A Self-Study Within A Broken Mind

I came back, incidentally, not a day later, but two days after. Kara and Lila were still in the cube, but sat back to back in the center instead of being split into the corners of the container. They were not at odds with each other so the orbs did not activate to separate them. Tarne was not around, possibly learning ways to make silence feel even better. I walked into the cube with a smile, but found myself slowing down as I got closer to the two women housed in a room to settle their differences. They were both hitting the ground beside them, hands sore and bruised. I stopped, but it was too late, they stood up and lunged at me. With both of them pushing, they forced me to the wall of the cube and used me as the key to exit as well. It was a well-orchestrated plan, for a bunch of rubes. “Sorry,” I said, then put one hand each on their respective sides to send them flying back into the cube. “I came here to get you guys out, but that wasn’t very nice.” “Let us out,” Lila said, then t...

I came back on Monday, sitting at the same table I was at on Thursday. On Friday, I opted to start work early and do some extra stats work that I enjoyed to the tune of new music I loaded onto my phone. The multitude of old music felt great for nostalgia, but I found myself skipping some old songs to hear the more recent ones. I would have to go through the whole list and pluck the weeds out. The whole “wearing beast like a cloak” was vivid in my mind, and I found myself wondering what made me think I had made peace with desire. It was a hesitant thought, disappearing the more I attempted to recall it. I put it out of my mind for the time being. For some reason, I was not afraid that I would lose this space, and the freedoms it allowed. I was not overweight here, did not have to be tall, did not even have to be male. I could be any kind of being I could imagine. I could even be a dragon for a day. And so, I decided to be one. When I entered the library, I was still human. It was empty....

I came back to her after a week or two. Time spent re-reading Finnelgamin was left uncounted, and filled my mind to the brim with old demons. I knew the whole story already, but it affected me harshly nonetheless. It was as if I did that cruelty all over again, and yet reading it over again made me understand how Finn came to exist so free of me. He was sealed away in his temporal bubble of repeated time, but in the story I wrote after, with a supposed copy of him, a damn Garavand reconnected them. When that story ended, what Finn found in the darkness beyond all the stars, was a way out. The only mistake he made was stepping into Rebecca’s space where I had complete control and connections to everything in my imagination. “Jack?” Rebecca asked of the library room. The electric tingle got her here, but she was right out of the bath, only wearing a towel on the hair and one to cover her body. “Are you here?” she started taking off the towel wrap around her, but I expanded the garment i...