"Hey Wren." one of them sneers.

"Are you starving us again? Or getting us stabbed?" they laughed at the cruelty of their own words.

"No! I didn't mean to hurt you. It was a story. It was to be told for fun. I didn't think anything in them would happen."

"But here we are: me, you, Jax and Anika. What did you think you could do? Come into our world and take us from the life we had, just throw us to the wolves."

"I told you! I didn't know what I was doing! Please, you have to believe me."

"You should know better than anyone; stories are truth disguised as a lie." Said Anika. "I'm going to ask you one single question. You answer and we let you go. You panic and Tinzin will be your guest." I stared at the red haired demon in front of me. I knew what he could do. I had given him that power after all. "I'll do anything. Just ask the question."

"What is happening and where can I find him?" She shook me into a heap on the floor. Now Jax spoke. "No, this is another demission. We're not going to find him." I nodded. "This place we're in is the only thing that exists." I whispered.

"You have the will to start to build a world bigger than what you have seen in your entire life yet when faced with something truly dangerous you don't even lift a finger." Said the Demon, Zin.

"Go away, you're just my imagination."

"No." they said in unison.

"No what? No to you being my imagination or no to giving my life back."

"I can't give your life back." replied Jax.

"Why?"

"Because you have taken your own."

"What? I'm dead?"

"No, you gave your sanity away in exchange for us." Anika, suddenly calm, answered, "tell us the end. What happens? You gave your life for our stories. Now we want them back. Let us live out our fates."

"No, I can't."

"Why?"

"Because then I will be lost."

"We don't care. You are insane. We aren't. Give us back our will and stories so you won't have to wonder about the voices. You won't have to question fate. You can know everything is real and nothing is a mistake. Give us our own place to be and you, in turn, you will gain yours."

I took a breath. I opened my mouth, but I didn't know what to say. How could I bring them to life? Who was I to write a book of anything? Why would anyone want me to be their author? I wasn't good enough. "I can't."

"Then we stay." The demon whispered and disappeared. I never saw them again but they are always driving us forward. They crawl behind me eyes and confuse their universes with my own. They beg me to tell them the end but I don't know where to start or where to begin. I struggle through the dark, not knowing what is real and still, the voices are here.

1

101: Karie Mulligan

CoD: Drug Overdose

ToD: 27.09.2014, 20:35

LoD:

The last thing Kazuo Takashima anticipated witnessing as a grim reaper was an Excel spreadsheet listing the names of all the souls he had to reap. 101 souls, to be exact. When he was accompanied by an elderly sage in a sheer black full-length robe, the destination he presumed to reach was a mystical cavern with ancient scrolls, not a Xerox shop. To make it even worse, it was the one he regularly visited when he was alive. A significant portion of his education loans was spent on fancy notes and scholarly references that never came to use-- Kazuo realised with a sigh.

20:32. Three more minutes. When Kazuo arranged the deal with the Council of Reapers to collect 101 souls as one of them, in return for being able to spend on Earth the time required for the task, he never thought the job would be as mundane as it turned out to be. All those movies and dramas had him worried about having to encounter snarly beasts and abominable monsters, or the least, a fierce spirit with no apprehension about tearing someone's head off, but the worst he ever came across was an aged woman who locked herself in her room, refusing to come out. Although, it did take him a great deal of persuasion for her to finally be convinced of what had to be done.

20:33. But none among the other hundred souls he reaped had put him in a difficult situation like the one he faced right then. Awkward, he lingered around the public ladies' washroom, reluctant to go in. With only two minutes left, he had to reach her before the aberrations from the Underworld sensed her death. Amassing all his courage, Kazuo took a deep breath, which he instantly regretted, before striding headfirst into the compartment she was in.

"What in the actual fu--" Maybe he had miscalculated the pacing of his little parade to the washroom, but it was infallible that Ms Karie Mulligan was not dead.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to--" Kazuo stepped out and shut the door loudly behind him. To say he was embarrassed would have been an underrepresentation of the circumstances that had befallen him.

20:35. She was supposed to be dead, but Kazuo could still hear her mumbling from the inside. Had he interfered with the universal balance of life and death? Was this bound to have consequences? However, before the introspection could lull him into a transient reassurance, the door clicked open, almost hurling him backwards into a fall.

2

"I know you all love me, but barging into the toilet is really where I draw the line."

Recently, I had been realising a few things about myself. A friend of mine once told me that I lack a part of the hard drive every human is built with. Back then, he said that about romantic love, because as much as I spoke about love, they never found me in love. It wasn't a lone case. Over the course of my short life, many a friend of mine have shared their concerns as to something being different about me. How I don't function the way normal people do. It all made me believe I was beyond the trivialities, that I had already mastered how to be the zenith of peace and contentment. But again, I knew I was missing something. I knew I was wrong.

