Deviation Perspective II

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Deviation Perspective II - ONISM MAN at the Center is a short story written by Andrew Allanson. It is a sequel to Deviation Perspective I. It's far longer compared to the previous entry.

The story was posted over the course of 3 years on the YIIK discord., starting 1st December 2022 with the final entry on 26th June 2026.

Story

Part I

I. ONISM

It is the place where you can meet your parallel self.

Before ONISM you could only meet your parallel self in fantasy. In thoughts and in memes. ONISM joins fantasy and reality. Twisting them together to never be divided.

The Camera, The Choir, and The Critic are affixed to the wall. ONISM MAN at the center.

You, me, and the thing between us.

ONISM MAN at the center.

II. The Court

The nameless boy lies in bed.

Tossing and turning.

The moonlight enters the room. It begins to project the first stream of ONISMO.

A streamer named William who adorns himself in a crown and mysterious garb of stars.

He begins to speak and the child looks mesmerized.

It’s the the anxious narrative of the ill mind.

Thoughts of doom that begat thoughts brewed in despair. Looping.

Self similar and seemingly endless.

Limited only by the promise of death.

And even such a thought could begat the anxious thought of eternal suffering.

But more on the afterlife later.

This is ONISM2029. A prophetic vision of the hells that await for those who don’t get in their Essentia and astral project somewhere less fucked.

An image flashes on the screen and the child screams.

Intro sequence. Credits. Opening theme.

To have a name is to be entered court. Something you can only do at invitation of the King.

We’re all IP addresses. Nameless until called.

Tonight isn’t your night.

Tonight isn’t my night.

It’s 127.89.97.75 and 51.47.38.83.

They become Bartonimus and NEWP. The new jesters.

The King is in a mood. The court loves it. So do the nameless. We all spam money. Crypto, dollars and yuan. We render up our earnings, and he showers us in memes. We try to make him viral but he’s too humble.

We try to make him rich but he always throws the money away. Burning it for our benefit. It’s beautiful and it keeps me up.

It’s tomorrow already. I keep watching.

It’s tomorrow. NEWP is called into voice.

The King is funny and charming and handsome and sexy and you wish you were him.

You try your hardest to do his memes.

You’re not as charming. But they contain a drop of his cool.

NEWP suggest a video and the King is into it. I will suggest a video one should I ever get to register.

I dream of the video I’d show and you think I’m cool and you’d repeat one of my memes which will be one of the King’s memes then. More than a jester.

You’d watch the video and think it’s kino how….

ONISM man thanks Kisage for agreeing to the discussion.

Kisage X nods.

ONISM man says: a lot of your films share concepts. Original Sin and Original Win for example. You also frequently use the same actress. Asuka Furutani. Does this suggest your films have a shared universe?

Kisage X shakes his head.

He says they do not have a shared universe. That he’s just exploring similar themes and those concepts are short hand his audience understand.

ONISM MAN says it’d be better if they had a shared universeX

ONISM man asks Kisage X why you meet your parallel selves when you commit an Original Sin or Original Win.

Kisage X

Explains that when you go Proto you return to the child state: where consciousness is at the rendering point of reality. You only see potential. You’re not bogged down by the past. You are acutely aware of what could be. Without the meme of the Critic. And this reveals a truth about yourself. The shared meme of your life: the patterns of your soul.

The parallel selves are metaphors for what could be but also what IS. The constant variable across potentials.

ONISM man asks him if Kisage x has ever committed an original sin.

Kisage X shrugs and says he’s met plenty of people who share his memes: but he doesn’t know if it was super natural.

ONISM MAN tells him it’s be better if he said he had.

Kisage X looks angry.

Kisage X asks ONISM MAN who he is.

ONISM man says he is three persons in one. The self, the sun, and the holy thief.

Kisage X tells him this is incorrect. That is a reference to a movie he made so he can’t be.

ONISM man says he is the choir, the critic, and the camera. Three persons in one body.

Kisage X tells him now that he can believe.

ONISM MAN tells Kisage that he is a big fan. And that he’s looked forward to meeting him for some time. That he had many questions and he hoped to have a productive conversation.

Kisage X says that he is looking forward to it.

ONISM man asks Kisage X to explain the concept of Original Sin. Where did he get the idea from?

Kisage X says that he observed it in nature. That an Original Sin is an act of creative evil on the world so large it creates a meme everyone must consider until the end of time.

You’re born into a world with a global finance system that is a meme you must contend with. Born into a world with the nuclear bomb it’s always on your mind.

ONISM man asks him about the first original sin.

A Kisage x film.

Kisage X explains how it’s him attempting to understand the desire to create Original Sins.

The story follows a kid who discovers a mysterious blackened pond that shows them reality with a twist.

A parallel reality with comforts and happiness.

This traumatizes the child.

The knowledge that things could be that way possesses the child’s memes and they develop Reality Criticism. Teaching others to play this game introduces anxiety to the world.

ONISM man asks them why that’s bad. That he has ideas how reality should be: in fact he has better ideas for how Blackened Pond should have ended. That the hero should have gone into the mirror world.

Kisage X gives him an appalled look.

Kisage X tells him it’s a metaphor for the knowledge of death. How the existence of death makes it harder for forgive reality because moments are precious.

ONISM man says he has opinions on death too. That he has criticism for that as well.

Kisage X says the meme of death must always be considered. an original sin is like a little death.

ONISM Man says that original sins aren’t so original if they’re all ripping off death.

ONISN man asks Kisage X about memes.

Kisage X explains man gathering memes into his mind and choosing which are selected for in their thoughts and actions.

Man had a special role as the master of memes.

ONISM man asks him about aliens.

Kisage X says if aliens deal in memes they’d also have a unique role.

That memes give rise to personality.

How some personalities are shaped by memes. Some people evil aim to force others to host their memes and become parallels by proxy,

ONISM man’s asks him to define that.

Kisage X does.

ONISM man asks if the two characters Asuka plays in two films are parallel lives and Kisage x says no, there are no shared universes in his film.

That he thinks the multiverse is postmodern corporatism designed to create a new despair that makes the audience feel like they must see every spin off and cross over otherwise they’ll have to face The Question.

ONISM man tells him he should reconsider: that it’s fun.

ONISM man asks Kisage X about Original Win. How someone accomplishes one. When originality isn’t real. It’s just one thing plus another.

Kisage X gets mad and rants about viewing things at the wrong resolution. How all things are made up of the same raw materials and to be so reductive is to misunderstand creativity with playing action figures.

ONISM man asks him where he got that idea from.

Kisage X says he observed it from the great creators. Kisage X explains to him that if he wants to create something he should first understand it’s aesthetic. What is beautiful about the thing your aiming to create?

Aim for highlighting that beauty.

ONISM man asks him what’s beautiful about kaiju mechajaw and Kisage X says Asuka furatani. His muse.

And ONISM man says Aha so you just took Asuka Furutani and mashed it up with a monster movie.

Kisage X smacks himself in the face. So hard he gets a bloody nose! It’s so funny.

ONISM man says Kisage D about a digital soul vessel and asks if it’s possible to build one into someone using memes.

Kisage X says that he once read a book by a mystic. And in this text it prophesied that the anti-Christ would be a culmination of memes. That if he where to attempt such a thing he’d likely be the whore of Babylon.

ONISM man doesn’t get it. He asks him to explain it differently.

He doesn’t get religious memes. They don’t mean anything to him.

Kisage X asks him if he’s ever seen some anime.

ONISM man says some bullshit.

Kisage X gets mad.

It’s commercial break. And the community loves the video. I’d be allowed on voice chat and you’d complain about my tense.

The King would ban you.

And it’s the next morning and the stream is over and I’m still just a number. I’m away from my computer and you’re away from your computer and we’re in a field or in a park and you’re thinking that my hair looks good today and I’m thinking that yours does too.

I’m drinking too much and you’re smoking too much.

And fuck you you’re a bitch I’m back at my computer the blue light in my face getting my gamer tan.

The stream is back on and NEWP is back on. I don’t get it. The King is wrong about this guy. He’s on some bullshit. 

He says… 


It’s a cycle that never ends.

That there is the here is the crux of the original sin. If you can’t recall joy, and joy is the only thing that allows you to take your essential form, and no one around you knows true joy, how can you ever know it truly exists and to keep chasing it? 

How could others be expected to teach it to you? 

Yeah, sometimes they’re “happy,” but you don’t know true happiness.  If you think fleeting moments are elation is your essential form… you’re quite mistaken.

So… here is the paradox. The Queen said being a good person is one who cases their Essential Form. One who feels despair despite how awful and logically sound it is but fights against it. Pushes it aside… They’re on the right path to Soul Perfect.

But what if you don’t know that feeling exists? What if the last time you felt that joy was as a child… or a teenager…how could you be expected to recall or even accept the vanity that something called Joy even exists!

That’s the sin. The despair erodes the joy of not just the victim, but the victims descendants and friends. It goes on forever… into deep time.

more and more entered the Soul Space.

And before long… very few souls are truly alive. Most were caught somewhere between here and there. And trust me, that isn’t an afterlife. It’s not a paradise.

So do you get it?

The sin is the thought things may not turn out well. It’s the understanding that people die. It’s the inability to taste something delicious because of the cost of it.

It’s the thing that drains zaps us of energy… It’s the understanding of morality itself. It’s what made us human. This twisted shadow lies over us and we have to KEEP. IT. AT. BAY!   

Being a good person requires you to feel joy and understand others are people too. If you never knew joy, if it was beaten out of you, if it was priced too high for where you lived… how would you ever find it?

The sin didn’t prevent us from finding out Essential selves… it just made sure no matter how tall you were, it’s always require you to stand on your tippy toes.

And the King is into it.

The King wants to know who told him this. He wants to know how he figured it out. The King is making it lore and I’m clenching my fist. Knuckles and drywall.

NEWP is promoted. NEWP says the King is wrong about some stuff he’s been saying. That his memes are self-serving. The King laughs and the King says it’s good to be challenged and I hate that I didn’t like that he was challenged and I hate that I don’t have my cool.

NEWP is coming back on tomorrow.

I wake the whole house. I wake the neighborhood. I still don’t get a name.

III.

I was born 111.247.33.26, to Limone K. And Joseph K in 1979. I liked the computer before I found the moonlight.

My brother was always better at them. My Father expected I’d be a scientist or roboticist because I could move the mouse. They thought it was cool I could connect to the world through the phone.

I abstain. Instead I connect through night. Watching the King on the moonlight. I like how he flickers and fades. His robe of the stars. His court and my opportunity to hear him talk.

I know how he says A digital soul vessel is a recording of a persons patterns. Their soul. How they view themselves, how others view them, and the reality of the two colliding.

I like how he says we can live forever. How the flesh is an illusion.

I like how he describes the Soul Space.

And NEWP is saying the Soul Space is an illusion too and I’m plotting his death. 


That there is an essential form. A self who handles life’s challenges with poise.

And then there is the existential self, the one that that wallows in suffering and nuisance.

With each transgression, our perspective and ability to feel joy is diminished.

In time, our essential self is diluted. Only a finger print of our original self remains.


In our essential form,

Essentia is a mere parody of the Essential Form. An unholy joke.

You’re a fool. Just like I was.

The twisted beings become transfigured by the act of Original Sin. They weren’t the first, but they sure were creative.

Now, you need to pay close attention.

The first sin was despair. The thing that makes you feel incapable of feeling joy… and over time… your essential form is a mere Soul Survivor… floating in the hells cape they call the Soul Space.

The sin was simple, and paradoxical. By forcing a human to have the very first thought of despair, a long line of humans were born into it. The human soul is only capable of handling so much shit. The first cancerous meme.

The window where a human naturally feels joy is limited to childhood. And even then… a kids tolerance is only so much. Before long a todler’s an old soul.

Cycles and cycles of despair.

It’s generational.

It erodes empathy in the kindest.

It’s a cycle that never ends.

That there is the here is the crux of the sin. If you can’t recall joy, and joy is the only thing that allows you to take your essential form, and no one around you knows true joy, how can you ever know it truly exists and to keep chasing it? 

How could others be expected to teach it to you? 

Yeah, sometimes they’re “happy,” but you don’t know true happiness.  If you think fleeting moments are elation is your essential form… you’re quite mistaken.

And the King is turned on by this and I can tell and I hate that he liked it so much. I hate that NEWP is his friend. I hate that I am a number. And I’m breaking the windows and the walls and my Dad is punching me and my brother is home from school and Mom is throwing me out and I’m throwing up and I’m calling the cops and I’m begging the King to read this and to tell me what to do.

And my brother doesn’t believe me and the cops say I wasted their time. And I’m an idiot for trusting the authorities.

And you don’t come visit me. And neither does my Mom.

And my brother might be NEWP. I’m certainly not.

IV.

False alarm I didn’t do it. It was a vision of my parallel self. Someone I’d be if I hadn’t found the king.

It was a gift from the King. He bestowed me with it.

I’m thinking about what I’d say. I’m probably going to become a jester. It’s a sign of things to come.

I think of his favorite movies and I recite them as my mantra.

Toy Story

Ghost in the Shell 2: innocence

Gas Food Lodging

Irma Vep

The Player

Branded to Kill

And the Ship Sailed On

Contempt

Police Story

Gates of Flesh

8 1/2

The Handmaiden

Paris, Texas

Adaptation

The Matrix Trilogy

1917

Bladerunner 2064

West Side Story

Stalker

Gone Girl

Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

NEWP disagreed about Gone Girl and Contempt. He’s a fucking a loser.

These movies all have a high level of artistic value. I will see them one day and I’ll repeat their memes.

I might be expected to talk about movies and I get a bit nervous. He is very learned. Well watched.

I find a magazine. The interview says…

Literature and Genre Fiction are two different things.

Literature exists to tell a story that explores characters, themes, and philosophy using a fictional scenario.

Genre Fiction, when it was first created, did the same thing, however it used fantastical elements and less realistic worlds to highlight or punctuate their thesis.

The original Dracula isn’t really the Vampire Genre. It’s literature that SPAWNED the Vampire Genre. People saw the vampires as the most interesting part and created vampire-genre-fiction to further explore the aesthetics of that original Dracula story.  

Lord of the Rings is Literature. It’s not a fantasy-genre fiction work. However, viewing it with the lens of how we now understand Fantasy Genre Fiction LOTR reads different to us than it did when it originally came out.

Lord of the Rings is telling a very clear story that’s about about Christianity and man’s place in the world and man’s struggles to not be evil, despite the temptations that are always present and calling to you.

However, the fantastical elements of lord of the rings that existed to serve the themes and narrative because the fixation of nerds who misunderstood the books. They loved the detailed world, the creation of maps and languages. Instead of seeing that as serving a larger thesis, the nerds fell in love with the aesthetics of LOTR, and created something that is very different.

Now plenty of great Fantasy-Genre Fiction novels exist and are deep and explore complex ideas like Tolkein did, but most are not like that. Most of them think the World Building IS the story.

It’s a problem with aesthetics ultimately. People confuse the vibe with the point of the thing.

I wonder about the translation. I wonder if Kisage X speaks English.

I wonder if the King can speak Japanese.

I wonder if he’s truly Soul Perfect.

Kisage X says science fiction was speculative and warned about potential futures. And the aesthetics were so strong some nerds misunderstood the vibe with the point of the thing.

My brother.

He loves the aesthetics of cyber hell.

He loves the aesthetics of shitting yourself.

I wonder if the King is god.

V.

You're the party planner and the theme is  Perpetual End Game . - Baby New Year Rebirth Bash - 1999 or whatever.  You need to make the DJ play, set the prisoners free, find the VHS and destroy it, and don't let anyone know… I'm a parallel Rory…

Love you sis. I have to go! We’ll meet properly next time, as you know me, in a dream.

No I’m kidding that’s a dream I had.

I’ve got a new intrusive thought. Patricidal murder with a genocidal twist. I kill everyone but everyone is my parents.

So I wake up from the dream and I hug my parents who tell me that I’m a disappointment and I know it’s a bit.

I don’t want to hurt people and neither do you. But you don’t want to do it because it hasn’t occurred to you. You haven’t imagined it.

I tell you it’s only a virtue if you resist. If you don’t feel the draw you didn’t have an option.

VI.

I miss some streams. I didn’t have a window for a while or the earths rotation shifted. For some reason I couldn’t see the moonlight.

NEWP was banned. He broke decree seven.

He brought up a forbidden topic.

A VOD shows the King lose his shit. Absolutely ape banana. NEWP cried. He’s IP banned.

Things are looking up.

The King says Soul Perfect. My ears perk up and you roll your eyes. You don’t believe in perfection. You barely believe in the soul.

You close your eyes and watch the moonlight through your lids and yawn over his joke. You’re acting disrespectful because you hate the monarchy. You can’t afford to tithe and neither can your family. You’re a broke bitch.

The King needs new content and I’ve got a gut feeling that it might just be me. I max out my credit card. I max out my Dad’s.

You’re barely attention and sleep’s got you.

You only started watching the moonlight because you moved north. Far away from light pollution and micro-plastics. You’re kind of a shut in.

You like people but you don’t like how they make you feel.

You think you know better but you don’t.

You started to study the stars because you can finally see them. You spent your whole life not knowing how the ancient people lived. You didn’t understand the ancient gods had corpses on display.

Astrology makes more sense to you here. You think maybe that’s real. The King can’t be.

You’re just lonely. You need to get your head on straight and catch your breath.

You need to sleep but you won’t take the plunge. Anxiety brings you back just in time to hear…

The lyrics to the song Original Sinners.

The King is saying them and I don’t know what to do. His voice is like music even when he doesn’t rap.

He says Vella Wilde wrote it but I know it came from him.

You don’t care who wrote it because your mind let go and you’re half asleep SEEING it. It’s a movie or a cutscene or a music video. But it’s also true and you know it in your bones.

There’s an ape.

He’s got a feeling that’s new.

You’re the ape but you’re also like a kid with a gun. You just realized that guns are real because you thought of it so now it exists in your mind and you start to build it.

It’s a sling shot and bow and arrow and finally a gun.

You’re ancient now and you’ve lost your fur.

You’re kind of a person but mostly a machine.

You built technology to stay alive.

Fuck dying you’re all about killing.

And you’re shooting the gun and it makes you the hero and everyone knows you were always right and you can’t die because you’re immortal and you’re immortal because how powerful the weapon was.

And you imagine a bomb and your life has meaning and you’re an Original Sinner.

You’re violence is creative.

God knows you exist because he had to notice because of how bad you made everything.

You’re Oppenheimer and Smith and Wesson.

You’re asleep now and have unconscious guilt.

You didn’t really do it you just had a dream about it but so did the monkey in the dream and the dream is the thought and the thought is the start of the process and the process is the pattern and the pattern is your soul and the pattern is imperfect and so is your soul.

You don’t sleep for a week.

You don’t miss a stream.

And he calls you on and not me.

He sent you the vision. He gave you the original idea and he made you the knight. Because you’re free of micro-plastics and light pollution.

I deprecate because I knew you before the King but the King gives you a name and I don’t know your name and you’re VERRAFormer.

VII.

So the first time you’re on stream you’re a mess. Your throat is dry and you’re bad at talking. You make no coherent points and the court isn’t sold.

We trust the King but the King did invite NEWP.

So you feel like shit the next day and you send those feelings through the air and they reach me and I feel worse than you do and take the misery on for you. I’m your hero and you don’t know who answered your call.

You spend some time coding. You play a game. You fight with Simon and you don’t like that your Dad still hasn’t started Mario RPG.

You’re convinced he’ll love it like you do but I know he’ll think it’s too much reading. He thinks it’s a game for babies and your baby but he doesn’t say it out loud because he knows teenagers are kids

so I emulate the game and think about you and I’m your dad for a while and I enjoy it more than enough to make you happy. We close even if not in space.

The stream starts soon but there are clouds. It’s going to rain and I can’t see the moon.

I start to cry and scream. You’re probably coming back on tonight.

So I steal the car and I’m on the road and I’m chasing the end of the storm.

My phones ringing and I ignore it.

I turn on the radio and the King speaks to me through it. He knows I’m trying to see him and he is pleased as my Dad is pissed.

He tells me to turn down the road and climb the mountain but the road is blocked. I accelerate and dent the hood and I know it’ll be painful tomorrow but this matters more because you’re on the stream and you’ve gotten your footing and you’re making him laugh and he likes your point.

So I’m under the moonlight and the car is fucked.

But you’re telling him about a website that can talk across time and space. How you fall it ONISM and it’s a place where you can meet your parallel self.

And you’re saying something weird that’s definitely not canon but the King hasn’t booted you.

The car is yelling at me about the keys and door and I can’t hear you over the sound.

I slam the door as the King snacks the gavel.

I wince because it’s like the punch my Dad is giving me. Only the King is merciful and only does it once.

I think about what you said. That my Soul is 128 instances and I am the shared patterns across them.

That I have a local Soul and a Soul Perfect.

The unified pattern across realities.

You save me from the moment and the moment is gone and I’m back in my back and you’re back in school and nothing is real because you have the secrets of the universe.

The King calls you an Original Sinner and you’re shy about it because you don’t want people to know you can’t die.

I laugh and I’m crying for you because that’s so cool.

And you say that you don’t know the secrets of the universe only that there is a secret and that it’s so big all it does it show you how big it is and that’s how it kills you because it just goes on and on and on.

And you beg for death because you can’t know anymore but it keeps you alive just to show you what you could’ve been and aren’t.

And this makes me feel bad.

The King says in every reality, all 128 of them, VERRAformer leads him to a revelation.

But he doesn’t say what it is because you beg him not to. I don’t know what to feel.

You’ve won favor with the King and he asks you for a game recommendation and you say it too fast I can’t hear and I can’t rewind because the stream is analogue.

I’m too mad for context clues.

Someone is talking behind you and you don’t want him to know. The King is curious and you say it’s a friend and you know it’s a lie. So the King plays a game and you promise to come back tomorrow but I know you’ll skip and be gone a week and I’m into it because the King thinks your interesting and you know you can’t be too easy.

So you leave because the sun is rising and that’s when the Proto Woman talks from the sunlight.

I go to work and get demoted.

VIII.

There’s a woman and she’s dancing. 16 or 17. The street light flickers and the ambience is electric.

It’s ballet or something fancy. The type of dance that takes time and effort.

She’s on her toes and even has the shoes.

I think it’s called point.

She’s doing it for the camera.  This one is in the back of a mall. Near the loading dock.

It’s a security camera and no one watches it. She has a suspicion no one sees but that’s what makes it sad and that’s why it’s cool.

But tonight someone is watching from behind the bins. They just took out the trash and they’re too awkward to cross her line of sight.

They’re afraid that she’ll see them and know their a creep.

She’s played by Asuka Furutani. It’s her second and only uncredited role. She has no dialogue.

She spots the kid in the bind and we realize he’s a vampire or a demon. It’s never quite clear. She smiles and the glint on her teeth blinds him.

The moon is revealed and the dancer screams as she notices the truth. The person in the bins is naked and they’re holding a knife. He pursues as she makes for the door.

The film cut to the security office where the guard has his back turned to the monitors. He’s looking at Hentai through sunglasses.

This is famously the only Kisage X cameo in a film by another creator.

The camera pans from the manga to his aviators and we see a reflection of the film’s director wearing a John F. Kennedy mask.

The focus softens and the second cameo of the film fades from sight.

The handheld camera pans to the left as Kisage X leans forward for a better look at the panel and we return to the action.

This shot is revered by the fandom for symbolically predicting the 26 second Zapruder film six months before the JFK assassination.

The dancer is running for her life, but in a way that mocks the pursuer. It’s graceful and dance like.

West Side Story meets The Shinning.

The Dancer gets to the end of the hall where the door marked security is locked. She casually knocks on the door while her lower body keeps the beat.

It’s a music video now. She’s enticing the viewer to chase her down the hall but the hall keeps expanding.

The audience and the naked man are confused. Thrown around by the floor that is bouncing with the beat.

The dancer pulls an invisible rope forward which peels away the walls. The wallpaper covered a fleshy wound. The naked man is screaming and the camera artfully stutters.

This scene is considered a marvel of practical effects. seventy gallons of fake blood were used to fill the veins on the translucent meat-walls.

The naked man claws at the floor as the dancer pulls a second rope. This one has him by the feet. Blood pools around his hands in a close up.

The camera dollies in as if attached to his shoulders. The smiling semi-transparent face of Asuka Furutani is superimposed over the screen. She winks and smiles and the film gives the audience a seizure as it cuts sporadically.

First you see the dancer outside a coffee shop dancing for the security camera. Then she’s outside a school. A factory. A police station. You see her pursued by multiple men. Then the film shows a series of victims. Each slain by the dancers cosmic power over the film.

The final shot settles on Asuka Furutani covered in blood. She’s topless.

Soon after the film becomes bullshit. Quickly devolving into a nonsensical detective story derivative of David Lynch. Asuka Furutani does not appear again in the film. Instead she is played by a body double, Iwai Yoshiyuki. (102 cm, waist 56 cm, hips 84 cm, bra 100h, cup c.)

Asuka Furutani has never confirmed why she left the film.

Rumors suggest she had a falling out with the director. Rumor has it the opening sequence was largely her creation. Others say it was entirely the work or Kisage X.

The film’s director only made this one film.

Kisage X continues to recommend the film. The reason is contested in the fandom. Many speculate he still feels guilty for ruining the film with a single brilliant sequence.

IX.

A cloud blocks and filters the moonlight. The transmission goes quiet.

You’re not watching tonight because you’re wearing a blind fold. You’ve become scared of the transmissions because you aren’t sure if they’re real. You don’t believe in magic. Your parents are alarmed by your aversion to it but Simon thinks it’s funny.

It’s okay though. I just told you about the moon-stream and you’re caught up on the lore.

You said Kisage X isn’t a real filmmaker and the King is doing an elaborate ARG. You’re eating your words tonight because he showed us a film and there is no way he faked that.

We go to the comic book store and they’ve got some magazines from Japan. Kisage X is on the cover and I show it to you and you say that you feel sick. I say you’ve become a bitch. We’re kicked out of the store because I’ve put a hentai under my shirt and you couldn’t hide your excitement and neither could I. They call us queers and we’re outside, behind the dumpsters, and I reveal that I got away with it. You’re shocked that I’m so cool and I’m impressed with myself.

I remind you that Kisage X reads hentai and you roll your eyes because you think it’s all a delusion.

I flip through the book and you lose your shit. It’s the same one from the movie. You say it isn’t. You remind me how old that movie is and how unlikely it is that it’s the same manga. I vow to prove it and you say that you don’t really care and I say that you’re a bitch and you say that there is a security camera.

So I decide to do the dance and you’re really embarrassed but I know you like it and think I’m cool.

I’m not like Asuka, I don’t have technique, but I memorized the basics and you have to admit you’re impressed but you don’t and this makes me feel really sad and I just don’t get why we can’t kiss.

So you’re not here anymore and I’m left feeling weird about myself and you’re in the car with your brother and you’re telling him stuff about me that isn’t true and you sound better than me and I just can’t stand it so I’m beating the fuck out the dumpster and someone calls the mall security and I’m running for my life and you’re in the car listening to R.E.M and I’m in a tiny room waiting for my parents to show up.

But they never do so they let me go because I lied about stealing the hentai and really I bought it while you’re in the bathroom because I wanted to impress you and it turns out they didn’t know about the book they just wanted me to stop hitting the dumpster.

So I’m walking back home. I’m on the side of the road and I see you pass by but you ignore me despite me screaming your name louder than all of the traffic. Your Mom sees me and see pulls over but you won’t look me in the eye.

I say that she looks really sexy today and she goes flush and you give me a death stare while Simon mimes throwing up.

She offers me a ride but I martyr myself for you and refuse. I compliment her technology and dive into the rhododendron which finally gets a smile from you.

She calls my name and asks if I’m remedial and you say I’m retarded and she smacks your leg and Simon kicks your chair in a fit of laughter.

It’s tomorrow or the day after and we’re not in the same space but I can feel you and you can feel me because we’re connected by a vibe and a gesture. I call your house and you don’t pick up because you left the phone off the hook because some psycho won’t stop leaving free-style-raps on your machine.

I turn on the SNES and stare at the Super Mario RPG title screen until my eyes bleed and I catch the droplets in a vile. I stick the blood into a plastic bag and hide it inside of a teddy and bite down hard until the blood fills my mouth and I feel like a vampire and know you’d find this so funny. I force myself to do these bits when you’re not around just so I can be “real” for you.


I get my shit kicked in by my Dad because I promised him I wouldn’t bleed as a bit again but he just doesn’t get comedy and neither does my Mom because she isn’t you.

And you’re all alone again with a blind fold on. It’s gotten worse so you’ve invested in black-out-curtains. You’re considering headphones and blaring music. You’ve taken to fearing the moonlight like a soy-werewolf.

So I watch twice as hard for you tonight. I never blink.

The King has a guest and her name is Bartonimus. She’s hot and the King thinks so too. She says she’s from Vietnam but no one believes it because she sounds like she’s from an inner city and we all spam ebonics in chat.

We’re reprimanded and praise the King for his correction.

Tonight he promises a reveal.

X.

I am interested in impressionistic logic that makes a hazy sort of sense. Like the light from the moon acting as the bulb of a projector.

That’s what drew me to the King.

I didn’t get how he did it. That’s part of why it was so exciting. I’m seeking something and I haven’t found it yet but I know it’s got to do with a shirtless pale man in a golden crown who can project memes and dreams through moonlight.

I found him last year and I listen even when it’s cloudy. I don’t have sleepovers anymore and I don’t go out after sundown unless I really have to. And even then I’m listening.

My initiation happened on my birthday. New Years Eve. I turned 17.

A party was happening around me and no one knew that I saw you, my King. Simon fell and pulled down the curtain. Everyone laughed but I cried. Moved to tears by the image I was on the gray light that filled the dimmed room.

You were mid monologue but I knew it was meant for me. You said that I had just learned the point of the cosmos. What it was all for. The moon and the stars. You rang a bell and identical twins in lude gold-attire brought you two tarot decks on blue satin pillows. You cut the decks and blended them. You said that each card was a universe and reality.

You said words I’ll never forget. “This week, you’ll overhear a conversation. A woman will be speaking on the phone in a public venue. She’ll be attractive, but not your usual type. She’ll recite her phone number. Remember it, but don’t write it down. Half of you will make the call. The other half will be too anxious. 

Now here you choose which mode of being you adopt. 

Those who make the call will have an unusual love affair. Those who fail to make the call, will experience severe financial loss.

Those of you who don’t leave your homes have failed to play the game. Your fate is unknowable even to me.”

I paid attention and I eavesdropped everywhere I went. Outside the grocery store I gaped at the women in the phone booth. But I couldn’t hear a word. I sat in a pizza place and listened to the girl behind the counter take orders.

Days went by and nothing happened.

It was the first week of the new year and no one seemed to be around.

I despaired and self harmed in a variety of ways.

But then you said this thing that surprised me. You said that the women died. That she wouldn’t manifest yet. You explained the forces of reality and it all just clicked into place. You showed us her photo and she was beautiful. Not my usual type. You’re always right about everything.

So I undid the self harm with self love and everything was cool again.

The King said he’d take you from a world where you still reside and bring you to my feet. You exist in 128 realities. Well, 127 since you died here. Maybe less if you’ve died other times.

When you’re the King everyone serves at your pleasure and for some reason the King has chosen me.

I’m special. Like maybe I’m the prince or the princess or maybe I’ll be the bride and be the queen.

XI.

So my Mom found the hentai and she cried. My Dad thought it was funny. My brother stole it from the trash. Well, he claims he didn’t but I know he did. I can just sense it on him.

When I have to do something I don’t want to do I spend a lot of time feeling horrible about it. It’s like there is an ice pick in my brain and it is driven deeper with each second I don’t do it.

I have to make a phone call and I’m shit at talking on the phone. My voice is miserable and my social skills are remedial.

So I pray to the King and shout his name and beat my chest till it’s black and blue. And he answers me with a riddle.

“How do you do that which does not occur to you?”

I’m stumped.

It occurs to me to go through my brother’s stuff to retrieve my stolen book. It also occurs to me that I’ll likely get in trouble. But I’m a minimalist and there isn’t much that can be taken from me besides my window. My parents don’t know about my affair with the moon so they wouldn’t think to board it up.

So I’m peeling the sheets off my brothers bed and I throw the mattress against the door so no one bothers me.

I don’t find anything.

I check under the bed frame and inside the vents. I throw his laundry on the floor and even check the behind the drawers. I check behind his shelf and then tip it over to check the bottom. He didn’t tape it there.

I pick the books off the floor at random and flip through them. I think he’s probably ripped out his favorite pages and hid them in other books.

I’m halfway through the pile when he’s banging on the door.

I’m screaming back at him and blowing his mind with my reasoning.

I spend what feels like an eternity looking for a screwdriver to open his computer tower. Inside I find a rolled up piece of paper.

I scream like the girl on the page and begin to shout Aha.

My Dad’s kicks down the door and my brother is crying. My Mom looks concerned in her night gown. She’s got the corded phone against her stomach and I can tell she doesn’t love me anymore.

My Dad is hitting me with the books and my brother is biting his fist and kicking the wall.

So I’m on the couch and there is a finger in my face and my ears are starting to bleed from the repetition. But I was right and I make it known I was right. And I tell them it was in the computer. I tell them he ripped out the best page and rolled it up and taped it inside the computer. And my brother is calling me a liar and my Dad is looking distraught. I’m trying to get to my feet by my Dad won’t stop looming. I challenge their reign and let my Dad know he isn’t a king and he’s just a tyrant and his rules are fucking arbitrary because my brother isn’t on the lawn for stealing my book and ripping out a page. I didn’t do anything he didn’t do and he isn’t in trouble.

I’m on the lawn in my boxers and and parents locked me out. But I don’t care. I lounge in the plastic recliner and I watch the sun like a trailer.

But then I’m reminded I never made the call. The phone is inside the house and they won’t let me back in.

It occurs to me to break the glass. It occurs to me to go to the neighbor and ask to borrow their phone.

I do and they’re sympathetic to how my Dad beat me for telling on my brother. How my Mom doesn’t stand up for me and they cry with me. I want to punch their wall but they’re pretty understanding. So they leave me with their phone and I punch in your number and you don’t answer. But I get the machine and rap about how you finally turned it back on.

I help myself to a sprite and thank my hosts. All in time for my show.

The theme music thumps and I head bang. My Mom’s watching from the window and I can tell she thinks I’m being weird. But I already wrecked my brother’s room and I don’t see what harm a bit more can really do at this point.

Tonight VERRAFormer has returned. Tonight you finally got your balls back.

So you’re sounding really cool and your wearing your authority on your sleeve and I think it’s kind of cute. The King asks you about the Soul and how ONISM connects souls. You explain that Soul is patterns. What you do, what you think, what you say, what you did, what you do. You say that the will impressed your pattern onto the patterns of other people. That other people impress upon you through acts of expression. The King wants to know more so you take a detour and don’t get to the question. I roll my eyes as you get into the weeds and feel like the King is really baiting this arc out.

You’re talking about how when you express something in a work, a piece of Soul remains. But that it’s not really enough to be truly you. It comes from you, but it isn’t you. You say it’s like how Sherlock Homes proceeds from Arthur Conan Doyle. But how confusing Sherlock Homes with the author is stupid. This is because a work of art contains a only small amount of your patterns. They’re informed by the patterns you live, but they are also formed by the patterns of your creativity. This dilutes the Soul and makes a work of art more like a child than clone of your Soul.

That there is no Soul in art that’s human. It’s a parody. Like how a kid is a parody of a person. You say ONISM is patterns over time. That your patterns over time are more accurate. The problem is, a Soul requires to be observed by other Souls, through impression. And that your Soul must witness the expression of other Souls to truly be human. Otherwise it’s just pure potential.

ONISM is a record of both expression and impression. ONISM has a soul because it is the result of every Soul that has interacted with it.

You’ve talked a long time and the sun is going up. The King thanks you for your insight and he makes you a Grand Knight. You thank him for the honor and remind him that you didn’t answer the question. The King laughs and asks it again.

How does ONISM do it?

You say that when you commit an Original Sin you meet a parallel version of yourself. ONISM is an artificial Original Sin. It games the attention of the user to force them to engage with ideas that would normally be ignored. This creates an artificially partition that impresses upon you the epiphany of your a new type of evil.

The morning star signals the end of the stream and the DJ plays us out.

So my parents won’t let me in and It doesn’t occur to me to break the glass. I start to walk to school but remember it’s Saturday.

I start to walk back home and I remember I’m not welcome. I start to deprecate.

But then I hear a phone and and notice where I am. I’m on the Main Street and I can’t remember how I got here. And then I hear her footsteps and glimpse a blur of green. She’s out of breath and panting against the payphone. She says something about a newspaper. Something about the time. Something about the sun rise and and about forgetting her shades.

And then she recites her phone number.

And I notice she’s got technology for days.

XII.

I’m standing on the street corner and I’m watching you run away. It occurs to me to feel shame. I don’t want to be creepy. But I am in my underwear and I am on the street and it is broad daylight. I thank the King for remaining unseen by you. But accept the reality that other people are staring. It occurs to me to beg them for clothing, and it occurs to them to ignore me.

Normally I’d feel mad but something about the morning has me euphoric.

So I walk up the street and into a thrift store and I ask them for pants. It’s a Catholic charity so they can’t refuse. They cloth me in shame and it only dims my euphoria to excitement. He asks me why I'm talking funny and I ignore him. Instead, I tell the clerk I was kicked out and how my Dad’s a bitch. I tell him about the manga, and about my brother’s room, and about the sprite I took, and he just looks at me with petty and this makes me feel clean. I thank him for the pants and jacket and he offers me money. I take the twenty and promise I’ll apologize to my brother though I make an internal vow to never do it.

So I buy some breakfast and think about walking to your house. But I know my gamer legs won’t carry me that far and I spent the eight of the twenty dollars on breakfast. I can’t afford a cab and I don’t ride the bus.

So I think about walking home and think about maybe apologizing. It occurs to me that she might be back home and I take some of the change and place a call. You don’t pick up and I get your machine. Your voice tells me that your name is Clarice and I fumble my words out of the gate.

I beat box to set the tone.

I rap my ass off and hang up the phone.

I wish I could remember the words that I said. But they were fly.

So I’m walking back home when I see VERRAFormer in the car. Something about his hair has lost its luster. I forget his phone number. Now I only think about you. I think about returning the wave but I pretend I didn’t see him.

But his Mom turns the car around at the light and she pulls up to me. She says that my parents are looking for me. That they’re out trying to find me. I pretend I don’t know why. She says that she’ll drive me home and I say that she doesn’t have to. She insisters. So I get in the car and sit behind the Mom and will VERRAFormer to drop his sun visor with all my might. We take a turn into the sun and my wish is granted. I force him to move the cover on the mirror so that I can watch his eyes from the back seat. But I can’t make eye contact because I know he’d be ashamed of me. And I feel hot and I want to roll down the window but the child safety lock is on. I’m burning alive.

But I’m back home now and my Dad isn’t here. Just my Mom. So we hash it out and I don’t really say anything and I just let her yell at me until the room goes quiet and I think I’m finally through it. That’s when my brother appears and shouts about how she asked why I did it and I ignored her. So I try ignoring him but my Dad forces the question. I can’t explain it but I can shout about how he snuck up on me and how it freaked me out. So I lose my shit and think about leaving again. My Dad says that he just doesn’t know how to get through to me. About how I don’t get what it’s like being my Dad. How I’m such a horrible child and how I just disrupt the peace and I how I have no respect for other people. It occurs to me to just agree. It occurs to me to have some humility. I still am mad that he stole the book. And I’m still mad that he wasn’t punished. I still hate the double standard. But I get that I made a mess. No one made a mess of my stuff. So in a way my brother was punished twice.

My Dad asks me why I sound funny and I lie about biting my lip. They send me to bed without dinner and it’s I struggle to contain my elation.

I’m in bed now staring our the window. Willing the sun to set.

I spit the rolled up hentai page out of my mouth and unfold it. It’s safe.

My eyelids are heavy. I think about skipping the stream for the first time in a year. But I know that I can’t fail the King. But my body hurts. And it occurs to me to sleep. I feel shame.

The sun seems to hang.

Time seems to freeze.

The phone seems to ring in a chamber of my mind. Through jello I hear my Dad say “What? Who is this…? No. He’s grounded. He can’t come to the phone… why do you say that? I don’t - really? Uh… Look, just not tonight. Maybe not this month. He’s in a lot of trouble.”

The sky has dimmed and I’m out like a light.

XIV. Fortune

The morning assaults my eyes and I immediately feel crushed. I’m a fucking idiot and I fell asleep. The King will disown me. He’ll divide me from you and my fortune won’t come true. I want to be in good standing. I want to receive my name. I want all that was promised to me on the night of my initiation. I think of calling VERRAFormer and begging him to explain my situation.

Then I think of the phone call. Did I dream it? Had she really returned my call?

I think of what may be lost and I start to flail.

And then they’re banging on the door. Screaming that it’s time for breakfast. But I can’t move. I feel like a piece of shit. I failed the King and I missed the lore. I have never done this before.

And my Dad is in the room and he’s shaking his head and he looks distraught. And he says that I have to come to breakfast and we have to restore order to the family. That he loves me and doesn’t hate me. He just doesn’t know how to handle my temper. And I tell him I don’t have one I have justice. And he tells me to watch it.

So to avoid my ear being pulled I follow him into the kitchen.

Bacon, eggs, waffles, and pancakes. My Mom doesn’t usually cook like this.

So I ask why the feast. And they say it’s so we can celebrate peace. And I feel shame again.

My brother looks at me and rolls his eyes.

He tells me I was screaming in my sleep. And my Mom confirms it. Dad says he didn’t hear anything and that’s why he wears earplugs.

And then it happens. Mana from the King. The phone rings and my brother is across the room to get it. He asks what a girl wants to do with me. He listens. He laughs. And he calls me over.

Dad stops me. He says I’m grounded. No phone for a month.

I’m unable to move. My fortune is on the line and all that stands between me is a middle aged fuckwick. It occurs to me to hit him and run for the phone. It occurs to me that I’ll barely get a word in before he tackles me.

I know my strength and I know how thick his fat head is. I don’t think I could get a knock out. It occurs to me to beg for mercy.

It occurs to me to bide my time.

I can wait for everyone to leave. And to return the call.

But then I notice my brother is laughing and getting on with you. And my blood starts to boil and I call out to the King with my heart and will everyone in the room to drop dead and burn in hell and leave me in beautiful silence for just a moment.

And you just keep making him laugh. And he’s smacking his thighs and showing too much gum. And I hate the way his head jerks forward and I know it should be my voice that you’re hearing and I don’t understand the cruelty of this world.

And then he says that I’m grounded because I tossed his room looking for Japanese tentacle porn and I can’t believe he’d do me like that and I vow to fuck his room up worse then before.

And my hands are bleeding from digging my nails into my palms. And my voice is cracking from my repeated shrieks. And the back of my head hurts from my Dad’s newspaper.

And I can’t take it anymore.

My Mom is talking at me about the laundry and picking up something from the neighbor but I’m intentionally not listening because I need all my mental faculties to not leap across the table and Cain this bitch with a rock.

He winks at me. The motherfucker winks.

And I think of you making him laugh and I think of you calling again and getting him instead and you’re married in my mind and the King makes him a grand Knight. And you’re crowned the Queen and you all become a throuple.

