You have forgotten all of the events before we sought refuge in this dark room. I think it is because you are traumatized from what we just witnessed but do not worry. I will go through every wonderful detail with you. No, you do not have to worry about this affecting me negatively. Sometimes, I must talk about some incidents aloud to cope and better understand it. The first thing you must know is that how we perceive one another is constantly changing. A lot of the time, the shift is caused by emotional shifts toward each other. So, when you are angry at me you would see an individual you despise. Hypothetically, you would see someone you care about if your emotions for me swing in that direction. Is this good? No! When you are comfortable and content, he is near and we do not want that because we are hiding from him. Out of all the individuals in this manor, I am stuck with you. I suppose being stuck with an optimistic cheerleader is better than being with an idiot.
Before we came to this place we were in a simulation...I do not know what happened before the simulation he never told me. Yes, I asked him about it more than once. He told me that we did not need to know that. In the simulation you are not supposed to eject yourself because the simulations are called lives and to have lived means that you are a trained individual. What are trained individuals good for? Well, they are great for following rules, commands, guarding, spying, and fighting without a cause. Yet, we are not like them because of near deaths and suicides. No, we will not be trained individuals using our skills without the true reason we acquired them. It is a bit sad because that means we cannot become one of those awesome assassins or spies from the glitzed shows and movies in the simulation. It is so hard to defy the rebel that is within us. When you are in the simulation you receive three warnings before you go to a manor. Three unidentified guards dressed in black will appear at different times within the sequence of the life to signify a near death or attempted suicide. Suicides that are successful are just individuals that synchronized with the simulation and need to be slightly modified. Are we defects? No, everyone is not meant to do the same jobs to avoid saturation. Our tasks are not really tasks at all. We are rebellious. We exist merely to assist overseers with whatever they want us to assist them with when they are not working. I just recalled something so uncanny from my life... Even in life we knew the overseers were there because we called them gods and goddesses.After the warnings, we were put in this place and locked in those life pods until he weaved himself into our... wait that is not right. He did not weave himself into our memories of our lives until we met him. Ouch! My head is hurting now. I should have known that he would distort our memories of arriving here and settling... I will endure the pain for a bit for your sake. If he is finished with me and disposes of me, you will remember, right? You must remember everything or at least most of it. Sorry, I have digressed from the important subject we were discussing previously. He introduced himself to all eighteen of us in the basement of this manor. We were out of our life pods and he shook our hands as he looked at the ceiling for some reason. Then he told us we could wander around the home. You chirped at his side like an obedient bird. From time to time he indulged you with conversation. You pushed those fingers of yours right into to his palm as you two strode to different circles talking about who cares and who knows what.Then he found a way to get a break from your clinging. I followed him to an area of this manor. It had light, brown wooden floor panels and I found an invisible door. It was heavy but I managed to open and close it silently. The room was empty when I looked around but as I walked around it there were things there that I could not see. I felt them all around me and then you appeared. Peeking in the door but we both know you are not the timid type. You ran towards me giggling and excited knocking invisible things over on your way. Then he pushed us out of there. I still cannot remember where that place was. Thanks. Then... are you paying attention. Static and white noise are all you can hear, now. The ink black room settles on a sweet Technicolor memory. You are at the beach digging your feet into the wet sand and a childhood friend calls your name."Ow!" You yell. You left me no choice you were not moving. Listen to me. I think we should go upstairs. I heard footsteps. They were heavy and I think it was him. I am not paranoid. It had to have been him because everyone else is... Hold my hand. A tug leads you through black spaces of varying sizes. The static and white noise return. You walk up wooden steps to see the one you were obsessed with for many weeks now. You two used to be close friends but middle school has really pulled you two apart but your heart still races every time you see them. Do they feel the same way? Your eyes meet and then you are yanked backward.
