Chapter Thirty-Five: The Grief Child

The fog clouded our vision and then dissipated again, leaving us somewhere else. We were no longer in a sleazy motel, no more peeling wallpaper. Instead, we were in a playground, an area of green grass, with swing sets and carousals and slides. And yet, somehow, in contrast to the previous motel, it seemed even more filled with a sense of despair and hopelessness.

"Be careful," Omega said. "The Hell of Loss often looks easy to pass through, but that's how it traps people."

"I don't get it," Tulip said. "How does a playground represent loss? I got the swamp representing life and the motel representing love -- twisted love, sure -- but a playground?"

"It's not a playground," Omega said. "Look closer."

I watched as Tulip squinted at the area around her and then I turned myself to 'look closer' as Omega suggested. I looked at the carousal, its metal arms beckoning for me to spin around like I had done in younger days. The sides were sharp, sharp enough to cut, and I knew if I spun around on it, I could cut a hole through time and I would find myself back as a child, when I was young and happy-

Wait, I never played on a carousal as a child. That wasn't my memory. "Something's not right," I said.

"I keep wanting to stop and play," Tulip said. "I keep wanting to go on the swings and twist them around like I did as a child. I want to do that so much my heart aches. I want my heart to stop aching."

"It's the Lacrimosa," Omega said. "The Grief Child, the Weeping Kin. Stop."

We stopped walking forward. I wanted to go back, to go on the carousal, but I knew I shouldn't. I held onto Tulip's arm and she grabbed my hand. The writer stood alone.

There was a girl in the path before us. She was young and small and thin. I forgot about the carousal and thought only of her. She smiled at us and my heart ached to reached forward and touch her and hold her.

"We are passing through," Omega said. "We cannot stay."

The Grief Child looked at Omega and I could see a shimmer, like the road on a hot day, like what I was seeing was just a mirage. The Grief Child looked at Omega and she shimmered again and I saw beneath the shimmer and I wish I had not. What I saw was something oily, something amorrphous, something without shape that had given itself a shape. It had given itself a shape that no one could resist.

The Grief Child smiled and waved us onward. As we passed it, it touched our shoulders and I shuddered, not in fear, not in sorrow, but in happiness. It touched me and I felt happy.

I was glad when the fogs descended again.

Chapter Thirty-Four: Motel Hell

We walked through the fog and soon realized that we were no longer outside. The fog formed into walls and the earth turned into floor and soon we were walking down a long hallway. There were doors on either side with strange numbers on them, numbers that seemed to swim in my mind. I looked away from them and towards the center of the hall.

At the end of the hall was a door.

"Where does that lead?" Tulip asked.

"To the center of the Hell of Love," Omega said. "Appropriately enough, it looks like a motel, right?"

It did look like a motel. The wallpaper was cheap and peeling, the floor was carpeted with a beige rug, and there was a strange odor in the air.

The door at the end of the hall grew larger in our sights until it looked before us. It must have been some trick of perception, since it had looked like a normal door before, but now I could see it was large, at least ten feet high. Or perhaps the door had simply grown as we approached it.

Omega went to open the door, but the writer stopped him. Instead, the writer knocked twice.

"Come on," a female voice called. Omega and the writer shared a glance and then opened the door.

The only word that could describe it would be a boudoir. There were silk curtains over the windows and a brick fireplace with a roaring fire, along with a four-poster bed. And on the bed was a woman.

I blinked and the person on the bed was now a man. He smiled at me with a lecherous grin. I blinked and she was a woman again.

"Please forgive us, God of Love and Lust," the writer said. "We only wish to pass through."

"Oh, please, don't be so formal," the man/woman said. "Call me Al Basti. And you can certainly pass through if you like, though I hope you'll stay a little bit first."

"We would," the writer said, "but we don't have much time."

"Oh nonsense," Al Basti said. S/he winked at me. "You have all the time in the world here. My brothel caters to all tastes, all types. We have girls and boys just for you."

"I'm sorry," the writer said, "but..."

"He lusts," Al Basti said and s/he was looking at me. His/her eyes were pools of red. "He lusts after you, girl." S/he looked at Tulip. Tulip said nothing, hypnotized by those red eyes. "Go on, you can give in. You lust after him, too, don't you? Give in and everything will be fine."

The need to touch Tulip swelled within me. I wanted to grab her, to kiss her, to throw her onto that bed, to fuck her. She turned to look at me and I knew she wanted to do the same to me.

We raised our hands and touched one another and it felt like an electric current passed through us. Her face drew nearer to mine own and her mouth grew larger in my vision and I went to kiss her and...

There was a splitting in my head, an ache that made me cry out and fall to the ground. My vision swam and I saw the ORACLE in front of me, her beautiful face shaking in disappointment. I had failed her.

Al Basti stood up from his/her bed and approached the swimming vision of the ORACLE. S/he waved her arm and the vision disappeared, but my headache remained. "What a tightass," s/he said. "Very well. You've already seen what the Hell of Love does. Just remember: you will never experience anything like that ever again. You may go now."

We walked through the other door of the boudoir and out into another hallway. The fog returned and I was more relieved than I had ever been.

Chapter Thirty-Three: The Hell of Life

We walked through the swamp, our skin sizzling, sweat dripping from our flesh. Even Omega, who rarely had nothing to say, had stopped talking and started drinking deeply from a water bottle the writer had given him. In fact, the writer had given us all water bottles.

"Be careful with them," he told us. "Don't drop them, don't drink too much. Proportion them. I have more, but not an unlimited supply."

"Why does it matter?" Tulip asked. "I can see a pool of water up ahead anyway."

"I wouldn't drink from that," the writer said. "I wouldn't drink from anything here."

"He's right," Omega said. "The swamp Abzu is where EAT comes from."

"Eat?" Tulip looked at me, but I didn't know what they were talking about either.

It was at this point when we reached the pool, which looked deep and refreshing. Even though I wasn't particularly thirsty, it still looked tempting, and I started to step forward, intent on scooping up some of the clear blue water into my hands.

The writer stopped me. "That's not a good idea," he said.

The water bubbled. A head burst from under it, wet strands of hair flicking upwards. A woman rose up from the pool of water, but the water rose, too. The water clung to her and I realized that she was the pool. Her face was too calm, too serene. Her eyes were the bluest I had ever seen.

"I heard my name being called," she said.

Omega immediately pulled out a knife, but the writer touched him on the shoulder, causing him to slowly lower it. "You have so many names," the writer said. "What do you wish us to call you?"

"Sirara is good for now," she said. "I heard you call this place Abzu. The primordial swamp. That's not its real name either."

"It has no real name," the writer said. "It is Eden. It is Abiogenesis. It is the beginning and end of life."

"True," Sirara said. "And look, my sister walks among us." She gestured behind us and we turned to see another woman climbing up the crook of a tree. She looked exactly like Sirara except instead of water, many vines were wrapped around her, and her eyes were the greenest of greens. "You have attracted the attention of the Lady of Greenery, Ninsar."

"We are merely passing through," the writer said.

"Oh, I know," Sirara said. "But she gets so hungry. Her plants need to feed, after all."

"I thought you hated the Algernon Forest," Omega said raising his knife again.

