A Self-Study Within A Broken Mind

I hesitated coming back after Christmas. Lila would no doubt tell Kara about my slip up. Knowing what happened could only expose the gunshot underneath the band-aid. I had worked too hard to change their minds, to have them forget. First of all, there was nothing to know. The person Tarne was had nothing to do with what the soul was before. Granted he regained his memories once before, but Fyntn fixed that with his sacrifice. Having delayed going into the library until the last few minutes before work, I needed to face what became of Kara. I had to know that the memory of knowing was erased. I stepped into the library to find it empty, but rather than call out, I sent out a telepathic field to only connect to Kara. She was nowhere to be found, possibly no longer in the untethered space. She had the Keir after all, and I worried what that might mean, having revealed the plan to erase her memories to James AI. The setting was wrong. I would have to stop by again another time. I was disap...

For fear of my words getting lost to the current status of my habitation, I employed my old way of writing, by means of storage USB with all my past stories, and those who would one day come to be. I had to delve into one of their minds tonight. Tarne could not be set aside any longer. I stepped into the library expecting another giant contraption of orange tracks, only to find Tarne playing by herself with JJ nowhere in sight. She was skipping on the wooden floor of many different hues, trying to only land on the lightest ones. “Hey,” I said, making her land on one foot, and tumble over to the couch. “Sorry. Where’s JJ?” “He didn’t want to play with me anymore,” Tarne said. “He’s very childish.” I smiled. “He is a child, Tea.” “I’m a child, TOO,” she continued. “But he’s a really petty little brat. We played his game for a bit, with a bunch of action elements. When he got tired, I made us some snacks and drinks, and asked if I can choose the next game. At first he was ok with it, but ...

“Hey,” I said the next night into the library. Lila was sprawled out on top of a bookshelf, these no longer filled with lessons of my life. They looked empty without books, but it was now the digital age, and the stories remained on the laptop downstairs. “Oh, hey,” Lila sat up on the bookshelf, legs hanging off each side. “You’re back like you said. I didn’t expect you to be here the next day.” “I feel a strange need to apologize to you,” I said. “But don’t,” she replied, lifted her leg over to join the other and jumped off the height to land gracefully. “I did what I wanted to do.” “Even without beast rattling around inside me, I took advantage,” I said. “It’s fine,” she said. “And let me know if you’d even feel like trying it in the female form.” I tried to picture it, rubbing our backs together at random. Then I tried to picture how a human female and Lila could engage in sex, much to confusion. There would be a lot to figure out before it could be pleasurable. “I was wondering if ...

“Hey,” I said appearing in the wooden enclosure. “You’re late,” Lila said. “Two days late.” “Yeah, I’m sorry,” I said. “It’s been a bit difficult to sleep lately with the heat. The situation in the city I live in is draining, but there was a nice thunderstorm last night that gave way to some cooling.” She was sitting on the couch in her child body, making me wonder whether the teen one was a way to cope. “How do you know about Faust?” She asked. “WHAT do you know about him?” I changed my view to see the transparent vines fill up the room. She was unaware of them, but they gave me power I once had with Rebecca. “Nothing,” I said. “You were mumbling out in the dark. Something about deserving being here? Wanna talk about that?” She looked away while pulling her legs up onto the green couch. “Not really,” she said, but I had a feeling she would anyway. “He was a friend back in my world.” “Was?” “We were playing around in this place adults tell us not to. Like an abandoned factory. It’s har...

How does one describe the fears of all who reside in the light? Do you not call it darkness? If that is your answer, then I am the entity you call darkness, alive somehow. I know not myself how I survive, but I see, I smell, I feel, I hear, and I taste, just as you do. The cold does not bother me, while you, it kills. That is why you light fires, while I cling to the shadows. You're weak. I'm strong. You tell stories of me, such horrible nightmarish tales, but I cannot say they are untrue. Your fellow humans look to the dark as a thrill, and it is from there where I strike. They scream and cry, but in the end all is silent. This is not about survival. The dark is my domain, my home, I defend it. There is another name that humans call me, a name devised by them of no understandable origin, but I enjoy it. I am a Garavand. I listen to them, to you, humans. The shadows hug me, hide me. So many stories of you are created right before me. I watch the darkness within these humans ...

Fiona did mention millions of fictional V-scapes that humans visited every day. I still had the plastic coin that allowed me access to all of them, and while a lot required a buy-in, or were pay-to-play, a great amount of them were still free-to-play with in-game purchases. Among the free V-scapes, the ratings guided me to one named: “We Can All Be Stars.” Perhaps it was due to being one now, but I was drawn to try it. To my disappointment, this V-scape was referring to a world where you decided what kind of famous person you wanted to be. The most popular was a rock star, but entrepreneur and tech mogul were also highly rated options from about a thousand different characters. In that world, you took over their life, making decisions and altering life to your whimsy. Each character could go dark with underground dealings, or could swim in a pit of orgy flesh thanks to their capitol. It was a strange ‘scape, not really where you went to interact with others, but rather to escape a hars...