Colorless Memories, a misc. games fanfic

"Where id was, there ego shall be."

-Sigmund Freud-

What am I?

Before I knew it, I was walking down a dark corridor.

Lifeless, colorless walls and floors stretched out to infinity, leading toward a forever distant abyss.

No, darkness wouldn't be the right word. It is more as if the concept of colors is absent from these walls to begin with, and the blackness before me is but the result of my eyes' inability to process its sheer scale.

I walk, I walk, I walk and I walk. Never really knowing why. If there was any purpose for me and this place, it must have slipped away long ago. Is this forward or backward? Up or down? Am I moving at all, or is this just part of a perpetual-motion treadmill?

Though, that doesn't mean much here, does it? Walking seems to be the natural state here, standing still would take more effort.

What am I?

Another step, and another, and another. No matter how far from the "start", the skeleton of the identical dull walls is all that exists here. Is this better than not seeing at all?

There isn't any sensation coming from my legs, or sound from my steps for that matter, it is simply a logical deduction that since these walls are moving backward bit by bit, my body must be walking.

The other senses, too, are devoid of any feeling. It is like being blind, deaf and paralyzed all at the same time. There is no suffering, only emptiness. Perhaps it is more appropriate to call this an existence rather than a life.

What am I?

I asked the same question over and over again, like a broken record. My gift of sentience being the only thing keeping me company.

Maybe, just maybe, if I ask this question enough times—if I ask this question for an eternity—I may even arrive at the meaning to the universe itself.

What am I?

Once, twice, thrice, ten, a hundred, a thousand. I have asked the same question a million times. Pondering the same thoughts, looping back to nothingness. Even if a billion years were to pass, the end of this tunnel wouldn't be any closer than it is now.

No other point of contact. No other sets of questions. Only me, alone, the one and only idea playing on repeat ad nauseam.

There must be…another one.

…

A wall slams shut before me.

"I've been waiting for you

my lost child."

For the first time since I could remember, I stopped.

"I am Ego Rex.

I administer rules."

The wall—Ego Rex—closes the tunnel off. A sculpture split down the middle. The left side depicts a man and the right a woman, both their stone eyes unmoving yet staring down into my own. They(?) speak in something akin to a voice of both a man and a woman—not two people speaking at the same time, but rather a conglomeration of two voices.

…While there is nothing outwardly unusual about them, something is off…

But that doesn't matter. Despite being in the same gray as the walls, the stone figure is different.

What am I? My mouth tries to open, but it fails to produce even the faintest of whispers. Actually, is it there to begin with? And if it is, does my mind still remember how parting my lips felt?

"The only one

who can answer your questions."

"Is you,

yourself."

As if reading my mind, they(?) replies, the sound coming from no direction in particular.

But is that truly possible? How many steps have I taken? How many times have I asked? Can answers be found in a place made only of questions?

The stone façade remains motionless, their eyes still utterly empty. It would've been much better even if they had just openly laughed at my predicament.

"What you should do here

is continue forward."

"Go to the library,

the outcast awaits."

"Go to Es."

With that, Ego Rex split apart and fall away, revealing the black hole once again.

The wall answered nothing and created few questions. The library? Es? It seems to be a name of an outcast, though the word is absent from my vocabulary.

With no one left to think to, I walk.

How long have I been here? A minute? A millennium? It doesn't make any difference, not to this place. All I know is that I must continue toward that chasm so far away, forever out of reach.

What am I?

What am…I?

What am…?

What…?

Blue.

Before I knew it, there was blue.

That sounds beyond alien, confined to this colorless limbo for so long. A butterfly—made not of flesh and scales but white blue light—dances carelessly across the tunnel.

The walls flow past quicker as my hand reaches out. There is no sensation in my arm, but it still moves to orders.

My fingers stretch out and…touch it.

The butterfly was gone, replaced by tiny motes of blue flying away down the abyss. I just stood there, staring into the distant far after the corridor had returned to complete colorlessness.

…My…eyelids become heavier. Dizziness takes over as I struggle to stay awake. The once-straight path starts to bend. The walls and floors collapse in on themselves, passing through each other and twisting into masses of black and white. The abyss draws closer…

…I…I…

…

…Nothingness.

