Chapter 1, or Fellas, I think I dropkicked God
I was born in the city of New Jersey-
"Nope. Too bland."
Once upon a time-
"Fuck that. Too cliché."
Hello there.
As you can probably tell by now, this is a story about a boy who decided to write a story about himself being placed into a universe where giants, mermaids, dragons and (possibly) unicorns exist.
"…. I am disgusted by the fact that I'm considering this as my opening statement."
Obviously this shows how much acid that I, the creator of this story must have taken to achieve this level of hallucinations. Now as the normal self-insert goes, I must either be a college student who got bored or a middle aged person who... also got bored. The next part is tha-
SNAP!
Dammit. Need another one …
CRASH!
Ow.
THUD!
"FUUC-"
My hands gripped at the air, fingers twitching as I imagined god having fun at my expense. A dejected moan escaped from my lips as I tried my best not to lose my shit again. I laid there on my back for a while, staring - just staring at the beautiful blue sky, devoid of clouds.
Had it been a normal beach, it would had crowded with tourists within the hour. The pearly white sand marred only by the lush jungle behind me, and the never-ending sea that laid before me. Picture perfect. Sadly, that had brought me no relief, and somehow, by some hand of fate, it had made me even more pissed than I currently was.
I sighed, pinching the bridge my nose with my free hand as I once again tried to take deep, calming breaths. It worked just as well as my previous attempts, which was to say not in the least.
It had been a horrible day. Well, it had been a horrible decade (plus a few years) but the past day had been horrible enough that it deserved recognition for the fact.
And with that, I turned to the sky, making sure to glare at the spot where I knew she was looking from.
Looking around to see if there was anything left of writing utensils around me, I sighed as I failed. Again. I threw the broken branch back into the jungle and I glanced at the words that I had painstakingly took time and love to carve into the sand.
...And there came a wave, destroying it completely. Fuck.
I should start again. Since the voices in my head tell me to do so and as a desperate attempt to protect my sanity (or what's left of it).
I sighed.
I suppose I should start the story by how I came to this predicament.
"On the off-chance that you're actually listening to me, of course, me sounding like a broken recorder that spontaneously grew arms and legs at this point-"
He sighed and grinded his palm against his head. He took a step back, and rested upon the crumbling blue wall. The rest of the dorm wasn't any better. The wallpaper consisted of a murky sludge blue that seemed to drain the life out of everything, and the faint smell of hospital bleach flitted through the rooms, no matter how much the facilities sought to distill it by air fresheners and deodorants.
I noted he was still talking.
"-Why are you doing this again?"
I stared at him, a deadpan expression on my face.
Sometimes it was hard to concentrate. His voice flickered between the regions of my head that commanded me to actually function, and an annoyance that needed to be taken care of.
I blinked.
Fingers danced in front of my vision again, and I noted the sound of fingers snapping. I shook my head and wiped away some saliva that found its way onto my lip.
Absolutely disgusting.
"I got all of that, but just in case you didn't, tell me the whole thing again, I wasn't listening."
My voice felt off. I coughed up a storm, feeling as though my vocal chords had grinded against each other for the last few hours. Was I always this thirsty?
He rolled his eyes, and sighed. It was a deep one, filled with annoyance, of having to repeat his speech again, especially when he knew that I knew what he was going to bring up. Again.
Did I mention this was getting repetitive ?
We're going in circles.
No we're not.
Wait, what were we talking about again?
"You can't keep hiding in here." He said, failing at his attempt to hide his displeasure. Even he noticed his own tone, and obviously tried to change the subject.
"Let's go to a party."
My answer was short.
"No."
"C'mon, this'll be fun, I get to have fun, you get to have fun, and we all get to have fun! Maybe some cute girls would be there, or boys, still don't know which team you swing for…"
He trailed off, muttering to himself.
I cricked my neck, feeling the stress slowly build up again. God- how long had it been ? Twelve hours? A day?
He was talking again.
"-anyways, you could show off your silly little tricks, and it'll be wonderful!"
I took a long look at him. Choosing my next words carefully, I enunciated each word, taking in the details of his face as he took a sip of water.
"But I'll be there."
There's a snort, followed by a wet splutter, and half of the drink he just took ends up on the ground. I pat him on the back as he coughs out the water he just inhaled into his lungs.
He lets out a little pathetic wheeze.
"I'M DRINKING HERE! NO JOKES WHEN I'M DRINKING!"
