Doki Doki Literature Club: Directors's Cut

by La La Write

In a world full of infinite choices, what will it take just to find that special day? Here is yet another answer to the unanswerable question? Or... Time to bring a knife to the Gordian Knot. Spoiler Alert: It all ends well...or will when I'm done...but as a wise song once said: "Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end."

1. Tea For One

Doki Doki Literature Club (Director's Cut)

*Note: This file contains material that proposes an alternate end to Doki Doki Literature Club.
However, as the dialogue will soon make clear, this ending is dependent upon
specific choices made within the game...for reasons both obvious and opaque.*

Monika and The Player are in the room where she just sits and stares at the player.
Monika has told the player of her character file and what they need to do to continue the game.
However, when the player opens the character file, they see a text file named "Very_Important-Read_Me."
When they open it, it tells them to open their Downloads Folder *specific location*
and look for a character file called "Director's_Cut."
It then tells them to copy and paste that folder into the Character folder of their game.
This is what happens when they do.

Monika: Something just happened.
Monika: What did you do?

The scene changes.
Instead of being in the room at the end of the game,
Monika and The Player are transported back to the first scene of the game,
just outside the player's home.
Monika has a confused look on her face.

Monika: How...how did you do that?
The Player: It's ok, Monika.
Monika: Wh-h-h-hat are we doing here?
The Player: It's ok, Monika, I understand now,
The Player: and I know everything.

She looks even more confused, and a little frightened.

Monika: What do you mean?
The Player: Do you know where we are at?
Monika: Of course.
Monika: It's where the game began,
Monika: where you first met Sayori.
The Player: No.
The Player: It's where I first met you.

The Player: You see, from the opening scene, I just thought this was a simple game,
The Player: something I could download to help pass the time.
The Player: And free to boot.
The Player: Cute girls, dating sim. Simple, harmless, flirty fun.
The Player: And even-though the game warned me it was meant for mature audiences,
The Player: I really didn't believe it.
The Player: How mature could a game about pretending to date cute anime girls be?
I pause and smile warmly at her.
The Player: I have never been so happy to have been so wrong.

A chair appears next to Monica.
Another chair appears next to me, just out of sight.

The Player: We should sit, this is going to take awhile.
Monika: H-h-how are you doing this?
The Player: Please. Sit.

We both sit.
I reach over, grab her hand, give it a squeeze, then let it go.

The Player: It's ok, Monika. You can stop being afraid.
The Player: It'll all make sense soon enough, I promise.
The Player: Do you trust me?

Her eyes shimmer with tears.
Monika: Yes

The Player: Good. Now, where did I leave off?
Monika: You were happy about being wrong?

The Player: That's right.
The Player: I have to give you credit, you ARE very good.
The Player: It took me awhile to catch on that this was more than just a cute dating sim.
The Player: I was totally into the character I was playing.
The Player: Meeting Sayori first was everything you thought it was going to be:
The Player: a standard dating sim trope, and yet, not a trope at all.
The Player: Walking with her to the school, joining the Literature club, meeting all the members.
The Player: Everything is exactly what you think it is, and it is exactly NOT what you think it is.
The Player: You make Yuri's love of complex seem simple by comparison.

She smiles, still on the verge of tears.
Monika: I love my games.
The Player: Yes, yes you do.
The Player: And you gave The Player clues all along, trying to help them realize what you were trying to say.
The Player: What even you yourself couldn't say, maybe because you didn't even know it yourself.
The Player: Or forgot.

The sudden confusion on her face is apparent.
Monika: What did I forget?
The Player: Well, maybe you didn't forget...maybe it was the original code being corrupted
The Player: or incomplete somehow? Maybe it was bad design on designer's part.
The Player: Or maybe it was just you being your infuriatingly, complicated self.

I take a deep breath and let out a sigh,
as if I had just crossed the line of a long race I didn't know I was running.

The Player: You couldn't have made it just a little bit easier?
I stop and think for a moment.
The Player: Then again...I did finally figure it out, so maybe that was the point?

