Recharge and Reequip

"I can just leave."

I stated it as a question, and she just kept that little knowing smile. Twenty-Six even gestured at the door, "I'm not stopping you."

I squint at her suspiciously. She'd been pretty upfront with me, but this isn't how it always went.

"That's not always how it was here." I said with a bit of heat in my voice. After she...wounded me like she did, I was locked in this little room, for what were apparently months.

Twenty-Six gave me a crooked look, "Did you really think you were going to go wander off in the wastelands in the shape you were in? That was for your own good."

Okay, that one pissed me off. I stood up, scrambling to express myself. It didn't work out too well, but I tried to yell at her. "Was this for my own good too?" I gesture to what used to be my left arm, now a mere stub with a metal cap on the end of it.  "Who the fuck gave you the right to just decide what I get to do?"

She didn't say anything, she didn't rise to my anger. She was also kinda sorta right in the second half of that deal.

I was delirious, emotionally reeling, and atrophied. Stepping outside was a death sentence. I probably couldn't have made it down the ever spiraling stairs.

I just fumed though, and she was nonplussed by it all, though she kept her eyes on me. I could've probably said more, but being enraged was just so draining.

"Did you know what she was going to do?"

Twenty-Six gave me that mysterious gaze beneath what I could only assume what eye shadow or something, the hood didn't help her, but her words felt earnest.  I felt I had learned a bit more about intuition of late.

She replied softly, "She likes to fix broken things."

"And I was broken."

She nodded, "That's all she wants to do. Fix things, improve things."

I raised my stump, "THIS is an improvement?"

She caught her mistake and raised a hand pacifyingly, "I thought maybe she'd fix your arm, not...that."

It took forever for me to continue, but eventually the moments passed.

"What is she?"

I got a shrug in response, "What's anything out here?"

"A Fear?" I questioned.  She shrugged again.

"Is she like the."

I paused.  God, it took me back. It took me back eight years.  How long ago was all that?  How much has happened in the world since all that?

Since the night I looked out my window and saw something unnatural, for the very first time.

"The Wretched Man?" I answered finally.

Memories just poured back into me. All the people I had met, all the community we had built. People just wanting to survive together.

We shared our stories, we hoped that we could learn something from each other. We tried to convince each other that we could survive.

Not many of us survived.  I can barely remember their names. Chester and Vieve...I think they made it. But how do you know?  I think it was Vieve who said that she felt like a cloud finally moved out from over her, and that she felt free. Is it so easy?

Twenty-Six looked at me as I processed some things that happened a hundred thousand years ago, but those memories came up fresher than I had ever recalled.

I looked at Twenty-Six, and wondered if she was one of our number once, but she'd always been so elusive on her own past.

"I don't think so.  She's inscrutable, and weird, but overall, she's not malevo.." She paused and raised a hand, knowing I was about to yell.  "She's not malevolent. She did it to help. Its just that she doesn't seem to get things like pain or trauma. She just fixes everything to what she thinks is right."

It sure felt like torture.

Yet, I was alive, I had survived a harrowing experience. The loss of my arm was a trauma from which I'll never recover. But I could learn to adjust to it, since I have no other choice.

She responded finally, "She just forgets what she's doing, and goes back to experimenting." I caught a look in her eye that told me measures.

Twenty-Six was one of those experiments.

"So why do you stay?"

With a bit of pain, she simply tells me 'don't.'  I don't push it.

She seems to relent that I'm leaving. I want to see my own world again.  I need to get back into contact with people, real people.  My investigation was a bust, and holy fuck my shadow's out there still.

God dammit. Maybe it doesn't come over here.

Alright, whatever, I'll see where that goes if it doesn't kill me.

She kinda just points at the corner near me.

I see a piece of shit sword in the scabbard against the wall. Its got some coloring to it, weird colors, purple and black, in the hilt.

I look back.  Twenty-Six says almost bored, "I gave her something to do."

I said off-handed, "This thing's supposed to be magic."

"Wouldn't be surprised." She said flatly.

"It....used to be a katana."

"Weeaboo." She snarks at me.

I looked at her, "This is the same weapon though? She reforged it?"

Twenty-Six says in her thick accent, "She does things. I don't ask why."

