From the author of
An Autobiography of Vincent Valentine
Phoenix Down.
Part Epsilon
Tiferet
"Then, no matter where you are, in a crowded restaurant on some desolate street
or even in the comforts of your own home, you will watch yourself dismantle every assurance you ever lived by. You'll stand aside as a great complexity intrudes, tearing apart, piece by piece, all of your carefully conceived denials, whether deliberate or unconscious. And then for better or for worse, you'll turn, unable to resist, though try to resist you will, fighting with everything you've got not to face the thing that you most dread, what is now, what will be, what has come before, the creature you truly are, the creature we all are, buried in the nameless black of a name.
And then the nightmares will begin." (Mark Z. Danielwski, House of Leaves)
Sephiroth talked all night and into the wee hours of the morning. Eventually, and suddenly he stopped. That session filled up both sides of two tapes.
He stood, rubbed his throat, and walked into the hallway and disappeared without an explanatory word.
I realized that I had not slept properly in a while when I looked out the basement window and realized that it was morning out.
But my attention was pulled again to the hallway that Sephiroth came and left in each night.
I was then convinced that the damn thing was alive. It breathed, ate slept, and grew.
As the doubt, fear, and darkness filled me, and as Sephiroth came around more, so did these feelings, the hallway grew.
The hallway reflected the hole in my soul.
As I have said, as this hole grew, so did that corridor of shadows.
And when I was at my lowest, Sephiroth came back from the misted, sunless lands of the dead.
I figured that I was just going mad.
That's all.
I figured that I was REALLY going mad the moment that it occurred to me that Sephiroth's childhood experiences were similar to my own. How could I relate to that mad man- I must really be crazy.
My first girlfriend and first kiss were sort of like his. Only my girlfriend's name was Carla.
She wanted to sing in our band, too.
And why was he coming back to talk to ME?
Me, of all people!
A poor young journalist from the city of Kalm.
Again, I didn't go to the office. I didn't call, either. I just tucked the three tapes that I had thus far collected into my coat pocket, and walked upstairs and out of the basement.
I stopped off at my apartment upstairs to pick up my dusty brown trench, my shoes, (but no socks) and my cigarettes and lighter.
They were a really old, stale pack, because I really don't smoke, but I figured taking it up again now was just as good as time as any.
I decided to take a walk.
A really long walk, give myself some fresh air and exercise as I smoke and pollute my lungs.
I'm not sure what time it was.
I wasn't even sure what day it was.
I walked through downtown Kalm. There were just a handful of thin eyed, sleepy, and cold people slowly making their way around.
I walked strait through them and wandered absently to the outskirts of town. As I walked along a dirt road, I stopped to light a cigarette.
There, standing a quarter mile ahead of me was a sandy colored dog.
With blank, black eyes he was staring at me.
I smiled and muttered to myself.
I wonder if he was a stray, but I didn't want to risk walking into a toothy, rabies ridden, death trap.
So, I didn't make eye contact and decided to turn around and slowly walk away.
As I smoked, I tried not to think about the dog. I was just looking off into the forest on either side of me on the dirt road.
I glanced over my shoulder.
The shaggy, thin, brown dog was following me.
I quickened my pace.
He quickened his.
As I swiftly walked, I kept thinking about Sephiroth.
Jesus H. Christ- what luck. Getting chased.
I glanced over my shoulder, the dog was right at my heel, but he was not biting or growing, he was sniffing my ankle.
I felt his breath on my skin.
So, I stopped.
I asked him if he was lost, or something.
The dog looked up at me with sad, silky, milked over eyes.
I shrugged. I am not really a dog person.
I kept walking. I didn't want to touch him, really.
He seemed kind of sick.
I then ignored him and his pitiful whimpers, and continued walking and smoking.
Eventually, the dog wandered off into the forest.
Sad, really, when you think you are loosing it and have no one to talk to.