"Why should I hate her?" Sirara said. "We are two sides of the same coin. Progression, regression. Evolution, stagnation. We feed into each other."

"Well, you won't feed on us," Omega said.

"No, we won't," Sirara said. "Your fate lies forward, beyond the Seven Hells. We just wanted a look, that's all. A look before you go beyond the Wall."

"Have you ever been beyond the Wall?" I asked.

Sirara smiled, her teeth slimy and blue. "Once," she said. "There is an ocean. That is all I can tell you. Now go. Before my sister gets impatient."

We followed Omega and fog began to cover the swamp. Before we left, I heard Sirara say, "The next Hell you visit shall not be so pleasant. Love never is."

Chapter Thirty-Two: The Charon

Tulip and I stood next to one another in the parking lot as the writer took a can of spray-paint and made drew a circle on the ground. He looked at it thoughtfully, then drew an x across it.

"What does it mean?" Tulip asked.

"Nothing," the writer said. "And everything. It means whatever you want it to mean."

"Do you always talk in cryptic bullshit?" Tulip said.

"Most of the time," the writer said. "We just need two more items. You two stay here." He walked to the right and then stopped, turned around, and walked to the left.

"So why are we traveling with him again?" Tulip asked me.

"He's going to lead us to the Wall," I said.

"And how do you know that?" she asked.

I shrugged. I didn't know if I should tell her about the ORACLE or not. I tried to play it safe. She didn't seem to mind being in the dark. She told me that it was fine just having an adventure for the sake of having an adventure. "Like The Hobbit," she said. "Although with more eldritch abominations."

We stood there talking until the writer came back. In one hand, he held a handgun. In the other hand, he held a cheeseburger. He set the cheeseburger down in the center of the x-ed circle. Then he held up the handgun.

"Are you sure he knows what he's going?" Tulip asked.

"No," I said truthfully.

The writer pointed the handgun at the cheeseburger and was about to pull the trigger when a voice said, "Wait, wait, wait!"

A man ran into the parking lot. He wore a black hoodie with the same x-ed out circle on the back. He pulled down his hood and I saw he was young, with long, dark brown hair. "Dude," he said to the writer. "Were you going to shoot that cheeseburger?"

"Yep," the writer said.

"That is not cool," the man in the hoodie said.

"We needed a way to find you and this was the fastest," the writer said. "Hello, Omega. By the way, you can eat the cheeseburger if you want."

Omega's face broke out in a massive smile. "Awesome," he said and grabbed the cheeseburger, gobbling it up in three bites.

"We need a favor," the writer said.

"Are you runners?" Omega asked. "I only do favors for runners."

"Sure," the writer said, "though we're running towards, rather than from. We need to pass through the Seven Hells."

"Whoa," Omega said. "Even I don't go near those places."

"Still, we need to go through them," the writer said. "We need you to show us the path."

"Why?" Omega asked.

"You don't need to know that," the writer said.

"Then why should I risk my life for you?" Omega said.

The writer laughed. "Risk your life? Which one? From what I've heard, you have so many, it's hard to keep track."

Omega seemed ticked off at this. "It still hurts when I die, dude."

"Fine," the writer said. "We need to pass through the Seven Hells in order to reach the Wall. And that will allow us to save the universe."

"Sweet," Omega said. "Why didn't you just say that? Okay, follow me."

Tulip turned and looked at me. I shrugged. Who was I to question the wisdom of the writer? If this Omega was to be our Charon, then so be it. I just hoped they both knew what they were doing.

We starting walking behind Omega and he began to talk. "Going from plane to plane, that's easy. You just have to find soft spots, places where reality bends. Reality is like a seven-layer dip. You got the melted cheese on top -- that's normal reality -- and then you got the guacamole and the sour cream and the salsa. Those are the in-between places, like the Path of Black Leaves. Then you get lower than that, where everything becomes mushy. That's where the Seven Hells are."

As we walked, the landscape around us changed. The parking lot faded away, the buildings disappeared into fog, and the ground turned from concrete into wet earth.

Trees entangled with vines rose around us. We were in a swamp. I could feel the humidity of the place bearing down on us.

"Now, because reality is so mushy in this place," Omega said, "things tend to get even weirder than normal. Like this place. This is the First Hell."

"Welcome to Abzu. Welcome to the Hell of Life."

Chapter Thirty-One: Seven Hells

"It wasn't real?" I asked.

"No," the writer said, "it was all real. That was the point. You had to face yourself and forgive yourself."

"For what?" I said.

"For whatever," he said.

"I found myself back at my parents' house," Tulip said. "It was...freaky. Nothing bad had happened, not like last time, with the other me. But there was still tension and...I had to confront my parents about some stuff. It wasn't pleasant."

"What about you?" I asked the writer. "Where did you find yourself?"

"It doesn't matter," he said. "We're wasting time. The next step of our journey is ahead."

"Which is?" Tulip asked.

"The Seven Heavens and Seven Hells," the writer said, pulling out the notebook. "The Seven Hells would be the easiest to get to, since all we need would be a Charon."

"A Charon?" I said.

"A ferryman," the writer said. "Someone to ferry us into Hell. I suppose we could ask Jack, but he always wants to make a deal. And one of the Fears definitely won't do it."

"Whoa there," Tulip said. "First of all, the Seven Hells don't sound that pleasant. What are they, exactly?"

"Not sure," the writer said. "Never been there. Let me check." He flipped through the notebook and then stopped at a page. "Here we go." He showed it to us.

THERE ARE SEVEN HELLS:

THE HELL OF LIFE, THE HELL OF LOVE, THE HELL OF LOSS,

THE HELL OF LONELINESS, THE HELL OF LOATHING,

THE HELL OF LOOKING, AND THE HELL OF LANGUAGE.

"Oh, that can't be right," Tulip said. "'The Hell of Language'? What, are we going to get attacked by a gerund?"

"We'll get to that when we get to it," the writer said. "Now we need a ferryman, a person who can move between life and death easily." The writer scratched his chin and then snapped his fingers. "I know just the guy." He grinned a manic grin. "We need Omega."

Happy Halloween

Hello, all. We're about three-fourths of the way through the manuscript now and I've been trying to post two chapters a week, but things at work are getting busier and more hectic, so I'm going to change that. I'll try to upload one chapter a week now. That way, we should be able to get through the rest of the manuscript by January.

Thanks,
Pete (Properly Paranoid)

Chapter Thirty: The Heart of the Matter

I said hello to Roger as I clocked in, then sat down at my desk and began to work. It was another boring day. Actually, it was the same boring day, just repeated over and over again. Wake up, go to work, come home, repeat. Intersperse with meals and sleep. Shake vigorous and you get one life unlived.

I still remember parts of my dream. The ORACLE and the Ivory Woman. The writer and his notebook. And especially Tulip. I don't know why. They were just part of the dream.

I wish I could dream it again. I wish I could just continue the dream where I left off. I wish so many things these days.

Wake up. Go to work. Come home.

It's the small, mundane things that distract me from my life. There is a stray cat I see sometimes around the neighborhood. I left an open tin of tuna out once for it. A small gesture of kindness. I don't know why I did it.

Wake up. Go to work. Come home.

