My heart beats even louder than when I made the breakthrough that led me to this experiment, to being seated on a public bench on a tuesday afternoon with a wide view of the bustling, chaotic city, along with all its nonsense that I usually avoid as much as I can. There’s heavy traffic on the road, as this is one of the main streets, and plenty of people are walking to and fro, living their stupid lives that have little to do with science and advancing mankind. I power up my tablet, which I built myself from scratch, and I point its scanner towards one of the cars waiting for a traffic light to turn green.
I have a clear enough view of the vehicle for the scanner of my device to hit it properly, and when it hits, the car’s properties are listed on the screen of my device. The AI, which I trained myself, quickly translates the DNA-like properties into readable stuff. It lists the car’s body’s color in hexadecimals, that approach a pure red. Other properties reveal that the tires are worn down. There’s a link to the universe entry for its driver, but I’m not interested in the guy yet. On my tablet I edit the hexadecimals for the color and change it to blue. As soon as I save my modification, in the real world the color has instantly turned a lovely shade of blue. A couple of passerbies stop and stare at the car as if they believe they have suddenly lost their minds, or at least that the car has some modern means of changing the color of its body on the fly. No matter. The world’s inhabitants except for myself and a few deceased geniuses are all peasants. Their minds will adapt to the changing realities as if they were being dragged by a current.
The light turns green, and the modified car crosses the intersection. The driver hasn’t noticed anything. I quickly change the properties of two of its tires so they blow up in unison. The car screeches to a stop in the middle of the street, and the driver gets out of it and, confused, stares at his tires. I imagine he will notice the color change soon enough. Hopefully he’s a car freak, and I have just stolen a small thing from him: now one of his babies has been hexed, its properties changed by some unknown force. But nobody else in the history of mankind has found out what I painstakingly worked to discover: that the universe is built just like a video game. Maybe it is a video game, not that it would mean much to me given that I was born inside of it. Once you can read the properties of everything and you have developed the means to alter them, you are de facto the king of this world. Of the whole universe.
I get up from the bench and leave towards the park. The streets are mine. I take a deep breath and close my eyes, feeling the late afternoon sun on my face. When I open my eyes, my gaze falls on the large crowd gathered on the grass. Some have sat down in groups to eat, others are running around, some are walking their dogs.
I orient the scanner of my tablet towards a tall guy that is playing frisbee, and I read his properties. I change the colors of his clothing, as well as of his hair and of the frisbee he’s playing with. The guy’s skin turns white by itself as his pitiful brain struggles to integrate my interference. He looks down at his now purple t-shirt and the bright green frisbee, and he begins to yell with fear. The crowd turns towards him and his shrill screams, and soon everybody is gaping at the guy as he jumps up and down while pointing at his clothes and the frisbee. I can’t stop giggling, but I walk a bit further from the scene even though none of these idiots would ever realize I was involved.
I try out several more experiments. I turn a cyclist’s clothes into polka-dots, make a young woman’s dress flow like water, turn a kid’s balloon into a bewilderingly complex equation. The results are always the same: people’s reactions are stupefaction, fear, and panic. I’m having so much fun that I don’t take into account the time, and by the time I feel my phone buzzing in my pocket it’s too late: I’ve missed my train. That’s alright, though. The tablet that I have built from scratch should be able to help me in any situation.
I walk around for a bit until I find a luxurious-looking apartment building. I approach the main door and I scan it to reveal its properties. The lock’s mechanism should be easy to manipulate, and in a couple of seconds I open the door as if I owned the key. I saunter through the foyer when I notice that there’s a security guard up ahead.
“I don’t recall seeing you before,” the guy says. He must be wondering if someone gave me a key, or if I know any of the residents.
“You never had, no. But I will come and go from this place as much as I want from now on,” I say cheerfully.
As he, confused, gets up from his chair to walk towards me, I scan him to test if he’s as easy to manipulate as a lock. I try to alter his thoughts. There are entries for his relationships with other entities of this world, as well as the beliefs he holds regarding them. I find a recent entry for myself. I change his perception so that he sees me as a maintenance worker, there to fix some broken pipes in the apartment building. Someone he has met before.
“Alright, go ahead,” the guy says as he returns to his desk.
“Wait a second, did you forget I’m the maintenance worker?” I ask him.
“I… I suppose I did.”
“And you’re the security guard here?”
“Yes,” he replies, still confused.
I chuckle. I am able to change reality and the minds of people by writing in a device. That’s the kind of power I’m going to use in this world. Man, I’m glad I’m me.
I was kind of pressed on time as the gorilla approached me, and maintenance worker was the first thing that came to mind. I’ll change it some time later to him recognizing me as a long time resident. And I will proceed now to check out my new place. Giddy as a child about to receive a present, I walk up the stairs to the first floor. I don’t have any particular preference, so I move up to the first apartment door I come across and with my device I scan the door. Through its linked entities I check out the properties of what I will face beyond the door. I see five people and two cats, all milling about their living space. The door’s lock has some pretty complex properties in comparison with the entrance’s lock, but I easily manage to bypass it.
I open the door and enter the apartment. There are two people linked with the living room up ahead. Before I show myself as a stranger to them, I check out their properties, I add myself as a related entity, and I alter the beliefs of those two people to recognize me as the new owner of their apartment.
It’s a couple in their forties. When they notice me they look distraught, as if they had been caught doing something bad, or failed to do something important.
“What are you still doing here?” I ask them.
“We… We…” the man stammers. He looks dazed.
“You already knew I was going to move in, right?”
As he struggles to put his thoughts together, I quickly check the couple’s properties. I add in that they have had a few conversations with me before, in which they had informed me that they were moving out. I wonder how they are going to react, given that I haven’t added any entry about whatever place they could move into.
“You are moving in already?” the woman asks, horrified. “We were supposed to have more time!”
I don’t appreciate her tone, so I immediately alter their beliefs again.
“You packed up some belongings yesterday and sold this apartment to me for a low price,” I tell them. “You were very happy with the quick hassle-free sale.”
This time they look much more relieved at this information.
“Just out of curiosity,” I ask, “were are you moving to?”
“Oh, that house we just bought in the countryside,” the woman answers with a smile. “We’ll have our own garden and enough space for animals.”
“That’s wonderful,” I reply with a nod.
Interesting. Did her brain rush in to fill the holes with some delusion?
“Well, give me a tour of the place, will you?” I ask. “I want to check out the rooms.”
The couple looks at each other.
“He’s the owner now,” the woman says to him. “What could it hurt?”
“If he wants a tour, we might as well give him one,” the man answers.
“Oh, good,” she says with a smile. “Follow me, sir.”
The woman stands up and walks away, the man following her. The two of them show me around their apartment. I look at the rooms with a critical eye, realizing just how much I can change. The closets are packed full of clothes, and the kitchen has a lot of food stocked inside it. Apparently all the furniture came with the changes I made.
In one of the bedrooms are the couple’s three kids, a guy in his early twenties and a couple of teenagers, one a maybe fourteen years old male and the other a maybe seventeen years old female. Two cats are lazing around on the bed. The three kids are playing some game on a console.
“What’s up?” I ask. “What are you playing?”
“It’s a game with cubes,” the teenage boy answers. “You build towers and bridges and fight off enemies.”
“It’s a dumb kids game,” the girl laughs.
“Alright. Do you know who I am?” I ask.
The fourteen year old kid looks me over, then glances at his parents.
“The landlord?”
I am quick to edit this one kid’s properties on my tablet.
“I’m your new dad.”
The boy’s eyes widen as his mouth drops open. The three kids all react with different levels of surprise and intrigue as I sit down on the ground with them. I have erased even the entries for his parents on this fourteen years old’s properties.
“What is he talking about, Matty?” the girl asks.
“I don’t know,” Matty answers as he massages his temple. “But he’s my dad now.”
The two cats stretch and get off the bed, one of them walking over to me. I reach out and pet it as I look at the kids. I can already tell this is going to be fun.
The girl teenager as well as the young adult stand up and address their actual parents.
“What the hell is going on? Who is this guy?” the girl asks. “This is a joke, right?”
“He’s our new dad,” Matty answers happily. “Right, dad?”
“That’s right, kid,” I answer.
I’m quick to add to their parents the belief that they willingly sold all three of their children to me.
“You didn’t even bother explaining to your kids that you had sold them to me?” I ask the couple as I look over my shoulder. “You are as irresponsible as they come, huh?”
“I wanted to explain, but you didn’t even let me get a word in edgeways!” the mother complains. “Besides, I’m pretty sure they got the idea as soon as you walked in.”
“What!?” the teenage girl screams.
“What the hell is this? If this is a joke, it’s a nasty one, mom!” the young adult says with a shaky voice.
The mother stutters.
“You know how your father lost his job last month? Well, things have been really hard for us… We had to choose between food or the mortgage…”
That’s some interesting improv, I think. I check her updated beliefs on the tablet. She already had an entry for her husband losing her job, and I guess her brain put two and two together.
“So you decided to sell us off as slaves?” the daughter screams.
“Slaves is a harsh word,” I interject. “Your routine won’t change much, it’s just that I’ll be the one in charge now.”
Both the girl and the young adult, who I guess is a bit more infantile than his age would suggest, start crying. The girl also hugs the teenage boy, who looks unfazed about this whole thing.
They’re trying my patience.
“Listen, I’ll let you play games all day if you want. You won’t even have to go to school, okay? So don’t start crying.”
“Yeah!” the teenage boy smiles.
“How are you so happy about this?” the girl says in a mixture of anger and sadness.
“It’s a lot to take in, but you’ll like it,” I say, then hold the girl’s gaze sternly. “However, as the new order of things, you need to establish to your former parents how much you hate how they have wronged you.”
“What?” the young adult asks with a trembling voice. “What are you asking her to do, exactly?”
I go over her properties on the tablet. There’s a whole group of entries for her emotional state. I pump up her rage.
“You hate what they did to you,” I say to the teen. “So vent your anger.”
The teen looks at her father, then jumps to her feet, launches herself at the man and hits him on the chest with all her strength. The two cats run over themselves to escape the bedroom.