Makes me wonder why Sephiroth went out of his way to make that freaky hallway growing in my apartment complex's basement just for me.
Maybe I deserve it.
Maybe, like I think happened, I'm making the whole thing up in my head and it is just a big hallucination...
Who can fuckin' talk to fuckin' dead people anyway?!
Sephiroth is dead, end of story, man.
...
Sephiroth and I have a lot of things in common, come to think of it.
Both our childhood feelings and experiences were similar.
We both have an out of control temper.
Neither of us had a good father, and an absent mother.
If I had the chance... fuckit.
If I had the chance, I'd take over the world.
I mean,
Wouldn't you?
Fuck.
I bet Sephiroth had a hallway sized hole in his life, you know?
Grant it, I can't sing, can't carry a tune in a bucket...
But I write.
Maybe I am goin' nuts.
Cracked nuts, pecan nuts, if I could be a nut, I'd be an almond.
Only one way to know if it's real...
I should listen to that tape again.
If it's blank, if Sephiroth's voice isn't on there, then I made the whole thing up.
Drug flashback...
Even though this would have to be the WEIRDEST flashback in history.
I turned the corner at the end of the dirt road, only to have another long path-like road stretch out for miles ahead of me.
The trees on either side sounded like ripping paper as wind caressed the canopies.
I heard a screech of car tires in the distance, but I didn't think anything of it.
I noticed something large in the distance on the road.
Maybe it was a huge rock or a speed bump.
But as I neared it, it was worse.
The dog, wound up being a huge bloody heap of road kill.
There were long, curvy, bloody tire tracks around him.
Hit and run.
I lit another cigarette.
Poor fella.
He was still fresh; flies haven't even collected yet.
I kept walking; the sight of him was a little sad and disgusting.
I began thinking about my band when I was a teenager.
I played the drums.
Not very well, though, my dad bought the set for me when I was four.
It was a huge set, really expensive; I didn't play it till I was in high school.
Carla wanted to sing.
Jason, at least, I THINK his name was Jason, it may have been Julian, or something, I don't know, he played the guitar. I remember he bleached his hair, though.
"Hey."
I looked around.
"I said. Hey."
Great. Now I'm hearing voices.
I started to run.
I think I dropped my cigarette.
I wasn't sure where the voice was coming from.
The voice was cold, and unfeeling, and all around me.
Much less human than the voice of Sephiroth.
"Don't you listen?"
I stopped.
I said out loud that I'm listening, and leave me the fuck alone.
Crazy-ass people.
"You've been talking to him, haven't you?"
I looked to my left, and there, in the forest, was a pair of inhuman eyes.
They seemed to be floating in the shifting shadows and darkness of the morning forest.
I asked, quite stupidly, talking to whom?
"Him... He who cannot die. He who is immortal. He who is a fallen, wicked angel."
I said to the red, long eyes in the forest, who was fucking talking to me, because I think that I'm crazy, that, yes, as a matter of fact I WAS interviewing him, just like I was talking to you, and why don't you come out of the fucking forest and stop scaring the brown shit out of me? And what business of that was yours, anyway?
"I feared that this time would come."
I asked the voice with the red eyes what the fuck he was talking about.
"I... I came out of sleeping, out of the nightmares, because in my nightmares, I dreamt that he returned, but only as an angel, because angels cannot be killed. He... did it. He... achieved immortality."
So, what, I asked, is he going to like, try blowing up the world again?
"No." The sad and empty voice answered, "He cannot do that. The Earth is physical. He, right now, is not physical. He can do no harm. What has he told you?"
Suddenly, I felt an angry surge of rage course through my veins.
What business was it of that freaky voice and eyes to know what Sephiroth and I spoke about?
I suddenly felt very possessive of the tapes that I had in my pocket. It then occurred to me that they were rare, and precious, and mine, as if they were then a part of me.
As if they were not only Sephiroth's recorded memories, but also my own.
"Tell me... what you talked to him about... it's paramount-"
I yelled at the voice, and ran.