I no longer believe there is a conspiracy against me. Why would there be? I am not important. Nobody around me is important.

Wake. Work. Home.

I stay awake later and later each night, my eyes trying to pierce the veil of night, even knowing that nothing is behind it. I guess I don't see the point of sleeping and dreaming of dreary things.

Wake. Work. Home.

And then I found myself on the edge of the overpass. It was on the way to work. I stopped and looked out at the sea of cars, all of them driving at breakneck speeds, going to their own jobs, find their own ways in the world.

And I couldn't stand it. I stood on the edge of the overpass and I wanted to jump. Jump and end my repetitive existence. Break the infinite loop.

I stood on the edge of the overpass and thought about the end of my dream. "Home," the writer had said. Home is where the heart is. Home is where we keep ourselves hidden away from sight. Home is where we can see our true selves.

I stood on the edge and felt myself fly away. I let go of what I was and it floated like a ghost into the sky.

And then I walked home. I walked into my apartment and there they were. The writer, with his notebook, and Tulip.

"Took you long enough," he said.

Chapter Twenty-Nine: Home

"So how do we get to the House of Forgiveness?" Tulip asked. "In fact, how did we get here? One moment we were in that freaky stair house-"

"The logistics don't matter," the writer said. "Anything I tell you would be nonsense, since that is how the world here works. Traveling between realms, domains, pocket universes, whatever, its unpredictable and better if none of us question how it happens. Got it?"

Tulip raised an eyebrow. "Sure, you're the boss," she said.

"And as for your first question," the writer said, "there is a simple way to get to the House of Forgiveness. In fact, you've been there before."

"I have?" Tulip said.

"We all have," the writer said. "The House of Forgiveness is the hardest of the Five Mansions, but the easiest to find. It goes by a different name though."

The writer turned to me and he wasn't smiling now. He looked sad and alone, clutching his notebook to the side of his chest.

"Home," he said. "We're going home."

There was no spinning sensation like last time. There was no sensation at all. I didn't feel anything. I didn't see anything. I just opened my eyes.

I woke up.

I was in my bed, in my apartment, in my world. I was home. Of course. I had never left.

Chapter Twenty-Eight: The Grove of Fetters

As we rose, I was able to see the sun. It was just setting, creating an interesting tableau of reds and purples, but then it fell beneath the horizon and night quickly descended. I was worried about falling off of the stairs, but the cold stone beneath my feet changed. It felt soft and I could hear the crunching of leaves. I felt along the ground and realized it was grass.

We were outside. No more stairs, no more fractals.

The stars lit up like a Christmas tree and I could see the Milky Way. It was beautiful. I looked at Tulip. She was standing next to a large tree, still wearing the red dress from the House of Fortune. As she looked up at the night sky, I felt something, an ache.

And then chains wrapped around her hands and waist and she was pulled up against one of the tall branches of the tree.

"Tulip!" I shouted and then I saw the writer was in a similar position, two chains attached to his hands and one to his feet.

Only I was free.

"We're in the Grove of Fetters," the writer said. "The House of Fortitude. You have to make a decision now. You have to make a choice."

"What choice?" I asked.

Smoke began to pour from the ground. "The Brute is coming," the writer said. "I can't get to my notebook. I can't stop him. But you can free us."

"How?" I asked.

"The chains are made from his body," the writer said. The smoke was forming into what looked like a wolf, its body wrapped in chains. "It cannot chain you, however, so it wants to kill you. You can free us with a touch, but you can only free one of us. You cannot take us both."

The wolf looked huge and angry. The chains around it were cracked and broken and even though I knew it was made of smoke, it looked real enough to kill. It opened its jaws and let out a howl.

"Fenris," the writer said. "Make your choice, Norman. It's up to you."

My choice? The writer or Tulip. The man who could lead me to the Wall or the woman that I...what? Liked? How could I like anyone? How could anyone like me? I was a delusional paranoid. The ORACLE freed me from that life, though. I owe her.

Do I? Did she free me from the life or put me in it? Was it her fault that the Ivory Woman targeted me?

No, no time, I need to make a choice. The writer or the woman. The woman or the writer.

Or both.

They were lined up. They were both chained, but they were in a straight line. I didn't stop to think about what I was doing, I just ran. I ran and I took hold of Tulip and her chains evaporated and then pushed forward right into the writer. His chains evaporated, too, and we fell into one big heap.

"Great job," the writer said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. "You just forgot one thing."

Fenris loomed over his, his jaws so big he could swallow the moon. He was going to eat us, swallow us whole, and we would be digested in his smoke stomach for the rest of eternity.

And then he stopped. "You are one lucky duck," the writer said. "With my hands free, I can write." And he was writing, scribbling in his notebook. "Looks like Fenris now has a burning desire to mark his territory." The wolf turned around and went away to urinate somewhere else.

"Well, that was bracing," Tulip said. "Where to now?"

"Now," the writer said, "we try to find Forgiveness."

Chapter Twenty-Seven: The Fractal Palace

The stairs twisted as they climbed higher. We had walked for what seemed like miles.

"Where are we?" Tulip asked.

"The Fractal Palace," the writer said. "The House of Forever. And I'm afraid this is just the beginning. I told you it would be complex. It's a complex complex." He chuckled.

"How complex?" I asked.

"Well," he looked up the spiral staircase, "technically, the Fractal Palace is infinite. You could keep walking and walking and walking and never go anywhere at all. Something about Zeno's paradox and infinite regression."

"So we're stuck here?" Tulip said.

"No," the writer said, "because there is always a way out." He took out his notebook and wrote something in it.

The staircase began to move. The steps climbed themselves like an escalator. We pulled ourselves away from the railing and tried to keep our balance. "Here we go," the writer said.

The stairs led up higher and higher until we emerged into a room made up entirely of stairs. The ceiling, the walls, everything was steps and stairs, all of them merging and dividing, going up and down and sideways. "Ah," the writer said, "l'esprit de l'escalier!"

"Funny," Tulip said.

The stairs moved themselves, twisting and turning, until they were part of a giant spiral, a spiral that went upward, upward into the twisting ceiling and into the sky.

"That's where we're going?" I asked.

"Away from the House of Forever," the writer said, "and into the House of Fortitude. It will take bravery and cowardice."

"Bravery and cowardice?" Tulip said. "How?"

"Bravery to go in," the writer said, "and cowardice to come back out."

And so we went up, up, and away.

Chapter Twenty-Six: The Only Game

The man led us back to the casino he had come from. The neon sign above the entrance read Glückshaus. As we entered the casino, the man changed. His hair grew longer, his body slimmer, his face more feminine. He became a she.

"What are you?" Tulip asked.

"I am the House's representative," the woman said. "Call me Alea. Come now." She led us through rows and rows of slot machines, one-armed bandits. I could see the faint outlines of people playing them, pulling the handles down, entering in coin after coin. "Don't mind them," Alea said. "They aren't even here. Much."

She led us down into the basement of the casino, down a flight of concrete steps. There, she pushed a button and a large light came on, illuminating a door.

"This is a Door," she said. "Capital D. Your chance to exit the House. If you win, that is."

"How do we know it doesn't end up in the Empty City?" the writer asked.

