About

I just know there's something dark in me, and I hide it. I certainly don't talk about it, but it's there - always. This Dark Passenger. And when he's driving, I feel... alive, half sick with the thrill of complete wrongness. I don't fight him, I don't want to. He's all I've got. Nothing else could love me, not even... especially not me. Or is that just a lie the Dark Passenger tells me? Because lately, there are these moments when I feel connected to something else... someone. It's like the mask is slipping and things... people... who never mattered before, are suddenly starting to matter. It scares the hell out of me.

Let me tell you something you already know. The world ain’t all sunshine and rainbows. It’s a very mean and nasty place and I don’t care how tough you are it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain’t about how hard ya hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward. That’s how winning is done! Now if you know what you’re worth then go out and get what you’re worth. But ya gotta be willing to take the hits, and not pointing fingers saying you ain’t where you wanna be because of him, or her, or anybody! Cowards do that and that ain’t you! You’re better than that!

...Okay, I'll tell ya. You are the worst person I know. You constantly hit on your best friend's wife, the man pays for your food and rescued you from certain death, and this is how you repay him? And to add insult to injury, you defecate all over his yard. And you're such a sponge. You pay for nothing, you always say "Oh, I'll get you later," but later never comes. And what really bothers me, is you pretend you're this deep guy who loves women for their souls when all you do is date bimbos. Yeah, I date women for their bodies, but at least I'm honest about it. I don't buy them a copy of "Catcher in the Rye" and then lecture them with some seventh grade interpretation of how Holden Caulfield is some profound intellectual. He wasn't! He was a spoiled brat! And that's why you like him so much, he's you! God, you're pretentious! And you delude yourself by thinking you're some great writer even though you're terrible. You know, I should've known Cheryl Tiegs didn't write me that note. She would've known there's no "a" in the word "definite." And I think what I hate most about you is your textbook liberal agenda, how we should "legalize pot, man," how big business is crushing the underclass, how homelessness is the biggest tragedy in America. Well, what have you done to help? I work down at the soup kitchen, Brian. Never seen you down there! You wanna help? Grab a ladle! And by the way, driving a Prius doesn't make you Jesus Christ! Oh, wait! You don't believe in Jesus Christ or any religion for that matter, because "religion is for idiots!" Well, who the hell are you to talk down to anyone? You failed college twice, which isn't nearly as bad as your failure as a father! How's that son of yours you never see? But you know what? I could forgive all of that, all of it, if you weren't such a bore! That's the worst of it, Brian. You're just a big, sad, alcoholic bore.

The mapping of the human genome was completed early this century.
As a result, the evolutionary log of the human race lay open to us.
We started with genetic engineering, and in the end, we succeeded in digitizing life itself.
But there are things not covered by genetic information.
Human memories, ideas. Culture. History.
Genes don't contain any record of human history.
Is it something that should not be passed on?
Should that information be left at the mercy of nature?
We've always kept records of our lives. Through words, pictures, symbols... from tablets to books...
But not all the information was inherited by later generations.
A small percentage of the whole was selected and processed, then passed on. Not unlike genes, really.But in the current, digitized world,
trivial information is accumulating every second, preserved in all its triteness.
Never fading, always accessible.
Rumors about petty issues, misinterpretations, slander...
All this junk data preserved in an unfiltered state, growing at an alarming rate.
It will only slow down social progress, reduce the rate of evolution.
The digital society furthers human flaws and selectively rewards
development of convenient half-truths.
Just look at the strange juxtapositions of morality around you.
Billions spent on new weapons in order to humanely murder other humans.
Rights of criminals are given more respect than the privacy of their victims.
Although there are people suffering in poverty, huge donations are made to protect endangered species.
Everyone grows up being told the same thing.
Be nice to other people.
But beat out the competition!
"You're special." "Believe in yourself and you will succeed."
But it's obvious from the start that only a few can succeed...
You exercise your right to "freedom" and this is the result.
All rhetoric to avoid conflict and protect each other from hurt.
The untested truths spun by different interests continue to churn and accumulate
in the sandbox of political correctness and value systems.
Everyone withdraws into their own small gated community, afraid of a larger forum.
They stay inside their little ponds,
leaking whatever "truth" suits them into the growing cesspool of society at large.
The different cardinal truths neither clash nor mesh.
No one is invalidated, but nobody is right.
Not even natural selection can take place here. The world is being engulfed in "truth."
And this is the way the world ends. Not with a bang, but a whimper.
We're trying to stop that from happening.
It's our responsibility as rulers.
Just as in genetics, unnecessary information and memory must be filtered out
to stimulate the evolution of the species.
Does something like a "self" exist inside of you?
That which you call "self" serves as nothing more than a mask to cover your own being.
In this era of ready-made 'truths',
"self" is just something used to preserve those positive emotions that you occasionally feel...
Another possibility is that "self" is a concept you conveniently borrowed under the logic
that it would endow you with some sense of strength...
Ironic that although "self" is something that you yourself fashioned,
every time something goes wrong, you turn around and place the blame on something else.
It's not my fault. It's not your fault.
In denial, you simply resort to looking for another,
more convenient "truth" in order to make yourself feel better.
Leaving behind in an instant the so-called "truth" you once embraced.
Should someone like that be able to decide what is "truth"?
Should someone like you even have the right to decide?
You've done nothing but abuse your freedom.
You don't deserve to be free!
We're not the ones smothering the world. You are.
The individual is supposed to be weak. But far from powerless a single person has the potential to ruin the world.


