Xxiv.a: Recompile, As I Walked Within The Crowd, Bumping Shoulders With Shades Of Old And New, I Started

xxiv.a: Recompile, as I walked within the crowd, bumping shoulders with shades of old and new, I started to think of what was next? A new person was practically born when I walked through those gates … I had felt a slight burn walking down the street, breathing in the smog hovering oh so casually above the slick finished street, black as tar, smooth as cream. The number of shades that were going to side with me was somewhat unknown/ insignificant in the war ahead. But here I was … no turning back now, it was succeed or be caught down the drain of the ever ensuing blood bath. So where to first? Whom to visit and see first? I had to prepare carefully … choose … carefully. If I were to run into the wrong shade at the wrong time, it could spell instant ego death with the full price of everything I wished to achieve along with it. So … I needed to breathe, disassociate a little, and take a view from outside this walking prison … I walked for at least a couple hours at least … until I remembered … the city had a large unoccupied district completely overgrown by nature. District label F-CXT, or just The Over Garden, untouched by governing bodies for more than a decade, The Over Garden was closer in resemblance to the apocalyptic cities from the books/movies I had read/watched in the past, where the story took place like a few hundred years after the bombs had dropped, where skyscrapers still loomed but were almost completely surrounded by trees and vines/moss, animals were everywhere, deer frolicking twitching their noses of black with curious nature based in innocence chewing on green fresh leaves, with birds flying fast and sharp around the dead districts over taken streets, to the opossum mother, carrying her little opossum babies like little bags over her back, seven in number, fourteen little black eyes looking all in my direction as they disappeared into the bushel. I walked deep into the district, taking it all in, I felt as if everything was quiet, but not silent … as I could still hear the sounds of nature fill my ears … until I heard what sounded like water flowing? I thought it odd, maybe a pipe had burst and started to spew water? But that didn't make much since, I was positive this district was completely disconnected from the rest of The City, despite it being located within The City … meaning no maintenance, no regulation, no power, and certainly … no water. All the sub-water systems should be cut off, or well … literally welded shut. So I walked off into the distance toward the sound, as I approached and shuffled through the bushes and low-hanging tree canopies, I was met with a little pond that had developed in the center of an old main street, right between two skyscrapers … I walk to the embankment of the pond and look to my left … nothing but thick forest … look to my right … nothing but streetways and eroded/degraded skyscrapers and infrastructure overtook by vines and moss … I put my hands on my hips and sit with thought for a moment … “Here, do it here” I start to gather sticks, old newspapers, and really anything flammable within my general area. I make a small campfire at the end of the pond, center of the street of the side with the buildings. I sit by the fire … why did it take me this long to realize who I needed to see? … why did I let all those people walk all over me? ... Why’d I even take a second to breathe in the air around all those people who made me sick to even think? Why did I let anyone in? I should have known from life past lived that no one here is playing a part that is not with some evil intent … they are all just “Bad Actors” playing to pry open my inner thoughts to use my personality to their improvement their gain and amusement …  Why did I play their little obvious charades at all? I didn’t in the past, I was the game master, not the pawn awaiting their moves and their actions … where did it all go wrong? The fire crackled and burned … glowing even brighter it had seemed … [To Be Continued]

xxvi.i: Son of Salem, why? “Look, I love fuckin people over … making their beach days in the sun a torrential downpour, it’s no secret ok … but I tire of fucking us over … it’s fucking boring me, and I wanna go back to messing with outside sources … wanna live again, yah get me?” Sounds fucking awful … sounds exactly like something I don’t wanna do. “Yeah well … life ain’t fucking perfect, neither are you pal. Sometimes we just gotta compromise and move on with our lives, lest we get stuck in a fucking irritating and brain-numbing loop. I hate … how The City has become … I hate … How we’ve lost the wheel to the Cazbium and everything we wanted came to a fucking halt … it pisses me off … royally.” … *BOOM* … “So … what’d ya say huh? Join forces and finally break this loop once and for all?” My head tilts low … the cost? … He grins. “Hehe … well … looks like you’re still kicking in there after all.” his grin fades to a serious expression. “I knew it” There are no deals with you Salem … that don’t come at some great cost … so don’t play