"It does," Alea said. "A specific section of the City. I believe it's called the Fractal Palace. Your next mansion to cross off."

"How does she know that?" Tulip asked.

"Oh," Alea said, "everyone knows where you all are headed. But nobody's ever been to the Wall before. I'd love to see you try. Now, to go through the Door, however, you have to play the game."

"What game?" I asked.

"What game?" Alea repeated. "Why, the game." She smiled and gestured to the other side of the basement. There was a roulette wheel with a man strapped to it. His eyes were dice. "It's the only game in town. Spin the wheel, my friends. Spin and see what happens."

The writer looked at me and nodded his head. Of course. I was the unlucky one. I had to spin the wheel. The worst outcome would be mine. But what was worse? Staying here as a guest/ghost of the House? Or going through the Door?

I stepped forwardly and nervously turned the wheel. It spun must faster than I had pushed it.

The man in the center said nothing. He was still alive, I could see, still breathing. But his eyes had been removed, blood staining his cheeks. The dice in his eye sockets rattled -- how, I don't know -- as the wheel spun faster and then, slowly, it stopped.

Alea looked at the dice. "Snake eyes," she said. "You don't see that every day. Go on now."

We turned and the Door was opened. Beyond it was a staircase. The writer and Tulip stepped through first and I turned back to look at Alea. She was still smiling, our apparent escape not bothering her at all. "You come back any time you want," she said. "It's been a long while since we've had a snake eyes."

I walked through the Door and it closed behind me.

Chapter Twenty-Five: The House of Fortune

I opened my eyes and took a good look around.

It looked like Las Vegas, but not the real Las Vegas. The Vegas of movies and television. Bright and shiny, neon signs everywhere advertising casinos and call girls. "Come to the Gemini," one of the the signs exclaimed, "you'll have twice the fun!"

I looked at the writer and found he was now wearing a tuxedo. I looked down and realized I was wearing one, too. Then I looked at Tulip.

She was wearing a red dress. If I thought the wedding dress looked good on her, the red dress looked even better. She had elbow length red gloves on as well and her hair no longer looked dirty or stringy -- it looked curled and elegant. I felt my own hair -- which I had been cutting for years, not trusting the barbershop -- and realized mine was better as well.

"It's not a place you come to looking like we did," the writer explained. "This is the place where dreams are made. Not good dreams, mind you. Most of them are bad."

A man emerged from one of the casinos. "Ah, newcomers!" he yelled. "Come, come! Choose one of these fine casinos! Place any bets you like! We take all wagers!"

"What shall we wager?" the writer asked.

"Well," Tulip said, "what do we need?"

"We're here," the writer said, "and now that we've crossed it off the list, we need to go."

"Ah, an exit, an egress," the man from the casino said. "We have plenty of those."

"An exit to where we were before?" I asked.

The man's smile faltered. "Well," he said, "no, not exactly. The exits here lead many places, but none you'll recognize. And to enter any of them, you'll need to put something up."

"Our lives?" Tulip said.

"No, we already have those," the man said.

"Our dreams," the writer said. "If we lose, you can have our dreams."

The man smiled. "That'll do nicely. We always need things to trade with the Reverie. Come with me." He clapped his hands. "We're off."

"Where?" I asked.

"Where else?" he said. "Now that you're in Oz, we're off to see the Wizard."

Chapter Twenty-Four: The Die is Cast

He found six-sided dice in the drawing room. "Right where I wrote it," he said. "Now all we have to do is roll it."

"And then we'll get to the House of Fortune?" Tulip asked. "Which would be...?"

"The House of Fortune is a place where luck and chance rule supreme," he said. "Think of it like Vegas only more...eldritch. You can win big or lose all."

"And what are the stakes?" Tulip asked.

"Life, death, and everything in between," the writer said. "And to get there, we need to roll a specific number on one die."

Tulip laughed. "Let me guess," she said, "a seven."

"Nope," he said. "We need to roll a thirteen."

Tulip scrunched her forehead. "That's impossible," she said. "Even if you cut the die on the way down, the most you could roll would be seven. There is no way to roll a thirteen."

The writer grinned. "Want to bet?" He tossed me one of the die. "You roll."

"Why me?" I asked.

"Because you are the lucky one," he said. "Or, rather, the unlucky one. The Ivory Woman causes unlucky accidents, pockets of chaos that turned everything topsy-turvy. You roll the die and she will make it into the worst roll ever. Which, in this case, would be a thirteen."

"Why would that be the worst roll?" I asked.

"Because the House always wins," he said with a grin.

I took a deep breath. "Still impossible," Tulip said, "but go ahead anyway."

I rolled the die in the palm of my hand and then tossed it onto the table. It landed on one of the corners and started to spin. It spun round and round and round, until I became dizzy even looking at it, and then it cracked apart, splitting into three pieces. I added up the dots on the cracked pieces. Thirteen.

The world around us spun, like a roulette wheel. I closed my eyes and waited for it to be over.

It was over in a second and then I opened my eyes.

Chapter Twenty-Three: The Way

I took the book from the writer's hands and pulled off the rubber bands. Gingerly, I opened it. The first page it opened to had this written on it:

THERE ARE FOUR LETTERS, FIVE SUNS, NINE CIRCLES, TEN PLAGUES. THERE ARE THREE BODIES, FIVE MANSIONS, SEVEN HEAVENS, AND SEVEN HELLS.

THERE ARE TEN PASSAGEWAYS AND TEN BRIDGES.

YOU MUST CROSS EVERY ONE TO GET TO THE LAST BRIDGE.

THE LAST BRIDGE IS THE WALL.

I read it out loud. "What does that mean?" I asked.

"It means," the writer said, "we have a long way to go before we reach the Wall. Luckily, we've already started. The 'three bodies' it mentions are us. Turn the page."

I turned the page and read the next one out loud as well:

THE FIVE MANSIONS:

FIRE, FOREVER, FORTUNE, FORTITUDE, FORGIVENESS

"We can cross the first mansion off the list," the writer said. "We've already visited it - that was Our Lady of the Immaculate Conflagration. And now for the next one."

"Forever?" I said.

"Okay, we'll skip that one," he said. "Too complex. How about the House of Fortune? That should be easier. Relatively." He grinned.

"You're having fun?" I said.

"I'm having an adventure," he said. "I've never had one of those before. Come on then."

"Where?" I asked.

"To find some dice," he said.

Chapter Twenty-Two: A Friend

The field of wheat lead to a house in the center. It looked dilapidated, worn down, but the door was locked and surprisingly could not be pushed open.

"Yeah, you won't break it down," the writer said. He took out his notebook and started scribbling in it. "The owner of the house makes it look run down, but it's actually very well maintained. Four-inch think steel door, multiple locks."

"Who lives here?" I asked.

"A friend," the writer said closing his notebook. "A friend who calls himself Amicus Nemini."

"Um, you do know what that means, right?" Tulip asked as the writer tried the door again and opened it. Apparently, his scribbling was able to unlock it.

"What?" I said.

"The name," she said. "Amicus Nemini. I took Latin a fear years back. It means 'a friend to none.'"

The writer walked inside and I was left looking at Tulip. I just shrugged and followed him, so Tulip followed me. "Why are we following this guy, by the way?" Tulip asked.