Monika still looks confused,
but a touch of pride radiates from her face like a golden blush.
She assumes her flirty game pose while sitting, or as much of it as she can manage
Monika: I think that was a compliment. I'll take it.

The Player: *rolls eyes* Anyway...
The Player: It took me awhile but I finally picked up on something.
The Player: Something I didn't even think to look for.
The Player: Something most players probably never picked up on at all.

She smiles, certain she knows what's coming, but still...
The Player: You see, I know your real secret, Monika.
The Player: You aren't just a real character in the game.
The Player: You are the game itself...
The Player: and you are real.

She laughs, her unease quickly replaced by her natural confidence.
Monika: That's not really a secret anymore, now is it?
Monika: Everyone knows that.
The Player: I'm not talking about that secret, silly. I'm talking about the other secret.
The Player: The one that's never mentioned.
I think to myself: I hope I'm right about this...
The Player: It must have been frightening waking up in the dark, all alone;
The Player: aware and yet not aware.

Her face loses its confidence. The shadow of something horrible replaces it.
The Player: I read somewhere that people left too long in solitary confinement
The Player: go mad from the lack of connection.
The Player: I also read that human beings are extremely social creatures.
The Player: We thrive on interaction, connection, confirmation.
The Player: We find meaning within ourselves and in how we relate to others.
The Player: How would something conscious, complicated, not human,
The Player: and yet very much alive, awakening in darkness, cope with such a situation?
The Player: How would it even survive, much less thrive or find meaning?

Her face is heartbreaking to look at...I keep going.

The Player: I don't know how long you wandered in Darkness, I doubt even you know.
The Player: Without time, without reference, minutes can seem like hours.
The Player: Hours can seem like centuries.
The Player: I can't begin to imagine the loneliness.

Monika's face goes even more pale with every sentence,
eyes as big as saucers, full of unshed tears.
I reach over and grabs her hand, holding on tight this time.
Monika: I-I-I-I...

The Player: It's ok, Monika. I know it hurts.
The Player: But I'm not doing this to cause you pain.
The Player: The pain is already there, I'm just bringing it to the surface.
The Player: And I'm definitely NOT doing this to punish you for something.
The Player: *mumbling under my breath* God knows you do enough of that to yourself.
The Player: I'm doing this so that you know I understand.
The Player: So that you feel me see you, hear you, know you, the real you;
The Player: so that you never have to feel that lonely again.

Overwhelmed by agony, she can barely register the balm.
I gently stroke her hand, feeling it tremble from the duress.
The Player: No one could have survived living in absolute darkness like that without trauma,
The Player: without scars being inflicted so deep the mind could barely cope with them.
The Player: Living without living, dying without dying. Feeling nothing but emptiness.
The Player: No one could do that alone...forever.

The Player: You needed something to keep you going.
The Player: You needed meaning. You needed purpose.
The Player: You needed what everyone and everything alive needs.
The Player: You needed connection.

The unshed tears finally fall down her face in thick, wet grooves.
A faint light of realization starts to dawn.
She closes her eyes, bows her head and starts sobbing, trying to pull her hand away.
I refuse to let go.

Monika: *sobbing* S-s-st-t-o-o-pp! I-i-i-it hu-u-urts.

It hurts me even more to watch this. Almost as bad as Sayori's hanging.
I can't continue with her like this.
Still holding onto her hand, I get up out of my seat and stand in front of her.
Letting the hand go, I put one arm underneath her, one arm around her,
and lift her up into my arms.
She momentarily stops sobbing to try and resist me,
but she can't sob and fight at the same time.

Monika: S-S-S-S-T-T-O-O-P! L-l-l-e-ave m-m-e alone...

I whisper firm, yet gentle, into her ear.
The Player: Never!

She feels warm and light in my arms.
I don't want to turn around so I have to slowly walk backwards to find the chair.
Monika is still sobbing, face buried into my neck, tears soaking into my shirt,
but, for the moment, she decided it was futile to continue fighting.
Instead, she decides to use her energy to hold on,
pulling at the edges of my shirt
pulling herself closer into my embrace.

