Song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jedFvpziGqo
It's dark. I feel frightened. Light pollution was a blight against the night sky, but it allowed you to see the world, no matter the circumstances. Now it was gone. Like everything, there was benefits and losses. Suburban life felt alien without illumination.
(It's crazy. It's a whole different world now.)
In many more ways than one. Trees were distant figures, cars were oddly-shaped beasts, and porches became the battlements of a castles. In the absence of light, my mind tried to stitch together a comprehensible reality.
Scenario System aside, there was something about the darkness, the sheer blackness that transformed my neighborhood into a different realm. I was now a horror game protagonist, veering through the predestined paths of my neighborhood like a PS1 Silent Hill character.
A wanderer in the dead of night, like a weary traveler in the Middle Ages. Time faded away, and I was returned to the most primal sensation: shock and awe of the nighttime.
[A powerful Constellation of the night is staring at you!]
A chill ran through my body when I saw that message, but the sensation faded. Did they take a glance at the channel and leave? Did I just sense a Constellation's gaze from beyond the Star Stream messages?
"AwWwoOOooohhHHH!!!"
In the far distance, I heard the howls and snarls of wolves, and the screaming of humans. Even further out, explosions and rumbling continued to echo through the early morning.
(Mobs, panicking humans, and gas explosions causing buildings to collapse. That's my best guess.)
As soon as I formed the thought, another scenario window opened up.
===
[Sub-Scenario - Escape]
Category: Sub
Difficulty: E
Clear Conditions: Traverse your pitch black neighborhood and get to the nearest school.
Time Limit: 20 minutes
Reward: 200 coins
Penalty for failure: ???
===
(My nearest school...)
In the Seoul, South Korea scenarios, the country's subway stations were main bases for humans to stay safe and progress. Stations were vital resources since they're designated safe zones from the elements introduced by the Star Stream system.
(Soon, we'll be going back to the good ol' days of fighting over land like feudal lords.)
For the U.S., which lacked a robust public transportation system (fuck you, car lobbyists), schools would become our stations. It made sense because they were equipped like small communities.
(The green rooms. If I survive the green rooms, I can get the flag and become a King.)
Then... I can compete with other humans. Another smile almost broke out from my face, but I made sure to temper myself.
(No, there's no guarantee I can survive the green rooms. It'll be a dog-eat-dog-world where people cannibalize the limited resources to save themselves.)
Although, I could just kill more people again and-
"Hah... hah..."
(What...?)
Why am I breathing funny? I look down and it's hard to see, but my hands are shaking. I realize they also feel funny. Oh god...
(They're sticky... and they smell bad.)
My hands are covered in blood. The blood of my neighbors, the ones I just killed a few minutes ago. The cracking of their bodies and their screams echo in my head and-
"Urgh-!"
I almost feel sick, but I force it down, but now my head feels light and dizzy. Was it all that running?
(Shit... I feel like shit.)
Why is because of what I did? Killing my neighbors? If so, why did killing people feel so bad? This was logical, I made it make sense. They killed their own families to survive, so they deserved what was coming to them. It's only fair to receive the same type of treatment you've given to others, so why was I feeling so... so sick?
(Remorseful?)
Was this left over guilt or something? For those people who could barely call themselves human? Why was I feeling something like that?!
"Ah shit...!"
Dropping my bokken onto the ground with a wooden clunk, my breathing became worse as I fell on my hands and knees. My beating heart was so fast, I couldn't handle it. Was I having a heart attack?
My palms and fingertips braced against the cement, which begun to sweat. My perspiration mixed with the blood, and the ground's grittiness stuck to my bloody hands even more.
(Oh god oh god I feel so gross oh god I feel so gross so gross so gross disgusting I feel so-)
Disgusting.
("Aggaahh!! Please, please stop!!")
("It hurts, it hurts, stop!!")
("No more, I didn't mean it, please!! I'm sorry!")
("Agaghh!! Mama!! hellLLpp!!")
("Fucking little son o' bitch!! I'll kill y- urgh!!Argh!! Fuck!!")
("Ugh!! Agh!!")
("...!")
Their voices or submissive silence bounced around in my head. My seven victims. Plus one.
("Hey, hey!! We don't have to do this- Stop!!")
"Homeless Fucker..." I whispered.
Do you know what a human sounds like as they die? You think there's battle cries and dramatic shouting?
No... they squeal. They squirm. If they don't fight back, they curl up and die, as if sinking into themselves will save them. They scream and shriek and beg and plead and gasp and try to bargain as sharp pain racks through their body and-
-And I just stood there, ignoring them. All their pain. I just kept on doing what I was doing.
(Until they were dead.)
"...until they were dead," I said aloud with a small laugh.
I- I didn't even know what I was doing until I was halfway through. I thought myself into doing it and committing to the action, but after that... it was like some part of me went to asleep, and another went on autopilot, and I woke up at the end to see seven dead neighbors and one homeless guy.
(My god... is that it? Seeing red?)
No, I was way too lucid. Was it high-functioning? No, then that goes against the point of seeing red. Can I even remember doing the deed? Eight counts of murder?
I clutch my head instinctively but wince soon after - my hands are still bloody, but now they were dry instead of wet and sticky. How long have I been sitting here?
(My sense of time...)
Oh. I get it now. Why I can't remember what I did less than twenty minutes ago. I killed them all in a rush, and the adrenaline shot my mind like an overheated engine.
(So that's what they were talking about. That... battle dissociation.)
Veterans, active duty military personnel, people who've been in fights or similar crises. Many describe it as one big blur. Somehow, I've blurred my own mind, making the memories fuzzy.