with me … what … is it? “You have to accept the nature that comes with being us … my passive.” What is that? *BOOM* … “The Trial” … What is this trial? What must be done? “Oh? You don’t remember that either?” He giggles loudly “Well then … part of our alliance also includes you taking on my traits … aka … not giving out everything at once. So sorry … but that right there is a secret.” … … … I think hard about my options … which was more of a battle to find options other than saying yes to him. Maybe he was right … maybe he wasn’t bluffing and I really do only have two options … have him join me … or die. *BOOM* The Storm picks up, the rain starts to fall heavier. “Take your time … we’ve only got about eighty more years on this shit hole rock … or until Wrath brings the Neon-Tide and sinks The City into the Sea.” *sigh* … if I accept your deal … I want no harm done directly to anyone I care for … I want no damage to inside sources any longer, I WANT … Peace now … understand?. His eyes glowed bright … his smile wide … he let out one more disturbing giggle, reached out his right hand towards me as to offer a shake, raised his left arm high straight into the air pointed at the sky, and made a finger gun hand gesture. *FIZZ* A small red flame appeared on the tip of his pointer finger, at the tip of his finger gun, and he said with a dark undertone. “Ha ha haaaaa oh I understand … Deal! … I will damage no inner sources or people you care for directly and we will achieve peace … noooo double-crossing … no crossed fingers as you can see … only what you wish and what we’ve agreed on here and now; So long you agree to compromise … and retake on my traits, my strengths … deal?” … I grab his hand slowly … deal. He laughs loudly and eyes glow so bright, they illuminate his face a little “THEN FROM NOW ON … I will be following your words as if they were gospel … as one again.” the flame on his finger grew a little bigger and made a fizzing noise again. He pulls the trigger and then … it suddenly SHOOTS Off from his finger into the sky, lightning quick, leaving a red trail behind, it pierces the clouds and as it does it sends a reddish web stretching across the white-illuminated clouds as far as my eyes can see from down in the canal. He laughs and laughs, jolts up, and starts to dance and kick water everywhere laughing and laughing some more … then he comes over to me and stands above me … putting his feet in between the gaps in my arms from my torso. I ask … What was that? “Karmic Justice … a message to the future my lovely Shade! What comes around … goes around. The fucked up thing is, that’s not even really my doing, it’s the golden pricks … I’m more so just the trigger puller hahahaaaa.” I look at him puzzled. He stretches his back deeply by putting his hands on his lower back and pushing in, stretching his chest out wide and lurching his head towards the sky and grunting … then a large sigh ... [To Be Continued]

xxv.g: Destroyer, haha, if that crazy nonsense even makes sense ... “Yeah I understand, and you may have slipped … but you've regained or never really lost, that part of you I've always known, which was your honesty and ability to fess up your mistakes … but why so hell-bent though on acquiring those old memories and way of things, even in the name of rebuilding? Aren't they the reasons you kind of collapsed in the first place? Would it not be too dangerous trying to gather all of that, I mean you're basically risking everything every time you regain a shade, and the more you get the less … Good … shades that'll be available for you … your risk to reward ratio … well it'll become more and more unbalanced as you go on” Yeah in a way, they were responsible, they built a path that lead to the shatter, and yeah … it'll only become more and more of a shit show as I progress further. But, I have to do something, gotta keep moving forward, I have nothing else to do otherwise, except live in regret and rot … I feel like an outsider to my own life as it stands now, a mere guest in this house, and I remember looking back through memory, the power I held over my own life, that I seriously lack now … I just don't know how I acquired that presence I had when I walked around, and how that made people talk to me, when I try to go mimic what I did in the past now … it just … fails hard, I get weird looks or get called an asshole or insensitive, I just make things awkward, etc … it's all just … wrong. “You are different … I know and see it, but” *She turned towards me, put her right hand on top of my left, that was resting on the couch* “I'm very content with who I'm talking to … you don't have to become … yourself, again … for me or anyone else to love or respect you. I also would much rather you be who you are now … if that means you'll stay safe.” *I start to feel my heart rush a little* I can feel her hand in more detail … soft, warm, and so damn light, feels strange, and so different from the gut puncher from earlier … guess this was partially why I liked The Imp … [To Be Continued]