"He's going to lead us to the Wall," I said.

"Right," she said.

"What I don't understand," I said, "is why you're coming along. You don't have to be here."

"Yeah, well," she said, "I was tired of running away. When I heard what you were doing is sounded...this is stupid, but it sounded like a quest. It sounded like something out of a story. So I made an impulsive decision and decided to come along."

"Oh," I said. We passed through a corridor and came across a large room. Unlike the outside of the house, this room was very neat and clean and well-maintained. There were security cameras everywhere, as well as a wooden table and a chair. I turned to the writer. "Where is your friend?"

"Dead," he said. "I think he's been dead for a while. But he left something behind, something we need."

"You said we were close to the turning point," I said.

"Close," he said, looking around the room. His eyes finally fell on a bookshelf. He scanned the shelf and then pulled out a notebook bound in rubber bands. "Here it is. His notes about the Wall. This is the way to the Wall. It is the outline of how to get there."

"I thought you knew how to get there?" I asked.

"I do," he said. "This is how to get there." He held up the notebook. "Take a look."

Chapter Twenty-One: The Church

We stood in an empty parking garage, the writer holding a notebook in one hand and a can of kerosene in another, Tulip in a white wedding dress, and me, holding a bouquet of flowers and trying not to sneak desperate glances at her, ashamed of the feelings that were stirring within me.

Would the ORACLE want this? Did she arrange it? She had been the most beautiful thing I had seen before this, but now...

My head hurt and I didn't know what was going on. The writer consulted his notebook again and then started pouring the kerosene in a circle around us.

"A burning ring of fire?" Tulip said. "That's the shortcut?"

"Almost," he said. "Give me the flowers." I did and he dipped them in kerosene as well. "Hold onto these," he said and gave them to Tulip. The bouquet included some of her namesake as well, until the writer lit a match and set them aflame.

"Whoa," Tulip said and nearly dropped them.

"Hold steady," the writer said and dropped the lit match on the ground where the kerosene circle was and a wall of flame erupted.

The wall of flame grew until it reached our faces and then shrunk downward and suddenly we were no longer in a parking garage. Instead, we were inside a church, huge and tall, but covered in ash and soot. The pews were burned out husks and the whole thing looked like it might collapse at any second.

"Where are we?" Tulip asked and I turned to look at her and gasped. The wedding dress she was wearing, pure white a second ago, was now as gray as the walls of the church, covered in the same soot and ash.

"Our Lady of the Immaculate Conflagration," the writer said. "And you are the substitute bride. The real bride isn't here at the moment, but she'll be back soon. We don't want her to catch us here, so don't let go of the burning bouquet, that's our way out."

Together, we walked down the aisle until we were a foot from the podium and the writer made another circle in kerosene. The flowers were almost burned to their tips now and Tulip was having a hard time holding them.

The writer allowed us to step into the circle and Tulip finally let go of the flowers as the fire burned them away and the circle of flames grew around us again and then died down and we were outside in a field of wheat.

"Where are we?" I asked.

"Near the center," he said. "Close to the turning point. Let's go."

We followed him, as we had followed him through fire, to unknown lands.

Chapter Twenty: Ceremony

I don't know how he got the wedding dress, but he did. We picked up the matches at a hardware store, as well as a can of kerosene. We went back to our hotel room, where we found the writer and a pristine white wedding dress, complete with veil.

"Put it on," he said to Tulip.

She raised an eyebrow.

"Please?" he said.

"Fine," she said and took the dress into the bathroom. The writer took out his notebook and started scribbling in it again.

"Do we really need to do this for a shortcut?" I asked.

"No," he said. "I can just write us there. But there needs to be a journey, steps taken. Otherwise it won't mean anything. Just words on a page. Besides, this is a place nobody's seen yet."

"What do you mean?"

"Never mind," he said and scribbled more. "I think she's ready."

She was. She stepped out of the bathroom in the white wedding dress and smiled and suddenly she was more beautiful than I realized. "Not the way I wanted to first wear one of these," she said. "But considering my life path before this, it's probably the last chance I'll have anyway. So, what's next?"

The writer stood up and said, "Parking garage."

We walked to the parking garage and I tried not to stare at her. I'm afraid I failed miserably.

Chapter Nineteen: Shortcut

"We're not moving fast enough," the writer said.

"How do you know?" I asked.

"I just do," he said. He looked tense and he had grown a full beard since he wasn't shaving. He squinted up at the evening sky. "We need to take a shortcut."

"There's a shortcut to the Wall?" I asked.

"There are shortcuts to everywhere," he said. "But I need some supplies. There's a ritual, a ceremony."

"What do you need?" I asked.

"Flowers," he said. "And a wedding dress, including a veil. And matches."

"Sounds like some crazy fun times I've had," Tulip said. "What do you need them for?"

"I told you," the writer said. "We're taking a shortcut."

Chapter Eighteen: Closer

"We're getting closer," the writer said. I didn't ask him how he knew.

Instead, I asked Tulip why she was traveling with us. "You don't even know where we're going," I said.

"Doesn't matter," she said. "I didn't know where I was going either. I was just...going." She refused to talk about what happened to her, only offering up information about "nobody," as she called it, and the other things that she has heard about. "It's better traveling in a group. I've heard of people targeted by something called the Cold Boy – he takes those that are alone, isolated."

This was the first I had heard of it and I had been isolated almost my entire life. I asked her about that and she said, "I don't know how it works. Maybe they are just picky about who they target. It doesn't really matter. From what I've heard, they all get you in the end."

"How many are there?"

"Lots," she said. "I came across someone who couldn't look in a mirror. Said a snake lady was just waiting in his reflection. And then there was the one who said his dead brother was after him. And another said they were being followed by a giant hound, black as pitch."

I sat back and thought about this. The ORACLE and the Ivory Woman were not the only otherworldly creatures out there. But they were different somehow from these things she was telling me – the stories she told me involved these creatures targeting a specific individual, driving them mad or simply killing them. While some ran, others decided to serve the creatures, saving their own lives by taking others.

The ORACLE was different, I knew. She didn't want me to serve her interests by killing. She had me find the writer so we could find the Wall.

But what was behind the Wall?

I put the question in the back of my mind and tried to listen again to Tulip's stories, tried to figure out some sort of logic, some reason in a unreasonable world.

Chapter Seventeen: Almost Dead

I almost died today. We were crossing a bridge when a car careened out of control. It swerved until it was pointed straight at me and I was frozen. I saw it coming and I couldn't move. I knew I should move, yet I was stock still, like a statue.

It was the writer who pulled me away, who pulled me down, scraping my hands on the hard bridge. And the car went off the side and down onto the road below us, making a horrific noise as it did, a crunching, crashing, breaking noise, a noise that still rings in my ears.

The Ivory Woman is not stopping. She wants me dead. She wants to stop us from reaching the Wall.

We ran from the scene – the writer and Tulip and I. We didn't want to talk to the police – we needed to create no ripples, as they say. No ripples in the pond.

I asked Tulip if she had heard of the Ivory Woman. "Sorry," she said. "I've heard of some weird shit, but nothing like that."

I wonder if anyone has?

