Nobody wanted to be my pillow that day. It was somewhat understandable as I bled considerably on my other pillow because of the long-lasting nosebleed, but it still hurt me nonetheless. I seriously needed someone to sleep together with me during the day as the calming sound of a heartbeat was quite good for resting.

In any case, I didn´t even want to rest too much as this would be quite fatal in its own way. I knew that, and yet, my drowsy state made it incredibly hard to stay awake. Even though I tried to keep my eyes open the whole time, I noticed my concentration, or whatever was left of it, slipping away more and more.

I feared what may come. I was already imagining all the horrible scenarios in my head that could happen because I may or may not have broken yet another promise I made Aska. Even though I did nothing wrong in my opinion as asking the whore to intrude into my mind wasn’t exactly sex in my opinion, but it was incredibly close to it. Aska would be furious, no doubt about this.

But I did have an easy solution at hand. I just needed to stay awake for a bit over a year or so and he would have surely forgotten it. At least, that was my hope.

My condition made this endeavour incredibly hard though. The headaches alone blasted through my head as if there was no tomorrow, the dizziness and drowsiness were just an extra. Thus, it was no wonder as my eyelids shut close on midday and I finally drifted into my long overdue sleep.

What awaited me in my dreams, or whatever happened to my soul, wasn´t Aska though. I found myself in my mind space again. Every memory I had was neatly stacked on countless shelves, ordered by their time of creation. For a few minutes, nothing happened at I strolled through my library of memories, no water dripped from the ceiling, no books flew in my face.

Curiously enough, my subcounsciousness didn’t act up when I drugged myself as much as I could, which was hilariously on its own, but also quite beneficial to me as I could finally wander around undisturbed, opening books with long forgotten memories and watching them in peace.

Take this memory for example where I was still relatively young and we lived in our old house.

“Aska, what does ‘The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree mean?’ “ I sat on his lap in the bed, reading a book about idoms.

“Hmm … it means that you and I are similar.” Similar … huh? Back then, I didn’t know what he was implying but around this time at the latest, my suspiciouns grew that we weren’t just roughly similar, but rather incredibly similar to each other. The way he brought me up was exactly as I would do it. Harsh and without any room for error. It may have been exactly this education that led me to becoming who I was, but I couldn’t explain other notable facts due to that alone. Our way of thinking was exactly the same for example.

The only differences I could make out between me and him in our behaviour, were exactly the things he made me learn. He couldn’t cook, I could. And that´s where it basically ended.

Sighing, I stood up and threw the book away, as far as I could. Even these good memories had a slightly negative connotation to them. Swiftly, I decided to stop wasting my time and actually search for this weird altar with the book. Exactly at that moment, it all started to go haywire.

At first, I didn’t notice anything, except for a slight change in the atmosphere. It felt a bit more humid than previously. As I looked upwards though, I couldn’t find the expected torrent of water, splashing down on me, but rather a perfectly normal ceiling. A bit weirded out, I walked onwards, still looking around, mostly towards the ceiling.

It was a ruse. A ruse by myself and I fell for it. The humidity wasn’t what was supposed to stop me with time, but rather a tool to distract me.

At first, it was only one book that hit me as I stared at the ceiling, completely oblivious to the changes around me. It flew completely silently through the air and hit me on my chin. My head yanked backwards by the force, nearly toppling me over.

“For fucks sake.” I shouted after regaining my balance. The book laid in front of me, unmoving and seemingly innocent. One look at the date of creation showed me it was merely twenty years old, so there shouldn’t be anything I forgot in there. As such, I grabbed the book and flung it away as far as I could, mere seconds before the next book flew towards me from my side. Annoyed, and knowing full well this wouldn’t end with a few books, I started to sprint away from it, hoping to dodge it in the process.

I should have been fast enough, but the book still slammed into my side. I yelped as my internal organs were squished underneath the pressure, but still proceeded to run away. The next book I noticed revealed what was really going on here. Its trajectory arced, heading right towards me, no matter if I stood still, or sprinted on.