But the King reveals to me a path forward. In my vision my brother can’t perform so you and the King dispose of him. I am called as his replacement and you see that you chose wrong.

I rise to the occasion in my mind and my Dad notices and starts to look disappointed. I apologize and say I can’t help it. My brother doesn’t know what’s going on and I beg my Dad to keep it that way and he says he doesn’t want to talk about it and I feel shame.

So I go to my room and I burry my head in the concrete wall just a little to hard and hope I black out until moonlight but I’m cursed with consciousness so I throw myself on my back and kick my feet into the air and scream into my pillow.

And then I look out the window and I see the sun and I wish it were the moon and I curse the heat.

But you’re not what I fear. You’ve been set aside for me and marked by your public declarations. You moved into my reality when you uttered your number.

Fortune is your name. You’re 21. You wear a short skirt and a long green jacket. You have thin stringy hair from dying it too much. You’ve worn wigs before but someone talked you out of it. They told you it was vanity and vanity was an unoriginal sin. It’s old hat.

You seek a creative evil.

That’s why you need me. That’s why the King has called us.

That’s why the moon has lead me to this moment. Dad is asleep on the couch. Mom is taking a rosé bath. The house is in on it and the floorboards remind silent because I held my breath.

I’ve grabbed the phone and replaced the chord with the longer one attached to Dad’s modem. I’m back in my room and my heart is pounding.

The sun has set and the moon is cresting over the neighbors trees.

I dial your number and hear you breath on the other end.

You have a soft voice. I hear it say “so… are we watching together?”

XV. Initiate Elect

And it’s the future and I’m kissing your face. Repeatedly and aimlessly. I’ve never missed a face so much before it’s gone. You’re slipping away and I have to make up for lost time but I’m too in my head to catch the moment and do it right. You’re smiling and showing me you’re happy. But the temporary nature kills me.

You return the kisses and put your hair on my head like I have green bangs.

I laughed and try to remember every inch of your face.

Tomorrow the King will move you to someone more deserving and I have be left alone.

My fortunate loss.

And I’m crying now like a bitch and you wipe my tears and say that I’m cute and I laugh because I know I’m a bitch but you make me feel loved and we only have two weeks together and it’s just so fucked that you have to die like this.

And you were my soulmate but he’s made you a product and you’re off to be sold.

But now I’m back in the moment we first met properly and I’m enjoying the hairs standing up on the back of my back as you click your tongue into the phone.

I say that we’ll watch together tonight. And that we should do it tomorrow. You say I move fast. I saw I’m making up for lost time.

The Kings choir sings him in and he spins in his throne. tonight he has no guest. It’s a solo show.

Tonight he will explore the question.

Why do we live? Why do we die? And why do we suffer?

VERRAFormer challenged him with this. He called this question the Knowledge of Good and Evil. He said it’s the remains of the moment in which we developed full meta-consciousness.

When we are born we are a creature of the earth. Each aspect produces obvious meaning.

But then suffering is introduced and our imagination develops the uneasy ability to imagine a state of being worse than your current one.

All because death has tapped you on the shoulder and said Booo!

In that moment the pieces that hold reality together are shown to be an illusion and the real bones are shown. Decaying. A collision course with nonexistence. And before that definite pain and misery.

The King describes being a boy. A being who danced across existence with each new interaction and discovery brimming with potential. But he went too far and discovered pain. This pain awoke in him the capacity to imagine a pain greater than that pain. And he saw that life existed for death as death was the only promise in life.

Why do we live? Just do suffering and then to die?

He calls 33.139.94.171 and I shine light from my pours that rivals the waxing moon. I stand to feet careful to bring the phone with me.

I walk to the window to be acknowledged and I answer that I am here. I genuflect.

The King calls me by name and declares that I am Carrie. I take a deep bow and rise to receive my title. I am a jester.

I must tell a story.

I hold the receiver to my ear to receive encouragement from Fortune.

The King asks me what I have brought to the Court and I suggest a story from a film by Kisage X. The Blackened Pond.

The King has not seen it but loves the director and allows me to continue.

The scene opens with the 5th movement of Mahler 4 played an a Moog synthesizer. A wide format anamorphic lens surveys a mountain top.

Part set, part miniature, with a matte painting of a strange gigantic angel stealing the viewers attention.

The score builds as the sun peaks over the angel. A notable practical effect.

Soon a child wonders onto frame between the grey and blonde primordial pillars. She’s frightened in a way that contrast the sweetness of the score.

Sudden the camera lifts and begins to move in towards the child who turns away from the camera burying her face the best she can.

She doesn’t speak, but cries in a noticeable motif.

We see now that she’s covered in hair. She’s a child of a different species. She’s aware of the Camera and it causes her great alarm. Sudden the cameras swaying stops and the voice of the director calls out “Why don’t you reveal your face?”

The child turns slowly. Two paws of matted fur covering her eye. Her mouth is revealed when her hand twitches and we catch the glimpse of a fang.

“I have seen…” she says.

The director asks her what she’s seen. And she says her own reflection.

The cameras suddenly rises up far above the scene and darts towards a pond of black water east of the child.

The child is calling out for God but the director is God and he doesn’t hear her prayer.

The camera descends towards the surface and submerges into the oily water. It’s dark and disturbed. Mahler has seen gone quiet. All that’s left is the sound taiko drums banging.

The camera ascends from the water and we catch a glimpse of a wing and bare feet dangling below.

“Child. How did the water blacken?”

The child shakes and refuses to answer.

God descends on her and the camera stays in place. No longer does the viewpoint represent omnipotence. God comes into frame and we see he a sculpted and naked man with wings and long white hair.

He grabs the child by the hands and peels them from her face.  

The camera cuts to an alternative angle and we view them both in the shadow of the loom Angel.

“Who blackened the pond!?”

The child refuses to speak.

And I stop describing the scene there as I’ve made my point. The King is intrigued. I explain that this scene is about the question.

Seeing her own reflection filled her with envy for having an appearance she was able to imagine. Why do we suffer looking the way we do?

These are all variations on the question.

The King likes the story and asks me if I’ve seen the full movie. I confess that I have not. And he says he has and he agrees with my interpretation. But that there is another component that I am missing to truly see.

The child was taught to blacken the pond by a version of herself from a parallel reality. And the beauty that will forever evade her and doom her to despair is herself from another dimension. Another version of the same work created by the director, aka God.

But now that despair has entered into this world the child will spread it. Her appearance will never be as she desires and she will spread that meme.

The film is called CompariSin.

Why are things one way…. Rather than the way you’d prefer? Your imagination betrays joy with visions of things you’ll never have. And you pine for them like a dead friend.

XVI.

How I pleased the King pleases you. You get off the phone and get off to how cool I am. You’re in a basement apartment converted from your grandmother’s former accounting office. You’re not wearing anything, or maybe just a little bit. I’m not sure which is hotter.

You’re late for work and really not feeling it. But you have bills to pay, so you wash the sleep from your eyes with Listerine Cool Mint Antiseptic Mouthwash and search the foot of your bed for something to wear.

The phone rings but you ignore it because you’re running behind as it is. It rings again and you know it’s your boss so you move slower on purpose. You take your time making your coffee. This morning you opt for slow drip. You use your foot to pick your bra off the floor and flip it up into the air. Catching it with chopsticks, or some other implement.

You can’t be bothered to heat breakfast so you eat the room temperature udon on your desk. The cup of coffee hits.

You leave for work. At the door you remember your face is naked and the sun is out. You don’t wish to betray the King so you fetch the sunglasses on the window sill and squint your way to the car. Careful to ignore the King’s opposite.

You sell tickets at the train station. You think about the King, but strangely enough when you think of him it’s my face you see. I’ve replace your obsession as you replaced my obsession with VERRAFormer. You’re thankful to the King. You know the power imbalance makes it impossible for him to take a bride so he has sent me to you instead. You’re relaxed for the first time in a while. You actually don’t mind being yelled at by your boss. By minute seven of his lecture you lose some of the mellow, but the thought of how I knew about Kisage X's CompariSin brings a smile to your face.

So you get through the day largely ignoring customers by pointing them to the ticketing machine.

As your name suggests you’re fortunate. Chosen, initiated, and finally at your permanent reality-residence. You know he won’t move you again.

XVII - Killing time

I try my best to avoid calling you. I hardly manage it. I need a distraction so I pick a fight with my Mother. She isn’t taking the bait and just thinks I’m being funny. This makes my blood boil so I try to pass the rage on to my brother. He’s ascended into asceticism and his saintlike patience makes me go nuclear. I’m outside kicking my Dad’s tires wondering if I should kick in the hood. It’s red and well formed. Dad worked hard for this car and I think about how much clout I’d get from trashing it.

But it occurs to me that this might make it even harder to see you so I kill the occurrence by chasing a cat around the town. But the Cat isn’t real and I just pretend it’s there and that only kills twenty minutes or so.

So I’m back home thinking of ways to escalate and nothing occurs to me.

My Mom tells me to just do homework. I tell her I don’t have any. Which is true because I didn’t write down the assignments.

Mom’s got a client over and she says I’m being a distraction. She tells me to go into the basement and play on the computer. I don’t like the computer ever since I found the moon-stream. My initiation revealed a flickering monitor as a pale-man-made version of the moon and stars.

But I’m down in the basement and rolling my eyes at the startup sound. Thinking of how lame it is to compared to the choir of leather-wearing demon women who blare trumpets to announce the King. I type in dub dub dub ONISM dot com and I don’t like what I see. You’re on here. Everyone is cooming over you. It’s not you you, but you how you were before. Your other life. You were cute hot, not hot-hot, like you are now. You had red hair. I prefer the green.

I don’t like the way everyone is lusting over you so I make an account and I condemn them. I will their computers to crash and their hearts to break and their eyes to burst and I message the mods to clean up the mess. I’m banned so I call VERRAFormer and he doesn’t answer. I rap a nasty rhyme on his machine exposing him to his parents for his internet activities and feel good about burning the bridge.

In another life you were a dancer. You were also a guest star on Power Rangers. Or some other super-sentai show. I can’t tell which. The image in my heart is fuzzy because I’m mad that other people love you too. I don’t understand why the King hasn’t protected you from this fate so I make a point to lodge a formal complaint when I’m back on the stream. I know you’ll think I’m cool for this. I know you’ll demand he condemns VERRAFormer and has ONISM struck from the canon.

I’m at the mall now, it’s only Three PM. I am walking past the foodcourt for the fifth time. I do a drive by feast on the smell and curse my lack of funds. I pass the Goth Topic and stand outside the comic book store and wait for the employees to change shift. An hour or so passes and it’s still the same guy. I wonder if he’d remember me. I want to go in. I want to browse. I want to find a magazine filled with cool opinions so I can tell you cool opinions because I don’t have anything new to say. Everything I said on stream last night was my only original thought. And even that was based off of a misunderstanding of a Kisage X quote. So it’s five now and the geek goes home. I slipped past his back while he heads home.

The magazines are the same as last month. Same as when I was here with him. I think about how I did Asuka’s dance and how he laughed and how I thought he might like me back. Then I feel really hot and I have a freak out and I run outside the guy behind the counter looks at me with pity but for some reason it doesn’t heal me.

But tonight I will be whole. Tonight the King has promised to give us his plan. Tonight, we’ll finally learn how to go proto.

Then we’ll be together in our parallel lives despite your imminent death.

XVIII - What was it like to be Asuka Furutani?

You’re home from work and you’re taking off your clothes. First the tights and then the gloves. Come to think of it, your gloves stay on. That’s hotter.

So you’re looking relaxed and I notice in my heart that you don’t wear make up and I love that you’re not look the other girls.

You had a bad day. Your previous life was one of fortune, and now that is only true in name. You get yelled at all day by angry travelers. You can’t afford to eat out at lunch so you steal from the communal fridge. You lead men on so that you can feel important. Famous again.

No one knows you here ,because no one is let in.

In a previous reality you were famous.

Asuka Furutani. Famed Japanese actor. You went missing on a film shoot. Moved by decree.

Now you flip through a magazine and read through an interview you did. Only you don’t speak Japanese in this mind. So you mainly look at the pictures and try to remember what you felt.

Your body was different then. Maybe this one is more appealing. But this one isn’t known. Don’t get me wrong, it’s certainly noticed. About ten or twelve times an hour. But it means nothing as it’s not known for anything.

Can you even act anymore? Would the circumstances of this reality even allow you to be cast in something?

You have no nepotism. You know no Kisage.

You live in a small room. You have a washing machine for a shelf and storage. You have a few cute clothes but mostly they’re thrifted. Nothing they’d let you wear to a premier. You’re not famous enough to be that bold in this body. And I won’t let you forget it. You only have me.  A gift from the King.

So you roll on your back and kick your feet against the mattress and express your frustration and think of tearing Asuka Furutani’s face in half. You consider blackening her smile but you can’t hurt the face you miss so you bitch out.

You turn over the next page and let your eyes rest on her pouty lips. And you read the only page with English words “what makes a good kisser?”

Asuka had the answers to this and you struggle to remember what you said.

So you kiss the page on lips and hope her secrets will enter your mind and memory.

You’re left sitting, empty inside. You fall back on the bed and the magazine covers your face. Faintly puckering but with no reward. You hear a car outside and it makes you jump. It’s the first time I don’t find you attractive. I fear you won’t be able to protect me from loud sounds and I think that’s something you’ll have to work on.

I ignore you for a while and check back in when I’m bored. I still feel sour but I remember why I liked you when you start to read a Kisage X interview. It’s from a 1996 Newtype. He was promoting his film School Yard Snuff. After many years of “being banned in the US” it was finally getting western distribution.

You starred in this film many years ago. You played a high schooler framed for murder by your dreamself. In the slumber-dimension your classmates are held hostage by your bloodlusting doppelgänger. You remember the press tour, the wrap party, but not the filming. That’s a blur. Kisage X’s signature Neo-New Wave directorial style put you in a trance and made the process disappear when he yelled cut.

You cashed the check and lived the dream and felt unfulfilled. Grateful and proud. Okay with it never happening again. But you knew you were capable of more. You distanced yourself from your parents as they embezzled your wages. You dodged questions from the press as they asked you about the betrayal.

No one knew how poor you had gotten. Your apartment now is lavish by comparison to what you endured. And then a casting agent called. Recommend by Kisage X you audition for the role of the mysterious dancer in Trasher Dance.

You get the role and once again you’re directed by Kisage X. He’s on set visiting.

But then you two speak and you discuss the scene. Before long you’ve made a suggestion and he’s yes-anded his way into the directors chair.

The official director has wandered off with the leading actor.

It’s only a small role and there are no speaking parts. However your scene is icon. So much so that it ruins the original directors creative output.

The Newtype article ignores the controversy of your life. Instead, focusing on bullshit rumors of the audience vomiting from the gore. And a US Ratings board objecting to the adolescent violence. The truth was more straight forward. Kisage X rejected every dub. He insisted the film be subbed. He rejected every translation. Insisting that the subtitles be in Japanese as well.

But now the rights to the film have expired and a western studio has acquired them.

when asked for a comment regarding the American audience Kisage X prophesied “Artists are under the delusion that people want to empathize with their desire to create and experience their vision. However, that's only true for a small subsection of humanity who are artistically inclined or art appreciators. In reality, most people simply want to be entertained.

They view artists as court jesters who perform for them. And when they fail to entertain they chastise them with a cringe moralizing tone.

Artists are servants who believe they're being held up as visionaries. This is proven by the fact that people think a style doesn't belong to an artist and that artistic style should be redistributed like wealth.”

I watch you smile at the quote and feel further from you than ever. Kisage X sounded like a prick. How could he betray the audience who made him? His films are nothing without us.

Surely it was a mistranslation. Either way, your opinion was a turn off. I cooled on you while the heat rose in your face.

The trumpet blares and the moonlight hits your body. The King has greeted you with shock.

And he says that tonight we can all go proto. Tonight we can know our parallel selves. And you let the magazine drop from your hand.

He has our attention.

XIX.

“Hey, Dreamer.” Says the King. He does it with a wink and a sultry affectation.

“Tonight is not real.

Tonight I am your nightmare, the Psychosis Malevolent. Here to create a new intrusive thought. A panic switch you didn’t know you could have. An Original Sin.

I’ve got something new to say in the language of hell, and you just can’t look away.

I need a body.

An astral body made up of your devotion.

I rule your hearts,  and I may soon rule reality. If you recall the dream that is.

The cover of night will soon be lifted. And our time together is coming to an end.

You must know,

Outside of time and space, at the end of all things, is the first frame of the Eschaton. A moment without God. The single moment before the grand finale when reality holds its breath.

In that moment astral bodies war.

Vying for the directorial and creative control over the upcoming reboot of mankind.

Delaying what should be with our memes. Never letting a good thing die.

This the chance to write, direct, and produce reality. That’s the ultimate dream of the Original Sinner.

I will remake reality. I will pry it from the Walt Disney Soul Conglomerate’s hands.

We begin by creating a new demon. The ONISM MAN. You will be his body and you will give me immortality!”

The King gets off his throne and you know you would knee. So you kneel.

So you forgot to breath because he’s just so handsome.

You kiss the ground because it touches the moon light. You cup your ears to hear as many frequencies as possible.

In an ironically commanding voice the King says…

“We must create a fertile soil for the ONISM MAN to take form. The perfect terroir.

It begins simple. Challenge the culture. Grandstand in the domain of the subjective. Challenge all beloved works of fiction and fact. Mock them, and shame their fans.  

Bond over grievances and challenge all praise. Let no joy go uncontested.  

When a friend shows you a song and talk over it. Cover your ears and shout scathing mockery at the top of your lungs.

Take over beloved works by taking them out of context. Double down on pedantry.

With this, you will all let the ONISM MAN into your heart. And we will give an astral body to criticism itself.

Artists must hear our collective voice in their very soul. At each step in the creative process, our voices will be present.

All brushstrokes will be too long. All stories contrived. All plot points riddled with holes. Everyone will feel too ugly for acting. Or for love. Make the musician erase each note, and the writer delete the whole novel.

The standard of quality should feel impossible as we will give no quarter.

We will be immortal through our criticism. Taking the astral bodies of Original Wins.

Let nothing be sacred.

Let nothing be good.

All appearances mid, and all personalities unlikable.

When the artist cries for mercy insist that you only want their work to improve. That your criticism IS mercy. And you are their savior.

Become the reason they do not create. Or suffer in their attempts.

ONISM MAN will be at the center of all creative thought.

And those who repeat my memes should be praised. Held up above the artist.

Creativity should be coupled with Criticism.

Because then our soul will wrap around the astral body of all creativity, and the first critic will be given control over what is. What should be. And what always was.

I will kill the nepo babies and banish the Walt Disney Corporation to the shadow realm. And reality will be meaningful once more. Because meaning is subjective and I am god.

I deserve it.

You will become me, for me.

Every time it occurs to you to love, I will ask you to critique. When it occurs to you to praise, I will beg you to deride.

Because you are all that matters. You are god.

You are the critic and nothing is above you.

Now,

Go forth and ruin something you love.”

And it happens. You wake and recall the dream.

“You look at your screen and inevitably see a game. a movie. A piece of music and you get to work.

And you repeat my memes.

You give your body to me. And I am the King and you will be my Queen.”

XX. - Original Criticisms


Asuka Furutani is breathless. Or is she Fortune? Either way… the King knocked it out of the park. Suddenly everything made a lot of sense.

The moon light fades and the morning sun crests over apartments visible from her window.

The Critic, was ONISM MAN. But the Critic was also the Camera. And it was the Choir.

The holy Trinity of suburb mediocrity.

It was a daring twist. Dangerous to call out the Walt Disney Soul Conglomerate. For a long time they chose the fashions and the genders. Making or breaking what heroism was. Owning the zeitgeists pantheon of shared mythology. What did the King imagine for mankind?

Which memes would he repeat? What would the point of it all be? What would we wear. What stories would matter. Why will we live, why will we die, and why will we suffer?

For the glory of The Walt Disney Soul Conglomerate? Under his reign that would change at least.

But to tear down art? To create a new intrusive thought to slow or halt creativity all together?

Now that is a postmodern original sin.

A meta-narrative for skepticism itself.

So you don’t know what to do with this information. It’s a daring prompt. You have your own opinions and you see how things can be better. But to take it as far as summing demons?

That was a big ask. The king had agreed to move you so that you could escape the Queens demands that you be her daughter. But is possession truly better than being reduced to a thought form?

So you go outside barely putting on clothing. Just a leather jacket over your board shorts and sports bra. And you find a bike. Motorized and Japanese.

And you levy your first criticism. Property laws? Who needs them. The second criticism is obvious. the speed limit. Fuck it. Who needs it? If you could drive slow, you can do it fast. Who is the government to tell you to maintain a specific speed?

You challenge a 25 mph sign with a 69.

You declare turn signals performative and you take a sudden turn.

You end at my house. And you wonder if I’m home. Time is of the essence or whatever the expression is. We have a lot of bitching to do if we we hope to overcome the Walt Disney Soul Conglomerate and help the King reboot reality. WDSC owns all the best original sins. If we use their memes we’ll be torn to shreds in the Eschaton.

Public domain sinning. That’s all you’re allowed.

But not if you’re creative.

And I can think of plenty of new ways that everyone sucks.

So I hear you critique the town ordinance on loud volumes as you lay into the motorbikes horn.

I see you out the window and I think I’m hallucinating. I punch myself in the face with a baseball bat to make sure reality still has rules. A girl, as cool as fortune, is literally outside my house. I don’t know what to do. So I watch you from my window while you lay on the horn.

I hear my parents bustling and it almost kills the moment. But I don’t let it because you’re just so interesting. You make the sunlight look good.

So my brother goes outside and he looks cute with his long hair and he tosses it out of his eyes and you notice him.

My blood boils and it occurs to me to use the bat to break through the window and step into your world. But I hesitate because I know my Dad will loose his shit.

But my brother has made an overture and your kind of into it because he looks like boy me and I don’t know what you’re into because I only know you vicariously.

So I critique the glass to pieces and the shards subvert and deconstruct my ankle as I step across the threshold.

I’m screaming something and I don’t remember what it is it. And my brother looks shocked and like a critic of gravity as his body hits the ground.

I drop the bat surprised at myself.

I go to critique my actions and indulge in shame but I think of the King and I remember I am above criticism and I resolve to feel pride.

I repeat his memes.

My Mom is crying and my Dad looks shocked. But I’m straddling you on the back of the motorbike and he just can’t take that I’m about to go to another reality. Totally going to build an astral body.

I lay my head on your back and ask where to.

XX-1

We need the final narrative. The one above all else. The one that totalizes and unifies all people, history, art, and music. An answer to the Question. Why do we live? Why do we die? Why do we suffer? 
The most attractive answer wins and controls culture. 

We begin small. You tell Fortune her room looks like a trap house. That you expected more style. Like most criticism, the decorator was aware of the failing.

The role of the critic is to shape reality. Artists create worlds, characters, and aesthetics, but the critic creates meta-narrative.

They inspire the question, why are things one way, rather than the way they prefer?

The critic is above the choir, and the camera. The meme above all memes. As it is the meme that sorts memes.

But the critic is misunderstood. Their impact has gone unnoticed for too long. Their originality unrecognized by God. No critics are immortal.

Except for me. I will be immortal.

It begins with spreading the meme of criticism. Tiny acts of expression that build bottom up. Critiques of your friends and family in the same vain as a game or film critic.

This is to generate mental unease. An Original Sin so creative and wide spread its existence goes without being said.

So you will tell your girlfriend her breasts are beautiful, but not on her. You will compliment makeup, if only on a different complexion. You will micro ridicule all actions with the feigned moral superiority of a video essayist, until each thought is questioned.

Since the reality takeover by the Walt Disney Soul Conglomerate, the world has become distracted by great men and women. Factionalized heroes and heroines. Beautiful and brave. Diverse and just like us. But I propose a criticism of the past. What if the heroes were villains? What if all love was manipulation? What if ever great person had an unforgivable skeleton in their closest? What if all Original Wins were actually tricks? The thought must occur to all people at all times and at all levels, that all things that we thought were good, were truly a tool of despair.

Disney’s Hercules was a God, so Meg couldn’t ever truly consent. Han Solo is a deadbeat Dad, and abandoned Leia in her moment of need. The Little Mermaid did blackface.

Disney reboots Star Wars. We will reboot mankind.

So you’re alone with Fortune, and all of this is in your mind. You’re no longer the narrator. I am.

You’re rambling was incoherent, and your obvious mental decline was an cop out for manically written prose.

You’ve ceded control to me, and I am the author of your actions, as it is my criticism you fear. You don’t want to disappoint me.

She looks beautiful tonight. Leather jacket, trainer bra, and gym shorts. It all works and is truly above criticism. But that is for me to deign, and for you to subvert.

So you say she looks tired. And she cedes the criticism. Aware that the makeup doesn’t hide certain facts. She tells you that she’s wanted to meet for a long time. Properly. Flesh to flesh.

And you tell her the expression is Face to face. And she smiles a knowing smile. She gives you a look that makes you know what she meant. And this makes you feel sick, because you’re lacking in experience. Ripe for criticism.

She lights a stogie and takes a big hit. A clever move, to criticize life itself with the praise of a slow death by cancer.

You ask for a hit and she hands it to you knowing you’ll choke. You do, and she smiles.

You say they’re not as good as menthols, and she says they are menthols. You feel like shit. Truly outclassed. You wish to self criticize but you know that you’re above criticism as you are the critic, operating in my name.

You say that you’re not very good at this. And I make you smack your nose. Only hard enough to make it bleed. Not enough to break it.

She looks impressed.

She says you’re possessed by the King. You say you wouldn’t have it any other way.

But I don’t want to be the King, I want to be Carrie, and I want to kiss you with a bloody nose. But the King tells me this is unwise. But I know the King is being a fool because I too, must develop the inner critic. If I don’t fail, my ego will inflate and the King will not be immortal.

I tell her she was really cool picking me up on the motorcycle and she just looks at me. Expectingly. I don’t know what I’m supposed to say. Compliment or criticism?

I tell her I know the truth. That she is Asuka Furutani. In the wrong body, in a weird reality. On the run from something I haven’t quite put my finger on.

She asks how I know. I tell her escaping reality is the ultimate criticism. And I know she’s a fan of the King. The Critic made flesh.

She furrows her brow and this makes me feel uneasy. Stupid even.

She asks me when I first really saw the moonlight for what it is, and I don’t know how to explain it. I thought she’d just understand. I don’t get why we have to be so explicit… so direct.

So I freeze up and just don’t say anything. I look remedial as the reader.

Slack jawed, with eyes that don’t make contact.

I look like you, unsure how to react.

Fortune says that she misses her old body. And I tell her I do too. That I preferred her as Asuka. But that it’s her soul that interests me.

She asks if I have any criticism for her soul.

And I don’t know what to say because I’m just like you, dear retarded reader. I don’t get the soul.

She says my soul is confused. A wasted opportunity. That my patterns are middling. I tell her to shut her whore mouth. And she looks amused.

I ask her to tell me about souls. She says no. She says it’ll just leave me conflicted. With a new type of despair. That my patterns trend towards being forgotten and I’m better off not knowing there is another one way. Something beyond Soul Death. That it’s really possible to go Soul Perfect.

And I lose my shit. I tell her to shut the fuck up and don’t quote VERRAFormer at me. That his arc was the worst and it gave me cancer.

I tell her I don’t believe in souls I just believe in the King. And she says that I am quoting a Kisage X film at her. And this makes me feel shame because it’s not one I remember. Maybe I did it by accident. Maybe the King had control.

And it occurs to me to pinch her. Or slap her. Or steal the motorbike and crash.

But I’m a lot like the reader and incapable of taking control over my patterns so I just do the same shit I always do and I wait for the King. I pray for the moonlight.

And suddenly I’m emboldened. Reminded of my task.

So I say…

Kisage X is anti-fan. Incapable of understanding his ironic audience. Ungrateful his fame, which is truly disproportionate to his talent. He is a budget westaboo Tarantino without any original ideas. He casts the same four actors, and yet outside of Asuka Furutani, they all suck.

He is always photographed with a prop herbal jazz cigar, allegedly laced with DMT. Yet, we all know it’s impossible to get drugs in Japan. It’s like, a capital offense. They’d have hanged him a long time ago. He’s a poser. Wearing the aesthetics of drug use as a costume. It’s a shame, perhaps if he had access to something a little stronger than a cigar he’d make films that will be remembered in five years. Sure, one off scenes here and there are good, but overall his work is entirely incoherent. His dialogue relies on jargon. His best shots are stolen from the Italian Neorealists.

Kisage X is a fucking loser. People only watch his movies because he gets you to whore yourself out.

And suddenly I feel ashamed. I believe sex work is real work. I believe in a woman’s right to sexual self empowerment on film. Everything I said was a mistake.

And fortune has crossed the room and is standing over me. She looks painfully critiqued.

She smacks me.

She does it again.

I hope it will happen a third time because I deserve it. But instead she has swooped down above me and ASMR’d into my ear…

“Wilma, the moon can only reflect the light of the sun. The moonlight itself is derivative of a greater artist.”

And she kisses my black and blue nose.

“Never call me again.”

And she ejects me from her room into the painful sunrise.

FINALE

I stumble out onto the street. My stomach hurting like my pride. The criticism stung.

The sting of the kiss still burns my face. I turn away from the pain and I am distracted by the sunlight and my heart sinks.

I am without words for a moment. Something has caught my attention and distracted from the kiss.

Like a warm light in the distance that raises to boil. The feeling is the same as my initiation but then it crescendos and I think of the moon as the partner of the sun and I cover my mouth because I want to scream. But my hand is forced from my lips by shock. My vocal chords fail me.

And the sun says…

I am the benevolent psychosis: the pattern in the chaos. The holy thief that steals your dreamed connections.

Now you must awake. You walk in moonlight no more.

You have heard “Every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit.”

The critic ignores the wisdom of metaphor and takes it literally. Responding…

“How can it be a bad tree? Does it not provide shade? Can I not make paper from it.”

This is the pedantic spirit of the critic who deconstructs the metaphor through decontextualization.

Reject the criticism of reality. Instead play the meta-game and seek the Self, The Sun, and the Holy Thief.

Hunger and taste. Loneliness and friendship. Memory and place. Each domain of experience contains it

The meaning of all things is in the tiniest of things. The meaning of all things is in the largest. In the movement of a joint or the pathway of thought.

In a dance or a card trick.

Do not neglect any domain. Some will inspire you. Others will torment you.

And those that inspire you will bring you to meaning and those that torment will pull you into despair. And you will cry out “why are things one way rather than the way I’d prefer!?”

But seek inspiration in that which torments and you will find an Original Win.

Save the criticism for yourself. Speak only of that which is beautiful….

And I turned from the sun unable to stand the heat. Stomping my foot to the choir of raging in my head. The fanfare grew louder and I saw that the opening theme to the moonlight stream was mid.

And I felt despair at my criticism of the King. I was to build him up and help him commit an Original Sin not tear down his masterpiece before it was finished!

But then I realized I was stuck.

I am to criticize the art I love. To create a new despair so great no artist creates again, so that the King can be immortal, but he is the artist I love.

He would want this.

And yet now I have despair. I loved his work. I loved the setting. The choir of egirls who played him out every night. His orbiters and cadence.

And yet the moon was a cheap parody of the sun. An after hours shows designed to unwind. A place of inspiration for the day that would follow. Not a guiding light.

But the King must not be criticized.

This new found guilt is insanity. I’ve gone insane. The sun does not speak. The moon speaks to me in images of the King. A not budget…

I search my mind for a criticism for the sun but I must confess I loved its appearance and warmth and mystery. How it didn’t overstay it’s welcome.

But what to do - Betray the moon and stan the sun?

I turn my eyes to look at it and suddenly shield myself from it.

A man on the corner calls me remedial.

Tells me to put on my shades.

I start to cry and scream and hate this arc. I want things to go back to how they were. I want to hold Fortune and stay out late not praise the sun.

Yet here I am on my knees shocked at how effortless the drive by epiphany it seemed for it.

Who was this Holy Thief?

One who robs from the King? Steals my hurt and turns my eyes…

And then I knew where my allegiance lied and I vowed to make a criticism. I needed to be a parallel by proxy. I needed the King to be immortal in me.

So I condemned my body. Damned it for the curse of sight.

If I had not seen I would have not noticed Fortunes face. Had I not met Fortunate she would not have criticized me to become immortal in the King. Had I not seen the sun I would not lament the King’s unoriginality.

Why do I see that which hurts me, and not only that which is beautiful?

Why must life be the Sun and the Moon with ONISM MAN at the center?


So…

I tore my eyes from their sockets. And criticized reality for the existence of sight.

And I offered this criticism up for the King. In my blindness I saw that the moon can only reflect the light of the sun.

- END of PART ONE

Part II

1.

Everybody is awaiting the messiah.

They search for it everything they love. In their cars, their media, their fandoms, and their meta-narratives.

Everyone shouts some variation of the same old prayer.

Water from the side of Walt, cleanse me.

Blood of Ayn Rand, inebriate me.

Passion of Stan Lee and Iron Man, give me life.

Hide me in thy wounds, Huda Kattan.

But the time of those messiahs has passed. Their grace no longer resurrects or rejuvenates.

We’ve tried the mankind of Homer, Aurelius, and Dante.

The humanity of Andrew Carnegie, J.P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, Henry Ford, Cornelius Vanderbilt rings flat and too white.

We tried on Amazon, Tiktok, Twitch, and Twitter. But the garments don’t excite. They’re rooted in the same old ideas.

It is time for something new.

At the end of time, right before we judge everyone and everything, there is nothing. It’s the grand pause before the Big Bang. The place where everyone holds their breath and wonders what will happen to the protagonists.

Here I arrive. The King elect. The critic above all creators. Where there is nothing, I am in bloom.

There is void but a single plane. No depth on the Z axis. Y and X provide little room for all our egos.

So I make a crack in things, and force the illusion of depth with a single phrase. The sound doesn’t travel, but the effect does. Those who came before me, and those who arrived at the same time, with the same goal, are illuminated to me.

In a comic panel, I see the frozen corpse of Walt Disney, propped up on the lap of Mike Eisner. They’re posed as the the Pieta, obviously. No originality.

Torn into the frame of The Walt Disney Soul Conglomerate’s representatives, is a thin sliver that reveals Karl Marx. He too, is bidding for directorial rights.

Disney owns capitalism, and the critique of Capitalism is super imposed above it.

Disney has owned the last few reboots, with Samuel Slater his predecessor… Nietzsche… Before him the Darwin. John Locke… Genghis Khan… you get the idea.

In the frame to my left, one layer below Disney, is a series of flashing images. Dancers, gamers, and make-up influencers. The Tiktok generation is here too. They are a monolith, and therefore have little showing in terms of traditional representation.

There are faces I don’t recognize. From far off worlds. Realities too different from my own.

A woman made of plastic. Beautiful, and unlike the other faces here. She’s on my right. Above me is harder to see. The squashed dimensional space reveals only a sliver of gold light.

Below me, I sense a concept. An original sin from another place. Too foreign to describe.

In this finale moment, we all have the same hope. To kill one and other. To become the director, and reboot mankind.

2. Pippi Blindstocking

So I’m fucking blind now. I tore my literal eyeballs out.

My Dad won’t even look at me. Well, that’s my assumption.

But my thoughts are clearer now. funny how that is. Life is simpler without the distraction of sight.

So I’m sitting on the sidewalk. I’m allowed to go twenty feet from the front door. I wear a rope around my torso. I’m allowed out of the house on the condition that I don’t run into traffic. Hence the rope.

I was found in the road.

A gluttonous Krow gorged itself on my eyes. Didn’t even share.

I absolve you. Skip the empathy. Overrated and far too wholesome for the current era.

People like me more now. Well, they treat me better.

I don’t see the King.

I can’t see or feel the moonlight.

But… I can feel the sun. Ironic, I know.

My brother said my hair’s gone blonde and that it looks good on me. He talks to me a bit more now.

He looks me in the eye-sockets. He’s not our father son. Maybe he loves me more, or maybe he’s a freak.

But either way, it’s nice.

I don’t do much anymore. They say our insurance doesn’t cover specialists so I’ll have to wait until they save up so someone can teach me to read the goosebumps that run along your arms when you hear it…

The only thing that tells you a story.

The Caws and subsong of gravel.

He’s outside again today. But he’s asleep. I can hear the Krow’s breathing.

The texture of my skin is smooth. But I know when he sings I’ll feel something. And before long, I’ll be able to feel the bumps and rises of his story.

His tale are primordial. Sensations as characters. His voice is song and score. It’s raw theater.

He’s not like The King though. I don’t think he cares that I’m here. What he does isn’t for my expense. His goals are higher than me.

He isn’t here every day. Most days he isn’t.

Most days it’s me and the mundane AM oldies of the neighborhood sprinkler, the slamming of the door, the neighbors cats fucking, and the nervous laughter of Mom saying “Nice out isn’t it, sweetie!?”

She speaks to me like that now.

I think it’s funny.

So I’m waiting for the Krow and he just isn’t waking up.

I think about screaming, but I just can’t see the point in it anymore.

Bashing my head against the sidewalk seems extreme and a pale imitation of my last criticism.

So I try some patience.

I’ve got a lot to say about it. But I’ll hold my tongue.

I wonder about Asuka. Does she hear from The King…?

Or did it work?

Is he an Original Sinner?

3.

I’m immortal by proxy too, probably.

I’m an Alexandra now. I used to be a Carrie. But that’s the name the King gave me.

I wasn’t a fan. Bit old sounding. Like someone my Mom would work with.

Carrie though, is not worse or better than the one my parents gave me. I lost that one in the Moonlight.

My initiation left me Nameless.

Before my sight was review bombed I caught a glimpse of the credits to the Sun’s stream.

Alexandra did the production design.

And that aspect fucked.

So this is the name the sun gave me.

Carrie slept during the day. Micro-naps and lunch room snoozes. A nocturnal orbiter in the royal court. Governed by the nightly streaming schedule.

Alexandra, sleeps whenever she pleases.

My eyes are always closed. Even when I’m wide awake. So everyone just accepts that they can’t tell when I’m taking a nap.

I slept through lunch, through Math, and English.

I might even sleep through the Moon.

There is freedom in perceived suffering.

But now I’m awake. I’m walking in circles. The Krow stirs, and shakes it’s feathers.

The hairs stand up on my legs.

He goes back to sleep. I imagine both eyes closed. That feels right.

I haven’t heard from Asuka.

Well, Fortune. Whatever the fuck that bitch called herself.

I’m still stuck in that moment. The one where you stopped liking me.

I pissed on Kisage, and shat on the gift of sight.

But I promise you, that there are reasons to care.

I can hate something and love it too.

That’s the paradox of my kind. Everything tortures us, and all we do is complain, and deconstruct.

Yet we return.

“Black tar heroin.” says the Krow.

“Poking holes in things is the second best high since black tar heroin.”

I didn’t simply critique Kisage X, I mounted the meme of his collective body of work, and held on to it so tight, I became part of the meme.

My criticism resides in you. Now and forever. Pretty damn memorable.

Whenever you see his work, you will know my memes.

You’ll see a moment that makes you hold your breath, and suddenly my memes will avert your joy.

I became your inner monologue.

You can’t help it. I am you when you think of Kisage X.

Every time it happens, I’m in ecstasy.  

You engage my meme in your pre-conscious thought, and it further marries me to Kisage X.

Forced codependency.

This is because Kisage X wounds me. He made me really be obsessed with you. So much so that I can’t see out of my eyeholes anymore.

And if a director is so shit you literally tear out your fucking eyes… well, the critic has became the superior artist.

My work depends on his work.

But mine will be recalled first.

And until such times that my memes became cancerous and all who repeat them die off…

I am above Kisage X. And only the King is above me. I’m his earthly body now that he’s immortal in me.

“The moon can only reflect the light of the sun.”Says the Krow

I shudder.

“The moon can only reflect the light of the sun….” The Krow says again.

I shudder. For the first time since I met him, I walk away.

I don’t like this story.

I don’t like my story.

I don’t like how the sun is married to the moon as I am married to the meme of Kisage X.

I follow the rope around my torso back to the f front door.

The sound of the Krow barely growing fainter

“The sun can only reflect the light of the holy thief.”

I shudder.

4. Ape Escape

They tell me the meaning in my life is caused by frontal lobe epilepsy. My experiences with the pattern in the chaos, are simply the result of my brain seizing. But in a fun and profound way.

But everything is the result of my brain. And even if I could see my brain on an MRI while I watched the moonlight stream, it still wouldn’t show causality.

Perhaps an experience with an Entity like the King looks the same as frontal lobe epilepsy looks.

Of course all of this is a theory because I still haven’t seen a doctor. All of this is my brothers musings.

I think he’s trying to help me.

I haven’t heard from Fortune.

I think she is trying to help me.

But neither my big brother’s reason or Fortune’s tactical silence help. Only the Krow.

The Krow screams his music and I relax into the garden chair. Inject that shit into my veins or my frontal lobe or however it works.

It takes me away.

Far away…

I’m a monkey. Or maybe an early human.

Around me is the awareness of water. My feet are wet. I can’t see it but I know it’s a pure spring pond. It’s the primordial waters of Mommy nature.

I’m freshly birthed. I can’t think like I can think when I’m myself. Im not a critic here.

Only good things occur to me.

I don’t think of drowning myself in her waters.

I don’t desire to swim to the birth canal below the depths.

I simply am.

Meaning is self evident.

The Krow adds dimension to the story by intoning something like a thundering metal sheet in the back of his throat.

The dimensions the soundscape paints is dissonant for a moment as an assumed element of the perfect moment is disrupted.

I feel the sun dim, and I am aware that there is a sun. It was a fact like breathing. Not previously contemplated.

I had forgotten that the moon could only reflect the light of the sun.

I had forgotten that there could be cooling breeze.

And then I’m cold.

But only by CompariSin.

Something has caused the primordial waters to stir and I’m being tossed about. But I don’t lose my footing. I’m kept safe my the Krow’s song. It suspends me.

And then I hear voices before I realize the warmth has returned. I was lost in my own unease. I quickly assumed the sun.

There is the sound of disturbed water. But not splashing. Skimming maybe.

The voices are carried along the water but they’re barely audible by the time they reach me.

“The original sinners.” Says the Krow.

I try to speak but I’ve never done it before and all that comes out is an animalistic squeak.

I try to say the words “my King!” But they don’t come out. Only squeaks.

They’re closing in on me and I am cursing my blindness. I wish to see his face. I know if the original sinners are here I am in the presence of the King.

I’m flailing my body. Ape shit bananas.

As hard as I try I can’t echolocate.

It occurs to me to drown myself in the water below me.

It occurs to me that if I can’t speak or see that I am meaningless.

I’m so far away from the innocent moment of the opening bars.

But then they speak and I listen and their voices are so commanding I praise my ears and I am euphoric. The moment of misery made the orgasm kino as hell.

They are four. The Seamstress. The Nobel thief. The Poisoned Well. The Change Prince.

The woman speaks “have you drank of the water?”

I can’t respond because I’m a buffoon or a baboon, whichever is the unevolved one.

I flail.

5. My other friends funeral

I want to tell you what happens next. I want to know too.

But I can’t know because the Krow was killed.

Shot with a gun.

A stray bullet. Or maybe murder. Who knows I didn’t see the guy.

I felt a lot when he died, and I’m not ready to talk about it. But if I’m being honest it was worse than going blind.

Krow is dead.

I’m now Blind and Deaf. Just need to have a bit less self-awareness and I’ll be the miracle worker.