“You’re a monster!” the teenage girl screams as she hits her dad again and again. Although her older brother tries to hold her back, she breaks free and continues hitting her father. The mother, who had been wasting time screaming in terror, moves forward to intercede, but I scan her properties and increase the woman’s weight by ten times. Her legs buckle under her, and she struggles on the floor as if a wall had fallen over her. The woman can only weep as she watches her daughter beat her husband to a pulp. The teenage boy is too scared and weak to help, but then again his former parents are now strangers to him.
The girl’s older brother picks her up while she cries and screams incoherently, and he drags her away from their unconscious former father. With his free hand he takes out a phone from one of his pockets.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“I’m calling the police. You can’t get away with this.”
I change the young man’s properties to include an unwavering loyalty towards me, then change his opinion on calling the police to a very negative one. With a trembling hand, he returns his phone to the pocket.
“I… I don’t know what I was thinking,” he says, frightened.
The teenage girl is panting and crying, but she alternates between looking at me and my tablet as if she’s figured out something is wrong.
“What did you do to my brother?” the sister asks.
“He’s fine. I just made him a little more obedient. He’s your obedient servant if you want him to be. Now, you were beating your dad pretty badly. Shouldn’t I punish you for doing something nasty?”
“I… I don’t understand.”
“What’s not to understand?” I say. “You hate me because I changed your parents, your weakling of a little brother, as well as yourself. You beat up your dad because of it, which resulted in him being hurt pretty badly. You’re going to be punished for what you did. Or you can join me and become a goddess among insects.”
“I… I don’t want to be a monster,” the girl says, crying harder.
Her properties reveal that the previous rage has subsided naturally. Her former father isn’t moving, and blood keeps pouring from his ears. The mother cries while struggling on the ground like a beached whale.
For a new trick, I test whether I can paste the properties I had saved on the device into a present object. I scan a book they left on a table, then I paste the properties of a shotgun. As soon as I save my changes, the shotgun appears with the same small imperfections as those of the shotgun I originally copied.
“Look at that, how nice,” I say, then look at the teenage girl. “Go ahead and grab it.”
The teenage girl grabs the weapon before she even bothers to think about it. It’s heavy, but she holds it up.
“Do you know how to work it?” I ask.
“My dad’s a hunter,” the girl says, then glances at her unconscious, possibly already dead father. “I can work it.”
“Good, because you’re going to be hunting your family now. Go ahead and shoot your mother in the head.”
“What?”
“She’s a monster now. Go ahead and shoot her in the head.”
“I… can’t,” the girl says.
“There are two ways this can go, and only one of them has you walking out of here,” I say. “Either you prove you’re a bad enough girl to follow my orders, or you’re not, and you get killed. What’s your name, anyway?”
“Jane,” the girl answers with a raspy voice.
“Old fashioned, but it will do. Nice meeting you, Jane. Now shoot your stupid mother in the head.”
She looks at me, then lowers the shotgun. “I can’t.”
I’m about to browse her properties when I stop myself. Why am I hesitating? I’m surprised to realize that I don’t want to modify her. She is holding a device of destruction that could end me in a moment, as well as everything I have worked towards, and yet I want this wild-eyed teenage girl to make the choice.
“One… two…”
I begin counting as I read in her properties that she’s quickly working herself up to the task. When I get to five she aims the shotgun at her mother’s head and shoots her. I got a glimpse of the horror in the woman’s face, before her skull explodes into a bloody mess that even dirties my pants.
“Good,” I say. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”
“No… sir.”
“Sir? Oh, you’re trying to be polite? That is cute. You can drop the politeness now, Jane. You know, I didn’t have to convince you properly to execute your own mother. Is it because they sold you guys into slavery?”
“Yes,” Jane says.
“You are something else, huh? Why don’t you make sure that the traitor you had as a former dad is properly dead from the vicious beating you gave him?”
“Yes, sir,” Jane says.
I watch as she stomps on her father’s head until his skull shatters. I think that if he hadn’t been dead from the beating before, he probably is now.
“Good. You hungry?” I ask. “Let’s order some pizza or something.”
The young adult, now loyal as a zombie, is staring blankly at the remains of his parents, while the teenage boy, who knows me to be his dad, is however cowering against a corner, I guess because of the murders. I kick the teenage boy, knocking him off his spot.
“You. Did I catch your name?”
“M-M-Matty,” he says with a thin voice.
“Hello, Matty. Now, you’re probably scared because not only are you in the presence of a genius, but also of a killer.”
“Y-Yes.”
I sigh, then turn to my favorite daughter.
“What do you think about this cowardly little brother of yours, Jane?”
“He annoys me,” Jane replies.
“Has he always annoyed you, or is this a new development?”
“I’ve always found him annoying.”
She moves forward, then raises her bloodied foot as if she’s about to crush her little brother’s skull as well. As the teenage boy screams, I grab the girl and drag her away.
“Did I suggest you to murder your little brother? You have issues!” I shout.
“You did not,” Jane says, frowning as holds my gaze.
“Right. You’re not eating or sleeping or anything until you apologize to your brother.”
The girl stares at her brother awkwardly, before speaking.
“I’m… sorry, Matt.”
I rub my hands while grinning. Oh, this is going to be fun indeed. The boy is probably going to wet himself out of fear. I kneel next to him and bonk him in the head.
“So, Matty. Do you have a girlfriend?” I ask.
“N-no.”
“Ah. Shame. You’re a good looking kid, you could easily get one. Anyway, I’m a bit tired already, not to mention hungry! You, the oldest, pass me your phone. I need to look up some pizza place.”
The young adult reaches into his pocket, then silently hands me his phone. As I begin to browse the internet for some nearby pizza place, Jane walks up to me.
“Can we get something else? I can’t stand pizza.”
I frown at her.
“Pizza is an art form.”
“Can we get Chinese instead?”
“Listen, I’ll order pizza. If you don’t want any, there’s plenty of food in the fridge. Now, sit down over there and don’t move,” I say.
Jane walks away angrily, scowling as she sits next to her little brother, who is still shaking in fear. At last I find a place that delivers, and call them up. I order a large pepperoni pizza along with sodas.
“Alright, a large with pepperoni, and soda for four. Do any of you want anything else?”
“Can you get chicken nuggets?” Matt asks in a small, quiet voice.
“Chocolate chip pancakes,” Jane asks.
“Meatballs,” the young adult says.
“A bunch of goofballs is what you are.”
I shake my head. I do order some chicken nuggets, though.
A bit later I check out the properties of the two corpses belonging to these kid’s parents, and I erase them. They simply disappear. Curiously, their spilled blood transformed into different entities, but I erase those as well. Later on, me and my new kids gather in the living room. The order comes in fifteen minutes. I watch as the kids dig in, happily eating away. Jane has gotten over her dislike of pizza, which couldn’t have been that strong. The two cats keep walking around with their ears perked up, only to stop at times and stare intently at me with curiosity and confusion. One of them ends up enjoying some pepperoni.
Once I’ve gotten my fill, as I watch the kids I toy with my tablet just in case I come up with something interesting to do. But the sun has already set. How will I handle these kids after they finish their dinner?
“So, kids…”
“…Yes?” Matt asks.
“I need to think of something fun for you guys to do… Any requests?”
“PlayStation.”
“Nah, I’m not really into video games,” I say. “They are for the puny who can’t make their own video games out of real life.”
Matt goes quiet. For about half an hour or so I make small talk, mostly with Janey, but even I yawn a couple of times.
“Can we just go to bed?” Matt asks.
“Yeah, I’m exhausted,” Jane says.
I stand up.
“Alright then. Let’s get going.”
We all head out of the living room. It seems that the room where the kids had been playing on the console before is Matty’s. We leave the fourteen years old there. The young adult, whatever his name is, disappears into another room. Jane leads me to her own room, and then she quickly flops under her blue bed covers.
“Goodnight, sir,” she says.
Standing there, looking down at this savage creature, an alien tenderness bursts in my heart. She’s unlike all those others, isn’t she? That faceless throng of noise and stink that fills the streets. Something pure has survived in this teenager. A little miracle.
I stroke gently her soft hair.
“You are a good girl, Janey,” I whisper. “I look forward to being your daddy. I will show you many curious and magical things.”
She closes her eyes, and in the darkened room I see her face relax.
Although I retreat to the doorway, I am not eager to tear myself away from the pleasant view. For many years I have lived and worked in that shacky garage, unbecoming of someone like me. None of those empty-headed academicians considered my research viable. A madman, they even called me. I was always aiming at a target that none of them could see. I could have given up entirely. I did give up on most of my previous hopes and motivations, except for anger and resentment. Those kept me afloat. But this warmth in my heart is a new phenomenon that I’m eager to explore. Life is full of surprises, and some are even pleasant. I smile at last and turn to let Jane sleep, closing the door behind me.

As I wake up, my instincts tell me that everything has changed again, as I have learned to expect for the last two years. I inhabit a new body. It feels lighter, except for the excess pressure on my chest. As I sit up in a stranger’s bed, my long hair caresses my neck. It takes a glance down to realize that indeed I seem to be a woman today. A particularly gifted one. And my hands suggest that I’m maybe in my thirties.
I sigh, and get up from the bed. I’m alone in a master bedroom, but someone has slept beside this body. I may have a boyfriend, or be married. Another one of those days.
I open the bedroom door carefully and scout the surroundings. A hallway leads to five other rooms. A second floor. And I hear voices coming from downstairs, young ones. Shit, this woman may have kids.
I descend the stairs. The living room is connected to the kitchen, and two high school aged kids are seated on the kitchen table, eating breakfast. The boy shoots me a look between worry and confusion.
“Are you okay, mom?”
“I’m fine, honey,” I reply in a higher voice than would have come naturally from me. I should have gotten used to acting at this point.
“I can’t even remember the last time we came in when you were still asleep,” the girl says. She has long bangs and an evasive gaze.
“Are you sure you aren’t sick or anything?” insists the boy.
I contain a sigh. I grab the box of cereals from the counter, as well as the milk, and sit next to the girl.
“I’m the good old mom you used to know, I assure you.”
“You are still wearing your pyjamas, though.”
