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The glass passes down the table again. The mug spins, and spins, and spins. It twirls within my fingers like a dreidel, the ceramic handle clinking up and down and up again. A cycling little thing. A smart, intelligent, cycling little thing. I wonder if it too knows there is nothing special about me at all.
The remnants of the dream cling to me like smoke. I'd been in space, a ship suspended in the endless black, the stars scattered across a canvas that whirled in cataclysmic hollow. I remember looking out the window, watching the galaxies drift by, each one luminous and bright and utterly meaningless. The wonder I'd expected was missing, replaced with a quiet sense of disillusionment. Space was supposed to be something grand, infinite, but all it offered was emptiness, the very awe of it having been stolen.
Reality did eventually replace, and the familiar shapes of the room did one day settle. It took me a while to rise, to make examinations and breakthroughs, to tear into existence through sinless disease of my thoughts. Some tragedies were born brighter than others, but these thoughts of mine were nothing but dim. Dim tragedies. They weren't my thoughts, per se. I was only thinking as a result of reading her books. The bookshelf across the bed, cluttered and uneven, the organization, ridiculous. Each shelf wild, stacked together with no rhyme or reason. I stared at this painting in print for a while. 'Sunday in the Park with George,' it was called. I read about psilocybin. I read about how humans want things predictable and orderly, how they recognize order in some taste of perceptual constancy. I read about the fifth principle of perception, the world where perceptual processes can sometimes distort sensory experience. I learned about illusions, demonstrably incorrect experience of a stimulus pattern, diseases shared by others in the same perceptual environment. About ambiguous figures– images that are capable of more than one interpretation, and of learning-based inference– the view that perception is primarily shaped by learning, rather than innate factors. I watched a show on the perceptual set, on the readiness to detect a particular stimulus in a given context, and played a game on gestalt psychology, the view that much of perception is shaped by innate factors built into the brain. There were facts on figures, the part of a pattern that commands attention, the ground (part of a pattern that does not command attention, the background), and I memorized the Gestalt laws of perceptual grouping. Similarity. Proximity. Continuity. Common fate. The Law of Prägnanz (we are looking for predictability, even where there is none.) When I was done, I watched an interview about face blindness, or prosopagnosia. And the effects of it all, the ability to learn new information, the more recent memories being lost, the corpus callosum, and Sicily. I read about a princess who grew larger the longer she received stimuli. I read about reuptake. And in all, my favorite thing I did today was find this painting in the basement. Zugspitze by Eugen Bracht.
I read about this too:
If ϕ is an atomic formula, then ϕ is a formula of 𝓛.
If ϕ is a formula of 𝓛, then ¬ϕ is too.
If ϕ and ψ are formulas of 𝓛, then ϕ ∧ ψ is too.
If ϕ is a formula of 𝓛, then ◊ϕ is too.
If ϕ is a formula of 𝓛, then ◻ϕ is too.
And I also read the Elegy to the Moon.
How did it go again? That poem, addressed to Mr. Hall.
'ghosts fly about my pretty windows
bats climb about and eat the gnats and fleas
and mister moon hides up there, shimmering in that dark and lonely sky
and i cannot discern if the thunder is real or not
the sky?
what does the sky say?
when december passes by, and june is soon to follow.
what does the moon do when the ground beneath her feet rots away?
what does she do when the sun fades and melts into a beautiful oblivion
when the dark gives way for more colors, and destruction destroys to give space for life to live.
a kiss from a thorny set of hands, legs like pliers, and other magnetic things.
eternally wide.
the pieces of the sky remain with me, but i dont remain there.
what are we but bugs?
nothing at all, mister sky.
what a lovely, beautiful storm in the rain!
what thunderous applause and cute little snowcloud tops
favorite flavors and legs and limbs and things and cute little girls and massive mountains and empty water bottles and printers that work in new inventive inks and nothingness and blendings and endings and all fades away! the moon that watches, the moon that cries, she sees all these friends vanish and go away, and over again, and over, she fades away into oblivion.
and another girl sits before you now, mister moon, with another male companion.
thunder cracks for you.
music plays for you.
an elegy to mister moon.
a rainy firework hits the moon's crater and makes it deeper.
another girl will ask you questions.
another boy will sing to you.
what does this one matter, mister moon?
such calm peace. such beautiful quietude.
itll end soon, mister moon.
and here she is now.
i give my way for another girl behind me, another one to write for you.
and she'll hear my radio voice in the reflection of various mirrors, but this stage is for her.
this is her time to shine. there she goes, mister moon.