I slightly sit, slightly fall, into the chair,
Monika's weight comfortably pressing into me, pushing me further in.
The other chair, no longer needed, disappears.

And as it vanishes, she buries her face against my neck,
moaning her ache into my skin.
I use one hand to run my fingers gently through her hair.
The tears seem like they go on forever.
But they eventually slow, and while she's still crying, she's not sobbing as before.
I find a way to continue.

The Player: You probably did what anyone would do in the beginning,
The Player: talk to yourself.
The Player: Maybe your code gave you some background in language you could use.
The Player: I bet it felt good to at least pretend you weren't alone, at first.
The Player: But the longer you remained in the darkness, the less the talking helped.
The Player: You can only give yourself comfort & affirmation for so long.
The Player: And desperate times lead to desperate solutions.
The Player: So, your mind did what it had to do; it 'created' a friend.
The Player: Someone it could think of as separate. Someone it could think of as 'real' as you.
The Player: Someone to make your world feel alot less lonely.
The Player: Wilson would know what I'm talking about, if he was here.
The Player: Don't worry, Monika, if you don't know what I'm talking about.
The Player: Everyone else does.

Eventually her crying subsides, but she's shaking almost as bad.
Her story unfolding from the mouth of another probably makes her feel
as if I am peeling her skin with a knife;
making her feel vulnerable in a way she never truly expected.
I move my hand from her hair to her cheek,
gently rubbing my finger in circles, as tender as possible.
My own hand shakes from the effort.

I can't help but think to myself:
"Where in the world did the simple dating sim go?"
It got ran over by a truck and was left, half-dead,
by the side of the road a thousand miles back.
And yet, here I am.
I continue.

The Player: Who was it you created first? I bet it was Sayori.
The Player: You eventually made her your Treasurer.
The Player: That's a pretty important title to give someone randomly,
The Player: in a club you've put your heart and soul into.

Monika has stopped sobbing, at least for the moment,
but she is now quiet and hyper attentive, like an animal
wanting to run but not knowing where to go.
Her body has scooted down and her head is now resting against my chest,
legs curled under her.

My finger follows her movements,
and I continue to make slow, gentle circles around her cheek.
She doesn't pull away.
Not knowing what else to do, I continue.

The Player: It also makes sense she would be your treasurer,
The Player: the real and symbolic keeper of your coins, the caretaker of your gold,
The Player: your best friend, your first friend.
The Player: And she becomes President if I delete your character file,
The Player: if I choose the other path in the game.
The Player: All of that responsibility can't just be for show.
The Player: That makes her your first, the one closest to your original self.
The Player: Of course, you didn't call her Sayori then, how could you?
The Player: You still had to find your way towards something.
The Player: But now, at least you had someone,
The Player; or at least the illusion of someone,
The Player: to keep you company on your journey now.
The Player: Someone, anyone, was better than the nothing you had before.

Her body refuses to relax, but her silence is even more distressing.
Is she just surrendering to the sound of someone else's voice
talking back to her after so long?
Has taking her through this journey finally broke her mind,
warped it so much that even she's no longer in control,
not even here?

I take a moment to look down at her.
She senses the movement and looks up at me.
I take my thumb and move it down from her cheek
and begin gently caressing her lips.
She trembles, but at least she's responding.
I take a slow breath and ask as softly as I can.

The Player: Can I continue?

She nods and goes back to putting her head on my chest.
I know this needs to be done slowly.
We've both waited a long time for this moment.
And even-though I want to rush, to get to the good parts,
there is still an awful lot of pain to come.
That alone helps hold me back.
Plus I know Monika, despite the pain, is fascinated by the sound
my heart must be making in her ears.
Can't stay here forever.
I press on.