I eat a spoonful of crunchy cereals, which helps erase the stale taste of this strange mouth’s saliva.
“Do you have a problem with my pyjamas or something, kid?”
“No, it’s just that…”
“Enough with the questions already!” I say in an exasperated tone.
The boy shuts up and turns to his bowl of corn flakes. This body has a maternal mean streak, or maybe it’s just me being annoyed. These days only rarely I care to avoid wrecking the lives of these bodies I end up inhabiting without having any say in the matter. By the end of the day, or even earlier if I get too tired, I’ll be gone, and wake up in some other stranger’s life. Who cares about these two bozos. I’m sure they are as average as they look.
The girl’s gaze rests on my cheek, but when I turn my head towards her, she nervously pretends she wasn’t staring, and starts fidgeting with her long black hair.
“Hey, whatever your name is…” I start, but catch myself. “I mean, are you okay, honey? You seem troubled.”
She turns to me with a blank expression and nods slowly.
“Are you sure?” I prod at her. If she starts crying now, I’m not sure how to handle it.
She bites her lips and fiddles with the spoon, turning it around and around. Then, without looking at me, she mutters:
“But what are we going to do about dad…?”
“Something happened with dad? What’s that?”
She looks at me and opens her mouth to speak, but then she closes it. To my left, the boy lets out a noise of incredulity.
“I knew something was wrong with you, mom! You are in shock or something, right? Maybe you should go back to bed.”
“Hush, Kyle,” I say. “Your sister has something to say, and you are going to listen.”
“Kyle?” the boy asks confused, but the girl interrupts him with a teary voice.
“How long will it take for dad to find another job in this economy?”
The boy stares at his sister, then he sinks the spoon in his cereal as if to drown it. He looks up at me, defiance in his eyes.
“So what, will we stay with you now?” he asks.
“Don’t you live here already?” I ask, caring very little.
“Dad says he can’t find anything in this town!” the girl says. “So we would have to move! But I don’t want to move! I have my friends here! Glenn doesn’t want to move either, do you Glenn?”
“Shut up, Carla,” the boy mumbles, almost inaudible.
Carla starts crying, and the boy throws a hostile look at her.
You pour some more milk in your bowl. So this body is divorced or something. Maybe a break of some sort. In any case the kids seem to prefer to stay with their dad. Am I not good enough? The cheek to come crying to me about it. I’m sure I have an awesome, well-paying job myself.
“Why don’t you just live here with me then? I seem to have plenty of rooms.”
Both of them look at me in wonder, while Glenn studies my face.
“I can’t tell if that’s a joke, mom.”
“Why would it be a joke, honey? Is my house not good enough for you brats?”
“Doesn’t your boyfriend hate having other people’s childen in his place?” the boy asks bitterly.
“I see, I guess I can’t afford this place on my own. Is my boyfriend loaded or something? And where is he now, anyway…?”
The kids exchange meaningful glances, then the girl speaks.
“Mom, you know how you are sometimes… confused…”
“I am not confused, I’m in full possession of my senses,” I say indignantly.
“Mom, have you forgotten? The doctors said… that you’d have to take those pills…”
The atmosphere at the table grows tense.
“I’m somewhat crazy, then.” I shrug. “Well, whatever. I suppose this boyfriend of mine is at work, right? And I sneak my two brats in so I can feed them before they leave for school?”
“Uh… That’s one way of looking at it, I guess.”
“Wait a second, so I divorced this father of yours and came to live with a boyfriend, and because he wouldn’t accept my kids, I gave up on you two?”
“I wouldn’t say you gave up on us,” the boy says, “I know you love us. It’s just, you like your boyfriend better than us.”
“I sound like scum.”
The girl glares at her brother for a moment, before turning to me with kind eyes. “Glenn, dear, don’t say that. I’m sure that isn’t true.”
“Whatever, Carla,” he says as he stands up from the table.
I motion for him to sit down, and apparently I’ve done it more confidently than the owner of this body tends to, because the boy obeys.
“Listen to me, kids,” I say with a serious tone. “I’m sure I love you both quite a bit. You came out of me, tearing me apart in the process. I feel a significant wind coming out from down there. I better love you after such carnage, or else I will regret the consequences for the rest of my life. Glenn, you seem tough, and I like your name. Carla, you need to believe in yourself a bit more. You aren’t exactly pretty, more on the average to ugly side, but it’s all about faking confidence. If the world rejects you, you reject it back, then shit on everybody. You know what I mean, Carla? You can’t go through this horrible life apologizing for being alive.”
The kids are confused. Carla looks as if I’ve told her something she can use, but doesn’t know what to do with the information.
“I-It’s like I don’t know you at all, mom…” the girl says.
“Yeah, yeah. I know quite a bit about how messy this life can be. One day you are working freelance from home in your boxers and one leg on the table, and the next time you go to sleep your consciousness jumps into another body, one after the other, and rarely returns to your own. Two years of such garbage. It’s a metaphor, you see, but the point is that you need to learn how to adapt to the chaos of this life. You never know who you are going to meet, what burdens you are going to have to bear, or whether you are going to wake up as a girl next to some horny dude who won’t ask your permission to fuck you. And the worst is that you enjoy it quite a bit. But it’s because the body gets aroused by itself!” I pound on the table next to my bowl. It takes me a few seconds for my heart to calm down, then I sigh. “The point I’m trying to make is that I’m sure you look pretty good without your clothes on, Carla, and that way people can look down at your body instead of at your face.”
“Mom, you are talking to Carla as if she was a grown up,” the boy pleads with me. “Why do you have to be so mean? She doesn’t like being talked to that way.”
I squint my eyes at him and frown.
“You little shit. You dare to tell me how to speak with your sister? I’ll shove a cactus up your ass. The thorns will come out of your mouth.”
Not knowing how to react, Glenn retreats to the fridge and grabs a carton of orange juice.
“Don’t you dare pour that for your sister! I’ve told you that I don’t want her drinking sugary drinks. She becomes hyperactive as hell.” I stand up, grab the carton from his hands and put it back in the fridge. As soon as I look back at this Glenn’s face, I realize that I expected another kid’s face to stare back. What was that other kid’s name again…? “She’s already nervous about going to school today. You really need to help her out.”
Carla chuckles against her hand.
“You are really pretty when you are angry, mom.”
“I feel quite pretty alright, although I haven’t come across a mirror. And these look fantastic, don’t they? I have become quite knowledgeable about sizes. Can you believe that the both of you used to suckle on them? How can we even talk these days, look at one another in the eye, knowing that some time ago you were sucking milk from my breasts? It must be so embarrassing for you.”
“For you too,” Carla says. “We’ve never heard you speak that much before.”
I pick up the newspaper on the kitchen table, and start reading the front page.
“Is there any particular reason why you are reading the paper upside-down?” Carla asks.
I put the newspaper down. It was yesterday’s edition anyway.
“Everything is upside down in this world, honey. Haven’t you noticed? What sense does it make that someone forced another person to exist only for them to look average to ugly? Isn’t that a cruelty for which one should hold a permanent grudge?”
“You aren’t ugly,” Carla says with a kind expression, and puts her hand on my shoulder.
“I was talking about you, though. Carla, do you like your life?”
“Mom…”
“Well, do ya, punk?”
“Yes. I do,” she says, with a firm nod.
“As you should,” I say, patting her head. “You don’t want to ruin that face of yours further, you know.”
I turn towards Glenn, whose expression suggests he’s having a Vietnam flashback.
“And you, Glenn, what’s going on in your life, huh?”
He turns redder than any of his shirts I have ever seen, but to be fair I have only seen one.
“Nothing,” he says, and lowers his head.
“That’s good to hear, buddy. Are you hitting anything yet?”
Glenn narrows his shoulders.
“What are you implying?”
“I’m implying you should hit something, like a baseball or a punching bag. It’s called exercise. It makes your body feel better, and there’s evidence to suggest it releases endorphins, thus making you happy. A lot happier than you seem to be, at least.”
“I do sports!”
“Yeah, I can tell. I have seen plenty of naked men in these last couple of years. Don’t ever have sex with anyone without permission, you hear?”
Carla laughs. Hey, I am serious! That’s a shitty thing to do to someone! But anyway…
“I digress,” I say, then hold Glenn’s gaze so intensely that he shivers. “You don’t want to grow up too fast. It’s not worth it. Trust me.”
Glenn averts his gaze down to the table.
“I still endure through nightmares what seems like every night,” I say, and although I try to control my voice, it trembles. “Sometimes someone holds me or wakes me up, and it’s always a stranger’s arms. You expect to wake up to security and comfort, but I open my eyes to a new nightmare. Do you understand what I mean?”
“I get it,” Carla says, then places her palm on my shoulder.
I smile, knowing she means well, and her words seem to flow directly into my ears and into my brain, causing tears to form in my eyes.
“I’m so sorry about your dad,” I say.
“Thanks,” she replies, her eyes shining.
“You can be so beautiful under the right light, Carla. Don’t you want to give your mommy a kiss?”
She opens her arms for a hug, and I embrace her tightly.
“Don’t worry, I won’t let anything happen to you,” I whisper in her ear. “I want you to do something for me. Take this as… maternal advice, if you will.”
“Sure,” she says.
“Don’t get angry at people. Not even the guy who is mistreating you. Be kind to everyone, and… you can change people that way.”
She pats my back. I release her from my grasp, and she nods.
“Yeah… but you know what?” Carla says, “Not everyone is worthy of trust.”
I stare at her, taken aback at her bluntness. My words have not changed her attitude at all. I sigh, but chuckle.
“That’s true,” I mutter. “And if you get them to think you are some meek creature, they won’t see it coming until you have already plunged a knife into their eye.”
She grins, and I smile. I really love this new girl.
“Mom, we have to go,” Carla says.
“Okay honey.”
Glenn avoids looking at me as he retrieves his backpack, which he had rested against the back of a nearby sofa. He gives me a short wave and attempts to turn to leave, but I rush over to him, force the kid to turn around and I embrace him tightly.
“I’m sorry,” I say, “I’m so sorry. I love you.”
“I know, mom,” he mutters.
