The Universe Inside My Head

I sleep, I stare, I distract myself. I waste away.

My life is in ruins. I thought that I had hit rock bottom before.

I was wrong.

I thought monsters left a stain on your soul.

They rip chunks out of it, and that emptiness is a constant pain that never heals, and never can be put aside.

Imagine your life, if you had a giant shark bite on your side, and be expected to move on.


Twenty-Six came by again. She's been tending to me. She informs me that she's not Twenty-Six, but Twenty-Seven.  Her quaint accent has changed. I consider the idea that she's been modified twenty seven times by this thing.

And I was fucking zero

Twenty-Seven tells me that she's ready to see me again.

I screamed at her to either let me go or to kill me. That I was still human enough to feel pain and I couldn't take any more of this helplessness.

She smiled wanly.

I'm not afraid to admit that death is a better alternative now. I used to be all 'never give up', because I felt that we could fight our monsters until the end.

Now?  I just feel pain, and I need it to stop.

I took the last of these antidepressants.  Someone told me once that twelve was a good amount for confronting horror.

I can't remember her name.

I can't remember anyone else's names.

Its all just darkness in this void.

Was I ever really anywhere but here?

Aimlessness

I woke up.

I threw up immediately, and repeatedly. I was drugged still, and was totally disoriented.  Now with a clearer head I consider that famous rockstar death of 'drowning in your own vomit' and wonder how close I came to that.

I rolled over onto my back.  That was a mistake.  Without elevation, I had trouble breathing.  I was helpless still, an invalid just out of surgery, and I was laying on the cool stonework floor of that laboratory.

I saw feet, and those feet were connected to a vague shape.  I reached out for it and nothing moved.  The hand that was supposed to respond, or at least would've before that damn fool's errand, wasn't there.

It was kind of silly to visualize using that hand, but well...I wasn't used to it being lame yet anyway. A few hundred thousand years of walking the Path versus a few...months I guess of being lamed.




I just don't know what to do anymore. I'm just so tired, I'm so weary. It was one of those moments of helplessness that you just can't recover from. A dentist working your teeth with only a subtle nudge to tell you what was happening.

Except it was far, far worse, far more intimate. The snap of tendons, of connective tissue, of bones being so casually put aside.

It was death in its purest form. Helplessness against a greater foe, getting savaged without any chance to defend. I could barely even process what was happening.

And I can't get that moment out of my mind.

The antidepressants. I don't even know if I should be taking these. I don't know if they help with what I feel. I don't know if I'm making things worse.

I take them because I need to feel that SOMETHING is helping me.

I've lost weight. I know its not healthy. I just can't eat. There's no appetite left in me. Every bite of food makes that sound, that sound that I heard. Even with my ears blocked, I can hear it through my skull. The rend of meat, the snap of tissue. Even vegetables make a noise, and the damn thing haunts me.

Potato.  I've been eating salted potato since.  26 brings it to me.

I'm in this room. with an IV in my arm. She comes in, she tries to talk, she waves her hand before me, doing something to me that I can't resist.

I don't know. I'm just so tired. I've not slept in a thousand years. I think this is all there is. In all of heaven and hell, this is always how it must be.

Life is terrifying and horrible, why should death be any different?

Anomalous Data

I wanted to try to tell this all nice and neat, but I can't.  I tried, I really tried to pretend this was no big deal, I've been dead.  This was nothing new. She.Took.My.Arm.  I can't finish writing this entry, so I'm going to leave it incomplete for now.  While I try to get my shit together.  Anything below in italics are my current thoughts.

This tower kept changing as I climbed up it. Spirally upwards endlessly. I think it was probably pretty wise of me not to open rando doors, because well...that's borrowing trouble, and I've done enough of that as it is. The floor changed again, to copper plates, with bronze pipes and marble.  The metal plates were cool against my feet, and numbed my feet a bit as I moved on. It got to the point where I wasn't sure i was moving at all.  I ended up leaving an empty can (Dr. Pepper, the nectar of whatever gods are left) on one of the steps, and continued upward. Again the flooring changed. First to wicker of all things, and then to...I shit you not...unfolded cardboard boxes.

Like, if you were to go to the post office, and get some boxes for transport.  No particular identifying marks on them, but yeah, cardboard. It seemed pretty thick, and really I had nowhere else to go. so I risked it.

Cardboard went to tightly packed fish netting about me. It seemed to be nylon or plastic, I'm not sure really. It just sufficed as stairs before I reached a ceiling. Thank a merciful god that there was a hatch on top, as I was not inclined to tread back down after all this invested time.

I thought about Twenty-Six, I thought about that pinchy machine I named 'Mr. Clicky' that I had found.