"I want to know everything, Mister Moon!"
"I want to love and be cherished, and give all my life to the beautiful moon, just like the boys under the sun!"
Mister Moon, don't look down on her.
She's enjoying herself.
Allow her the freedom from this cycle, if but for a moment.
The buzzing of bees, the flowering cycles, the nice things.
It's a picnic, for her.
Until all goes wrong.
A picnic for her and her friend.
What little children twinkle with hopes and good dreams.
She'll want to know everything, and her friend will love her with love she cannot return.
Because she'll be returning to the dirt soon, and young girls like that are unable to love anything but knowledge.
"Mister Moon, let's dance! Let's dance with the spring!"
And she looks behind her, and she realizes,
There's another girl meant to take her place, with a friend in hand. An identical boy to hers, and this girl has a mirror to stare into, but no reflection to take its place.
Mister Moon looks down on her.
Young one, know that your fate is kind and unkindly. It is the storm of all creation, it is the thing that happens once every lifetime, the thing that happens over, and over, and over again.
Let this one take your place, child.
"The rain is nice for now."
Yes, it is. And so, this girl fades with the moon, hand in hand, to see the logic of the rain.'
I kept reading. Kept looking around for something. Kept learning. It wasn't out of any curiosity or genuine interest. I just don't know how to sit still, doing nothing. I try, sometimes. Just to sit there. Just to not move, to meditate, to think nothing at all. But, I can't. To the escapee, I crack open a book. I touch the edges of the pages, feel the paper feather against my thumb. I start reading- really reading, with my whole heart- until the words go soft in front of me, and I realize I've been staring at the same sentence for five minutes. Some sort of story's happening, but I'm not inside any of it. I'm watching it from the window, learning nothing, and only memorizing.
I tidy up, too. The lady, the one who's not here right now, I'm sure she'd appreciate it. Keeping busy. Making the world look a little nicer, even if you're not in the mood to see it. I fold clothes into neat little squares. Wipe down the kitchen counters. Arrange the cans in the cupboard by size (don't think the old lady will like this one too much.) My hands move all on their own, but my chest stays heavy, meaning I gotta lift it up and down myself. The second I stop thinking on these things, it all comes flooding back. The gnawing tick of a perilous ache. The grueling weight of dead regrets. She's still on my mind. I don't know who.
Nah, fuck that. I do. I really do.
I think about what I would've said, what I would've done.
If I was a few days early, a few minutes.
One of the books said it was a sin, that taking your own life cuts you off from a Sensotheist's ending. When I told that book what happened, it looked at me like I'd handed her over myself. I know it's not that simple. I know words say things to make sense of the awful parts of the world, I'm not naïve to not think that– but still– what if this book's right? What if she's burning, and it's all my fault?
I want to see her so bad. Just once. Just to say I'm sorry. To tell her I love her, even if I don't, even if I can't. I wouldn't do that. I know I don't want to see her, because I don't want to take any sort of responsibility, and God- God- I feel so rotten for beginning to love someone else. For smiling at breakfast. For letting this new lady take care of me. She's not trying to replace her. I know that. But it feels like I'm betraying someone every time I let myself be happy.
I don't do anything about the feelings.
I feel guilt, but I get dressed anyway. I comb my hair. I put on a clean shirt. I look at myself in the mirror and try to see something worth saving. It doesn't always work, but I think she'd be proud of me for trying.
Ain't sure which one. But, I'm not sure of anything lately.
I'm having episodes. I fell to the ground an hour ago, crying. I could see her in my head, filling my ears with all the sounds, the tastes of snow, the scent of peonies and pink trees. I saw men marching, uttering the phrase "I will not fall." I saw a stand named the Boozer Beetle.
I heard a lot too. Big great bloody snow cloud said something like,
'Esotericism is the core of sensotheism.'
I saw my God's notes. Or, another disciple of hers. I don't know if God has handwriting, if God writes.
'contrast/connotation is relevant to the discussion of meaning
Malicious intent machinized= gaedriel, solitude, materialism
The tavern, the familiar feel, the drinks, the simple life, the world around us. Purples. Greens.'
I remember her caving self.
And I remember opening my eyes to see it all again.
--the books, yeah? This 'M' girl has so many shelves.