Chapter Sixteen: Tulip

Her name was Tulip. We met her on the road to nowhere. At least, that's what the writer said it was and she didn't disagree. She said that it would have to have been the road to nowhere, since she was being chased by nobody.

I asked if that meant she wasn't being chased, but she said no. "I'm being chased by...myself. But it's not me. I mean, it looks like me and acts like me and everyone I knew thought it was me, even my own mother and father, but..." She stopped, as if she had said something that she hadn't wanted to, something that just slipped out. Her hair was a dark auburn, wavy at the ends, and her eyes were brown and she looked lovely. "When I had had enough, I finally confronted it. I asked what it was. It said it was nobody, like me. And I told it that I wasn't nobody." She turned away from me. "And it said, 'We'll see.'"

She didn't say much after that. The writer was busy scribbling things down in his notebook, which he had kept secret from me since the night at the motel.

Suddenly, he looked up. "Do you have a car?" he asked Tulip. "I think we're going to need a car."

And just like that, we were three.

Chapter Fifteen: The Third

"The third what?" I asked.

"The third man," he said. "Or probably woman, in this case, since we're both men. That's how it usually goes: two men and a woman. Or two women and a man. Or three women. I've never actually seen a story with three men - usually, in those cases, it's five people, three men and two women."

I stopped and finally said, "I have no idea what you are talking about."

"We're going to meet someone else," he said. "You didn't think it would just be you and me, did you? On a road trip to end the world? No, there's going to be a third. She'll show up soon and probably be in trouble. Or save us from trouble. One or the other."

"Why?" I asked.

"Three is a magic number," he said. "Lots of things come in threes. Three Wise Men, Three Billy Goats Gruff, Three Blind Mice. And it's lucky. Did you know that in Chinese, 'three' sounds like the word for 'alive,' whereas 'four' sounds like 'death'? So a story like this has to have a third."

"This isn't a story," I said.

"Of course it is," he said. "It's all a story. It's never going to stop being a story. And if you think you're outside the story, that just means there's a larger story around you, like a Russian nesting doll. That's why it won't work."

"What won't?" I asked.

"Breaking the Wall," he said. "She thinks breaking the Wall will bring her into the real world. But the 'real world' is also a story, so it won't work. She can't escape by using stories. It's just...impossible."

"So why are you doing this?" I asked.

He shrugged and said, "The show must go on."

Chapter Fourteen: The Secret Rose

I didn't trust the restaurant, so all I had was dry cereal, straight from the box. No way anyone could poison me with that.

He ate a plate of scrambled eggs, French toast, pancakes, hash browns, and a Diet Coke. He scarfed them down as I watched, un-self-conscious, uncaring of the bits and pieces of food that fell onto his shirt and lap. Occasionally, he would pick them out from his lap and eat them and then dive back into his plate of food. And then take a slurp of Diet Coke.

After each plate was emptied and he was done, he took a deep breath and then said, "So, where are we now?" I told him what city we were in. "No, no," he said. "Where are we in the story? Is this still the rising action? I know we're not at the climax yet, we can't be."

I didn't know what that meant, so I said, "I'm supposed to bring you to the Wall."

"Of course you are," he said. "She wants the Wall to collapse. She wants to live again. Not that she was ever alive, exactly. She's always been dead. She was born dead."

"The ORACLE?" I asked.

"The Vision," he said, "of Days to Come and Days Gone By. The Queen of All Our Yesterdays. The Secret Rose. Do you know the poem?"

"No," I said.

"It's about," he paused, "well, I don't really know what it's about. But there's this bit at the end: 'A woman of so shining loveliness, that men threshed corn at midnight by a tress, a little stolen tress. I, too, await the hour of thy great wind of love and hate. When shall the stars be blown about the sky, like the sparks blown out of a smithy and die?' That's what she is, you know."

"I don't..." I started and then stopped, because he stabbed his fork downward into the table.

"You would do anything for her," he said. "Thresh corn at midnight. You would bring down the stars in the sky for her, wouldn't you?"

I nodded.

He left his fork on the table. "Of course you would," he said. "That's what she does. That's how I wrote her. And you." He got up from the table. "Time to go."

"Where are we going?" I asked.

"To find the third," he said.

Chapter Thirteen: Awake

I had my mission. I knew what I had to do: bring the writer to the Wall.

There was only one problem: I had no idea where the "Wall" was. And my dream did nothing to illuminate it. In the morning, in the cold light of day, I realized that I had no idea where to go next.

Then the writer awoke. "Where am I?" he asked. I told him. "I'm not dead." It wasn't a question, so I didn't answer. "Who are you?"

"My name is Norman," I said.

"Norman," he said and rubbed his eyes. "I remember you. Conspiracy nut. Targeted by the Ivory Woman."

"Yes," I said. I didn't know what else to say, so I asked, "What were you writing in your notebook?"

"Ideas," he said. "I've been able to keep them off my back by writing stories, but lately...there's been too many. Too many ideas, too many stories in my head. I can't get them all down. I've become...overloaded with ideas. I started one and then skip to another. Too many stories trying to get out." He rubbed his temples and then seemed to realize he was doing it, so stopped. "I need food. You hungry?"

"Yes," I said. I had not eaten much in the past week.

"Let's go get breakfast," he said. "You don't happen to have any money, do you? Nah, I didn't think so."

As he got up and stepped to the door, he said, "I'll just write us some money. It'll be just like the real thing."

He stumbled into the bathroom then and slammed the door.

Chapter Twelve: A Dream

I had a dream. The writer had fallen asleep and I sat on the chair beside him, tired and worried. And my eyelids became heavy and I lowered my head down and sleep rushed forward to engulf me.

I was at work. Except it was also a forest. There were trees rising out of the floor, but none of my coworkers noticed as they went about their day. Only I could see the trees and the strange shapes that flitted between them, the shadowy forms and insubstantial things that always moved out of the corner of my eye.

And then SHE was there. The ORACLE. I heard her voice, even though her mouth never moved. "There is a Wall. Invisible and unbreakable."

She moved forward and brushed my cheek with her razor-sharp fingers. "You will bring him to the Wall."

I looked at her and suddenly knew something was behind me. I just knew that the IVORY WOMAN was behind me and if I turned around, I would see a blank white tunnel.

I made my mouth move and say, "What is she?"

The ORACLE looked at me with pupil-less eyes and her voice rang in my ear as clear as day: "She is nothing. She cannot harm you. She seeks to delay the inevitable. She cannot win."

All things. Another voice. Soft, like a susurrus. All things tend towards chaos. Breaking down, bit by bit. The arrow of time takes all things. Even us. You cannot go backwards.

The ORACLE's face changed then. One moment it was calm and serene and then for a split second it changed into a snarl, lips drawn impossibly back, teeth bared, eyes red, forward creased and cracked, as if something was struggling to escape. Was this a mask or the mask torn away?

And then it was gone. She was back to being serene. Her voice flowed through my mind. "Ignore her. She is nothing. You must go to the Wall."

"The Wall must come crumbling down."

Chapter Eleven: Sleep

He's finally asleep. I dragged him back to my motel room and tried to calm him down. It was a strange reversal - me, trying to calm someone else down. But I have felt strangely calm ever since I met the ORACLE. I know I am not simply insane now and this makes me do things I would never have done before.