Even now it was an age ago.
not that ages have meanings anymore.
I don't know. I mean, am I back in the thick of things again? Am I just slowly dying now, letting a single moment play out over weeks or years?

What if I'm still on that fucking Path.
Always on that path
What if I just now finally snapped? I mean, I know I've exaggerated. I've talked about how 'hyuck hyuck, I must be loopy!  time to cackle into the darkness and fillet a tree stump with a knife, yuck yuck yuck."

But I mean, the classic line is 'If I were crazy, how would I know?' for a reason.

Why even bother, I guess? Why bother if I've crossed another line, or had a mental break? It doesn't get me any further on my current goal.  And that goal is to understand what happened to Matchbook.


Whatever, man, answers are needed.  Maybe I can do one good deed and finish this damn post.

The hatch opened up into another 'far too large room'  I didn't even give a shit about spacetime getting fucked in the ass anymore. Obviously the rules HERE were not the same as THERE, and I was okay with that as long as I could make reasonable assumptions.

The ground was worked stone, those big blocks that are reminiscent of castle stone. Which was fitting, because I climbed up into Frankenstein's lab.

No tesla coils, but there was a shitton of weird machinery, and glowing tubes that networked across the room. Giant gears slowly moved back and forth, chains on the ceiling. Hoses, and one of those spoked wheels you'd use on a ship to pump water.  It slowly turned on its own accord, rotating forward and back.

it was at this point that I just couldn't continue writing so casually.

I stared at the page before me, and I couldn't continue. I wrote piecemeal parts of it below.

I saw her.  The thing that Twenty Six called Dal Matia. This large, hunched over creature of metal and organs. It turned to me.  Its face was a hollow mask of metal. Inside I saw motion, but I was not sure what.  It rolled as its body turned, but it was this jerking strange motion. I heard the snap of what sounded like bone.  It was unperturbed.  But it was NBD to me.  Just another creature.  Twenty Six warned me.

What I didn't see was that Twenty Six was splayed out on a table, disemboweled to the point of cut in half.  Nope, that'd have been handy to see before I started mouthing off.

I threw that damn clacking mecha-organ onto the stone floor of her tower workshop. The thing skittered around on the ground, little prongs and levers actually causing it to crawl about six feet before it gave up. "You dropped this." I said in my level best. As always, she was engrossed in her work, using some sort of overhead machine to cause sparks, like she was soldering. It couldn't be that. That was understandable, and we can't have that in Undertown. Eventually, she turned her head towards me without her body turning. There was a sickening snap that came from within that armored frame of hers. I had heard that one before, when a deer broke its neck trying to commit suicide next to me. Yeah, I've lead an interesting and terrifying life. I repeated myself, with some clarity. "You put this thing INSIDE someone. He then went on a killing spree. I took his head off." The next words came out very crisp. "And. He. Got. Back. Up." She swiveled around, then curiously looked at the accusing evidence. Long spindly fingers picked it up. She regarded it as if it were the first time she had seen it. "Unfortunaete. It wuz meant fur a more pruper alighning."


The next sensation I felt was a coolness. I awoke to blurry vision, and a lightheaded feeling. I was floating, or perhaps laying down on the stonework. I must've still been in her lab. I noticed what had to be Dal Matia's face hovering over me as I lay there. I could barely move under my own power, my frame twitching just a bit. Whatever had happened to me, I had lost all ability to move, and most of my ability to feel.
I realized then, that she was talking to me as she peered down over me. Her words, dull and muted, took several seconds to tune in to. She was saying something about 'procedures' and 'upgrades'. Suffice it to say, I was suitably alarmed. A sputtering cough came from my mouth as I tried to wheeze out a 'no', anything to get her to stop her from whatever it was she was up to.
My ears kicked back on as I gasped for breath, staring more straight up than at her. She spoke in her standard matter-of-fact thoe, that metal mask of hers occasionally looking up at me. "...simply incogruitous with the rest uf your beeng, but there are risks an rewurds with every medicul praktise." There was a bright beaker in her hand, I had seen her mixing it when I spoke to her minutes ago. It glowed a sickly green in her metal hand. Unceremoniously, she dumped it on me, as she explained what she was doing. Ever the teacher, ever the mentor, ever the sadistic piece of monster. "Feel now pain, even now. Thees will not take too lung to repair. We just most make room for the new limb."