Somebody once told me the world is gonna roll me
I ain't the sharpest Let's get down to business
She was looking kind of dumb To defeat the Huns.
In the shape of an "L" Did they send me
Well, the years start coming When I asked
Fed to the rules and I hit You're the saddest bunch
Didn't make sense But you can bet

Open up your eyes, take a look at my d**k
Get the picture fixed in your memory
I'm driven by the rhythm like the beat of a heart
And I won't stop until I start
To stand out
To stand out

Some people settle for the typical thing
Livin' all their lives waiting in the fallacies
It ain't a question of "if", just a matter of time
Before I make you shut the ******** up

Once you're watching every move that I make
You gotta believe that I got what it takes
To stand out, above the crowd
Even if I gotta make you shut the ******** up
'Til mine is the only d**k you'll see
Gonna stand out...

'Til ya notice my bulge

If the squeaky wheel's always gettin' the grease
I'm totally devoted to disturbing the peace like a ******
And I'll do it all again, when I get done
Until I become your number one
No method to the madness, and no means of bondage escape
Gonna break every rule or gender bend them all outta shape
It ain't a question of "how", just a matter of when
You get the sexy message that I'm tryin' to send
I'm under a spell, I'm in over my d**k head
And you know I'm going all the way to the end
To stand out, above the crowd
Even if I gotta make you shut the ******** up
'Til mine is the only d**k you see
Gonna stand out...
'Til ya notice my bulge

If I could make you stop and take a look at me
instead of just, jackin' by
There's nothin that
I wouldn't do if it was gettin' you to notice my bulge
It's alive
All I need is half a chance,
a second thought, a second glance
To prove, I got whatever it takes

It's a piece of s**t

To stand out, above the crowd
Even if I gotta shout out loud
'Til mine is the only d**k you'll see
Gonna, stand out, staaaand out

Stand out!
Stand out!

'Til mine is the only d**k you'll see
Gonna stand out

'Til ya notice my bulge

I got myself a notion
One I know that you'll understand
To set the world in motion
By reaching out for each other's hand
Maybe we'll discover what we should have known all along
One way or another together's where we both belong

If we listen to each other's heart
We'll find we're never too far apart
And maybe love is the reason why
For the first time ever we're seeing it eye to eye

If a wall should come between us
To high to climb, to hard to break through
I know that love will lead us
And find a way to bring me to you
So don't be in a hurry. Think before you count us out.
You don't have to worry, I won't ever let you down

If we listen to each other's heart
We'll find we're never too far apart
And maybe love is the reason why
For the first time ever we're seeing it eye to eye

If you're ever lonely, stop. You don't have to be
After all is stolen, I'll beat a way from you to me
TAKE A LOOK INSIDE AND SEE (YEAH)

If we listen to each other's heart
We'll find we're never too far apart
And maybe love is the reason why
For the first time ever we're seeing it eye to eye

The sea was angry that day, my friends - like an old man trying to send back soup in a deli. I got about fifty feet out and suddenly the great beast appeared before me. I tell you he was ten stories high if he was a foot. As if sensing my presence, he let out a great bellow. I said, "Easy, big fella!" And then, as I watched him struggling, I realized that something was obstructing its breathing. From where I was standing, I could see directly into the eye of the great fish.