He stands stiffly in my embrace for a moment before he returns the hug a bit.
“You feel your mommy’s big, welcoming breasts pressing themselves against you?” I say softly in his ear. “Replicating that with a new girl who isn’t related to you is your sole goal in life, my dear boy. As soon as possible, too. You don’t want to go through the dreadful decades that await you regretting that you didn’t have sex with some big breasted high schooler.”
“Ew, mom!” he says, then attempts to free himself.
“We have to leave, mom,” Carla reminds me.
I refuse to let my new son go.
“Nothing of that fake disgust, boy. Something deep inside you yearns to return to those days in which I cradled you in my arms and you tightened your lips around my hardened nipples.”
“Mom!”
“Also, you’re a teenage boy, and my body’s natural curves are really starting to bother you. You want me. I can see it. Don’t worry, I’ll be gentle. Bring this up again the next time we are alone.”
“Mom!” he exclaims, even more disgusted and angry.
He manages to escape from me, and Carla grabs him by the arm and drags him out of the house. I wave at them as they leave.
They have been gone for a few seconds when I finally lower my arm, and a wave of anguish washes over me. The tears burn. I will never gaze upon these two children of mine again. Isn’t that the height of cruelty?
As I walk up the stairs and return to the master bedroom to undress myself, I struggle to loosen my throat, to contain the sobbing. That ugly girl’s warm smile still brightens my heart, and the feeling of that boy’s strong arms still lingers around my borrowed, soft body. Indeed, this world is cruel, but it is also beautiful.

Nobody came home. By five in the afternoon I get so sleepy that I lie down on this stranger’s bed to take a nap. Shortly after, another jump separates me from her family.
I awake under the late afternoon light, which filters through my eyelids. My consciousness teeters in a body that is slowly regaining its senses. I hear the sound of waves slowly licking the coast, I feel cold sand under the bare skin of my torso and legs.
“I’m home,” I mutter.
There is no answer.

I enter my sanctuary, our club, as I struggle to prevent the trash food I’ve bought from falling all over. After I close the door behind me, I stop for a moment to look at my friends, the other three members of the literature club, who are illuminated by the afternoon light pouring from the windows. To the left of the empty seat reserved for me is Lydia, the small, bespectacled and hyperactive girl obsessed with the mysterious. On the other side of the table awaits the blonde beauty Kumeko, and to her right her childhood friend, and only published writer of our club, Hibiki.
I leave the food on the table. Lydia is quick to open a bag of chips and stuff her mouth with a handful. When I sit on the empty seat, the tiredness of this whole week of exams drags me towards the ground. But today is another blessed friday, and we’ll enjoy our club time for a couple of hours.
“Well then, who is presenting a text today?” I ask.
“The winner of the Literature Club contest will present their work!” Kumeko announces as she pats her childhood friend on the arm, and she doesn’t notice him blushing. “It’s the third story by Hibiki, entitled ‘The Lost Girl’.”
“Oh? That sounds interesting.” I say.
“Yes, I think so too. It’s about a young girl who is lost in the forest, and she meets a boy who helps her find her way home.”
I shush her.
“Hey, no spoilers! Let the man read!”
Hibiki clears his throat, and as he holds his printed story, he stands up and begins to read it.
“There once was a young boy who grew up in a small village. The boy lived with his mother and father, and had two younger twin brothers. One day, when the boy was sixteen years old, he and his family took a trip to the forest. They set up a campsite by a lake, and went swimming. The next day, the boy went to explore the forest. As he was walking he heard a low growl. He looked behind him, but he couldn’t find the source of the growl. As he continued walking, the growl grew louder, and he began to run, and soon he found himself at the edge of a meadow filled with flowers. He stopped running and took a deep breath, enjoying the beautiful sight of such vibrant life. Then, as he was admiring the flowers, he heard the growl again. His heart pounding in terror, he began to run through the meadow. As he was running, he tripped over a rock and fell, hitting his head on another rock. He began to bleed from the head and passed out in the middle of the field. Luckily, a group of dwarves happened to be passing by. They saw the boy as he lay motionless and bleeding, and picked him up. The dwarves brought him home and nursed him back to health. After a week, the boy regained consciousness. He found himself lying on a bed in a strange house. He saw a group of dwarves standing around his bed. One of the dwarves spoke up. ‘Where do you come from?’ The boy was startled, not expecting to hear any English, let alone perfect English. ‘W-What? Where am I?’ ‘You’re in the Dwarven Kingdom of Karst.'”
“I like the sudden appearance of dwarves in a non-dwarf related story,” I say while I munch on some licorice. “A subversion of expectations or something.”
Hibiki nods.
“Go on,” I say.
“Not much else to say. He spends the week in the dwarven kingdom, and eventually goes back to his village.”
Hibiki looks over at us, and then puts down the paper he was reading from. He sits back as we stare at him in silence.
“What, that’s it?” Lydia asks in disbelief.
“Yeah. That’s it,” Hibiki says with a sigh.
“That’s horrible!” she shouts in frustration, “You spent an entire week and couldn’t come up with anything proper to write about?”
“Well, I was trying to stay true to the feel of a bedtime story. They don’t all have grand plots.”
Lydia crosses her arms in front of her chest to say something else, but I lean over the table.
“Wait a second, what’s with the title? You called it ‘The Lost Girl’, right? There wasn’t a girl anywhere in that plot! Did you read another story by mistake?”
Hibiki takes the paper from the table and looks at it.
“You see that? That’s your problem right there,” I point out. “You didn’t even notice. If a reader can notice something that isn’t there, your story has failed.”
He crumples up the paper and tosses it over his shoulder. We hear a startled ‘oinks’ from behind us as a piggy-bank catches the wadded paper ball.
“You’ll get over it soon, but I have to go now. See you guys later,” Hibiki says as he stands up noisily.
Seated to Hibiki’s left, his childhood friend Kumiko grabs the embarrassed kid’s arm and pulls him down.
“Don’t be ridiculous! It doesn’t matter if we didn’t like this story much, they can’t be all winners! And you have to critique our stories too!”
“Can’t it wait?” he asks.
“Yes,” she says, “but no.”
Kumiko gives him a serious look. He sighs and raises his eyebrows in defeat. He’s not going to win against her stubbornness.
“Alright, alright, I’ll stay,” he says, throwing his hands up in the air.
Kumiko smiles and starts going through her bag to get her papers.
“I also wrote something. I was trying to stay in the fairytale theme. This one is a story about a princess who is captured by an evil dragon. There is no prince to save her, and she has to save herself.”
“One of those post-modern retellings, I see,” I say as I gulp down some soda.
“No, it is a story about a strong woman who can fight for her own honor,” she responds, annoyed.
“I didn’t mean any offense. I liked it.”
“I have barely started telling it!” she says, then pouts.
“I meant that I liked the story in general. Continue.”
She narrows her eyes, then nods and starts reading her work. Her bell-like voice is as pretty as her blonde hair and pale blue eyes.
“The sun had fallen, leaving me in a pitch black dungeon. I shivered in the frigid air. The cold stone floor felt as if it was sucking the heat out of my naked body; I felt so exposed and vulnerable. I was naked, and my clothes were not anywhere to be found. There was no furniture in the room either, save from a bucket full of water and an old moldy piece of bread.”
“I liked the part about the nakedness,” I say.
“Shut up, JP,” she says, annoyed.
I smile. I have always had a weakness for pretty girls. That being said, I can admire a girl’s mind and body without wanting to jump their bones. I don’t know why they always think that we’re going to do that to them.
“Where was I? Oh yes, I was shivering on the floor and trying not to starve to death,” she says, giving me a dirty look.
“Is this a story, or some harrowing experience of yours?” I ask, then chuckle.
“It’s a story I made up!” she says, annoyed.
“Continue.”
She looks down and continues reading.
“I heard a fearsome growl and looked around to find the source. Above me was a giant black beast, curled up on itself like a cat. It had sharp yellow teeth, and blood red eyes that seemed to pierce my very being. I wanted to look away, but I felt hypnotized by its gaze. Then, it struck. It opened its maw and blew out hot air that smelled like rotten eggs. I blacked out. When I woke up, it was surrounded by several people wearing medieval clothing. It roared, and the people backed away in fear. The beast looked at me, then ran off into the forest. I had been rescued.”
“You forgot to mention that she got rabies and died,” I say.
“Shut up, JP!” she says, annoyed once again.
I have to point something out.
“Wasn’t the idea that the princess saved herself in this one?”
“Oh yeah,” she says, blushing.
“You’re really bad at this.”
“Shut up, JP!”
Both me and Lydia take some time to stop laughing.
“Wait, that’s the end of the story?” I ask.
“Yeah,” she says, clearly disappointed that I didn’t like the ending.
“That sucks. You should go back and change it so the dragon gets killed or something.”
She pauses for a moment, thinking about what I said.
“Yeah… that’s not a bad idea.”
“The princess should probably be the one to kill it. You know, because that was the point you intended to make with this whole thing, which you insisted on. You deliberately presented the story as capturing that post-modern angle, and then your text failed to reflect it.”
“But it wasn’t my fault!” she whines.
“Maybe not, but that’s what you presented to us.”
She pauses again, and I can tell that she’s realizing that I’m right. She sighs in defeat.
“Yeah, you’re absolutely right,” she says. “I’ll have to change it.”
“We all make mistakes,” I say with a smile. “As usual, though, we have trouble staying on target.”
The remaining member of the club, our mostly delusional Lydia, chimes in as she pushes up the bridge of her glasses.
“I’m pretty sure you’re the main reason for that, Jacob.”
“How do you figure?” I ask. “Kumiko’s the one who went on a tangent and forgot her own ending.”
“You’re distracting her. You do it all the time.”
Lydia is just teasing me, as usual.
“Yeah, but it’s okay. She’ll get around to fixing it,” I say with a smile.
Kumiko can’t stop frowning at me as Lydia finally pulls out her own story. She seems more enthusiastic than usual about this new one.
“What subject are you obsessed with this week, Lydia?” I ask as I rest my face on my palm.
“I did some reading last night. Did you know that dark matter is all around us?”
“Um… sure?”
