Pov Character 1
"Fate leads him who follows it, and drags him who resist."
- Plutarch
"Fate leads him who follows it, and drags him who resist. Well, isn't fate a bitch?"
- Me
Isn't it strange - just awful. Waking up. Sleep is the most perfect possible state of a living human being. So beautiful and fascinating, guided by yourself into a world created entirely by y
As real as reality itself - right up until waking and realizing the insignificance of that world you created. In dreams, there is no meaning, because they aren't real. If one day you woke up from reality and understood that your entire life had been nothing more than a fabrication of your own mind, that reality would lose its value in a second. A fictional world is just as valuable and meaningful as a real one. Some people prefer to live in a world they know nothin
That, and I simply hate waking up early in the morning
In my country, when you turn fifteen, you have the right to leave school and start working. Well, when I turned fifteen, one day I just packed all my things into a suitcase and ran away from home in the middle of the night. I hopped onto a freight train as a homeless kid, headed abroad, and never came back.
Okay, that's a lie. I came back once. I returned home one summer because of a girl who was dying of cancer and… No, wait... that was from a movie I watched once.
I think I remember now. My grandfather died of a heart attack and I went to his funeral. No, no. I didn't know him. My uncle? No, he died before I ran away. I think it was my father. No, that makes no sense-he was still in prison at the time. So why did I come back?
"Do you even remember what your name is?"
"My name is Kim. But I changed it to Amon. Because of… because of legal issues?"
"The two names have nothing in common. Why are you...?"
"Can we move in a straight line, please? Isn't this later in the story?"
So, where was I? Ah, yes. Fifteen, ran away from home, train, homeless, never looking back, hating mornings.
While traveling, I worked whatever jobs I could to survive. I was a waiter, a cleaner, a courier, a driving instructor with a fake driver's license, a truck driver - again with a fake license, a taxi driver with-
"Let me guess… a fake driver's license?"
"No?! I already had a license by then, I just paid for it with fake money. That's not the important part. Stop interrupting me. Ъour turn will come."
So, why I hate mornings. Everything strange started happening when I first realized it. I was working at a pizzeria or… just a fast-food place. We bought expired meat and paid off the health inspectors so they'd give us high ratings, while in reality we spat in the customers' food and sometimes used the sponge we washed the grill and dishes with to clean the toilet. Well, they didn't do that before me - but they did long after me, which is why the place eventually got shut down. But that's another story. A very interesting one, actually...we'll get there.
So I worked at this place-let's just call it "The Food", for eight months. Longer than anywhere else I'd ever worked. Usually I got fired in less than two months, once they found out I'd submitted fake IDs and made up my résumé. But "The Food" didn't fire me because I was hardworking, reliable, loyal… and because I knew so many things about that place and my boss that they'd sooner dump me in a sack into the river at the edge of town without fingers than dare to fire me. Ha… moving on.
I'd never worked anywhere that long. And waking up every day at the same time, in the morning, to go to work...it was deeply unpleasant for me. I tried to understand how, for the love of God, people did this every single day. Then, on the day I seriously thought about it while commuting to work, I realized I simply had to leave that place.
I don't know how I got from one thought to the other. I probably decided that if I had so much time to think about such stupid things, I'd gone soft. And it wasn't just that. Coworkers invited me out after work, I became friends with my neighbors, and I even remembered the names of a few colleagues. Horrifying.
"Sounds like a fear of putting down roots."
"Nope. That's just my mindset. We'll get there at some point!"
That was my turning point. Pathetic as it was. But I had my limits. Extremely low ones, but limits.
When I made that decision, I felt it… that bad karma. I'd only heard stories and seen news reports. In my country, over 10,000 deaths a year remain unsolved. The news stayed silent, but people aren't that stupid. Okay, maybe they are-but nothing is hidden on the internet. It might be dumb, absurd, and contradictory to everything sensible, but… why did I read those things? I now remember articles like "Fashion Designer Uses Spider Silk for New Collection," "Famous Footballer Secretly Trains with Monks in the Svaya Mountains," "Cat Predicts the Future of the Royal Family," and "Restaurant Bribes Health Inspection for High Rating"....no, wait, that last one was true… whatever.
Uh… this is getting long. I'll keep it shorter. Online, people called these incidents bad omens. One day, something strange happens to a person- they see things that aren't there, behave unnaturally, lose their mind, and then poof- they disappear, so to speak. My omen was, uh… very interesting. It was right behind me. How do I describe it… back then, it was still small. It looked like a dog, but not a cute one. No, no, no. It was ugly, decomposing, stinking of rot, flies buzzing around it. It had probably been hit by a bus- which now sounds pretty reasonable. I don't think it looked like that by choice.
It followed me all day. Even to work. I wiped tables and cleared dishes while it stared at me through the window, sitting on the other side of the street, drool dripping onto the ground. I felt like a slab of meat.
It was driving me insane. And I figured it out. When meat got too old-let's put it that way-because the freezer got overcrowded and a cheap pile of meat we didn't even realize was rotting started to stink, reminding us of its existence. At first we burned it, but that made things worse, and they paid us extra if we got rid of it. I just had to feed the dog and watch nature do its work.
I went outside, and it was there. I felt like it was ready to tear me apart on the spot. Its gaze was bloodthirsty, its drool pouring more and more, and I had the feeling its saliva was burning through the asphalt. It probably thought I was scared-but I, like a man, hurled the sack of rotten meat at it and slammed the door while watching it rip the bag apart. Poor thing.
Late that evening, my shift ended. Wait...I was supposed to quit today! Nah… tomorrow.
I was heading home. It was more of a box than a house, but the rent was low because some guy had died there of rabies… ohhh. Yeah, that was probably a mistake. That's where I should've started my story…
"No, no, no. NO!" shouted the girl with short black hair and canine teeth.
"What now? You wanted me to start my story from the beginning."
"And, um… far from the end?" asked the slightly irritated man in a black kimono with long tar-black hair as he sharpened his blade.
"Do you mean narratively, or chronologically how far back?"
"Both!"
"Both!"
"Oh… um, more than a year back chronologically, I think. As for the narration… well, we're not in a hurry anyway."
"Kill yourself!" screamed the woman with the raincoat as she threw a rock at him.
I was heading back to my little cube when suddenly the damn dog appeared behind me. It growled like a wolf, and the closer it got, the bigger it became. It must have been furious about earlier. I would've been.
Suddenly, a massive bloodthirsty monster stood before me. Its body elongated into a skeletal form- pale, almost bone-colored skin stretched tightly over a visible ribcage and sharp joints. Its limbs were long and angular, ending in claws on both hands and feet. Its head was enormous and horrifying—a writhing mass of dark, tentacle-like growths replaced any conventional face, giving it an alien, chaotic appearance. Amid the twisting tendrils, a single glowing orange eye pierced outward. The creature's tail was long and whip-like, tapering toward the tip, covered in dark, segmented patterns.
It leaned over me, and then...
"Did it kill you? Please say yes."
"Why did we let him tell the story first?!"