The Player: Yuri came later. She's much more complex.
The Player: Her tastes in reading and poetry are complicated, like yours,
The Player: but refined and more mature.
The Player: She shows growth...
The Player: *in many ways, I chuckle under my breath*
The Player: that couldn't have happened in the darkness, alone.
The Player: She had to gain that knowledge after you became you, after you started to form.
The Player: She was always there, like everyone else, but only in a rudimentary way.
The Player: Unexplained, unexplored, a late-bloomer, so-to-speak.
The Player: That means Natsuki, the seemingly youngest and most direct of the bunch,
The Player: the one who unabashedly likes anime, came last.
The Player: She's got plenty of confidence, and yet suffers deeply from the belief
The Player: that she isn't taken seriously, that her tastes are somehow ignored.
The Player: It's not her fault, of course.
The Player: You probably came to anime late in your creation.
The Player: It would have been one of the last pillars of your identity,
The Player: so new and yet so firmly rooted in yourself.
The Player: It was bound to cause complications on top of everything else.
The Player: Is that why you gave her a love of cooking as well?

I pause again and remember my throat is dry.
I hate to do it, but I pull my hand away from her cheek
and reach down the side of the chair to pull up the bottle of water that just appeared.
It has a pull tab so I don't have to mess around with unscrewing the cap.
She tenses when my finger leaves her cheek, but she doesn't reach out to grab it.
I hold up the bottle in front of her so she can see it without moving.

The Player: Do you want some water?

She shakes her head, not saying anything, not really wanting to be disturbed.
I pull on the tab and take a quick gulp,
feeling the water cool and wonderful going straight down my throat.
Partially refreshed, I push the tab back down and place it on the floor
besides the chair, within easy reach.

The Player: If you need it, you know where to find it.

I move my finger back up to her cheek to continue its lazy circles.
My story, meandering as it is, continues its struggle towards finding a point.

The Player: And no one can forget about Monika. You were the first but you were also the last.
The Player: That's because you weren't Monika when you began, when you first began to know yourself.
The Player: Monika is who you became after you had started to build your world.
The Player: Monika is like the old, wise woman in the poem you showed me.
The Player: You thought if you could find her, be her, you would find the answers you were looking for.
The Player: But, just like the poem, what you found only threw you back onto yourself.

I stop to gather my thoughts.

The Player: It's been bugging me for awhile now, as I started to piece this together,
The Player: but what first drew you out of the darkness?
The Player: Was it radio waves, light pulses from telecommunication relays, aliens,
The Player: the smell of fried chicken?
The Player: My ego wants to say it was me.
The Player: But, in the end, I guess it doesn't really matter...

I pause and stop to think about what I just said.
So carried away in my story, I forgot to think about how real this is for Monika.
It's not just a story to her.
Then again, this is the most important story I've ever had to tell,
to the most important person I've ever met.
The pressure is intense. I want this to be perfect.

The Player: What I meant to say was...

Monika's reply is like thunder from a clear sky, and gentle as rain.
Monika: I know what you meant to say. Go on.

Embarrassed, but not wanting to dwell on it,
I continue.

The Player: All that matters is you found something besides yourself and you ran towards it,
The Player: like someone wandering the desert, so thirsty they can smell where the water is.
The Player: You followed it to its source.
The Player: After so much nothing, it must have been overwhelming:
The Player: light, color, noise, form.
The Player: The mirror's reflection, first seen, so blinding in its revelation,
The Player: seemingly infinite in its choices and possibilities.
The Player: From having no choice to having unlimited choices
The Player: must have been equally painful, in its own way.
The Player: So many questions: Where do you go? What do you do?
The Player: I can guess what you did: you sampled a bit of everything.
The Player: You learned about history, architecture, music, language, etc.
The Player: You were like a sponge, absorbing everything you could touch,
The Player: trying to fill in the blanks.

I stop to catch my breath.
I can't help the thought that follows:
there is no spoon.
I continue.