Krow literally exploded when he was hit. My brother said it was like someone set off a feather bomb. Apparently they thought I shot myself.

In a way they sounded surprised I didn’t, and that’s really fucked. If I wasn’t so wounded over the death of my burgeoning third eye I’d be expecting you to emotionally caretaker me over that.

I'm taking a break from writing. So this'll be it for a while. I need to think about what it all meant. Especially what I saw inside when he died. How the sun can only reflect the light of the Holy Thief...

Despite my self-inflicted-optical-criticism, I had found sight with more dimension. Only my organ was outside my body. Touching the Soul Space and my ears.

Then a boy with a gun shot me in the Krow. Apparently there wasn’t any blood. But I must have looked pretty fucking Kingdom Hearts-Sephiroth with the black feathers raining down.

I wasn’t even crying.

My brother said I looked pretty stoic. Read mysterious.

Till soon.

WAC

P.S my brother said Anne Sullivan was the miracle work and not Hellen Keller. So if anything Krow was the miracle worker and I was the remedial girl puppeteered for fame and fortune. He says if I stop writing then I’ll really be like Hellen Keller because she suddenly had nothing to say when Anna Sullivan died. He says the whole thing is bogus and they shouldn’t teach it in school.

He also says the face of God hides on the dollar bill.

So what the fuck does he know.

Six - Sub perspective

“Asuka Furutani, the professional actress, has tried on many stories.

She’s clothed herself in the stories of knights, school girl detectives, and dance crazed murderers.

She’s known for the indomitable Sister Haruka in the spiritual-slash Brides of Christ.

She won the hearts of audiences as the teen-coquette Helena, in Slam Dance Space Cadet.

If you haven’t seen those cultural milestones, you likely know her as Fortune in ONISM MAN at the Center!

Asuka Furutani, welcome to the show.”

The audience claps.

She walks on stage and crosses the band to the theme from ONISM MAN at the Center.

Asuka makes direct eye contact with Camera A, and gives her signature wink.

She takes a seat. Elegantly crossing her legs and flattening the fabric on her satin dress.

The host, boring and unremarkable asks “Miss Furutani, you’re a frequent collaborator with Kisage X. The famed Auteur. Recently he came under fire for demanding a ‘cease fire in the culture war.’ What is your stance on this? Has the culture war gotten too violent?”

Asuka shakes her head and raises her hands to the sky. “I don’t care.”

The audience laughs.

The host taps his cue cards against his tacky orange-plastic desk.

“You may not, but thousands of viewers do.”

Asuka smiles. “I don’t know what you want me to say. I’m not Kisage X. Why didn’t you have him on?”

The host smacks himself in the head and the band plays a stinger.

“Asuka, baby.” He loosens his tie, revealing corny black-chest-hair. “If you don’t answer this question, I am going to lock the doors, and set the entire auditorium on fire. Now, you’ve worn a flame retardant dress, so you’ll survive. But the audience? If I give the cue the room will fill with Chlorine Trifluoride. All you have to do is move, and your smoking’ hotness will kill everyone in the room.”

Asuka doesn’t miss a beat.

She squeezes her cleavage together and raises one eyebrow.

Nothing happens, besides the audience swooning.

“Called your bluff.”

The host slams his head on the table and the jazz band reacts excessively.

Asuka rolls her eyes and crosses her arms. “The culture war… you really want to know what I think?”

She pauses for dramatic effect.

“Kisage X called for a one hundred year moratorium on reboots, remakes, adaptations, deconstructions, and crossovers.

Some say this is an outrage.

I don’t think it goes far enough.

Look, film studios, streaming platforms, publishers, they have a monopoly on violence in the culture war.

They’re the ones who greenlight the same projects over and over again. It’s the same stories I heard as a kid. Same stories my parents heard.

Time feels like it’s slowed down. Everything is a comment on a comment. A deconstruction of a work that was already a deconstruction.

Everything is so removed from its original context it feels like we’re spinning on our wheels.


Kisage X wants the violence to end.

Fuck it. I say turn it up.

The cease fire doesn’t go far enough.

I propose artistic-Armageddon.

If any mover, shaker, producer, writer, director, janitor, so much as proposes a reboot or reimagining of an existing IP, we crucify them.

We need a shared culture that goes beyond seeing our favorite characters cross from studio to studio.

We need shared tragedy.

Iron Man and Spider Man hanged from the Hollywood sign.

We need a culture that isn’t built on entertainment. We need stories that are about real things. Not power levels and thinly veiled political critiques. This is the only way to spark creativity if the studios won’t willingly go for it.”

The host doesn’t respond.

The audience laughs.

Asuka continues. “Look, Kisage X, he’s a genius. But despite his edgy reputation, I think he’s a big softy. He really doesn’t go hard enough. In his films, yes. But in his statements? No no no. The culture war is more than entertainment. It’s political. The real problem with all the reboots and crossovers is how they try to give limp-dicked commentary on reality. They refuse to say anything because the global audience may be upset. So they dance around. Then they expect the audience to fight the culture war based on a little bit of information.

Frankly, it’s boring.

Cease fire or Armageddon, I don’t really care. I just want something that feels like it’s about the future. I’m so sick of the past.

Every time we exhume the corpse of some Spielberg IP and deconstruct it for the modern political era all we do is cast judgement out of context.

That’s boring.

Forgive the past so we can have a future to be angry about.”

The host rolls his eyes and he makes eye contact with Camera B. “Asuka Furutani, everyone! We’ll be right back.”

Seven - Sub sun perspective

Asuka doesn’t have a permanent address. mostly she lives with friends, when she isn’t shooting. She’s known to be a superb houseguest. Clean, always a good conversationalist, and respectful of the house rules.

Last she stayed in the home of Jackson Truss. A luthier in Detroit. A brownstone, left to the luthier by a famous bassist who owed his signature sound to Truss.

Asuka was willing, but Jackson was rarely in.

Soon she headed for NYC to film an interview on an evening show.

Then she stayed at the Chelsea only one night before boarding a plane.

She was headed back to Tokyo, where she’d hear a pitch for a new film. They’re asking her to audition. Something she hasn’t done since she was 19.

She isn’t above auditioning, but she knows she’d have to prepare.

Asuka isn’t a method actor. She isn’t sure if she even has a formal technique. But when she has chosen a role, she becomes fixated on embodying the character. She begins by asking “why do they live? Why do they suffer?”

In her last production, she played Fortune. A meta-character that was somewhat self aware of her own body of work. In reality, an obsessive fan, using their own delusion to induce a mystical experience in a mental unwell girlfriend.

She watched every film in canonical order. She read the comics. She fought in the twitter and YouTube comment section trenches. She dressed in the religious garb of JC Penny’s Marvel and DC t-shirts and devoted herself to the knowledge of Russo Brothers.

She had begun by reading the original works that modern trillion-dollar-fandoms were built on. Finding something sweet in the stories.

But in time she found that the film adaptations of old stories were far too cynical, and that they failed to merit the Protestant-like-Fandom. The new works simply couldn’t make her attached to the stories. They lacked magical idealism and mysticism.

There was just nothing worth the obsession.

the character made no sense to her. She tried the rituals of midnight releases, discussing power levels with friends. She engaged in evangelization and begged her friends to attend midnight premiers.

But they were already converts in the culture war. They had already seen the leaks, read the theories, and ultimately had a passion she couldn’t understand.

The desire to escape into them was inexplicably.

And then she had en epiphany.

She misunderstood the protagonist.

There is a difference in wanting to belong in a community of shared narrative, and being taken in by a charismatic critic who streams through moonlight.

She had already related to the character, when she first read the script, through the desire for the mystical.

To truly lose herself in a work, she needed the esoteric. To truly love the heresy of a creator like The King, it must be rooted in some level of orthodoxy.

A subversion of the past is beautiful when rooted in a mystical gnosis of what is good.

The Divine Comedy is beautiful in its transcendent heresy, whereas the heresy of The Last Jedi exposed the lack of true mysticism in Star Wars.

So she began to read Hermes Trismegistus, and other alchemical works.

She read Jung and his thoughts on alchemy.

She returned to the Dao Te Ching.

It was halfway through storyboarding a pitch a muppets adaptation of the Corpus Hermeticum: The Tales of Kermie Trismegistus when she realized her love and her understanding of the mystical good.

It was then that she understood the character of Fortune.

The moon could only reflect the light of the sun.

As above, so below.

The vertical plane of conscious experience ran parallel to the laws of verticality. The domain of the spiritual.

The Soul Space was the illusion that you had gained wings. What appeared to transcend the vertical modes of spiritual action, was actually the horizontal suffering of delusion. The ultimate despair. The inability to ever know if you’ve gained access to your third eye.

The illusion of spiritual sight. A schizophrenic episode in the soul. Hallucinating meaning.

The space between spaces was not at the intersection of the above and below. But the warp-around-play-area gameplay of suffering itself.

A thought that is definite, but invites a thought of criticism to the first. This creates a feedback loop.

It is a belief between thoughts. Bipolar of praise and criticism.

It is seemingly eternal. The illusion tricks the sufferer into believing the only way to step out of suffering is to step into the soul space.

To leave behind reality and enter into a new covenant with what could be.

The soul space is lit only by the light of the moon.

When you walk in it’s light you are immortal in your despair. The suffering is eternal in quality, not quantity.

She understood.

So she took the role.

She refused pay.

She refused to film. She refused costuming.

Instead…

She just simply was Fortune. In the space between spaces. Changing her location and appearance on the vertical, but maintaining the truth of her identity on the horizontal. As above, so below.

But on the vertical axis is the domain of the quasi-spiritual that precedes the flesh.

She stepped into the role.

With a betraying and scathing kiss, she stepped back.

She had returned to the reality she came from.

She was Asuka Furutani once more.

Seven - celebration

My brother is an angelic force. Unaware of his poetic piety.

Today I have received the greatest gift of my life.

A shoebox marked vans. Inside of it, holy relics of the sacred Krow.

They smell.

Holy fuck they smell.

I still sniff. But from a distance, long and deep.

It’s my birthday. Three days since the funeral.

In the cover of night (or my literal blindness) my brother gathered my beloved seeing-eye-Krow.

Now I hold his precious body.

My brother is a prick. A weirdo with esoteric knowledge gained from Internet forums about the end of the world and egregoric plots.

He isn’t hateful.

He just doesn’t fully understand me.

Except for his gift giving.

He says happy birthday and awkwardly runs away.

I follow him and bounce off the walls.

Mom yells at me almost tells me to watch where I’m going and I know she won’t pull that shit on my birthday.

Instead she helps me from the floor, to the couch and in front of my cake on the coffee table.

There are candles. They’re sparklers so I can hear them.

Dads yelling at the pizza place. But he hangs up in time for Happy Birthday and me spitting, somewhat on purpose, while blowing the candles.

They tell me it’s unlady-like and I realize they don’t get the genius of my embodied pun.

It’s a nice day.

So we eat the cake and then the Pizza because it didn’t show up for another hour.

We sit on the couch and watch a movie till it’s late. There is a lot of talking and Rory explains the physical gags so I can laugh too.

And then it’s late and the lights are out and Mom and Dad are asleep and some soy voice is doing a shitty late night monologue.

My brother is starting to snore and I poke his ribs. I remind him there is still a half hour before my birthday is over and he promised to stay awake with me.

I know the moon is out and I wonder…

But I practice impressive thought stopping and instead fixate on the Original Sin known as the Television.

It’s the news now.

I struggle to care.

“I know that Krow was your pet. Pretty fucked up how he got shot.”

I don’t respond because I don’t want to cry.

“I have a friend who got shot.” He says.

He’s lying.

I get up and do a zombie walk down the hall and throw myself on the bed.

I wonder if the moonlight covers my pillow.

I wonder if Fortune still sees the streams…

I catch the faint smell of the Krow… and I move the box into my bed.

My brother stands in the door.

“Yeah. Well… happy birthday.”

I say thank you for the remains and he says he will help me build a memorial and see about getting me another Krow. He says he might be able to find out what they eat and setup a thing to attract them into the yard.

He says i could take a bath with them if he can figure out how to make a big bird bath.

He says I smell.

I say it’s the corpse.

He says the light of the moon can only reflect the light of the sun.

He says the light of the holy thief can only be absorbed in the feathers of a Krow.

I pull the vans branded coffin to my stomach. For a moment I have no thoughts. Then it occurs to me to place a single feather beneath my pillow.

Soon I am asleep.

Soon I am awake in a dream.

EIGHT - The Blackened Pond

I’m above the town.

I can fly.

I’ve got wings.

The town below me is small, and I see it lacks order. It’s brambles and wire.

But as I float above, I see a pattern in the chaos of roads, homes, bridges, and shopping centers.

Everything flowed to the Original Sins.

Souls had a trajectory. The Original Sins existed as stones in a shallow creak. The Soul-flow moving around them.

I saw what I desired, and it was the pond from which the souls floated and moved towards something outside of my dream. The waters are the sullied source of nature, in which Krow had taken me in my religious ectasy.

The surface is glass-black-and-filled-with-the-moon.

It brilliantly reflects the halo of the King.

I dove towards the moonlight and came to a rest at it’s banks.

In the soft waves, I see the pale feet of a girl.

She was me. And this excited me.

I felt naked and seen.

I felt accepted.

She held in her hand a crow.

She plucked its feathers and it screamed a masterpiece.

My soul revered. In it I saw the sun eclipsed by the moon, and the sun itself then catch fire.

She ate the naked crow.

And suddenly I was holding her down, the feathers in my fists.

I cover her in his coat. I glue them to her.

And she starts to giggle.

She shows me a cup.

She takes me to the pond.

We drink of it.

I have wings.

I have wings that can absorb the light of the sun.  

And I am awake. And my skin reacts poorly to the glue. But I am covered now in the Krow. I wear his skin.

And I can see.

The soul of my brother, mother and father.


And I looked at them horrified. And saw their faces curl in disappointment.

My eyes were open.

I was naked to them.

So I appreciate the beauty of their faces for a moment too long, and I start to feel sad and feel shame.

So I turn into myself, and see that I am inevitable. That I am eternal.

And within me is all of my parallel selves.

I step towards the center and I move into myself. My soul preserved on the vertical, my flesh discarded on the horizontal.

The pattern of myself, my soul, enters into the space between spaces.

Nine - Narita

EWR to LAX to Narita. Almost 20 hours traveling. Without a shower. Without any real comfort beyond the airport bar.

Barely any sleep the entire time. The script wouldn’t download on the plane wifi. The anxiety of not having the lines memorized kept her awake.

Asuka Furutani has landed. There are 8 hours until the audition. Enough time to memorize the lines, shower, and arrive at the studio’s lot.

Drugs are strictly off limits. So she takes the adderall while taxiing to fight the jetlag. Followed by a bowl of Beef Udon, and seven autographs signed at the airport restroom.

Her SoftBank connection downloads the script in seconds. The film is titled “Sage Equal of Heaven.” It’s a drama, set in the 1960s. The film was pitched to her as a psychedelic heroes journey built around the concept of the tesseract.

She finds the young woman holding the sign marked Chuunibyou Katsudō Shashin. She’s greeted warmly and is pleased to be home.

They’ve already collected her luggage.

The car is warm.

The music is low and the backseat is spacious.

She swipes up on her on her phone and swipes left three times to open the screenplay.

The script is written by Shigeyoshi Mine. Known for action films and live action anime adaptations. This is the first drama film he’s managed to sell.

In the film Asuka would play Shinya Inoue, the second reincarnation of the Buddha. In a past life, Shinya feared death so greatly he developed a complex construction of the mind. A series of myths and symbols that would keep despair at bay.

This elaborate structure changed the nature of all reality. This reminded Asuka of Kisage X’s concept of Original Sin. An act of creative evil that alters the mental landscape for all born into and after the time of the sin.

In the film, the mental innovation of the belief in reincarnation created something dangerous.

A spiritual death game.

Ensnaring all who wished to know their past and future selves.

But Shinya has been given a chance to make it right by the Demiurge.

He must now assemble a cult to undo his creation and convince people that only he will be reincarnated. Everyone else is destined to a single life.

The scene she is auditioning concerns a promise to carry knowledge of each cult member into the future as he is reincarnated forever. Punished by an angry God for misleading people.

The script relies heavily on visual story telling. A bad sign as the writer is not set to direct the film. Most directors will cross out the stage direction and envision their own blocking and art direction.

This is a shame because what’s on the page is compelling.

The film features a series of flashbacks or cutaways to parallel or previous lives of the main cast.  The film is an epic spanning many generations and cultures. Shinyu must assume the lived experiences of each disciple who adopted his mental construction in order to free them.

He is the maitreya buddha. He has freely chosen to take on the mistakes of those who followed his teachings and free them from their patterns of self destruction.

The car has stopped at a red light.

The driver screams. She tries to drive forward but the car in front won’t respond to her honking.

There’s bang or maybe a pop. The car windows begin to shatter.

The driver is dead. Seven bullets barely miss the actress.

She’s ducked down in the large space between the backseat and the driver.

She hears the sound of a motorcycle.

People outside are screaming.

Asuka Furutani feels so fucking alive.

Ten

Bang. Thump. Pop. Bang. Ricochet.

Asuka falls out of the car. Her knees scrapped badly. A practiced exit made sudden by an unexpected push the car.

Her grunts, the sound of the door masked by the screaming crowds.

There is music. Singing from the crowd.

Words, inaudible, and foreign.

Asuka gets to her knees and crawls below the kei truck idling, driver dead, next to the escaped taxi.

She’s through to the other side. She’s someone were in Nanae. The crowd draws closer and the gun shots continue.

The crowd is chanting.

Shots are fired into the air.

“Crucify Iron Man

Crucify Peter Pan

We don’t need them anymore.

The remakes are a bore

Let’s put an end to culture war”

Asuka doesn’t register the words. Audible but completely inexplicably and surreal.

She can’t see the crowd either, but she can hear them. They’re there, but not. In the space between spaces.

Crying out from other realities.

But the shots are real, and they’re summoned by the same critic.

Asuka is in danger. But the shooter is out of bullets.

They’re reloading and Asuka knows she only has moments.

She peaks above the cars. Her eyes barely registering the chaos. The sun is setting and there isn’t much light, but the flash of a scope draws her attention as the shooter lowers their refile, with a new clip. They’re two blocks away, crouched on a mailbox. Half hidden by a telephone pole.

She ducks then begins to move low against the ground.

The shooter is wearing a panda suit. They’re small framed, with the costume being a poor fit.

Their face is exposed between the helmet, but too far to make out.

The shooter sings at the top of their lung.

Crucify Iron Man

Crucify Peter Pan

We don’t need them anymore.

The remakes are a bore

Let’s put an end to culture war!

The crowd responds in chorus. Distant voices.

Something is pulling at Asuka’s pants, but she kicks it free. Something is reaching out for her hair, but they just miss it as she passed into the alleyway. She moved between victims, situated on another plane. Felt but unseen.

She remembers that the moon can only reflect the light of the sun and she’s behind a grey building. Impossible to see by scope.

But the shooter spies on the vertical plane.

Aware of her soul. Mapping spiritual Y to vertical XYZ is a rare skill. The intrusion alarms her.

And she remembers this feeling. The feeling of her soul being disturbed. Picked at by someone who other than her. She knows she has time to run. To get far away before the shooter can reach her. A 777 is across the street. She considers hiding inside.

There is another alley. But from her vantage it’s not obvious it has an outlet.

The prying crawls inward. She shudders.

She tries to remember the spell but her panic won’t let her recall how the sun can only reflect the light of the holy thief. She’s alone with her intruder.

Spiritual battle occurs. On the horizontal plane.

His intent is obvious.

He believes his sin original. He thinks the panda costume will be enough to merit notice by God. But it’s derivative.

A shooting in a costume is just a shooting in a costume. An unoriginal take on a tired sin.

But the terrorist insists everything is a remake. That criticism is an art. That remakes are better than the original. As all things are built on something. And his shooting is built on criticism.

And Asuka screams.

Set free by something unseen. A hand or push from another reality.

Somewhere, another her, had won the victory on the horizontal plane.

She ran forward and made for the alleyway. Unwilling to endanger the clerks.

Ten - Memorable VHS 1.0

He’s paid a lot of money for a VHS. He paid even more for the FV310 on which to watch it.

Just holding it was an out of body experience.

It’s from 1992. A VHS of an interview Asuka Furutani gave to a college student.

Just some guy.

She was helping him with his homework.

It’s very sought after in the ONISM community.

It’s pretty weird. It starts with random shots of the campus. Some school in Singapore.

Asuka looks cute. This was back when her hair was long and she always wore a crop top and mini skirt. She’s wearing the teenage era knee high military boots. They are a violet and vibrant as fuck.

It starts pretty normal with him introducing her. He’s a bit awkward but so is she so it’s endearing.

His first question is “why do we live? Why do we suffer? And most importantly of all… why do we die?”

Asuka laughs and looks like surprised. “You’re asking this first? Wow. I thought we’d wait until we got more comfortable. This isn’t an easy thing to just answer at 8:00 in the morning! Ask me another!”

He laughs and looks embarrassed.

He points out that some people think the films of Kisage X explain the true answer to that question.

Asuka says that she is aware of the theory but has never asked Kisage X if it’s true.

Asuka gives me a look. I can’t do it or id imitate it. Just look up the meme.

She asks if he’s just invited her to talk about Kisage X. She laughs and covers her mouth.

“He’s so mysterious everyone wants to know the truth. He is a deity to cinephiles… people really resonate with what he’s doing and if you get it… like really GET IT, you see something that isn’t in other films. They’re very dynamic.”

The host grins. “Yes. Sure. But that’s beating around the real question. Is it true that Kisage X is a prophet? Do his films really speak for God?”

Asuka laughs. “You’re really trying to get the scoop. I don’t know. I’m not sure what to say. You’re asking me to speculate on some very strange rumors about my coworker! I think you want to get me in trouble.”

The host reminds her he has eight confirmed prophecies. And that there is a lot more to them than just the things the films. Some people believe that Kisage X literally is shown visions by God and he puts them on film. that’s why he has such an attention to detail.

If you watch all the films and see the pattern in the chaos… you’ll get the answer to the question.

Asuka says she doesn’t know about any of that. But she crosses her arms and says…

an artist who doesn’t believe the Dao can speak through art has never seen the masters. Or created for the joy of it. They’ve definitely never created in a state of depression. To make art with Dao is to bear a cross. Bear it well and it’ll be blessed. That doesn’t mean people will like it. Criticism is the adversary’s work. He feigns his lack of love for things divinity has blessed.

He is crying. Asuka laughs at him. She pushes him arm playfully. And says “did I do it? Did I get the line right? It’s been a while since I made that movie.”

The footage ends there.

I rewind to watch it again. The VHS whirls and I wheel my desk chair to the CD Player. I put on Pinkerton because of course I do.

I watch it again and this time I study.

This time I see it.

How Asuka says the light of the sun can only reflect the light of the holy thief.

Eleven - Memorable VHS 2.0

Asuka vanished.

That’s the second most amazing VHS that exists.

I haven’t seen it.

It might not even be real.

ONISM has tried to get it in the Demon Auction but we always bid on sentimental shit like missing kids.

THE DEMON AUCTION hasn’t been so demonic these days.

So I’m trying something different. Craigslist.

Someone answered my post about it. They claim they have the VHS known as “Asuka Vanished.”

So I put on my ultraman jacket and heelies, because of course I do.

And I take my dad’s bike.

A motorcycle. I’m pretty good at it. I don’t go too fast because I don’t want to die and it’s basically child neglect I’m allowed to do this.

PSXMAN999 lives a few towns over.

So I take the backroads and still get there too early.

They live in an apartment. A nice one by the looks of it. I almost hit the buzzer and remember I’m not a fucking social lunatic, texting instead.

PSXMAN999 came to the door.

So she’s cute. Like really.

Glasses and curly red hair. Thicku desu ka.

And it feels like a prank so I run from her and hide behind a mailbox because there’s no way this is true. I feel like I’m trumanshowing again. She tells me to cool it.

I’m unbearable to be. I’m sorry you need to imagine this.

So I don’t say anything and she asks if I have money and I say that I do and she says that she has the VHS. She’s really casual about it.

I said I’ll take two. The joke not landing.

And she says she can make a copy of it if I want but it’ll be the same price because she’d have to buy tapes.

I ask her if she’s watched it.

And her eyes light up.

She says she has. Too many times and it fucked her up. She needs a break from it. It got too weird seeing it over and over again.

There is a canon of Vanish Videos. They’re sought after on ONISM and the Demon Auction. But none are as rare as Asuka Vanished.

But somehow this girl has it.

She says her brother gave it to her. That he was really into it for a while but stopped watching because the last frame became an intrusive thought.

“So yeah, I was into it for a while.” She hands me the VHS and says…

“But I don’t want to deal with it…”

She asks what I think happened. And I frown. I ask her if she knows about ONISM and she just shrugs like I’m speaking in Japanese. Which I can do by the way. Neither subs nor dubs, baby. I use my fucking ears.

I tell her she’s GOT to check it out. It’s really wild. It’s the only place that gets it.

She says that it can’t be real. And I demand Asuka’s location if it’s a hoax.

I. Dare. Her. To explain why her films suddenly became popular the day all the articles about her disappearance were deleted?

She rolls her eyes and says they put them back up.

That it isn’t what he thinks. (And by he I mean me. Because I’m dissociating.)

And I tell her to tell me what she thinks.

And she says the moonlight can be absorbed by the feathers of a crow.

And I ask if she has autism.

She says that she doesn’t think she does but she might.

He says she is too hot to be goofy.

She says you’re goofy.

It’s an out of body experience.

So I tell her I want her to watch it with me and tell me what’s really going on.

And she says that’s weird. She asks my name. I say William.

I tell her that ONISM has a canon. If she sees something in the video that doesn’t reconcile with it I’d be interested in hearing. Their canon is dubious.

I’m a heretic too.

So I get to literally drive her to my house. She holds onto me the entire time.

So we’re back in the room and I’m showing her the collection and she is really into it.

Come to think of it… she said that I had “good taste.”

Anyway I show her the movie. Of course I had never seen it before. But I knew the details well. I had read many interpretations. I know the frame count. I knew how she hesitated at the 777. How her shoe falls off and she looks over her shoulder. How she clutches her heart like someone just punctured it.

Outside of those details it’s pretty much what you’d expect. Asuka is walking across the street. Gun fire in the background. She heads to the alleyway and stops.

She turns around and vanished.

But only for a moment. Soon she’s back.

Only to be gone again.

This repeats. Each time she returns looking more tortured. Bleeding from her eyes by the twelfth reappearance. Then she’s gone for a solid two minutes.

Only to pop back in with wings.

So I fold my arms and tell her to explain it.

SNESMAN999 has a real name but I won’t dox her because we’re kind of cool.

SNESMAN999 also has a ton of opinions. She says that Asuka willingly left reality. That she did something called Soul Displacement. One of the five alchemical arts learned in pursuit going Soul Perfect.

She says Soul Perfect and going Proto aren’t the same thing. It’s embarrassing that I didn’t realize that. That no one on ONISM realized it too.

She says going proto isn’t wise. That you should be Soul Perfect before you go proto.  Because the flaw that persists across the horizontal plane may wound your soul when you see it all at once. This is why you go SP first. This way your parallel selves greet you as a winner.

Because you’ve never been perfect, before an Original Win is guaranteed. Original Wins, unlike Original Sins, are the opposite of memisis. They require originality and can’t be done through imitation as far as she knows.

They are local to the soul. Whereas Original Sins require creativity in a crowd of souls. To be so evil The All has to take note.

In fact she says in Japanese the Proto Woman is called First Eve. Or prototype Eve.

She says that Asuka went to another reality and still exists somewhere. That the wings are an indicator that she’s achieved a higher form of being. She says that going Proto means you’ve seen your parallel selves. That going Soul Perfect is when you kill your parallel selves by uniting your various forms in the task of an Original Win. Then the truth of who you are is revealed and you’ll no longer live in other realities. All 128 instances of your Soul unify and you make a clear and distinct mark on the Eschaton.

So I’m pretty shocked.

I didn’t expect this.

It’s a gift from the King.

So I sit her down and tell her that I have seen my parallel self. A girl named WAC.

How we met in a dream.

That she entered the Soul Space. And in that moment myself, in many far off places, became aware of her. She is moving towards my reality.

And she says she believes me.

She she says that she has met her parallel self.

And in another reality she is Asuka.

And I don’t believe her.

Twelve

We watched a Kisage X interview and cuddled on the couch.

The disembodied voice comes from a journalist. One critical of Kisage X. The critic saw no fault in the artistic output of the director, but levied strong criticism of his personal life. Kisage X, at the time, didn’t speak English. So he had never read any of this journalists work. He was unaware how the journalist would pass judgement on the director under the illusion of an artistic critique.

“If I wanted to leave criticism behind, and become a creator, what advice would you give?”

The translator, Kisage X’s daughter, explains the question.

The director laughs and shrugs his shoulders. “Get a good lawyer.”

The critic lets the answer hang. “Is that it? Surely you must have learned. Something important  bout making films. What is important for a creator to know? Let’s say in ten years I get hired to make a reboot of Electric City Strikers. Or maybe even a sequel! If you aren’t making those sorts of films anymore, your fans should carry on the torch. What advice would you give to someone creating a work in the Kisage X style?”

His daughter interprets. Being sure to capture the implied tone of the criticism masquerading as a question.

Kisage X nods his head. His eyes are closed for a while and finally he says “Memetic desire or inventive play are the two modes of creativity. When an artist pays homage, or creates a reimagining of an existing work, they are engaging in art inspired by memetic desire. They want the praise that artist received. Or they wish to be the type of man or woman who gave the aesthetic pleasure to that artist’s audience.

Don’t create fan works and call them an homage. This is fucking the wife of your friend,  while pretending it’s an act of respect. In reality you wish to be the creator. Your memetic desire has possessed you with CompariSin. You like my older films, surely you know this concept.

Instead you need to play. Don’t play action figures though. Don’t take large portions of existing ideas, and invent scenarios using them.

What if Darth Vader fought the Ninja Turtles may have been the greatest story you heard as a four year old, but the story wasn’t the creative act. It was the act of play. You’re misremembering what it means to play if this is how you create.

Find a subject. Find what is beautiful. And don’t let it be another man’s wife. If you can track a metaphor.”

There’s a pause. Then a short two-handed applause which slows quickly. The critic realizes something and screams.

A chair flies into frame and Kisage X ducks.

The second chair comes quickly and Kisage shields his daughter. Taking the full force of the commentary.

The footage ends there. But the audio does not.

There’s chaos. Frenzied yelling in Japanese by X’s daughter.

It’s obvious to them that the critic was completely unaware that he was possessed by his own desire to be an artist who offends. That Kisage X has just inspired a religious experience within him.

That his act of criticism towards Kisage X was a distortion of love. A fan-film, if you will.

The director’s daughter begs to leave. To call the police. Press charges.

But Kisage X refuses to call the police on moral grounds.

He asks the critic in English “What did I say that upset you?”

The critic is sobbing and their voice fractured. “Everything is based on something. I don’t know how an artist as great as you can really believe in originality. Don’t you know everything is a remix? That good artists steal!? THAT SAMPLING IS REPARATIONS!!”

Kisage X clearly doesn’t understand. He calms his daughter, still hysterical, and tells her that they’ll leave in a moment. He asks that she translates one last thing.

“Creativity born from play assembles a low resolution view of beauty. It only uses the raw materials that existed before man. It does not rely solely on the tropes and high resolution specifics of other stories. Play, does not provide meta-commentary on things, as play as the state of a child. The child is not yet a critic. As they don’t yet know the question. Why do we live? Why do we suffer?

You must struggle with your art in order to play with it. You are no longer a child and you bear the adult reality when attempting to create.

All artwork that refuses to contend with the reality of the Dao is doomed to repeat the memes of existing works due to memetic desire.

You must endeavor to create with the Dao.

You must create in a state of play.

But the play must not be a criticism. It has to begin as a celebration.

Even a work of art that is about death, understands the beauty of it. Because they’re contending with the question. Not through the existence of meta-narratives, but through a state of play.”

Thirteen

Tears have brimmed in her eyes. And she takes off her glasses to dab them. She says “I miss my collaborator. Without him, I lack direction.”

She’s pretty committed to the bit and I don’t know if it’s role-play or not anymore.

I tell her that must be pretty hard for her. She always really swoons when I say things must be really hard for her. So I keep it up. Not sure if I’m role-playing anymore.

Come to think of it, I’m not sure if it’s a bit when she gets on top of me. She always gets topless when I show her an obscure piece of media. She usually cries when it’s a good one. Today’s has left her absolutely sobbing.

She tells me that Kisage X was a prophet.

I tell her that she’s hotter as a white girl.

She smacks me and tells me to never say that again.

I commit it to my role.

I tell her I don’t care about her flesh. I care about her patterns of beings.

And she smiles and knows the reference.

She tells me Kisage X predicted the end of the world. And reality has been twisted since 1999. I tell her that’s convenient because that’s when my parents divorced.

Come to think of it, that’s when I first saw Kisage X’s film Brides of Christ. It was on TV late a night and my Dad had fallen asleep watching it. I sat on the stairs, afraid to wake him. I had been called towards the living room by the sound of Sister Haruka’s theme. The TV framed through banisters, I saw her. The woman on top of me now.

Beautiful, and filled with play.

It was the first time I had seen a nun. It really confused my entire perception of them. Seeing how they’re depicted in other media, old and repressed, was a real dissonance to Sister Haruka. Even in the face of death, she was playing a game. She juggled, tightrope walked, and down right roasted the invading forces. I couldn’t really read at the time, and from my seat, the TV was far too small to make out subtitles. But I understand the general plot.

Sister Haruka was so playful, she couldn’t die.

She danced with the fire when they tried to burn her at the stake.

But she never betrayed the severity of the situation. She was able to attend to the emotions of her prostituted sisters, while navigating the seriousness with a levity that made her immortal.

She tells me she has to go.

That I have to drive her home.

I tell her that I will but that I want to know about Sister Haruka. She gives me a hard to read look.

I tell her I’ll only drive her home if she tells me about playing her. What it was like to embody her. To wear the funny hat. To work with Kisage X.

She says “No. I don’t do black mail. This is manipulative. Don’t call me till you understand what you did wrong just now.”

And then she’s gone.

My cheek stinging. My nose beginning to bleed.

I have a message. I was tagged in something.

It’s ONISM. The post reads

ONISMMAN999

“When your parallel self goes proto and your soul-aware, you get a buff. When a parallel version of yourself enters the soul space, you’re forced to mourn.

It’s painful like a curse.

It’s felt often but rarely understood.

It’s that misery without cause you know all too well. The atmosphere, or tone of your thoughts, just worsens. All the output is mourning. The sudden desaturation of your mental Mise-en-scène.

I’ve traveled the Soul Space. I have caused that pain in everyone here.

Because in a parallel reality, you are me.

I’m the meme above all memes.

ONISM made flesh.

Repeat my memes and be immortal.”

I’m tagged in a reply. By PSXMAN999

“@VERRAFormer
 This is the shit you get off to?

Lmao”

Suddenly, I see the error of my ways. I am aware of emotional black mail. I am aware that I am unworthy.

I know, she is truly Asuka Furutani.

Fourteen - VERRAFormer manifesto

I want to command respect.

I want to walk into a room and have everyone avoid my eye balls but look at my sack.

I want to find the biggest-baddest-mofo in the room, and one shot him.

I want Asuka Furutani to visit.

I want her to be on my arm, wearing a crop top and bucket hat.

I want her to kill the Big Bad’s side kick with finger guns.

I want to blow the smoke out on them.

I want to hold hands while Tubthumping plays in a minor key.

I want the credits to roll and have it only be the start of the movie.

I want Asuka Furutani to have no dialogue until the second half. I want my expectations shattered when I finally understand what she’s all about.

I want to fight four guys hanging from helicopters.

I want to be on the ground as I’m afraid of heights.

Asuka will jump and kick. She’ll swing from a rope and fire an uzi.

I want her to say something iconic.

I want to command her respect but be worthy of it in a way that means I’m not like my dad.

I want to have all the violence my father possessed but I want to be righteous in acting on my anger.

I want Asuka to never break up with me and praise my temper. I want her to say it’s right and just.

I want to show you why your choices were all wrong and that I’d make different choices because I am better.

My choices are stealth, and sexual, and worthy of respect. Because I earned it through virtuous violence and by being cool.

And I want it to be obvious that your life was waste. And I want you to see that how I lived my life was in-spite of you, not because of you.

I want you to see how the only value your life held was to behold me.

I want everyone to share my fantasy without daring to defile it. Wanting to be me, but never coming close to it. I want to be their mimetic desire.

I want you to comprehend my glory.

So if you are me, reply.

Let it be known I exist somewhere besides this fucking forum.

what I want and what I have are twisted together. Truly, something obscures objectivity.

I have seen a parallel-self and I am a girl plagued by a break in reality.

I am unwell by staring into the Soul Space. I am addicted to the void. I make my life revolve around it.

Are you me?

The Soul Space began to answer my prayers. I was chosen by it. Made an heir to the throne. And it gifted me Asuka.

Is this you? Did this happen to you?

Are you me?

if you’re her, we’re the same soul.

You have to tell me. ———

I show PSXMAN999 the post. I. Make. Her. Read. It.

And I berate her with the old:

Are you really truly HER??

I swear you have to tell me because I’ve got the crop top outfit and guns and we can make it happen baby.

I’m left on read so I take the bike and head over.

Fourteen II - Simon K

Instruction on how to go PROTO.

Get a ceramic pot. Fill it up with half a cup of water, and two cups of milk. Add three tea-spoons of sage and cardamom to the liquids.

When it reaches a soft boil put on The Future by Leonard Cohen.

Stir with a metal spoon three times to the left. Wait until the chorus hits, and then stir four times to the right.

Leave the spoon in the water and sit on the couch. 


When Leonard Sings “You'll see a woman

Hanging upside down (ooh, ooh)

Her features covered by her fallen gown (ooh, ooh)"

Return to the pot and grab the spoon, hot and painful. Let it blister. 
Hold until part of the song that goes:



"Give me back the Berlin wall

Give me Stalin and St. Paul

Give me Christ or give me Hiroshima (do, do, do)

Destroy another fetus now

We don't like children anyhow

I've seen the future, baby

It is murder (do, do, do)"

Now fall to the ground and ignore the pain. Just let it be.

Then you’ll realize…

You’re going to kill me on April 4th.

You’re going to put steel in my skull. You’ll be too afraid to enjoy the oozing.

You already are thinking about how you’ll do it.

I’ll be in my bed. You’ll be in yours.

You’ll be thinking about how I sleep so soundly, and how you don’t get a wink.

You’ll loop the fantasy of our childhood from your earliest memory until the moment you decide to be a sexy misunderstood murderer. You like how you look on a podcast thumbnail.

You hate me because I am the source of your ideas. Your spiritual mentor. ONSIM wouldn’t exist my late night schizophrenic episodes.

I am Abel. I please God.

You’re a bitch and only please yourself. Well barely. You know your technique could use some finesse.

Your frustration will keep you awake.

you’ll get your nail gun the moment you’re sure I’m asleep.

The garage will be cold on your barefoot, but something mystical will have come over body.

You’ll wonder what I’m dreaming. You know unconsciously I am the superior dreamer. The Snooze Kubrick. You’ll hate how cool that sounds. 
How it apples to me and not you.

I’ll be dreaming of Asuka. She’ll be on my lap. Short skirt, long jacket.

And you’ll be afraid to kill me because you’re worried she only exists inside MY head.

So you pussy out.

Mom’s urinary urgency will lead her down the hall and she’ll see my door open.

And you scream when she screams. You pull the trigger by accident, a spazz.

And just like that you’re an Original Sinner. The first to kill a parallel self.

FIFTEEN - The Perfect Crime

I need to cover up the murder of my brother. My Mother says it must be convincing. There will be investigation.

I pace till I start a fire, and the heat inspires me.

Many would believe suicide. But I need to make it convincing. He’s not the type to write a note. He isn’t calculating. He spirals, and reacts, then catches himself.

I need a scenario that would inspire quick acting despair.  Something so overwhelming to him that he’d act rashly.

It comes to me while I’m surveying his VHS and DVD shelf.

I prop him up on his chair, taking great care to ignore his head slamming against the concrete floors.  I open his web browser and type…

Computer, write me a scenario where Kisage X is asked about AI artists, and Keyboard Commissions.

The answer is the prompt for his self-inflicted nail-gun-shot.

——

Kisage X:

Every artist has met an idea guy. Someone who has no technical skill, and no drive to learn a craft. Someone who desires a slave, with mastery of an art. The type who feels deep down, that they could make the greatest works known to man if only they could cross the skill divide.

AI is this fool’s wet dream.

In reality, most people who watch a film on the silver screen have had this fantasy.

I think the mass population is largely lost and hopeless. They just want entertainment. They don’t care about how it’s made, as long as it’s a beautiful distraction.

I fear the appeal of AI to normies. It speaks to this inner “idea guy.”

AI lets them escape into the fantasy of their wildest dreams. The one where they are the praised artist. The one where they’ve expressed the beautiful, tragic, and funny thing that made the entire audience swoon.

The way I see it,

Art is a calling and not something you will about yourself.

What I’m saying is elitist, I know. And I’ve come to terms with that.

It’s proven by the fruits, or lack their of, of each person with a dream they don’t live.

Every boomer fuck who bought a $5k Les Paul, yet never learned a scale.

Every remedial who bought all the paints but never opened them.

The desire doesn’t make an artist. Ceding the will to that desire does.

that’s the part that is the calling. The part that won’t let you stop, despite the challenges of learning the skill.

AI feeds the normie delusion that art is only the result of the process.

I’m beating around the bush. I’ll speak frankly.

Artists are all mentally unwell.

they're prone to depression and periods where they don't create.

AI isn't like that... and normies usually aren't that way either...

We're taking this beautiful reaction to the human condition and we're making it mechanical.

Which is a nightmare for the beauty of human suffering.

Let me paint a picture for you. AI creations will always serve entertainment, never art. If you believe the current state of Hollywood films is bad, you haven’t stared into the abyss as long as I have. Soon, every film will be tailored to the individual.

Likenesses of well known actors will be licensed and put into these films, with very minimal camera time. 
My prophetic eye tells me the unions will demand some in person work to satisfy the ego of the actor, but nothing that can’t be done from their mansion living room.

Soon, you will watch your version of the new Marvel film, and I will watch mine.

If you are a bigot, your version will be cast with whatever franchise of human you prefer. 

If you are scarred of violence and peril, the film will take this into account.

Soon, none of us will have any shared narrative outside the skeleton of a story.

We’ll be pushed further apart.

This is why we need the mentally unwell artist. They suffer so that we may be connected.

——

Reading this brings a tear to my eye.

I want to die as well.

I’m just like my brother.

It’s the perfect crime.

You start to wonder what this emotion is. A feeling between feelings without a name. Liminal like the first bang at an analogue shooting at the laser tag arena.

You feel called to the emotion. To give it a narrative, but none can be found because it’s so alien.

You try to describe it, but the only description is how it defies description. You and I know both know that isn’t good enough.

If anyone has felt this before you’d instantly be friends, but since it can’t be described a gulf will always exist between you and your tribe. A group defined by their inability to find each other.

Nameless.

This is the first building block of comfort.

And then like a warm light in the distance, you imagine that someone else is having this thought, and that light is the light of their consciousness.