“Homing books? You got to be kidding me.” I exclaimed and caught the book out of the air which was surprisingly easy. I discarded the book swiftly, only to realize that it started homing onto me again, heading upwards from the ground with a force to be reconed with. I caught it once more, just before it hit my jaw. This time, it pressed onwards and followed my head as I stepped backwards.

“What the fuck do you want?” I asked, already imagining how I was squished beneath a bunch of these. Surprisingly though, the book gave up a few seconds afterwards and spun downwards slowly. It landed on its back and presented me the title, which was a date thirty years in the past.

Wary, I stood there for a few seconds, but as I couldn’t find any more aggressive books, I picked up the one on the ground and inspected it. The black cover was fairly standard for my memories, to there was nothing unsuspicious directly. As I opened it though, I was a bit confused.

The boxes which usually held my memories were completely black.

“Okay, sleep is recorded in these books, so what?” I asked loudly, making the book in my hands strangely angry. It flapped with its pages wildly and started to fly away from me, leaving me flabberghasted behind. My subconsciousness was kind of weird.

I strolled onwards, hoping to find the altar once again. Instead of finding it though, I was soon hit by another book on the back of my head.

“Hey!” I shouted angrily and rubbed the place it hit wildly. The book, laying on the ground with equally black boxes, didn´t move at all anymore.

“What do you want?” I asked, slightly furious and picked it up. I stared at this book even closer and flipped a few pages. Only then did I notice how my thumb was completely black with ink. Something strange was going on there, that was for sure.

Out of curiosity, I went over one box with my thumb and noticed how the memory behind it started to appear. I just wanted to start with the second time of rubbing my thumb over the page, just wanted to reveal a bit more of this still obscured memory as the world around me turned black.

“You wanted to talk to me?” asked Aska, already sitting behind me. Strangely furious, I twirled around and walked towards him, sat down on the sole furniture in this strange room, a white table, and balled my hands into fists.

“Not right now, to be honest. I had a great dream about pandas.” I explained and relaxed considerably. The timing was odd, true, but it didn´t necessarily have to mean he knew I was close to uncovering a secret. I didn´t even know what secret it was as the only information I could grasp from the line I cleared of this ink was that this memory happened inside a room.

“I heard pandas a sex grouches.” He said, directly going to the topic I really didn´t want to talk about.

“True …” I answered, trailing off into the distance with my voice. “Have you heard?”

“That you are a millionaire now? Congratulations!” Like I said, we knew quite well how the other worked.

“Yeah, they say the first million is always the hardest, but it was surprisingly easy.” I claimed and placed my index finger on my cheek.

“Hmm … don’t listen to them, I made my first million at the age of three.” Quite an achievement, I dare say.

“Oh?” I asked, quite intruieged about the story behind it.

“Turning a whole planet into gold to eradicate everyone on it was honestly hilarious. You should have seen the face of the goddess of life.” Well, I could imagine her contorted face perfectly well. On the other hand, I also knew what was coming next. “So … want some cookies?”

That was honestly a bit surprising. I expected some kind of punishment and definitely not the bowl of cookies right in front of me. I took one and slowly placed it into my mouth as I had no other choice anyway. The moment it touched my tounge, I immediately spat it out again in disgust. It wasn’t poisoned, it didn´t hurt me, it just tasted bland.

“Your food is shit.” I stated, trying to get the last crumbs out of my mouth.

“Can you make me some?” If I would live together with him, sure. If he would tell me anything about these blackened memories, sure. If he would spill the beans about the mysterious book on the altar, sure. But like this?

“I´m not your housewife.” I said and shook my head. He would have to offer something for a few cookies.

“Hmm … how about I forget what happened?” I nodded virgourously, saluted and turned to the kitchen appearing a few metres away from me. It was either making cookies or torture, it was obvious what I would take.