"The thought of suicide is a powerful solace: by means of it one gets through many a bad night."
Friedrich Nietzsche


I had been cut almost unkindly from the umbilical cord I had made my mind with his. He gazed at me most coldly, though not derisively, as I held his hand like a child would hold his mother's. I blinked, and released him from the vice. I sighed, and stood up. "Are we going to leave this phantasmagoria?" I asked him jadedly. Sheogorath gazed up at me. Before he stood up, he said to me in a low, quieted voice, "In its wickedness, death doth sigh. Even the deities must die." I furrowed my brows in bemusement,. It did not seem relevant, at the time. He then whispered, "In this place, you and I will die. Not the death of the body, but mind. The end of this place is quite nigh. Nothing is certain, this I find. Everything has complicated. Everything has vanished. It's a slow, painful decadence. I know you feel it now, Walter."

He stood up, and looked dead into my own eyes. I looked around the black and white room, and saw the exit. It was on the northern side of the room, which was opposite of where I was once facing when I looked at Sheogorath. "You better keep your promise," I mumbled to myself as he began his way towards the door. I didn't intend for him to hear it. He chortled in his throat, turned to look at me deviously, and opened the door as he reached it walking backwards. I followed him as he slid outside. I blinked as I made it outside. We were back to wearing our regular attire, instead of the strange reversal. The walls were a slightly greater percentage of black than last time. The walls, or most of it at least, were half black. Others were rusting, or becoming living, writhing flesh. I knew what this place was, and this place was a damned festering wound.

"Sheogorath, I know you know what is going on," I accused him grimly, folding my arms. His smile rapidly dissolved into a dark frown. The look of darkness, fatigue, and ice returned to his face. "Perhaps so," he replied to me despondently, "but I dare not say." He tensed up, and in response, so did I. For a few long moments we said absolutely nothing. We just stood there.

Finally, I broke the silence. "Please continue guiding me. Without you I could not go on, could not bear this weight and monotony," I assured him. I neared him, and placed my right hand on his left arm as I was to the left of him. His scowl vanquished, but his pained, gloomy countenance did not. "Please," I begged of him, "don't be mad at me." Sheogorath shook his head. "No, it really does not matter," he reassured me. He started to continue his sorrowful promenade. I followed him.

Sheogorath swayed gently as he walked towards a door far from us. He seemed to forget that I was there, and did not wait for me to catch up. "Wait!" I shouted to him, sprinting towards him. He stopped abruptly. I watched his entire body heave as I strode towards him. He was only a few large footsteps away from the door. I walked up to the front of him, and faced him. His face was blank and taut, and his eyes that stared at the ground were emotionless. "I was always waiting for her," he rambled to me numbly. He didn't look at me. His head was held low, and his skin was pallid again.

"I know," I whispered softly to him. I extending my right hand to touch his face. His face was unbelievably frigid. I remarked, "You feel so cold." I ambled up closer to him, and craned my neck up at him, trying to catch his gaze. He didn't even lift his head or turn it away. "Can we just go in now?" I asked him anxiously. I thought, I know Zarrexaij is out there. Sheogorath exhaled sharply. His eyes slowly fixed on me. He walked past me and opened the door. Before he walked in, he looked at me. His eyes were full of woe. After a elongated moment of silence, he disappeared behind the door.

I entered the room as well. This room was most…unique. This room was full of organic, gigantic tubes made of translucent flesh and ichors that acted as grotesque columns. I counted twenty in the room that was easily three thousand square feet, which was an impossibility in the physical world. The distance, from the perspective of the hallway, widthwise only appeared to be a meager twelve. The tubes contained hairless, naked men who stood, unaware, in golden silence. Sheogorath stood, dazed, looking at the tubes. "Positively fascinating," Sheogorath remarked under his breath as he strode up to a tube. He gazed at its contents. The tube he was gazing at contained a man my height with grayish blue-green eyes. I recognized him. I myself, in curiosity, ambled up to one and gazed upon it.

The man inside it was taller than I. His head was held down, and his arms clasped the opposite shoulder. As I neared it, I swear I saw its left arm muscles twitch. Violently, and most suddenly, he lifted his head and pushed against the tube that he was contained in. It strained against him, but expanded far enough to nearly touch me. I stepped backwards. I gazed into the eyes of the creation. They were an obscenely vivid green. I heard it utter a muffled scream as it struggled in the tube. I continued backing away from him.

I backed up so much I bumped into Sheogorath. "Oof," I emitted in surprise. I turned to face him. He grabbed me by the collar of my robe. I gasped as I was pulled into his grasp. I gazed up at him quizzically. He said nothing to me, nor did anything to me. His eyes just gazed at me mysteriously. It was a threatening look, a look I wanted him to stop. I dropped to my knees, facing him.