The screaming within my head began to ebb away. It didn't stop, but it faded enough into the background.
(So that's why some killers are traumatized.)
Even if your victims are dead and in the earth, they still live on inside of you. Your memories. It's perverse to say, but there's a connection between victim and killer in those final moments. You're hurting someone until they die, and in the end, you get to walk away, but you must deal with the aftermath of what you've done. Why does that sound so familiar?
(It's -it's a rising action before the climax and the denouement.)
The rising action - the killing. The death - the climax. The denouement - the trauma.
"Hahaha... hahahahaha!!!"
At first, tears were falling from my eyes, but soon they were replaced by raucous laughter.
(That's just the way of the new world now!! It's KILL or be KILLED!!)
There are only two constants in life! When the fluff is stripped away - the laws, the agreements, the morals and values and the rules and the rights - there are only two truths left!
To not be raped and to not be killed!!
There is no Godly ordinance to protect you! Unalienable rights ordained by God?! Those are lies. Self imposition written hundreds, even thousands of years ago, but in the end, they don't matter. It's all a bunch of fabricated rule-sets and stories written by age-old humans who somehow have a say in our modern society from beyond the millennium old grave.
No, there is only one constant truth, one unchangeable fact: you. Your existence.
Even if the world falls, even if the systems break away, if everything were to survive beyond the end, you and others will be there.
Human rights must be enforced. Laws must be passed. Regulation must be prioritized. But you? You are human. The moment you were born into this world, you were given the right to exist. Before you were even conceived, you were cultivated, and fought to lay claim to the human cradle known as your mother's womb. After gaining strength, you tore your way out, through the blood and placenta. Through the shock and the fear, begetting shock and awe, you were born.
And you took your first breath.
In those beginning moments, you were given two unalienable rights - the only ones that truly matter when all the protective systems break down: to not be killed and to not be assaulted.
For murder is a violation against your existence. Assault, sexual or not, is harm against your existence. Rape and similar affronts are the perverse impositions of someone else's will and desires against yours.
For in the end, when no one is there to save us, a human only has themselves.
"Hahahahaha..."
My laughter grew weak like my tears.
(Life is like a cobweb. Innumerable strands binding us together, forming the Gordian knot of life.)
Sometimes strings will be cut, entire swaths of the web will be destroyed, and things will be rewoven.
(That's why murder is so scary.)
When you kill one being, you do not destroy one strand. You destroy it and pull on all the others connected to it. To kill one existence means there will be a momentary connection between you and the victim, but new strands will be forged between you and their connections.
You graduate from a disconnected being into a murderer.
(That is why... I cannot go to the school.)
If I got to the school ahead of us, then everyone will eventually catch up to me. That means my mother and everyone else... we'd face the scenarios together, from surviving the Green Rooms to electing a King to hold the flag. They'd be with me every step of the way.
(If they survive this sub-scenario...)
What if they didn't make it? What if some of them didn't? What if my mom isn't there? But if she is there, and they all make it... what then?
(I'll have to face what I've done.)
They'll hold me accountable or internalize their resentment. It'll be harder to make decisions due to their resistance. And my mother...
(She'll try to control what I do, like all parents who have children.)
But it'll be worse. She'll be dependent on me now. Since I'm capable enough of surviving the scenarios, then it means I'll have to take care of her, lugging her around. Like dead weight.
Honestly... I don't think I love my mother. Not anymore. I've suffered for a long time in my younger years because of her. For years, her heavy hand was placed on my development, which she calls love, but it's all control and enmeshment, attaching herself to me because she has nothing else in life.
I'm sick of being my mother's son.
(But if I forsake it all...)
If I move in a different direction, avoid that school, and abandon the chance to get the King's flag in the upcoming scenarios, I'll become a wanderer...
(I'll be a free agent.)
I won't be a King, not even a pawn.
(But I'd be free and off the board as I can be.)
Free as I can be under the scenario system. To me, that is worth it.
The school is up ahead and I can see a glimpse of it. If I just continue walking towards it, I'd be there and everything will follow a prescribed path, one I'd know thanks to the Anna Croft Side Stories.
But I'm sick of the comfort and familiarity. I want a new story. I want to jump onto a new page. In my old life, I complained and bemoaned that things weren't changing, that I wasn't happy. If I go to that school and surround myself with the same people and the same circumstances, I'd only be perpetuating my misery, existing within a semblance of the old life I knew and despised. I'd merely recreate that old reality under new circumstances.
The idea of that, the repetitiveness, the continuation of my old, unfortunate situation, it makes me sick. No, I must change. I must forsake everything, from that school and that flag. A drastic severance is what I need.
The school up ahead, only a few dozen meters away. A forest to my left, much closer, with visible paths I can walk on.
I turn away from the straight-forward path and start walking towards the woods, approaching the tree line.
Sometimes, the common way, the direct path isn't what's conducive. People need to explore, to veer away, to find what they need, not always get what they want.
[Many Constellations are wondering what you're doing.]
[Constellations of Nebula "Black Cloud" are watching you with great interest.]
[Many Constellations are saying you're going the wrong way.]
[Many Constellations think you are acting foolish.]
I ignore the messages of the Constellations, similar to how I've ignored the opinions and perceptions of others. I have to choose my own path, even though it's scary. I'm going to enter the woods that border my neighborhood: an immense Metro Park crowded with tree life and woodland critters.
(The scenarios will change that, though.)
Who knows what'll be there?
(But I'll face it.)
This is the decision I've made: to forsake what is known in the hopes of attaining what is new.
(Even if I'm a lost child-)
"-I can keep on walking."