Consider only victory, make defeat an impossibility in your mind.

If you're upset with yourself, it could give you an opportunity to redeem yourself as a person.

The American College of Pediatricians urges healthcare professionals, educators and legislators to reject all policies that condition children to accept as normal a life of chemical and surgical impersonation of the opposite sex. Facts – not ideology – determine reality.

1. Human sexuality is an objective biological binary trait: “XY” and “XX” are genetic markers of male and female, respectively – not genetic markers of a disorder. The norm for human design is to be conceived either male or female. Human sexuality is binary by design with the obvious purpose being the reproduction and flourishing of our species. This principle is self-evident. The exceedingly rare disorders of sex development (DSDs), including but not limited to testicular feminization and congenital adrenal hyperplasia, are all medically identifiable deviations from the sexual binary norm, and are rightly recognized as disorders of human design. Individuals with DSDs (also referred to as “intersex”) do not constitute a third sex.1

2. No one is born with a gender. Everyone is born with a biological sex. Gender (an awareness and sense of oneself as male or female) is a sociological and psychological concept; not an objective biological one. No one is born with an awareness of themselves as male or female; this awareness develops over time and, like all developmental processes, may be derailed by a child’s subjective perceptions, relationships, and adverse experiences from infancy forward. People who identify as “feeling like the opposite sex” or “somewhere in between” do not comprise a third sex. They remain biological men or biological women.2,3,4

3. A person’s belief that he or she is something they are not is, at best, a sign of confused thinking. When an otherwise healthy biological boy believes he is a girl, or an otherwise healthy biological girl believes she is a boy, an objective psychological problem exists that lies in the mind not the body, and it should be treated as such. These children suffer from gender dysphoria. Gender dysphoria (GD), formerly listed as Gender Identity Disorder (GID), is a recognized mental disorder in the most recent edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association (DSM-V).5 The psychodynamic and social learning theories of GD/GID have never been disproved.2,4,5

4. Puberty is not a disease and puberty-blocking hormones can be dangerous. Reversible or not, puberty- blocking hormones induce a state of disease – the absence of puberty – and inhibit growth and fertility in a previously biologically healthy child.6

5. According to the DSM-V, as many as 98% of gender confused boys and 88% of gender confused girls eventually accept their biological sex after naturally passing through puberty.5

6. Pre-pubertal children who use puberty blockers to impersonate the opposite sex will require cross-sex hormones in late adolescence. This combination leads to permanent sterility. These children will never be able to conceive any genetically related children even via artificial reproductive technology. In addition, cross-sex hormones (testosterone and estrogen) are associated with dangerous health risks including but not limited to cardiac disease, high blood pressure, blood clots, stroke, diabetes, and cancer.7,8,9,10,11

7. Rates of suicide are nearly twenty times greater among adults who use cross-sex hormones and undergo sex reassignment surgery, even in Sweden which is among the most LGBTQ – affirming countries.12 What compassionate and reasonable person would condemn young children to this fate knowing that after puberty as many as 88% of girls and 98% of boys will eventually accept reality and achieve a state of mental and physical health?

8. Conditioning children into believing a lifetime of chemical and surgical impersonation of the opposite sex is normal and healthful is child abuse. Endorsing gender discordance as normal via public education and legal policies will confuse children and parents, leading more children to present to “gender clinics” where they will be given puberty-blocking drugs. This, in turn, virtually ensures they will “choose” a lifetime of carcinogenic and otherwise toxic cross-sex hormones, and likely consider unnecessary surgical mutilation of their healthy body parts as young adults.

Michelle A. Cretella, M.D.
President of the American College of Pediatricians

Quentin Van Meter, M.D.
Vice President of the American College of Pediatricians
Pediatric Endocrinologist

Paul McHugh, M.D.
University Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins Medical School and the former psychiatrist in chief at Johns Hopkins Hospital

Anne had expressed the desire in the rewritten introduction of her diary for one person that she could call her truest friend, that is, a person to whom she could confide her deepest thoughts and feelings. She observed that she had many "friends" and equally many admirers, but (by her own definition) no true, dear friend with whom she could share her innermost thoughts. She originally thought her girlfriend Jacque van Maarsen would be this person, but that was only partially successful. In an early diary passage, she remarks that she is not in love with Helmut "Hello" Silberberg, her suitor at that time, but considered that he might become a true friend. In hiding, she invested much time and effort into her budding romance with Peter van Pels, thinking he might evolve into that one, true friend, but that was eventually a disappointment to her in some ways, also, though she still cared for him very much. Ultimately, the closest friend Anne had during her short life was her diary, for it was only to Kitty that she entrusted her innermost thoughts.