“Anyway, here it goes!” Lydia announces. “Title: ‘The Cat in the Box’, by Lydia Hirsch.”
“Yes, we are aware of you, Lydia.”
“There once was a cat named Mr. Whiskers. He was trapped inside a box. The box was also trapped inside a bigger box. There were three boxes all together. The big box, the medium-sized box, and the small box. They were all trapped inside each other, like a Russian Nesting Doll. ‘Meow,’ said the cat. ‘I wish I could get out of here. I’m stuck in this small box. Oh no! There’s a even smaller box inside of me, and I can’t get out!’ Mr. Whiskers looked very scared. He was afraid of getting trapped inside an even smaller box.”
I hear Hibiki gulping.
“Somehow that makes me feel a pit in my stomach…” he says.
“Shhh! It gets better, trust me! Mr. Whiskers then saw a laser beam appear inside the small box. It started to move around, and Mr. Whiskers was very afraid of getting hit by the beam. But then, another cat named GutterCat came in and saved him! The two cats ran outside, escaping the boxes.”
“Where did this cat GutterCat come from, and how did he find his way into that small box inside other boxes?” I ask incredulously.
“Who cares? The point is that the two cats lived happily ever after escaping those evil boxes. The end.”
Lydia beams as she finishes her story. She looks around at our faces, which display a mixed response to her story.
“That was… ugh… an interesting story,” I say, as I try to think of something nice to say about it.
“I thought it was incredible!” Lydia says excitedly. “When I grow up, I want to write stories just like that!”
“But you did write that one.”
“Oh. Yeah…” she says, as her smile falters slightly.
“It was a nice try, but it needs work. For one thing, why did Mr. Whiskers speak perfect English? Also, how did he fit in the box? Did he just shrink himself somehow?”
“Well… It was a magical box,” Lydia says in an almost inaudible voice. “You can do anything when you’re a writer.”
“Didn’t you say recently that you wanted to start writing stories based on reality?” I say as I raise an eyebrow.
“Well… I can change reality,” she says, now pouting. “If I could fit twenty bumblebees inside a teeny tiny bottle, then I can make a magical box that defies the laws of physics.”
“Hell no. Writing isn’t anarchy. There’s no meaning if you don’t follow at least some rules. If anything can happen, then nothing makes sense. Is that not the case?”
Lydia raises her hand as if she was in class.
“Yes, Lydia?” I ask.
“I have a problem with that. You said you want to write about the real world, but that’s not true. Nobody writes about the real world. Writers have been doing fiction for thousands of years. Did Shakespeare write about the real world? No. That’s why his plays are still around today. Did Tolkien write about the real world? No. That’s why people are still obsessed with his work decades after he died.”
“We might be aiming too high here, at least in regards to comparing ourselves with such writers. We seem to remain stuck at preschool level.”
“Well at least I’m trying!” she exclaims.
“And that’s all I’m asking for,” I say, raising my hands. “You wrote about a magical box, really?”
“Yes!” she says, agitated. “I wanted to challenge myself.”
“Writing about a magical box instead of the usual aliens, lost civilizations, bigfoot, underground complexes of tunnels that hold kidnapped and tortured children, and isolated islands of sin for the one percenters?”
“Yes, because I can do that too!” she says, raising her voice. “I just wanted to try something new. I always have my cat save the day, so I wanted to switch it up.”
“Instead of your cat solving the mystery, now you wanted a new cat to save your own cat?” I laugh out loud.
“Stop making fun of me,” she says, abashed. “At least I’m trying.”
She mutters something to herself as she holds her story with her arms crossed.
“Don’t get me wrong, Lydia,” I start. “I love your stories. It’s just that I get tired of suspending my disbelief week after week while listening to how your cat discovers alien life, or hunts down a bigfoot, or saves the children from the underground tunnels built by the military-industrial complex, or blows up some private island full of mostly naked underage girls.”
“You think too highly of yourself, then,” says Kumiko. She doesn’t seem to have forgiven me for correcting her story before.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I ask with annoyance.
“You think you’re the only one who has issues coming up with stories? I’ve had the same issues as you, except way worse. And let me tell you why,” she says, her eyes flickering towards the black binder in front of her. She looks at it for a while, as if trying to remember something she wrote inside it.
“You… you don’t have to tell me,” I say. “If it’s too personal, you don’t have to.”
She sighs. “It’s not that personal. It’s just. I’ve been working on this story for a long time now, and I still haven’t finished it.”
“Are you trying something seriously? What is it about?”
“It’s about a girl and a guy who are good friends, almost like siblings. Over the years, they grow closer together and become romantically involved.”
“I must say, I’m loving the sibling angle.”
She gives me a look. “Well, they do grow up together. Together, they face all sorts of trials and tribulations. It’s a story about growing up, really.”
“A coming of age story?”
She seems to think for a moment, before nodding. “Yeah. You could say that. But it’s not just for the main characters that things happen. It spans decades, so there’s time for generations to pass and see change.”
“One of those stories that try to feel the pulse of society during many decades, or something like that?”
She nods. “Sure. Something like that.”
I stare at her. She stares at me. The room is quiet save for the occasional sound of pages flipping as Hibiki turns a bunch in front of him. After a while, Kumiko speaks up.
“So… you want to hear it?” she asks.
“Sure,” I say. “Why not?”
Kumiko takes a deep breath, and begins to tell her story.
“Our tale starts in a hospital, with the birth of our two leads. I will speak now from the point of view of the protagonist… I’m born first, a crybaby but a strong one. You come out second, strong and silent. So strong and silent they think you’re deaf, but it’s just an act of defiance. We grow up with each other, inseparable. We do everything together. School, playtime, everything.” Kumiko takes a deep breath. “For our eighteenth birthday we’re given our choice of whatever car we want from the dealership down the road. I want the one that goes from zero to sixty in three seconds. You want the off-road SUV that can drive over practically anything. We fight over it for hours…” Kumiko begins to cry. “We… We fought all day. I didn’t think we’d fight on our birthdays, so I didn’t get you a present. I’m sorry, I tried to make it up to you later… But we fought all day, and in the end, we took the dealership. I went first, and when they handed me the keys to my new car, I said ‘this is for you’. I handed them to you. I broke into tears immediately after, because I knew you’d hate it. You took the keys from my hand, and went to look at the car. I looked up about the car later, and saw that it costs almost twice as much as a house in our town. It was too late to give it back. You didn’t say anything. But then, you didn’t need to. I understood. I cried for our lost friendship, and never spoke to you again. The end.”
Kumiko is sobbing heavily now. I struggle to say something. I walk around the table and I try to hug our blonde princess, but she pushes me away.
“No, no!” she screams. “Don’t touch me! I’m disgusting! Just leave me alone! All of you, leave me alone! Leave me alone!”
I stand back. Kumiko pulls out a cigarette and a lighter. She struggles to light it with a trembling hand.
“Please stop her,” I say to the others. “Tobacco has never been on her side.”
At this point, the cigarette has caught fire.
“I’m sorry,” she says, blowing out the flame. Slowly but surely, she stands up and heads towards the window. I stare in horror.
“You aren’t thinking something crazy, are you, Kumiko…?”
“You, least of all, should call me crazy,” she says coldly.
Then, she jumps out. Lydia, Hibiki and myself run to the window, only to catch that Kumiko has already landed on the grass a meter and a half below and is sprinting towards the gated entrance of our school.
“Kumiko!” I shout.
My blonde friend never looks back. After she disappears behind some trees, I shake my head and return to the table. We sit around in silence for a while, not knowing how to bring up this disgraceful event. Hibiki is wringing his hands.
“Hibiki…” I start, “you need to take good care of that girl.”
“I don’t know what to do!” he cries.
“Just keep being friendly with her. You’re the only person she’s got, you know.”
He nods, his eyes red from crying. I feel a huge, dark pit in my stomach. What the hell have we done? We’ve pushed our only stable member to jump out of a window and attempt suicide. It’s a miracle that she survived. But I’m not sure whether she did it for herself or for us.
I wipe the sweat from my forehead.
“Well, I guess I might as well read my own story. I did go through the trouble of writing it and all.”
I walk over to the whiteboard and grab a marker from the edge of it. I then begin sketching out the plot of my story on the board, but shortly after I give up and I draw a huge dong. I return to my chair and sit down wearily.
“My story starts like this: the protagonist is some guy called JB who attends some high school or other. His life is generally fine, I guess, but what he loves to do the most is to attend the literature club that he’s a member of. Maybe not the most important or prominent member, but a vital part of the whole, I’d say.”
I pause my story to grab another pastry. As I do so, our headmaster comes in for his weekly meeting with the club. Apparently he’s had some sort of announcement to make, but he forgot it. He leaves, and we hear his hurried footsteps fading away.
“Where was I? Ah, yes. It was a hard week for our protagonist, as he had to pass the most critical exams. But that’s behind him already. We meet him on a friday as he enters his beloved literature club. He’s bringing a bunch of trash food to fill the stomachs of his grateful friends. I haven’t said anything about the other characters yet, but as secondary players we have Lydia Hirsch, a delusional girl who loves everything mysterious and who particularly adores her cat Mr. Whiskers. She’s very much into writing stories that involve the aforementioned cat. Frankly, I’m a bit sick of the whole thing, but what can you do. This girl probably needs some therapeutic help, and it’s likely that after this year of high school ends, I will never see her again. Would that be sad? Remains to be seen.”
I pause my story again to eat some chips.
“What do you think of my story so far, Lydia?” I ask. “I particularly hope to hear your early opinion, for some reason.”
“I like it, Jacob. Actually, it’s really starting to come together. Hey, but I have an idea for your story.”
“Oh no,” I reply. “Not another one of your ideas.”
“Yes, Jacob. Another one of my ideas.” she says with a cheeky grin on her face.
“Fine, what is it?”
“You should make the protagonist’s love interest a cat named Mr. Whiskers,” she replies with a giggle.
I shoot her down immediately. “I’m not doing that.”
“Come on, Jacob. Just think about it for two seconds.”
I sigh in exasperation. “Fine, I’ll think about it,” I say, not meaning it in the slightest.