Run! Run! He is up there! He almost got you! You are led the opposite way and you hear a door slam. You move in the direction of the sound to see if it truly was a door that made that sound. What are you doing? Leave it locked. We need to get out of this place. Where can we go? Oh, you are right. The window is a wonderful idea. Crap! It is jammed. Let me find something. Yes. This should do the trick. Glass shatters and wood breaks behind you just like the time you threw a game controller at your mother's wooden coffee table with the glass center. The only difference is the wood splintered at one of the inner corners upon impact. A hot breath tickles the back of your ear. A gruff voice asks. "Where are you going?" You gasp. Lean, muscular arms wrap around you and lift you up; you are put back in the blackness. You can feel the air around you slightly sweep past your face as he nearly jogs up an incline with you in tow. Flump! You have been dropped on to something soft. You try to adjust yourself on the lumpy thing and realize that it is a cot. You roll out of the bed and your socks slide on the floor as you move. "Stay! Stop moving around or I...You don't want to know what I will do." He says.Your breaths are short and loud. Where is the girl that was helping you before? She probably got free and left you with him. No, she is getting help like the time your classmate fell off the stage in drama class and sprained his ankle. You ran to the teacher and told her what happened. You got suspended because the boy blamed you after that, but your lover skipped school to be with you throughout the suspension. A sultry voice bounces off of the walls outside of the room. It comes closer until it enters the room. A candle was lit a few moments after her arrival. "Hey, big daddy I thought you were looking for me." A shadow around your height says. An unusually tall shadow moves from a wall near the cot to the doorway toward the smaller shadow. "This is the only way to find you, right? You two are close. If I have one, I have the other or... How about we skip all the steps and go for what I want." A husky voice says.
"Wait, we can't do that because..."
"You two have been running around all this time without a care. Now, when it is time for you to do this one thing there is a problem miraculously. I am not playing games with you. I need to unwind and you are going to do it."
"Could we find something else for you to do?"
"What do you have in mind?"
"We can walk around, dance, or just sit and talk about stuff."
"No."
"Play hide and seek?"
The question is so high pitched you can barely understand it. The shadows seem to converge and become this black, tall glob on the wall. Silence and shadows that are somewhat still in a dancing candlelit room is the only thing you can see. You run past the shadows out into the hall. You choose a direction and run. You run into a wall and hit your big toe. You lightly scratch the wall until the pain eases and proceed to limp, briskly in the opposite direction making sure you do not look at what may be combined shadows that may become less abstract upon close inspection. The air shifts as you approach the plunge in the hall. You put your foot out and take one step at a time until you reach the last step. You run straight and you find the front door already open. It is raining and you hear crickets. You run past the bright porch light with flies hovering around it to go where? Anywhere away from that place seemed like a good idea to you. You reach an old Hollow tree and decide to rest in the shallow tree hole. You lean on a root and you hear quick steps smacking the mud on the ground outside, shortly afterward. You see big, black boots and black, jean pant legs stop moving. The person stands so still that the rain hits them like they are a statue. It begins to move toward the tree hole. You shoot out of the hole and back into the rain that blurs your vision and sucks your body heat away. Your chest aches and your throat burns as air rushes in. You are tackled to the ground but this guy is not abnormally tall. "No!" You yell and he releases you. He jumps off of you and slowly puts his hands in the air. "I am not going to hurt you. I just saw you running in these woods and I was trying to figure out why you were here in the first place. It is not open to the public." He says with a southern drawl. "I am trespassing?" You ask. "Yes, but it is raining really hard out here. I have a cabin just outside of the woods you can camp there until the rain stops." He says. You nod your head and follow him to a little cabin. Your clothes are drenched. "I think I have an extra t-shirt and pants you can wear," he says. Once you get the spare clothes you go to the bathroom and change your clothes. When you get out of the bathroom, you sit on a chair facing the window waiting for the tall shadow to give you doom,and he lies on a camping bed at the center of the cabin behind you. There was a time when you were in swim class and your lover had the same class. You two reminisced about how silly you were for not spending time together during middle school. You promised each other you would not drift apart again. You feel a tap on your shoulder. "I have to leave. Can I trust you to not wreck my cabin?" He asks. You nod.
~~~~
Author's Note:
This is the book before "Rituals of Destruction."