New limb? It was my worst fear, the same thing she had babbled about when I first met her. She was going to mutilate me, and there was nothing I could do to stop her. I managed to weakly rasp a scared "Don't", but she wouldn't listen. I was going to have to be awake as she operated on me, and there was nothing I could do about it.
I tried to will myself to pass out, even as I felt jostling and movement from my left shoulder, my heart raced, even as the rest of my body was in perfect contention. She spoke as she maimed me, "Hoomans are very frashile creetures overall, but thees is the nature of my wurk, to find yur truuth."  There was a noise, a noise that I could never have heard before, but I knew it had to deal with her ripping me apart. I prayed for death, I prayed for that death I so wanted, that I was denied repeatedly.
There was a tearing sound, and I knew I had heard that one before, at any time you are trying to cut up tough meat. My shoulder shifted again, as she placed something up on a metal pan of some sort. I saw fingers. I saw my own hand up there, just at the edge of my vision. She kept working, I tried to scream, tears welling up in my eyes, as I couldn't keep my terror in check. Impassively, Dal Matia looked up at me and had the nerve to chide me. "Stop skwurming, I weel make it better soon. You will see."


There was the sound of something light and rigid hitting the stone, like a stick. It had to be bone. It had to be what was left of my forearm being removed piece by piece. "This...this was bad surgery. Dead you really think yu could kill such an abknormalety like a Bleeding Three with your own arhm?"  She tsked at me, her fingers covered in my blood.


I could only whimper and beg for death.

she took my arm.

she took my arm

It was said

that the Slender Man appearing was just the excuse I needed to self-destruct.

That's true.  It took me a long time to admit it.  All the excuses, all the pain. I've hurt for so long just because I wanted to have some meaning in my life.

I don't know, alright?  I want to continue to write, I want to talk about all the weird shit that goes on.

but I JUST DON'T FUCKING CARE. I can't write, I can't just be nonchalant about going into weird space time shit.

it doesn't work like that.  I don't know where everybody's gone, and there's only like three people left that I know.  We were all together again, and yeah we suffered, but godddmaait its the only family i have

I cant fucking do thsi alone

Overcast

I have this umbrella you see.

Its small, but its just about enough circumference to cover me.  I can wish it was wider, but thats never going to happen.

The thing is, this little umbrella of mine, it protects me from all the negativity I've accrued from being a self-driven egomaniacal bastard who is hashtag desperately looking for a reason to live.

Its stupid I know, but I carry my little umbrella wherever I go. And above me, thats where all those negative thoughts and past crimes and worries.  That's where they all hang out, in this overwhelming sea of darkness, just shedding darkness down upon me from all directions.

But underneath the umbrella, its not dark, its just normal surrounded by dark.

Sometimes the umbrella grows, sometimes it shrinks, and on some very bad days, it nearly folds right up, leaving me almost entirely at those dark moments' mercy.

My words can't open my umbrella, only actions can. Yet other peoples words will do so. Compliments or praise, well I am still far too into such things, I know I shouldn't judge myself on the words of others.  You see, I have to do things to keep it open.  In the past, before all this, I'd give blood, I'd donate, I'd hand off sandwiches to the homeless.

I can't do most of that anymore. Blood's probably tainted. I've got no money, and I /am/ the homeless.

So I work, and I try, and I listen.

My entire life revolves around finding frickin side quests that I can solve, and doing them, so that umbrella opens up for a while.

Its my comfort and my shield against all my despair and woe. All those reminders of the things I've done...all those reminders that I should be dead again.

For a little bit longer, I'll stay under my umbrella, before that fateful day that it collapses entirely.

Going Next Door

I knew I came to a stop in the Path, because the Path stopped.

That's a rarity.  Usually the well-worn dirt path just wanders on forever, and while it may grow a bit more wild, it never just ends.

This time it did, ending very definitively among a small copse of trees. I just stood there for a few moments, letting the light wind and black leaves just swirl about, as I ruminated.

Was this what Twenty-Six did?  Did she leave a trail for me to find?  How the hell does anyone do that, anyway?

I've spent lifetimes on this damn plane and couldn't answer any of those questions. The more and more I look about me and listen, the more I realize that I don't know shit about anything.

Everything has rules now, everything goes deeper than it ever did before. The thin knife may draw blood, but when it puncture the flesh, you see so much beneath it. And so it goes for a weary soul such as I, whose entire life had only drawn blood until now.

I don't know how anyone else does it, but for myself, I simply put forth the thought that I wanted to be off the Path, and normally, here becomes there in a few moments. It was always an effort of will as they say, to just make the clear and conscious decision that I wanted to leave.

That was not the case this time. The biggest thing that happened, in response to my absolute and crushing intent to get out, was nothing at all.

My heart skipped a beat, and a pain rose in my chest. I could be trapped here again, it would all start again, being forever abandoned and lost. I was stupid to come here, stupid to trust.

It was about this time that I smelled something akin to vinegar in the air. Harsh and unnatural, the scent was but a whiff, as I kept thinking about how much I wanted out of here.  And as always, the ground just shifted beneath me as I moved, and everything rolled away.