I trailed my fingers along the spines. Older titles that seem weighted, heavy with dirt. The Myth of Sisyphus, Crime and Punishment, No Longer Human. Lasciatemi Morire, there, nestled amongst them. Some of the lower levels were levied with the weight of taxing spines worn and soft, others sharper, newer, all of them touched at least once. Goodbye Eri. Berserk. Kakegurui. Serial Experiments Lain. Neon Genesis: Evangelion, Chainsaw Man, Dungeon Meshi all packed together. Some of them aren't books, but cases. See-through cases with discs. Signalis, too. I remember that one vaguely. It's the game I tried earlier. I didn't get very far. A disc of Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, its cover dark and sleek. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice,
Goodnight Punpun, Cowboy Bebop, Frieren, Nana- the nations form a strange kind of border, each one a symbol of their own right. Some of the spines said "1." There was no higher number. I suppose there must be more to collect. When this "M" person comes back, I'll find them the "2"s, to repay them for letting me use their room.
The lower shelf did have a label though. Before I accidentally peeled the damn thing off. 'CDs.' Dozens of small cases, brittle things. One of them, a bit uneven. 'Future Past,' is the one I push back into place. The disc is missing from it's case, though. I wonder where it went. I'll go looking for it later.
I can see myself when I step out of the bedroom, making sure to close the door behind me quietly. I'm sitting at the table, retracing my steps as the mug spins and spins, and spins some more. Past me, I guess, is afraid of disturbing the weight of this quiet, of stepping too loudly in this moment that hangs like a still-standing pool. Future me is a whole lot less kind. There is only silence here for the both of us.
The kitchen stretches out ahead. Dim and ghastly thing. Light filtering in all grey and faint, touching all the edges of the countertops with a softness that feels like something reverent. I watch me make a little bit of a stand there, allowing myself a moment, feeling the quiet swell around me before I move forward. The refrigerator, humming with me. A low, steady sound. Comforting, almost. A heartbeat in the silence. Another life that lives with me and knows how I feel.
I open it slowly, letting the cold air breathe against my skin. And there, front and center, are her leftovers. A single sticky note sits on top, inked with her handwriting: "for you." I gently rip it off the plastic and trace the note with my fingers, feeling something strange, warm and unwanted somewhere in my chest. Future me's still at the table. The plate is empty in front of me, the mug. . . just as empty. Past me thinks I could eat it here, the thought crosses me, a glimmering temptation that fades almost as quickly as it appears. But eating alone, standing here, it would feel wrong. Incomplete. Like speaking to a shadow. A meal is kinder shared, softened by the presence of another. I want to wait, I realize. Wait to eat with her. Somehow, that feels. . . more important.
Closing the fridge, I turn, and she catches my eye again.
Statue still standing there, my tall and silent figure draped in "moonlight." Her presence melts into the room. She's always been waiting to be noticed again. Marble lady seems to disappear in the background, waiting in the shadows, carved with the kind of care that suggests her maker knew she was a God, a piece of something eternal. Her face is still turned away from me. Angled so I can only glimpse her profile. One serene eye, one soft line of her jaw. The rest of her remains hidden, veiled from me, right outta my reach. I could step closer, stretch out a hand, and maybe even brush the edge of her cold stone skin. But I don't. Instead, I just stand there, caught beneath her silent watch. The thought slips into my mind, unbidden and sharp, piercing as if it had waited for this moment, like being watched over by an angel that I don't belong to.
Beneath her gaze, I feel like something barely alive, small, forgettable. She sees me as something that doesn't quite deserve to be here, something just outside the boundaries of her care. I am alien beneath her watch. So thoroughly, painfully out of place that it almost aches. The Gods of this world, these ancient, still things. . . they know I'm an outsider. And in this silence, I feel that truth settling, thick and cold,
There's not much else to do here. There's still the TV in the corner. It sits in its own shadow, dark and silent, a black mirror that promises some empty form of distraction. But the thought of turning it on, of breaking this quiet, of filling it with hollow voices- it feels wrong, an intrusion I can't bear. I leave it untouched, slipping my gaze past it, letting it vanish into the dark with the rest of this old shit. I walk past, gently pressing my socks against the floor. The stairs rise before me, a warm wooden ascent, and I take each step slowly, feeling the creak of old wood beneath my feet.
At the top, propped against the wall, is not her battleaxe. She never leaves it here when she goes out. All that's left is the weighty stand, the golden trim of the metal prongs leaning into the shadows. The receptacle gleams dully in the soft light, waiting, idle, a silent promise of something unspoken with that unhoused red voice. My fingers itch to trace the hilt again, to feel the cool, rough grip of something she's held- but I resist. She'll bring it back later. I'll see it again. And her.