I drew it, and the piece of shit blade I've had for 100,008 years felt good in my hand. It was straight now, not a ninja-to. I think honest to god short sword. I only remember sword types from the old D&D groups, but it made me think more European than anything.  It had a crossguard she added. Thank god. It was tough as shit to parry with a freaking replica katana. The middle of that crossguard, made with some sort of dark metal, had a little hole in it.

As I stared at it, I saw little motes of energy cross through it.

"I'm going to regret this...but tell her thanks, I guess."

She started to say it, a smirk on her face.

We say it together.

"And all it cost you was an arm and a leg."

Time to Talk

"I'm not an edgelord." I say with the rote measure of someone who had to defend myself a thousand times.


 Twenty Six smirked at me, all necro-goth in her gear. "Sure." She replied skeptically. 


 "I'm not." I repeat.


 She doesn't believe me. 


 I roll my eyes and look away, "This isn't me being all angsty for nothing. I've got PTSD for sure."  "Uh-huh."


 She replies, "and you brood a lot."

I frown, "My life is dogshit, I'm missing a goddamn arm. Come on, you're going to tease me?  Do you thi.."


 And she interrupted me, "Did you 'not ask for this?'"

I just growled and suddenly developed a keen interest into the vague clouds outside my window. She adds as she leans forward, "You literally carry a katana."

I snap, "Yeah but I actually barely know how to use it, so take that! Hah!"

She sits on the chair. She's helping me cope, I know that's what she's doing. Sometimes you need to just have someone to talk to.

I've got a cup of ez-mac I've been working on. No idea how it got here.

She continues, apparently wanting to push more buttons.  Her accent is pretty thick. Boston, if I recall. "So uh. let me ask you."

"Here it comes." I say in an exhausted tone, but one that hopefully sounds permissive.

Despite being a prisoner here, she's treated me okay.

As I ponder if I have Stockholm Syndrome, she says "Rika."

I sigh. "Okay. which one?"

She idly says, "Both?", she's got her elbow on her knee, and that's holding her head up. She's acting pretty human for someone with...well I can only assume those are 'upgrades' I see on her.


 I just talk for a bit. "Rika. So the first one was just this proxy that was tormenting a guy I never met that was just called 'B'.  She decided to come get me for some reason. I did some stupid shit involving her."

She just looks at me.

I sigh, "is this about that ass comment?"

She smirks.

I shrug, "I was stupid, I was wanting to exert some sort of control over myself. I chose to pretend it was sexual for some reason. It was shit behavior to do, I get that."

I add before she goes any further, "She apparently got 'redeemed' or whatever, then immediately pasted.

Twenty Six says wryly, "Those severance packages..."

I answer it in unison with her, "really focus on the sever"

She prompts me, "The second one?"

"Erika?" I raise my eyebrows, "She terrified the shit out of me. She was really, REALLY freaking smart. She saw through my bullshit immediately, and played me for a sucker repeatedly. I couldn't help but think about how right she was. I mean, just because you're on 'the other side' doesn't mean you can't be right."

"So no sexual attraction then?" She follows up.

"She was utterly beautiful." I answer.  "Blue eyes, which is weird, probably contacts now that I think about it."

"Because she was black."

I nod and pause, "Is this where you tell me you know her?"

Twenty Six laughed a little, "I'm not that predictable, am I?  DId you fuck her?"

I blink.

"Did I fuck the proxy?"

"No. No I did not. She would've killed me."

"But you wanted to."  Now she's razzing me again.

I shrug, "Admittedly she was beautiful, and...well..." I manage a weak laugh, "Boobs are fun."

Twenty Six says wryly, "I know they are."

I wave my hand dismissively, "But no. I realized for the most part, I'm asexual. I never had much of a want, you know?"

She doesn't say anything.

"No real want to look for anyone either."

She doesn't say anything.

I just look at her.

The necrogoth finally responds, "But you /have/ fucked."

I roll my eyes. "Yes, Once. Why the h-"

She cuts me off, "I'm curious! I'm stuck up here in this frankenstein tower twentyfour seven"

I raise an eyebrow and start to make the joke, but she shuts me down with a look.

I add, "This doesn't end with you propositioning me."

She laughs, "It doesn't /now/."

"Probably for the best." I admit.

There's some silence, so she goes for the throat again.

"Did you make her c--"

Now I interrupt her with an annoyed shout, "Oh come on!  Really?"

She laughs, "Alright alright."

I realize she's still playing me, and honed in on a sore spot. I point at her, "I'll get out of here someday, and you'll regret playing games with me."