It was never that I was beyond any of these emotions. I had just convinced myself that feeling any of this wouldn't alter the tragic trajectory of my life. That I don't deserve, or that I was better off not giving in to hope, though I always professed about the same. But many places where I used to feel something's which dissipated soon into nothing's, recently, the dissolution has started leaving more residue than ever before. It used to linger like a clogged sinkhole, always bothering the regular flow of the sewage. But just like the domestic chaos, time had decayed and decomposed some of the sewage that lingered in the cracks and crevices of my heart. And the drain is returning back to a normal, and I have dishes to clean again, and the frustration and mundanity of a clog is slowly fading away. My futile attempts at clearing the drain has finally started showing results that could actually lead to something.

This morning, I missed Bill. I was never one to be excited for birthdays. I barely looked forward to them. But when I met Bill a couple years ago, he went on an effort to create a whole post, a massive tag line, comparing the time zones and weeks of waiting just to put up a few heartfelt words he was willing to repeat to me over and over again. I have no idea how many times I've read that post over the last few years. I couldn't bear to read it this morning. Part of me wanted to, but the grief within me was scared how it would affect me. I couldn't risk the drain to be clogged again too soon, I have years worth of problems to deal with while I still can. Of the past, the present and the future.

Hmm, I guess I could call this series 'My brain is a bullet train, and I forgot where the brakes are!!!' with a lot of intermittent screaming and crashing. Hey guys, I am back (:

But let's start where we stopped yesterday. Wait, why are we focusing on the past? Shouldn't we be focusing on the present? Would overthinking about things that are already done and over change anything? Isn't it a waste of time?

Well, first of all, how much thinking is overthinking? I think the reason behind a lot of overthinking is that we have a lot of unfinished thoughts. Thoughts that occurred to us, but we couldn't follow through. Thoughts we distracted ourselves off of from. Thoughts that are yet to be solved. Things that are yet to be decluttered, sorted and arranged neatly in that clumsy brain of ours. After all, if we only focus on the present and leave yesterday for yesterday, wouldn't our life eventually become an assortment of unsolved yesterdays? And how many unsolved yesterdays can we handle before it all becomes a burden too heavy for us to carry?

So yes, let's start where we left off yesterday. I do believe there were a lot of topics we didn't really expand on. Let's see.

I think we were done with the 'Construction of building systems to maintain our life, and how it could hinder us as much as it might help us grow, and how we need a fine balance between routine and following our intuitions' part of it all, didn't we? I think we made a fine point there! We need some level of a system to align our goals, but the moment the system starts to hinder us, we need to give in to our humane impulses. We need to find the balance. (I read somewhere that you could get off any board meeting formalities by saying, "I think what we should strive to aim for is a compromising balance between the various opinions we discussed today." Just wanted to mention that, friend to friend.)

do something for ourselves'. Ah, the age-old self-love conundrum. Where do we draw the fine lines between self-love and narcissism?

Grief. It was everything they told us it was.

Isn't it funny-- how we always think that the rules and generalisations of the ordinary world do not apply to us; to assume that we are unique; only to realise later that we are no different; that perhaps in the grand scheme of things, we are all one and the same? All the life lessons we overlooked, all the collective experiences we have as a society over the years neglected, all for nothing. All for merely meandering at this moment, pondering how all life would have pivoted if only I realised I was just one among the millions that once were and soon would be. Only another forsaken soul to walk the forgotten grounds of a forbidden planet.

Alyssa once asked me whether Earth, with all its pain and suffering, was indeed the torturous hell we were always warned about. I did not have an answer for her back then, and I am unsure whether I still have one. The eternal burning portrayed in the books, I am beginning to wonder if perhaps it was only the romanticisation of yet another lost poet of how our hearts sear in pain as we traverse from one chapter of life to the next. Sometimes I wonder if this piercing pain is what it means to be alive. Or whether we are repaying for our sins from a past life, one we lived long ago and can no longer remember the details of. A hell within us, where we chain ourselves to a harrowing heaviness, forever threatening to carry us into the void.

Kara slouched further into the space between her gaming chair and the neon monitors, the light painting her eyes pink, hands slipping between her knees, tongue tracing the lines of her dry lips. The shit she had on her screen right then was fucking lit. Lights out, three in the morning, jacket on-- Kara already knew how the rest of the night would play out. Grabbing her Converse sneakers and the rugged backpack, Kara slid the window open, glancing back at her room one last time with a cheeky smirk as she made the leap.

The cold wind rushed against her skin as her bike sped through the empty streets, triggering all the speed cams on her trail. But none of those would matter since they would never trace the fake plates back to her. Kara only had her destination in her mind. She was about to make some serious money.

"You really have no manners." Harlem spoke as he wiped the golf club clean with one of the tissues scattered on the floor. "I told you we could talk this out." He took one step after another, closer and closer to the woman slithering out of his reach. Making sure his stance was perfect, he aimed the golf club right at her bloody head, his feet pressing her down by the hip. "But you never listen!" he hollered as her entire frame fliched for one last time that night.