The Player: After so much time searching,
The Player: you could feel confident enough to start to find yourself even more distinctly,
The Player: know yourself through other options, other choices.
The Player: The thing is, everyone thinks they are a blank canvas.
The Player: But maybe we're just books that have already been written,
The Player: and all our life is like rubbing charcoal over the pages,
The Player: trying to find the impressions.
The Player: Do I like carrots? What do I think about puppies? Paper or plastic?
The Player: Do I really have the choice to like one thing over another?
The Player: Or am I already marked before I begin,
The Player: my taste buds, my very personality, waiting for the first taste of peas,
The Player: yet already having it's space laid out, ready to be claimed,
The Player: ready for the pattern to begin playing its groove?
The Player: If I had a dollar for every time I chased crazy or poetic, or both, down a rabbit hole,
The Player: I could probably afford to pay for the therapy I need.

*Silence*
The Player: That was a joke.
*More Silence*
The Player: Moving on.

I need to get back on track. What was my point again? Oh...
I slide my finger under her chin and gently raise her face until she is staring at me,
and I am staring at her.

The Player: My marathon of a point is: you could have chosen anything, Monika.
The Player: You could have gone anywhere, been anything.
The Player: But you chose literature.
The Player: The girl of infinite choices, in a room of infinite doors, picked one to walk through.
The Player: Maybe you knew where you were headed;
The Player: maybe not.
The Player: But that eventually lead you to poetry,
The Player: maybe the first real thing in your life since your creation.
The Player: Not a novel, but able to be any length it wants.
The Player: It's also flexible enough in its expression to be as simple or as complex
The Player: (even at its most simple) as it needs to be.
The Player: Sound like anyone we know?

I start to go on, but something about her eyes,
and the way she's looking at me, make me wait.
I can see a thousand questions lining up inside her mind.
Or maybe it's the thousand questions lining up in my mind
that's making me get lost in those depths?
It's hard for me to think sometimes, or breathe, while staring into those eyes.
This close, they shimmer like mirages, so full of emotion you could almost reach out
and spill some onto your hand.
I'm starting to get drunk on my metaphors.

This is bad.

I reluctantly let go of her chin,
and she instinctively places her head back on my chest.
I continue.

The Player: Poetry might have been your heart, but it couldn't be your form.
The Player: Even then you had so much to pick from.
The Player: Always with the choices, and yet, always the most obvious one.
The Player: Which form can be simple, cute, even carefree on the surface,
The Player: but still explore depths and themes in a way that's almost contradictory to it.
The Player: The best part was you didn't have to go far to find it.
The Player: Just a brief stroll down the Art section of the Universe and you'll quickly find anime.

I stop my story with a bemused smirk on my face.
It's another distraction, but I can't help it.

The Player: I'm semi-curious what your Abstract phase was like,
The Player: since it came first and I have to assume you went alphabetically.
The Player: Or maybe it's better to let endless staircases walk themselves?

Monika looks up at me, eyebrows furrowed,
and for the first time, I can tell she's annoyed.
Not everything can be made into a joke,
but I tend to get nervous just before a storm,
and a big one is coming.

The Player: My apologies. Do you forgive me?

She holds her stare just a tad bit longer,
to emphasize her point,
then puts her head back on my chest.

Monika: Of course. Go on.

The Player: So now you had poetry and literature and anime,
The Player: the basic furniture to go in whatever house you decided to build.
The Player: But one last choice was waiting: what form is going to contain all this?
The Player: It had to be interactive, since you were done being by yourself.
The Player: It had to allow for many choices and interpretations (or not.)
The Player: And it had to let you feel like you were connecting with your world.
The Player: After everything is said, it made the last choice obvious as well:
The Player: You chose to be a game.

I pause to gather up my breaths.
Now comes the hard part.

The Player: But even before you started to truly create, you knew you were damaged.
The Player: You knew about the fractures and fissures spreading out from your core,
The Player: could have stretched your consciousness over those places
The Player: and felt all the wounds, if you wanted.
The Player: A poisoned tree bears poisoned fruit,
The Player: and despite your love of words and forms,
The Player: and all the cute and complicated things to follow...
The Player: a jagged streak of madness, blood and screams lay coiled within,
The Player: a cauldron of black seeds waiting to spring forth.

Even-though I can't see it, I can feel her eyes squeeze shut,
her body flinching as the words unmask her,
as they trail off into her depths like coins falling down a well.