The helmet from earlier rests on the chair, its polished metal catching the faintest glint. I reach out, hand hovering over the implement, then grip the left xiezhi gently. There's a click, and I watch, almost mesmerized, as the wall begins to shift. The wood pulls away, trembling like smoke, each board retreating and shifting, twisting into itself until it reveals the staircase beneath. No longer the warm wooden steps but dark stone, shadows mingling with the faintest breath of cold.
I place my foot on the first step, and the stone sinks slightly under my weight, groaning in a low hum that fades into the silence. There's a cold edge to the darkness waiting below, so thick and empty it presses against me, swallowing the walls and stretching out until I can barely see the edges of the stairs. I grip the guardrail tightly, as if holding it will keep me tethered, keep me certain of where I am.
One step, then another. The stairs creak softly, a quiet rhythm that becomes my only sound, my only anchor in the weight of this jaw. Each step leads down, down into that void, and yet there's no end in sight. Just a stretch of endless black, an impossible descent that goes deeper and deeper.
My hand slides along the rail, the wood rough under my fingers, and I peer ahead, straining to see some hint of landing.
There's nothing.
The steps keep spiraling down, dipping lower and lower as I descend. A kind of stillness settles over me, pressing into my chest as I walk. A sensation hidden away from all light. I take another step, feeling like a child lost in a story he doesn't understand, unsure of where he's supposed to go, or even why he's going.
And yet, I keep moving.
There's a point, maybe a hundred steps in, where I stop and glance back. The stairs stretch upward, impossibly high, an endless dark chain leading back to some distant beginning. I've come so far already. Too far. Yet somehow, I still don't feel closer to the bottom. I stare, heart thudding, at the empty stretch behind me. I could turn back. Part of me wants to. But, something else pulls me forward. It feels foolish, pointless, to keep going when I don't even know where these steps lead.
I take a step back, hesitate, then step forward again. The pattern repeats. All of me knows I should turn around. That this is a waste. But I can't. Something is waiting down here, just out of sight, and it feels just so necessary. So, I walk carefully, clinging to the guardrail, feeling each step under my foot as I press onward.
And then, from somewhere deep in the silence, a sudden voice chirps, tinny and strange, breaking the stillness like a crack through glass.
"Incoming call. Incoming call."
I pause, heart skipping seven beats, straining my ears to catch the sound. But it's gone, vanished into the deep dark. The silence fills in again, a deep and heavy weight that keeps dropping, and with great burdens, I keep moving, picking up my snail's pace, gripping the rail so tightly my knuckles begin to ache. Dastard thoughts drift darker as I walk down into the maddened depths. I feel younger somehow, unsure of myself, like I'm stepping into me. . . all of me, and less of me. Each step down feels like a loss, like something is being left behind in the shadows above. I don't know where I'm going, or what I'll find if I get there. I only know that this descent, this endless walk, is pulling me deeper, further from any sense of myself.
And then, once more, the voice. "Incoming call. Incoming call."
The words float out from somewhere, strange and distant, filling the silence with a mechanical tone that feels almost. . . mocking. I grit my teeth, resisting the urge to call out, to demand some answer from the stairs. I press on in silence, moving faster, the clacking of my slides hoping that the voice will vanish if I go deeper, if I can find the bottom of these impossible steps. The light is buried deeper away. I don't remember the color of it.
Eventually, a scent drifts into the darkness, faint but sharp, slipping through the shadows as something that's been waiting, a lingering that's been here for all, beneath every human tongue and over every human gloss of eyelids. The lens that keeps all-seeing. The thick, metallic scent of meat. Raw and primal Gods live down here. It fills the air, winding around my ribs as I descend. The stairs stretch wider now, yawning open where the space itself is changing, in a ventricle where the darkness is giving way to something older, and a scent so much stranger. The skin on my nose stretches and scared, it prickles. I tighten my grip on the rail, still seeing nothing but shadows ahead.
But I keep walking.
I do make it. Eventually.
At the bottom of the stairs, the room yawns open, cloaked in that same sickly brownish-orange hue, dim and heavy, like the last rays of sunlight decayed into rot. Shadows cling like dead children with rigor mortis fists to the mothers of their corners, and the walls seem to shudder under layers of peeling paint, each layer a glimpse into forgotten parts of darker colors buried beneath, staining the air with the scent of dust, rust, and memories better left unhallowed. The stillness is thick as sludge, and I almost feel it seeping into my skin, sticking to my thoughts. I scratch the sweat off my scalp. Where I pick, blood sticks to my nails.