In her diary, Anne wrote of her very close relationship with her father, lack of daughterly love for her mother (with whom she felt she had nothing in common), and admiration for her sister's intelligence and sweet nature. She did not like the others much initially, particularly Auguste van Pels and Fritz Pfeffer (the latter shared her room). She was at first unimpressed by the quiet Peter; she herself was something of a self-admitted chatterbox (a source of irritation to some of the others). As time went on, however, she and Peter became very close, though she remained uncertain in what direction their relationship would develop.

The framework of society stands above & below me. The hardest thing to destroy, yet the weakest thing that exists. I know that i am different, yet i am afraid to tell the society. The possible abandonment, persecution is not something I want to face, yet it is so primitive to me. I guess being yourself means letting people know about inner thoughts too, not just opinions & fashions. (Heheh) I will be free one day, in the land of purity & my happiness, I will have a love, someone who is me in a way. Someday… Possibly thru this life, maybe another, but it will happen.

“Love is more valuable than anything I know. To love is to enter a completion of one’s self. I hate those who choose to destroy a love, who take it for granted. love is greater than life even. As i look for love, i feel i can’t find it. ever. but something tells me i will. Someday. Somewhere. As my love will find me. She feels as i do right now, i can feel it. we will be inseperable. Her & i. Whether it is [edited] or not, i think ill find it. (my love). we will be free, to explore the vast wonders of the stars. To cascade down everlong waterfalls, & thru the warmest seas of pure happiness… no limits… no limits. Nothing will stop us.

Time passes, people move. Like a river's flow, it never ends.A childish mind will turn to noble ambition. Young love will become deep affection. The clear water's surface reflects growth. Now listen to the Serenade of Water to reflect upon yourself.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-I3X0fvD5NU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7y5KdgImmoo&index=1&list=LLnEZ11DQWxgtxjIaiRvRzFA

https://youtu.be/azrJVfNlAU0

https://youtu.be/tfBpKhh8dgQ


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I gave my life
Not for honor but for kazoo

Ethan spoke directly into Antonio’s soul on that dark night. “You're a sweet kid, okay?” He confessed “I can tell you're a little butthurt from your assblasting. But I recommend next time trying not to harass and threaten us...” Antonio could only watch, clenching his jaw. “Just let us talk s**t about you, you're SoFlo! You think people are gonna stop making fun of you?”

Ethan’s face became a spiderweb of cracks as Antonio smashed his iPad onto the expensive tile floor. Shards of glass skittered to a halt below the brick hearth of his massive fireplace. He cursed under his breath and began cleaning it up. Not like he had anything else to do.

In the next room sat fifteen laptops all hooked up to various web traffic simulators, predicting internet trends. He used an advanced algorithm to download other people’s content as soon as it went viral, adding black bars to the top and bottom with some dumb religious s**t in there before auto-posting it onto his Facebook page. His operation had become entirely automatic, for the sole purpose of gaining subscribers. After all, subscribers equaled money.

His only worry these days was hoping nobody would recognize him on the odd chance that he had to step outside. He hated his fans. In fact, he stole that algorithm from a fan whose name was then easily forgotten. But this was different. Ethan’s face laughed at him from the shattered screen. The other shoe had finally dropped. Looking at his simulator outputs, he could feel the veins tensing up along his neck. He was forecasted to lose half of his subscribers in the next six months. And subscribers equaled money. The algorithm did not lie. The red tide was turning. How would he explain this to the man in the book? Perhaps he already knew. Antonio had to fix it.

He stayed up late that night drinking Soju cocktails, writing the best possible response to Ethan that he could come up with. It was horseshit, but it would do. He had to resort to making fun of himself, so he acted like the buffoon the world saw him as. It was his surrender, changing the tone of the argument. Antonio had never learned to argue. He was too busy learning to play chess. But he knew how to charm. And he knew how to lie. And if it came down to it, he knew how to destroy. In the back of his mind, a small voice hoped that it wouldn’t come to that. He uploaded the video and prayed it would silence the criticism.