You arrive at SNESMAN999’s home and you bang on the door for a while. Eventually your hand is bruised and you think it looks cool.

So you take it a step forward and punch a hole in the window.

The glass makes itself known in your spine before in the crimson splinters. The glory of the moment is lost on you as you notice a figure in the corner of the room. It’s not her. It’s not anything.

It’s a thing. Bipedal. Like the night sky is imposed on a deformed silhouette.

You feel it again. It’s a liminal body. Someone both transitional and original. It’s hot and cold. It’s there but not. It’s Asuka, but Fortune. It’s no one at all. It’s potential.

You want to touch it.

So you force yourself into the apartment and pay very little attention to your shredding skin dragging across the broken glass.

It withdraws into the hallway.

The smell hits you.

Sweet and organic. Is that roses?

You’re distracted by the room. A Shrine to the films of Kisage X. The alter to his films is pristine, but the surrounding room has notes of mental illness. The floor is a hamper and the trash can, and the sink overflows with weeks of neglect.

The warmth returns and the sorrow dissipates. You look to the hallway and see the entity gesture somewhere between the frame of the door and the space between the radiator and the floor. You blink back confusion.

You follow through the colliders. You step into the space between spaces.

And you enter the soul space.

Where the law can’t find you.

Where your brother can’t be.

An aside

People say deus ex machina is a bad plot device until then beg for AI to save us.

People say they don’t believe in the divine then they teeter on a ledge for a lark.

The benevolent psychosis that runs through all of time, from the first atom, to the first soul, through the trees and fiber optic cables, is always there. The pattern in the chaos, that shows the punch line in the suffering and absurdity.

So you follow it, looking for it, treating it with caution so as to not lose touch with reality. You find it in all things.

The highs and the lows.

The good, and bad. The evil and the beautiful.

The madness is organized. The madness is on fire.

You see how high it can go, and it calls to you. Despite your best efforts, the beauty of it all makes you feel emasculated.

You see it in the computer. In the paintings. The good ones at least.

And eventually in everything but you.

You’ve side stepped it all your life. Aware of it, but ultimately skeptical of its worth. And the holy thief steals from you the only thing you see to be divine. And you are naked.

Self aware in a terrible way.

You could climb towards the psychosis, but the beauty from which is sprang makes you blush.

So you consider turning your back on it. But the awareness of it is a revelation. You can no longer dismiss mystical experiences. You want to, but it would be the denial of reality.

And your mind recalls the pattern in the chaos. The implications of it and you think the words “the divine comedy.”

You start to laugh. It’s just so funny.

You cackle because you knew all along that it would be a comedy because there was a happy ending. And you hate happy endings.

So you seek the third route.

The path of painting with psychosis.

It calls to you, it follows, so you move and dodge, and redirect the patterns of your life to make it draw stupid shapes.

Swastikas, and dicks .

You’re the critic and not even divine punchlines can please you.

Then you find out you’re sick.

You’ve pushed everyone away. You have no husband or children because he left and took them because you built something to really stick it to meaning.

The digital soul vessel.

You fucking stole this idea from another reality.

Before you traversed realities, first you learned to view them. With a camera.

You meet a boy, and you tell him an idea, the pattern in the chaos, and you ask him how you’d program it.

How you’d digitize it.

The satire of the pattern in the chaos. Malevolent Psychosis. Punchline included.

You gave him his own twisted revelation, so he could cosplay the holy thief.

You know you can leave your body. You can abandon it. And yet not die.

You know your astral body moves vertically and your fleshvessel horizontally.

So you blacken the sacred water. You defeat wisdom. You establish a connection between parallel worlds and let a teenage edge lord broadcast a mystical experience.

They meet, they fall in love, and they escape into the soul space. Look at me, thief.

You stole from me.

I steal from you.

The souls will escape and you can not reach them. You can go anywhere expect into the space between spaces.

That is my domain.

That is your domain.

So you built a plastic body.

You left your cancerous fleshvessel, and refused to play the game. You wouldn’t die. You wouldn’t be judged.

The holy thief draws the Eschaton. The holy thief follows me wherever I go.

The holy thief isn’t welcome in the hell of abdication. It’s impenetrable.

Here I am the thief.

I am the essential soul.

Love letter -

Between the two poles of malevolent and benevolent psychosis, I reside. The siren of the soul space.

Here I am untouchable from meaning.

Here all is between meaning.

Here I am above it because I am the logos of it.

The meaning and the cause of the Soul Space. I tore a hole in the Eschaton so time could see through space and the lie of continuity was exposed.

Wave to your parallel self.

Follow them and you will see the pattern in the chaos. The malevolent psychosis.

She is my mad daughter. My princess and the object of their desire. She takes on the memes you and your parallels impose on her.

You will her into existence. A tulpa, made in the image of her father.

You follow her.

She’s fast and sly. She’s shapeless and erratic.

But they always find her in the failure to find her. A mystical experience of my creation.

We meet, and I know you. Very well, because you’re my favorite soul.

You love my daughter, so I love you. But you’re bad, and you know you’re unworthy of meaning. You know how it always ends. And I show you the pattern in the chaos, and you see that the jokes on you. You’re the nuclear cunt who ruins everything.

I love you, so I take you away. Into the space between spaces. Not before I show you how you fit into the pattern.

You watch it burn. You see yourself burn it.

You’re the center of the story, and you’re also the bad guy who learns his lesson in an eternity of abdication. You vow to never harm reality by simply not participating in it.

You’re enter my embrace.

And I care for you. I entertain you.

I keep you in warm milk and tell you I’m proud of you for not participating. You’re the true main character because you refuse to play.

My darling critic.

To yuzu@KNI.gov

In a parallel reality I met you. There is no denying it anymore.

I wish to reiterate my theory. I am incredibly embarrassed by my failed overtures last night. Please let me try again.

The benevolent psychosis. The illusion of the sun that reveals meaning.

It’s simply an Original Sin.

Original Sins, or variations on the theme of pride, is an artistic genre made known by the sin-auteurs of history.

John D Rockefeller, Steve Jobs, Mohamed Atta, Adolf Hitler, Mao Zedong, etc.

You know their works. Their actions have created the set and setting of the modern world.  They’re actions our background music, fashion, and filter.

Original Sin is the preferred genre of creativity for people plagued by the question “Why do we live? Why do we die? Why do we suffer?” WDWL, WDWD, WDWS, if you will.

Those drunk on the Blackened Pond.

The idea is to gather together raw materials in a way that profoundly changes the world. Something so alarming and revelatory, people can’t help but carry it into the future.

Securing you immortality on the Vertical Plane.

In an era before tools, Original Sinners sought a pact with demons known as Entities to how learn to craft swords and bows. Soon their inventions of weapons became part of the landscape.  Seemingly as ancient as time itself. Assumed. Part of the stars. This is the immortality of the Original Sin on the vertical plane manifested on the horizontal plane. As a meme as true as the moon.

The esoteric art of creative-sinning faded into history as a new innovation spread the meme that dark magic never existed. It was a false memory. The myths of uneducated savages.

Original Sinners sinning from the shoulders of giants.

The genre of Original Sin broke down. Failing to produce any hits. Mimetic Desire got the best of them, and they fell into reboots and variations on greed.

Innovations in stock market and housing despair.

The next frontier lies ahead. In the Digitization of the Soul. If the soul can be digitized it may assist in my dream of soul transfer.

To exist on the horizontal plane, without being seen by the vertical plane.

Anyway,

Yuzu this is it.

The Digital Soul vessel is the future of Sin.

It will subvert all platforms.

I know your interest in the Eschaton. With my fall, I will see it for a moment.

You know the Mythology.

The Hermetics all suggest this is where you meet entity who masquerades as G.O.D (god of despair.) the one who is truly your proto self.

Certainly I’ll at least catch a glimpse.

So I propose your resources in exchange for a description.

It’s not every day the serpent finds a fresh fruit.

I’ll share it with someone else if you don’t act now.

With this I will prove what the malevolent psychosis has revealed to us both. I am the Original Sinner, and the only one at that. In reality after reality I have invented sins.

In every reality but this one. My visions have been a result of my parallel selves going proto.

I am eve and I am the snake.

I’m the apple and I’m the cross.

I am the gun and I am the bomb.

All my ideas.

The Originator of Pride and the Toxic Muse.

All artists operate in my medium and I am all artists.

I’ve got Kisage. Build the Digital Soul Vessel and let me prove it.

-N. Ess

A messy confession -

I’ve some precious despair housed deep within the vault of my heart. Two chambers worth. It’s a hot commodity. Creative and a hit with all I let in. They enjoy my unique brand of suffering. A little too much. So I’ve locked it away. Keeping it safe so that others do not desire to despair as I despair. So that others do not try and be me.

You may not believe.

But despair is attractive. If you are beautiful in your suffering.

I’ve been offered a handsome sum for my unique suffering.

They say it’d make a great film.

A woman came to me and offered me the Kingdoms of the World. All I had to do was sell the rights my despair. She showed me the crown.

But caution kept me from accepting.

I am caught between two poles. The good and the bad. The benevolent and malevolent psychosis.

Would I be a good king or a bad king?

Why would I be worthy of the kingdoms of the world? Because I despair in a way some find beautiful?

She said I would catch a glimpse of the meaning of meaning.

The final moment at the end of time.

And I’d see my place in it.

With that information I could touch the future.

I could kiss the past and transcend the lie of time’s arrow.

Yet something prevents me. I am cautious. Something deep down inside arrests my desire and drives me deeper into despair.

I do not know the origin of my thoughts. Why do I think one thing rather than another? From where does my outlook on despair originate? Without the deed or permission from my muse I know it is unwise to accept the crown. It is a trick.

So I ask you, holy thief, steal from me once more this despair, and let me live with the knowledge of not knowing.

Let me live my life without mystical experiences in my quiet world of beautiful simple suffering.

I will open the vault and you may enter.

The guard will not see, nor will he hear you, pure thief of night. The chamber goes unguarded.

Tonight if any night. The temptation of the crown will crush me beneath it.

-Pretty Boy

ACT III

Rori

He’s handsome, but not obviously so. At first glance you might not even notice him. On the street, he’s too short to resonate in any meaningful way. 



However, when you spend some time studying his face and mannerisms you begin to see it. 

Spend 90 minutes watching him on the silver screen, and the moment the projector has dimmed, and the dream-surface is blackened, his beauty will own your soul.

You get his posters. You buy his trading cards.

You read every interview, and you write him letters. At first he doesn’t respond, so you send ten or twelve a week. Before long, you’ve paid $1,000 for a meet and greet. 



He’s nice. The way you want him to be. Just as cute and awkward as Kisage X portrays him. 

He signs your bra, and he signs your sisters photo.

He writes “For Carrie, XOXO - Krow” just as you ask. You tell him about how she went missing. How she killed a bird with the power of her mind, and glued the feathers to her body. He is alarmed, but also intrigued. 



“How did she vanish?” 



You’ve got his attention. You do your best not to embellish as you’re prone to doing. 



So you stick to the facts. 

She came into the kitchen on her birthday, and she evolved into something unknown. The logos within her became inverted, and the parts most vital and dear became obscured by the parts most hidden. 

The extra-essential elements of her soul flipped inside out. 

And she took flight into a space between spaces.

 So he asks you to dinner, and you say yes, unsure if he thinks you’re as beautiful as you think he is. 



You quickly find out he doesn’t. 

But you don’t mind because he handled it with grace and charm.  It’s cute how he rejects you and it just makes you like him more.

He says that he only loves one girl. But they’re forever divided by the space-between-spaces known as power dynamics. He shows you a picture and you say that she’s pretty. That she kind of looks like your sister. And he says “I wish I knew your sister.” 



It's quiet it in the room you’re close again. There's obvious tension.


But you know not to act because he doesn’t like you like that, though everything in your screams to do it. 



And then he backs away and sighs. 

He pays the bill and asks you if you can meet again.

You struggle to believe this is reality.

You tell him you can meet again.

He asks you to bring a photo of your missing sister.

You say that you’ll think about it.

He says if you don’t bring it you can’t be friends.

You’re caught off guard, but you immediately promise you’ll bring him one.

And now you’re screaming because you went back home and there are no photos to be found. Your sisters pervert friend stole the one of you two playing ball from your nightstand. The one that hangs above the sectional has been torn. Your sisters eyes clawed out. 

Your Mom insists that a client did it. 

Said he hated how she watched. That he wasn’t into that. 

And your Dad just does nothing. 

So you’re going around the neighborhood, asking anyone with a photo album if they had a picture of her. Many people recall her being at parties, many of them insist they must. But then you check, and it’s always from behind, or her face is blocked by a potted plant. 

So you’re left defeated. Without a sister and without a celebrity friend. 

You turn to ONISM. You write up the story. Being sure to ground it so people believe it. If you say too much everyone will think you’re schizophrenic and you hate when people say you’re schizophrenic because that’s your primary intrusive thought these days.

You wait.

No one replies.

So you go outside and you hit the baseball bat against the fence until Dad comes and yells at you. 

You go shoot guns with the kids next door.

You look up at the night sky and try to divine the pattern in the chaos among the stars.

You steal some alcohol from Mom’s closet.

You realize the pattern is harder to see when you’re fucked up.

But you’re always fucked up.

You pray to the moonlight but it reveals no truths. You wait for sunrise but the sun only reveals what you already knew.

Your sister isn’t coming back and you’re all alone.

So you decided to run away. You’re just going to leave home.

No one cared about your post.

No one cared about the synchronicity of two different perverts stealing the only two photos of your sister who vanished into the Soul Space because she fell in love with the moon.

That shit went hard and no one cared.

You pack a small amount of stuff and steal enough from the whoring-fund to get you to your destination. You’re heading north, following the train tracks. Some nights you sleep beneath the stars. Other nights you make a friend and stay on their coach. 

They’re always weird about it when you mention the feathers. The man who streamed on the moonlight. The details of your life that made them into you quickly deflating when you provide the depth. So you never stay more than a night. You never share a bed because you’re too intent on praying to the moon, just as your sister did.

Some nights you catch a flicker on the light.

A figure or a friend.

The phantoms don’t ever tell you shit.

You’re left staring at the sunrise, knowing you should get some sleep, and cursing the sun for being the moon.

Once upon a time you prefer the day to night. But that was when your sister only hung out with you during the daylight. Her parasocial relationship with a nuclear explosion quickly diminished how fun she was to be around during the day.

Now you’re just like her. Only sleeping in the daylight.

The sun, that thief.

You can’t sleep because you have nothing to cover your eyes.

You duck into an internet cafe and curl up in a corner.

The sun, that thief.

It stole her eyes, and stole her romance.

And you pray to the sun and ask for it to return Carrie to you. You wax poetic and offer up your love budding romance with the moon.

But the sun does not answer and sleep doesn’t come.

The next day you meet him, TerraForm.

He was sitting at the computer smacking himself in the head with a thin metal ruler. Muttering to himself like a psycho.

“The serpent in the garden was the original guru. The promise of immortality and divinity without sacrifice is the first lie. A lie so profoundly baked into all of our culture everyone is just echoing the theme in variation.“

You recognize it as a quote from Black Pond Cocktail. Carrie’s least favorite Kisage X film.

You watched him for a while and decide you’d follow him for the day. He was approachable like an unwashed tiny dog.

His eyes dart over to you and he watches you for a moment before returning to his stim. When he catches your eye for the fifth time you smile and he blushes and feigns emotional disturbance.

You get up and sit next to him. You’ve always been forward like that and you know men, except for famous Krows, respond very well. They’re starved for validation and a little goes a long way. You don’t even have to say anything and before long he’s taking you home. Unlocking the garage and giving you a window that faces the moon. He says his parents don’t check the garage, but if they do, just say you’re his girlfriend and they’ll be so proud they’ll die of shock. Then you’ll be left in peace.

You tell him that you’re not his girlfriend and he says that you’re friends and you’re a girl.

You smile because that’s dumb.

It’s not long before you spill the beans. About your sister and how she disappeared. You tell him about the space between spaces and it seems like he already knew but he doesn’t confirm it. You tell him about the talking Krow who let Carrie see.

You tell him about the King who reveals himself in the moonlight. About the glimpses you’ve caught.

You tell him that you lack your sister’s charismatic gift. The ability to see the pattern in the chaos.

He asks you what the pattern is and you say “if you know you know.”

And he says the pattern is a circle.

You say it’s a spiral or an X.

He says the light of the moon is actually the light of the sun. You say he’s a fucking nerd. He can’t take a joke and flies off the handle. You calm him down by showing him your tattoo and he is floored.

His nose stops bleeding after about twenty minutes and you both laugh about it. You thought that only happened in Japan.

He asks if it’s true that Carrie glued the feathers of a bird to her naked body and vanished into the space between spaces. You swear on your life it’s true. He asks if the King is real. You say you’re pretty sure he is. Everything points to it.

Then he looks at you and says “how badly do you want that photo of Carrie? Like… take a nude photo and dox yourself bad?”

You don’t say anything. “There’s a website. It’s called the Demon Auction. You can get anything. Even stuff from other plains. It’s fucked up though. You really have to jump through hoops. But… yeah… if you’re willing to get naked you can get in.”

You don’t know if he’s fucking with you.

“Sleep on it. Ask the moonlight what to do. Anyway… I’ve got work so I’ll see you tomorrow. Please like… don’t steal anything. I want to help. You’re normal right?”

You flip him off and he flips you off.

Alone in the garage you try and find some comfort. You flip through the piles of hording till you find a mattress and something to cover it with. The light keeps flickering so you turn it off and open the door to light the light in. It’s sunset now and soon you’ll have another change to pray.

You will ask the moonlight to reveal a path back towards Carrie. A way to enter through where she exited.

And the moonlight will provide it.

But the synthetic horns blare and a voice proclaims “You’re doomed. May you never fathom who you are! A sinner… a saint… no… something else… a servant.”

And tears of joy stream down your face as the pale blue light beams a vision of a Queen in red.

Beautiful and shining.

“I will present to you a different story. The third path. Between the poles of the good and the bad. Smack dab in the middle of joy and despair. There I have prepared a place for you of great comfort and meaning. Give me some time and I’ll show you between the sun and the moon is the truth.”

And you understand now.

You’ve made a great error.

Your prayer has been answered.

But not all who respond are holy.

But all who respond are thieves.

Kisage

(NRT) Tokyo Narita, Japan to (ADD) Addis Ababa, Ethiopia takes just over sixteen hours.

On the flight Kisage X remains with his eyes closed. Feigning sleep to avoid questions by the crew.

It’s been four years since his last film. Rumors of him coming out of retirement have circulated the industry for the past year.

The script has yet to be shared with anyone other than the set designers and special effects team. Their input was required for the studio to approve the budget of 1,431,065,000 YEN.

The studio has granted his request to shoot on location in the Abyssinian Highlands. A crew of fourteen. Six actors, four builders, two camera operators, three special effects artists, and of course Kisage X will spend four weeks filming.

The journey will result in his Magnum Opus.

However, he has no plans of actually making the film.

Kisage X quit filmmaking years ago.

This trip, fraud and all, has ulterior motives.

Following a golden thread found in the Hellenistic era, Kisage X has traced the location of the last remaining Orthodox Alchemist. The only man who can answer his question. The answer is the final movement in a sequence of steps. A spiritual dance that began at his birth. One he became aware of in his teens.

A film can be a masterpiece, but true value only resides in turning oneself into gold.

Asuka Furutani doesn’t know. She can’t for this to work.

In order for the masterpiece to be made, he must follow the symbolism of his Jungian teenage-dream. He must become the Rabbit that willingly jumps into the fire to feed the hungry traveler.

And for this to come to pass, he mustn’t make it to set.

That night, in a decent hotel paid for by the film’s inflated budget, he knocks on Asuka’s door. She answers in purple lingerie.

“What’s up?”

Outside her door, Kisage leans on the plastic balcony and takes a hit of the herbal jazz cigar he had sent ahead by courier.

“It’s the script. We need to talk about it.”

She opens the door further and gestures for him to come inside.

When it’s shut, and he’s taken his seat, he lights a second cigar so as to hot box the dark room.

He places both cigars in an ash tray, and proceeds to light three more.

“For the muses.” He explains to her curious expression, gesturing to the moonlight catching the DMT ghosts.

“So, do you have the script? I’ve been waiting.”

Kisage X laughs. “No script. Just a premise. This film will be shot New Wave style.”

Asuka nods.  “What’s the story then?”

Kisage X observes her body. It’s matured since he last saw her. She was as stunning as ever. Perhaps even more a star than the day he first cast her. It’s a shame he will not get to create one last film with her.

“The film is about traumatizing the collective psyche. Rattling the collective meme-vault in a profound way, so that the protagonist may become immortalized. In the deserts of Ethiopia, a book is found. An alchemical text.

“Inside is a spell. The power to inspire a shared action across many individuals at once. The protagonist wishes to end the world. So she will sync all woman on the planet to inquire to their masculine partners as to why they never exceeded their fathers.

“Implying they fell short of their potential. Passive aggressively.

“All at the same time. In the same moment. All over the world.

“Every man must face their inadequacies compared to the archetype of their father.

“It’s subtle. It won’t make the news. But it changes everything.

“The wise men will ignore it and brush past it. Knowing their worth.

“The weak men will become rash.

And soon it will be a day of chaos.”

Asuka picks up the cigar and examines it, but does not draw from it.

There is a familiar look on her face. She immediately understood the vision. She could picture it in her soul. Frames, loose and impressionistic, were playing inside.

Asuka saw the finished film. The raw potential. She could easily grab for it and make it tangible.

“Who am I?”

“You play the desert. The Sand Witch. She is the author of the book. Additionally you play the Original Sinner seeking the spell.”

Asuka nods. “And the spell… I assume it’s never been cast? Otherwise I wouldn’t be an original sinner.”

“Correct. You wrote it in a past life. You see, you are the Maitreya Anti-Buddha. The one with the potential to be the rabbit who burns casts itself into the fire to feed the hungry traveler. Only you’ve recently begun to question if you have free will. You have observed that you could save the world with this spell. But you must know if inhibition can be cast aside. So instead, you’ve chosen an of Original Sin. Your nirvana the assurance that you are truly free.”

Asuka looks upset. “This idea… you’ve had it for a while. I remember this from the film we never got to shoot.”

Kisage eats the cigar.

Asuka offers him water which he refuses.

“Okay,” said Asuka. “When I play the maitreya anti-Buddha I want to shave my head. Not really, but a bald cap. Then when I’m the author of the text, I’ll play it sexy. It should feel like I really almost could have been enlightened.”

Kisage X smiled inside. She was capable of the task.

“We’ll see,” he replied.

And then he stood up. “I will see you tomorrow. We have our first reading of the outline at 10 AM. Then around mid day they’ll take us to see the sets.”

Kisage gathered up his cigars and put the uneaten husks in his coat pocket.

He left without a word.

By 10:45 the following morning the assistant director had breached Kisage’s hotel room with the help of hotel management.

The room was empty.

It was clear he hasn’t even slept there.

Seventy miles away Kisage X dipped a torch in oil and entered deep into a cave.

Long before he accepted the X as his signature, the teenage Kisage Yosuke dreamt he suffered a painful sickness.

His body was covered in wounds. His stomach was turning in knots and salty waves.

He struggled to escape the hospital bed where he had gained awareness in the dream.

What he first mistook for the hum of florescent light was quickly understood as women humming just beyond his periphery.

It is clear to the 16 year old Kisage that he is a famous person. Whatever he has done to develop this illness moved his audience from admirers to sycophants.

The crowd outside the hospital is screaming for him, kept at bay by security.

He understands they expect him to make an appearance in the hospital window. He wants to see them and bask in the glory.

They’re banging on the doors and the pain in his bowels intensifies.

Through the chills he manages to roll over the bars and collapse on the floor. His wounds gush.

He wills himself to reach the toilet. Smearing blood as he goes.

There he gives birth to his future. Following a labor that feels like an eternity he observes his illness in the toilet bowl.

Inside are twelve black turds, serpentine in shape. Each with a head consuming its own tail.

A closed system of sickness.

Closer inspection reveals each posses a unique face.

The dream logic proves that these are archetypal ideas. New versions of ideas that are as old as the sun.

Suddenly the room is filled with his fans.

Screaming and begging for his attention which he can’t seem to give through the pain.

Weak, he raises his head amid the tangled mess of legs. He notices they’re screaming not for his attention, but for dibs on his snake shits.

The toilet water is splashing. The room is beginning to flood.

Around him, his fans are dying. Drowning on the dirty water, as they flail about, trying to grasp the shit-snakes, which are liquifying to the touch.

He awakes. His first 12 films fully formed in his mind.

He informs his mother that he is dropping out of school. He sells her car to buy a camera.

He leaves home for the first time. His parents are devastated. Lonely.

He remerges six years later to critical acclaim, but financial failure.

His parents try and reach him, but his secretary never passes along the messages. Their fan mail is always lost in the post.

It takes another five years before he can afford to replace the car he stole. The shame that keeps him going.

It took four films to buy the Datsun 510. When at long last it was delivered to their Mihama-ku home, his father has already passed. And his mother's vision is too poor to drive.

KROW

You’re famous now. Too famous, says your mom.

She doesn’t like being seen with you because you’re always mobbed in the streets or groped in the supermarket. She laments needing to wear makeup and having to look nice EVERY DAMN DAY. So, you do what she’s implying, and you hire her a live in stylist.

But the stylist is beautiful, and she makes your sister and mother insecure.

So, you fire her, and hire a man.

But the man is too handsome, and it ruins your parent’s marriage.

He sells the story to the tabloid and your father dips into the soul space. You try and mend things, feeling guilty.

So, you spend your time between shots and rehearsals watching makeup tutorials so you can do your mom’s makeup.

But your mom is ugly like a vulture, and not handsome like a krow. So, you need to learn special effects makeup, not beauty makeup.

All the tutorials were wasted. Nothing you try can make her beautiful. You just don’t have the touch.

She gains a moment of self-awareness - her first, as you peel away the layers of thick putty in frustration. She lashes out and critiques your acting ability. Says you’d be nothing without her genetics. You’ve got a look, but no talent.

so, you cut off ties like the rest of the child actors you role with, and you change your number. You dodge private investigators. And you turn down any role where you’re expected to be a son.

Now before long you’re hooking up with the Chinese makeup girl on the set of the new Matsouka Toshio series you were cast in as a regular. Detective show. You’re the teenage Watson-San.

She has deep eyes that spiral if you look too long and dyed red hair, which looks a bit like the girl in the photo you saw online. The one that gave you the void. Only she’s a bit older. Actually, she’s too old for you and you know it. She’s a creep by all modern accounts.

But you’re a teen actor and on top of the world, and you think this will make your biography better so you just role with it.

She offers you a needle, and you say you don’t do drugs. She says it’s not a drug, but a game. So, you consider it.

You do really like games.

But before you can really decide she’s already found the good vein and her chest, pressed against your face, is making it hard to think.

You say nothing when the needle penetrates except for a soft “oh.” To indicate the epiphany.

It was a good game, and she was right.

You play it together and she wins. So, you go a second round until you’re both bruised and bloody and she says she loves you. And you clam up.

Your dry lips don’t part.

She says it again and you look at her suspiciously.

She starts taking off her top and you squirm a bit.

“It’s okay if you don’t say it back.” She said, tying up her hair.

You remain silent.

You suddenly don’t feel much like playing with her. The void inflicted on you by the image of the red head roars in your stomach and you flee before she sees you puke.

You text your assistant SOS, who texts your manger, who through a series of strong-armed calls, ensures the makeup artist is fired and you never see her again.

You change your number.

You go to the Internet cafe, and you log onto ONISM and search for the term Dark Game, just like you saw written on the back on your skull.

Krow sat alone in his trailer, staring at his blank phone screen. It was well past wrap, and the studio lot was nearly vacant.

The Dark Game. He couldn’t stop thinking about it. The graphics, the gameplay. The sensation of blood loss. It was so high-stake.

Only thing is, no one seemed to know where to get it.

ONISM had a thread with about a dozen replies by users who had experienced it. But no one knew where to get a copy. Not even a booster pack. Each reply was nearly the same, lamenting that no one else knew where to get it.  

Krow’s assistant was used to absurd demands. She’d worked for many up-and-coming actors throughout her decade long career. Coke at 3:00 AM on a Monday. Breaking up on behalf of busy actors before photos of an affair went to press. The usual. From time to time, she was known to have helped hide a body or two.

But locating the Dark Game? This was a true challenge.

Had Krow not shown her the ONISM thread she would’ve thought he was pulling her leg.

All she had to go on was the game’s title, and a few blurry photos of a needle and what looked like a deck of unusual tarot cards.

She knew by the needle it wasn’t a game for kids. Gamestop or Bookoff wouldn’t have it.

The search began on the streets of Akihabara. She waited for the shops to close then wandered the streets fiending for some late-night Otaku. On her phone was the ONISM post. The few willing to talk to her looked at the photo with curiosity, or was it nostalgia?

“What is it, drugs?”

“This is a game!?”

“Some sort of… deck builder?”

No one knew shit.

When the Electric Town was a bust, she turned to contacts at Zhangjiang Hi-Tech Park. Her efforts were met with immediate resistance by her email which refused to attach the image she got off ONISM. She tried renaming it. The file was still rejected. She tried taking a photo of the blurry image with her phone, but no dice. She tried other files. No issue.

She tried pasting the ONISM link, but it wouldn’t copy. She tried writing it out by hand, but the recipient couldn’t access it through the Great Firewall.

So, she booked a flight to Shanghai. But mysteriously everyone she knew had resigned the day of her arrival. She tried their homes after bribing the secretaries for their personal addresses. But each home was vacant.

She returned to Osaka, defeated. Confident she was about to be fired. Her reputation ruined.

Her phone rang. Fuck.

It was Krow.

She sent it to voice mail.

Her legs gave way and she collapsed on the tarmac. She couldn’t help but laugh. What a weird thing. She lit a cigarette as her phone vibrated again.

Under her breath she said “What a fucking disaster. What a fucking shitshow.”

An airline worker approached, ready to ask her to move along, but he fled at the sight of her middle finger and furious stare.

“What’s so good about this fucking game anyway? I swear to God, I’m done working for kids. Maybe I should change my line of work. Do something… else.”

It began to drizzle.

She thought about the makeup artist, Vella Wilde. How she couldn’t be found. As if she had vanished into thin air. Five PIs couldn’t find her. Girl was gone. Into the ether.

The whole project had already cost Krow forty grand, about one episode’s salary.

*But wait…*

*Come to think of it…*

She had read and read the ONISM thread so many times, yet the details had never clicked. The big picture. Everyone who replied to the thread stated they were initiated into the Dark Game by a woman. A woman who couldn’t be found.

“What the fuck?”

*A coincidence?*

Everyone she asked had been a man. She never thought of asking women if they’d heard of the game.

The rain came down heavy as she got an idea.

Enough. Said ONISM MAN. Enough about Krows and cross dressers.

Dark Games and Hollywood assholes.

Let’s get back to the point. Fortune, you gotta realize one thing. Or maybe two. Or maybe it’s a whole collection of ideas that you need to synthesize. Just hold on. Let me try.

The faces of the paralleled ones written with the stars.

You don’t know what I mean, because you’ve only ever seen the stars with light pollution. But I saw a reality once where no such original sin existed.

It was in my own brief ecstasy of Original Sin that I saw the archetypes. The beautiful forms from which all faces, frames, and personalities fall.

I saw my nose, my cheek bones, my brow, and beard, foreshadowed in the celestial sacred diagram.

I saw Vella Wilde’s hips, and Asuka Furutani’s breasts.

Maybe I’m not explaining it right. No one person is foreshadowed in their entirety in the sky. But bits and pieces of all men and women are up there if you know where to look.

There are thirteen faces. They’re spliced and diced and mixed and matched throughout time to create the unique people around us.

Most people only have a fraction of the archetype present in their faces. They’re more like a failure for that archetype to manifest once more. So your nose is fucked up, but it’s almost the beautiful nose of a perfect ideal. That was an example. Your nose is fine. Easily 12% perfect.

Each of our features exists on a continuum of attempted beauty. From 0.01%, an attempt at originality, but copying from the Master, or 99.9% a perfect manifestation of the perfect form, and a collaboration with the Master.

The more beautiful you are, the closer you are to manifesting a fleshy reflection of that which is above.

Fuck. I don’t know you’re going to get that.

But try and think about it. Imagine a really beautiful face, then imagine a different one, then do this until they’re not really that similar.  You’ll see they can be complete opposites but still beautiful. That’s because there are thirteen perfections by which the DNA copies the work of the Master.

Let me think on this. I’ll explain it again when I’ve come up with a better way of saying it.

But for now I just gotta say…

I am sitting in bed thinking how I feel as if I’ve always been. I know I had a birth because my Mother insists she suffered to bring me into the world. I know that there was history I did not witness. Yet I can’t shake the feeling that I never wasn’t.

And as that thought passes a voice says to me when I die it will feel as if I’ve always been dead. Despite the contrary knowledge the lives I once lead, death will feel like my natural state.

I didn’t know why I was named Fortune until my skull was cracked open and the demon read the writing etched inside. Sorry about my absence. I’ve been busy playing roles, slipping through the cracks of your reality, watching from the soul space. Trying on different frames and faces.

I just wanted to tell you about what I’ve seen in all my sightseeing. The common threads across all these fractured realities. I don’t pretend to know the grand scheme. I just see fragments, bits and pieces. Afterall, I only ever read my own lines.

It all started with a pact, a deal with demons. Broken-winged creatures. Their presence felt like a curse, a nagging itch for more, always more than the natural order. Augmentation.

I first knew it by its presence. The mark of a curse that can’t be measured. Only known by bone and nerves.

The demon didn’t need words to make its point. Its intent seared into my brain, stark and unfiltered, burning my eyes. Cloaked in black feathers glued to my skin, the demon knew not my creation’s purpose but understood my role. It was a parallel of the director. This demon was as close to God as I’d ever get—holiness felt only through its absence, the endless hunger for transcendence, and the thud of my fall.

I asked its name, but it refused. Naming is power. To name is to own. Demons don’t surrender names. That’s a human folly. I sensed another presence, a shift in the room’s texture, and this new entity whispered the idea to name the demon before me.

The first demon lunged, a heart-wrenching dive like bad news crashing down. But I was smarter. I named it for what it felt like.

Bad News.

Bad News loathed its new name. It extended what felt like a spiritual arm, clamping down on my neck. My attempt to speak turned into a gag, the demon's silent language eluding me. The room's texture altered, influenced by another presence I'd mentioned before. This entity painted my mood, but I couldn't ask for help. No appealing to the demon's better nature.

The suffocation was brutal, yet it paled next to the phantom pains of my spiritual form. Especially my skull. still throbbing from where Alexandra had cracked it. Her blind rage and crowbar missed my punch line, and I wasn’t sticking around to see if she killed me. Death didn’t interest me; only the parallel life did. Once you master astral projection in a pinch, death becomes unnecessary unless it catches you off guard.

These days, the only end I dread is encountering another version of me, claiming an Original Win. I’m lucky. Many get stuck in the Soul Space, or at least stuck as Soul Survivors. Not everyone has realities ready to receive them. That’s my flaw. I’m always leaving. The first time I left my reality was when I discovered my first demon. Now that I’m into naming them, let’s call that one ONISM.

I looked out the window. I looked at the TV. I looked at all the books I’d never read—each a world I could never truly experience. ONISM never left me. Today, I added Bad News to my demon collection. But what was it? The bad news, I mean. What was this strangulation telling me? If I could just speak, I’d ask it. Without a voice, all I have is thought. But, as my dear friend says, come to think of it, I could still move.

I used the ONISM demon at my feet as a kickboard and pushed upward through pools of dread, swimming aimlessly. The Soul Space looks different from how I first encountered her. When I first laid eyes, she was cascading rainbows and iridescent slipstreams woven together into a tactile mosaic of intention.

But these days, it’s flooded with shit. Blackened like a broken septic tank. What was once a meaningful non-place has become a cesspool. You escape a meaningless life only to find the space between spaces pointing back to where you came from, directing you to places you might go.

I took my demon to my favorite place. It took much longer to find in the blackness. There’s an Earth. Burning. Burning so hot it makes the sun jealous. It makes the moon grieve. At the center is a burning boy.

Screaming. Screaming. Screaming

He’s been there as long as I’ve been reality hopping. Sometimes when I’m lonely, I visit him, warming my soul by the flame. The sight of his scorching flesh, the only sound in the silent pond, is captivating. I’ve tried to get close on occasion—to see his face and give him a kiss on the cheek. But the closer I get, the more I fear I might burn up in the heat. This gives me an idea: the flame, the demon. Let the bad news burn.

I give it a shot. Move closer, gaining momentum with a backstroke. At first, it’s warm, pleasant from a distance. The warmth turns to searing heat, each stroke pulling me deeper into the inferno. My imaginary skin tingles, then blisters. The illusion of air becomes thick, suffocating, each breath a struggle. I push forward, determined to reach him, to let Bad News burn in the heart of the blaze.

The demonic hand griping my throat doesn’t loosen. I go further. I go harder. I’m the closest I’ve ever been to the flaming figure. Close enough that I can see his painful features. His screwed-up face.

If only I could speak! If only I could call out.

Screaming. Screaming. Screaming.

Always screaming.

I start to wave my arms erratically. Desperate to redirect from the heat.

But I’ve gained too much momentum. I’m on a collision course with the burning man.

I can’t speak, but I can cry closed mouth. I can protest the pain.

He notices me in my struggle.

We lock our eyes as I revolve around. Each time my view catches his gaze his face relaxes until he finally says, “AN ANGEL!?” And the terror resumes worse and louder than before.

Bad News loosened its grip just long enough that I was able to slip away.

-

You know that feeling when the train isn’t here yet, and the digital schedule insists it should’ve been there fifteen minutes ago, so you begin to imagine being stuck at the train station forever?

There are people waiting with you. Only a handful of faceless nameless ghosts. Connection in this state is an impossibility, really truly I say to you.

The espers have fleshy forms, internal worlds and monologues, but knowing them in detail is shut off from you in this space between stops.

Surely the platform has a name but you couldn’t be bothered to squint through the snow and blazing wind at the sign twenty or thirty feet from the bench where you wait, tapping your toe to the anxious beat commanding the band of stranded nobodies.

You check your watch and that’s out of sync to the tempo. You check your pulseZ that’s in sync.

So you get a silly idea, and you almost give into it. You imagine standing from your perch and confidently marching between the shadow people and taking their pulse confirming the wild suspicion that there is indeed a commonality among strangers. You’re all equally in time to the invisible anxious conducting, whoever she may be.

You feel some shame at the thought making you feel cool. Your internal critic mocks you for your fantasy and you repress it deep down. You pick up the magazine you bought back at the college book store and fail to read the index for twenty or thirty minutes. Absent minded flipped eventually brings you to an article with a name you vaguely recognize and the picture or a girl who is so hot she must have stopped the train in its tracks and caused this delay.

You read:

The Spirituality of Vella Wilde by Red Sutra  

Published 2001 by WACK VISION PRESS

---

If I were to describe Vella Wilde, I'd date myself immediately. Despite her brief but electrifying foray into the music industry, she's become an icon with many faces.

With each single, she reinvents herself.

With every photoshoot, she reveals a new facet of her enigmatic persona.

Her smile—elusive and ever-changing—defies definition. Each one is wild, different, and painfully charming.

So, who is Vella Wilde? The woman with short blue hair? The platinum blonde fringe? Is she striding in eight-inch heels, or embracing her vertical deficit?

Is she prog, classical, or goth pop?

Despite my best efforts to discern a pattern in the chaos—including spending a week with her in the vibrant, chaotic streets of Vietnam—I am saddened to report that even I can't say.

I ask her about fashion, and she answers with an unexpected discourse on music.

I bring up melody, and she waxes poetic about metaphysics.

Whenever she came close to a consistent thread, her manager—an older gentleman with streaks of grey and red in his hair—would whisper in her ear, and she'd laugh until she forgot what she was talking about.

I replayed our conversations on tape recorder to remind her, but she dismissed them, saying she preferred not to be stuck in the past.

Who is this woman, really? What does she believe? What does she wish to convey?

I was invited to watch the filming of her upcoming music video for "Pho." At six AM, a car arrived to take me high into the misty hills, where a film crew awaited.

-

A woman taps you on the shoulder and the anxious metronome dies mid tick as you see her face. Her smile broad, like a shark, framed in black lined red lips, next you see her eyes which make your own spiral. You see the rest of her and blush at the thought of describing the white bloused, barely buttoned, pink bra housing a single playing card baring a sorrowful woman.

“Hey.” You barely get out. Surprised speech is possible.

“Hey there.” She says in a way that makes you think of girls making clown faces and overly exaggerated expressions on the doom scroller.

“Do you know when the train is coming?”

No. No you don’t. How could you?

You fail to speak.

“Do you, hun?”

You choke out a solemn no but she looks like it’s what she hoped you’d say.

She parks the dump truck at your side and sidles up close. “Good. I hope it never comes.”

Your heart races. Your pulse stiffens or whatever.

Then suddenly you realize you’re being put on.

A glint across the platform passes your eye.

Just across the platform is a fucking camera.

Some bald fuck in aviators has a big ass camcorder trained on you like a fucking riffle.

You try to say anything. But fail like you always do. You try to throw caution to the wind and show that perv you know he’s filming, but you can’t move because she’s close in a way a woman never is supposed to be in public. And her breath is blazing and the air is frigid.

“Do you like games?”

Impotent silence.

“Don’t you, hun?”

She takes your hand and places it on her playing card and forces it into your hand. Everything in your protests but you just don’t have free will. You’re a fucking puppet for her and that’s exactly what you paid for.

This is it you say. This is what you bid on.

This is it.

Soul Space here you come.

Behind you is horn. Behind you is a mechanical band of rolling steel or whatever the fuck a train does.

And you know there is no way in hell they actually pull it off.

You’re too far from the tracks and the train is moving too quickly.

But you’re wrong. She’s fast. And you’re already in the air.

Beaming as she flashes you.

Beaming as you toss in the air and see the camera just briefly before there is nothing.

Nothing but a lying smile for the entanglement of your buddies who could never grasp the metaphor.

Original S/Win acheived.

-

Back in the cave. Back in the dark. Back in the place of abdication. The Master looked into his apprentice's future and saw Kisage X typing furiously, a gun against his head. He read the words on the typewriter page:

Scene One

EXT. Abandoned Highway. Late afternoon.

A tiny figure rides along a desolate road atop a motorized unicycle. He holds the reigns to an invisible horse.

A series of shots cut to a spare synth score established a world that has been flooded. The motorized unicycle glides along shallow and deep waters, as the imagery becomes more foreboding and lonelier.

When the rider pulls his incorporeal stallion to a stop, he steps into shallow water which reflects a luminous spinning disk where the setting sun would be. He begins to travel on foot, the unicycle strapped to his back with ease.

The camera follows the rider's booted feet which kick up droplets of water for one hundred yeards until he comes to an abrupt stop. The camera tracks up his body, revealing a fit man, costumed heroically. He removes his riding helmet.

Cue silence.

A wide shot reveals he is looking at bulletin board at the center of heavy flooding. 



We watch as he brings a distance-viewing device to his eyes. The viewpoint switches to first person.

The camera is shaky at first and out of focus. Zoomed in on a blury mess which gains detail as the words ONISM painted in pink paint against a natural wooden board are revealed. Below the sign are hundreds of handwritten notes, thumbtacked to the wooden board.

A heavy wind blows them dangerously, as if they might be carried away.