The old, decrepit bus hissed as its movement ground to a halt. The rusty sliding doors screeched open—well, one of them did. The other tried to, but failed to budge halfway through its cycle. I leaned right and stepped down to the cracked pavement, the cold wind pressing against my skin.

The air was…overly salty. Most people on short vacations by the beach would enjoy it for its merit of being novel and different from their ordinary, repetitive urban lives. I, however, could only describe it as downright sickening. It was thick, sticky and called attention to itself. My parents hated that it was gone when we moved to the city, but there wasn't a happier day in my childhood than the one when this was all behind.

And yet here I am, back again.

Strangely, it didn't seem as repulsive as it had been in all those family meetings with half the people a younger me hadn't even heard of. Was it maturity? Or had this place become impersonal after all this time?

The edge of town was a fifteen-minute walk away. The streetlights were all burned out, the once-starry night sky was covered in chemical-ridden clouds that left barely enough moonlight to show the way. This was, for all intents and purposes, abandoned now, that bus was just one that happened to cross by.

Memories of another life echoed through these streets. I could almost see the ghosts of people walking past me, though their names and faces had long faded to nothingness.

But there was still her.

…

At last, before me stood the ocean.

Black and white waves relentlessly crashed into the rocky shore in the distance, the noise was almost deafening in the silent night. It wasn't exactly a pretty sight. A dry desert covered in plastic carried in by the sea. Violent and dirty, not exactly somewhere you would like to spend a holiday.

I took off my shoes and stepped onto the smooth sand. The brushing of sand hitting my face was neither painful nor annoying, yet ever-present.

Tiny waves lightly covered my feet. Salt water was probably unlikely to do the clothes any good, and standing alone out at sea during the night wasn't a great idea either.

Regardless, I stood there, closed my eyes and walked down memory lane.

Someone calling out for me.

Wind chimes ringing.

Graphite on paper.

My eyes snapped open. The sun hadn't risen, the tides hadn't ceased, and there was no one else on the beach. It was still me, alone.

…

I let myself fall down on the wet sand and stare up at the sky.

It was dark. There were no visible stars, only the dull moon shining weakly, its light no longer silvery and ethereal.

I laid there and watched it, until the ride came.

When I came to, my senses returned.

The weight of cloth on skin, the feeling of my tongue, the scent of paper, and the sound of…something.

I open my eyes.

Rows upon rows of bookshelves, all disjointed and arranged in the most mind-boggling manner. There are only wooden shelves of paper and bindings to be seen aside from the ceiling and floor, there isn't even an inch of actual wall anywhere. The books varied in thickness, some have their names on their spines and some don't, though most of the former flew right over my head.

While everything is still colorless, the shades of gray here are noticeably lighter than those in the corridor.

I move through the maze of books toward the source of the sound, hitting dead ends after dead ends. It isn't that it was deliberately designed to be confusing, if the gaps were a little bigger, there would have been enough space for me to slip through some of those ends. Maybe the architects who made all this just had the competence of a child with a toy box.

After what felt like forever, I reached a clearing.

An empty space in the middle of a cluttered world. The eye of the storm, perhaps? It may even be able to pass off as a normal room in this perplexing landscape, just with bookshelves for walls instead.

My sight moved across the shelves, taking it all in before coming to the back…

"Well, look who showed up. I grew tired of waiting."

Also posted on AO3: /works/50940958

Uploaded on: 10/11/2023

Word count: 1639

Hello everyone, thank you for reading my, well, first fanfic I ever. Is there anywhere I can improve at? Any grammar mistake on my part? Do I just suck as a writer and have a near zero chance of ever making anything readable? Just let me know in comment. Reviews would be very much appreciated.

On another note, I do want to let you know that this fic will go over the contents of the books in the game. So that does mean that there will be at least allusion to themes such as suicide and sexual violence (the very first book have both of these). I'll go over these things very briefly and try to not go into any more detail than I absolutely have to. There will be warnings at the beginning of chapters that have those if you want to skip them entirely.

And yeah, I think that's all I have to say. Thank you again for reading. I'll try to update this every week or so, but I apologize in advance if it takes longer than that, university and all.

P.S. for the version: This version of the story have a different Ego Rex speech style. On AO3, Ego Rex's text is bigger and is aligned closer to that of the game, but I can't find a way to align right here, so I just centered it. If anyone know how to aligned the text right and make it bigger, please let me know.