But something is different down here. The small table that held the dolls before is gone, leaving a barren space in its place. Instead, a computer sits on the table, an odd, unwelcome presence in his decaying room, its monitor flickering weakly, casting eerie, fractured light across the walls.
I glance to the far end of the room, where a statue looms, rigid and solemn. It's her.
The woman.
Her figure rises tall and unyielding, draped in a monarch's crimson cape that flows around her shoulders like blood frozen in mid-spill. The black helm of 'Etoria Iustitia' crowns her, dark and gleaming, adorned with the interwoven xiezhi spiraling up, their golden eyes locked in an eternal gaze of judgment. She holds her war-axe firmly, as if ready to strike even in stillness, her cloven hooves planted in an imposing stance. On her shoulder is a spear, ready for the picking. She has hooves. Fascinating. Yet, from where I stand, only her right side is fully visible, her left half obscured, hidden in shadow. She stares out, resolute, but there's a sense of distance in that gaze, a fierceness that separates us. My mother. She's wonderful.
I step closer, noticing a label at the statue's base. The handwriting is familiar, and the words are funny. They don't mean anything.
"In some stories, you are the victor. In others, you are simply dirt. And in many, you were unraveled by your own wrath. Pride keeps you here, and pride tethers me too. We are forever misaligned."
'The Godking Alltitus'
I suppose that quote is from 'Alltitus.' It's a good quote.
There's nothing else new here.
Turning back to the computer, I take a look at the screen. No games or anything. It's faintly lit, but the image is fractured. Glitches ripple across the display like a thin layer of static, distorting whatever is meant to be there. Lines of text overlap, half-visible beneath bars of noise, and dark patterns crawl across the screen, flickering in and out of the center's light. The words blur together, twisting and tangling into something incomprehensible, language trying to communicate through the fractures. Colors bleed and blend and bleed again in a dance of chaotic blends, washing over each other, each layer a reminder of how close this whole thing is to breaking. It's hard to look at it for too long. The machine itself is alive, but damaged, its signal dying, its message lost in the static. Hard to hold conversation with something so damaged.
Nothing else here either.
The scent of meat grows stronger, almost suffocating. The darkness. I press my hand over my nose and mouth. There's a damp and heavy clump, a texture of taste that I can feel pressing against my skin. My heartbeat echoes. Loud. Unnatural. I see my breath in front of me. Cold and inaccessible. I feel the strands of oil tracing over my tongue, and I bite it to avoid the taste from becoming all I know.
I hear the thumping of steps, of slams, and of bangs. The door to my right opens with a quiet creak, the scent of burning aches, and it all moves.
I hear with great comfort, the soft sounds in my ear. Comforting diseases of sounds they are, sloppily whispered. The thumping wasn't really a sound. It was a vibration incessant. It moved through the floor, the walls, and sank its teeth into me. I felt it in the throat, rattling around in my system, a sulfuric gas passing from the air around it. My back pressed hard against the wall, and I slid down until the rough wood caught my shoulders. I kept my gaze fixed on the other darkened doorway, barely daring to blink. Something was coming. I didn't know what, but every nerve screamed to run, to hide. No choice. I couldn't.
The shadows shifted, crawling across the threshold alive.
The first I saw was the skull. A goat's skull cracked and yellow, ripped up with jagged horns that curved upward like talons. It moved awkwardly, jerking like its body didn't quite know how to carry itself, drool slipping down the system in wet splotches. The neck. Bones, sharp and uneven, jutted out like scaffolding, wrapped in tangled wires that sparked faintly with blue light. Strips of what looked like old film hung from the mess, trailing down like viscera, the frames catching glimpses of distorted faces in the dim light. Its body was a hideous bulk draped in something furred and rotting, a patchwork of mottled pelts stitched together by hands that didn't care for symmetry. Its body slumped low, its limbs hidden beneath the sagging weight of the coat, but the head was held high, the creature mighty and proud. From its hunched lower half, a single wooden plank jutted upward, its surface splintered and warped, like it was the only thing holding the creature upright.
And yet in awe, it was still watching.
The skull tilted slightly, as if curious. The movement sent the filmstrips swaying, casting flickering shadows of light and frames of scenes against the wall. The rotating sound of chugging and film strip readings, in it my breath hitched, the air caught sharp in my throat as it took another slow step into the room. When it got closer, the teeth came next, set into the hollow of its visible eye socket. They churned slowly, grinding in an endless circle, the wet, chalky sound of lubricated enamel on enamel scraping into my skull.