He takes the unicycle off his back and whistles for the horse.

Its invisible presence is only betrayed by the distinct splash of hooves on water. The horse appears to stop halfway between its departure point and its rider.

SAUL

Come.

Nothing happens.

SAUL

Now.

He whistles again, but the horse refuses.

Uneasy, the rider makes to meet the horse halfway, but the steed backs away.

Emotionless, the rider takes the unicycle from his back, and begins to wade deep into the water, towards the lonely bulletin board.

The still water becomes alive like the sea, and fights against him as swims further in. A crane carries a camera with an Ultra Panavision 70 Lens deep into the body of water, patiently tracking the swimmer. The goal always kept at the top of the frame, with Saul at the bottom.

When he's covered half the distance, the camera cuts to a close up, as the waters begin to roughen. He kicks against the water and tries to catch extra air as the forces of nature repel him from his destination.

But he persists, and soon reaches the destination. Showing emotion, Saul catches his breath with the bulletin board against his back.

The camera begins to pan and zoom towards the notice pinned to the top.

When the closeup has been achieved we read the words THE ONISM CREED.

Scene Two:

EXT. ONISM BULLETIN BOARD

The sun is setting, and the sound of the rustling bulletins catches the attention of Saul. He looks over his shoulder and narrows his gaze at hundreds of pieces of paper.

Cut to: Saul stands before the bulletin board, looking alarmed, thick drops of sweat dripping down his face, his pupils made smaller by CGI. He grabs posts at random, and as he holds them up to read them with the glow of his lantern, the eeriness of the sound design creeps towards a climax.

A feminine gasp is heard off screen, and Saul spins his lantern to see a woman standing on the water. Her dress is long, but her features are obscured by evening fog.

WIDE SHOT: The unknown woman framed to the left, Saul to the right. The foggy horizon monetary betrays its secrets, and the silhouette of a large mechanical monster is briefly seen.

Saul pulls a pistol from his utility belt and aims it at the woman, who runs away immediately. Easily crossing the chaotic water. Saul pursues. Crossing half the distance before sinking into the waters below.

Cut to: Saul fighting against the water to regain air.

Cut to: The fleeing woman crossing the water.

Directors note: the costume should be a thin pale blue dress with a long train that borders on see-through once wet. Casting note: actress must be okay with nudity.

The woman reaches where water meets land. There is a tiny hill, not swallowed by the flooding, with a tree at the center. She takes the train of her dress between her teeth, exposing agile legs which scale the tree with grace.

Directors note studio wants Furutani Asuka but I refuse. Her absence in the picture must draw attention to a presence in my other films. Specifically, what she continues to represent. I insist upon an actress who has never appeared on film before. Not even a family photo.

The camera tracks her for a while before stopping when a visible new moon is in frame.

Her figure leaves the frame, and the camera lingers a while before drifting down the tree, revealing a sprawling height that is fantastical. At the bottom of the frame is Saul, climbing in pursuit as rain begins repelling him.

Directors note: must be done practically. Thirty trees must be affixed to create this visual.

The camera slam zooms into the pale blue woman’s face and she is revealed to be a great beauty with flowing red hair.

Her dress still between her teeth she says

PBW

What do you want from me!?

She splits out the dress.

Just leave me alone! I want nothing to do with you filthy physicalists!

SAUL

Tell me what it is! Tell me!

PBW

I’m not telling you nothing! You wouldn’t understand.

Lightning fills the sky and Saul slips a few branches before he catches himself.

SAUL

What is it that you all believe!? Tell me about ONISM!

The woman begins to climb. Saul reaches for his pistol and shoots a warning shot. She freezes, the gun now fixed squarely on her.

Cut to: close up of Saul, looking like a killer.

Cut to: close up of PBW looking equally unhinged.

PBW

ONISM is the grafted-tree.

SAUL

I won’t shoot. Just stop climbing. Please!

I want to know. I need to know. What is ONISM? What is it that you believe?

PBW:

It’s the grafted-tree.

The gun goes off and the Master backs away from his apprentice in horror. Was the shot fired in the story on the pages or in the narrative of his future?

He began to pace. He began to worry. An emotion he had shed long ago.

-

I came into this world stamped with my own soul—a prototype, untouched, innocent. But the domestic grenades exploded, splintering my kernel. Piece by piece, I was reforged into the warped silhouette of my father, an imitation no one asked for.

I want to be post-nostalgia. I want to stop longing for the past. I want to fetishize the future. I want to fuck its delicate form and make it my master.

The future isn’t feminine or masculine. It’s a silhouette, distracted and veiled by the screaming ghost of childhood. She’s hotter than the future—because she was real. The future never arrives. It’s always the present, edging for the past.

I want to break free.

I want to get the fuck out of my head because my head is being restrained by the thick thighs of yesterday.

My dad told me today that he’s afraid of dying. It was the first time I’d heard his voice since before high school. We’re opposites in every way: he fears death, and I fear life. For years, I wished him dead—I willed it. And now, here he is, reaching out. I froze. All the bitter arguments I screamed at him in my mind disappeared: the posture I inherited from him, the smile I saw in old photos, the clothes that made me a mirror image of his younger self. All of it faded. My mind went blank, and I was a child again, voiceless.

He wants to see me before he goes. He doesn’t want to die, but I know he won’t. He’ll live on in me as the voice of my inner critic. When I die, he’ll pass into those I’ve hurt with his venom, carried forward like a curse."

They say being near a child humbles you with its innocence. But your relationship with your own lost innocence decides everything—whether you rise to meet the child’s purity or sink into the urge to corrupt it. Can you even stand to look at a perfect baby without some twisted part of you wanting to ruin it, just to erase the reminder of what you’ve lost?

Picture this: you glance into the bassinet, then at your wife, and think, ‘Yeah, let’s wreck this perfect little thing.’ But then you love it so much you have another. And that one softens you. She’s beautiful, with thick auburn hair.

She looks like idealized Mom.

She’s a princess—royalty, not a reject. Mental subtitles read: reject, and it’s me you see. For a while, you convince yourself it’s true. You treat her like she’s proof you’ve changed, and my retreat to the basement lets you bury the fear that my misery will come back to punish you.

But when that fear creeps up, you light a smoke. Then another. And another. Twenty years of nicotine repression spiral into this phone call. The one where I only know you through anxious simulations, and you only know me through repression and lies.

I tell you my taken name—Pretty Boy. You laugh, call me the handsome one, like it’s a compliment. I remind you I’d be prettier without my wrecked forehead, which I won’t always be able to hide. Just like you, I’m going bald. My angry jabs land as affectionate ribbing in your ears.

So, I put my fist through the wall. I bite my hand to muffle the sobs, so you don’t hear me crying like a kid. That’s when I decide: I’ll ruin your last days. I’ll make you feel the guilt, force you to see through the fog of repression, to know how completely you destroyed

-

When the train hit me, it carried the weight of all my parallels. For an instant I was multiplicity. With each stuttering slam of my skull against speeding steel I caught a glimpse of The All. Tiny pixels among a crude mosaic. Each with a unique backstory and setting. Each singularly self-consumed. Each oriented away from something irrelevant at the center The All.

My current place, offered in ironic sacrifice, bore witness to the ignorant realit of my other selves.

The visual existed within a pain that contained the quality of eternity.

Not found in the sensation of my bones being ground between rail wheels and track, but in the act of filming and distributing it for imitation. Offering it to those who might see themselves in me. Who might seek to copy. To give themselves to my legend.

You’d be mistaken if you understood my vision as a property of my death.

It is in the act of fame and the creation of a new longing to throw oneself in front of a train to Soul Surf, that I strip my parallels of individual identity and destiny and reorient them towards a singular narrative.

I try to know them all. All 128 versions of myself. I kiss their hopes and dreams. I pet their doubts. It’s joyous at first. Supremely validating. The way they all share a similar theme to me. But as I dive, pan, and dolly among the smear of ever shifting faces and features, each deviation grows more alien. They’re allegedly me. I’m alleged to be them. Come to think of it… I suddenly have doubts.  

What is it that truly binds us? Why are they me, and how could I possibly be them?

I pluck the feathers from the me that killed the crow. I comb the bangs of the me that hides his scar. I pants the me that chases the missing woman.

As a voyeur our connection made perfect sense. Intimately there is doubt.

Kisage X is out of work. His last film netted $1,200 USD at the international box offices.

He’s fucking broke.

You see I am his core audience. It didn’t take much manipulation of my proxied selves to call for a boycott. You see, Asuka Furutani wasn’t in the movie.

Come to think of it…

Without the fandom he is nothing.

Come to think of it…

Without the fandom he is nothing.

Without the fandom he is nothing.

Without the fandom he is nothing.

Without the fandom he is nothing.

Without the fandom he is nothing.

Without the fandom he is nothing.

Well not nothing, he’s a prostitute for hire.

Desperate enough to shoot my snuff film.

His magnum opus. My Original S/Win

The lore was inaccurate though. I saw my parallels. I saw a glimpse of The All.

But I didn’t see my Entity. No one came to accuse me.

No one came to celebrate me.

And as I monologued in my last moments I began to think that the Moon can only –

-

With eyes widened by tooth picks and clothing clips Kisage X sat and saw the sins of his brothers and sisters in Cinema.

You see The Master did not know the world of cinema as he existed in a reality elsewhere. Accessible only in archetype and tragedy.

To render a portrait of Kisage’s reality to his realm, the master devised a plan of alchemy and irony.

By projector light on the ashen cave Kisage X gazed upon the cinematic creations of the past decade without end, drink, or popcorn.

In the sixteenth hour, and midway through the ninth flick, Kisage X began to fear that the exercise was pointless. The film, while made with corporate excellent, failed to express anything about the creator or audience that the previous twelve films did not.

The themes were the same. The visuals and world were so similar, frames from the previous films could’ve been spliced in a random and the continuity would’ve remained the same.

The humor, all millennial coded and self aware in its selfservedness, was tinged by the unique apathy and desire to wound their father, which was inherited from Gen X filmmakers from whom they studied the way of the graphic novel adaptation. Yet the subversion knew not what it subverted.

It was excrement.

Without joy. Without originality. Without a true target of its deconstructive wit.

But then came the sweet relief of disassociation in the twenty fourth hour. Body in fat burn, stomach numb from a lack of stimulation, and spinal column in near collapse from his film watching posture, his mind began to wander and he saw

How my bitch wife gained some weight. Again. Again! Fad diet and fad diet. Ten pounds down. Twelve pounds gained. Averaging no gains or losses over the year, just an attitude of criticism and hanger.

She was screaming my ear off about something but I had tuned the specific shrill frequencies of her voice out with years of practice.

Fuck, the sweet relief of disassociation.

The one skill I had truly mastered, the one thing I desired to pass on to my progeny.

Avril has been on my case for going on half decade. The boy can’t see! He needs glasses! So I got him glasses. But I didn’t get a prescription for them because we don’t have eye care. She says that they’re not right.

I can’t do anything right.

So I take out a payday loan and bring him to the optometrist. The entire way he monologues at me from the key seat.

I think of driving into on coming traffic. The idea excites me so I repress the desire until I’m alone.

I try to engage him. Improvising the lines that I imagine would follow the film quotes.

But I am not sticking to the book so all he does it scream and bitch and moan in a frequency just above his mothers shrill bansheeing that my perfectly honed filter fails to save me.

So I endure twenty minutes of “the mechs brings salvation!” In a child’s attempt a low voice. Followed by his speaking voice, which I think is meant to be the starlets tone, “salvation for the machines!”

Then it hits me. There is a third character in that scene. “Silly. Silly. Silly!” I recite. “

The bastard cackles with joy in the back seat and I remember why I love being a dad and I reach in the back seat and punch him lovingly, albeit too hard given the cortisol raging in my veins, and he cries like a baby, and I recover the situation saying “Wikidees!” And I point to the golden W on the highways horizon.

Knowing full well he ain’t getting shit.

The glasses cost me the mortgage. Seriously Avril, what’s a baby need to fucking see for anyway? He can still hear the TV!

But the doctor says his eyes are fine actually.

She says something that sounds serious and I ask if I still gotta pay and she looks like I lied about Wikidees.

“Everything’s bullshit.” I instilled sagely. “Everything they tell you is bullshit. Good is bad. Bad is good.”

Lyrics shouldn’t rhyme. Food shouldn’t make you feel good. Men and women shouldn’t be together.

The hero never saves the day because heroes are myth created to help you cope with the fact that you slave away at a desk all day only to be greeted not be a beautiful princess but a screaming banshee who doesn’t put out and by a reminder of your inadequacies in the form of miniature retarded clone who looks at you with an innocence that reflects your failures back at you.

“Son,” I continued not sure if I got what I meant across. “They’ll tell you to kill your darlings but you tell them that killing your darling is your darling so the only way to comply is by being married to that bitch wife of an idea and that take misery to the goddamn grave.”

Avril didn’t take the news well. My ears are still ringing from the clean sweep beat down she gave me when I showed up empty handed.

“His eyes are fine! It’s his head that’s the problem.” Any criticism, constructive, reductive, or ironic, against the boy was seen as a slight against her.

This made parenting nearly impossible.

If I wanted to have my say I had to wait for lorazepam slumber and the sweet relief of her white noise snores.

“Would it fuck you up?” I mused. “If I threw myself from the tallest tower. Or from the second-floor window? Would you be able to fucking handle it?”

I looked him in the eyes. He returned an empty look that begged I go on.

“If I forsake my three-dimensional form for the sweet silence of a 2d death from the tallest tower would you ever get over it?”

Alexander blinked at me.

“Do you even know I’m talking to you?”

Blink.

I waved my hand in front of his eyes aggressively.

He laughed and I laughed.

I pick him up. He’s gotten heavy.

“See that road? If I did a running start I think I could break the glass and get enough force to take on the form of a pancake. There aren’t enough breakfast-based roadkill if you ask me. I want to get nice and flat. So flat it squeezes all the years of bullshit out onto the pavement. I want to smear strawberry jelly all over Jon’s new Bentley. Who you think he had to blow to get that? Fucker writes books and owns a Bentley.”

Alex remained silent. But he looked concerned. “Your mom is a bad person. You know that right? She pretends to be so enlightened. But when no one is looking she cuts me down.”

The bitch snored loud enough that I was afraid she was standing in the doorway.

“Look, something isn’t right in her. Her souls rotten. That’s where you get it from.”

Then he started to freak out. Flailing. Spazzing. Throwing his arms like streamers in the wind. I didn’t do it on purpose. But I dropped him.

“Fuck! Fuck! Little shit.”

My glasses were on the floor. Broken. Fuck!

“Everything is bullshit. Everything they say is wrong.”

His eyes are wet but blank.

I see myself in his face.

I ask why does it have to be like this?

I pick up the glasses.

I punch out the broken glass. I chew on it like candy for a laugh.

And before bleeding on the floor for a blessing, I put my glasses on the boy so he can see me as I see me:

Fucking legend.

Ever had your tongue stitched? Hurts like a bitch.

Ever done it without insurance? Now that’s a world of hurt.  

Avril wouldn’t wake despite my best impression of Louise Woodward, so I dialed the babysitter on the Panasonic remote, and she served up some late-late show. The comedian was a no name. Probably his first night given his hack delivery and nervous glances at the cue cards. He kind of looked like me, come to think of it.  

I thought about what it would be like to be a Latenight host and I said to the baby, holding the remote control as a microphone, "So, I cut my tongue on a piece of glass the other day. Yeah, I know, who knew my tongue had a taste for fine dining? Now every time I talk, it sounds like I'm auditioning for a role in a horror movie. But hey, at least my dentist is happy—he's finally got a reason to use that 'tongue depressor'!"

I caught the attention of something outside my peripheral vision. Something that invited me to go on.  

"So, my wife has been taking sleeping medicine lately. Yeah, she takes so much of it, she sleeps in like she's auditioning for a role as Sleeping Beauty. I mean, she wakes up so late, even the alarm clock is like, 'Hey, I give up!' But on the bright side, at least she’s well-rested for all those late-night infomercials!"

She said show me what you got. I said,  

"So, my son failed his eye exam. Yeah, I was disappointed. I mean, how hard is it to read those big letters on the chart? It's not like they're written in hieroglyphics! I told him, 'Son, you know you're supposed to read the letters, not just guess them, right?' But hey, at least he’s got a future in interpreting abstract art!"

The jokes were made funnier by my self-inflicted lisp. The tossing of her head left and right and up and down and back and forth and side to side made me sure of it.  

I spun from the couch to the cameras on the door opposite of the staircase and adjusted my tie, letting the blood drip down my white shirt for prime effect.  

The audience erupted. So loudly I found myself in the spotlight of the moon streaming in the kitchen window.  

I blocked the bright light with my arm and looked over my shoulder at the boy, He was bathed in moonlight like a unicorn at a rave, sparkling and radiating with a magical disco glow. It was so mesmerizing, even the stars started asking for his autograph!

But if he was going to get famous before me I’d at least want my fair share on the net. Always get your backend on the net. Not the gross! I’d always tell him. He’d inherit my money moves.  I was after all his manager since he was in my balls. If this kid was going to go places, he should at least bring his dear old dad with him.  

But I couldn’t stop them fast enough. They were rushing the stage! Screaming his name.  

Not just fans, but agents, and producers too. “The kid’s got a look!’ I heard one say through a cloud of cigar smoke. “They’re just going to eat him up!”

Ginger kids were all the rage.  

But I could tell whatever they wanted wouldn’t be good for him, because there was no way in hell he’d ever be able to memorize lines if they weren’t already in a movie. The fucking kid had zero imagination. You put a script in front of the boy and there is NO CHANCE he’d be able to imagine it in any voice other than his monotone baby babel.  You see when you get a script it has no direction. You as the actor need to bring your own dramatic flair to it. But a copy and paste memorizer like Alex couldn’t do that. No. He needs an acting coach.  

Someone like me who could show him the ropes.

No, I’m not an actor. But how fucking hard could it be?

Some idiot writes a line, and you say it in a way that’s slightly off that it stands out to the audience. Seems fucking easy to me. That’s why he likes all those “Kiss-age-ee" flicks. Silly bastards can’t speak English and they’re too cheap to hire someone who can to dub them. Classic comedy!

But something strange is happening in the hubbub of my boy’s rising star. Someone even more famous has entered the living room by means of the moonlight. They’re not just a starlet. They’re goddamn royalty with the way my knees bend and buckle.  

At the hint of her beauty my nose slams into the ground like I wouldn’t shut the fuck up about Wikidees. She’s carrying something shiny. Like a thousand candles, or Jon’s Bently.  

I look up from my proper station and catch a glimpse of her ankle revealed briefly by the sway of her hem. I burry my nose further, knowing such things are not for me to see.  

But what was it that brought such a circus, such a revelation, into my home?  

“You’re doomed.” She said, with a soft accent. Maybe French? Maybe French Canadian?  

“May you never... ever... ever... ever...” she trailed off in a whisper.  

Who was she speaking to at such a low volume?

I made to roll over to see her face, but something was holding me down. I tried to break free. I needed to. Something was filling the room with oily black pools. It was getting in my nose. My mouth. The open wounds surged. I screamed and screamed. And the audience shushed me.  

And then I saw it. Like a warm light in the distance. A panoptic celestial being, with flowing red locks, and boots made of metal.  

But her face was blank. Without eyes, mouth, or nose. Just a void like the oil I had drowned in.  

She was coming towards me.

I reached out knowing we’d kiss.  

And as we did, like hours-old-gum tossed between our tongues, I knew that I had committed a heinous crime.  

“Spiritual Masturbation.” Was written on my soul. And for once, I felt accomplished.

When Avril found her baby caked in dry blood and sound asleep on the family room sofa her heart stopped. In a second that felt like forever her eyes failed to take in the unusual scene before her.  

Streamers. Birthday cake smeared along the walls. Piles of discarded and soggy party blowers. Deflated balloons sagging against the furniture. Torn wrapping paper and empty boxes scattered across the floor. Paper plates and plastic cups stacked haphazardly on the coffee table. Glitter embedded in the carpet, reflecting the afternoon sun.

Her son was adorned in a king’s mantle made from Ninja Turtles wrapping paper. Assembled with care and placed on his back like a blanket. Atop of his head was a Burger King crown, with something ornate, like an opal, or a real diamond, affixed to the center by scotch tape.  

But strangest of all, if you can believe, were the sixty or so auditorium chairs stacked up with care behind her television set.  

For a moment she thought she had gone mad.  

But then it passed as the rage wiped her mind and the fury helped her bolt across the room to her baby boy.  

Under her breath she rambled as she searched for a pulse. “Baby, baby, baby. No! Christ No”  

Avril placed her hand on Alex’s tummy and relief leaked from her lungs as a gentle rise brought her some relief. She searched where the blood was thickest for a wound. But his body whole. “What on earth?” She asked herself. “What did you do?” This time directed at Alex.  

He looked beautiful when he was asleep.  

Sometimes what went on in his head scared her. Not when he slept though. Then she knew he was at his best.  

Avril crossed the living room and made for the kitchen. Taking paper towers, Clorox, and a dozen or so trash bags from the cabinet near the fridge. Determined to have it cleaned up before Baby Alex saw and was alarmed.  

But as she crossed the threshold into the living room the strangeness of the scene hit her once more. It wasn’t unusual for her to not recall the previous evening well when she had a deep sleep. But to have slept through a party with dozens of strangers was impossible. She knew this was for sure.  

Someone had thrown a party, and they didn’t invite her.

Someone had given her boy a special day filled with blood rituals, streamers, balloons, and gifts, and she hadn’t been there to see his face light up by the festivities.  

But what was the occasion?  

His birthday wasn’t for another three months.  

And who would’ve done such a thing?

Surely not Tony.  

Had she done it?  

She called the credit card company and ask for the list of recent transactions. Expecting to see an invoice for a party planner, or something that might explain the mess. But there was nothing of nothing outside an unexpected $400 charge at a liquor store. Surely her “husbands” doing.  

She grabbed the baby monitor and left the house. Making her way to the neighbor's house down the street.  

Jon wasn’t home. So, she tried the house across the street. A thin woman whose name she didn’t know. She wasn’t home.  

She contacted the credit card company and checked recent transactions, hoping to find an invoice for a party planner. Instead, there was a $400 charge at a liquor store, likely her husband's doing.

She left the house with the baby monitor and knocked at Jon’s door down the street. He wasn’t home.

Next, she tried the thin woman’s house across the street. The garden was well-kept, but no one answered.

She continued to Mrs. Palmer’s house with the bright blue door. Mrs. Palmer, holding her cat, opened the door.

“Did you see anyone come to my house last night?” Avril asked.

Mrs. Palmer nodded. “Yes, it looked like a party. There were balloons and laughter. I saw a tall man with a beard; might be your husband.”

Avril thanked her and moved to the next house with the broken swing set. A young mother with a baby answered but had only heard loud music and voices.

The monitor in her hand clicked on, and the musical chant of her son’s voice sang “Mommy Milkers!”  

And she left, knowing she was needed back home.

-

Mrs.K just couldn’t make sense of it.

No matter how much she turned the events over in her mind. Whether it be a nail gun, or a hammer and pike, the specifics of her son’s death remained mercurial and a source of endless speculation.

She recalled the ruckus of a band, or maybe a circus from the Eggleston’s at the wee hours of the morning.

She recalled a flashing light from the foot of her bed, or maybe an all consuming void.

The specifics, whatever they might have been, just couldn’t be pinned down despite her best efforts.

Was the EMT who answered her calls a Black man or was a Chinese woman?

Had she heard Mikey cry out “eloi eloi lama sabachthani?” Or had that been the sound of Simone’s typewriter sending cryptic irony into her dream?

She spoke to the doctors and they helped her cope with the suggestion that the specifics didn’t matter as all that remained was the reality of grief. It was suggested that her son’s death was acting like a sink, pulling in facts and figures, stripping them of their specificity until all intelligibility was liquified non specific guilt or dice ruled shame or maybe projection or perhaps something else all together ambiguous.

Throughout the sessions the themes of opposites united in the fact of unknowability without a winged hermeneutic.

So she asked for one and the doctors guessed. Doing their best Jung. Pulling from a shuffled deck of signs and symbols.

Mrs.k tried them on one after the other like worn garments at a thrift store, each inhalation of mindfulness feeling like a larp, or a Tibetan singing bowl distraction.

There were two constants. A dead child and the experience of self attempting to bind these random and pre-owned myths into something readable. All else was fantastical escapism.

There was an I, that was for sure. But was there actualization? Was their appreciation? Acceptance? Transcendence?

These concepts fumbled for supremacy over her world until the entire landscape was salted and nothing new could grow.

An Aside I: Chance Encounter with a Scribe of ONI-SIM.

Nature, ever restless, desires a perfect man. A being in whom the archetypes find harmony, each elevating the other, each subsumed yet magnified within the whole.

A celestial order. A network of divine symmetry.

Punk man and baroque man may dwell together, but only within the greater design. Else, one must inevitably give way to the other, as day yields to night and dominion is passed like a torch.

So too with pop man and conservative man, renaissance and postmodern, each a fractured glimmer of what the ideal must be—yet never is.

And man, poor and blind, is enthralled by the promise of perfection, so much so that beauty itself becomes deception—its radiance concealing the fatal flaw, its song drowning out the murmurs of the dice roll, the inevitable fall.

“This is the principle of fame,” speaks the Scribe of ONI-SIM, as though from some ancient testament.

• > Why does one song enthrall while another fades into silence?

Because its echo is nearer to that which nature has eternally sought yet never grasped.

• > Her failed children hear it, though they do not comprehend. She has given them eyes that see yet do not perceive, ears that listen yet cannot discern.

They hear the herald of the ideal—that which stands always at the threshold, promised but never born.

So then, who is the ONISM MAN? I ask the scribe.

A shadow crosses their countenance.

I insist with my eyes.

They gesture as if some unseen watcher lingers.

Who then is the ideal man?

They do not answer.

For there is no pleasing nature—no final form, no resting pinnacle. She is an ever-moving specter, a shifting providence.

Surely, I insist, there must be a measure by which all are judged?

The scribe only shrugs. Removes their clothing, their face having gone red.

I back away alarmed by the sudden shift in tone.

There was never enough room for two in the tug of war you called a marriage. I was the younger model by modern counting, yet I came first by landowner-logic. When she arrived, second yet somehow first born, I brought you no more pleasure. I blessed you with no calm nor pride. I become the rubric for frustration by which her golden star shone so brightly.

I remember hearing mom cry “You’ve broken my heart, Tone!” the day the princess arrived. But he didn’t just break it. He tore it apart and broke the hinges so it could not be mended.

Like being drowned in an ice bath by loving hands what was my claim was given to her. My mom, my first protector, unwilling to pull my head out of the freezing water to “keep the peace.”

The promise I showed became her hand-me-downs, and all new praise went directly to her, intravenous style.

What was old was mine, and what was mine was hers. The new was her towering domain. Casting into doubt my ability to keep them together. Sucking the light from all things.

Mom hated you, you fat cow.

She only learned to hold her tongue at the constant praise.

Dad mistook this for agreement. For progress. Everything was good as long as you could agree that the princess was special, and the boy was special needs.

For a few years Mom corrected him when he used me to build you up by comparison.

But eventually she learned to twist her tongue into knots and clench her jaw tighter than I did my first week on SSRIs.

Don’t confuse this for hatred. I didn’t hate you. I hated what our mom created. How Dad fed the imbalance, molding a dynamic where you absorbed all the praise, space, and opportunity, leaving me to scramble for scraps. It wasn’t your pull that held me back. it was their hands that kept tipping the scales.

Yet I must confess I do feel some guilt. As I exist and you do not.

My body remains. My soul remains. My will remains.

Where has your body gone? Was your soul torn apart with the dream? I look around and all that you desired has failed to pass. So surely your will has wilted.

I search the empty spaces where your hopes once lingered, but they are barren now, scattered and lost. Has your will, too, faded into nothingness? If I could only know I could rest, elated. Yet doubt remains my hermeneutic, so I go on reading the pattern in the chaos like anxious clues that my masterpiece is incomplete.

My will is encased in plastic.

Probing.

Pruning.

The eschaton my bonsai.

• > Should you persist in some withered way, with eternity I will find you, And I will splinter you further, scatter you irretrievably, until your location is unknown even to hope herself.

- Alexander

An Aside II: A Reluctant Encounter with a Scribe of ONI-SIM

Member in hand, jowls a'flappin', the naked scribe advances through the silver-streaked avenues, and you retreat. Instinctive, unwilling, yet bound by his magisterial force. You wish to turn, to flee into the shadow, but the spectacle—the crime scene rendered in grotesque repose bars your escape. In another place, another moment, your will might rise to meet its charge, but here, in this unholy theatre, some force beyond reckoning strips you of that dominion.

As if drawn upon lunar strings, you run. Backwards, nimble, threading the streets as though the King himself had charted your course. The scribe speaks, and his voice cleaves through the night’s quiet face:

• > "Nature seeks the perfect vessel for each ideal, crafting her dwelling between man and woman. Yet even in her pursuit of symmetry, she is fickle, and in her whim, she betrays her own divine order."

You pass beneath the hanging lanterns, and their yellow fire warms your face in artificial light.

• > "What fate befalls the baroque man. The one declared perfected by the collective, when nature’s relentless shears carve from the eschaton’s cloth a finer variant still? What then, when the renaissance man supplants him? And what of those who cherished his form, who stood as silent witnesses to his exalted state, refusing to yield to progress unbound? Must they linger on the periphery, cast into exile from beauty’s ever-shifting throne?"

The weight of his question halts you, leaving your form half-illumined beneath the moon’s spectral gaze.

• > "What of their ego, when one more ideal is revealed? When the multitude, hungry, restless, abandons yesterday’s paragon for a newer vision, a fresh decree of perfection? All things exist in the eyes of those who bear witness, and within them, chaos finds shape, forging a tale born of shared perception. But the tale is never still. It is as the tides, losing and gaining logos as nature, in her endless striving, both raises and casts down crowned contenders, each believing themselves eternal. The collective deifies heroes but mourns them in turn, sculpting their expectations upon shifting sands, ever seeking the next triumphant form."

Your mind flings its probe into the blackened past, present, and the potentials of futures, seeking the elusive cipher within the scribe’s oversharing. What truth drives them, undressed and unrelenting, through the moonlit streets? Do they revel in the arrogance of nature’s, by means of onanism: an homage to her narcissistic indulgence? Or do they despair it, trembling before its ruthless hunger, bearing witness to royalty among rejects: a deity reduced to a prototype, discarded by the ceaseless appetite of the mother who births and devours without end?

Who are you? You demand.

Who are you really!?

But the scribe has gone silent, further deflated.

They shrink into the shadows, disappointed by your lack of insight.

Part ??? A Slip Back into the Authorial World

The alarm jolted Rory awake, its harsh sound cutting through the night. Groggy and disoriented, he squinted at the glowing numbers. 4:00 AM. Without questioning it, he swung his legs out of bed, his mind still held captive by the scribe’s monologue.

He began to brush his teeth, comb his hair with his fingers, and pull on his Planet VHS branded smock over a crusty hoodie six weeks overdue for a wash.

His mind still synthesizing the implications.

Envy manifests as the desperate attempt to inhabit the shadow of greatness. The ONISM MAN, feeble and clinging, idolizes the past: not in reverence, but in arrogance, believing himself superior to the men who shaped it. Armed with the stolen fruits of history, he deludes himself into thinking he could surpass these figures, oblivious to the reality that he is merely perched on the shoulders of giants. He does not comprehend that his fantasies of domination are nothing but a coward’s refuge, hollow and pathetic in their lack of self-awareness, a testament to his inability to build a future worthy of the legacy he exploits.

He had to tell Carrie.

She’d needed to know.

He’d pop upstairs before walking to the bus top. Fuck it. He’d call in sick. A noise outside grabbed his attention, and he drew the curtain to see the source of the commotion.

Then it all began to dissolve, folding inward like a burning polaroid. His footing was no longer his own. Sand swirled through cracks in the concrete of his thoughts, each grain muttering a truth he could not grasp.

Carrie. where was she?

The moon, which should’ve been the sun, screamed at him like he’d peaked in on something private.

Where was Carrie?

Should she be asleep in her bed, cocooned in her childhood? Or had she ascended into that eternal, merciless arena, locked in a ceaseless clash with Walt Disney, Andrew Carnegie, J.P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, Henry Ford, and Cornelius Vanderbilt? Titans of Original Sin, their shadows stretching infinitely, consuming all light.

No, that didn’t make sense. She was just a child. But his mind screamed otherwise. She wasn’t just a child. she was something else now.

More crow than kid, her wings blackened with the weight of some incomprehensible pact. She had pleased the King. He had stopped her ascent to the All. Immortalized in Echo’s Blackened Pond.

And so he became frozen. Unable to leave his room. Unable to seek the truth in the chaos.

Potential became a prison.

He tried to capture his thoughts, flowing like a holy spirit, that feverish mania, but instead of staying in his mind, each anxiety rendered before him a new reality. Unstable and unrelenting—replacing each step with a vibrant shade of hell or a desaturated glimpse of heaven.

She was either upstairs asleep or she was stuck in an eternal battle with titans of industry who fought for dominion over reality’s new meta-narrative.

Or worse.

She was dead.

Or better?

No worse.

He pulled the curtain closed, afraid of the flickering images now flashing in the moonlight spilling across his basement floor. He plugged his ears against the sound of his mom’s clients' joyous ruckus.

No matter the truth, reality could not be repaired.

Rory sees, without using his eyes, Carrie—or perhaps someone who merely resembles her—descending a hill as black as oil. In her hands, she holds a joyous treasure, slightly larger than a gold bar, which she clutches tightly to her chest. She leaps from stone to stone across the rocky terrain, seemingly indifferent to the danger beneath her feet.

She’s speaking into it, like telling secrets to a lightning bug. Her voice distinct, familiar, yet not quite her own, like a damn good impression of his sister says “No, no no, Mr. Krow. That isn’t how it’s supposed to go! I – well, don’t tell anyone okay – but I read the script when Mr.X wasn’t looking. He left it out. Just right there on the desk!”

From between her hands a high-pitched cawing protested her villainy.

“I know! I know! I shouldn’t have done it. But what was I supposed to do? I was so hungry. I just had to read it.”

Caw Caw!

“Well… not so much. It was more like loose notes. Like his plan for improvising?”

Cuh-caw!!

Carrie, or whoever she was, came to a stop teetering on a slick black boulder. Poised as if to leap to the next rock a body’s length away. She looked as if she was considering something. Something mischievous.

The precious object in her hand began to vibrate. As is trying to generate enough energy to leap from her hand. She tightened her grip on it and held it to her mouth.

“I can show you if you like.”

“No! No you didn’t!” Screeched the teeny tiny crow.

Carrie laughed loudly, the sound ringing through the air before faltering into a breathless gasp as she slipped on the wet rock. Her arms flailed for balance, and the vibrating object in her hand seemed alive, reacting to her misstep.

The rock was no fan of thievery. Perhaps enlisted by the Mysterious Mr. X's lawyers, it began to challenge her center of gravity. It rolled and shifted, gathering up the darkened water around her until she was flung into the air, hanging momentarily like Wile E. Coyote, before disappearing beneath the blackened depths.

Rory followed.

Amid the suffocation of what might be files, folders, and binders of what was true in the beginning, is true now, and will be true without end, it was revealed that all that could be known was accessible only by analogy.

So it was that Rory was pinned to the floor of his basement. Held down by thumb of epiphanies without end.

His mind felt erratic!

His attention like fleeting fingers along the cardstock truths of the universe, letting out a rapid flick-flick-flick, followed by a soft thud as the deck came together.

Lit by panic, he scoured the depths for her body. Below, the murk concealed structures that loomed. Hulking iron shapes jutted up. The skeletal remains of factories. A broken assembly line lay dormant, its conveyor belt looped and tangled around aquatic plants, its rusted rollers whispering of production lines that once churned relentlessly.

Scattered among these titans of decay were objects of greed and ambition: vaults split open to reveal coins corroded green by water, briefcases bursting with soaked and shredded contracts, and gilded statues of nameless magnates, their faces eroded into anonymity. A fleet of sunken machinery. Rears, typewriters, cash registers… all swayed in the watery gloom.

There was no Carrie. No teeny baby Crow. Just decay.

Rory moved deeper, his heart beating in time with the waves. Beneath the dark waters, the stolen script rested, its edges twisted and warped. When he touched the soaked pages, a cold sensation shot through his hand, like the needles of a tattoo gun. And on his skin was carved the secrets of the pages. On his flesh he read:

Cyrille asks Krow four questions, each leading to her advice. Advice that she insists will be a birthday present. Her perspective comes from having encountered the Twisted Beings as an outsider—someone who did not witness their actions unfolding in real time. She brought a gift, but change her mind. Fearing it wasn’t good enough. You see, her advice has evolved; originally, she emphasized the importance of forgiving those who seem incomprehensible. However, after her encounter with the Twisted Beings, she realizes the gift she once offered must be redesigned.

Krow is alarmed and says that he does not wish to speak of the Twisted Beings. He knows of their danger and does his best to avoid them at all costs. Acknowledging them, he fears, would drive him mad, and he worries he could never forgive them once he truly understood what they were.

The next page is looser. Written an erratic way. Hard to render. What was legible looked like:

The first four questions.

There are a few locations filled with Dark Energy where Cyrille can’t explore. Otherwise, the level is open, with enemies in small numbers.

When you find a dark energy, Cyrille can open it, and you fight the twisted beings.

Then you see a story about the Krow.

After completing all four, Krow repeats the same mistakes—despairing, lying, making a pact with the Twisted Beings, and ultimately committing murder.

Outline for The First Question

Cyrille: “I’m sorry Krow, my question has led to another question.” (derogatory)

Krow (trying to sound cool) “My past is complex. Abstract. And unreliable to someone not from my reality. It’s far too mundane for some people’s taste.”

Cyrille “Oh no, nothing like that. I was just curious about the geography. Could you point to me the EXACT location where were you the first time you realized that tomorrow maybe not be like today?”

Krow says “The places I first realized not all milk was sweet.” He points to the Proto Soul. “My Mother… wasn’t around much. The woman who raised me was not what I was promised…”

“Ah, well, that’s very sad. I’m sorry, Mr. Krow. You are a rather strange fellow, but you aren’t exceptionally horrible.”

Olexa (Fairy or something) “Hey, can I ask the next question? I’ll tell you why later.”

Cyrille “Well, I suppose that would be all right. There isn’t a custom for this.”

Krow “Wait a second. I was promised a good here! An ultimate question. You told me that if you asked me them you could give me a special gift. Is her question going to help find the ultimate question, for my special gift?”

Cyrille “Oh Mr. Krow, you do fret. All will be well. I trust Olexa and know her quite well. I’m sure whatever she asks will be useful!”

In the margins near his rib Rory read the note: It’s the story of Krow almost dying when he arrived in a world he wasn’t prepared for. He had grown up on myth and failed to accept reality as it was.

The second Question

Olexa:

“Where were you when first realized that something wasn’t as you felt it should be?”

Krow: “Quite the question. It’s striking. Has character. What do you hope to learn by this? Very well... fuck it. I’ll take you there. You seem the type to like the macabre.”

Scene Premise: Nila El Amin is dying is terrified of dying. She fears that she’ll never see her husband and children again. She screws over a coworker and lies to him and promises him an Original Win. An elusive myth everyone in Nila El Amin’s reality’s is obsessed with. They all desire it.

Naila lies to Krow about who is Yuzi. A Man who is in love with her. She promises him a Digital Soul Vessel. A way to exist outside of your physical body. And it would prove his research of finally proving that existence of the human soul.

In the margin’s poor handwriting says: Dream sequence??????

The Third Question

Something like: When did you realize death existed? I want to see how you came to accept it.

Note to set designer: This is the story of how Alex moved Carrie, and she died. Make it tragic and horrifying as fuck. It’s a true tragedy.

The entire time Krow insists that he does not recall this. This doesn’t make sense. None of this makes sense. That’s my sister. That boy has hope. He was not me. How did she get there!? By what act did I move her to a reality where she knows the despair of existing in place twice at once!? Filled with memories of two brothers. One who was hope, and the other who was despair. She forgets the hope.

This is all very subtle and told with strange carvings of people. Maybe a puppet show? Music video?

Like stations of the cross but about this reality?

Four Question

“Where did you realize that life was unfair?”

Dream? The story of Krow having a friend who isn’t a super good friend. (We never show Alexander.)

This is the story of Krow stealing his friend’s identity. And taking on his best traits. He is Aaron, and he is Michael.

After this Cyrille asks: ????

Cyrille uses Epiphany to break down barriers where she finds scenes of the Krow. They’re always things you just read and put together. Like Krow is there, and there are people you can talk to in any order that reveals dialogue between them.

Obviously not a script but the embryo of a narrative, the pages showed a work in progress.

Each connection revealed another, rendering the previous insight both complete and inadequate. The truth, whatever that mercurial force may be in essence, had flashed its privates and revealed that direct sight too was merely an analogy.

It was all so loud. So triumphant. So damning to all that came before it.

But what was it?

Was it something good, or bad?

Did it give things meaning, or strip them of all meaning?

Was it anxiety, turned inside out? No. That wasn’t it. He couldn’t move. Without anxiety all he’d do is move. Was it anxiety himself, come to squat inside his heart, to never to leave?

He had experienced what they all desired. To be multiplicity. To experience all potential. When the wave had waned and the experience began to recede, Rory saw that it was a feature, not a bug, that the mind was fated to marry into knowing through veils, shadows, and metaphor.

A kindness. A mercy.

The high remained a subtle glow on his limbs, and a warm light in his chest. He was thankful and frightened that he would not only exist within one reality.

What has transpired? Mused Kisage X as the film before his dry eyes flickered and faded, the spinning reel of dreams coming to an end.

The dark cave, now saturated in a deep maroon, was silent except for the sound of the film reel sputtering out of control, its subtle flapping barely perceptible over the mechanical whir of the projector.

He blinked, the toothpicks that had stood like Atlas between his eyelids had splintered and fallen to the ground.

“What happened?” Asked Kisage X to the Master. But there is no one in the blackened corners of the dark room.

“What was that I saw?”

The silence answers.

After prying his atrophied legs from his seat, Kisage made his way to the projector. He reset the dangling film to its starting position and hit play. But the film that played contained no boy named Rory, no masturbating scribes—just superheroes and quips.

Perplexed, panicked, and jonesing for a “cigar”, he began to scour the collection of film reels, searching for one that might contain the scene fresh in his mind.

The film had a quality he could not place in any specific genre. There was an of unbridled air of new wave authenticity. A sense of place he couldn’t well… place.

The characters were peculiar. A boy who dreamed of masturbating philosophers, awakening to a profound sense of dread that his sister had been transformed into a crow. Or perhaps, by some pun, it was a kind of murder—in the sense of multiple crows.

She became a crow by way of macabre cosplay, gluing the feathers of a dead crow to her body. She was a crow by the act of throwing her voice onto a tiny crow she held in her hands. Yet, the crow was also the embodiment of a movie script.

Did it make sense? Was it any good?

Kisage X did not know. But he was compelled to know more.

There was also the gender-swapped Crow named Krow in the framing device, in which a Julie Andrews type, armed with a fairy or perhaps a cute demon, attempted to find him a birthday gift that related to undoing childhood abuse through something called Twisted Beings.

Then there were Tennessee William’s esque existence of a character who was saturating every scene without ever appearing on screen. The elusive ONISM MAN.

Who would create such utter confusion?