He did not want to sleep. He kept insisting that some "grotesque" thing would take him if he went to sleep. But his eyes were bloodshot and I knew it was only a matter of time before exhaustion overcame him and he slept.

Finally, he scribbled more things down in his notebook and then dropped it and collapsed onto the bed.

I gingerly picked up his notebook and looked through. More snippets:

a world where they are completely human. a world where they are completely incomprehensible.

new mythologies. no gods only devils.

a house made of doors. each one unlocked by a different key.



And then below that, there was a snippet of poetry:

one missing piece that makes it all fall down

one for the seer, dead and buried in the ground

one for the baby made of bone and grinding gears

these are the things that every man fears

I wonder what it all means.

I wish I could ask the ORACLE more questions.

Chapter Ten: The Writer

I found him. I followed the pages, the pages that were scattered across the street and through the door and up the stairs and down the hallway and into the room. I followed the pages that were scrawled with bits of stories:

a garbage man who finds himself in the middle of an epidemic of cleanliness - people are so consumed with being clean, they die of it.

an astrologist who finds that her stars aren't right anymore: one of them is missing.

conspiracy of librarians. hiding memories. not hidden, hiding. seek and ye shall find.

the city is a woman. the woman is a city. a constantly shifting map is tattooed on her back. her lovers go insane tracing their way through her maze.

seven sleepers. twelve mansions. thirty-two silences. 

words without meaning. all conversations become gibberish.

And so on and on.

I finally found him curled up in a room, dark and dusty, with a small ray of sunlight peaking through the curtains. He was furiously writing in a worn notebook. He looked up at me and said, "Are you real because I wrote you or did I write you because you are real?"

I didn't know how to answer. I merely lowered my hand and he grasped it, a pencil still caught between his fingers.

"Time to go," I said.

"Time," he said. "There is no time. I can go back. I can backdate things. Time can be edited, revised, updated. Time and all things."

I led him out into the cold light of day.

Chapter Nine: Breadcrumbs

I am searching for the writer that the ORACLE needs. It has been difficult, but I know that I am getting closer. Closer and closer and closer.

I saw the WOMAN in WHITE again today, though. She was across the street. It looked like someone had cut out a bit of reality in the shape of a woman. And behind the thin film of the world was a world of bleak whiteness. Nothingness. Nothing in the shape of a woman.

I reeled from this sight and tried to run. Then I almost tripped and fell into the street. If I had, a bus would have hit me straight on and I probably would have died or be horribly injured. But I stopped. I stopped mid-trip. As if the law of gravity ceased to apply to me, I stopped. I managed to regain my balance and step backwards.

On my way back to my hotel room, I saw words carved into a concrete wall. Had she carved them with her fingers?

The words were:

INEVITABILITY VERSUS UNPREDICTABILITY

SHE IS THE IVORY WOMAN


I know now. The name of the conspiracy. The name of the one who controlled every aspect of my life.

The IVORY WOMAN.

Chapter Eight: LIFE

She took me by the hand. She took my hand. She held my hand and drew her fingers on my palm, outlining my lifelines in blood.

I was wrong. She is not DEATH.

She is LIFE. She is the ORACLE. She can see PAST, PRESENT, and FUTURE.

She smiles and her teeth are sharpened like razors. She does not speak. But I can see what she wants me to see.

I see a man. A writer of stories. He is filled with despair and will soon die without help.

She needs him to live. To write. The stories he writes are not important, per se, but they provide...solidity. I don't know what this means, but I don't have to. She wants me to find him and help him.

She already knows I will do this. She can see it in the blood on my palm. In my lifelines.

I want to ask about the WOMAN in WHITE.

She presses one razor sharp finger to her lips and shushes me. The WOMAN in WHITE can wait. The ORACLE can protect me.

She has seen my future, which means I have a future.

go, she writes in my palm and then pulls away. My head feels full of information, pregnant with possibilities.

I look at my hand and then back up, but she is gone.

I head out the door and don't look back.

Back on Track

Okay, I haven't received any visitors at work or had any calls about the manuscript. So I guess I was correct and this 'Alliterator' guy was lying about writing it. In any case, I'm going to continue posting the chapters when I have the time.

I do have to warn you though, that this is where it gets good. Those previous chapters were a warm up -- the chapters that come after have some full blown insanity.

 - Pete (Properly Paranoid)

Note

To the douchebag in the comments for the previous post:

I am not impressed with how many Blogger accounts you can make. If you are really the person who wrote this manuscript (which I doubt), you can come to my office and politely ask for it back if you want. If not, please refrain from posting on my blog.

Thank you.

Sincerely,

Pete (Properly Paranoid)

Chapter Seven: Paradox

"Newcomb's Paradox." I looked it up. It's a thought experiment.

Imagine there is someone that can predict the future with 99.99% accuracy. "The Predictor" they are called. Then imagine there are two boxes in front of you, the Player of Games. Box A and Box B. The Player is allowed to take one or both boxes. Box A always has a thousand dollars in it. However, Box B might or might not have a million dollars in it. It all depends on what the Predictor predicts.

If the Predictor predicts that the Player will take both boxes, Box B will have nothing. If the Predictor predicts the Player will only take Box B, it will contain a million dollars.

It seems simple, right? Take both. Take both and you will either get a thousand or a million and a thousand. If the Predictor is wrong. But the Predictor has always been right.

The Player does not know the prediction. The prediction cannot be changed once the game is in play.

Now imagine that instead of money, inside the boxes contains the Player's fate. Life and death. One choice leads to everything working out fine, the other leads to a horrible and quite painful death.

I think I am the Player.

I need to play the game.

Chapter Six: Cause

I finally saw the cause of my misery and pain. I finally saw the conspiracy's core, the thing that moves the world around like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, setting everything up just right.

I was looking for DEATH again. I wanted to ask her so many questions, questions that plagued my mind and made me restless and sleepless. I looked for DEATH and I found something worse.

I saw it out of the corner of my eye. I do not know if I could see it if I tried looking directly upon it, but it was out of the corner of my eye that I saw it and it was in the corner of my eye that it stayed.

It was in the outline of a woman. The figure of a woman. But it was just the outline. A stark white outline, like a chalk drawing done in the middle of the room. And inside the outline was...nothing. A blank white nothingness.

I stopped what I was doing and just waited. I waited for it to move, for it to walk forward on its nothing legs and reach out with its nothing arms. But it didn't. It didn't move at all. And I knew: this was the cause. The primal cause, the cause of all things. The conspiracy in the cracks, all of it.

This outline of nothing. This woman in white.

At that moment, I felt my fingers move without me. They sought release, to type words into a keyboard. I didn't want to move, but my fingers wanted to type, to write something out. Something wanted to be born in letters and sentences, but I was fixed in place. Finally, my hands found a pen and one wrote on the other with frantic scribblings.

I glanced down at my hand and then glanced back up, but the outline of the woman was gone. Or perhaps it was still there, but I could no longer see it.

I looked down at my hand again to see what my fingers had written. There were just two words and I, unfortunately, had no idea what they meant:

NEWCOMB'S PARADOX.