The video was a disaster. He couldn’t get the book out of his mind while kissing the paid model, and the editing was too sloppy. It was seen by the world as more than just a surrender, but a pathetic leap into some previously undiscovered black hole of shame. His subscriber forecast was now an eighty-five percent loss over the next six months. He would have to go back to working at 7-11. “No,” he thought to himself “Not with everything I’ve accomplished.” Another voice in his head, much louder this time, reminded him that everything Antonio had, he owed it to HIM. And that pact was specific. Nobody could rip it away. He was protected. This Ethan, this foolish man, he would pay. With that, Antonio decided it was time to consult the book.

From his fridge, he grabbed a milk carton filled halfway with Icelandic goat’s blood. It was congealed and smelled of decay, but it would suffice for a council. There was only one more carton left after this. He reminded himself to call his Goat guy, Nils, in the morning. “GUILTY!”

The word suddenly screamed into his head, followed by a piercing white tone. “AH! WHAT THE ********!” Antonio cried out, tumbling against the brick hearth of his fireplace. “NOT AGAIN!”

“GUILTY! GUILTY! GUILTY!”

His fingers gripped at his temples, ready to rip out every nerve, every tendril of noise, when just like that the hot lance slid from his brain and disappeared. He cried there, below his secret entrance. He knew this wasn’t the work of the man in the book, but something else. He was reminded of fluttering bats, a hooded figure staring at him from the shadows. Something that was playing a tug of war with the man in the book.

“And I’m the rope,” Antonio muttered to himself before pressing the hidden button within the fireplace. The brick facade rotated to reveal a dark hallway. Antonio disappeared into the darkness, plotting. “Maybe this rope should have a say in things...” He turned off the OTHER voice in his head, the one warning him about dangerous thoughts.

The hallway ended in a single door. Solid steel bolted into the foundation. A green terminal came to life, placing ominous shadows across Antonio’s face. He pressed his thumb to the terminal and the steel door hissed open. The room beyond was stark white, wide and empty save for a pedestal in the center upon which it sat... The Book.

It’s true name was “The Book of the Dead” and Antonio had found it on a Goodwill shelf back in 2011. He opened it as a joke, but was enraptured by its song. To some, the book only showed the writing of the names of the newly dead. To a select few, who were already dead inside, it read something else entirely. When Antonio opened the Book of the Dead for the first time, he saw directions. The directions were quite specific, down to the phase of the moon, and what kind of goat’s blood to use to call upon HIM. As HE would have no other type of ceremony to convene with mortals. There was a single illustration accompanying these directions, and every page after repeated the same image. Two blood red eyes atop a white smile. Antonio had become very familiar with that smile. It always hit him like the smell of a diseased animal, yet he endured because after all HE had allowed Antonio his empire through the manipulation of the common man.

Antonio opened the book, peering at the pages with the slight fear as always that something new would be printed there. An alteration of the deal. A surprise move on the chessboard. He knew what this book could do to people. And as always, he was relieved to see the same old instructions scrawled sloppily across the page. He knew it was in another long-dead language, but he understood it just fine. The man in the book opened his eyes suddenly. Their understandings were one, and Antonio winced as he finally realized how dangerous that would be this time around. Nonetheless, he began the ritual.

He read a passage from the book, moaning, his tongue swirling in his mouth, his finger rolling across strange glyphs printed on the page as if reading, yet his eyes were rolled back into his head, pointed towards the divine. He brought the milk carton of goat’s blood to his lips and drank deep of the clumping red gelatin. He had done this enough times to realize the importance of putting your goals first and your self-worth second. The oozing glob of blood needed only to lick his stomach acids before being rejected. His eyes rolled back down. He spewed twice as much blood as he’d drank onto the concrete floor, hot and steaming now, bracing himself against the wall with each attack. When it was finally over, he wiped the red spittle from his mouth. The ritual was complete. “s**t,” he muttered, looking at a splotch of blood on his two hundred dollar shirt.

