window.

Open.

Light leaking in.

I am free.

There is nothing anymore.

Just light.

I am happy.

023

The previous material is.. Yeah.

It’s not very pretty, is it?

Shouldn’t be either.

It only gets worse from there, anyway.

Let’s explore a different medium.

Cinema.

Film scripts.

I don’t know what the hell half of this means.

Bear with it.

This is just excerpts.

Empty room, red chair, two hooded figures.

Figure 1:

Are you sure this screenplay is good enough?

Figure 2:

I suppose so.

Figure 1;

Our original idea was something much more lighthearted and less abstract.

Figure 2:

Sorry to disappoint.

Figure 1:

No, it’s quite good actually. Would just be better for a series. Are you down with that idea?

Figure 2:

I suppose so.

Cut to a busy street.

Voice 1:

Sorry, life’s been rough.

Voice 2:

I’ll pass.

Voice 3:

What’s with the cameras? That’s fucking weird.

Voice 4:

You know, I’m not feeling like it.

Voice 3:

Bright fucking lights.

Voice 2:

It’s the end of the world as we know it.

Voice 1:

God’s in his heaven, all’s right with the world.

Voice 5:

I am God.

Voice 6:
You are unnecessary.

Voice 7:

It’s clear that no one fucking likes me anyway.

Voice 8:

I feel terrible.

Voice 1:

Life’s fucking shit.

Voice 9:

Sometimes it feels like my life is some terribly amateur avantgarde film made by a bunch of depressed people that met through an internet chat room.

Voice 10:

I am me.

Voice 3:

Be.

Voice 5:

I think I’ve heard that somewhere before.

Voice 11:

1, 2, 3. Mic test. Can you hear me?

Voice 1:

The stars are so bright tonight.

Voice 3:

It’s noon.

Voice 11:

Merge.

Voice 4:

I’m not a fucking doll.

Voice 7:

A childish deity.

Voice 5:

Humans are the childish deity in our world.

All simultaneously:

Tomorrow will be a fucking awful day.

024

Shot of a TV.

Host:
It’s a lonely night out there.

Audience member:

It is.

Host:

Sometimes, things stop making sense.

Audience member:

Life is complex, isn’t it?

Host:

Sometimes I think about how I could be all the people in the world, and yet I chose to be this.

A dark room. The walls are screens, flashing gradients.

Guy A2:

Don’t wait.

Guy A3:

We are one.

Guy A4:

I am Me.

Guy A5:

You are Me.

Woman A2:

Seventy seven.

Woman A3:

Leave.

Woman A4:

You have no purpose in this world.

Woman A5:

Nine, eight, twelve, five, four. Seventy seven.

Woman A6 (Child):

Shut up, shut up, shut up!

Woman A7 (Masked):

The lines have been blurred.

Woman A8 (Teenager):

No one. No one wants to understand. No one will ever understand.

Woman A9 (Covered in blood):

I am just like him in the end.

Woman A10 (Old):

It doesn’t matter if I die. I can just be replaced.

Women A11, A12, A13 and A14 simultaneously:

Now I understand. I know the answer. I know the solution to this mystery.

025 (Afterword)

Hey. Can I consider this a chapter?

I guess.

Thanks for reading this… whatever.

Nothing here is coherent and I’m honestly surprised anyone would want to pick this up.

But I guess this bizarre self-indulgence and lack of actual retrospective…

I guess it may just be interesting to some.

These are all drafts.

Nothing here is concrete.

It’s just dumb shit I wrote.

But I guess thank you for picking it up.

I might write something that isn’t… this next time.

It’s dumb and unprofessional and just..

Um.

…

Yeah, I think you know what I’m gonna say next.

It’s all done.

Thank you.

Thank you and thank you and thank you.

Yes.