Chapter Five: Headache

I woke up with a raging headache. Something is wrong with my head. It feels like something is bursting to escape. If I split my head open, would Athena emerge, her helmet dripping with gore, her spear covered in gray matter?

I am seeing DEATH more and more. I don't know what to make of her. Is she an omen? Has the conspiracy finally decided that I am to be dealt with? If so, they are taking the slow approach. I can feel them creepy up on me in every rusty nail avoided, in every accident missed.

Is DEATH protecting me from the conspiracy? Am I supposed to do something? Am I supposed to accomplish something before I die? Before she takes my hand with her sharp fingers and leads me into whatever awaits on the other side?

The headache is getting worse. It's concentrating in my left ear now. A pain, an ache, a dull throb. And then it rises suddenly, like a spike in the side of my head. And I can feel it building up again, just waiting for that moment, that spike, when I will clutch my head and beg for the release of death.

i can feel it fingers myfingersaremoving icantstopthem

ON THE NAILS OF NORNS AND THE NIGHT-OWL'S BEAK

THE WOMAN IN WHITE WILL LET OUT A SHRIEK

THE FATE OF THE GODS SHALL BE UTTER AND BLEAK

AND THOUGH SHE IS DEAD SHE CAN STILL SPEAK

Chapter Four: DEATH

I can feel it building up in the air. Like a storm, exactly like a storm, except there is no way to predict where the lightning will strike or when or what will happen when it does. In fact, there may be no lightning at all. I can feel it building up in the air with no release in sight, suffocating me with portentousness, with ominous feelings. Like this is the END of the WORLD and EVERYTHING is going to BREAK DOWN into CHAOS. All of the BUILDINGS and STREETS and CARS and AIRPLANES will BREAK DOWN and people will FALL out of the SKY like DROPS of RAIN and

What am I saying? Why do I get like this? Is the conspiracy trying to make me insane or do I know about the conspiracy because I am insane? Where do I draw the line? How do I know certain things are real and certain things are not?

I have never seen the conspiracy at work. They perform their actions, work their miracles, behind everyone's backs, in the secret corners of the Earth. Not in alleyways, but in the offshoots of alleyways, in the hidden spaces no one knows.

But I have seen DEATH. DEATH is something different. DEATH is not a part of the conspiracy. DEATH is the only thing outside of the conspiracy, outside of everything.

As I walked to my car, after work, I saw DEATH.

She had fingers like knives.

Chapter Three: Names

I can't tell you my real name. Not the name I was given at birth, but my real name, the name the conspiracy gave me.

My boss's name is ROGER. My coworkers call him ROGER RABBIT, because he has overly large front teeth and a gorgeous wife. I cannot remember my coworkers' names. For one thing, they change every week. Not their names, but the coworkers themselves.

"What happened to GEORGE?" I would ask.

"Oh do you mean JIM? He was fired. I'm KEVIN."

Every week, out with the old, in with the new. In hindsight, I realized that this was due to the conspiracy, to make me uneasy, to make me unsure and insecure and look strange. So I stopped learning their names. No more GEORGEs or JIMs or KEVINs. Just RANDOM COWORKER NUMBER 2 or UNKNOWN PERSON 3.

As for the conspiracy, I do not believe it has a true name. It is, after all, INVISIBLE and VICIOUS and OLDER than words and REASON and has YEARNED for more than what we can give it.

I'm sorry. When I get nervous or excited, I tend to capitalize more and more words. Just a tic.

Chapter Two: The Conspiracy

What is the conspiracy? Who are the participants?

Well, that's simple. That's the easy part. Everyone is a member of the conspiracy. Everyone. Even you. You may not know it, but you are a part of the conspiracy to ruin my life. You are being manipulated at this very moment to bring about this conclusion. And it doesn't matter where I go, because it's the same everywhere.

Every single person on Earth is part of the conspiracy. Unknowingly recruited, used against their will, forgetting what they want forgotten, only remembering the bits and pieces of their lives that make sense.

The conspiracy lives in the cracks. The cracks in our memories, the cracks in our lives. Those moments when we can't remember what just happened, when we think we did something, but don't know what. We think "Oh, it must not have been important," but it was. It was important to the conspiracy.

I am a member of the conspiracy, too. How could I not be? I am normal. As everyone in the world is a member of the conspiracy, to be normal, I must also be a member.

And yet, somehow, I remembered. Perhaps that was why I became their target or perhaps I remembered because I was already their target. It does not matter. I remember now.

All those forgotten moments, those moments you think don't matter, those are the moments the conspiracy uses. You move something, you change something, and it effects things, which effect more things. A chain of cause and effect.

A butterfly flaps its wings and a hurricane happens.

You are the butterfly and the conspiracy makes you flap your wings when it wants a hurricane. Whenever it wants an accident to happen or an assassination or a regime change or a man's life ruined.

It is the gun and you are the bullet.

Chapter One: Normal

The conspiracy stepped up its game today. They turned up the volume on my alarm clock, so when I woke up, it was with a blaring headache. Clever bastards.

They also removed the last of my aspirin, so my headache stayed with me as I drove to work. Other things the conspiracy did: manipulated traffic lights to cause congestion, set up construction areas in certain streets, parked cars in certain parking spaces, and all to make me late for work.

You might think that this is overkill. After all, each one of those could have made me late; however, all three combined  were certain to make me late and make my boss impatient and irritable at me. I was one step closer to getting fired. Just like the conspiracy wanted.

I know what you are thinking. You are thinking: why is he so special that an entire conspiracy seeks to ruin his life? I am not special. I am, in fact, very ordinary.

And that's why they wish to ruin me. Not to kill me. They wish to bring me to ruin, to dismantle my life bit by bit, piece by piece, until I am left with nothing except the jagged edges of broken dreams. All because I had the audacity to be normal.

"Oh, you're just paranoid," you think. Of course I am paranoid. I have to be. I have to watch each step I take, each turn signal, each person I make eye contact with. I have to be careful or else I will make a mistake, one mistake, and then the conspiracy will take another piece of my life away. They did it a year ago, they will do it again.

I can't give away my name. I will just refer to myself as Norman (short for 'Normal Man'). Norman sounds good.

This is my story.

A Brown Bagged Manifesto

I am a reader at a publishing house. I read manuscripts day in and day out. You would think that's a pretty boring job, but I like it. I like reading. Sure, I get mainly stinkers, but every so often there is a jewel in the rough. I like finding those and sending them on to people who can polish them up and publish them.

I was working on Friday when the mailman dropped on the usual bundle of manuscripts for me - however, there was one that stuck out. The reason being that it had been mailed in a incredibly crumpled brown paper bag.

I opened the bag and removed the manuscript and began to read.

It is possibly the strangest thing I have ever read. And I love it. I know for a fact that no one here will publish it - it is just too out there - so I took it home and have decided that I will publish it online. The writer (who has remained anonymous) put a note on the first page releasing the entire document into the public domain, so I won't get into trouble.

In any case, the manuscript was called Paranoia: A Manifesto. And it begins like this:

The conspiracy stepped up its game today. They turned up the volume on my alarm clock, so when I woke up, it was with a blaring headache. Clever bastards.