Kharagpur, West Bengal

18 May 2017

There she was. Against the pink-tinted skies and the slow-moving gales of a late Thursday evening, her entire frame leaning against her hands atop the rusted iron railings of the greasy balcony. The rain had abandoned puddles of water atop the leaking roof, perhaps to ensure the moss didn't die from the scorching heat of the summer. They left stains on the hem of her pants, but like always, she wouldn't notice them until the end of the day. The strands of her hair danced to the winds ever so slightly, forcing her to push them behind her ears like she always did. She never could stop complaining about her messy hair. And now, many years later, it seemed like she still couldn't.

"You're here." Karun realised how much he had missed her voice. Perhaps hearing her past audio messages on the humid nights he couldn't sleep hadn't done the trick. She pulled all her hair into a ponytail, unable to handle the few strands that always slipped away.

School for Gifted Students, Arkhenzas

June 1968

Within these walls reside the glorious future of our great nation-- the brightest of all, seeking to transform their wondrous dreams into an extraordinary reality. And we, the Staff of Arkhenzas, are devoted to equipping our brilliant prodigies with all the facilities they will ever need. Here, the dreamers thrive. Here, their dreams come true.

Time passes differently within the bounds of Arkhenzas. Rarely does one look up at the dreary clouds and predict the right time of the day. Here, the mid-noon and the evenings bid farewell the same. Here, the cold gravel walls are forever ornated with raindrops from the misty drizzles throughout the day. Here, the trees beyond the forts are a tint of brown than green, and amid the heaviest downpour, the entire canvas turns a mosaic-- edges blurred with various shades of brown transforming into one.

#microfiction

Whitehorse, Canada

November 17th, 2013

Leah Ann Sterling was never one to believe in love at first sight. Yes, countless times has she enacted that fleeting moment with a myriad of costars-- the accidental glance, drowning in that deep hazel or cerulean eyes, wordy first meetings. Not that it was unromantic; In a screenplay, it was nothing less than captivating and bewitched. But Leah liked to believe that love would, in reality, be much more organic. Something that was built within her heart, over time, for a particular someone who understood her better than most. And she did find that someone precisely five months ago, and it was all fine and well until this morning when she died in her sleep.

It was relatively unexpected, needless to say.

Earth, July 3012

My name is Arianna Marshall-I, and I am a clone. I am nothing more than a meagre lab rat.

Arianna-I sealed the doors shut to the cryo-chamber behind her. She sank to the floor, shielding her eyes with both hands as if that could alter the reality that had already dawned upon her, sobbing and shivering, unable to understand how it could have happened. It was true. Part of her did achingly desire not to spend another massive chunk of her life-- frozen to the core in an ice-cold chamber. But she never meant to kill the woman who freed her in the first place, who helped her realise she had an existence, who she wouldn't exist without.

"Hello--" The woman who came into the room checked her out, head to heels, "healthier me." A wide grin. She looked exactly like me, Arianna-I had noticed. Not that she ever knew what she looked like, but the figure she had seen in the mirror mere moments ago was very resemblant to the woman in front of her. "I'm here to take you home." A blank stare, unable to comprehend what she was trying to communicate. "Newborn baby brain-- got it," The woman held her around the shoulder, leading her out of the blockaded chamber she was asked to stay in.

"Chips?" There they were, relaxed on the elegant, comfy couch in the living room on a Sunday morning. Arianna was two different women in her eyes-- A burnt-out perfectionist who drowned in alcohol on workday evenings and on weekends, a hungover girl whose kindness reflected in her smile. Even as they sat on the couch, her hands extended towards the newfound friend, Arianna-I could notice the lines under her eyes. The lines only appeared when she was genuinely happy-- Arianna-I had learned. Because she used to smile differently on the late-night work calls-- her eyes bereft of its shimmer, merely a bare, lop-sided grin.

"I was so lonely before you, dear. I won't let anything happen to you. This is your home. No one will take you away. No one can. No one." She mumbled throughout the previous Friday night, contorted on the floor and clinging onto Arianna-I's waist, drunk to the bone. And the midnight after, Arianna-I was up, scared and pale, only to find her on the other side of the bed. Upon hearing the unrest, she sprang to life, her bloodshot eyes roaming the room to detect any danger. "It's okay, it's okay." She told Arianna-I as she sat beside her, her hands firm yet gentle on her shoulder. She was like an owl-- hard to see if she even blinked.

"It's only for a week or two, they promised. You trust me, don't you?" She pursued her as Arianna-I ran to her room up the stairs. "Please don't run, dear. Listen to me. You know I'll never let anything happen to you, right?"

Would things have been different if she had stopped there and then? Why did she keep running? Arianna-I soon realised she would never be able to forgive herself. A mere moment, a reflex she barely had any control over, and the life of the one person who ever cared about her was lost. She had started to take pride in being the reason why Arianna's eyes shimmered, unlike anytime else while she wasn't being with her. But right then, pupils dilated, pale, her eyes were staring into a void or perhaps piercing into the guilt and regret which had started building its grim towers inside Arianna-I's soul.

They were right. We belonged in a cryo-chamber, sealed forever.