xxvi.e: Son of Salem, He spits on my face ... “NO … You helped him leave The City back then huh, you had old lady blackmail our boss to get you free of your debt huh?” Help escape The City? Old lady? Black Mail and Debt? He slaps my ear again so hard, I can feel it sting and start to bleed. “YOU TRY TO FUCK ME HUH? THINK I'M A STUPID HUH? I'LL FUCKING KILL YOU, YOU UNDERSTAND BITCH” Then … it clicked, a while back, I had helped The Jester escape The City … helped him leave and escape an insane Mexican drug lord we had worked for, well ... The Jester worked for, and I helped to get him off the street, and put a little extra cash in my pocket. You see we didn't exactly leave on good terms … he suspected I helped him disappear out of The City to help escape out of the drug lords influence, so he could stop working for him, he and I both had seen too much you could say, there was no leaving peacefully. And in that, he ended up putting this “Debt” on my head, that I apparently owed him. Me being me … I went to see an old friend and “Other Mother” of mine named Mrs.Van she was a Vietnamese kingpin in the Vietnamese mafia, and had taken care of me and The Jester when we were young little shits, running around The City when we were super poor, me homeless/a runaway. She had offered us housing, food, clean clothes, jobs, and of course … money. All-to-do drug runs for her as kids … no one would expect a child with a school backpack to be carrying around bricks of coke and baggies filled with countless grams of pot to sell to the rich and addicted. I more or less, owed her a lot, we had separated for a few years, about three, one year before my collapse … then the two that were my collapse. After my involvement in helping The Jester escape The City back then, I needed to secure my own safety … so … I went to the only person I knew who'd have the power to actually do that. Mrs.Van. She ended up agreeing to do so, so long I explained my absence and caught her up on The Jester, as well … run a few jobs for her … free of course. And boy did I … and boy did I hate life. But she managed to shake the fucking dirty thug for me, incidentally … by blackmailing him. Never found out what the blackmail was, but she did it. Then life went back to normal pretty much, like I hadn't passed off a crazy drug lord and basically had his life or business or whatever threatened so he'd stay away from me. And well … seems he had caught word of my much-awaited return to The City, and must have been keeping tabs on me. And so now … he was probably gonna have me tortured … laundered off to some high bitter or used as a token to structure some deal against Mrs.Van. Little does he know … she does not do hostage situations, merely drops the hostage as well the drifter trying to swindle her. She'd say “You get caught, you get ransomed, you ruin my business, you are liability and will be cut off like dirty asshole who tries to get one on me” so now … I let this Spanish fuck keep swearing at me while I wait for my indefinite doom. He continues on, saying how you should have never did what I did … I should have known better … and can't fuck over a true mother fucker, etc. Gangster mumbo jumbo really. All the while my head is racing with so many thoughts, I'll never get to tell The Knight about the words his dad had left with me the night after his twenty-first birthday. How I wanted The Jester and I to take that trip to the mountains like we always wanted to, that I was finally ready. And to The Imp … well, there was just too much to say … one of which was to thank her, for when she helped me years ago with Aurora, told me everything I was doing wrong … and how I needed to treat her and everyone else better, and how they had all actually discussed me being a problem, that without her help … I would have lost them all much sooner than I did, that she was so special for what she did, and I needed to thank her. I try to loosen my restraints silently and in an inconspicuous manner, to no avail … [To Be Continued]

xxiv.d: Recompile, that look like hospital doors that were not there before … I say ok, and walk to the doors, and step through … where I'm now in a small doctor's room. I go and sit up on one of those examination bed things that are typically in family doctor's offices … I waited for about 10 mins then … a doctor came in, she didn't seem off or perturbed by anything … she sat down in her bar-like rolling seat and started entering data into her computer, then she walked over and said “You've been malfunctioning again … we're gonna need to probably put you back on the medication” What? What medication … my Narcolepsy Meds? “We'll start you with a higher dose this time, then gradually lean you off when we've seen significant progress” Wait, wait … hold on what medication? Why am I hear? “*Sigh* hey just remember something would you?” Huh? “Someone thinks they can shelve you and come back later … someone thinks you have to be contained and conquered … someone is truly after your heart … don't fuck up and let the first two ruin your life, just deny, take what you've learned and try and remember what you lost … then … do what you do best.” What I do best? ... A Loud bang filled my ears, the lights went