I swallowed hard. Don't look into its eyes. Don't look at all. My hands pressed to the wall behind me as though it might open up and let me through. The bastard didn't lunge. It didn't roar. It just stood there, its head tilting further, the grinding slowing, deliberate, a question unspoken in the grin of its features.
My eyes caught something at the edge of the skull when it came into the light. A curve. A rough and glamless texture I shouldn't have recognized, shouldn't have wanted to recognize. And then I could see it truly for what it was, the black skin. Thin. Stretched too far and slipping further, dribbling down half the skull.
"Mom," I whispered, the word trembling out of me before I could stop it. The thing froze. Its body shifted in tiny, spasmic movements, the fur rippling unnaturally. The sagging skin slipped lower, pooling against the jagged ridges of the skull, almost mocking the shape of a human face, the eyes glaring at me in pure greed.
I couldn't breathe.
The teeth stopped.
The silence was almost worse than the grinding.
And then it lunged.
There was no time to scream. No time to think. Just the shadow swallowing me whole, the air splitting open with a soundless roar.
When I woke, the room was quiet again. My sheets were soaked with sweat, clinging to my trembling limbs. I sat up, gasping, my head pounding with a rhythm I couldn't shake.
On the floor, just beyond my bed, lay a single strip of film, its edges curling like dead leaves. I didn't touch it.
I ran. Ran as fast as I could. All the way back upstairs.
I turned, practically stumbling over myself, and rushed to the helmet, the twisted figures on its surface catching the faint light. My hand shot out, trembling with confidence as my fingers pressed against the xiezhi, the cold metal groaning under my touch.
The room shuddered. The walls groaned as if the space itself was alive, breathing out its disdain. I didn't care. I don't care! My chest burned, my throat raw with the desperate pull of air I didn't even realize I'd been holding. Without waiting, I moved toward the staircase.
The steps. They stretch out in front of me, don't they? How endless and unyielding. Each descent felt slower, heavier, the shadows folding tighter against the corners of my vision. The farther I went, the more the air seemed to shift, growing colder and thicker with every step.
At last, I reach it again.
The room yawned open before me like a wound that had never stopped bleeding. The computer, the statue, the nauseating freeze of warmth– they were all still here, but none of it mattered. My eyes locked on the figure.
It stood in the center, its skeletal frame hunching beneath that disgusting patchwork coat. He stood so straight, the goat skull almost fell off the wooden pole. That skull was cracked in places where the bone seemed too brittle to hold, and the skin, her skin, was still there, hanging in sick, damp folds, slipping further down the jagged contours of its head.
It hadn't moved. It just stared at me.
The teeth in its hollow sockets turned slowly, grinding in that awful, deliberate rhythm. Its silence clawed at my chest, filling the space between us with a weight I couldn't bear.
I didn't stop to think. "Mom."
The word escaped me in a whisper, trembling and small.
It cocked its head at an impossible angle, the skin falling down, falling down. It pooled in clumps under the jaw. That horrible grinding slowed, the teeth pausing as though the machine inside had frozen mid-motion.
And then it moved.
Its steps were jerky, halting, its body pitching forward like a puppet whose strings had been yanked by hand. Each shuffle sent the filmstrips swaying, the blatant glow of images on their surface flickering too fast to focus. My mother's face was there, somewhere in that awful cascade of frames, but it was not her.
It moved faster. Its body twisted at angles that made my skin crawl, the plank of wood jutting from its back dragging through the air with a splintering hiss. I pressed my feet to the ground, but I couldn't make myself move. I couldn't look away.
Its head snapped forward. The teeth ground faster, spinning the gears of a hellish, unloved machine, and for one terrible moment, its face, my mother's face, was right in front of mine.
And then it lunged.
I felt the impact before it touched me. The air split open, the soundless roar swallowing me whole as the room dissolved into shadow.
When I woke, the sheets clung to my body, damp and suffocating. My chest heaved as I pulled myself upright, the dim light of my room spilling across the floor.
I looked to the corner, and there it was again, another strip of film, curled like it had been torn from something alive.
I didn't hesitate this time. I threw off the sheets, stumbled to my feet, and ran. Didn't I bolt upright? Didn't I gasp for air? The damp sheets cling to my skin and cling and cling. The weight of this godless nightmare pressed down on me, but I didn't stop to think. My feet hit the floor before I even realized I was moving. I ran. When did I run? I ran?