“That’s all I ask,” she says with a huge grin on her face.
“Alright, back to my story. We also have this guy called Hibiki. He’s the soft spoken kind whose expression demands other people to believe that he is hiding some inner ocean of wisdom or whatever. Somehow he won a couple of awards from his previous stories, likely because the judges consider that stories in which little to nothing happens and the protagonists mope around are good stuff. This Hibiki is also madly in love with his childhood friend, a blonde, blue eyed beauty called Kumiko. However, Kumiko will never love him back, because she’s into being abused by rough, older men.”
Hibiki glares at me. “Jacob, that’s enough.”
“Do you have a problem with my story?” I say.
“No, but you know it’s not true,” he replies.
“How would I know, if you never tell me anything about it?”
“Jacob, there’s no way…”
“Anyway, the remaining member of this fictional literature club is a beautiful princess called Kumiko. She’s blonde, has pale blue eyes, and a soft body to die for. However, this princess was taken by the dragon of depression, and she’ll need to save herself in this one, because no brave hero is heading off to slay her foe.”
“Shut up, Jacob! You’re being an asshole,” Hibiki says.
I shush him, and he does shut up, but keeps glaring at me intensely.
“You know,” I begin, “I used to love coming here. It was my happy place, where I got together with my good friends to goof off, write some bunch of nonsense and giggle as we read them out loud. But that’s gone, isn’t it?”
“Jacob, you’re drunk,” Lydia says with an understanding tone. “Go home, sleep it off, and apologize to everyone tomorrow.”
I shake my head. “Apologize? There’s nothing to apologize for. You all have been lying this whole time about everything, and I’m not gonna take it anymore.”
“Lying about what?” Hibiki asks sharply.
“That this is even a real literature club,” I say.
Now they’re all staring at me with confusion and fear on their faces. Lydia asks, “Jacob, what do you mean by that?”
“You’re all too scared to go out, meet people and make friends. You’re just using this as an excuse not to.”
“Jacob, that isn’t true,” Lydia says softly. “It really is a literature club.”
“You keep telling yourself that, cat girl.”
There’s a moment of silence. I want to tear into my two remaining friends further, but I feel there’s no use. And then comes the weariness, the exhaustion. The void in my chest is expanding.
I let my ass fall onto the chair.
“We are living in a fantasy. In a few weeks we will exit this clubroom for the very last time in our lives. Lydia, you will move out to the other side of the country for college, Kumiko will start working at her family store, and you will probably do something in the world outside, Hibiki, although I don’t particularly care. Do you two understand what I mean?”
They both nod.
“We have already lived through our carefree years,” I say with a thin voice. “Until now we could laugh with the utmost sincerity. But what awaits us in the coming decades? Do we have anything to look forward except for mounting responsibilities, increasing bills, and the pains and humiliations of our progressively decaying frames?” I stand up and continue, “Do you really want to live the rest of your life knowing there is no escape from reality?”
I don’t give them the chance to answer. I’m not even sure what the answer is. I just need to believe in what I’m saying.
“We’re all living a lie,” I say, “but if we stand up together, we can change it.”
My two remaining storytelling friends remain silent. They don’t answer. They don’t disagree.
I look at the ground. I feel empty inside. “I will stand up to the lies of this world all by myself,” I say. “Good luck to you.”
I leave the clubroom and close the door. A few seconds later I open the door, walk to my chair and sit down. Tears are streaming down Lydia’s face, and her glasses have fogged up. Hibiki’s face is all red and he makes no effort to clean the snot running down the sides of his lips.
“The end,” I say. “Well, what do you think?”
“It was the most beautiful story I ever heard,” says a voice behind me.
I turn around, and can’t believe my eyes. There stands a princess straight out of a fairy tale. Her long, blonde hair glistens in the late afternoon light, and the blue pools of her irises remind me of beautiful dreams. Her eyes are red and puffy, as if she has been crying for an eternity.
“Kumiko?” I say. “It… it’s been so long.”
“I know,” she says. “I just… I just wanted to say that… you were right. I was unhappy. I was so unhappy. My stepfather, he…”
Tears roll down her face. I have never seen her so sad in all the years I have known her. In a way, it’s like seeing a stranger. I stand up and quickly walk up to her.
“It’s OK,” I say, grabbing her hand. “It’s OK.”
She looks into my eyes. “Do you remember… the day we met?”
“Yes,” I say with a smile. “I saved you from the rain.”
“Will you save me again?” she asks.
“Of course,” I say, but it’s already too late.
A gunshot rings out, echoing through the halls of the school. I squeeze Kumiko’s hand and close my eyes, but the distant meowing is getting louder.

I was bored today, and I have enjoyed that new anime “Full Dive” recently.

---

The classes finally end for the day. As soon as I reach my home and I eat some, I sit on my virtual reality chair to log into my beloved game. I recline my head and I feel the virtual sensorial orchestra overwhelming this lackluster reality, kidnapping me from the dreadful real world into a more colorful virtual one, in which I can be important and do exciting stuff.
Inside the virtual world, I awaken in my home, a two-story building in a small, generic fantasy town. I embrace the alien breeze in my skin, the feeling of the adventuring clothes keeping my virtual body warm, the heavy trusty sword now sheathed and hanging from my belt. I hear the voices of my virtual parents, both non-player characters, talking to each other on the floor below. They wouldn’t speak with any other inhabitant of this home when I’m not present, because I’m an only child. Then I smell the cooking. These virtual parents are nice, not like the couple of neglectful punks from my real world.
When I descend the stairs I see my mother sitting on the couch, her face buried in a book. She looks up towards me.
“You look ready for an adventure, dear,” she says with a smile. “But also tired. Make sure you get plenty of sleep, OK?”
I nod to her and say goodbye, then leave my hometown behind to venture into the wilderness. New adventures await.
I can expect a variety of dangers, from slavering beasts lurking in the forests to rogue mages in their towers. I am ready for them all! But today is a beautiful day, so I decide to enjoy the scenery. In real life I’m lucky if I can venture far enough from my street from time to time. I get so exhausted, and I need to deal with transportation and all that crap. On here, in the virtual world, everything is grandiose, and adventures await me in every corner. Bloody tales, often involving murder. Those tend to be the best kinds.
I’m so absorbed by my surroundings that I don’t watch where I’m going, and walk right into something. It feels like running into a wall. There was a man standing on the path, dressed in leather armor and gripping a sword with his teeth. He takes the sword out of his mouth.
“Hello,” he says. “I am Sir Owen. Are you new to this world?”
“Not at all, I’ve been playing for a while. Are you another player?”
“A player?” Sir Owen chuckles. “No. I’m afraid not. None of us are. We’re all locked in this world, doomed to stand by and watch as you players have all the fun.”
I nod solemnly.
“Damn, they pack non-player characters with some gravitas these days.”
“I take it you’re a player,” says Sir Owen. “I haven’t seen you around before, unless you’ve joined since the last time I went to sleep. What’s your name?”
“I’m Cockslapius Fuckbucket the Third.”
“Well, Cockslapius Fuckbucket the Third, I wish you the best of luck in this world.”
“Don’t need luck, my friend, just my trusty sword and my healthy bloodlust. Both have done wonders for me already. Kind of a veteran player at this point.”
“Ah, an experienced one, then. You’re just the man I need to talk to. I was told that players could go to the city if I needed help, and you seem trustworthy.”
I just got here and already some NPC is trying to rope me into doing his dirty work? What a pushy bastard. Then again, this could be a good opportunity. If I help this desperate character, he might have some goodies for me… And I wouldn’t forgive myself if I passed the chance to train further.
“Sure, I can waste my time with some sidequest. What city are we talking about here, my good man?”
“The one I am trying to protect, of course. We call it… Oh, what is the name of it again? It’s on the tip of my tongue…”
“Uh… Nevermind. Probably doesn’t matter. What do you need me to do?”
“I need you to infiltrate the city and kill the evil wizard who controls it.”
“Is this a new development? I haven’t heard of any nearby cities with such issues before.”
Sir Owen grips his sword with determination, and looks at me sternly. He’s like some serious dude.
“Sire, I wouldn’t dare joke about such a grave matter as an evil wizard controlling an entire population of innocents. I need your help, Cockslapius. Will you help me?”
I rub my chin while I consider the situation. Would the artificial intelligence have introduced such a status quo altering event, given that it would affect other players? And out of nowhere as well? It seems wholly unlikely. Maybe this non-player character is messing with me. But then, he seems pretty damn serious.
“If you’re lying to me, I’m coming back to haunt you.”
He nods vigorously.
“Of course. Now, let’s get down to business.”
“Fine. Let’s go.” After a few meters, I turn towards him. “Wait, what was the city involved in this mess?”
“Oh, certainly, we must do this first. It’s Bealbeast.”
My eyebrows rise in surprise. That’s one of the more popular hubs, well protected by a powerful mage who lives there. The chances of this being legitimate are low.
“I see. And what’s the name of this powerful wizard?”
“Cyrus.”
As I frown, we continue on. The man doesn’t seem to notice my disapproval, and rattles off his story.
“Cyrus was my pupil when I was still a teacher at the magical university in the city. He was a bit of a loner, but he had such promise… One day, he just left without a word. We never expected him to become this powerful wizard that he is rumored to be. He is no doubt capable of destroying the city.”
“What timespan of events or whatever are we speaking of here?” I ask cautiously.
“Hmm, you want to know how long it’s been since I was exiled from my home? It’s been a little over twenty years now.”
“And you’ve waited this long to take action?”
His head hangs low.
“I have wanted to go back ever since then, but I haven’t had the strength. Until now.”
“What changed? Wait, let me guess: meeting me?”
He nods vigorously.
I pat the non-player bastard on the back.
“I must say, you damn bunch of ones and zeros know how to make a player feel special.”
He doesn’t respond, but instead looks longingly at my hand. It’s unsure whether he’s being sincere or perverted right now. Maybe both. The man puts his hood back up and continues on, ignoring my presence. An awkward silence ensues, which I’m not used to in video games, as players usually have something to say to each other. I guess the AI can’t figure out new stuff to make this puppet say.