The landscape was completely unfamiliar.  Purple skies with darker clouds, orange soil of a bright intensity, a flat, barren wasteland.

It looked flat.

Let me emphasize that, like 'no curvature of the Earth' flat. My gaze panned to the right, where distantly I could see a small craggy hill, or possibly mountain, with some features atop it.  Before it lay a sickly green haze. To my left, I saw another copse of trees, a little closer, and yet I could smell the natural scents of the wilderness, such as rotting logs, and the freshness of grass and leaves. I could smell it as if it were right next to me. It was as if distance itself was flexible here.

Safe to assume, I concluded, that either I was not in the States anymore.

Perhaps it was some other plane of existence, or some sub-plane.  Maybe it was just 'right next door' to Earth. Of all the strange and myriad thoughts, I kept hoping one thing specifically: That it wasn't another planet.

I just shook my head as I took in the angular metal tower straight ahead. Of all the strange things I've been a part of in my life, this was the strangest.  The wind picked up as I surveyed the tower, and reddish lightning clashed in the sky. There was a hint of rain already coming down, and the strange scent I had first smelled was from it. Ammonia, or something like it. It offended the eyes and nose even at this light volume, and soon the skies were bound to open up further.

Seeking shelter, I ran forward.  I doubted the treeline being able to do much to mask the scent, and the way to the right seemed far too far, that green mist that hovered over it all, reminded me far too much of chlorine.

So forward I went, attempting to beat the storm to what I could hope was safety. The land before me grew hazy as fumes rippled unseen, bending the light about it. I ran with an arm over my nose and mouth, just hauling ass.

I reached the tower to find a very old-fashioned door set into it. A plain wooden door, set for something about four times my size, adorned with a bronze or brass circular handle.  I rapped on the door urgently, sending a low ringing tone throughout the area.

Out of the corner of my eye, I noted movement upon the flat, featureless plane.  The ground rose and swelled in the distance, a bulge in the earth about the size of an elephant.  It rolled and moved at a fast pace, a semi-erratic pace. As it turned, I noticed how the ground receeded behind it.

Something was burrowing shallow to the surface, something large, fast, and most likely dangerous.

The clouds had started to open up, entirely muted lightning became visible in the sky, with no thunder accompanying it.  I banged on the door again, and in a sense of urgency, fled inside anyway. The door opened without much issue, the problem was the sheer mass of the door being put into motion. I shut it behind me then put my back against it.

From the outside, the tower was metal plates on metal plates, a haphazard series of them all slapped together to form the rudimentary shape of the tower, but inside, inside it was worked stone. A simple grey stone, smooth to the touch, was set in blocks as the flooring and walls, off to the east side, it formed the staircase upward, with a metal railing that seemed to have been bolted on.

Unsurprisingly, it also seemed to be a lot larger inside than it seemed.  I'm going to stop you right here though, if you start screaming about Time Lords or screwdrivers, I'm going to pack up my psychotic nightmare, and go home.

The tower was unfurnished, its only central furniture being the staircase itself, I made use of it. I couldn't imagine who was living here, or the scale at which they were living. I was taking a lot of chances, and hadn't much choice in the matter, but at least I could try to be practical about my actions.  I removed my shoes and padded up the large stairs. The cool stone was rough against my feet as I held my shoes in my arm. 

The first landing was simple, a wooden circular table with slatted boards on it, and three legs, a long series of pillows with backs on them, probably to substitute as a type of couch or bed...and three large cables that crackled with what couldn't be electricity.  Electricity wasn't green.

Or perhaps here it was, it certainly sparked and flashed like it, though there was no sound, much like how there was no thunder outside to accompany the lightning.  The cables ran upwards into the flooring above, I returned to the stairs.

Above that story, the walls changed to the same sort of iron panels I had seen outside. The workmanship was shoddy, and slapdash. I could smell the hint of whatever gases outside were raining on the area. The stairs shifted as well to metal plates, some of them at poor angles, causing me to constantly adjust how I walked, to avoid being put against the handrail or cut against the wall.

A large thumping sound moved above me, and as I circled upward, I noted mechanical...well, I don't know what they were, but the mechanisms were in motion. They weren't gears, nothing outright clockwork, they were large grooves that levers rolled up and down in, like perhaps, a manual transmission for a car, how the gearshifter maneuvers into different slots.

I noted doors on the side of the staircase. Naturally by this point I didn't really care that there were no side rooms denoted outside the tower, I had accepted the fact that I wasn't dealing with sweet Newtonian reality at this point. So long as everything had some reason to it, I figured I'd be fine, I just needed to keep flexible and adapt.

 Its been a rather....full set of days of late, I've got a lot of catching up to document, I'll continue from here next time.