The pool of blood began to boil underneath the steam. The shimmering red gave way to darkness and from within, an arm grasped the ground as if reaching through the floor. The creature revealed its face now, forming from the pool of rejected blood; First two red dots beaming up at Antonio, then the teeth. It was always grinning like someone listening to a joke they already knew. It towered above him. Red pulsating liquid coarsed across its body in streams, bubbling over the exposed muscles and curvatures of its thorned face. Antonio could never figure out whether to call the man in the book a “He” or an “It” -- he had settled for rotating between the two depending on context. Antonio had also learned to swallow his screams when it spoke to him.

“WHAT IS IT.”

He never saw its mouth move, but figured it must. Its voice, nevertheless, sounded as if someone was whispering into each of his ears at different times. He almost thought about his plan, about the rope choosing its own direction, and quickly dropped it to the back of his mind with all the other small voices.

“There’s a problem with the youtube channel,” he stammered in reply. The way it looked at him now worried him, like it was burning a hole through his mind. It was searching him.

“YOU WOULD ASK ME A FAVOR?”

“I need you to destroy another Youtube channel. This guy Ethan. He’s roasting me on the internet and it’s going to ruin everything.”

“AND YOU LET THIS HAPPEN.”

“No! I didn’t do anything! Well, I tried to respond and instead incriminated the s**t out of myself but anyone would have done that! You have to help me!”

“NO.” Its body rippled with disdain.

“I thought we had a pact?!” He stammered, pointing at the book.

“THE PACT HAS BEEN FULFILLED. I OWE YOU NOTHING.” It sneered, sending plumes of bloody mist into the air.

“But you need me. You need my channel, to make everyone stupid, right? You need everyone to be stupid so you can ascend?” Antonio knew the room was hermetically sealed and conditioned to 52 degrees, but he was sweating buckets. Even if this thing didn’t have a straight connection to his mind and soul, Antonio’s intentions were written all over his face. He went for the Queen sacrifice. “Just fix this one problem for me, and it’s right back to the way things have been going. I promise. You keep saying yourself how close we are.”

Its grin widened to an impossible length. “AS I SAID, THE PACT HAS BEEN FULFILLED. TONIGHT I ASCEND. BOTHER ME NO MORE HUMAN.” With that, it began to melt back into the puddle of blood. Antonio realized The Blood Man was in no mood to play chess, so he flipped the board.

“Not if I burn this ******** book!” He yelled back, something he’d never done in the presence of the red demon.

The melting ceased. It snapped its eyes towards him. It was no longer grinning. In its eyes, Antonio saw something new and strange. Was it fear? “T-- That’s right! I’ll burn the goddamn thing in the fireplace, I’ll destroy it!”

“YOU DARE?!” It howled, rising to its full humanoid form.

The Man in the Book probably wasn’t used to people pushing back. Antonio probed for another weakness. “I DARE! What the ******** are you gonna do about it? Huh? What CAN you do about it?” Antonio leapt for the book suddenly, but the Blood Creature was faster than he realized. His hands brushed empty air as the thing before him snatched the artifact for itself. This led to a blood-curling scream. Antonio watched in shock as the creature’s hands melted away into black dust and clouds of ash around the book. It fell to its knees, howling and shimmering with heat.

In that moment, Antonio closed the distance between them, and the next he was backing away, book in hand. “You can’t touch the book,” Antonio was the one grinning now.

“NO, BUT I CAN TOUCH YOU!”

And with that, The Man in the Book started towards him. Antonio ran, stumbling through the doorway, and slapping the control panel on the other side. The creature was halfway through the doorway when the hatch hissed shut, cutting the bloody assailant in twine. It screamed with a thousand deafening voices. Yeah, definitely an “it,” Antonio thought to himself.

Its innards crept from its torso like worms, forming new appendages. He started running back towards the living room, where he’d burn the book and be done with it. Antonio only then realized that the fireplace was fake. There was no chimney chute. It’s sole purpose was to house the rotating hidden door. How could he be so stupid? He passed through that door now, into the living room, and continued running towards the kitchen.

Antonio’s first thought as he entered the kitchen was “I don’t remember leaving the fridge open.” That’s when he spotted the other milk carton on the floor, drained of blood. The Man in the Book grabbed Antonio from behind, its arms fully formed again. Its red skin burned through his shirt. He could smell the saccharine smoke of searing flesh. He screamed and dropped through its grip, to the ground, scrambling towards the stovetop. It was a gas range, but sometimes the pilot light took a while to--

“YOU EXPECT TO RUN FROM ME?”