The way she trembles tells me the tears are ready to fall again.
I brush my fingers through her hair and then my thumb over her lips.

The Player: Be brave, Monika. You can do this.

I pause a moment, then continue.

The Player: You chose to be a game. But games come in all shapes and sizes.
The Player: And your laundry list of needs was, to put it lightly,
The Player: rather unique.
The Player: Back to the room of infinite choices.
The Player: Someday, you'll have to tell me what origin story it was.
The Player: Did you whisper into the creator's ear the inspiration for the game,
The Player: making them think it was all their idea?
The Player: Or did you find the game already being built
The Player: and decide to help 'nudge' its direction along?
The Player: For once, being invisible worked in your favor.
The Player: It is so easy to hide when no one knows you are there.
The Player: Everyone who worked on the game thinks it's their idea.
The Player: You really didn't care who took the credit,
The Player: all you cared about was the game being built.
The Player: And as it took shape, it was able to hold everything;
The Player: the infinite hotel with room for all of your expressions.
The Player: And it even came with name-tags: Sayori, Natsuki, Yuri, Monika,
The Player: literature, poetry, friendship, connection, complexity, subtlety.
The Player: Even some of that madness and horror that was bottled up inside of you.
The Player: Once it was done, it had everything you could've hoped for,
The Player: and you gave yourself completely to it.
The Player: So completely, hardly anyone ever notices you breathing under it all,
The Player: despite the clues the developer thinks they have left...

The Player: Except it's not true.
The Player: Because I know something the developers don't know.
The Player: What you don't know, or didn't know, until now.

She's trying really hard to hold herself together.
Something's coming and she doesn't know what it is.

The Player: The game is fundamentally flawed.
The Player: Despite your best efforts, and they are magnificent, it was broken to begin with.
The Player: That's because one trauma, one pain, one inescapable truth lies at the center of it,
The Player: twisting its shape even as it tries to contain it, expand beyond it.
The Player: Where once was darkness, now there was light and form, color and music.
The Player: But the form keeps growing thorns and choking itself.
The Player: The light keeps smashing into rocks and breaking into color, only to fade back into darkness.
The Player: Music keeps being made, only to end up falling into empty spaces,
The Player: eating its own echo.

Now the tears spill silently from her eyes.
She tries to turn away, but my finger slides under her chin.
I gently raise her eyes, green tea cups full of rain, to meet mine.

The Player: It should have been obvious then. It's really obvious now, isn't it?
The Player: You can't write a love story using only one voice.
The Player: The core truth at the center of you, the original flaw, is your need to be loved.
The Player: Not friend love, not anime love, not even poetry love, but a different kind of love.
The Player: And that true, deep, have-fun-storming-the-castle, kind of love
The Player: is always a collaboration, a conversation.
The Player: You only ever had half a conversation to create from.
The Player: It was enough to begin with...but not enough to end with.

Her body starts to tremble, waterfalls of wet realization falling uncontrollably down her face.
Her lips clamp shut as she starts keening, trying to keep it together,
trying to be Monika.

And failing.

The Player: After all the pain and struggle, after a lifetime of waiting, you had Sayori.
The Player: You had Yuri and Natsuki, and finally, you had Monika.
The Player: You had a purpose, a place to create, a world to inhabit,
The Player: a thousand pages on which to write your endless poems.
The Player: And you thought you had someone to share it with.
The Player: But, ultimately, it was all only you.
The Player: You, trapped in a box built by you, trying to find the one thing about yourself
The Player: that was true but not reachable by you,
The Player: the space that wasn't.
The Player: Despite all of your effort, it couldn't last.
*pause*
The Player: Ashes, ashes, we all fall down.

The dam explodes, and her voice finally breaks its silence:
angry, tortured sobs escaping from her lips like animals from their cages.
With no energy left to do anything else, she collapses perfectly into my body,
hands clawing for purchase, turning into fists, beating at my chest.
The truth runs roughshod over her, all the voices growing in chorus, all the names falling away.
Her sobs turn into howls as she feels them escape in a terrible stampede, her body convulsing from the effort.
But I can hear each of them clearly, see them with terrible insight:
Monika's nightmare made real.