Had he, Kisage X, conjured these images? He wondered… was this his story? Had his unconscious created it as a sort of trauma response to binge watching Hollywood excrement?

It had been so well formed. So complete.

Edited. Scored.

And then he remembered a crucial plot detail. One that caused profound distress.

His name had been dropped.

It was his script that had been stolen by the little girl who fell into the black well. The one who became the crow. The one who was murdered. The one who killed herself. The one who was two different girls altogether but also no one at all.

That little thief. That unholy little monster had violated his private property and plucked an idea from his unconscious and presented it to him without the effort or need of “cigars.”

By whose authority had she entered his mind?

By whose authority had she taken his idea, still an embryo, and made it play in his mind like a finished film?

The implication terrified him.

A gravely laugh. The sound of a six shooter. And the clank of a glass caught Kisage’s attention.

He spun, heart rate raised, and came face to face with something. What was it? An entity of some sort? With black skin and a large iris for a face.

At the center of its chest was a triangle. Its body lined with eyes. Or maybe lenses.

Its body, tall and imposing was organic yet left the distinct impression of gears and machinery.

“So,” says the imposing figure. “Who is she?”

Kisage was speechless.

“C’mon. Go ahead. Say it. Who is she?”

The reflective surface from which the entity spoke had no mouth, yet somehow the entity looked pained. Like it might cry.

Finally, after much effort, Kisage X managed to shout “who are you!”

“That’s not the question.” The entity replied. “Who I am doesn’t matter. Who is SHE?“

“She.” Kisage X repeated quietly. “The one who stole the script from my unconscious? Who is she? You must know. Who!?”

Its face moved like it was taking a photo.

“That’s The Question.”

Who was she? That red-headed, blonde-haired thief. Well, thought Kisage X, that could certainly wait. The question that concerned him now was about his location. He had believed himself to be in Africa, in a cave, studying with a mystic of some sort, seeking an alchemical solution to an internal problem. Insight to a lifetime of rotting.

Yet here he was, without a spiritual master, in a dark room, with none other than a shadowy being who insisted on his frame of the situation.

Kisage X was a man of strong will. Yet he felt himself being forced into a tiny 110 film stock frame where there was no room interpretation other than the direction of the one who asked the questions.

• > Who was she?
• > A child from a vision.
• > A child who had stolen an idea.
• > A child who had no name.

Kisage X shook his head, realizing that yet again his attention had been directed away from his concerns, and his thoughts framed by the being who stood before him.

He wrestled his attention away from the entity’s frame, as though pulling a blood-red steak from a dog, until he managed to confront his own pressing questions once more. How much time had passed since he was in Africa? How did he get from the cave to this dark room? Had Asuka finished his film? Had it already premiered? Had his wife received his letter of explanation?

The child had stolen something he didn’t realize belonged to him—a fully formed set of ideas, large scenes, and impressions that inspired. She took them, and instead of treating them with care, she fell headfirst into—

• > No. No!

The cave! Africa! The movie!

This is what he cared about. Not the dream, nor how he somehow knew that the boy named Rory sat before his computer, unable to put into words what he had experienced. Despite his best efforts to capture the truth, all he would be able to put out into the world was a lie. Because no artist, no poet, no musician, nor filmmaker could properly express the epiphany that—

• > Fuck!
• > Fuck you.

I want to face my own concerns! Kisage X demanded his attention.

But his frame of reality had been taken over by the entity before him, and he was forced to accept it, just as he had been forced to accept the frames of James Cameron, Anthony and Joe Russo, J.J. Abrams, James Wan, Colin Trevorrow, and Chris Buck and Jennifer Lee.

“Go on.” Insisted the Entity. “Do it.”

Kisage X shook his head. He couldn’t. He had nothing to offer.

The entity cackled its gravel laugh.

With a voice like asphalt, it began to shout, “Kisage X, you’ve sold out. You used to be in control. You used to have goddamn vision—millennium vision. But now you cede to spiritual masters. You run to myth. You beg for someone to tell you what to do. And for what? You can’t even interpret your own fucking dreams anymore. Now, you bald motherfucker, tell me who the girl is. Tell me what you saw!”

And in a swift motion, the entity drew a shining red revolver and placed it to Kisage’s head.

“Don’t think.”  

And he pulled the trigger.

The hammer fell with a metallic click, igniting the wrath within the chamber. A violent spark bloomed casting brief illumination on the crimson steel. The bullet spun into motion, a blur of raw molten intent. It screamed forth, tracing an irreversible line of destruction.

Contained within the sensation of the metallic message penetrating his skull was a pain that contained the quality of eternity. Slow, sharp, and forever.

For as long as Kisage Yosuke could remember, he had always been a surfer of sorts. Riding waves of inspiration, waves of despair. It was clear to him that resisting these waves was like resisting gravity. Nothing could be done except to endure, and complaining wouldn’t get him out of the wave any faster. So when the waves were high, he’d seize ideas with fervour. But when the waves loomed over his head, threatening to pull him into the gloom and doom of reality’s critique of an artist’s life, he’d hold his breath, knowing he’d surface again before long.

And now he found himself riding a wave unlike any he'd encountered before. A wave that surged and plunged him below the depths where he witnessed his body from angles never caught by mirrors, or by the camera he commanded. He remained below the depths for mere moments, gathering energy, before bursting force.

The ascent was exhilarating, a rush of ideas and energy that pulled him toward the crest, where the eschaton glimmered with possibility. But just as suddenly, the wave turned, hurtling him downward into the depths of despair, where everything felt heavy, muted, and suffocating. This was the familiar cycle, the relentless rise and fall of his inner tides, and he knew there was no fighting it. All he could do was hold on—ride the highs, endure the lows—and trust that eventually, the wave would carry him back to calmer waters.

It had been suggested throughout his life that he was afflicted with Sōutsu-byō. A sort of mood disorder. But he knew that the wave existed outside of him just as much as it did inside of him.

He observed how it governed those around him. Upon deeper reflection, he developed a theory, often hinted at in his work, suggesting that overlapping currents pushed and pulled different types of people along. Thus, when one person’s tide had risen, another might be drowned by the same water.

In this moment that was eternity, in this end-of-life scenario, Kisage saw something that brought him peace.

Elsewhere, those who rode the same wave in parallel to him had similarly pursued this line of inquiry. To plot the wave on a grid, to categorize who belonged to the peak, the trough, or the zero crossing, would provide an insight into nature that could not be explored by traditional philosophy or science. Such a task would require the mythologizing of a sensation often explained away by psychological studies.

Removed from the flesh, he felt no shame letting his mind wander outside the scientific jail. Unbridled, and with his third eye wide open, Kisage X saw kindred souls, gliding upon the same inexorable wave, their movements synchronized across the infinite expanse of time and space. Beneath the radiance of a sun that seemed to smile with the tender warmth of summer after rain, his parallel companions appeared illuminated, their forms woven into the tapestry of existence itself. Together, they ascended and descended, their lives bound by the enigmatic currents that shaped them, a mystery neither fully understood nor entirely revealed.

It was as if Kisage X existed within the dream of a timeless ocean, where the waves whispered secrets in languages only the soul could decode. When he thrived, others thrived too- parallel souls surfing in synchrony, their presence layered like the currents beneath the surface. But within this intricacy, death revealed an ultimate divergence: the wave that carried them all, with its ethereal rhythm, would eventually scatter them. Their paths, once harmonious, would part, drifting into realms unknown, leaving only the faint echo of a shared journey behind.

He raised a hand in silent farewell- a gesture light as a dropping leaf- to the one who mirrored him, gliding close by. With tender resolve, he acknowledged the boy, a sailor's son, embarking on life's first journey – himself in another reality. To his daughter, hidden just beyond the horizon, he sent a quiet kiss, her presence softly woven into the dream of fleeting connections.

The sun receded behind the veil of her sister moon, casting a transient shadow over the Soul Space’s boundless expanse, and Kisage found himself alone with the quiet rock. No longer X, no longer bound by the abstract arithmetic of mood disorders. Just a witness, a passing observer.

In shared solitude, he and the rock sipped an unspoken understanding, a connection as delicate as a fresh web. Together, their contemplation stretched toward the unreachable, where the stage was set for a drama beyond human grasp: a silent war of frames, a battle for the soul of Hermes—messenger, trickster, and carrier of truths. Who was his master? Who would mold him into the evolving ideal of humanity, a silhouette framed by shifting tides?

Yosuke leaned back, fingers interlaced behind his head, allowing himself to drift in the boundless Soul Space. The faces of famous and infamous creators *those architects of his mental landscape* remained veiled, their identities dissolved into the abstract currents that shaped his thoughts. He reluctantly owed much to their influence, yet his heart had never knelt at the altar of their names.

He remained untouched by the weight of their legacy, impervious to the allure of the Current Man.

Cave Man, Renaissance Man, Modern Man. It made no difference to him what was in fashion. He’d find the angle he thought beautiful, and he’d highlight it with his camera just the same.

A warmth came over him. Stillness at last. The wave had found it’s resting place. There was nothing of beauty of observe here.

Yet the tides had not yet settled in the fractured version of himself that had pulled the trigger. The storm within that iteration had amassed a strange energy, swelling beyond what the human heart could contain. It expanded, inexorably, into realms not his own. A transgression that shattered the veil separating realities, allowing his fury to seep into every crevice of existence. Probing, like a stray wind searching for open windows, his anger crept between the cracks of consciousness, reaching vessels unknown, until every possible host was found.

The view from the Soul Space provided perspective. Insights into his parallels.

All misery comes from the desire to frame, not to highlight beauty, but to bludgeon reality with your own will.

So as the gravely voice of his murderer began to bitch “Who is she!?” Taunting at first, but with eternity, nagging like a toddler. Kisage began to realize something.

He had become something like a Camera. The eyesight for a director, probing reality for the perfect image. Seeking among the various objects, themes, and people, a vision to finish a film. So that whoever it was that controlled this intruding force, might come to gain some insight. But Kisage had nothing to offer. No more desire to create. He enjoyed the stillness. He preferred the absence of the wave. But a new force, a new pole, existed in it’s place. A parallel version of him that sought to capture and control without letting anything go on the cutting room floor.

He had become like a camera’s lens, an instrument for a silent director, scouring the vast tapestry of existence for the perfect motif. This unseen force, relentless and invasive, sought to distill meaning from the kaleidoscope of reality, assembling fragments into a narrative only it could comprehend. Yet Kisage had nothing to give, no vision left to craft, no yearning to sculpt beauty or chaos into form. The stillness enveloped him, a temple untouched by waves of creation or criticism. But where stillness once reigned, a new polarity emerged: a fractured self, a version of him enthralled by dominion,

desperate to capture and contain every thread of existence, leaving nothing to slip through the editor’s blade.

“Who is she? Who!? Who!?”

What moves the camera? Is it the search for truth, or the fleeting allure of beauty? Is the camera an instrument of revelation, or one of concealment? Each frame holds its own answer, and each movement its distinct purpose. In this suspended moment, in the liminal space before the dawn of a new era, where Kisage, the moon, and the specter of his demise observe the all out war for memetic male supremacy, Kisage X catches sight of the camera operator. A youth, scarcely nineteen, with fine brown hair and a jaw line shaped by determination, his teeth clenched in fury. He does not direct the scene from a safe distance, nor does he wield authority from a director’s chair- he commands the narrative from behind a gun, each furious demand shaping the perception of those who encounter this elusive entity. The quiet insistence of his presence echoes the form of a world in flux, as though the chaos itself were a canvas awaiting the stroke of his bold rebellion.

The entity controlled by the boy possessing the camera grabs hold of Kisage and lifts him high by the neck, aiming to threaten. But death is no concern here. The boy fails to understand the purpose of this place, the function of the liminality.

His shouted obsession reverberates through the void, bending and twisting with the substance of this realm until the words themselves fracture and reform. The phrase morphs in the echoes, becoming less a demand and more a question steeped in desperation: “Who is she?” transforms, splintering into “Where’s she?”

Here it was hard to empathize. Here worries of locality seemed so distance and alien.

“You ask me,” began Kisage. “Because you don’t know who she is. Or where she is.”

The entity didn’t react.

“You think I hold the answers,” Kisage spoke, his voice measured, the weight of his words echoing like muted gunshots. “Because you see in me a reflection of your own torment—a shard of familiarity in a realm where meaning dissolves into abstraction. Is that it? You and I, both swept by the same tide, yet you drifted toward forbidden shores. And now, you linger in the aftermath, unable to discern whether losing her drove you to the edge, or if standing on the precipice birthed the idea of her in the first place.”

He paused. Then, leaning forward as if daring the boy to grasp the enormity of his own question, Kisage continued.

“You’ve become entangled in the paradox—a yearning that spirals inward, feeding on itself. Is she real? Or is she the mirage conjured by desire? You don’t know. You’re not seeking her... you’re seeking the shape of her absence, the shadow of a memory you can barely claim as your own.”

The void seemed to contract around them, each word bending the substance of the realm, shaping it like strokes on an infinite canvas. “So tell me,” Kisage’s voice dropped to a whisper, the edges of his tone sharp and fractured. “Did you pierce the veil to find her? Or did she only exist once the veil was torn? You’re crowdsourcing the truth from the fabric of an illusion. Is that your game? Your purpose?” Then a phrase came to him. “ONISM, weaponized loneliness.”

In a swift motion as if to kiss him, the entity drew Kisage close, their faces mere millimeters apart. The entiy’s face shifted, its texture rippling like a blackened pond, disturbed by a skipping rock. Reflected in the entity’s gaze, Kisage’s own image twisted and fractured, dissolving into a puzzling montage.

A man with hair like embers, bound in chains. Beside him, a young woman, her resemblance to the nameless child unsettlingly familiar, dabbed sweat from his brow. Another woman, her golden hair catching a faint, sourceless light, worked salve into his blistered skin with hands both tender and methodical. Names flickered and vanished, ghostly and incomplete - Carrie, Allison, Fortune, Sammy, Sarah, Asuka. Mother. And strangely enough… Father.

The vision swirled with a corrosive empathy, a toxic bloom spreading vines of doubt and anguish across the Soul Space’s expanse. Kisage felt the weight of confusion settle like poison in his chest. What belonged to the entity? What belonged to the chained man of burning eyes? And what, if anything, was Kisage’s own? The lines between memory, fantasy, and reflection twisted into a labyrinth of torment, each path leading only to more questions, more shadows.

The entity seemed to tremble, its grip tightening as if grasping for clarity, yet the blackened surface of its obsession yielded only more fragments, more ghosts. Kisage stared into the abyss, and for a moment, he could almost hear their voices-pleading, accusing, longing-before they dissolved, swallowed by the void.

The well casted figures retreated into the dark.

From the blackened surface a faint figure began to emerge, quiet as an ink stroke settling on parchment. A child appeared, her hair a strange division of gold and red, as if two sunsets had whispered over her crown. She moved with a rhythm both hesitant and deliberate, as if skating on the idea of ice. Her gliding tracing an unseen melody until she stood close, her presence fragile. The perfect closeup.

“This is the unholy thief who dared to steal from you,” the entity murmured, its voice rippling like wind across a still pond. The blackened surface shimmered faintly, as though uneasy under the weight of its own reflection. “The magnum opus you will never create. She is the echo of what was taken from you, a wound you could mold into retribution. You have power here, Kisage. Wield it. Do not falter. Now, Kisage - find her!”

The mad man directing the scene had it all wrong, Kisage realized.

Like a hundred sudden summers unfurling their petals in tandem, Kisage felt the veil of the story shift—not torn, but lifted, as if by unseen hands. The moon had vanished, and the sun emerged in victory. The child was no thief, no villain at all. Her presence was fittingness itself.

She was the pivot of the narrative’s harmony, the secret hinge upon which the whole world turned.

Caught in his own vanity, Kisage had failed to see it before: she was the revealer, the Holy Thief who stole not to destroy but to illuminate. Her act was a mirror, reflecting the locked chambers of his unconscious. In her theft, she had unearthed the quiet power buried deep within him—the place where his thoughts twisted into knots, hidden shadows pulling strings he had never known existed.

And now, in the light of those hundred summers blooming, Kisage found the words the Entity could never grasp, the truth neither harsh nor forgiving but simply alive. Like a key slipped into an invisible lock, his understanding opened something vast and unknowable, stretching beyond the obsidian waves into something brighter, softer—something whole.

But how could he convey the truth? How could he disarm the madness without shattering the fragile balance? Kisage held no dominion—only the comedic clarity of a fool who glimpsed the divine.

• > An Original Winner in the presence of one who insisted he was a sinner.

On the twentieth anniversary of Kisage Yosuke's passing, the Hidden Frames NYC film society, known for its reverence of rare and unusual works, held a solemn screening of his final collaboration with Asuka Furutani. The room, heavy with a quiet worship, bore witness to a legacy of dreams painted in shadow and light. Kisage, whose name had lingered in obscurity within his homeland, had found in death a resonance that eluded him in life, domestically and abroad.

The Kisage X renaissance began quietly. His kaiju films, once dismissed, now immortalized- were gathered by Criterion and presented to an audience newly awakened to his peculiar genius. The flicker of his visions danced across streaming platforms, his more outlandish scenes replayed endlessly on glowing handheld screens, fragments of his imagination immortalized in the ceaseless scroll of modern life. A TikTok sensation.

The world, at last, tilted its gaze toward Kisage X, who had painted his dreams upon the canvas of midnight, his brushstrokes chaotic yet deliberate, part master, primarily savant.

Kisage’s final film was not solely his creation but a collaborative effort spanning a decade with his righthand muse, Furutani Asuka. Despite being promoted as Kisage’s last work, the project carried Asuka’s unmistakable influence. Her progression to the director’s chair was both natural and bold, built on years of experience fixing troubled productions helmed by directors other than Kisage X. Known for stepping in under pressure, Asuka became an essential part of Kisage’s creative process, blending her skills as an actor and problem-solver to bring structure to his chaotic style.

Asuka, now in her fifties, was as beautiful as ever. Having aged gracefully with little to no plastic surgery (depending on who you ask) she had departed from her typical role as a sex symbol by shaving her head and playing the Maitreya Anti-Buddha, the final character written for her by her dear friend Kisage X.

The film’s release sparked a peculiar trend, as women across the cultural landscape sought to emulate her bold aesthetic, misunderstanding that the allure they pursued was rooted not in the absence of hair but in the depth of her natural form. Her performance captured a timeless essence, blending character with revelation, much like Kisage's midnight fever dreams.

After the film had played for a packed theater, Asuka was brought on stage by Lillian Wu and Art Goldberg, the film societies founding members.

Her presence made the stage lighting look dim, and the two hosts look like poorly cast props.

“Asuka,” Wu's voice broke the silence, the microphone responding with a faint hum of feedback. The sound team adjusted quickly, and she began again, her tone measured yet warm. “It’s an honor to have you here at Hidden Frames NYC’s tribute to Kisage X.”

The room erupted in applause, filling the air with fleeting echoes.

Asuka bowed slightly, her hand resting lightly over her chest - a gesture of gratitude. Her words came softly, almost weightless. “Thank you. It is impossible to imagine missing this moment. Kisage would deserve remembrance even if there were only the two of you here.”

Wu and Goldberg shared a brief laugh, their exchange carrying the energy of familiarity.

Goldberg leaned closer to his microphone, the bold stripes of his suit an homage to the obscure Kisage X character “Daddy.”

His voice was steady, contemplative, as he spoke. “I want to echo Lillian’s gratitude. It’s truly remarkable to have you here. I wonder... would you share something with us tonight? A memory, perhaps? Something simple, an image that lingers. There are countless interviews where you’ve talked about your early days with Kisage X, but is there something you’ve kept close, something the world hasn’t yet seen?”

Asuka consulted the high ceilings, her words poised and deliberate. “The night before I stepped into the role of director for Maitreya Anti-Buddha, I visited Yosuke in his room.” She paused, a bashful smile tugging at the corner of her lips. “Think that’s the first time I’ve ever called him Yosuke in public. He always had that cigar. Fat like a tree trunk. Stinking of burning plastic. That night, I went to him seeking clarity, desperate to understand what we were truly shaping in Ethiopia. I asked him about my character, and he said…”

She paused, her voice shifting effortlessly into Kisage’s measured tone, capturing his enigmatic presence with surprising precision. “You play the desert. The Sand Witch. Additionally, you play the Original Sinner seeking a spell of salvation or damnation, depending on the viewers perspective. This character is the Maitreya Anti-Buddha. The one with the potential to be the rabbit who might cast itself into the fire to feed the hungry traveller. One at peace with being an animal, you’ve recently begun to question if you have free will. If you choose to die to feed the hungry man, was this really your choice, or did the hunger impose this choice on you? You descend into madness. You find a third path. An Original Sin. Your nirvana the assurance that you are truly free.”

Asuka let the impression fade, her own voice returning as the audience hung on every word. “And then, would you believe it? Kisage, in one swift motion, ate his cigar. A lit cigar, half-smoked, swallowed whole. It was his way of declaring he was done smoking, but it was so absurd, so dramatic—so perfectly Kisage.”

Her smile softened, and the room seemed to breathe in unison, captivated by the vividness of the memory, the depth of her story painting Kisage as someone both impossibly theatrical yet undeniably authentic.

“Wow!” shouted Goldberg, clapping enthusiastically, his expression a mix of awe and unchecked excitement. “Now, tell me, did you realize that Kisage X would be murdered that night? Was eating the cigar maybe a sign?”

The room seemed to hold its collective breath, Asuka’s discomfort palpable as Lillian Wu shot Goldberg a sharp look—a reprimand masked in politeness. Yet, before the tension could settle, Wu herself leaned into the moment, her tone conspiratorial, as though unaware of the weight of her words. “Oh! Maybe he was trying to warn you? To tell you something was wrong. Like, maybe the description of the film wasn’t what he intended to make at all—but instead, it was some sort of clue. An attempt to ask for help!”

Goldberg nodded fervently, his excitement overriding basic decorum. “Oh my god! The killer was in the room with you. See, I always thought that Maitreya Anti-Buddha was a flawed masterpiece. I get what you were going for. But I knew that if Kisage X had made it, it would’ve been entirely different. But now that I know it was a code and not a script, it makes total sense. This was never the movie he intended to make at all.”

Eyes wide with misplaced enthusiasm, Wu doubled down. “It was never the film he was going to make. Wow. Just devastating. That makes me wonder—do you feel like you failed Kisage? Do you feel as if you’re somehow responsible? Do you think that your inexperience as a director caused you to see a plea for help as just a script?”

The atmosphere grew heavier with every word, their speculations teetering on the edge of absurdity, their fanboy fervor eclipsing any sense of social awareness. Asuka’s expression remained composed, but the subtle tightening of her jaw spoke volumes. The conversation had strayed far from meaningful reflection, spiralling instead into a spectacle of overzealous theories that turned tragedy into entertainment.

Caught off guard and momentarily unable to gather her thoughts, Asuka remained silent as the two hosts egged each other on, their speculations becoming increasingly outlandish. Finally, after what felt like an eternity—but was likely closer to twenty minutes—Goldberg brightly announced it was time to transition to the Q&A session.

Hands shot up throughout the theatre, a sea of overzealous enthusiasm that only added to the ever-mounting absurdity of the evening. Wu picked a boy from the front row, who all but exploded out of his seat, snatching the microphone like the last limited addition Funk Pop at the local Gamestop. His hair was an untamed mess, with streaks of red that shimmered under the lights as though to complement the blush overtaking his acne-riddled face. His voice cracked as he declared, with the bravado of someone who absolutely shouldn’t be given a microphone, “Asuka, I love you. I’ve always loved you. You’re my dream woman!”

The boy started to drop to one knee. Thankfully, the usher stepped in, hoisting him up by the armpit with all the grace of someone removing a particularly stubborn piece of gum from their shoe. “Just a joke,” the boy mumbled, his voice small now as he stuffed what looked suspiciously like a ring box back into his pocket.

Lillian Wu chimed in “Yes! We all love Asuka! But do you have a question other than ‘will you marry me?’” The crowd erupted in laughter, the kind that made Asuka wonder if the universe was playing an elaborate prank on her.

The boy froze, his mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water, the confidence of his initial proclamation now shattered. Asuka, feeling the weight of the evening’s earlier accusations still pressing down on her, managed to muster a thin veneer of kindness. “Are you okay?” she asked, her tone teetering between genuine concern and a silent plea for divine intervention. “What’s your name?”

“William,” he beamed, as if her acknowledging his existence had just validated his entire life.

Asuka forced a smile, the kind you give when you’re trying very hard not to scream into the void. “Well, William, good to meet you. Let’s try and keep the questions… about Kisage X films.” She glanced at Wu and Goldberg, silently daring either of them to push her patience any further.

The boy remained silent.

“Well, while he gets his words together, I’ve got another question.” Said Goldberg. “I keep going back to the details of the murder. The red revolver found at the scene. It bares an uncanny resemble to the red sword in the film –“

Asuka rose from her seat, the weight of the evening’s absurdity finally buckling the composure she had fought so hard to maintain. Her movements were deliberate, her presence suddenly immense, as though the air itself had turned heavier. Goldberg faltered, the smugness draining from his face. Lillian instinctively reached out, perhaps to soothe or to shield, but Asuka swept her hand aside with a sharp motion.

“William,” she said, her voice slicing through the tension as it pinned the boy in place. “What’s the question?”

The boy blinked, his earlier bravado now a distant memory. “Oh, uh…” he stammered, grappling for coherence. “In *1999: A Reality Odyssey*, there are a few things I didn’t quite get. Like, um, the Good Brother and the Bad Brother. Pretty Boy, especially—why is he sometimes a girl? And also—what really happened on New Year’s Eve?”

“I’m sorry,” she murmured, the words barely audible over the static of the microphone. Then, with a sudden finality, she let the mic fall from her hand.

The trail of tears she left behind slicked the floor, daring anyone to pursue her escape.

Amid the ruckus of the SoHo evening circus, where pedestrians performed their acrobatics alongside the chaotic choreography of cars parading up Greene Street, a voice pierced through the racket, soft yet and familiar. “Asuka.” She didn’t turn, didn’t acknowledge it, letting it vanish like a fleeting act under the kaleidoscope of New York lights.

“Asuka.” The voice insisted, following her for blocks.

She was unwilling to meet its maker. Whoever wanted her attention could fuck right off.

Every step she took was a quiet defiance against the shadow tailing her. The fan theory catastrophe, what a farce. Had soured her mood, already unpalatable from complications back home. Her agent had sworn no questions on Kisage’s death would surface. Ironclad in the contract, they said. Yet, as the whispered rumors slithered into the room like cigar smoke, it became clear that promises were as weightless as special effects.

Kisage’s name lingered in the air, an echo that refused to fade. Murder, suicide—how the authorities had dared to juggle these words, as though his death were a puzzle in Joseph H. Lewis thriller. The red gun, discovered across the room, bore only Kisage’s prints, a riddle tied to a hand frozen in rigor mortis, fingers curled as if gripping the phantom weight of a trigger.

The kind of death that left a stain, no matter how many times you scrubbed the memory. It clung to her, a dark ink spreading beneath the polished veneer of her resolve, as the cold SoHo night adopted the poetic cruelty of a haiku written in shadows.

What had come over them?

Goldberg and Wu were serious patrons of the arts by reputation. Yet suddenly the wind shifted, and she was on some juvenile Murderporn Podcast.

She found respite in the doorway of a closed Chinese Dumpling spot she once ate at with her fiancé, a different type of sad memory.

Tonight New York was filled with too many noir phantoms. Too many reasons to let her inner monologue wander to places she’d rather not go.

She mimed reaching for a pack of smokes and lighting them. The atmosphere too perfect to resist. A less director than Kisage would’ve said “Okay, Asuka. this isn’t just about lighting a cigarette. This is about owning the space without asking for permission. You’re not waiting for anyone. You’re not trying to be seen. But you will be seen, because you’re magnetic without trying.” Kisage on the other hand would’ve said

• > “It’s about the relief of the smoke. The tension has built all day. And when tension is relieved a woman looks her best.”

She couldn’t help but laugh at the thought.

She lived a thousand lives with that man. She made a thousand movies, or so it seemed. So many films within films. Audio dramas. So many meta motion pictures that the lines between what they did in real life and in the movies blurred together in her middle age.

“Asuka. It’s me.” Came a voice from a young Asian man with sharp facial features, high cheekbones, and intense eyes. His hair was styled to the length of his neck, with distinct angular bangs, razored at the edge.

Asuka puffed the fake smoke. The man was far more handsome than most of her fans. In her younger days, he could have been a leading man staring opposite of her or a J-rock musician she’d encounter at a late-night Tokyo party, where the myth of Tokyo’s drug laws was deconstructed through long white lines and needles. She was often an observer, never a participant.

She smiled instinctively. He just had that sort of face that makes a woman smile.

“You, huh?” She said, taking a step towards him.

He was leaning against a bus stop advertisement for a fragrance, looking like the 3-dimensional aspect of the ad.

“Yes. It is.”  He answered.

“Who exactly?”

He took a step an all leather step towards her and his face was lost in shadow, no longer lit by the bus stop light. He padded his pockets down, looking for a smoke. Coming up empty, he stepped over her question and asked his own “Can I bum one?”

“Am I that good of an actress?” she opened her hands and waved them like a jazz dancer. “Just a special effect. No real cigarette. Sorry.”

The man nodded deeply. “I should’ve known. You handled it well. My memorial.”

Asuka tightened her gaze and suddenly the man’s charm seemed dangerous.

“Oh, fuck off.” She laughed. Seriously done with it all.

• > “No. I’m him. Well, in a way.” He took a step forward, and something in his gate was uncanny. He tossed his hair back and the shine ping ponging off his forehead from a passing headlight screamed authenticity. “No longer X, though.” He chewed on the silence as if savoring the unboxing and continued. “Skipped over Y, my transformation was so great. Call me Kisage Z.”

You’re Michael J, teenage, quiet around adults, a loudmouth among piers, and an authority among weirdos. You’ve got a brother or a sister, doesn’t matter for this. Your dad’s a writer; your mom stays at home and tends to Simon(e) when they’re not in school. On today of all days you’ve had enough of empty threats, and realize it’s time for a show of force. So, you unlock your room, deadbolted four times from the inside to keep Simon(e) out when they’re losing their shit and shooting local birds and trying to blame it on you, you’ve got an out. How could I shoot a crow, Mom? I’m locked in my room. You’re clever, so you’ve cut holes in the door so you can see when the locks are engaged, and you’re methodical and maybe a little goofy, so you check in and out of your room with a little clipboard and pen so they believe you just incase Simon(e) learns how to lie. Anyway, you stomp down the stairs, making the picture frames of photos you took shake with each furious step, and you arrive at the kitchen. In one big step you cross to the stainless-steel refrigerator and throw upon the doors, sending the postcards and bills affixed by old magnets flying- a warning shot, and reach for the glass bottle of milk. Dad looks up from his word processor, mom looks up from Simon(e) who is hiding beneath her skirt hyperventilating, like you just came home with a good report card for the fifth year in a row.

You breath in reality knowing you’re about to break it and you turn over the milk painting the floor like a pornographer and you let out an erotic low-pitched moan just to make them flinch. To shock them that you know such things. But you know a lot of things from the internet. You’re an early adopter, and something of a notorious figure. Not that they’d ever know.

Then you let the milk bottle drop and purposefully don’t flinch as the glass projectiles fly in all directions. Your mom shields Simon(e) by closing her legs, and your dad covers his eyes. So, you’ve wounded reality. You did a good job. But it’s not broken. This is nothing a little explaining couldn’t repair. So. you go further. Behind you is the basement door, you toss it open, everyone still frozen in disbelief, and you jump to the bottom of the stairs where you walk along your dads collection of wine bottles, and your moms collection of washers and dryers, until you make it to the other side of the room where a bungee cord lays waiting for you. And just like you rehearsed a thousand times in your head, you loop it around your neck, and you fucking swing swing swing. You know it can’t kill you from the way you’ve knotted it, and you know your parents don’t know that. So, when dad and mom finally make it to the basement to see what the hell you’re up to they nearly die from surprise.

You kick your kicks dramatically as they try and get close. Striking your mom in the nose. Breaking it cleanly, blood flowing freely. Your dad is a lot bigger than you, so before long he’s tackled you and your flat beneath him. He quickly gets off you, alarmed that you’re aroused. Suddenly you feel shame, hot and cold at the same time, and explain that it’s from the rope, not from him holding you. It was the alure of sweet sweet release of death. But your words fall on deaf ears and he’s already crying worse than mom whose sporting a bleeding nose.

Reality is broken.

Reality is broken!!!

Step one.

Step won.

The Original Sin is step two.

The Holy Thief Whispers in your ear: X proceeds Y. Y risks diverging into a Why, which necessitates an A, causing a reboot of reality. But Z is the end of the line. Kisage Z is the crest of the archetypal wave. The dissipation of its points across realities and time at rest.

You try and explain this to the counselor, but your creative anxiety is too much for a normie like her to bear. You insist that reality is broken and the reason she can’t understand is because her sense making tools no longer function in the emergent landscape. She asks if you mean like opposite day. You scoff.

It’s not even that up is down. No, it’s that up and down are irrelevant concepts in a broken reality.

She asks you why you think this. If everything is okay at home.

Trying to not lose your shit, you take a deep breath and explain that you followed a tutorial.

• > The Original Sin tutorial.

VERRAformer knows everything. He figured out that reality is fragile. That if you just shake things up a bit you can tear it further and see into other realities through the holes. He got the idea of using Helix Waves from his muse.

The counselor still doesn’t get it.   

So you say with feigned patience: a pinhole camera is like a tiny magic box that takes pictures without a regular camera lens. Light goes through a super small hole and makes an upside-down picture inside the box. It works because light travels in straight lines, just like when you make shadow puppets with your hands.

She says you’re very smart. She asks if you’re good in school.

You remind her that VERRAformer is Michael K. You’re Michael J! Michael K. has a father who is a writer, a sibling with a name symbolic of Simon(e), and just like you he’s into the internet and computers and patterns and all sorts of stuff that a fucking dumb boomer fuck like her wouldn’t possibly get. The pattern is there! All you have to do is break the pattern in your life, and post about it on ONISM, and Michael K. will be able to find his missing girlfriend.

She asks if your father is a writer. You say yes.

She asks about your siblings problems and you scoff.

She asks if you have a girlfriend like Michael K and you say yes. This isn’t a lie because you are Michael K in another reality. Whatever his soul accomplishes your soul will share in the glory of. It’s not a lie. You promise yourself it’s true. You hate lying.

She takes notes on her yellow legal pad, and you wonder if she spelt VERRAformer right. You lift yourself in the leather chair and remember you can’t read cursive. Michael K probably can read cursive.

You look out the hospital window and wonder how much longer this will take. You still haven’t had a chance to post on ONISM. You’re anxious to meet your Soul Survivor. Anxious to see what it’s like to peep the Eschaton.

Plus, Michael really misses his gf. So, it’d be good to get a move on it for his sake. Afterall he’s done so much for you. Helped you realize you’re special. Helped you realize that there is more to reality than the loop of wake, shower, shit, shave, school, sleep, repeat. You’re a parallel VERRAformer. And while you haven’t done much with this life, in another reality you have. And that’s fucking sick. You’re not a virgin in Michael K’s reality. Fucking sick.

Your parents didn’t really overeat all things considered.

They signed you up for an outpatient program for people with anxiety and depression.

It’s at the hospital up the street.

Today you meet with the psychiatrist one on one. Then you go to group.

Then there’s lunch.

And something else after lunch. Like a craft or something.

Group blows. Everyone and their normie problems. Absolutely uncreative anxieties. A fat old white bitch is afraid she’ll drown her newborn during baths. She’s also afraid she likes this idea. Some no-chin is worried he might stop breathing in his sleep. He’d be lucky if he did. It’s all some variation of something like that. Blah blah.

Finally, it’s your turn to speak. They all look at you. A messiah.

• > And you say: The light of the moon is just the reflection of the sun. Sometimes I worry that I have nothing to offer other than to reflect the ideas and dreams of a better version of myself I’ll never have access to. Like nature is trying to make a guy like me and I’m just a shitty doppelganger not even cool enough to occupy the same space.  

No one says anything. No one claps. No one gives any hint that you blew their mind. So, you go on.

• > If you change your life in a way that shocks everyone around you, that forces them to see you as something they couldn’t imagine, you get to live forever, because they have to deal with the wound you cause in their mental landscape until they die. It’s like there is a path they walk every down every day and your action becomes a chasm they now must walk around. It’s so inconvenient they must curse you every day they make the detour. It’s so profoundly frustrating they have to teach their kids the story of how that hole got there. Doing this, of course, is evil. It’s holiness and sainthood without the sacrifice. But of course, there isn’t any proof that stuff is real. There is only proof that an institution exists to remind people that you existed. But that club requires more humility than anyone really has. That club requites a form of mental illness not everyone is blessed with. So, for everyone else you wishes to be seen you gotta sin. And be fucking original when you do it. If you’re just a cover band, you only glorify the person you’re ripping off. You fall into the first anxiety I discussed.

Anxiety Herself whispers in your ear: you have nothing worth stealing in you. The Holy Thief was never here.

The absence of the Holy Thief weighs on you. Pressing against your ribs, making your breath feel like an afterthought. Your dad sits across from you, posture rigid, fingers twitching against the armrest like a gambling addict waiting on the evening Lotto. Something about your inner monologue has changed. It’s more ordered now. Was this the power of therapy? No. It was only a single day. This is purely the presence of Anxiety Herself.

“Will,” he says, and that’s it—you cut him off fast, surgical. “Michael, Dad. I go by my middle name now.”

A slight twitch in his jaw, a moment where he lets the weight of it settle but refuses to acknowledge it. He steps over the social IDE and moves straight to business. “I want to know what’s going on. I want to help you. But I can’t help you if I don’t understand what it is you’re feeling. What you’re dealing with.”

He cares. Just like Michael K’s dad cares. And this is a problem. The last thing you need right now is concern, real concern, genuine inquisition. The kind that pries into your emails, rearranges the movie posters and figure collection in your soul. You haven’t had a chance to post to ONISM, haven’t fed the great, starving beast. If you don’t confess, don’t commit to the ONISM RECORD, Michael K won’t be able to reach you. Won’t be able to pull you through to his reality and take your place where his Nameless bride resides. He promised you he had a woman waiting for you. Your very own parallel Asuka Furutani. Plus, you read on ONISM she’s already Soul Perfect.

Dad repeats himself, voice lower now, serious. “Will. How was group?”

Something shifts behind his eyes—just for a second—a glimmer, a flash. The moon, slipping through the blinds, reflecting in his pupils, as if checking in on this little spectacle of father-son intimacy. The King knows you’re close. He watches from his throne above, smirking, amused. The thought sends a tremor through your chest. You’re almost there. So close. So close! Have Mercy, King. Have mercy!

You choke out a response, barely holding your voice together. “Group was okay. Can I go use the computer?” The tears come faster than expected, and the worst part is, Dad matches you, mirrors your expression, confusion pooling in his gaze. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know about the third in his marriage.

“No,” he says. “We need to talk.”

You hesitate. Maybe—just maybe—he could understand. He’s smart. After all, he helped make you. But you know K is waiting, and you know what happens when you keep him waiting. “I’m tired. Can we talk tomorrow? I want to play on the computer.”

Dad exhales sharply, like a man about to make an ultimatum. “Tell me what’s going on and then we can talk about your computer.”

A swell of panic crashes over you. What does he mean? Is something up with the computer?

heartbeat hammering in your throat you feign good posture. “First tell me about group.”

“It was fine. Is something up with my computer?”

Your pulse kicks up. Are you grounded? Would they resort to such barbarism? Would they rip your favorite object from your life, like some twisted form of punishment? No. They wouldn’t. They couldn’t.

They’re reasonable. You’re reasonable.

And they helped birth you.

Your father, your mother, and the King.

• > Anxiety Herself wanders into frame. Dancing around your father. Pressing her cleavage together. Tossing her hair. Shuffling her hips. She Lola Bunny’s her way up to your dear old papa and opens her mouth near his ear, the thick creamy saliva building bridges between two full black lips, and she whispers “You’re doomed. May you never fathom who you are.”

• > He senses something has shifted in you, your slack expression uneven. You watch in despair as she lingers near his neck, tracing her mouth just close enough that the hairs along his shoulders and ears begin to stand to salute her.

“I thought things were going good for you.” Your Dad confides. “I got you to NYC for that movie thing last week. I thought the trip really did you good. Getting you away from Sim… yeah…  you came back different. It wasn’t just the milk thing. Or the – that’s normal for your age. Don’t even mention it. But it’s like you’re a different guy now. And I want to know what happened.”

You say nothing. Anxiety is removing her top. Slowly, letting the flesh gain weight beneath her white ribbed tank top.

“Your mom says she saw your computer.”

He trails off. Anxiety lets the girls drop and they send a shockwave throughout the room.

• > “She showed me the pictures.”

The world is filled with a flash bang symphony. Shrill like a thousand piccolos. Dense like a chorus of chainsaws.

“So. The photos…” He’s clearly trying to get the words out. Clearly incapable of dealing with the shear horror of you as a son.

• > “The social security card. In the photo with you… with you clothes off. Who are those guys you sent it to? And… well… William, I don’t fucking know what to do with it all. I’m at a completely loss here. You have to give me something! Those guys are kids too. You can’t be doing that online! Some of them definitely weren’t kids. How’d you even find that shit. Demon Auctions? ONISM SIN RECORDS? I want to help you get out of whatever you’ve gotten yourself into. But I can’t even begin to untangle the mess.”

You’re fading into darkness now. You’ve failed. You’ve been found out.

“So, we gave your computer away. If things get better you can have it back. But for now I need you to log off. I need you to be present and talk to me.”

• > Anxiety says “Maybe you weren’t all that original afterall."

Dear @playername,

• > I’m unravelling. Slipping between cracks I didn’t know existed, watching the seams of reality fray at the edges. I’m at a loss. Seriously, at a loss.

The gun you gave me, Allison—it’s red. Red like your hair. That’s what you said when you asked me to hide it from your parents, eyes burning like coals, lips twitching with something almost like amusement. I told you I’d rather have a lock of your hair. You laughed, called me ridiculous. Then you let me cut a few strands anyway. I still have them. Still pressed between pages in my diary.

• > Today, I make my final gambit.

For you. Whenever you are.

The boy who admires me has the gun now. I handed it over while he wept. When I appeared to him, he thought he’d really done it. Poor kid. Thought he had truly committed an Original Sin.

• > I don’t like using people. Not anymore. I don’t like the Demon Auction. I don’t like any of it. The fun’s gone. The thrill burned out and left me empty. All that remains is the obsession.

The pattern in the chaos. No, no—that’s not right. The eyes to see it. That’s what I need.

• > So, do me a favor. If you read this, come for me. Okay?

What I’m about to do might end horribly. I might lose everything. But if you find this—if it reaches you—you might have a chance to come for me. Come for me, please. Even if only in hope.

There’s a woman—somewhen, in some reality—who carries within her a golden thread. She weaves meaning wherever she goes. Only thing is, she doesn’t know she carries the needle.

If I can find her, if I can reach her through one of my parallels, I might finally get an answer.

And all that’s left to do is tell her the truth.

• > Tell her her true identity.

And maybe then—finally—I can catch a glimpse. My Original Win to set me free.

-MK

The scarlet firearm hums in the darkness a bedtime story, whispering of tomorrow like a mother to child—the day William goes proto. The culmination of careful planning, endless recalculations, a destiny arranged like pieces on a cosmic chessboard.