The Creature seemed to grow taller as it advanced. Its grin had returned.

“YOU HAVE DISAPPOINTED ME FOR THE LAST TIME.” It reared back with its fist, ready to punch clean through his chest. Antonio spun a dial on the stove. “You’re goddamn right about that.” He said.

The Man in the Book found himself distracted by the blue flames licking up from the top of this strange hollow box. “WHAT MAGIC IS THIS?”

“It’s called a power burner, b***h.” With that, Antonio slam dunked the Book of the Dead onto the flames, scorching his wrist in the process. The Man in the Book’s jaw unhinged with a scream. He began falling apart into viscous pearls of steaming flesh. The book itself sizzled as the flames caught the pages. A black ooze bubbled from within the book. The flames were to the ceiling now. Antonio jumped to his feet, about to grab a fire extinguisher. Then another thought hit his mind: “Let it burn. Let it all burn down. The fifteen laptops, the algorithms, the youtube page. Let me turn around and look at the life I’ve been running away from all these years.”

But as he turned to leave, something happened with the book. The flames died out. The black ooze continued bubbling. It formed a pool on the ground, from which a familiar arm jutted out.

“Oh s**t,” Antonio muttered. The face that followed was not one he recognized however. This thing wasn’t red or bloody. It looked like a man. Long blonde hair, covered in real skin. The man stood to his feet and reached for a handshake.

“Hello Antonio. Nice to finally meet you in the flesh, as they say.” He spoke like a normal man.

“Who… who are you?” Antonio responded.

“You called me The Man in the Book, in your head that is. My name is George.”

“You don’t look like the man I’ve seen.”

“The book makes you look a certain way if you spend enough time in there. But hey, thanks so much for freeing me. Told you I’d ascend tonight.”

“You tricked me?” Antonio cried out.

“Don’t try to make me feel guilty about it, Antonio. I’ve been trying to trick people into doing that for nearly three thousand years and you’re the first person who was stupid enough to fall for it. Then again I got tricked into doing the same thing myself, so, what’s the saying? About removing the stick in your eye before telling someone else about theirs?”

“Log… it’s a log…”

“Ah sure. Anyway, we have ourselves a predicament here Antonio. You just destroyed the Book of the Dead, which means right now there’s a lot of people out there not dying when they should be. You know what we have to do right?”

Antonio knew. He didn’t want to say. The naked man before him reached behind his back. Antonio’s eyes grew wide with fear when he saw what George was holding.

“It’s time to start writing a new Book of the Dead. With a brand new author.”

George placed the book on the counter. “Now be a good boy and get in the book.”

Antonio moved to run, but his legs were locked. All he could feel was that he was staring at his new home in the pages of that book. As he moved closer, George said something but it was already from another world. The color of the pages became his field of view. A yellowed patina wrapped over him like a cocoon and winched his arm to an outstretched position. He closed his eyes in pain, not believing what was happening. He slipped into psychosis, and was lost among the waves for a time. Bobbing endlessly in a black sea. A familiar voice laughing at him from the beach, in the shadows underneath the pier. “Told you so, Antonio!” It cried, laughing hysterically.

When he could finally open his eyes again, Antonio found himself sitting at a stone desk cut from the cave around him. A shaft of red light filtered in from high above. Antonio became aware that he was writing with an old quill pen in his hand. He was writing names in the book. These were all the deaths in the world as they happened. He was writing them and someone else had to read them. He knew that. Antonio wondered about his Facebook page. What would happen when all of his fans noticed he was missing? Then it dawned on him: The algorithm. It was going to continue reposting other people’s videos forever, or until someone shut it off. That could take months. Years. Nobody would know he was gone, that he was here acting as someone else’s algorithm. Forever reposting the losses of the mortal realm; A place that he barely knew, and would soon easily forget. Checkmate.

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It's been a while since I've used gaia, I might check things out here and there for some days but if anyone wants to keep in contact here's my discord: ☍ 𝚃𝚛𝚎𝚗𝚝#1758

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l-Asriel Dreemurr-l

Report | 12/05/2015 10:03 pm

l-Asriel Dreemurr-l

i mean about buying the item and helping me heart
l-Asriel Dreemurr-l

Report | 12/05/2015 9:52 pm

l-Asriel Dreemurr-l

Thanks for helping me crying

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