The motions of your shadow, just ever so slightly off.
A familiar face, out of the corner of your eye.
A raging beast of screaming mouths and blinding symphonies.
A wriggling box, and a question within.
A million legged creature, with twice as many eyes.
A child, despondent, they will never look you in the eyes.
A crystal, engraved upon it, endless cruel, cold, calculation.
The living corpse of a whale, and the bottom feeders eating it to the bone
A statue that bleeds and moves, only when you aren't looking.
A door past which all is clear, a door to the Dream by which many are still slumbering within.
And the devil who has made them All what they are.
- - - -
The only thing I can feel is the wind getting pushed out of me, as a massive, red thing rockets into me.
The lightness in my gut it stomach turning, but, not something I can feel in a dream?
'"Oh that? Memory of vertigo," Red said, all too casually.
Wait, what?
To my left, and to my surprise, the personification of the part of my mind that dubbed themself 'red' is falling with me, towards the ground.
I can barely make out what they say over the screaming of the asshole on top of me though.
"Might wanna grit your teeth fer this next part, man!" She said it with such a sadistic grin that I was confused for a moment, but then the words processed and all I could do was brace myself before-
Boom
I hit the ground back first, the pain of the fall is, not as bad as I thought it would be? No, more like, it's the pain of a memory, not a fresh wound where there should be one.
But the pain didn't let up as the crimson beast pinning me began to rapidly slam me into the ground, while screaming into my face.
Spittle and hot air poured out of it's gigantic mouth and I could barely move, let alone open my eyes to see more of it then the few glimpses I got.
"Yeah yeah yeah, shut up for a second," it was red that spoke up, again, the smugness in their voice was apparent.
After they spoke, the beast stopped attacking me, rather than that, it just kept me trapped under it's grasp.
"This is the part where you ask me, something utterly stupid, like 'why? Why are you doing this Red? Aren't we friends?' Well, fuck that." As they spoke, red made the motions of someone talking with one of their hands.
And frankly? None of those questions even passed my mind.
"Well, it doesn't really matter now, oh hey." As they spoke, they grabbed me by my hair and forced my head up to meet their eyes "what's with that look? Man? You look so, angry, anger isn't a handsome look on a man, especially not someone ugly like you." The tone as they spoke was as caustic as the hate that overflowed from their eyes.
"Aww jeez, you really can't take a joke, can you? Bastard that you are, with that look on your face it's no wonder those villagers think your a devil, champ."
"No reaction? Not like you, not at all, but you do know why you deserve this, right? You remember? In that empty little head of yours, do you still have that little reminder, of what you did wrong? You do, cuz I know I fucking do, bro."
"Yahrnam! The place where our dreams, heh- went to die! You, probably don't remember this place but when we were still us, we tried, maybe, three or so times? To play bloodborne, and each time, we gave up."
"The first time was because of school, we got distracted and the grind slowed to a halt, the second was when we were in college, oh, I'm sure you still remember college, man you gotta! It was hell."
"The only way we could cope was video games and anime, distraction, laziness, when we should have been doing whatever we could, to get better, ring a bell yet?"
"What really I'm trying to get at here is, you haven't changed, pal. Not once in this new world have you lived up to a single fucking damned thing, you have promised."
"The second time we stopped because we got distracted again this time, by anime like the one we're in now, so maybe it wasn't all useless."
"The third time, let's walk through the scene together, bro."
"Imagine this, fresh college dropout with aspirations at the very bottom of the barrel, the year? 2020."
"Isolation hits you hard, you don't know what to do with yourself, with the utter, lack. Of. interaction."
"Stuck in a one bedroom, shared bath apartment that's even then too fucking expensive, barely going out for anything other then that shitty online job, what was there to do, besides distract yourself with hours of nothing-burger content!"
"So you decided to boot up the old PS3 play a few games to pass the days between work."
"And eventually you returned to bloodborne."
"It captured you, in a way you could never really describe again, the feelings of frustration and annoyance, fueling your every move to get back to where you died last, you suck at actual games, so you died a lot."
"But that didn't stop you, you realized before you even faced the first boss, that no matter how many times you failed, it didn't matter, as long as you could continue."
"You faced the cleric beast, it took everything from you, but you still didn't stop, not once until you knew how it moved enough to kill it, that's how it goes."
"But, it always wore on you, the constant failure, even dying to the most basic enemies, each death frayed your perception a little more."
"It wasn't the Father that did you in, you could have kept going, you could have picked the controller back up and figured him out like you did the beast."
"But you didn't"
"You always did get too immersed in those kinds of games, and I really don't blame you, for giving up."
"After you woke up from that state, the next day, you never touched the game again, after failing against Gascoigne, no, what I absolutely can blame you for, is how you let it fucking effect you."
"After you gave up on that game, you began to give up more."
"Spiraled, not too badly, but still enough, all over the failure you experienced in a game, because you couldn't cope with having to fight some guy over. And fucking over."
"To be real with you I would have been able to leave things in the past, if only you did the damned same."
"Because, even without the memories of it, somehow the habits of giving up stayed."
"Where did that go? That part of you that would have been screaming and scratching and clawing at me, to escape go? Where did that passion, refusal to give up go."
"I could have made this space, really look like anything, to be honest, I could have done better with the recreation, but even I don't remember everything about that."
"What I do remember, is that was the day I was 'born'"
"A little seed of self hate that had been fed by everyone in your life, finally breaching the surface."
"Do you even remember why you got so obsessed with black clover in the first place?"
They trailed off, chuckling dryly, shaking their head they turned back to me after that monologue, with a new vigor to the hate in their eyes.
"She was eight years old. And you even took the damned name of a poor little girl, like it was yours! God, it's beyond words! Hahaha." The laughter was manic, and dull at the same time, as they writhed over themselves and then stilled as they stopped speaking, "just to get to where I was planning with all this shit already, I've been taking enough."
With that, crimson beast that still had me pinned to the ground, took one of it's paws off me, and began bashing me into the cobblestone with it, punch after punch landing directly and only on me.
With each slam, I was reminded of a different pain, echoing past the point it was when I first felt it, and being magnified.
Regardless, I found myself still conscious, experiencing once again, after such a short time away, all that pain again.
It got old quick, as it long since had.