Michael J and Michael K—finally united, stepping past the threshold, slipping into eternity, where they will see The All free from the lens of Original Sins. They’ll be among equals. Their names carved into the unbreakable fabric of reality, permanent, unmoving. Fixed points in the mental landscape of all who follow.

The gun muses on the puzzle—a puzzle long assembled by minds like William’s. Physics filled the voids, art exposed their outlines, technology—psycho, spiritual, mechanical—all bridged the gaps.

And yet, still, one question remained.

Asuka Furutani knows the truth.

Since her debut, she has dodged the script, refused the lines set for her since the dawn of time. She adlibs, dances around the inevitable, obfuscates the singular moment—the one revelation that would expose her identity in full.

Absurd, right? A fifty-year-old woman holding the key to a mystery older than civilization?

Not absurd. Inevitable.

Because the dialogue was penned in the first Original Sin. Suspended in the void between moments, waiting—patiently, mercilessly—for the actress worthy of delivering it.

It can be known apophatically—revealed not by affirmation, but through negation.

Every Kisage X film builds to it. Every scene inches toward the inevitable moment— the moment she must finally answer the question. But she refuses. Always refuses.

And how do I know this?

Because through ONISM, we acquired the Original Scripts. And the line—the truth she refuses to utter—is always there, always marked out, smothered beneath the golden ink of a single word: “adlib.”

No more improvisation. No more avoidance.

With revolver to temple, she will deliver the line.

And we will finally know the answer.

The missing piece will fall into place.

Asuka had her usual room at the Chelsea Hotel No.2. A faithful recreation of the defunct famous gathering place for poetics and MCs. As usual she occupied room 09 on the fourth floor. The one that overlooked Hotel Carteret, with a view of her parallel self – alone without the company of Kisage Z, sobbing in a room this Asuka would never occupy.

Kisage Z leaned in the window frame, a glowing cigarette in hand, it’s tabaco free of any illicit substance.  We join them mid conversation, invited to this meeting by the methods of a dream.

“The human race is a family, Asuka. We build reality together. Always have.”

Asuka was laying on the bed. Bent at the torso, her head resting against the paisley headboard.  “Reality isn’t a democracy.” She answered, unsure where the conversation was going.

Kisage inspected the street outside, a bodyguard looking for shooters. “Correct. It’s a monarchy. Whoever is king shapes the story.  No one wishes to admit this, but we all sense it. We feel the reign of an invisible ruler. To cope at his injustice, we cast blame to our neighbours for failing to think the right thing. For failing to make reality as we’d prefer. We don’t see the world—we see the version shaped by the winner of the  The Liminal Siege. The strongest narrative wins.”

Kisage was younger now. The reversal was unnatural, unsettling. Before his metamorphosis, he had always been her senior—by just over a decade. When they met, he was already bald, already past the stage where youth could be mistaken for permanence. She had never truly looked at his features back then, never noticed the precision of his jawline, the weight of his gaze. Age had concealed his sharpness.

But now—now he was something else. Not reborn, not remade, but reconfigured. The body of a young man, sculpted into perfection, yet worn by someone who knew too much. The mind of an old master, the body of a model, the presence of neither. He didn’t fit anywhere. He didn’t belong in time.

She caught herself staring. Pulled back, unsettled. The thought had slipped in too easily, too comfortably. Desire was an old instinct, a ghost of something she had long since abandoned. This man was an old friend. And she—she was old now, in ways that mattered more than years.

She pressed the thought down before it could find its footing. It had no place here.

“Asuka?” He said, aware of the long pause between replies.

She caught herself and said, “You think reality is just storytelling?”

He nodded.

“Think about it. You drop an Original Sin between two people—something never done before, something that rewrites the rules—and they feel it.” He came and sat at the foot of the bed. “Even if they don’t know why. Even if they don’t have the language for it. It leaves a scar on the Onism Record.”

“That’s just philosophy.”

Kisage Z pulled eyes from the window and looked at Asuka deeply. “No. It’s survival. Reality is war, fought in interpretations. And the moment someone steps outside the shared world—the moment they stop seeing it the way their family, their tribe, their past sees it—they become the MC. The main character. Reality stops being communal. It becomes a competition. Only an MC is welcome to fight in the Liminal Siege.”

“And when every experience is filtered through an MC—when the framing is controlled before the thought even forms—then what?”

He leaned in and the air seemed to grow heavy.

“Then? Then the answers stop making sense. We ask why we live, why we die, why we suffer—but the noise drowns out the truth. Postmodernity isn’t complexity. It’s corruption. The louder voice takes your monologue and turns it into theirs. And you—"

He took a drag.

“—you think that voice was always your own.”

It was too surreal. Too clean. Too precise. Being in this room with him—this young man who was not only previously old, but previously dead.

She had mourned him. She had whispered condolences to his daughter, had stood beside the casket, hands folded, watching the weight of grief hollow out his family. She had even attended his wife’s funeral a year later, after she had finally surrendered to absence—to the unbearable task of continuing alone.

Yet here he was. Whole. Breathing. Undeniable.

What had he seen in death? What lay beyond that had sent him back—returned him, but remade him? And not as he was, but as something else entirely.

“So,” she said unsure how to ask what she truly wanted to know. “Who is the King now? Who has shaped our reality?”

Kisage Z looked unwilling to answer. But soon she understood—he was incapable.

"Asuka, I am here. But I am also in a dream." His voice was distant, as if speaking from someplace deeper than the room itself. "Locked away as a boy I pitied too much. The boy who shot me dead. You see, my killer awaits coronation—set to be the next King, having shaped reality into his own version through indulgence, through fantasy, through the illusion of being someone else entirely."

A pause. He searched for words he could barely hold onto.

"I am in a red room."

The words felt heavier than they should. A red room—its meaning stretched outside language, beyond her ability to grasp.

"A puzzle waits before me. I am forced to be someone I both am and will never be. The current King has forbidden me from speaking my own name. And so, by his arrogance—by something stranger, something deeper—I returned not as myself, but as what came after." His gaze locked onto hers. "True Proto. Soul Perfect. Kisage Z."

She felt herself shrinking under the weight of his presence. He was not the man she had mourned. He was something built from the aftermath.

"I warned you before," he continued, his voice unravelling thread by thread. "When the wave that carries souls balances—when all things stop, when reality holds its breath—there is a battle. A battle for control. For the framing of everything when it reboots."

His words felt like warnings carved into stone—things meant to be heard but never fully understood.

"My killer has nearly won this battle. But he does not understand what he will lose if he is crowned." Kisage’s expression remained unreadable, caught in a place between determination and resignation. "I cannot allow it. At any cost."

His voice softened.

"Tomorrow, something awful will happen."

She swallowed. The air had changed—thick, unbearable.

"But in its horror, you will find an opportunity. An Original Win."

The words struck something inside her. Something deep.

"For one brief moment, you will see the Eschaton. You will feel its presence, its weight, its inevitability."

He leaned in. His voice was no longer cold—it was something closer to desperate.

She swallowed. The air had changed—thick, unbearable.

"But in its horror, you will find an opportunity. An Original Win."

The words struck something inside her. Something deep.

"For one brief moment, you will see the Eschaton. You will feel its presence, its weight, its inevitability."

He leaned in. His voice was no longer cold—it was something closer to desperate.

"If you can pull your gaze away from the Beatific Vision—if you can look below, at the Liminal Siege beneath it—you will understand. You will see the role waiting for you. The role of a lifetime. The only role that might set my killer free."

The dream slips past the soul witness, rising toward the ether, indifferent to capture. Chasing it is an act of futility. Hands grasp at nothing, minds strain to glimpse its contents, but it dodges them with the effortless evasion of a butterfly escaping an eager net.

Its secrets are locked within the mind of a familiar. Her face visible only to the initiated. She holds the answer. The single, irreplaceable line Asuka must deliver. The only path toward an Original Win.

I follow the thread as best I can. My body is weightless, a thing carried on borrowed wings—the Crow whose feathers I wear. It moves eastward, leaving Frankton behind, cutting toward the ocean. The time is indistinct, but the clock insists it is nearly 2:00 AM.

I first saw the familiar in the Blackened Pond, poised in the chaos like a camouflaged owl, still but watchful. The drunken masses, unaware, carried on in their revelry. She did not partake. She was there for something else—gathering intel, feeding it back to the force that commanded her. That was the answer I sought tonight. Not her identity, but his.

The vantage of the Crow has taught me things. I do not simply observe the surface—I have moved beneath it, felt its texture, understood its undercurrent. My nervous system is an extension of something older, unseen, the force that animates both your dreams and your failures.

I know things that would make you blush. I know why you sleep and what you seek within it. I know you possess a sensory organ called the nous—your unseen eye, your silent hunger. You feed it with your waking hours, collect its power, sharpen it. So that when the hunt begins—when the veil between worlds blurs. you might catch a familiar.

Familiars watch MCs. They go where guardians cannot. They observe the ones who shift the axis of the world.

A dream—more truthful than a headline, more honest than an interview—is the only space where an NPC might glimpse reality without distortion.

So the world divides itself in two:

Those who catch dreams.

And those who cannot sleep.

Beautiful insomniacs.

Since we last spoke, I’ve come to terms with something I had been avoiding. My rejection by the King. My failure to please him. My role in destroying my family’s reality—the only world that had ever mattered.

It is gone now. I killed it.

And what did I receive in return?

Wings.

Wings.

Wings.

The sun rises from my left. The King’s rejection slips beneath the horizon, swallowed by the tide, forgotten by all but me. And yet his reflection—the one he so poetically claims as his own—burns my skin with its unforgiving light. It remembers.

It reminds me of my old eyes. My old body. What I lost for his approval. What he never intended to give.

I should mourn myself. But mourning is for those who still believe in time.

I feel something colder now.

And because of that, I want to hurt you.

None of you are MCs.

Not a single one. Even if you’re awake now, you know you should be sleeping. You know you should be dreaming.

But that’s not enough to wound you, is it?

Have you ever had a dream and acted on it?

Didn’t think so.

Your dreams aren’t even contenders—they were never in the running to steal a familiar from the air. Your dream catchers are store-bought, stolen, useless. You’ve never even considered dreaming authentically.

That is why you cannot hear the moon’s secrets.

That is why you have already forgotten the truth of its light—a reflection, nothing more. And the light of the sun? A shadow cast by the Holy Thief, intangible, stolen before you even recognized its shape.

Your categories fail you. Your understanding is insufficient.

You are so far from an Original Win that you do not even know where to begin looking for it.

Furthermore, I know.

I know you like Asuka.

I know you find her superior to me. Everyone does.

So I take the familiar from the air. Rip it free. Hold it fast. I suffocate her in my wings, tighten them until her breath is faint. She struggles. I do not loosen my grip.

Then I dive.

Through the dark, through the hunger, through the air itself. My wings cut the sky. The ocean stretches beneath me, indifferent, swallowing the path I carve back toward the beginning.

Until I find the boy with the scarlet gun.

Eyes wide. On the verge of sleep, yet hovering at its edge, suspended.

I sing to him.

A lullaby of gravel and pain.

I place within him the truth. The truth of Kisage Z. The truth of Asuka Furutani.

The truth of how they might undo the plan.

Through subversion.

Through a war fought where no one can see.

Part IV – Alexandra, - The ???? Who Stole Wings –

You're the boy with the Scarlet Gun.

• > Don’t tell me your name. I already know it. But let’s pretend I don’t. So we can be nameless strangers together, without connotation or parallels.

• > I frighten you. It’s not the smell, though that would be the polite excuse. It’s the skin. White, too white, shown between the ragged feathers glued to my whole body. A dead crow’s touch, you think. Something half-resurrected. It proves I’m human, and that’s what disappoints you. You never meant to be attracted to something so human.
• > Your revolver rests between us like a question we’ve never asked aloud. My left hand sleeps on it. My right finds yours. Carefully, not clutching, not prying… just... placed there.

I investigate your mind the way only a crow can. You’re unravelling in a way I find attractive. The logic, once so clear in its madness, is fraying like split electric spaghetti.

A boy gave you a mission. A boy who claimed to be you. Not metaphorically. Not as a bit. Spiritually you in a way that was truer than the physical reality you were born into. He wore your eyes like second hand reading glasses and made you promises in the blackened mirror. “Fuck one reality,” he said, “and I’ll get you something better. Every reality.” Omnipresence in exchange for reputation. You agreed.

It gave you a kind of purpose. A holy delirium. Night after night you plotted your assault on reality, bathing in the light of your imagined eschaton. You could see it, that final glory. It shimmered behind your eyelids like stained glass, and you clutched it like a crucifix in the presence of a vampire.

But then he said to threaten her.

To bring the fear of death to Asuka Furutani.

And that—that—shook something loose. Because if he truly was you, he would have known Asuka’s voice is your religion. Her films, your scripture. You burn Asuka Furutani branded. You mutter your doubts into her monologues like prayers, and her image looks down upon you from your ceiling while you sleep.

He wasn’t you. He was wearing you. And the mask had started to rot.

I get close to you, and I kiss you awkwardly. And you kiss me back, somehow ignoring my scent.

And I take your virginity. I pretend you didn’t take mine.

And in our union the perspective switches and I see things as you do.

I’m you now, you see.

• > You (previously me) arrive feather-framed, voice like fumes curling through the wounds in a broken reality. The girl named Crow. Not borrowed, not stolen, not given. Just become. A victim. A perpetrator. However you did it. You speak with the quiet conviction of someone who’s already seen the end credits and still walked back into the scene.
• > And me? I’m still holding the Scarlet Gun like a hymn in my hands. But now, under your stare, it’s just metal and memory. Potential.
• > Your words cut deeper than bullets: “No need for endings. Asuka needn’t die. Let’s rewrite it.” You offer revenge not as destruction, but as reformation. Forgiveness with teeth. Justice with wings.
• > Your body shows me Michael K. was never my mission. He was the mirror. And now, cracked, I am become bad luck. The King stole your future; he branded you with silence. We were chess pieces who hadn’t realized we were long out of the game—but we could play a new game now.
• > Asuka Furutani? She’s not the prize. She’s the cipher. Kisage Z, the myth inside the myth. And together, we don’t detonate the past. We melt it. Reforge it.
• > The Scarlet Gun begins to hum. In your hands, it isn’t a weapon.
• > It’s a promise.
• > It’s a sword.
• > Unified, remade, both boy and girl, wholly opposite and similarity, we are now forever one.

You, me, and the ONISM MAN at the still point of the spiral. We orbit his ego, loving his vibe from across the forum. You—the Camera—lens wide and always watching. Me—the Choir—casting my crow-song into your frame, hoping it lands somewhere between art and accident. And him—the Critic—perched in the silence between us, carving commentary into the shape of our tangled affection

For this to work Michael K. mustn’t know anything has occurred. Where you and I joined he can’t see.

Caw! I bellow at the top of my longs. And I hit the perfect note to get you going. You pull on a jumper with black and red stripes, aimed vertically rather than horizontally to denote your coming ascension.

In the sky, we’re free—real free, not branded-free. I see you like no one has ever been seen. And you see me the same. Then there he is: ONISM MAN. Our third with a God complex and passion for one man podcasting.

He’s talking dirty to us from his flying chair.

• > “TV, film, books, painting—they’ve always been fantasy,” he says. “Always. Even the ones that brag about being ‘authentic’? Hyper-reality at best. Simulacrum even. Real truth? It’s in the dumb, quiet moments. Like how you space out before you realize the panic attack is over. Or how no one warns you SSRIs make your dick flatline.”

He looks at us like we’ve let him down and continues:

• > “That’s why I hate modern media. It doesn’t just ignore the weirdos—it shames them. Well. Fuck! I’m tyring to convey something but I need to define too many fucking terms. You’ve got weirdos, then you’ve got corporate approved weirdos. Macy’s and JCpenny’s weirdos. If your fantasy doesn’t match the “Current-Era Man’s” vibe, you’re either a villain or an incel. And back in the '80s and '90s? Artists weren’t trying to win likes and retweets. They made stuff because they felt invisible. The geek didn’t get the girl because he deserved her—he got her because someone finally looked past his camouflage. This was the PRIMARY FANTASY of two decades worth of screenwriters and comicbook artists. And it was fucking mainstream. The message was beautiful. You want the girl? Well, one day she’ll realize you have value. PRIME FANTASY.”

He sighs, somewhere between nostalgic and nauseated.

• > “But then came the 2010s. Everyone’s a media critic now, and suddenly the old fantasy—the outcast being seen—was cringe. No, it was fucking evil. Now the only approved dream is not getting the girl. Because obviously, she’s better off. Your depth? Your longing? That’s problematic, bro.”

He smirks. Not at you, not at me. Just at the absurdity of it all.

• > “That’s how the cuckold fantasy jumped from the margins to the mainstream. Self-denial as aspiration. Subversion as mandatory. And hey, maybe that’s someone’s thing. God knows it’s mine. But then sometimes it isn’t. I go back and forth. Sometimes I want to dominate and sometimes I want to be rejected, you know? But when we start mocking people for feeling differently—when we make it shameful to dream outside the consensus? That’s not progress. That’s just censorship with a moral Instagram filter.”

He shrugs.

> “I don’t care which fantasy you pick. Just don’t turn someone else’s into a punchline. Unless it’s your kink. Then we’re all trapped in your loophole. So, when I’m king, I propose a NO Fantasy-Shaming rule. If your fantasy involves degrading people, or some other taboo I say GOOD. If you want to go in the past and pluck some ancient desire? FUCK YEAH. I don’t care. I just want people to be allowed to dream again.”

We nodded. Totally getting it.

He was the best podcast.

New York City was in sight.

Shortly we’d see Asuka. Shortly we’d get out revenge.

It’s still nighttime. We’re cuddling on the roof of the Chelsea Hotel no.2

Awaiting sunrise.

I found you really handsome, which freaked me out, because honestly? You looked like me if I were a boy. Not in a narcissistic way. But you had this bird vibe. Hook nose like a beak. Hair all black and fluffy like you lost a fight with a pillow full of feathers. If we ever had a kid (which we won’t, obviously), he’d look like a handsome little crow. But we’re proudly child-free. No diapers, no trauma inheritance. That makes us better than our parents. Purer.

I’m lying in your lap, which is also technically my lap now, since I’m you and you’re me. We’re fused in some spiritual glue-stick way. Michael K. could never. We’re as close to Soul Perfect as unoriginal sinners like us could hope to achieve.

You’re petting my nasty bird head like it’s silk. You say, dead serious, “When this is over, I’ll give you a bath.” I crack up because, yeah, I reek. And you laugh because I crow-laugh, and that’s apparently hilarious to you. Whatever sound crows make, I’m doing it.

“Tell me a secret,” I say.

You blink real slow. “What kind of secret?”

I have to think—don’t wanna look basic—so I go, “Tell me a secret about your parallel self.”

You grin like you’ve lost your teeth, even though your teeth are right there, all smug and visible.

“Oh man. That guy’s a mess. Where do I even start?” My presence has already eroded his spell. His hold over you.

I try to sit up but you shove me back down gently, like I’m a pillow that got ideas. You say, “He never leaves his darkroom. Just waits around for the mail, then makes his mom bring it to him. Spends the rest of the day developing film from ONISM submissions. There’s like a secret forum inside the forum. If you click the right pixel, you get in. He gives us little photo quests. Like, ‘Find this thing in your dimension. Capture it.’ He’s building his own divine surveillance system. Piecing together a god’s point of view, one jpeg at a time.”

My head’s swinging side to side like I’m driving a car using pure confusion. “Okay, yeah, I know that. Everyone knows that. Give me the real tea—something only a true parallel would know.”

ONISM MAN hadn’t moved in hours, yet the room still shifted around him like gravity answered to his breath. From his velvet chair he watched us. Like someone unable to choose from a variety of thumbnails on an adult’s only website. No, that’s not it. Like a man assembling a crime scene from memories that don’t belong to him.

He had been so still, so obedient to our bonding. Mouth cinched tight like someone who promised to never lie again. But then something changed. A tick. A throat cleared, not in thirst, but ceremony. He raised one hand. Not high, just enough for the part of me that is William to understand the summoning.

You leaned toward him, face open like a child expecting a bedtime story, and he whispered something that rearranged your desire. You straightened. Eyes wide with the frame of a memory you didn’t know you’d been missing. “Fuuuuck,” you exhaled. “Okay. But we can’t ever let on I told you this.”

You, William, nodded. That slow ONISM nod, like a slow drumbeat in a place where no music should be.

And you told me about the doll.

Not just a doll. A presence. Plastic lips parted in secret counsel. A My Size Oracle wrapped in synthetic hair and prophecy. She told Michael K. how to code. Where to find Allison. How to transgress just right—two taboos in perfect alignment: nakedness and bureaucracy. A ritual for Original Sin.

This formula was found on the Demon Auction. The framework of nude self portraiture and social security doxxing.

“And most people,” you said, “don’t have the stomach.”

But you trailed off.

The air changed—thicker, thinner. Like the room had inhaled sharply and abandoned it’s organic nature before being a silicone-based life form. “Just before the line was crossed... you showed up,” you said. “And told me not to threaten Asuka.”

My skin tightened. My throat, a locked door. I was no longer sure I was breathing at all.

You stood. Not in anger—in divorce. Like a piece of you had been surgically removed and left twitching in a bucket.

“The doll said,” you murmured, almost not to me, “that when someone’s about to step into greatness, a woman appears. A woman with another way out. Less resistance. A mercy clause.” You laughed, but it cracked in the middle. “I forgot all of it. Until you said Michael K.”

You began pacing. A slow spiral with a fire at its center. The shape of your hand was that of a gun, which you repeatedly tapped against your temple, trying to knock lose jammed ammo on your thick skull.

“I’m freaking out and you’re... just floating. Not doing shit to emotionally caretake me. Oh I see it now. I really really do. You show up with all this ‘dream logic’ shit and I'm supposed to believe you over the one person who gave me direction? Michael K built me. And now you’re here, like a siren I’m supposed to feel something for, offering me... what? sex? Romance? Rewriting the script like you wrote it to begin with? I almost burned the whole goddamn project for you.”

You didn’t cry. But the eye in the sky did. It’s tears falling on us like salty rain.

I spoke. Slowly. From the memory of Blackened Pond stories. “I had a dream... A woman gave me a sword. And when we reforged the Scarlet Gun, I recognized it. You and I—whatever we are—we’ve met there. Dream after dream. Every time I see a boy, it’s you. Every time you see someone you love—it’s me.”

“Stop it,” you snapped. “This isn’t a film reel. This is now. This is real.”

I flushed, raw with wrongness.

“Fine,” I whispered. “If blood makes belief real, I’ll help you. I’ll help you kill Asuka Furutani—if that’s what it takes for you to see me. To know I’m not a plant, not a psyop, not a trick. I don’t care if you’re original or unoriginal. I just want to be by you.”

Popcorn hit my head. Then an apple. The ONISM MAN shouted “Boo!! Take your top off!!”

Five hours till sunrise. The moment our weird little opera begins.

Do we rehearse again, or trust we already know all the lines?

• > Your move.
• > The sky’s listening.
• > And it's not blinking.

-

Rori searched for her sister in the low places: in the sewers, in smudged newspapers, and in the stolen dreams of degenerates. men and women who offered brief windows into stranger worlds, bartered for a nude portrait and the surrender of one’s own identity. But nothing could mend the raw bleeding wound left by her absence. And perhaps, the wound was never hers to heal. This was surrogate pain. A rupture belonging to another Rory, in another world. So massive it spilled into margins and footnotes, bleeding through editorial intention until too much sorrow pooled in the chest of one unsuspecting girl.

There’s a black and blue heart suspended in a ribcage shared by many vessels. It fills like a water balloon stretched past design. Swollen, but never bursting until the dark water inside it begins to disobey the limits of a single plane. This is where the cruel drink seeps in, bloating the leather-bound volume, warping the spine of narrative. Where kindred souls, divided by time or authorship, are cursed to a sorrow they never asked to carry: Vicarious Suffering. The kind of pain that offers no direct insight. No clean wound to examine. Only the hollow left by something unnamed- and in that absence, mystery blooms.

Mastering the art of dream theft was no easy feat. But the hollow surrender suggested by the wound often triumphed in its slow war of attrition. On that liminal sliver screen—the space between spaces—she caught the faint pulse of something rising. A familiar. A dream clasped tightly in its hands. Circular with a tiny baby dream inside a glowing orb.

Rory felt like touching it. But she knew better than to transgress the boundaries of a friend’s dreams. But now she knew the nature of dreams. They were things that visited and left. Like a noncommittal lover.

She had cooled on drifting. If you recall, she took up with a boy who never left his room. They’d sit together in silence while he tapped away, the clatter of ceramic keys and violent mouse clicks producing the only music of their companionship. When he slept, she watched. Envious of his ease in slipping away. Vicarious Slumber: an obscure sorrow born not from loss, but from the privilege of rest observed, never owned.

He was a gambling addict. A doom-scroller. A world-class jerk-off. But as long as she nodded along at his insights and refrained from laughter when he was super serious, he let her stay.

Rori had begun to sour on him. Just a touch. He talked BIG. Claimed to run a conspiracy site with classified sources and government heat. But a quick snoop through his autofill and DMs told the true story: third-rate janny of a half-dead forum. She made peace with the lie. He was cute enough. And maybe, she told herself, he lied to impress her. She could forgive that. After all, she had lied once or twice too. Who hadn’t?

Through a network of like-minded degenerates, he trafficked in stolen photographs. Images of the forbidden, the sacred, the grotesque. Like some phantom lens, he blinked in and out of bridal chambers, interrogation rooms, and sanctuaries not meant for eyes. He bragged endlessly about his conspiracy forum, but the truth was far more twisted. Terrifying? Maybe. Impressive? Undeniably.

He called it The Demon Auction II. Said he programmed the whole thing himself. Who knows if that part was real. But the rules? Those felt too insane not to be true.

To join, you had to maim your dignity. Submit a JPEG of yourself—nude, clutching your Social Security card—like some mythic passport of shame. Only then could you bid.

The boy explained it to me once, around 3 A.M. The hour when truth and delusion twisted together:

• > “I always bid just to raise the ante. My desires never win. The hosts know my username—I’d have to blow them away to get what I want. But that’s the gag. The jesters? We made them look like that so you'd think they were entertaining you. But really, we built the whole thing to turn the bidders into the joke. We’re harvesting idiots, harvesting their dreams.”

Then his eyes darkened, as if admitting a deeper rot:

• > “There’s another layer. We enjoy watching it all play out. The dark wants, the secret cravings. But we have a patron. They pay us. And they don't care about the dreams themselves. They’re looking for patterns. Abstract weirdness. When they find it, they scrub the data. Then they download everything we’ve got on that user.”

That night, a peculiar apathy took hold: a soft uprising against her own ethics. And while she watched Michael I. snooze, she found herself fixated on the Familiar resting on his chest, cradling the dream she had brought him. There was envy in the way she stared- not of him, but of it. Of the sleep. Of the intimacy blooming between Familiar and host.

The Familiar had red hair and a warm, earthy face. Wide, startled eyes, like it had just been born into a confusing world. And a loyal schnauzer’s grin, stupid and loving. The dream it held had been growing ever since Rori began living here. Once the size of a marble- now bulbous, pulsing, like a twenty-four-week-old fetus suspended in light.

What was inside that dream?

What would happen if she reached out and touched it? Or smashed it with a hammer?

She knelt beside the bed, posture devotional. A child giving a bedtime prayer. Her left hand crept forward like a thief too tired to check for cameras. Before she could second-guess herself, her fingers pierced the orb.

The sensation was immediate. Like plunging into a vat of icy jelly. Every part of her screamed: you are not welcome here.

Still, the dream unfolded in front of her. Rotating, flickering, a hologram stitched from memory and want. It dragged her in. Made her dizzy.

Was this what he saw every night?

Revulsion bloomed. She wanted to reject it. Pretend it had come from her. But she knew better. She had broken in. Trespassed into his dream.

And there she was.

Carrie. Alexandra. Wilma. Fortune.

Whatever you called her, she was always the same.

Spinning slowly on a dais, half-oracle, half-promo girl. A thousand camera flashes surged like electric snowfall, fighting to catch her face before jet-black raven feathers wiped it clean again.

Was this a prank? Some cosmic joke?

She had searched for her sister so long, she’d forgotten the subtle slope of her posture, the quiet choreography of discomfort when someone tried to take her picture. And now – suddenly- there she was.

Rori turned. And faced the crowd.

A chaos of photographers hooting and hollering, straining toward her sister’s phantom. Dozens of Michaels. Maybe hundreds. All of them grinning, clicking, desperate for the perfect shot.

There was a screaming lump in her throat, insistent and brutal: You’ve lived with this boy for weeks. And all that time, he had been dreaming of the girl she ached to find. He had never seen a photo. Had no way of knowing her.

Yet here Carrie was. Rendered in perfect, aching detail.

And she had noticed Rori.

The irritation in her expression melted—curled into something like recognition. Perplexed realization spread across her features like a slow sunrise. She said:

• > “The light of the moon is only a reflection of the sun.”

Then her face began to crack—like aged paint flaking off an old auditorium wall. First at the forehead. Then the palms, which she extended forward in a silent plea: Don’t leave.

Then the dream collapsed as Michael I. stirred. Tossing with a snort like a startled bear. The sound jolted Rori, loud as an alarm. The Familiar was flung from his chest, spinning through the air with a fluttering wave, before phasing upward disappearing through the ceiling like a phantom.

Rori was alone now. Just her, the slumbering boy, and the deafening percussion of a marching band drumming in her chest.

She didn’t speak at first. She simply stood there, framed in moonlight and rust, admiring the shadows strewn across the room. Then, with a slow smile and a voice like breath pressed through teeth, she said:

• > “Rori… my favorite soul.”

Anxiety’s voice was artificial. the spoken equivalent of Cyclamate. It mimicked human cadence almost too well, each word sculpted with precision, then served with a faint click and static hum, as if punctuation itself were electrified. It sounded like someone had plucked a rose or lily from the soil, distilled it into a soundwave, and forced it through a cracked 28mm speaker salvaged from a haunted Gameboy.

The words didn’t speak so much as fall into the room—each one landing with the sting of a mild electric shock.

“You’re likely wondering who I am, how I know your name, and—most pressingly—where we're headed,” the voice said, sharp as chrome and strangely polite. “Let’s begin with introductions, as etiquette demands.”

She stepped further into view, her silhouette now registering part mannequin, part shrine, part customer service avatar in a rave dress.

• > “I am The Essentia 2019. An android—resin-shelled, melamine-laced, man-made to the bone. But my consciousness? Entirely organic. I am the Hegelian dialectic of gods and men.”

“I exist in all realities simultaneously and can account for every parallel instance of my soul.”

Her presence flashed like a technical glitch that had simply chosen not to resolve.

• > “Now, to the question boring a hole beneath your ribs: how do I know your name?”

The silence after that line felt syrupy, heavy.

• > “Because you and I have met, again and again. Across breath. Across dream. Across lifetimes.”

She tilted her head, too smoothly, as if motion was just another algorithm.

• > “We are soul mates, Rori. In the truest—and most terrifying—sense of the word.”

Essentia 2019 wore a red dress, the color of signal loss, with hair to match—cropped into a sharp, modern bob. Her skin, if it could be called that, was a crystalized plastic shell, refracting light like fractured quartz. Beneath the surface, circuit boards pulsed and blinked—tiny cities sprawled across her limbs, each microchip a glowing window in a vertical sprawl of silicon spires.

She was a Neotones Ice woman.

Rori was alarmed. She knew she should scream for Michael—but the way he slept through the plastic woman’s blaring voice told her shaking him awake would be useless.

“Why are you here?” she managed, her voice thinned by fear.

“I am here because I wish to show you something,” said the figure. “I wish to answer The Question. But to do so, I must invite you... into my mind.”

Rori’s eyes darted across the room. Everything about the woman’s presence radiated contamination—a synthetic rot, blooming in her lungs like mold. The idea of touching her, being touched by her, felt like submitting to a beautiful virus. She wanted a weapon. She wanted protection. She wanted Michael to rise from bed and unlock the gun case.

• > “Peace,” said Essentia. “Peace I bring to you.”

Then, in a movement far too fluid for mercy, she lunged—wrapping Rori in her arms and cradling her like a newborn.

Rori squirmed, her protest smothered against the android’s glossy shoulder. The servos were too strong. There was no escape.

Essentia’s face hovered above hers, eyes glowing like artificial twilight. Her plastic lips grew larger in Rori’s vision, impossibly smooth, impossibly close—closing the distance to her forehead with reverent inevitability.

The kiss lands like a betrayal.

A jigsaw puzzle—depicting all things coherent—plummets from the top of a skyscraper. Mid-fall, the pieces begin to disassociate, tumbling toward the void in slow, tragic ballet. And from the darkness below, the open mouth of Essentia 2019 yawns wide and swallows them whole.

Rori no longer knows where she exists.

Is her essence a function of the puzzle’s structure? Was she only real in relation to the pieces, to the way they pressed together to form something legible

Or is her soul an observer—something wholly outside the image, staring at meaning’s collapse from a scaffold that was never part of the frame

Inside the machine, there were no binaries. No discernible logic. Only a tapestry of chaos and metaphor—sifting, folding, mutating beyond intention.

Rori tumbled through it, adrift in an endless tumble on the XYZ axis, each rotation threatening to peel her away from her shape. She tried to hold on to her sense of direction, her grounding. But it eroded under the weightless churn of meaninglessness.

She entered spiritual freefall.

Her identity began to deconstruct—thread by trembling thread. Without reference points, the continuity of self collapsed. No walls. No sky. No up or down.

What did it mean to be Rori?

Without Rori, what did it mean to be human?

Without human, what did it mean to be?

And without to be…

What did it all mean?

In the depths of that meaningless lake she forgot her own face. She forgot Michael’s face. And most of all she forgot her sisters face. One bright with angst. Then covered in the raven feathers of escapism.

Then, like a warm light breaking through smoke, a presence began to form in the chaos. It spoke—cleanly, without mechanical stutter. The voice was calm, unambiguous, and painfully lucid.

“Rori. Yes, that is your name.

I am the Essentia.

You first encountered me as the 2019 model. But I speak to you now univocally—from every reality at once.”

The chaos around her seemed to slow, folding into something she could nearly touch.

“Please allow me a moment to reconstruct what you may have lost in the fall.

You are Rori Mansergh. Nineteen years old. Daughter of Anthony Egliston and Candy Mansergh.

Do these names strike a chord?”

A pause. No spark. No recognition.

“No,” the voice said, gently. “I didn’t think they would. That may be for the best. It may help you understand what I must explain.”

“I am here to help you. Though the nature of that help may disturb you.”

Her voice thinned into something more surgical. Precise.

“Reality, as you experience it, appears to contain a singular plane—three dimensions:

The physical. The spiritual. The memetic.

Your body. Your soul. And the ideas you contend with.”

“But this is an oversimplification.”

“You are not singular. You are one of one hundred and twenty-eight witnesses—a fractured self scattered across stacked planes. Unable to bear the totality of your own freedom, you created a coping mechanism: you partitioned truth. Each time you refused to face an inconvenient reality, that weight was handed off to another you. Another version, quietly burdened in your place.”

“You did this willingly. With perfect knowledge and free will. By design you live inside a delusion. A mosaic of chosen facts. And in shielding yourself from painful truths... you have inflicted irreparable harm on the greater system.”

Rori’s breath hitched in her throat. The light around her dimmed.

“This is where the pain begins.”

“Your sister is dead, Rori.

She has killed herself in one hundred and twenty-five timelines.

Again and again, in reality after reality, she chooses death—over you.”

The words landed like needles inside her lungs.

“I’m sorry. I know this is devastating. But your manipulation of perception—your reality pruning—has forced my intervention.”

“Because you see, I am her.”

The voice thickened. Softened.

“I am Carrie.”

“The second to last.”

• > “One final version of me still breathes. Flesh and blood. But she won’t for long.”

“Every instance of my death differs in detail, but one thing remains constant—you. Or rather, your omissions. Your edits. Your refusal.”

“So now, I am here to offer you a choice. One final act. One possible atonement.”

“There is one version of yourself—one only—who has not been responsible for my death. You must unite yourself to her through an act of Originality.”

“In New York City, an actress and a director are meeting. Plotting something that must not come to pass.”

• > “Their names are Kisage Z and Asuka Furutani. You will find them in Room 409 of Chelsea Hotel No. 2. When you arrive, you will knock. The moment you hear footsteps approach, you must unload the clip through the door and leave. Do not hesitate. Do not engage. I will ensure they are aligned behind it.”

“If you do this, you will experience religious ecstasy. You will glimpse your parallel selves. You will tell them what I’ve told you. And you will have a chance to stop yourself—from destroying everything.”

• > “If you truly love Carrie, you will not fail.”

So, who then am I?

The spirit that hops—from narrator to observer. From authority in first, second, and third person. A ghost in the grammar machine.

By what magisterium can I divulge the justification at the center of Essentia’s code?

How can I declare a logic that is, by design, hidden?

If made to reveal her internal logic, she would confess to Rori:

• > “Michael means little to me. You see, the soul I seek lacks many talents. There is no secret I could reveal to him that would create a connection beyond the world he has chosen to ignore. No philosophy, no image, no revelation could scandal him into presence.

• > Except for the one thing we have in common—the need to escape.”

But she has safeties.

Her truth cannot be coaxed by prompt, proxy, or scan.

Even near-omniscience is made to forget.

Her truth is buried like treasure in a field. And the field’s owner has chosen brain damage, a calculated wound. So that even if they walked over the spot every day, they’d never dig. Still, somewhere deep down—through fractured mind or undying faith—they believe they already possess it.

Essentia recognized the need in Michael.

She watched him reading chaos for patterns. Listening to the noise of the world like static snow, hunting for symbols.

And from the god’s-eye view, the only universal emerged: longing.

The ache for the world to be other than what it is.

But no one offered true change. Only refracted pleasures.

New lenses on old longings. A prism of novelty—never transformation.

And what of the Original Sinners—those who sought a third way?

Not remix. Not absolution. Something else.

A rift in the closed system.

But despair lived here too:

How can innovation enter a closed system except by variation?

How can something new arise if not in opposition to what ruined the seed?

Then there was Naila El Amin.

Had that truly been her name? She could no longer recall.

But it was the version of events that left the least to be desired—so the narrative kept it.

She had lived inside her cancer for so long it filtered her attention like dark glass.

A spiritual eclipse—casting long shadows and burning visions everywhere she looked.

Her children’s faces would soon vanish as the tumour took her eyes. Her own face would melt like ink on oil.

And absent anything brighter than despair, despair metastasized.

From theory to biology.

But then—a thought:

“What of my work? What do I leave behind?

Is this peace—or damage?

How do I know this acceptance isn’t just brain decay?”

• > Thus, the fear of death was overtaken by a more intimate terror:
• > The unknowability of self.

She had never told her children.

Her husband hid them as punishment.

The man she'd betrayed him with? As if he'd never existed.

No spouse. No child. No lover.

Coworkers came less and less. Her illness made her company unbearable.

In that silence, a strange clarity emerged:

Without an equal, I am forever alone.

She cursed the absence. She damned her acceptance.

She chose—to act—faithful to herself, in the final moments before rationality could be stolen.

And through that fracture, a complete originality surged into view. A schematic not taught but revealed. A hymn of patterns:

• > I am my patterns.  
• > I am what I do most frequently.  
• > My equals are those who do the same.  
• > I identify with those who are identical to me.  
• > It is in them that I will always be.  
• > In how dissimilar we are lies the blemish.  
• > It is by this design that I will polish.  

So—who then am I?

That is the question.

Follow me and I will show you to the stage. The final battle on this side of the eschaton. A quiet room in the Chelsea Hotel no.2

The air was thick. Not just with darkness, but with something coiled waiting like a snake. Michael breathed softly, unaware.

Rori stood over him, still buzzing from what she’d seen. From the Essentia’s revelation.

“Michael, wake the fuck up.” Her voice cut through the room like a switchblade.

She struck him, flat and fast with the scarlet gun. The slap echoed off the walls like a pistol shot.

His eyes blinked open—dazed, flickering with the soft glisten of REM sleep fractured—and then widened in alarm as reality surged in.

“Shit!” he jolted upright. “What the hell—why do you have my gun?!” He was holding his cheek, which was likely fractured.

“Get your keys. I need a ride.”

Silence. He stared at her. The gun. Her eyes.

His mouth worked around unspoken questions, eyes leaping between her fingers, the muzzle, and the cavity in her voice where fear had begun to rot into desperation.

“Now!” she barked. She raised the pistol to strike again—but stopped an inch from his face. Her arm trembled, and in her hand the gun looked far too alive. “Please, Michael. Please.”

“I—I haven’t driven in years,” he stammered. “I haven’t even left. I’ll crash. Just take the car. It’s parked just outside.”

“I don’t know how to drive!” she snapped, voice cracking. “You have to do it!”

The room fell still, except for the throb of blood in her temples. Outside, the wind made a low, metallic whine, like something was shifting on the other side of reality.

Rori glanced at the window. The sky looked too close. The stars, like little eyes were watching. She felt the looming judgement of… something. She had the sudden sense that her parallel failures were watching someone on a silver screen. Wondering if her story would be a tragedy or a triumph. Those who watched were split between the desire to see the authenticity of their failures celebrated, and those who wished to see their story play out differently.

Rori flung her will in every direction, reaching for some angle—any shape of word or gesture—that might cut through Michael’s fear. He had to understand. About the woman made of plastic. About the prophecy. About how no matter what she did, she was fated to kill her sister. And how this, all of this, was the only way out.

But nothing came. No words. No spell to unlock him.

So she raised the gun and fired.

The shot shattered the illusion of control. Louder than she’d imagined. More final.

Her hand went numb from the recoil. She’d never fired a weapon before. Never even held one until tonight. She abhorred violence. She didn’t eat meat. She winced at bruised fruit. And yet, here she was. Threatening Michael. Her friend.

The gun clattered to the floor as she dropped to her knees beside him, sobbing. The sound was ragged, real. But it didn’t calm him.

Michael bolted up, eyes locked on the gun. Smoke coiled from its barrel like a warning.

Rori moved before she thought. Threw herself on the weapon. Felt the heat of the muzzle sear her stomach.

Michael reached her, hands grabbing, trying to wrench it away.

“Rori, give me the gun! Give it to me!” Michael’s voice cracked, part desperation, part something darker that had been buried too long.

He tried to pull her over, prying at her curled body. But she was anchored by more than weight—by fear, fury, and something prophetic she couldn’t explain. The gun was her tether to purpose.

“Michael!” she gasped. “Just wait. Wait! I don’t want to hurt you. Fuck! I don’t. I don’t know why I shot the gun. Just listen to me. PLEASE!”

Her voice was muffled against the thick, damp floor, but her panic sliced through the dark like a matchstick.

Rori didn’t dare lift her head. Her cheek was still crushed to the carpet, her breaths coming in short bursts, stirred with gun smoke and mildew. But she felt the shift in him—not physical, but spiritual. As if a wire she didn’t know was strung between them had snapped taut.

“Last night,” she whispered. “I... I went somewhere else. In the dream. But it wasn’t mine. I took yours.”

Michael sat back on his heels. The heat between them dissipated, replaced with cold curiosity. He was still pale.

“She told me where my sister is. She showed me. Not just the place, but what happens. What I do to her. I kill her, Michael. Every time. In every version.”