I ran back to my apartment complex.
What has gotten into me?
I took off my shoes, and cigarette stench coat, and threw them onto the sofa.
I left my TV on again.
Fuckin' red eyes with freaky voice.
Tell me what I can and can't do.
I gotta listen to those tapes, make sure that this is all real and that I'm not goin' batty.
I walk into my tiny apartment kitchen, and opened up the tape player and the first volume of the Sephiroth interview.
Then, I opened up the fridge.
As I found a cold slice of ham pizza, I pushed the play button, and turned up the volume...
There was rain in the background of the tape.
"I find it amusing..."
Said the voice of Sephiroth under the hiss of rain. Only, it wasn't really Sephiroth's voice, it sounded more like mine...
But at the same time, it wasn't mine.
It's hard to explain, but I stopped eating cold pizza as soon as the tape played.
"Find what... so amusing?" My voice asked on the tape. Again, it didn't sound like my voice, and it wasn't that I wasn't used to hearing me.
That's just it, I'm a journalist, I hear my voice on tape all the time.
That wasn't really my voice, either.
You see, it was that Sephiroth's and my voice sounded close to the same!
"Don't ask why I choose you to be my particular interviewer. Is... that recorder on? Don't ask WHY I wanted to be interviewed. Just do as I say and we will not have a problem..." The tape continued, "Stop listening to the tape. It is unnecessary, and silly. Just continue the interviews as you were- and don't forget the hall-"
I leapt up and snapped the stop button on the tape player. I didn't want to hear anymore.
It was too weird, way too fuckin' weird. The voice, both mine and Sephiroth sounded the same.
And those last few lines WERE NOT in the first interview.
...
What was it going to say about that hallway?
Forget it, I don't want to listen.
I just want to get some sleep.
I just want to piss, and shit my pants because I'm so scared.
And I'm hungry as hell.
I tried to calm down and just eat my pizza.
Then, I passed out on the couch.
...
An Autobiography of Vincent Valentine
Phoenix Down.
Part Epsilon
Tiferet
"Then, no matter where you are, in a crowded restaurant on some desolate street
or even in the comforts of your own home, you will watch yourself dismantle every assurance you ever lived by. You'll stand aside as a great complexity intrudes, tearing apart, piece by piece, all of your carefully conceived denials, whether deliberate or unconscious. And then for better or for worse, you'll turn, unable to resist, though try to resist you will, fighting with everything you've got not to face the thing that you most dread, what is now, what will be, what has come before, the creature you truly are, the creature we all are, buried in the nameless black of a name.
And then the nightmares will begin." (Mark Z. Danielwski, House of Leaves)
Sephiroth talked all night and into the wee hours of the morning. Eventually, and suddenly he stopped. That session filled up both sides of two tapes.
He stood, rubbed his throat, and walked into the hallway and disappeared without an explanatory word.
I realized that I had not slept properly in a while when I looked out the basement window and realized that it was morning out.
But my attention was pulled again to the hallway that Sephiroth came and left in each night.
I was then convinced that the damn thing was alive. It breathed, ate slept, and grew.
As the doubt, fear, and darkness filled me, and as Sephiroth came around more, so did these feelings, the hallway grew.
The hallway reflected the hole in my soul.
As I have said, as this hole grew, so did that corridor of shadows.
And when I was at my lowest, Sephiroth came back from the misted, sunless lands of the dead.
I figured that I was just going mad.
That's all.
I figured that I was REALLY going mad the moment that it occurred to me that Sephiroth's childhood experiences were similar to my own. How could I relate to that mad man- I must really be crazy.
My first girlfriend and first kiss were sort of like his. Only my girlfriend's name was Carla.
She wanted to sing in our band, too.
And why was he coming back to talk to ME?
Me, of all people!
A poor young journalist from the city of Kalm.