His voice is so obviously filled with humor and delight that even I have to smile, even just a little. As he wipes himself off, I get up, wincing as I feel my bones grind against each other. I start popping my fingers, relishing in the pain as some measure of feeling returns to my body.
"How long was it this time-"
"A day and a half. You stopped yesterday morning. Early morning. I caught you on one of the cameras I had set up."
The silence speaks volumes.
"I had to drag you from the roof to your dorm. Mate. I can't keep making up excuses for your episodes anymore. You're lucky that it was early enough that no one saw us. I know I'm your friend and all, but I'm an engineer. I work with machines, not with people."
He sighed again, rubbing circles into his eyes.
"You really need to get a therapist. Or socialize more. Or something, anything !"
I stay silent, unable to answer him. I take time to reply, trying to think of another excuse I hadn't already used. There's a lull in conversation as we take in the sounds that form outside the dorm.
We had this conversation several times over the past weeks, each hurried, (but nonetheless, still expressive), ending in a standstill. I stare at him. His gaze is on the floor, but his eyes are alert, clearly waiting for me.
"I need a reply, Alex."
His voice cuts through my musings like a hot knife through butter, jerking me back to reality.
"Yes." I reply, voice wavering.
"I mean an actual reply, not a half-assed excuse. What you did- I barely understand it myself, and, well," He sighs. "We really do need to talk."
Goddamnit it all- my emotions. Why did have to tug on all my damn strings ?
"I know." I reply. "I know. Just…. not today. Not now. I'm not ready for this at all."
I tilt my head towards him, and he stares accusingly at me. "I really am sorry. I know I can't keep doing this, and you deserve to know. Just… not now."
The silence stretches.
"Please."
I brush past him, feeling the lining of his jacket, subtly fetching his items. His grip tightens on the windowsill as he watches me.
"I promise I'll go to the party."
He smiles. He knows that it's not much, but it's still a start.
"I'll keep you to your word."
"Also, they aren't 'silly' tricks. They're called illusions. Listen closely, ill-uoo-sh-ions."
This was nice. No talk of unstable, fragile mentalities breaking apart from the seams, nor talks of the workload slowly crushing the students, or anything that had been contributing to the depressing mood that constantly surrounded him. From the tone that we were talking in, a passerby wouldn't assume we had been talking about life-threatening tendencies.
That was his way of assuring me everything was okay. Sarcasm and condescending-ness.
I didn't have the heart to tell him that it was what told me that everything was not.
"Yeah, yeah, have you seen my ID card ? I swear I put it in here…"
I trailed off, focusing my attention on rummaging through my wallet.
The change of scenery was helpful. Instead of his blue walls, the hallways were a dull grey that almost seemed metallic and smooth, until you put your hand on them. From years of machinery being pulled through the hallways, and the lack of care, they were rough and coarse to the point where it was a liable hazard to actually cause bleeding if you were to lean on them too hard. Of course, other than that, everything else was fine.
He takes out his special deck of cards, shuffling them slowly, clearly savoring the familiar sounds of metallic tings and tangs, and the scrapes as they brushed against each other, enjoying the well acquainted texture of metal against flesh.
He notices me watching him and starts to grin a little, knowing that I fully understood what he was doing. That was his little trick; when he would start shuffling his special cards, that meant he was going to do something that both pissed someone off, and also help them at the same time. That left his victim(s) with the need to strangle him, but the fact he had helped you seemed to cancel it out.
Not this time. Not this fucking time. This time, I was going to make sure I wasn't going to miss a single fucking thing about his stupid tric-
Pain blossomed from my head.
Instead of watching my own steps, I had walked (Read: Crashed) into the next pillar.
"FUCK!"
God-FUCKING-dammit. The warm trickle of blood had already started flowing from my forehead, dripping steadily into my eyes. Fuck my anemia. I gingerly reach for the wound, trying to assess the damage- thaaat wasn't flesh. I felt the blood flow stop, and started peeling away at whatever had latched onto me as I had hit th-
My ID card.
He silently hands me a roll of bandages. I silently stare at the card, barely registering the pain. He shrugs at my still form, and starts to nonchalantly unwind the roll, brushing my hair apart and starts wrapping it securely around my forehead. After pinning it together, he walks off, as if nothing had happened.
"…"
That cheeky little shitstai-
"Eghhhhhhhhh"
My throat locked up as my brain tried to process the scene. I sat there speechless for a whole minute, my entire body screaming: 'what just happened?' Apparently, my vocal cords seemed to had been making a sound similar to what a man trying to choke down a horse would sound like, and I just blinked dumbly.
I slapped my cheeks.
