A Self-Study Within A Broken Mind

I came back a few days later to the same feeling of warm comfort I hoped it still was. Having become comfortable in another gathering of people, I just disconnected from them again. It had to happen. Both JJ and beast started bleeding through. While an imaginative kid could use some friends, beast was not someone that deserved to exist around others. Just like before, I would miss those few I grew fond of, but they were better off not knowing me. The warmth I felt around me was also wet. With that in mind, I could only assume I was in a womb. If this was Lila’s womb, I had no idea what the birth would look like as that part of her being’s life cycle was not known to me. I knew two things other than this: that I could not see, and that I had no way of editing my predicament. Whatever this was, I would have to let it play out. In a strange way, I did not want to leave this comfortable embrace of warm wetness. It was like a sensory deprivation chamber, only you did not float in water, but...

(27k, loosely edited) “…for dark magic tends to save the world more often than the pure kind.” -some old wizard The nails she wore drew me to her first. They were a midnight shade of purple, rimmed with gold, each sporting three small daggers, star-like, gradient of gold to the midnight purple. They entranced me, enticed me, and inhaled my existence. In the end, those nails were the ones who brought me to my supposed life. I wasn’t alive, but not quite dead either. “Half-lifer,” she called me, her crimson lipstick so close to my eyes. “Best come with me.” This isn’t my story. I’m dead. Well, not yet. I’ve died, and she brought me back, but not to life. I can talk, walk, sleep, and pretend I’m human. I don’t decompose, but have no heartbeat. With one foot in the grave, I’m frozen between life and death. I now serve her, Deresanzi, the Queen of Half-life.” “Stop calling me a Queen,” she said. “I’m just another Half-lifer like you. You’re only here because Salzy wanted to bring you ba...