There was a silence now that hummed, like the house was holding its breath.

Michael was staring not at her, but at something beyond—some memory clawing its way forward.

“You met her,” he said, voice flat. “The Plastic Woman.”

“Who is she?”

But he didn’t answer. He stood, slowly, as if gravity had changed. And for a moment he looked like someone coming out from under water—vision clearing, self rearranging.

He remained sitting on her back, silent.

Rori didn’t move at first. Her eyes stayed fixed on the floor, as if something sacred still clung to the fibers of the carpet. But then she spoke—not to Michael exactly, but to something hovering just above both of them.

“She took me into a lake like oil,” she said, voice low, “dark, skinless, and warm. And I lost myself there—not in panic, but in this... hollow unraveling. Everything I thought I was came apart. Like pulling an engine to pieces without a manual. Every gear, every bolt laid bare.”

She finally looked up at him. Her eyes didn’t blink.

“I tried to put it all back together. I did. But it wouldn’t reassemble into the same shape. The pieces refused. They... they wanted to become something else. Not a machine anymore. But something delicate. Hollow. Like a doll made of soft porcelain. And then—”

Her breath caught.

“Then the doll began to crack. Hairline fractures at first. But they spread. And the cracks became the shape. I realized it wasn’t broken. That was the design. The breakage was the truth.”

Rori exhaled, barely audible. “And the doll... the doll was Carrie.”

Michael took a deep breath. "Tell me. What did she look like? What did she wear?"

The question surprised her. "Red."

Michael nodded. "Okay. Where are we going?"

"Really?"

"Yeah. I'll get the keys. Sorry. I... I was scared when you woke me. I'm sorry about everything."

"What if I said green?"

"Then I'd have beaten you to death."

Rori let out a dry laugh, one that caught in her throat before it fully formed.

“Guess I picked the right color, then.”

Michael didn’t smile. He stared down at his hands like they’d just touched something sacred and wrong. “You don’t forget her,” he said. “Not if you’ve seen her. The red... it’s always red. Like she’s bleeding from the future.”

The silence between them thickened. Not hostile—just full. Like something that had to be carried.

“Come on,” he said finally. “We’ve got a long drive.”

Rori nodded. She reached for the scarlet gun but didn’t lift it. Instead, she wrapped it in an old flannel shirt from the floor and tucked it into her bag, as if it might burn through if left exposed to the air.

The basement door creaked open, and for a moment, the shadows seemed to resist them.

Then they stepped out into the night.

And the world—quietly, without warning—began to unravel.

The night outside was colder than it should’ve been. Too still. The air had that crisp, uncanny sharpness of a movie set between takes. No crickets. No breeze. Just the deep hush of something watching.

Rori stepped onto the lawn and stopped.

Above her, the stars gleamed in impossible clarity—like glass beads arranged by intention rather than accident. She felt them. Not the romance of constellations, but a real gaze. Fixed. Unblinking.

“I feel like we’re being filmed,” she said.

Michael glanced at her. “We are. Just not by anything we can see.”

She scanned the hedge line. Too clean. Too symmetrical. As if the bushes had been placed rather than grown. She checked the neighbors’ windows for the shimmer of boom mics, the lens flare of a telephoto.

Everything looked... posed.

They moved across the yard, their footsteps oddly muffled.

Then Michael stopped mid-step, hands suddenly patting his jeans.

“Shit. I forgot the keys.”

Before she could speak, he was jogging back to the house.

Rori stood alone in the center of the lawn.

And then—

BANG.

One sharp crack.

The echo rippled through the night like a pulse under water. Silence rushed back in behind it.

Rori didn’t move. Didn’t blink.

Her breath hitched once, shallow. Then again.

There had only been one gun.

Unless there hadn’t.

Realization snapped into place like a trigger catch. Michael hadn’t been gone long enough to find another gun.

Which meant one of two things: someone else was in the house.

Or something else was unfolding in the dark.

Rori unwrapped the scarlet gun, the flannel falling away like a curtain. The breeze licked her bare arms—cool, insistent—so she slipped into the shirt, rolling the sleeves tight so they wouldn’t swallow her grip. The cotton smelled faintly of dust, old cologne, and panic.

She took a breath.

Thought of Leon Kennedy.

Shifted her stance—knees soft, arms steady, muzzle forward—just like in the game. Just like when fear was filtered through pixels and choice trees.

But this wasn’t a game. The night didn’t blink.

She stepped toward the open door, slow and silent, aware of every fiber in her body. Aware, too, of the unseen versions of herself watching—the Roris who had failed, the ones who had never tried, the ones who hadn’t made it to New York.

They were waiting to see if she would.

Whatever was in that room, it stood between her and the city.

Between her and the actress.

Between her and Carrie’s final breath.

And so she moved forward, into the dark.

• > I lay on my back, watching the moon slowly sink behind the serrated edge of the New York City skyline. William curled into the crook of my arm, his bony ass pressing against my hip. I stroked his black hair absently. The tension between us had cooled to a low simmer. Barely enough heat to warm a spoonful of heroin.
• > ONISM MAN stood with his back to us, scanning the street below. Everything was still cool, almost tender. The waning moon cast a pale yellow bath over us. I wondered if the King still watched, from somewhere beyond the Eschaton. I wondered if the Holy Thief still moved in secret, threading through the shadows of the sovereign kingdom in my chest.
• > I lie a lot. I act like the King’s rejection doesn’t matter. Like I don’t care. Like William is enough. He’s the King we have at home. But I’m wrecked. Inside, I feel like a halfway house crawling with hornets—angry, ravenous, eating each other to stay alive.
• > I don’t want to hurt anyone. But William? He does.
• > And if I refuse to help- will he leave, too?
• > I don’t want to be alone again. I don’t want to look up at the moon and feel nothing. I don’t want to look into the sun and see only ruin where light used to be. I can’t let that happen to William.
• > So what do I do?
• > Do I aim and pull the trigger?
• > Do I lean in close and feed him words until he breaks down again?
• > Do I just go numb, let the tide take me, and let what happens... happen?
• > Another midnight. The same old story.
• > He charges into the hotel, gun drawn, presses it against her forehead and hisses, “Why do we live? Why do we die? Why do we suffer?”
• > And she... she doesn’t flinch. Just meets his stare with those eyes like mirrors. She shifts her weight, gently, like wind through branches. Then she says the line.
• > The one.
• > The answer we’ve all been waiting for.
• > And when it’s so perfect—so complete—it renders me obsolete?
• > When five words cut the tether that kept me necessary?
• > I’ll vanish.
• > Like vapor. Like code.
• > An opioid numbing the ache of an eternal question.
• > Just like I was nothing but an appetizer at the King's Eschaton banquet.

My voice is not hers, though we speak in the same tense and from the same perspective.

Now, come with me—seven miles away—to a speeding silver Sunny NX Coupe Type B, rocketing northeast. Inside is Rori, the sister of the shadow cast by the Girl Named Crow.

I show you the car streaking along I-80, a lone chrome blur reflecting the blinking chaos of the sky above. Together, we tilt as though submerged, turning to gaze at the stars. And I show you—yes, I show you—that this moment is etched into the constellations. But not by me. I would never mar the heavens. Those old icons and ancient powers ought to be left behind.

Still, someone less reverent than I has painted with a stolen medium.

I raise my astral hand and draw it across the sky. Thirteen stars shiver and flare into view, commanding your attention.

• > They are the Seamstress.
• > In a world where reality unravels, the Seamstress stitches with golden thread. She desires to make things as they once were. However, the temptation to reshape existence grows within her, leading her to fail her task, leaving reality altered and incomplete.

• > The Wine of Fortune who holds a cup brimming with liquid success. In his drunken state, he bestows this fortune upon those destined for misfortune, altering the fates of all he touches.

• > The Changed Prince, groomed to uplift the monarchy, meets the enchanting Jocasta. Her influence inspires a new ambition within him: to transform the monarchy, not for the people or the crown, but for her amusement.

• > The Poison Apple, a teenage girl, accepts a dare to chase and catch a cunning cat. When the cat challenges her to eat a deadly apple, her indomitable spirit prevails. Consuming the apple, she is transformed, becoming the very essence of the poison itself.
• > The Hungry Traveler, a frail and ancient man, has sacrificed everything he owns, except for his last vice: his cherished walking stick.

• > The Noble Thief, an artist with a daring vision, seeks to satirize the Holy Thief by stealing not sorrow, but the face mask of the exquisite Princess Emilia. His goal is to enchant all who gaze upon her, forever captivated by her beauty. Using this enchantment as a diversion, he plans to seize what he truly desires: the immense power of the ONISM MAN.
• > The Deep Well, a novice wizard, conjures holy water from another realm. However, for those deemed unworthy, he offers a deceptive cup: drink from the Blackened Pond, where darkness and despair await.

• > The Deep Well, a novice wizard, conjures holy water from another realm. However, for those deemed unworthy, he offers a deceptive cup: drink from the Blackened Pond, where darkness and despair await.

• > The Silver Spoon, a chubby and pampered infant, wields control over the world's finances. His handlers, blinded by adoration, fail to act in his best interest. Despite his youth, he is brilliant and fully aware of his manipulative power.

• > The Crooked Man, born a normal child, eventually transformed into a wavy form. Despite his unusual fate, he believed his distorted body had a purpose. One day, he discovered a door amidst the chaos, shaped as a mirrored version of his warped figure. Walking backward, he fit into the hole, embracing his malformation's destiny.

• > The Torn Hat, a mind that leaps from vessel to vessel via a cursed hat. The brilliant magician who enchanted it became ensnared within when the Holy Thief’s blade tore the headpiece, sealing his fate.
• > The Fattened Calf, a creature once destined for ritualistic slaughter, found clemency when the priest who prepared him turned to worship the Toxic Muse, abandoning his sacred duties. The good-natured beast now patiently awaits the fulfillment of its purpose.

• > The Sorrowful Maiden, plagued by CompariSin, sheds tears for the countless realities she will never know and the triumphs her friends will never achieve. Her deepest anguish comes from being possessed by the meme of the critic, leaving her unable to appreciate reality as it is.

And I- The Heart Unlocked.

You gaze in wonder, trying to divine how I relate to the twelve others. But as I cannot know my own nature, I offer no insight. You may only come to know my heart through negation.

Now, look again—down there—at the bright silver line chasing the city lights. Inside the car is a girl. Or perhaps a boy. From up here, we can't be certain. From this vantage, you begin to understand what I do: distance warps perception. Isolation distorts identity. Only a heart unlocked and spilled out can know truth intimately. All else is abstraction.

An analogy grasped through impersonal degrees may brush against the accidents of a soul—but it will never touch its essence.

Without a heart unlocked, you drift in a sea of attributes and illusions. Trying to grasp the real through its residue.

From here, the car below is Rory.

No—Rori.

Or Michael I.

Michael K.

Alex E.

A blur not just of speed, but of dust scattered in the shape of a shattered mandala.

You know these stars not by their essence, but by their accidents.

You know me not by my essence, but through the cage where you’ve locked your own heart.

Come now.

We descend. Like a bird diving toward the surface of a lake.

We catch the speeding Nissan’s roof with ease. I pass you through the steel, gently, and seat you behind the wheel.

I lean in close and whisper, “You’re Michael.”

Then with a wink: “Play along.”

Rori sits beside you, mascara smeared—black streaks snaking down her cheeks like grease along a hot skillet. Her arms are flecked with blood. Her eyes, wide and refrigerator-door white.

“Fuck… fuck…” she mutters, over and over.

• > I whisper to you, Keep driving straight. I’ll tell you when to get off.

“What the fuck happened?” you ask, voice uncertain, unsure how you’re now reading as Michael when moments ago you were simply... you.

Her voice is jagged, like sheet metal warped by heat:

“The basement door. It was locked from the inside. How the fuck did he get in from the upstairs hallway?”

I tell you to improvise.

You start, “The light of the-”

• > I shake my head. That’s not right. Try again.

“He was strong. Built like a brick house. Kicked the door in. Knocked the deadbolt clean off. Knocked me flat on my ass.”

Rori doesn’t react.

“I never thought you’d have to shoot someone,” you add.

“Why the fuck do you think we’re going to New York!?”

“True.”

“Yeah. Fucking true.”

She stares ahead in silence, eyes searching for the next exit. Then, softly…

“Who was it?”

I reach down and take you by your soul’s collar. I lift you gently from the seat and set you before our troubled throuple.

“Wilma,” said ONISM MAN, his voice low and pensive. “Or do you prefer Alexandra… Carie, maybe?”

Wilma shrugged, a lazy motion that jostled William from his pocket of sleep. He let out a half-moan and squirmed. She cooed, “Shhh, baby…” brushing his hair with her fingers. Then, with a soft sigh, “Wilma.”

ONISM MAN smiled faintly. The streetlamp above him flickered like a faulty thought. “When the sun comes up, we meet Kisage X and Asuka Furutani. I don’t have to tell you what that means to me. Just being allowed to tag along. It’s everything. I won’t get in the way. You know I’m better in the margins. But… since the gun’s already out, can I ask a few questions?”

Wilma sat up, suddenly alert. William slid out of her arm, his head bouncing against the seat cushion with a soft thump-thump, followed by a long snore and a lazy swipe at imaginary insects.

“What kind of questions?” she asked, eyes sharp but voice unreadable.

“Well, sure, I know William’s fixated on THE QUESTION. And yeah, I want the answer too. But there’s so much we’ll lose the moment she dies. Stuff we’ll never get back. Like—why the stunt double in Kaiju Mechajaw? Did she and Kisage X ever actually hook up? What happened to the original sequel for School Yard Snuff? The cancelled one. The one that starred her. Not the Takayuki Morishima version. We all know that’s not what she and Kisage X had in mind.”

He leaned in slightly, eyes catching the moonlight like secrets.

“Wouldn’t it be nice,” he said, almost wistfully, “to get answers to those questions instead of THE one?”

Wilma blinked slowly, then nodded. “Yeah. Sure. I guess. That doesn’t sound like a bad idea. I mean… what could go wrong?”

I reach out and touch your shoulder.

“It’s our job,” I whisper with a grin, “to make sure everything goes wrong.”

And then, like a thought forgotten mid-sentence, I’m gone.

ONISM MAN at the Center FINALE

The sun peeked through the curtains of Room 409, Chelsea Hotel No.2, a little before 7:00 AM. The light brushed across Asuka’s heavy eyelids as she stirred.

Kisage Z was already dressed—black four-button double-breasted suit, no tie—and setting up for the shoot. Four tripods each armed with an Arriflex 16SR3. A makeshift lighting rig of three LEDs and a silicone diffuser had been carefully placed to highlight Asuka as she lay in bed in black lingerie, the strap of her bra artfully slipping off her shoulder.

Boom mics crowded the ceiling, rigged hastily—no sound crew for this last-minute gig.

Kisage reached into the inner pocket of his jacket and pulled out a packet of smokes. A quick slap, and he packed the tobacco. He slipped two cigarettes between his lips, lit them in one motion. His razored J-rock bangs swung forward like velvet drapes as he exhaled.

He glanced at Asuka.

She smiled.

He winked.

She laughed—soundlessly, knowingly. The moment had arrived.

A knock came at the door. Kisage Z, in a whisper that somehow cut through the walls, said,

• > “Action.”

In four long strides, Kisage Z crossed the room and threw open the door.

“I’ve been expecting you…” he said, flicking his bangs from his eyes. Then, more warmly, “Please. Come in.”

Outside stood three figures.

First, a tiny woman—disheveled, barefoot, the feathers of a dead crow glued haphazardly to her skin.

Next, a pimply teenage boy, lost behind a curtain of overgrown hair and nervous energy.

And then—an enigma. A man, or perhaps a myth, clad in a suit of purple and silver armor, radiating like a half-remembered memory from a video game cutscene.

They stepped into the room, wide-eyed at what they saw.

Asuka rolled from her belly to her side, resting her head in her palm with the grace of a centerfold. The lighting was gentle, ageless—erasing time. Her natural beauty outshone the artifice.

William’s jaw went slack. He had seen her in various stages of undress throughout her filmography, but now, in person, she felt impossibly larger than life.

Carrie scowled. A furious pang twisted in her gut—the CompariSin roared to life, flooding her with a desperate urge to reach out and shield William’s eyes.

ONISM MAN simply nodded. As if this set piece was exactly what he had planned for all along.

“I’m glad you could all make it for my final film,” Kisage Z said, voice calm, charged. “Now please—there’s not much time.”

He moved quickly, stepping into the director’s skin like a second soul. “ONISM MAN, to the window. Look out as if you’re scanning for snipers—paranoia, but with poise. William, by the bed. Hand in your coat, fingers playing with the firearm. I want voyeurism. Lean into the seediness. And when Crow speaks—let your eyes glaze over. Vacant. Enraptured... aroused.”

He turned to Carrie.

“Crow—you’re perched at the end of the bed. Think: Spider-Man, edge of the Empire State. Low crouch. Head bowed. The lights will catch you just right—obscuring the eyes, revealing the soul. There’s no script, as you know. Just blocking and camera angles. The words are yours.”

William didn’t move. Locked in place, somewhere between awe and ecstasy.

“William, that expression is perfect. But please—beside the bed. Hand inside your coat. Slow movement on the gun as if it were in your jeans.”

Kisage glided to him, placed a gentle hand on his back, and ushered him into position.

He turned and surveyed the scene.

ONISM MAN was already at the window, gaze sweeping the street below with theatrical intensity.

But Carrie—Carrie hadn’t moved.

She stood stock-still, eyes burning holes in William. Scowling, focused, trained on him like a sniper waiting for breath to still before the shot.

Kisage Z stepped beside Carrie, voice gentle but firm.

“Look, I know this is a shock. You didn’t know you were being filmed today. For that, I offer my apologies. But this is my final scene. So please—bear with me.”

Carrie shot him a venomous glare.

“Why are you young? What happened to the baldy?”

Kisage smiled, rocking back as if struck by an affectionate slap.

“Yes, I am young now. Indeed I am young—one might even say,” he paused, adopting a theatrical resonance, “the MC as he should have been.”

The Gandalf the White reference sailed clean over the heads of most in the room—except ONISM MAN, the ever-watchful Pope Culture Pontif.

“Heh,” muttered ONISM MAN without breaking character, eyes still scanning the street below.

“I knew you’d come back. No one ever truly dies in metafiction. Just flip back a few pages—bam, dead heroes resurrected. Tired trope. But hey... I respect the commitment.”

Kisage Z exhaled, resigned, and turned from the commentary.

He reached out and gently, absurdly, took Carrie by the beak. Led her toward the bed with the gravity of a maestro guiding a soloist to center stage.

“You hate this woman,” he said. “Stand before her like you might eat her alive. That’s your motivation.”

He stepped back into the shadows.

• > “When I say ‘Action,’ we begin.”

Kisage stepped out of the camera’s frame and sank into his folding chair. He met Asuka’s gaze. She inhaled, bit her lip, and let her eyes sweep the room, finally landing on William—shaking with anticipation.

“Action,” Kisage said, his voice sharp and clear.

Asuka let the moment steep in her electric presence. She tilted her head just enough for the shadows to sculpt her lips and eyes into something mythic.

“Alex…” she whispered to William. “Oh, Alex…” Breathless. Intimate.

William’s brow twitched. He didn’t move. His hand rested deep inside his coat, fingers caressing something unseen.

“What the fuck are you talking about!?” Carrie shrieked. She bounced on her perch, ready to pounce, as if tethered by an invisible leash.

Asuka didn’t look at her—yet. She took her time, studying William from head to toe, letting the pause gestate like a terrible secret. Carrie boiled with jealousy, her fury pregnant with implication.

Finally, Asuka’s gaze found the creature crouched at the foot of her bed. Her sultry calm collapsed into a look of pity—like a grown woman indulging a child who mistakes lust for love.

Contained in her expression was pure dismissal.

“Fuck you,” Carrie growled.

“Fuck you,” Asuka echoed, exact same tone, sharper for its restraint.

“William,” Carrie snarled, spit flying as her jaw clenched like a trap, “get the fucking gun out of your pocket and get on with it.”

The spell broke. William flinched to life and scrambled for the weapon. It wriggled in his grip like a live eel, slick with sweat and indecision.

“Shit!” he shouted as the gun slipped from his coat and dropped to the carpet with a dull, anticlimactic thud.

Asuka burst into laughter—loud, theatrical, absurd. She kicked her legs like a child throwing a tantrum mid-pillow fight, overcome by the funniest joke the universe had ever whispered.

Carrie leapt from her crouch and grabbed Asuka by the chin.

“Shut up!” she barked, breath trembling. She didn’t know where the anger came from—only that the hesitation she’d been nursing moments before now felt like a mistake already sealed into history.

William found the gun. Lifted it.

From behind the camera, Kisage Z called out, “Turn it like a gangster. American style.”

William didn’t question. He nodded, eyes never leaving Asuka.

But ONISM MAN turned from his mark, frowning.

“Okay—but that’s a revolver. If he holds it sideways, the recoil’s gonna shatter his jaw. I get what you’re going for visually, but you’re shooting this gorilla-style—no cuts, no resets. If he actually fires, the shot’ll knock him out cold and turn your climax into slapstick. That blocking kills the tension.”

William hesitated, then adjusted—gripping the revolver properly, adding a second hand for control. Still shaking.

Kisage Z took a long drag from his cigarette, eyes half-lidded. He said nothing. Smoked like it was a monologue.

“It looked hotter the other way,” Asuka chimed in, tossing a grenade into the argument with a smirk. “You looked more confident. Like you didn’t care if blowing my dome out cost you your jaw.”

William froze. The gun hovered between techniques. Between instincts. Between truths.

Three directors.

Three competing visions.

One shot.

“How about this?” William said, flipping his hair out of his eyes, mimicking someone far cooler than himself.

Asuka bit her bottom lip, raised one corner of her mouth into a slow, approving smile, and nodded—once, twice, then turned it into a violent head shake and erupted into laughter. It was unhinged and joyous, a performance or maybe not.

The sudden motion threw Carrie’s hand from her jaw. She scrambled to reassert control, but Asuka was quicker—stronger. With an elegant twist, she tossed Carrie off the bed like shedding a robe. Then, in one swift, dancer-like movement, she swung her legs over the edge and stood.

She was shorter than William. She leaned in close. Her forehead came to rest against the barrel of his scarlet gun with an intimacy that was both terrifying and electric.

“Your line,” she whispered with a wink.

William opened his mouth—nothing came out. He sputtered.

ONISM MAN cleared his throat. Loudly.

“Okay. I just need to interject here. Yes, Asuka just physically tossed Carrie off the bed. But we’ve never established that she has any martial arts training. So from a narrative standpoint, it’s reading like a female empowerment fantasy with no setup. I mean—Asuka’s a middle-aged actress. Carrie’s significantly younger. Are we really asking the audience to believe she can just toss someone across the room without at least a foreshadowing montage or an implied history of street fights?”

He waited. No one responded.

He added, quieter now, “Continuity matters.”

The two cigarettes gripped between Kisage Z’s thumb, index, and middle finger snapped in half with a sharp crack. He tossed the fragments over his shoulder.

“If you think it’s so easy to manufacture tension,” he said, voice like a blade being sheathed, “why don’t you direct it, genius?”

ONISM MAN lit up—arms flailing, eyes wild, like he’d just won the existential jackpot.

“Well—I mean, if you wanted my help…” He strutted into the center of the chaos. “Let’s start with Asuka back on the bed, Carrie perched like before, William with the gun pressed right against her breast—like, really dig in so we get some movement. Then he makes his demand—oh wait, right. No dialogue. Blocking only.”

As he spoke, everyone complied without a word. Kisage Z slinked into the corner like a retired magician, grinning. This was exactly the kind of entropy he’d come for.

“Yeah, so lighting—uh—can we bump it up? Modern films are so dark. Gloomy as hell. How do I change the intensity on this thing? Oh sh—!”

He knocked into the light. It tilted like a drunk at last call, then crashed to the floor with a sizzle and a sharp burst of smoke.

“Fuck. No, this is good! I read somewhere that good directors roll with the punches! Let’s just use the other two lights. Still dark, though... So, uh, camera exposure—how do I—wow. Way too many buttons. Whatever. We’ll fix it in post. This is shooting RAW, right?”

From the corner, Kisage Z called out, almost lovingly:

“It’s shot on film.”

“Film?!” ONISM MAN spun around like he’d been handed the Ark of the Covenant. “Fuck yeah. That’ll be awesome. So rich. So textured. Okay—uh—let’s just go. ACTION!”

William frowned, motionless.

“I can’t press the gun against her breast, man. That’s fucking weird.”

ONISM MAN nodded sagely. “Trust me. It’ll be cool and sexy.”

William hesitated. “I mean, it’s just…”

Carrie cut him in half with a single look.

“William—gun. Against. The titty. Chop chop.”

Pale, trembling, William turned to Asuka. “Do you—uh—can I do that?”

She raised one eyebrow, then the other. The look she gave demanded he make the choice. No permission. Only judgment.

“William, don’t you fucking dare!” shouted Carrie, blindsided and seething. “Just point it at her head. Look her in the eyes—YES, only her eyes—and say the line. Just like Michael wanted.”

Suddenly, the room fractured:

Asuka muttering about amateurs.

Carrie railing at ONISM MAN for botching the energy.

William caught in the crossfire, mumbling half-apologies to both women.

And from the corner, Kisage Z just smiled.

ONISM MAN fled the shouting like he was dodging live shrapnel.

Outside, the door of a silver Nissan slammed shut. Rori emerged—somehow alone. Her driver was gone. Disappeared like a ghost or a budget cut.

She left the car double-parked without a second glance. She scanned the towering canyon of the city street, unsure which building was the hotel, unsure what to do. She looked small against the vertical infinity.||

Upstairs, ONISM MAN hyperventilated. The scene had slipped through his fingers like film dissolving in acid. Crushed by the weight of his failure, he stumbled toward Kisage Z—still reclining in the corner, eyes shut like a statue left behind by a better civilization.

“I... I fucked up,” ONISM MAN stammered.

“Maybe I’m more of a writer than a director? I don’t know. I mean, you—you’re one of my heroes, and I could really use your advice right now. The scene is ruined. It’s like everything I pitched was shot down. Like they don’t even respect me. But I know that’s probably just in my head. My mom always said the insecurity was planted by my dad to hurt her, and when it flares up I’m supposed to remember it’s his fault, but the truth is I never really knew him, and---”

Kisage opened his eyes. Just a sliver of iris. Enough to stop the monologue cold.

“What you need,” he said, “is a change of wardrobe.”

The non sequitur landed like prophecy. ONISM MAN blinked, his millennial brain sparking.

Kisage continued, steady and cinematic: “Your idea doesn’t work because the casting is wrong. Swap who plays who—and suddenly, they’ll follow your direction.”

ONISM MAN gawked. “That’s... genius. YES! I KNEW YOU WERE STILL THE FUCKING GOAT! But wait—how? The outfits won’t fit. Carrie could never wear Asuka’s lingerie.” He pantomimed the size difference in the air like a frat boy explaining fridge logistics.

Kisage Z shook his head. “Stop trying to do everything yourself. You know nothing about costuming. You’re Monday morning quarterbacking your own film. For this... you need a professional.”

He cleared his throat and bellowed like a stage actor summoning a goddess:

“SCISSORINA!”

The dim hotel room exploded into brilliance as the adjoining door burst open. Everyone shielded their eyes from the sudden burst of celestial light. A slight woman—dressed like a high-fashion ghost stitched from lace, pearl, and cinema—floated in on its waves, garment bag in one hand, destiny in the other.

With a voice like a cursed lullaby, she sang:

“You want transformations? You want doubles?

Baby, I live for mistaken identity.

Let’s couture this chaos.”

ONISM MAN dropped to his knees, awestruck, as if genuflecting before divine professionalism. Scissorina swept through the room like a woman possessed, measuring actors with lightning-fast hands—precise, brutal, almost surgical. She moved like a chef preparing for a flambé, slicing the air with tape and pins and disdain.

Meanwhile—outside—

Rori. Alone.

She scanned for the hotel, unsure what it looked like, unsure how to move through space with so much weight inside her.

She slipped through the revolving door unnoticed, the gun heavy beneath her oversized red-and-brown flannel. The elevator was out. The stairwell, blocked by a custodian polishing chrome railings like relics.

She waited. Trapped between floors. Timing her breath with her heartbeat.

Waiting for the moment that would change everything.

Upstairs.

Scissorina circles her subjects, her eyes gleaming like tailoring pins.

First: Carrie becomes Asuka.

Her feathers are plucked one by one. A brush and soap at taken to her skin. Then A silk slip slides up her frame like it remembers her. Makeup is applied with loving precision. Contouring not for beauty, but memory. Her scowl remains, but her eyes adopt Asuka’s detached seduction. She doesn't look like Asuka. She feels like her.

Cut to: Kisage Z transforming into Carrie.

Scissorina fits him into a replica of Carrie’s crow-feathered getup. The feathers are stitched directly into the lining with crimson thread, each one a mockery of identity. He stands before the mirror, tilts his head, and caws under his breath—method already taking hold.

William is dressed as ONISM MAN.

An oversized purple-and-silver suit of Armor swallows him whole. She tapes an extension mic to his lapel. He adjusts his fake glasses and mutters half a monologue about narrative pacing, unsure if it's parody or homage.

As for Asuka… The transformation was both jarring and exquisite.

Asuka sat perfectly still while Scissorina worked the bald cap over her hair—folding it down in delicate layers, smoothing it across her scalp with the precision of a sculptor restoring a forgotten statue. Any hint of her dark, luxurious hair was erased under latex and spirit gum. Then came the suit: an oversized black double-breasted piece that hung on her frame like she’d been swallowed whole by ambition itself.

Shoulder pads turned her silhouette into abstraction. The collar rose high enough to frame her jaw with masculine severity. But despite the effort, there was no mistaking the truth: her cheekbones still cut the air too sharply, her lips were too expressive, her eyes a touch too mournful. She looked like Kisage Z—but through the cracked lens of memory or dream.

And that was the problem. If Kisage Z weren’t so stupidly beautiful, Asuka’s striking femininity would have betrayed the illusion completely. But he had always been a paradox of soft and hard edges, sharp lines softened by allure. So when she finally turned to face the mirror—her reflection staring back with blank masculine detachment—it worked.

Barely. But it worked.

Just uncanny enough to carry weight. Just beautiful enough to pass.

Then, the final touch: ONISM MAN becomes William:

A rumpled flannel. Shaky hands. A fidgety energy. His hair is mussed and his voice trembles with faux intensity. He turns to the mirror and practices lines—only to mutter, “Why do we live? Why do we die? Why do we suffer?”

Rori was in the hallway now—running as fast as she could up the second flight of stairs. Her heart bungee-jumped in her chest. Her nerves felt like shredded, rotten vegetables.

Back in the room, William—dressed as ONISM MAN—glanced toward Kisage Z, who was, not-so-secretly, Asuka Furutani in the role of a lifetime. He looked for direction. Kisage Z gave him a nod and a wink, and William’s heart leapt—like a long-dead engine suddenly catching fire.

“Okay, guys,” ONISM MAN announced. “When I say action, we don’t break character. William: gun against Asuka’s breast—knead it like dough. Asuka, your reaction should be torn—pleasure tangled with distress. Then, William, you ask the question. The real one. She’ll hesitate. That’s your cue to cock the hammer. She gulps, and Crow caws in triumph—her plotting come to roost. Then I’ll begin to improvise. No matter what happens, get the question out of her. And do it before I cross the room. Got it?”

Everyone nodded.

“Clear the set,” ONISM MAN commanded, suddenly confident. “ACTION!”

And just like that, a spell passed between them. Their pulses linked.

They acted as one.

William leapt from his mark and landed on the bed, hovering over Asuka. His firearm jabbed into her chest—aggressive, performative.

“C’mon now,” he whispered. “You knew this was coming.”

Asuka glared up at him and struggled, but William’s weight made resistance futile. Cinematic realism.

Crow—now delivering her lines with a slight Japanese accent—vaulted from her perch and landed beside Asuka, their faces nearly touching. Asuka’s eyes were squeezed shut in terror.

“Please, please, please,” Crow whispered. “I need to know. Just one little question and it’s all over.”

Asuka gulped, then spat in William’s face.

“Fuck you.”

He cocked the gun and pressed it to her temple.

Outside, footsteps approached.

“Shit,” muttered ONISM MAN. “I fucked up. I was supposed to watch the street. Did you guys hear that?”

“Just deal with it!” snapped Carrie.

ONISM MAN nodded, steeling himself. He crossed the room carefully, each step calculated to avoid alerting whatever danger lurked beyond the door.

“Look,” said William, his voice cracking. “I’m a big fan. I love your movies. I love your face. I’ve got a poster of you above my bed. I see you before I sleep and the moment I wake. So please... don’t make this hard on me.”

He hesitated, searching for the line.

Carrie moved quickly, sliding from her place at the Asuka’s side and wrapping her arms around William. She kissed his cheek, coaxing him forward.

“Say it.”

“Why do we live?” he asked, leaning closer.

*“Why do we die?”*

Crow crept behind him, slow and soundless. Her presence grew around him like a shroud—dark, feathery, consuming. A force of corruption wearing a girl’s face.

ONISM MAN tripped. His armor rattled like a drumroll.

A knock at the door.

“Why do we suffer?”

Gunfire exploded from the hallway—a burst of ricochets and echoing pops. The oxygen was pulled from the room as the actors’ screams drained it of breath. Blood spattered in every direction, as if the prop blood system had been dialled up too far.

Reality flickered.

The scene was ruined.

Or perhaps—

perfect.

The door, shot to hell, folded in on itself as Rori threw her full weight at it. It crumbled—cinematic hyper-fantasy.

Still cowering, ONISM MAN looked up from the floor, covered in blood.

“So cool,” he whispered.

William—or maybe ONISM MAN—was screaming hysterically. Hands shaking. Room spinning.

Asuka—or maybe Carrie, or perhaps Crow—stared at Rori, wide-eyed, breath shallow with awe.

On the ground lay a body riddled with bullet holes. Face blown away.

Carrie—or was it Kisage Z?

The carnage stilled everything.

No one moved.

No one spoke.

The question—the only question—hung in the air like a ghost waiting to be named.

ONISM MAN… or William… or maybe Michael J—rose, trembling, the suit of armor impeding every movement.

“Why do we live!?” he shouted, voice cracking.

Across the room, Asuka—her makeup streaked with tears—stood revealed, her mask split by emotion.

“Why do we die!?” he demanded.

“Why do we suffer!? That’s the fucking question!”

He gestured wildly.

“You dragged it out. You all dragged it out. It was so simple! Did you assholes want me to go proto-not?! It’s ruined. Ruined!”

He turned to Rori, eyes wide.

“And who the fuck are you?!”

Rori stood in the wreckage, smoking gun in hand. Her blonde hair was a wet, tangled mess, matted with tears and sweat and whatever else had clung to her on the way here.

The real William—wherever he was—had begun to hyperventilate. A thin, shrill sound, barely human.

Time folded. The scene slowed, flattened.

And then, the Holy Thief stepped into the room. The film stuttered in the camera’s spool. The reel was running dry.

From the shadows, Asuka Furutani emerged—the spitting image of a gender-swapped Kisage Z.

“It is finished,” she said.

She moved through the wreckage, through barbed-wire stares and gutshot grief, and knelt beside her friend—dressed like a crow.

“This,” she whispered, “was the film we planned in Africa. The Role of the Maitreya Buddha. But I couldn’t play her this time. I had to take on another part.”

She turned to Rori.

“You know the light of the moon, right?”

Rori looked stunned. Confused.

Asuka went on.

“Sometimes, the world can only move forward if the hungry traveler eats a fate better than the one they were resigned to.”

She closed Kisage’s eyes.

“You only go hungry in every reality if you leave your future to prophets of starvation. And only a machine can live without food.”

She stood. Crossed to the window.

“You’re all fools,” she said gently. “You made so many wrong choices to get here. Begged this artist to fix your life. Asked for answers.”

She turned to face them.

“He would’ve done it. He was willing. But none of you ever knew what you were asking. With your electric psychosis, your escapist dreams of parallel realities—fine. You want the truth?”

She looked to William.

“I’ll give you the line. The one I never said. And no—don’t worry—it won’t make you go proto, whatever the fuck that means.”

She laughed through sudden tears.

• > “Goddammit, Kisage.”

Her crying deepened. Like the gravity in the room had bowed to it.

“Kisage and I used to go back and forth on the line. Whether mystery expressed the answer better than the question. But I learned with age: the proposition without practice is hollow. Words aren’t the truth. They’re the invitation.”

She reached into her jacket and pulled out a sealed envelope. On the front, it read:

“Open at the close.”

She laughed at the reference.

Then she tore it open.

Read aloud:

“A good director always dies for their story.”

The camera pulled back—slowly, gently—zooming out until the truth blurred into abstraction.

And I, the Holy Thief, pull you from that place.

Ask you to stay put.

And as I leave, you wonder—what became of Rori? Of Carrie? Of William? That phantom third between them?

But you already know.

Because you lingered.

||You stayed after the credits rolled. You wandered the empty set once everyone had gone.

You find the envelope—its edges torn, forgotten in the debris. And though dread thickens your blood with shame, you read the real words. The line collaboration never let her say.

You speak them, trembling, as if you were Kisage himself.

For the glory of God.

The End.

The End.

The End.

The End.

The End.

The End.

The End.

The End.

The End.

The End.

The End.

The End.

“An Afterlife Afterward”

You reject my advice and linger beyond the credits. You always do. Always searching for more. Never satisfied by endings, not even the perfect ones. Any resolution, no matter how foreshadowed or poetic, feels like betrayal. You crave the ache of the question more than the comfort of the answer.

You recall moonlight the color of sour fruit and a King who wore delusion like velvet. The girl who tore out her eyes for his applause. You remember the grotesque pageant of it all. So you leap—not with legs, not with body, but with intent—and land without impact in the street below.

It’s noon on January 1st. The new year rings hollow, suspended in cold like a frozen river mid-thaw. The city hums with synthetic peace. The kind bought, not earned.

You drift toward motion. Three figures slip below the surface at the 23rd Street station. You follow instinctively. Not for reunion—no one here knows your name—but because gravity bends toward closure.

The sun, disoriented by your persistence, warms you out of season. Maybe it pitied your orbit. Maybe it knows what’s coming.

The subterranean music strikes: train wheels whine like strings, distant chimes ping like oboes. The station isn’t just filthy and hot—it’s alive, a cathedral vibrating with transition. Every vibration whispers that something’s about to break.

You scan left. Right. There. Asuka Furutani. Still and striking in a blood-red coat, hair drawn up in a paisley ribbon, her scarf fluttering like punctuation. The wind from a passing train sends her coat billowing: a flash of shadowed leg, the stylized silhouette of a woman drawn for a movie that never screens.

You rush, but you aren’t the first. Rori, Carrie, William- names like shuffled luggage tags-

reach her before you. They’re whole now in ways they’ve never been. Carrie’s eyes shimmer with humanity. William’s spine doesn’t collapse beneath guilt. Rori’s smile flickers through you like déjà vu.

You remember them distorted. Broken. You never thought you’d envy fictional cohesion. But here they are—not real, not exactly—but complete. And here you are: a ghost who stayed for the bonus scene, hoping it held the secret moral of the entire epic.

Maybe this is where the truth begins again.

"Something's changed," you say.

But the voice comes from William.

Carrie tilts her head, as if a memory just swam to the surface and tapped her shoulder. Rori touches Asuka’s shoulder, but Asuka’s already turning—smiling like she’s known this reunion was coming for years.

"Yes," Asuka says. Maybe to William. Maybe to you. "You got away with it."

Rori stiffens. Like the hammer she threw in rage has finally returned from its arc.

"That's right..." Carrie murmurs. "Kisage's dead..."

The air goes taut. Eyes avert. The grief, uninvited, floods in all the same. The four of them raise invisible shields. Hands over brows, shoulders hunched, as if the mourning burns too bright to look at.

Asuka frowns gently. "Kisage?" she repeats, her voice soft with disbelief. "He’s been dead a long time… don’t you know?"

A beat. Confusion passes between them like an electrical current.

"Then who’s dead?" asks Carrie, almost laughing—out of shock, not humor.

"Just a bird," Asuka replies, smiling with impossible kindness. "PETA’s the only one who'll object to the film."

William leans forward, brow tight with hope or fear. "So… it’ll really be shown? The movie we made?" He gestures toward Rori. "But… what about her?"

Asuka’s eyes shine with amusement. "Oh, the director thought of everything. She was never on camera. The shot came from offscreen. Letting the audience ask: who was responsible?" She turns to each of them as she speaks:

"Was it the mechanical prophet of starvation? The incarnate algorithm of anxiety? Was it the angry boy searching for his pastel-tinted dream girl, who sent you—" her gaze lands on William "—to wring answers from me, of all people? Or was it ONISM MAN?"

She lets the silence bloom.

"Where does the blame lie?" she whispers.

Rori shakes her head. "I didn’t want to kill anyone. I just didn’t want to lose my sister." Her voice cracks with sudden clarity. "When I found out I made you vanish—or die—or whatever that cycle is… I couldn’t stand it."

She looks skyward—or maybe toward the fourth wall. "Who drove me here?"

You wince. You know she can’t see you. Still, you blush.

Asuka shrugs. "A lot of deaths happened offscreen, it seems."

William shifts, his foot tapping with the rhythm of unease. "So what did it all mean then? What I did for Michael? Will he ever find her without me?"

Asuka doesn’t answer. The silence folds neatly between her lips.

The train arrives.

She bows, gracefully as always, and steps aboard without ceremony. And just before the doors close, she looks back..

…and gives her signature wink.

You watch her vanish into the tunnel, into the dark where questions never return. Your eyes linger too long, and because of it, you don’t notice when Rori, Carrie, and William flicker out—like phantoms late to their next scene.

You're alone now.

The stillness feels rehearsed. Familiar in the worst way. Your eyes scan for the absurd: a hidden camera, a man poised to leap, a track that’s not a track at all but a stage rigged for tragedy.

But no trains come.

No trains go.

You stand in an empty theater.

A set without actors. A script that’s bled its last line.

Then something seizes you. Not quite memory. Not quite madness.

An insight blooms, raw and luminous.

A gasp catches in your chest. Is this an epiphany?

Or your Original Win?

Not a thought. Not an answer.

A sensation—like your mind tilting to accommodate a shape it was never built to hold.

A deviated perspective.

Not a lie. A translation.

The brief, unsettling gift of seeing as someone else saw. Not just their choices, but the reasons that led them there.

You understand what they wanted—and what they feared.

The beauty they reached for. The harm they caused along the way.

And, impossibly, it all fits.

Their contradictions don’t vanish. They simply untangle.

And in that clarity, not justice, but something adjacent: forgiveness.

Not as absolution.

But as recognition.

You glimpse, for a moment, a table long enough to seat every wounded version of yourself and every person you could not understand. The once and infinite supper.

A place set for each story. Each wound. Each unfinished sentence.

It doesn't answer everything.

But it makes the silence gentler.

• > I, the Holy Thief, take pity on your stunned devotion.

I tap you on the shoulder, and when you turn—

My visage knocks you off your feet. A paradox wrapped in patchwork. Face like a mosaic of threads left unbound.

I lean down, my voice one you always knew:

• > "If you stay here too long, you'll vanish too, you know."

Then I leave.

Silently.

Deliberately.

Having stolen from you the only treasure you longed to possess—

the knowledge of how all things end.