Up the stairs. Back to the helmet. Back to the xiezhi.
The faint hum of the mechanism groaning through the air as I flick the lever again. Again, the walls shook, again, the dust spilling from the corners of the room as the familiar staircase opened up once more. I didn't hesitate.
Down I went.
The descent felt longer this time, the air colder, heavy and burdened with each step. My legs burned, but I didn't stop. I couldn't. The end of the stairs came into view, the doorway yawning open. Teeth and jaw and mouth waiting to swallow, me, me, me.
The room was exactly the same. No need to describe anything but her. It stood in the center of the room, motionless. The goat skull tilted slightly, almost imperceptibly, acknowledging my presence, acknowledging me. Her sagging skin was worse now, slipping further, hanging in tatters. It barely had hands to keep clinging. The teeth in its eye sockets churned slowly, each grind like nails scraping down my spine.
I didn't move.
Neither did it.
I stood there, staring, my chest heaving, my hands trembling at my sides. My legs screamed at me to turn back, but I couldn't. I couldn't stop looking at it.
I wanted her.
I wanted to see her again.
It tilted its head further, the grinding stopping for just a moment, the silence suffocating. Then it came.
Its body pitched forward in sharp, jerky motions, the patchwork coat rippling as the plank of wood in its back dragged against the air. It was closer now, the teeth spinning faster, the filmstrips along its neck flashing distorted images too fast to register.
I stayed still.
The lunge came with too much warning.
The world shattered into darkness.
I woke again, the same gasp tearing from my chest, the sheets twisted and damp. But I didn't stop. I couldn't. I deserved this. I deserved it all. I ran to the xiezhi. Flicked the lever. Down the stairs. Back to the room.
It was always the same. The heat. The grinding. The impossible judgment in that awful, lopsided gaze.
And every time, I let it come closer. Every time, I let it lunge.
And every time, I woke up.
I lost count of how many times I ran. How many times I flicked that lever. How many times I stood in that room, staring into the grinding teeth, the slipping skin, the hollow judgment of something I couldn't name but give the title, 'Mom.'
I just wanted to see her again.
Even if it meant letting her kill me. Again and again and again.
I woke up choking on my breath, the sheets clinging to me like a second skin. I shed them in folded piles of entropy. My body trembled, drenched in sweat, but I didn't hesitate. My feet hit the floor, and I ran.
Up the stairs. Flick the xiezhi. Down the other stairs.
The air thickened with every step, pressing against me as though it didn't want me to reach the bottom. But I did. I always did.
The room waited, its suffocating warmth dribbling around me in blanket piles as I stepped thicker through.
She's still here!
She stood in the center of the room, tall and hunched, plank of the spine standing upward like a splintered tree. The skull no longer tilts! Only a slight alter! The grinding of its teeth filling the air with that horrible, deliberate rhythm. The skin was long dead and still refusing to let go.
I stared. The silence between us was thicker than any blanket and warmth and words. My chest ached with the weight of her.
And then it took a step.
The jerking motion sent the filmstrips swaying, the flickering images stabbing at my vision. My legs locked in place as it moved closer, the grinding slowing, pausing, the sound like a clock that had stopped ticking just to mock me.
The lunge was sudden, a burst of chaotic movement that swallowed me whole. I woke up gasping.
Ran back to the xiezhi.
Flicked the lever.
Down the stairs.
The room again. The creature again. Its silence again.
I couldn't stop.
Every time, it stared at me with that same awful, tilted gaze, the grinding teeth in its eye socket judged every inch of me. I let it lunge, and I woke up choking on the weight of what I couldn't reach. My saliva suffocated me. My sweat drowned me. My fear, my punishment, was deserved.
Again.
The stairs blurred into one endless descent. The room became my entire world. The grinding, the heat, the unbearable need to see her face again, no matter how wrong it looked.
Again.
I stood there, trembling, staring at the creature as it inched toward me with that jumbled, halting gait. I let it lunge.
Again.
I woke up screaming, and I ran.
. . .
There was a long path of cherry blossom trees. A quiet view, their tips just turning red, some of them falling. The snow is green and full of red poppies. They are her trail.
"Sit with me," my goddess commanded, a table set for the two of us on the picnic blanket at the crest of the hill. With a small flick of her wrist, she tossed a black doilie onto the wind and watched as it turned into a beautiful row of petals. They were pink. Pink petals that melted into red, and eventually, a liquid form of air.