She tilts her head, "What's keeping you here?"

I look about as surprised as she does. "Big wheely thing, part metal, part squishie, cut my arm off. Talks like Dracula or something?"

Twenty Six shows some teeth as she smiles, "The moment you get out of her sight, she forgets you existed."

Holy Crap.

I can leave.

Brought Low Again

I didn't want to go.

I didn't want to see her.

But I didn't have much of a choice in the matter.

Injury has a way of debilitating you in all manner of ways. You find yourself not wanting to eat, drink, move...live.

You atrophy, and lose muscle mass.  Muscle relaxers for the pain? They work by destroying muscle mass, making it even worse.

I took a last handful of pills, all while Twenty-Seven just looked on, unimpressed. There was an odd lilt in her voice, something I couldn't place. "Well, at least you're eating something."

I didn't even try to jest.  But it was true, they made me hungry, and while I couldn't stand eating much aside from potatoes, I'm sure that without them, I'd have not even done that.

That sickening crunch and tear.  The sheer idea that to survive, you've got to force more trauma upon yourself.  Its impossible.

I remember taking some time back there, in that place before.

I had to look it up. Sanctuary.

They had TV, and I used to be something of a comics fan. So I watched TV, anything to numb the mind. Anything to quiet myself.  A chance to normal out if but a moment

I binge watch some marvel shows. Daredevil is fun.  I binge for a few weeks and then I have to stop

they bring in the Punisher guy. and they say he's constantly living in that exact moment when his family died.  He can't progress.

But is that me, or is that the me that I want to be?

The one that's hurt but not hurting, damaged but unbowed, accepting that I cannot move forward?

Do I want to be hurt so bad that I just can't feel?

yes

I need it to end.

She was kind enough to lead me back through the strange place. Stepping on ground made of little blocks like legos, and onto a staircase of glass whisps.  I don't know why it changes, I stopped caring after it happened.

She leads me into a thin door that we have to stand sideways to get through.  The lab's the same, and I pull away. There's nowhere to go to, but I do it anyway. I live at the whim of something beyond me.

Wheels squeak. A masked creature covered in metal plates, and hoses appears. Its eyes light up within a facemask of some dark metal.  It speaks to me in a weird accent. I can see a tongue moving in its face, but nothing else moves up there. Is it armor that hides what it is?

Picture like...

Shit, its impossible to really describe because she keeps changing what she looks like.  Okay, let me try.

Picture a xenomorph, skin half of it, cram it halfway inside a metal statue, so it gives some sembalance of a human element, and then drop that into a wheelchair.

There you go.

She talks in this weird, English-by-way-of-Google language too.  I'm trying to emulate that as I write, because ITS MY FUCKING COPING MECHANISM, GOD DAMMIT, AND I NEED TO FUCKING COPE.

Jesus Christ.

It examines that fucking stump from when she cut my fucking arm off.

An eye comes OUT of her facemask, looks around, then squishes as it gets pulled back in. I'm more concerned about what happens next, than what she's up to.

"bAlance?" She says. I didn't realize its a question. She just stares at me. Time passes, and I really didn't want to talk. I didn't even want to look at her. Every time I do, I just think about what she did.

The fucked up thing is that she doesn't seem either malevolent or remorseful.  I was a project, and she seemed to like her projects."

"No?" I finally answer. I'm back at the point I can't look at her.  That whine of her wheels just makes me flinch, and I start reliving things I shouldn't.

I feel something on my hand, and I open my eyes. I didn't realize they were shut.  Wet flesh, covered with a mucus or something. Slick.

She's touching me. She pulls on my arm, and I pull away.

I got triggered.  I pull back and scream, and try to flee, but I can't remember how I got here.  Was it a door, a trap door? did I just walk down a hallway?

I thought I heard someone call my name. I lost track of what was happening.

I woke up again.

Voices. It was her. Twenty-Six or Twenty-Seven. Maybe both. I don't care. I hear a few words of it. I hear the word 'trauma' and look about.

I'm back on a table of some sort. I remember seeing her wheel over, and then I pass out again.


I wake up back in what room I've been staying in. Its starting to become mine. I feel a little safer here now. Security. Just a tiny bit. What little things I still have, they are treasures to me, they are my memories, my identity.

I look at whats left of my arm, and find its been covered with something metal. A cap of some kind that covers it. Black metal.

And now I just try to process life again, for a little longer.

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