After nearly two years of chain smoking and self-destruction, I have returned to finish what I started. Cigarettes: 10. Anti-depressants: 3.

MYTH: HYPNOSIS IS USED TO ACCESS OR EXPLORE HIDDEN MEMORIES.


Nighttime and city-lights; infrastructure and reflections on the river's wavering surface. In Naminé's near-sighted eyes it was some other world where there were multiple suns and buildings where up was down and down was up.

She was barefoot and soaked to the bone; the calm surface of the river had asked her for a kiss.

Shivering and blue lipped, black eyeliner and mascara smeared down her cheeks, she spoke to no human but to all the cosmos as she looked onwards to the far away life on the other side of the river. She could never look into the light, but she always found herself looking back when the shadows threatened to engulf those synthetic suns.

Chronic dissatisfaction: the epidemic of the 21st century.

She's now looking at us and her eyes dart back and forth as she ponders what to say next. Her eyes shift back to ours, and stay they fixed, unwavering. She has something to tell us:

"How easy it is to get lost," she begins in a quiet, croaky voice. She takes in a hit of tobacco.

"How easy it is to get lost in a world of alcohol and drugs, of illusions and lies. A world where knives are silk and blood is candy; where we don't have to face our problems because they no longer exist, where we don't have to think because we no longer exist. A world where you disconnect from everything that is, was and will ever be real.

"How easy."

Another hit, and she glances at the horizon, then looks back at us.

"But the sun will rise soon, and the enchantment will end. It's time to put out our cigarette with our bare feet."

Her cigarette falls to the floor and her small, bony white foot quickly puts it out. She doesn't wince, but fluidly turns around and begins to walk towards a lone car a few metres off. The same car we can recognise as Axel's.

She hasn't walked far before she turns her head back towards us, her wet hair plastered onto her forehead, a "I'm-not-quite-here" gaze paired with an equally "I'm-not-quite-here" blue-lipped smile barely stretching on her face. She cocks her head to the side and winks, her "I'm-not-quite-here" smile curling into a crocodile smile (all predator and bared teeth, dark-eyed glint).

"Come, join the party. But keep in mind that everything has its consequences."