“So, sir Owen, what do you think about when a player hasn’t happened to run into you?” I ask.
He takes his time to answer.
“I think you have a low opinion of me, if you can’t tell.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because I haven’t been insulting you the entire time.”
“It’s a matter of fact that you are a denizen of this virtual world and I belong to the rotten dimension of reality,” I say, “which those of us unfortunate enough to be born in need to escape from in order to tolerate another stretch of maddening, anguished boredom. We either escape through the traditional dreams or the virtual ones. You are the lucky one, as far as I’m concerned.”
He says nothing in response, and I continue to speak without waiting for him to reply.
“I’m not sure what you’re expecting from all of this, but I’m going to give you a bit of unsolicited advice: don’t expect anything from anyone. People will let you down every time.”

We walk on in silence, passing by a bunch of trees that were drawn with less detail than the ground at their feet. What feels like half an hour later we arrive at the outskirts of the great city of Bealbeast. A voice shouts out to us from the distance. It’s some kid.
“Hey! Are you the guy who’s going to rescue our princess?!”
“That would be us,” sir Owen says, “Why do you ask?”
“Because she’s been taken to the top of the palace by a bunch of evil bandits, and nobody has had the bravery to save her!”
When I care enough to, I raise my hands to stop their conversation.
“You fellas are crossing events here. I came with sir Owen to free the city from some evil wizard or some other. Nobody said anything about a princess.”
“That’s because it’s all been covered up,” sir Owen says.
“Apparently not well enough, because this kid here knows about it,” I say. “And before we go and do anything rash, I want to get a few things straight: what’s our motivation for exerting ourselves?”
“The princess is being held hostage by an evil wizard who wants to marry her,” the boy says.
“Ah, a cliché kidnapping of the pretty princess by some evil guy.” I shrug. “How hot is this princess supposed to be anyway?”
“I’ve never seen her, but I’ve heard that she is a beautiful maiden with long blonde hair,” the boy says.
“You hear that Owen? That sounds like a princess fit for a hero.”
Sir Owen eyes me with concern.
“I fear you are taking this too lightly, adventurer.”
“You worry too much, Owen. I’m just having fun. Anyway, where is this evil wizard?”
The boy turns around and begins walking towards a large palace surrounded by a rather large moat.
“Follow me. It’s this way,” he says.
I look at sir Owen, who nods in response.
The three of us walk towards the palace while the boy tells me about the city of Bealbeast. Even though I’ve been here like a hundred times, I let the non-player character speak his piece. Might as well.
“Are you even listening to me?” the boy asks.
I look at him and nod my head.
“I’m listening. The princess is in a tower just waiting to be saved, right?”
“No! The princess is in the palace, but she’s being held in one of the towers on the upper levels.”
“Which tower?” I ask.
“I don’t know!” The boy cries out in exasperation.
The palace he’s guiding me towards doesn’t sport any towers. It only has one floor. I shake my head, then pat the annoyed kid on his.
“Why did the AI involve a kid in a kidnapping plot by some evil wizard? Does this town not have decent adults to inform heroes of such matters? If you can’t offer anything else to misinform me about, just run to whatever corner you need to turn before you dematerialize again.”
The boy stands there for a moment, then opens his mouth as if to say something, though no words come out. He looks hurt, but he turns around and walks away. In any case, I am near the bridge that crosses a moat and that leads to the big front doors of a huge palace that I don’t recall existing before. A couple of guards protect the entrance.
I turn to sir Owen.
“Well, sir, how do you suppose we should approach this rescue operation?”
Owen looks around, as if he’s trying to find an answer written on the walls of the nearest house.
“I do not know… but we can’t let the evil wizard succeed. We need to rescue the princess.”
“Why? She’s not real. Even if she was, she’d just be a stuck up royal brat that is unsatisfied with her luxurious lifestyle. Not our problem.”
“But evil must not prevail!”
I sigh.
“Getting tangled in such a cliché development will poison my soul. How many experience points or what reward are we talking about here as compensation?”
“What? How can you put a price on the life of the princess?”
“How can I not? If I don’t, then I’ll die and I won’t be able to play this game anymore.” I am not sure what I mean, but I add: “Is the princess more important than my enjoyment of this virtual world?”
Owen opens his mouth, but doesn’t say anything in response, so I continue with my line of thought.
“I’ve had such a lousy time in class this morning. Just unbearable. The people around me are all posers, you know? All phonies. I feel like I should wear an earflap hat as a fashion statement. In the afternoons when I log into this game I just want a smooth ride filled with gruesome murders to quench my thirst for mayhem and blood, you know? Pleasures of the flesh. I want to quicksave and pull out my firing rod.”
“I… I’m not sure about that…”
“So you see, if your princess is in trouble, then she’ll have to offer me something tempting before I save her.” I grab sir Owen by the lapel. “The best thing about this world is the careful simulation of all human senses! Do you understand what I mean, you fake fella?”
I release sir Owen, who keeps staring at me blankly. He doesn’t seem to be repulsed by my touch, which makes me glad. I’m far too used to people backing away.
“Sure, sure. The… the princess will offer you a boon. Whatever you want! If you save her from this terrible fate, she’ll give you anything. I’ll make sure of that.”
“That sounds vaguely like a promise of sexual favors to me,” I reply. “I am not going to lie to you, I’m only motivated by virtual sex these days. They don’t make them like that in the world out there, you know?”
“I… I’ll make sure of it.”
My interest spikes.
“Oh? You’ll make sure of it?”
He nods slowly.
“This is a good chance for you, then? No more questions?”
“None.”
“Yes… Good. Then what are we waiting for? Let us go save the princess!”
As I cross the bridge, I unsheathe my mighty sword and point at the couple of guards ahead that likely intend to prevent me from opening the big doors of this damn place.
“Hey, I’m going in. Either you stand aside or you end up in pieces. I haven’t had my fill in a whole day!”
The guards look at each other, perhaps trying to make a decision. Cowardly peasants!
“Come on,” I mutter. “What are you waiting for?”
One of the guards turns his head towards me, and holds up a hand.
“We… We don’t want to fight.” He says. “Let’s talk this over…”
I walk up to him and stop close enough that the tip of my sword digs into the soft flesh of his neck.
“Sure, fella. Let’s get to babbling.”
He swallows and continues.
“We have families, okay? Children who count on us to bring home the bacon. If you kill us, who will pay for their food? Is it fair to put such responsibility on some poor woman’s shoulders?”
“Damn right,” I reply. “That’s what families are for.”
“You would send mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers to an early grave?”
“I have and I shall over and over. I wish for you bunch of ones and zeros to be fully real, so it’d feel even more satisfying. You are speaking to a madman here.”
The guard swallows again, and then nods at his comrade. They both step aside, which is all I need to push through and open the big wooden doors.
I march confidently into the throne room, where a young girl sits on her knees. A crown has been placed in front of her; she looks like a queen being presented to the public. Except there’s no one else here, just this girl and myself. And I guess sir Owen behind me.
I stop for a moment, and while checking my surroundings to make sure both Owen and me don’t get ambushed, I take a good look at this kneeling supposed princess. She seems to be about my age, perhaps a year or two older, with dark brown hair and light blue eyes. The crown, being gold and jewel-encrusted, shines brightly under the sun that pours from the windows.
“Hey,” I say in an attempt at conversation. My voice cracks towards the end, so it comes out more like “Hiighhh…” I clear my throat and try again. “Well, you must be the princess? I’m pretty sure I was promised a blonde, but I guess we can’t be too choosy these days.”
I give her a short bow, and clumsily fall forward. I dive into a roll and end up in a battle-stance, just in case.
The girl bursts out laughing. She falls onto her side and holds her stomach. Tears roll down her cheeks as she continues to laugh.
“You fell on your face!” She manages to say in-between laughs. “Even I didn’t expect that to happen!”
I clench my teeth, then punch my thigh in rage.
“Damn it, woman! I spend so many hours playing this damn game because it should allow me to feel mighty, while in the shitty world outside I’m some powerless nobody! I receive enough mockery in the classroom, five days a week! You want to antagonize the moody introvert who’s always glaring from the back of the room? I’ll come back wearing sunglasses and a trenchcoat!”
I unsheathe my sword, and the princess’ eyes open wide. She jumps backwards and kicks over the crown in the process. She puts her hands up and starts to scream for help.
“Shut up!” I shout. “I’m not here to kill you, you damn idiot!”
My shout makes her cover her mouth. I take a deep breath. That was pretty damn rude of me. I usually try to be a gentleman to ladies. As my heart calms down, I speak carefully.
“Listen, you virtual princess: sir Owen guided me to this very place because you were supposed to have been kidnapped by some evil wizard or whatever. So are you in trouble or not? And what is the reward?”
The princess looks at me in confusion.
“I’m not a princess.”
“Well, you certainly look like one.”
She sighs.
“Fine, I’ll play your silly game. What do you want to know?”
“How did this whole princess-capture thing start?”
“I wanted to leave this town. I was bored. So I went to the local tavern, because all adventurers drink there. I wanted to hire one to guide me out of the city. Then, I got captured by the evil wizard!” She looks at me with hopeful eyes. “Are you here to save me?”
I sigh and sit down on a chair nearby.
“Well, it depends on the size and jiggliness of the reward.”
“What?”
I avoid her gaze.
“Look, I’m supposed to be a mighty warrior. But I’m not. I’m a damn bookworm who prefers to stay indoors. I’m weak and powerless. Very, very powerless.” I make sure she hears the pain in my voice.
She pauses for a moment, then sighs.
“Fine. I’ll pay you compensation if you take me out of this place.”
I look back towards the open, now unguarded front doors.
“Why don’t you just walk out? Did the AI seriously create such a lazy questline?”
“It’s not a questline, it’s my life!”
I feel the itch I have gotten so many times in this damn game, the urge to destroy the foundation of these virtual people until they sink into a pit of virtual existentialism. Then we’d be even.
“Listen, you don’t have a life. None. You don’t even exist.”
“I do so!”
“Open your eyes, dammit! You’re a set of numbers and some data that’s been programmed by some guy with a laptop, who doesn’t love you. Nothing else. You have no emotions, no feelings… You’re not even good looking.”