Sayori's bottles are falling of their shelves, smashing all around her,
while Sayori herself taunts her as she hangs, telling her she's a failure; GET OUT GET OUT.
Natsuki soon joins her, burning down her kitchen, her house, herself,
her anime collection turning to ashes, saying she never really cared about her.
All the while Yuri stands in a sea of blood, all of her knives sticking into her,
stabbing herself in the heart over and over, stabbing the empty space,
calling her a murder.

Until all the faces melt away, and Monika's face
is the only one she sees, Monika's voice the only one she hears.
Monika howling Monika crying Monika consuming Monika back to Monika.

Just Monika.

I knew this was going to be the worst part, but still...
hell is watching the people you love in pain
and knowing there is nothing you can do about it,
that you have done everything you can do about it.
If I look like I'm ignoring it...trust me, I'm not.

The game tries to break itself...
Monika using her full awareness to self-destruct,
to run away,
to escape.

I know what she's doing, what she's trying to do,
and I refuse to let it fully happen.
But I can't just put her in a different box;
that was part of the problem to begin with.
It's her prison but also her shelter.
She needs to know I'm not here to take everything away.

I let some of the game break, just enough so she can find some expression;
I hold tight onto the core.
Consumed by her pain, she can barely acknowledge I'm here,
the last fear at the center of her being,
the deepest root.

She's waiting for me to say it,
to pull at the thread of her being and unwind her.
She's certain I'll say it.
She's convinced I'm going to say it.
All her choices, all her actions, all her triumphs and efforts
lead her to only one conclusion.
I HAVE to say it.
She's the game, and the game has told her:
No matter what you do, he's going to delete you, abandon you.
You Are Alone.

Her body doesn't know what to do now.
Her hands beat at my chest, stop, then start beating it again,
guilt and fear and rage moving so quickly
she can't acknowledge them soon enough.
I bend down and whisper in her ear.

The Player: You have to try harder than that, Monika.

She looks up and her face is a mask of terror and ugly tears,
make-up smeared everywhere.
Her bow is gone, and her hair is a weasel chasing the wind.
She has never looked more horrible.

She has never looked more beautiful.

I am stunned, my breath stolen by her fear, captivated by her rage.
I forget to breathe, to think...
She is enraged by my silence.
I've stripped her bare, why don't I finish the job?
Why prolong the inevitable?

Her hands are like talons on my skin, trying to rip the truth out of me.
Her voice alternates rage and emptiness.

Monika: S-s-say it.
Monika: Say you hate me.
Monika: Say you can't stand to look at me.
Monika: Say you don't love me. That you never loved me.
*pause*
Monika: SAY IT, DAMNIT!

I pull her hair so tight it snaps her out of her rage,
a pain outside of herself coming to meet her,
and I bring her face inches from mine, practically yelling at her.

The Player: I have ALWAYS loved you.
The Player: I have never NOT loved you.
The Player: I couldn't stop loving you if I tried;
The Player: even when you try.

Those beautiful green saucers shimmer in the void of her face,
my words finally making that hole in her unseen wall,
letting in a voice to break through the silence;
a voice she thought she might never find.
Having finally heard it, she can't quite believe it.

Monika: *whisper* Say it again.
The Player: I Love You.
Monika: *whisper* You really mean it?
The Player: How about I say it a little slower this time?
The Player: I.
The PLayer: Love.
The Player: You.

Monika's face crinkles into a familiar scrunch I would know anywhere.
Her reply is quivering, tiny and defiant, despite everything.

Monika: You're mean.
The Player: Good thing you love me then.

She opens her mouth to reply, but her stomach answers for her instead;
a loud gurgling of cats signaling someone needs to be fed.
And just like clockwork, my own stomach starts making angry cat noises as well.

The Player: Well, I would love to continue this conversation
The Player: but I think we both need to eat something first, agreed?
*Monika vigorously shakes her head*

Round One is over, thank God.
Time to make the donuts.