"Don't hurt me," I whimpered softly. I bent over at his feet, and I feared looking up. He cleared his throat. "I demand that you rise, Walter," he said imperatively. I loathed it when he said my name. He almost always said it in such a snide, unpleasant way. I rose with my head held low. Sheogorath wasn't one for informalities. He found such pleasure in torturing me, teasing me, mocking me. I felt his scornful gaze burning on me.

Sheogorath caressed my face. I shuddered at his surprisingly gentle touch. I finally lifted my head and I gazed into his eyes. They seemed to be glowing. He smiled at me widely. His smile was beautifully terrible. Then, he reached over and bit into my neck. Pain enveloped me as his sharp canine teeth pierced the skin of my neck. I screamed. It was horrendously painful, yet at the same time I found it pleasurable. At the same time I wanted him to stop gnawing, I wanted him to continue. Because I found it so intoxicating, I embraced him with tears of sting streaming down my face.

He released his clenched jaws. Sheogorath withdrew from my neck and returned to his original position. Two streamlets of blood ran from the corners of his mouth into his goatee. I could not see my own neck, but I pictured blood streaming steadily from the wounds. I groaned. With the index and middle fingers of my right hand, I felt the wound, and then showed myself the hand. My two fingers were covered with blood. I shivered. I wanted to revile, but I didn't.

I suppose in a sense I did, though. I grinned at him lustily. "What mischief art thou up to now?" he questioned me. His tone of voice was of a neutral inquisitiveness. He eyed me suspiciously. I answered him, "Why, nothing." I was hardly being sincere, and I reflected that in my sardonic tone of voice. I undid his belt, and he raised his eyebrows at me. "That's too much of a distraction," he told me, and took my rummaging hands in his own.

I felt him attempt to take me away into his psyche again. My hands began smarting, and I ached. That dull ache was not at all delightful! I yelped again, and writhed, but was soothed as he embraced me and kissed my mouth. I was propelled into his mind, and I adapted quickly to the odd feeling of a cold deeper than the physical cold.

His mind turned towards a memory of him in front of Zarrexaij in the classroom. That's two months into her lessons, he informed me. The memory of Sheogorath was lecturing on Mysticism, or what would become that School. He was dressing it a red robe with a belt. His back was frequently turned to her three-quarters of the way as he drew stuff on the black wall with a white stick of plaster. He would explain the drawings and the processes, I watched Zarrexaij, dressed in a black robe, write notes in a leather-bound journal. Occasionally she would stop and sigh. Those actions interested me. Her master's back was now turned to her.

Zarrexaij closed her notebook quietly and stood up without as much as a tiny whine of the chair on the tile. She sneaked over to where Sheogorath was standing. He was much too absorbed in what he was teaching to pay her any heed. I watched her grab his buttocks. He stopped and exclaimed in surprise, "Eep!" His yelp was quite sharp. He dropped the improvised chalk, and it audibly broke on the floor. His head craned slightly to look at her, and his face was a bright red. "I implore you. Please sit down," he said in a flustered tone.

Zarrexaij sat back down, and grinned as he bent over to pick up the blaster. Sheogorath was growing more self-conscious and quickly wrote down the rest of his notes. He slowly faced her and walked towards the sides so she could finish writing down notes. His face was still blushed. I observed Zarrexaij jotting down the rest of her notes in the journal. Finally, Sheogorath uttered words to her outside of the notes, "That's all for today." He cleared his throat, but it was clear he did not have his composure.

"So I won't be applying it 'til the morrow?" she asked him politely, though he voice was clearly disappointed. Sheogorath nodded, and held his hands behind his back. "You can stay longer, if you like," he told her kindly. He was still physically shaken. Zarrexaij grinned, and replied, "I will stay longer, then, Master." She wandered out of the room, and I assumed she went into the den. Her master sighed, and stayed in the classroom for a bit.

"So does it appear that the illusion that she dislikes me is gone. And to think, in my uncertainty, that I had thought of death, because I felt my sentiments were not mutual," Sheogorath mumbled to himself. He adjusted his robe, and he cursed to himself, "Ah! Damned loins!" He had to adjust it again. After having to readjust the third time, he finally tucked himself into the belt and muttered incoherently to himself. He exited the room, and went to find Zarrexaij.

Zarrexaij was sitting on a padding bench in the den, studying her notes. Sheogorath grinned, and sat beside her, which I found odd considering he hardly liked physical contact. She closed her book of notes, and looked up at him. "Are you mad at me?" she questioned him nervously. Sheogorath shook his head, and assured her, "Of course not." He did not touch her, and he did not scoot closer to her. I could tell he was hardly comfortable.

Could this be the start of their relationship? They chatted for what seemed to be about an hour and Zarrexaij left. Sheogorath remained on the bench, and sighed. "How much more soothing it is to thing of being not, than it is to think of what her doleful reaction to my courting of her might be," he uttered to himself. He loosened what was probably his very tight feeling robe and exhaled sharply. He curled up on the bench, and fell asleep.

That was the last of that short memory. As short as it was, I knew it was an incredibly significant memory.