"Okay, enough of this. How the actual FUCK ?"
He giggles and just gives me that god-awful smirk of his, motioning me to get up.
"Goddamnit. One day, I'll figure out how you do that."
At least he was having fun.
Of course, he had no intention of staying.
Of course, I had no intention of staying.
Attending parties during the school year hadn't exactly been on my list of priorities, and that was before he had mock-bribed me. My willingness to attend a social event on my own accord without being dragged kicking and screaming through the back window, (Another story, another time.) was roughly equal to a coulrophobia willingness to attend a child's birthday party. (And the fact it was a social situation which required human contact didn't help matters.)
So exactly why was I inclined to let my senses be assaulted by the pop songs, foul body odor, and the overwhelming scent of alcohol ?
Peer pressure, that was why.
The crowd was sweaty and humid, the lingering smell of booze wafting through the air was enough to make me nauseous, and all the conversations were few and far between nothing and something. Normally, human interaction was good for you, but in excess?
Oh. Yes, hello! Welcome to my personal space, how can I help you?
I passed the majority of the crowd, and slipped into the toilet, taking care to lock it only slightly, so that someone could easily jimmy it open.
I opened the bathroom window, letting the humidity wash over me, and took in a deep breath of the summer wind. This was a stupid idea. Walking on a strip of stone that was a half a metre wide over a forty metre drop was a stupid idea. Walking on it during the night ? That was worse. Doing it after a mere hour after my episode?
Wow, it's almost as if you had a death wish!
I hmpfed in response, focusing on hoisted myself onto the windowsill. Most people who had the misfortune of meeting me would quickly realize that I approached challenges the same way some approached war; fight until death, or victory. In this case, death meant…. death, and victory meant I didn't have to go to a party, and socialize with other real human beings.
I briefly considered the options.
"…"
Those who dare are rewarded, right?
"ALLON-ZE-WHAT THE FUC-"
I expected for my feet to hit stone. I EXPECTED the stone to be SOLID. I expected the stone to STAY SOLID under my feet. I did not expect stone to crumble beneath my weight (Not that I was fat either.)
Of course, as this had happened within a second, my mind was still in its "what the fuck, why the fuck, and how the fuck is this happening to me" mode, so nothing really computed through my mind, expect for the fact that gravity had turned against me.
The window snapped shut behind me, leaving me grasping at the stray piece of railing. I hung onto it for my dear life. As the rest of the stone crashed down into the darkness below, I vehemently tried NOT to scream.
FWPHF !
The sound of debris falling was muffled slightly by the shrubbery, as the tall trees 'caught' some wreckage as it hurtled downwards.
I wanted to scream.
It wouldn't do well to scream at my luck, bringing unwanted attention to my predicament.
"…"
I still wanted to.
Screaming would cause me to panic, which would cause me to freak out, and believe it or not, some would assume that having a panic attack while precariously holding onto a piece of rebar over a drop of forty metres was a (un)surprisingly bad idea.
As gravity decided to start its unabated hatred for me, I considered considering my life choices and how it brought me here.
So I did.
"…"
Motherfucker- I really did deserve this.
Behind the veils of time and space, she watched.
Once upon a time, she had been a person. Born with her knowledge and understanding of the worlds around him, she excelled in her life, and grew to be loved by everyone. But that wasn't enough for her. She wanted more. She learned forgotten knowledge, sacrificed herself to her work, and began to change as a life form.
By the time she breached reality for the first time, she didn't need her body anymore. Her body became her mind, and upon discovering life, she would take shape once again. She visited countless realities, and appeared as a god. Even with her harshness and her hardiness, she made allies and friends, encountered new life forms, and found love. She was known as a Benevolent Omnipotent Being.
Before long, everyone she knew had died.
She should have shared her knowledge, but she hadn't. She had been tasked with the arduous task of protecting the secrets of life itself. She felt neither hatred nor regret. She mourned for the dead, but felt no pity. If one lived their life to the fullest, then nothing should have brought grief as they passed.
Instead, she was bored. Slowly but surely, as her knowledge was astonishing, every interaction she had, had been turned into nothing but digits and figures, filed away for analyzing. She had experienced so much, and thus, was losing her ability to… experience.
She lashed out. She faded into the veil of space, and brooded for millennials. Her legends became myths, to mythologies, to folklore, and ended up as fairy tales. Self-loathing had filled her. She became the 'Benign Omnipotent Being'.