Again, I didn't go to the office. I didn't call, either. I just tucked the three tapes that I had thus far collected into my coat pocket, and walked upstairs and out of the basement.
I stopped off at my apartment upstairs to pick up my dusty brown trench, my shoes, (but no socks) and my cigarettes and lighter.
They were a really old, stale pack, because I really don't smoke, but I figured taking it up again now was just as good as time as any.
I decided to take a walk.
A really long walk, give myself some fresh air and exercise as I smoke and pollute my lungs.
I'm not sure what time it was.
I wasn't even sure what day it was.
I walked through downtown Kalm. There were just a handful of thin eyed, sleepy, and cold people slowly making their way around.
I walked strait through them and wandered absently to the outskirts of town. As I walked along a dirt road, I stopped to light a cigarette.
There, standing a quarter mile ahead of me was a sandy colored dog.
With blank, black eyes he was staring at me.
I smiled and muttered to myself.
I wonder if he was a stray, but I didn't want to risk walking into a toothy, rabies ridden, death trap.
So, I didn't make eye contact and decided to turn around and slowly walk away.
As I smoked, I tried not to think about the dog. I was just looking off into the forest on either side of me on the dirt road.
I glanced over my shoulder.
The shaggy, thin, brown dog was following me.
I quickened my pace.
He quickened his.
As I swiftly walked, I kept thinking about Sephiroth.
Jesus H. Christ- what luck. Getting chased.
I glanced over my shoulder, the dog was right at my heel, but he was not biting or growing, he was sniffing my ankle.
I felt his breath on my skin.
So, I stopped.
I asked him if he was lost, or something.
The dog looked up at me with sad, silky, milked over eyes.
I shrugged. I am not really a dog person.
I kept walking. I didn't want to touch him, really.
He seemed kind of sick.
I then ignored him and his pitiful whimpers, and continued walking and smoking.
Eventually, the dog wandered off into the forest.
Sad, really, when you think you are loosing it and have no one to talk to.
Makes me wonder why Sephiroth went out of his way to make that freaky hallway growing in my apartment complex's basement just for me.
Maybe I deserve it.
Maybe, like I think happened, I'm making the whole thing up in my head and it is just a big hallucination...
Who can fuckin' talk to fuckin' dead people anyway?!
Sephiroth is dead, end of story, man.
...
Sephiroth and I have a lot of things in common, come to think of it.
Both our childhood feelings and experiences were similar.
We both have an out of control temper.
Neither of us had a good father, and an absent mother.
If I had the chance... fuckit.
If I had the chance, I'd take over the world.
I mean,
Wouldn't you?
Fuck.
I bet Sephiroth had a hallway sized hole in his life, you know?
Grant it, I can't sing, can't carry a tune in a bucket...
But I write.
Maybe I am goin' nuts.
Cracked nuts, pecan nuts, if I could be a nut, I'd be an almond.
Only one way to know if it's real...
I should listen to that tape again.
If it's blank, if Sephiroth's voice isn't on there, then I made the whole thing up.
Drug flashback...
Even though this would have to be the WEIRDEST flashback in history.
I turned the corner at the end of the dirt road, only to have another long path-like road stretch out for miles ahead of me.
The trees on either side sounded like ripping paper as wind caressed the canopies.
I heard a screech of car tires in the distance, but I didn't think anything of it.
I noticed something large in the distance on the road.
Maybe it was a huge rock or a speed bump.
But as I neared it, it was worse.
The dog, wound up being a huge bloody heap of road kill.
There were long, curvy, bloody tire tracks around him.
Hit and run.
I lit another cigarette.
Poor fella.
He was still fresh; flies haven't even collected yet.
I kept walking; the sight of him was a little sad and disgusting.
I began thinking about my band when I was a teenager.
I played the drums.
Not very well, though, my dad bought the set for me when I was four.
It was a huge set, really expensive; I didn't play it till I was in high school.
Carla wanted to sing.