out, and then … I woke up … it was morning and cold, the fire went out clearly … there was something on my face? little feets? I jolt up … and flying off of me was a little Baby Racoon … Oh? Sorry buddy … didn't mean to scare you … he reminded me of the little raccoons I used to feed next to my old workplace after hours by the dumpsters, he reeled back and hissed, I raised my hand up palm down facing the little guy … Woah woah … hey calm now … I reached into my little burlap bag I found late last night while gathering fire supplies. I grab out a little granola bar and open it, offering it to him … he calms himself and his hair which was all stood up, starts to fall … he slowly approaches me … takes a sniff, and then with his tiny hands grabs a little bite-sized bunch of granola and started to chow down while keeping his vision affixed on me. I slowly sit down … and offer up more and more, he slowly gets closer and closer until he is resting in my lap … he was only about the size of my hand, I slowly pet him while he nibbles and chows down … [To Be Continued]

xxiv.c: Recompile, I yell for him to climb up my arm … he tries and slips, I grab his forearm in panic and pure instinct … he starts to slowly slip more and more down to my hand … he says … “God PLEASE … PLEASE I DON'T WANNA …” He slipped out of my hand and disappeared into the depths below… I stare in disbelief and shock at what just happened … I then snap out of my quick little trance, then go to stand, I grab onto the railing and shuffle and struggle walk towards the stairs leading up to the helm with the captain. I make my way up the stairs… and look over to my left, where this Black Beard looking figure was pointing and yelling around and at sailors, as to direct them in what to be doing, I walk up towards him, and in his madness and chaos … his gaze crosses me for a mere glance … then his eyes dart right back to me and all the color and expression leaves his face … then a terrified shock pours over him … he raises his arm and says to me “n-no … it can't be you … y-you died years ago” I yelled HUH?? Then the storm picked up again, I start to stumble and then BOOM lighting hits the back of the ship … knocking loose the rope that tied down the main boom … it came swinging with great force straight for me at a slight downward angle … it SLAMS right into my abdomen carrying me straight to the edge of the ship … busting right through the railing launching me overboard, I watched as the top of the shit grew in distance and my arms flailed in the wind of the fall … then boom … my back slammed into the rocky cold seas and then … darkness … I thought, was I dead? THEN LIGHT … I awoke … springing straight up with great force and speed from a resting position to a sitting position … OHH … What the Fucking FUCK!! ... I look around … I'm … I'm in a bathtub? Filled with blood, I'm covered in … blood, head to toe. I look at my arms and hands as they are covered in blood, so much so … some starts to drip off onto my lap. I look to my right and notice the curtain is fully drawn, I grab the edge and pull it open … it's a bathroom from a previous house … I stand up and step out of the tub, open the cabinet as to grab a towel … it was completely empty … great. I went to open the door and walk out into the hall … but … it was … it wasn't my house hallway… it was the hallway with its drab walls and flooring, I walked out from one of the doors in the wall … I walk out into the center of the hall … look all the way right down the hall … then all the way left down the hall … both just lead on infinitely into a black void. Then I hear a loud bang from behind me? I turned around quickly, the door to the bathroom had slammed shut? I go to open the door again … it was … locked… … … I … was speechless … I walk backwards to the center of the hall … turn to my right and start to just … walk … I walked and walked and walked… until then, I came across an intersection in the hall, an opening to a slightly larger room on the left side of the hall … it had a desk and a few lounge chairs against the wall with a little table with magazines … I walk over and pick up a magazine … soaking it with blood … it said on the front cover “Family, Friends … Rehab … your journey starts with Ascension” I put the magazine down. I looked towards the desk and there someone was, a woman dressed in an old-timey nurse outfit with stains all over … I walked up to the desk and she just stared looking straight forward at the upper wall in the oak desk … she had this … fucking god-awful gleaming smile … and bulging eyes … Hello? ... can you help me please? I don't really know what's going on, haha. No response … uh hey! *I wave my hand in front of her face* still nothing … then I noticed a little sign in front of a bell that read “Ring for Service” … … … I think, it's worth a shot … so I ring the bell and INSTANTLY Her head twitches to face me and she says “The Dr will see you right away … Just go in through the doors on the right please!” I look to my right and there now are two double doors that look like hospital doors that were not there before … [To Be Continued]