The princess seems taken aback. I have managed to hit a chord.
“How… how dare you?”
She steps forward angrily. I step back angrily. Then she stops, as does my backward motion. I frown; there’s a wall behind me. I growl, trying to regain control of the situation.
“I came to fulfill some lazy quest, and you’re here stalking me because the game wouldn’t be fun if it was realistic.”
“How would you know? You’ve never experienced anything in your life.”
That struck a nerve. Damn virtual persons and their AI generated cleverness.
“Maybe I haven’t, but so what? People are born just to die. Before you know it you are already decaying! So what’s the point, really? We should all spend our days naked and touching ourselves. Anything is better than this constant dread-infused depression!”
The princess takes another step forward. I want to take one backwards myself, but there is that wall behind me. The princess holds my gaze, then bursts into laughter.
“Wha… what?” I stammer.
“Ha ha ha! You are such a fool to think you can stand against the likes of me!” She grabs my shoulders and holds me in place. I struggle to free myself, but I can’t. “You think you can scare me? You think you can intimidate me? You are nothing before the great… well, you get the idea.”
She takes out a small bottle and pours the contents on my face. The smell is strong, and I feel a tingling sensation all over my features.
“W-What did you do?” I ask fearfully. “Is this poison? Or maybe a more personal fluid of yours?”
“Ha ha! I have poisoned your virtual body. The effects of the poison are instant, and fatal. You’ll be dead in a few minutes.”
I struggle once again to free myself from her clutches, but nothing happens. “Oh god, I get it! You are both the princess and the evil wizard!”
She takes out a medallion and shows it to me.
“Yeah, I’m the evil wizard. I lied to sir Owen about my true intentions so he’d help me.”
I had forgotten that I had come with that other NPC, but he’s standing there dead-eyed as if he might as well be T-posing. I look back to the scary princess-wizard.
“Why would you do such a thing?” I ask fearfully.
“For fun! Just like this!” She takes out a small hour glass and turns it over. “Watch the sands of time!”
I try to avert my eyes.
“No! Anything but the sands of time!”
The princess flips it again, and I watch as the sands fall from one chamber to the other. And as they slowly fall, I feel the transformation. My breathing is becoming shallower, and I am starting to gasp for air. I must have fallen to my knees. I want to stand up and run away from this place, but my body feels heavy and immobile.
“Will you truly cause me to die without my daily dose of desperate VR sex?” I struggle to say. “That’s like two thirds of the virtual experience. Can anyone be so cruel?”
“This is your punishment for giving me a stiffy,” the princess says. The princess moves over to sir Owen and flips the hourglass once more. Sir Owen gasps once, then collapses into a pile of ash-like sand.
“No!” I yell. “You can’t just kill off an innocent person!”
“Sir Owen was no innocent. He was a power-hungry man who sought to control others for his own purposes. Now he’s a pile of sand, just like you soon will be.”
As the princess-wizard’s laughs reverberate in my skull, I claw at my face in agony. Such torture, witnessing my faithful NPC friend sir Owen being disintegrated before my eyes is too much to bear. My vision fades to black as I begin to cry for help. I manage to crawl past the princess-wizard, and reach for the phone installed on some pillar. I lift the receiver to my ear.
“Hello, 911? I’d like to report a murder.”
The operator on the other end sounds bored as she asks for my name and address. I tell her my name but realize I don’t know my address.
“Are you sure?” The operator asks. “The police usually take this sort of thing seriously.”
“No really, there’s been a murder! By an evil wizard! I guess I’m somewhere near Bealbeast, in this damn game.”
The princess has now thrown a ball of fire at me, and I’m desperately leaping out of the way.
“Sir, are you on drugs?” The operator suggests. “Because if you are, I can refer you to an addiction treatment line.”
“I don’t need drug rehab! But the wizard is trying to kill me!”
The princess now zaps me with lightning and I convulse on the floor. As I drop the receiver, the operator hangs up on me.
“P-Please, princess-wizard…! Surely we can come to some compromise! There must be something I can give you that will satisfy your murderous bloodlust, but that won’t involve my virtual annihilation!”
“I want you to suffer, for my teacher, sir Owen, suffered.”
“But that’s terrible! There must be another way!”
“Yeah yeah,” the princess sighs. “I dunno… I suppose if you can make me laugh, I’ll spare your virtual life.”
I’m grappling with my fading thoughts in an attempt to somehow make her laugh, but she looks like a frigid bitch. Thinking is a struggle while the after effects of her electric spell course through my bones.
“Damn it, I can’t think of anything! Making people laugh on command is like the hardest thing in the world. Surely you don’t want anything better, like some sexual enslavement sort of deal?”
“No, hahahahaha! That’s pretty funny. But I want to hear about the sexual enslavement… Is it a painful experience? Will you cry while this is happening?”
“Yes. I have no issues crying during sex.”
I was ready to hear her evil, icy, frigid laugh, but her laugh is warm and sweet.
“Good, then I’ll do it.”
“So… you won’t kill me?”
“No, that would be too kind. You’d enjoy the experience too much,” she says with a smirk. “But I will enslave you. Tell me something, how do you feel about sirens?”
“They are quite noisy.”
The princess turns into a siren, and her beautiful, sweet laughing voice becomes a shrieking cackle that would put any normal man into deafness.
“I’ll remember that.”
For some eternal minutes I struggle to resist her call, but then I can’t take it anymore. I succumb to her desires. My mind is taken over by the siren, and I am forced to become her slave. I obey her every word, her wishes, and commands. I have no free will. Normally, this is something a person would want to get out of. But for me, this is the best case scenario. The siren and I fall in love, and live happily ever after.

A few minutes later I log off the game and realize that my sister is standing a few feet away while glaring in disgust at my stained underwear. I jump out of the VR chair and cover my privates.
“How many times do I have to tell you not to spy on me while I’m hooked in!? Damned tsundere imouto…!”
“Shut up pervert, you’re not real mature yourself. What the hell are you doing?”
“What the hell do you mean by what the hell am I doing!? The same thing I do every afternoon! I come back home defeated, then undress myself down to my underwear and rejoin the wonderful, consequence-free realm of virtual reality that involves simulated pain and naked ladies! Can’t help if my body reacts to its offerings while I’m not monitoring it.”
“Well, stop doing that in the living room!” My sister cries out in frustration. “You know how mom is about… things like that. You’re already on thin ice with the VR, and I won’t be held responsible if you get into trouble for your weird habits.”
“How is it any of your business what I do in my free time?”
My sister’s glare intensifies.
“Mom has been asking me if you’re doing okay lately. I’m starting to get worried about you, honestly. If you keep this up, she’ll find out what sort of smut you’ve been involved with on the VR network, and that’ll be the end of your little hobby.”
I feel fear crawling through my spine.
“It’s only some shit about sirens and slavery, I swear!”
My sister sighs.
“Yeah, I don’t want to know. Just don’t let it happen again, or we’re gonna have a bigger problem on our hands.”
I force myself to stand straight and hold this overconfident imouto’s gaze.
“Well, it will keep happening, every afternoon, for the foreseeable future. What do you think about that!? What are you going to do, dweeb!? You are smaller than me.”
She purses her lips.
“I’m telling you now as a favor to you, but if mom asks me about it again I won’t lie to her. And you’d better have a damn good excuse for your disgusting habits.”
I sigh, and force myself to relax.
“What excuse could I give except that I’m scum? Think about it. We are both scum, it’s woven in our DNA. You will end up like this as well, or worse. The craziness lurks in your cells, waiting for the smallest chance to burst forth and ruin your life.”
I am unsure about the source of my outburst, but my sister’s expression is priceless. She’s a cunning devil though, and stands her ground.
“Don’t try to manipulate me with vague existential threats. For your information I’m going out with Jake now, so I have someone who can take care of my animal urges when they pop up. Unlike some people.”
“I have been married to my right hand for years! Your separate-flesh-based relationships can’t compete with the strength of this bond.”
My sister shakes her head in disbelief.
“What are you even on about right now? Jake and I love each other, and we don’t have to manipulate each other with such low blows. Unlike some people.”
The strength of my glare should burn imouto’s eyes.
“Stop saying ‘unlike some people’. It keeps replaying in my head. You have no idea how crazy I am. I don’t care if you are some imouto, I will pummel you into a paste! Then we’d see Jake wondering how to fuck the remains.”
My sister chuckles.
“Oh no, you wouldn’t hurt a lady.”
“I’d hurt you, rip your limbs from your body, tear out your eyes so you couldn’t see and drink your blood so you couldn’t resurrect, and do it all over again. And when you were nothing but a broken bag of meat I would laugh at how weak and stupid you were.”
She continues to laugh, as I continue to glare at her. Blood flows from the open wounds on my palms, as my nails dig into the flesh.
“You keep going on about stuff like this,” imouto says. “No wonder nobody loves you!”
“We are the Great Old Ones. The most terrible beings who ever lived. There is nothing funny about our existence.”
“I find your existence hilarious. It’s a funny tale of how a little boy got so butthurt over a VR video game that he kept crying about it.”
“Shut up. Shut up. Shut up,” I say, my voice increasing in intensity. “Everything was going fine until you showed up. Now everything is ruined.”
“Maybe your life is,” imouto says. “But not mine.”
As usual, my sister’s words strike harder than any of the insults hurled my way in class. She has found out my weaknesses, and now holds them over my head. Defeated, I turn away from this witch to hide the tears welling up in my eyes.

The next day, class goes on as normal. My classmates continue to throw barbs at me, and I pretend that they hurt like they are supposed to. But deep inside, none of the taunts affect me. None of their insults matter, not when I have a bigger enemy to fight. Every afternoon when I get home I lie back on my VR chair and I train. I shall train for eternity if necessary, until I defeat the little bitch whose cold disgust waits for me to face it again. At this moment, my sister is probably running her soft fingers through her hair, or licking some candy while she reads some light novel. She is living the good life, and I will make sure that she pays for it.
Maybe I’m just a little boy who can’t let things go. But when the final battle arrives, on that day, you better make sure you kill me, because I will be coming for you. And I will never stop coming for you.