As time crawled forwards, she found others like her. Other Omnipotent Beings. Apparently, the self-hatred and depression was a normal part of their lives. Some gave into the hate and became Bastard Omnipotent Beings, lashing out at life. Some destroyed their memories on purpose, and re-lived their lives again. Some gave up. She hadn't decided to do any of that. So she waited.
It was a lonely existence.
With all the time in the universe, she began to watch others. She watched the throes of humanity dance between the palms of her hand. Watching heroes triumph over evil, love blossom between foes, the will of people overcoming impossible odds. She changed again, and began,… feeling, again.
Slowly, she began to interact again. Granting weapons of justice and light to heroes, encouraging love between children- (Well, at this point, everything was a child to her), twisting fate to benefit a weary traveler, or in several cases, making a boy trip into erotic situations. Before long, she had realized something. If she decided to interact herself, she would be able to accurately predict what would happen. But if she decided to grant others some powers, ….
Well, Netflix had gotten boring years ago.
Of course, she had done things like this before. Sending people into realities of their own making, sending people back in time with their knowledge of the future, or in some rare cases, grabbing people after death, and giving them a second chance. In layman's terms, watching the weak become strong.
"….."
Hm.
In this case, emphasis on the weak.
/
'Internally screaming'
Well- that was loud. Care to deafen yourself again?
"Dontlookdowndontlookdownontlookdownontlo-"
He looked down.
"FUCK!"
One would assume when facing a precarious situation, their first train of thought would stop, as their brains tried to overcompensate by halting the influx of emotions and thoughts that would rush in. Instead, Alex felt everything at once.
The fear,
"JESUS CHRIST ON A CRYSTAL METH BINGE-"
The confusion of what had happened,
"Oh god oh god oh godohgodohfuck-"
But he just mostly felt the absence of ground beneath his feet.
"OH FUCKING FUC-"
First, calmly assess the situation.
On a ledge, hanging for my life.
Check.
Second, assess your inventory.
Shifting the brunt of the weight to his right, he looked into his pockets. Bandages, linen cloth, loose change, his deck of cards, a will to live, Jerry's ID card, and a swiss army knife.
Check.
Break down into another panic attack as you slowly realize that whatever you do for the rest of your (Admitted short,) life will have no meaning whatsoever as the constant march of time brings-
Not check. Certainly not check.
With Alex's subconscious currently attempting to coax his feelings from behind the metaphorical couch into the mixture of jumbled up thoughts, It realized that trying to help his feelings stand under the duress of contemplating the realization that its host had been a useless potato for the past nineteen years of its miserable life, it turned to his brain for help.
Fuck feelings, that little cowardly backstabber.
"Should I shut the fuck up and focus on the task at hand?"
Alex paused, looking back up at the window, just in time to see it slam shut.
"…fuck."
Brain? Any noteworthy ideas?
"…"
"That's a horrible idea. Then again, it's the only idea, so I'll go with that."
He started fiddling with the linen cloth, keeping an firm grip on the ledge.
"Is this a stupid idea? Yes. Yes it is."
Step one, secure 'rope' onto body.
"Should I be panicking that I'm devolving into someone who talks to themselves as they hang precariously above the principle of death? PROBABLY!?"
Step two, secure 'rope' onto windowsill.
"Should I be worried as the only thing keeping me from dying a particularly painful death are some weak-ass bandages from the dollar store?"
Step three, test out its tensile strength.
He pulled on the linen cloth, and felt it snap under the pressure of a single tug. Shit.
Letting go of the ruined cloth, he gazed at his surroundings. Windows around him, but none close enough to pry open.
Unless…
He looked downward, confirming his suspicions.
Trying again, he lowered himself to the window below.
Don't think. Just do.
"On three."
He paused, breathing through his mouth, trying to calm his raging heartbeats.
"…. Three!"
Glass shattered underneath his feet, shards flying into the air. As he swung through the windowsill, he released his grip and allowed gravity take him. He flung his arms around his head, and was sent hurtling in the room, crashing onto a very painful heap upon the floor.
He laid there, breathing heavily as he stared at the vaulted ceiling above him.
"Well, that worked."
And with that, he flopped upon the bed. Toeing the power button on his computer, Alex groaned, turning himself to stare at the ceiling. The fact that he had nearly died again had shaken him, sure, but something seemed off about the whole thing. But at this moment, he was still was under the euphoria of doing something stupid- and getting away with it. He could care less about the small stuff.
Nothing about his life felt right. It was the little moments, like these, that kept him in check.
Reflecting upon himself, he feels his mood start to blacken. He hears the computer hum to life, and with that, the dark room is briefly illuminated. He turns to check on his phone.