Jason, at least, I THINK his name was Jason, it may have been Julian, or something, I don't know, he played the guitar. I remember he bleached his hair, though.
"Hey."
I looked around.
"I said. Hey."
Great. Now I'm hearing voices.
I started to run.
I think I dropped my cigarette.
I wasn't sure where the voice was coming from.
The voice was cold, and unfeeling, and all around me.
Much less human than the voice of Sephiroth.
"Don't you listen?"
I stopped.
I said out loud that I'm listening, and leave me the fuck alone.
Crazy-ass people.
"You've been talking to him, haven't you?"
I looked to my left, and there, in the forest, was a pair of inhuman eyes.
They seemed to be floating in the shifting shadows and darkness of the morning forest.
I asked, quite stupidly, talking to whom?
"Him... He who cannot die. He who is immortal. He who is a fallen, wicked angel."
I said to the red, long eyes in the forest, who was fucking talking to me, because I think that I'm crazy, that, yes, as a matter of fact I WAS interviewing him, just like I was talking to you, and why don't you come out of the fucking forest and stop scaring the brown shit out of me? And what business of that was yours, anyway?
"I feared that this time would come."
I asked the voice with the red eyes what the fuck he was talking about.
"I... I came out of sleeping, out of the nightmares, because in my nightmares, I dreamt that he returned, but only as an angel, because angels cannot be killed. He... did it. He... achieved immortality."
So, what, I asked, is he going to like, try blowing up the world again?
"No." The sad and empty voice answered, "He cannot do that. The Earth is physical. He, right now, is not physical. He can do no harm. What has he told you?"
Suddenly, I felt an angry surge of rage course through my veins.
What business was it of that freaky voice and eyes to know what Sephiroth and I spoke about?
I suddenly felt very possessive of the tapes that I had in my pocket. It then occurred to me that they were rare, and precious, and mine, as if they were then a part of me.
As if they were not only Sephiroth's recorded memories, but also my own.
"Tell me... what you talked to him about... it's paramount-"
I yelled at the voice, and ran.
I ran back to my apartment complex.
What has gotten into me?
I took off my shoes, and cigarette stench coat, and threw them onto the sofa.
I left my TV on again.
Fuckin' red eyes with freaky voice.
Tell me what I can and can't do.
I gotta listen to those tapes, make sure that this is all real and that I'm not goin' batty.
I walk into my tiny apartment kitchen, and opened up the tape player and the first volume of the Sephiroth interview.
Then, I opened up the fridge.
As I found a cold slice of ham pizza, I pushed the play button, and turned up the volume...
There was rain in the background of the tape.
"I find it amusing..."
Said the voice of Sephiroth under the hiss of rain. Only, it wasn't really Sephiroth's voice, it sounded more like mine...
But at the same time, it wasn't mine.
It's hard to explain, but I stopped eating cold pizza as soon as the tape played.
"Find what... so amusing?" My voice asked on the tape. Again, it didn't sound like my voice, and it wasn't that I wasn't used to hearing me.
That's just it, I'm a journalist, I hear my voice on tape all the time.
That wasn't really my voice, either.
You see, it was that Sephiroth's and my voice sounded close to the same!
"Don't ask why I choose you to be my particular interviewer. Is... that recorder on? Don't ask WHY I wanted to be interviewed. Just do as I say and we will not have a problem..." The tape continued, "Stop listening to the tape. It is unnecessary, and silly. Just continue the interviews as you were- and don't forget the hall-"
I leapt up and snapped the stop button on the tape player. I didn't want to hear anymore.
It was too weird, way too fuckin' weird. The voice, both mine and Sephiroth sounded the same.
And those last few lines WERE NOT in the first interview.
...
What was it going to say about that hallway?
Forget it, I don't want to listen.
I just want to get some sleep.
I just want to piss, and shit my pants because I'm so scared.
And I'm hungry as hell.
I tried to calm down and just eat my pizza.
Then, I passed out on the couch.
...