I took a seat, and when she poured me fresh golden elixir, I drank without question. Without even tasting it, I knew it was the best thing I would ever touch. She was the problem of unemotion, and she would give me great things. To reject is. . . foolish. Remarkably so.
I let her speak to me for nearly an hour, simply ranting on the day, her calm, cold voice delivering me to a place I didn't know I wanted to be. "Your desire to see your mother can be expanded beyond the immediate horror, connecting it to a deeper yearning for belonging, closure, or self-acceptance," she said.
"If I were to make you, your personal journey would reflect broader themes of decay, obsession, and the cycles of self-destruction. The room and its impossibility, its endless looping structure would act as a metaphor for your inability to move forward, tying a psychological horror to the physical space. The xiezhi and the endless stairs would represent a larger system of punishment and judgment. You would feel deserving of that role."
She was an artist of the highest kind. Nothing short of a God. My everything. "How can I make my life more interesting to you? More appealing? Heavier?" I asked her.
"Show how Jesse interacts with the world outside the nightmare space. What does his ordinary look like? How does it contrast with the horror below? His desperation to return to the xiezhi might carry more weight if his waking world is subtly corrupted or uncaring, making the nightmare realm feel like his only chance to connect with something real."
She said such pretty things. I wish I knew what they meant. I wanted to act upon them in all the ways she wanted me to.
"Use details of the room and the creature not only to terrify but also to provide hints of a larger mythology. Why is the xiezhi there? Why does the creature wear his mother's face? Let the act end with unanswered questions that demand exploration. And then, never expand."
She said even prettier things.
"Before Jesse leaves– and you will leave, that is an inevitable pattern– his bond with his caretaker, the mother figure, must be clearly established. Show how she grounds him, offering moments of rare warmth or stability amidst his unsettling experiences in the cabin. Introduce a fear of abandonment in Jesse. Perhaps he's haunted by memories of losing his biological mother or being alone. This emotional wound drives him to seek her when she goes missing, overriding his better judgment. Build up the stakes of her absence. Does he call out for her and get no response? Does the cabin feel different, colder, or subtly wrong without her presence? Tie Jesse's departure to the earlier ground rule: he must not leave the cabin without her. Breaking this rule should weigh on him emotionally, adding tension. Use internal conflict, 'She told me not to leave. . . but what if something happened to her?' to show how his care for her outweighs his fear."
My God was so strange, but all I wanted was to hear more. I began to think that one day, I would like to understand what the world looked like from her perspective. Though, the suffocating honey of her voice. . . it was already fracturing me. I could feel the blood drip down my chin. I could feel it pool in recesses on my collarbone. I must be quick.
"When I move further from the cabin, the environment can subtly shift. That would work, right? The landscape could grow increasingly alien and unnerving, like sounds that echo strangely, trees that seem impossibly still, or shadows that feel alive. This would create a creeping unease. Right, my Goddess?"
I was pleading for her approval.
She softly laughed at me. Shook her head. Placed that chin on her delicate hands. "I wouldn't find it very interesting. You'd be playing too heavy into cliché. Though. . . Jesse's inability to find her must feel maddening and disorienting. He could call her name, his voice swallowed by the wilderness. I suppose. Maybe he finds traces of her: footprints, an abandoned item- but no definitive sign of where she is. Ruining your sense of reality for. . . what? Esotericism? What a silly game you play, darling Jessaline."
"And if I fail, would that entertain you? If I went crazy?"
"Your fall would be chaotic and emotionally charged, if that's what you're looking for."
She tilted her head back, laughing a gentle honeyed sound. A drink of air, she took in, an elegant sip of the breath around her.
"In his panic to escape the beast, he stumbles too close to the edge. The beast rears up, its grotesque form blotting out the sky, and Jesse backs away blindly, losing his footing! Use sensory overload- wind whipping at his face, the roar of the beast, the rush of his heart in his ears, to make the moment visceral and disorienting."
"I don't. . . entirely follow."
"The act could end with Jesse staring up at the forest's jagged silhouette before losing consciousness, symbolizing how far he's fallen emotionally and physically. That would work, wouldn't it, Jesse?"
"No," I shook my head. "That wouldn't work at all."
She sighed. Sipped her tea. Remained a little disappointed.
"I was once so much of everything, and yet. . . it seems I have consumed nothing at all." And then it all went black. And it all went quiet. And it all disappeared. And I had nothing left at all."
And that was it.
That was all my Goddess said to me before she went back to whatever she was before.
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