"Heres a straw."
He's finds one hovering in front of him.
"What ? What for-"
"Because life sucks."
He whipped his head toward the voice, finding himself staring at his computer.
He stared at the screen.
The screen stared back.
Now most people wouldn't have personified a computer, but Alex was a firm believer when said computer stares back at you with glowing white eyes that protruded OUT of the computer, some shock would have been mandatory.
"EEK!"
Silence bled into the room as he realized what sound his mouth had made.
"Seriously?"
And of course, as if the glowing eyeballs wasn't weird enough, the screen started growing other appendages as well. White fingers grasped at the edge of the computer, and a figure started pulling itself out.
" 'Eeks' are for small rodents crawling through your garbage, not for omnipotent beings that have their eyes poking out of your computer. C'mon, I'm worth a 'OMMAHGAWD' or 'SWEETJESUS' at least, right?"
"Oh HELL NO!"
This was straight out of a horror flick. Guy watches creepy ghost girl climb out of television, girl repays him by eating his face off. Not in the fun way, either. So instead of standing there like some clueless idiot, Alex went to the cupboard and pulled out a broom.
Time to clean up the trash.
"BACK FROM WHENCE YOU CAME FROM DEMON."
"GEROFFME-"
His roommate had returned drunk; finding Alex screaming and kicking into his computer.
The next few minutes was spent watching a bizarre battle between the boy and his computer, a battle which had no connotations, and seemed to run around the concepts of logic and fantasy, in which the boy was somehow losing against an inanimate object.
His roommate decided he hadn't had enough to drink, and decided to increase in his endeavours of slowly killing his liver.
"MY COMPUTER!"
They stood over the remains of the apparatus, and judging by the hole in the screen that led to another dimension, this wasn't something Alex could take into the store.
"Well, in my defence, you weren't exactly making it easy for me to talk to you-"
"YOU COULD HAVE KNOCKED."
She (It ?) waved off the question, pretending to act miffed.
"Yeah, but no one important uses the door anymore, and as you should know, they're meant for people with no imagination-"
"I don't care! The sign clearly says 'NO GODS ALLOWED. WE ARE ATHEISTS.' Like, it's right there. "
Needless to say, he was thoroughly underwhelmed on how god was. Maybe it was because he was an atheist, or maybe that the fact he had nearly died trying to escape a social situation. Either, or, he was not having any more shit flung at him today.
"I'm not god."
Of course. The omnipotent being could read minds as well. Definitely not god. Instead of replying, he flung himself onto his bed, turning to face the wall.
If he couldn't see the hallucination-
"HEY !"
-then it couldn't see him.
That was the general rule of acid trips, right ?
"I am NOT an acid trip, thank you very much !" It snapped, turning into a fluorescent shade of white.
White ? How the hell-
With his curiosity winning over his sense of survival instincts, he turned towards the acid trip for the first time, taking a good look at it.
…
His poor, poor retinas.
Wrong. It was a mistake. Something gnawed at him, the wrongness of… everything. The feeling devolved deeper into his mind- his soul, screaming at him on how this was an abomination of his reality. Whatever it was, it didn't belong here.
He took out a paper bag.
It's figure was white. That was it. It wasn't a pure enlightening white, nor was it a blinding one. It was white from the lack of, … anything. It seemed like its white was from a void of any blemishes that could have tainted it.
He started breathing into the bag.
If the figure was white, then its cane was certainly black.
If the figure was the void of any stains, its cane was the void of purity. The lack of light contrasted starkly with its owners lack of darkness, turning everything else irrelevant. It was a gaping void, or in better terms, a hole.
And with it, the absolute emptiness of everything came crashing in. The hole had its ethereal chains wrapped around him, pulling him in-
The room was quiet for quite a long time after what was a reasonable amount of laboured breathing.
A presence takes its place before him.
"You alright there ?"
It was not alright.
The paper bag was not enough. He passed out.
Well, here we are again. Another rewrite.
Sorry for the long hiatus, as I had been dealing with exams. Depression had been a large factor of my life for a while now, but now it's all been resolved now, and I can focus on writing again.
With that out of the way, this time theres a new plot, new character traits, and a new everything. But same storyline.
Because of this, every new rewritten chapter is almost a completely new thing. I'm scrapping the old plot, so each update will be new and refreshing.
As always, thanks for all the reviews and follows. They remind me that there are real people reading this shitty fic, which brings me joy.
Aw shit, here we go again.
