Consultation 126.2

“Though I gathered quite a few people for Connect Four, it was nowhere near as many as what was required for Sudoku. I used live people who had both their arms and legs amputated for the yellow pieces. The red pieces were people I skinned and kept alive.”

“I set up a large grinder over the seven by six grid, it could freely move across the seven columns. The yellow pieces were directly dropped in the cells I chose while still alive. Each cell I placed my piece fit ten amputees. The red pieces were first tossed into the grinder alive before they entered the cell my opponent chose to drop his piece in. It took twenty ground-up people to fill up a red cell. Once the cell was filled up, if the red player placed their piece on top of mine, the amputees would drown to death in a mixture of ground-up flesh and blood.”

“The screams of the skinless red pieces were truly exquisite when they were ground down into mincemeat. Their screams mixed together beautifully with the sound of despairing pleas for God’s mercy from the amputees who drowned in the red pieces’ ground flesh and blood. Once the red player’s cell filled up, the top of those cells would close off to ensure the game pieces maintained their positions in the grid.”

“As for my opponent in the wonderful game I designed, I specifically selected the most innocent child I could find. I challenged him to this game of Connect Four and told him I’d spare his life if he won. The life draining from his eyes as the game progressed was truly a marvelous sight to behold.”

“Our little game started off with my move and the instant he saw what the pieces were, he immediately threw up. It was quite adorable, too cute really. He wanted to stop playing, but all it took was a little threat to make him continue with the game. If he didn’t want to play, he’d die and I’d force his family to play with me in his place.”

“It was amused as I watched his clumsy moves, he was awful at Connect Four. I dropped my first piece at the center column in the grid. I didn’t bother to connect three pieces in the bottom rows early on; rather, I blocked all of his moves to force him to play his pieces on top of mine. By doing this was able to bask in his torment and the musical screams in the background. “

“The first piece he’d played was on top of mine in the center column, but the instant he heard the screams and realized what the pieces were, he adopted a passive playstyle dropping his pieces to the sides to avoid mine. The agonized cries from the pieces had really affected his better judgment. I naturally didn’t let things end easily, I continued to toy with him and gradually pushed him further into a corner.”

“My final objective to concoct the perfect depiction of Connect Four was to set up a double win in the two rows at the top. I wanted the entire grid to be completely filled by the end of our game. His inability to play where he wanted because of the guilt from drowning the amputees made setting the game up to end that way a piece of cake.”

“Once we reached the mid-game, there was no way for him to avoid dropping his pieces on top of mine. By that point, there was truly no end to the agonized screams which filled the room.”

“One play after another, the light in his eyes diminished. If he’d played freely from the beginning, he could have potentially ended the game much sooner to minimize casualties through his win. Unfortunately, he couldn’t bring himself to be the one to end the amputees' lives. He was completely restricted, his body was shackled to the ground. He couldn’t fly away, he was nothing more than a pitiful caged bird whose feathers had been ruthlessly plucked.”

“When he was forced into a position with no other moves to make, he finally ended their lives one cell at a time. But by this point, it was already far too late for him to win. There was no way for him to connect four pieces and I’d already set up a double win in the top two rows by this point. He was forced to continue the game despite it being obvious he’d already lost. The fear of his own death forced him to continue prolonging it despite it being futile.”

“His mind broke down further with every futile move he made as he witnessed first hand his demise approaching evermore close by the second. As the last column filled up one cell at a time, alternating between red and yellow, hopeless tears filled his eyes. Despair as deep as the ocean radiated from every pore of his body. I relished in every second of it. It was truly indescribable ecstasy.”

“When the final piece was played, that poor child collapsed to the ground, no more remained than a lifeless husk of a corpse drained of all strength.”

“That was when I approached him with a wide smile and whispered in his ear, ‘You’re free to go.’”

“The look on his face was beyond anything I could have imagined, it was almost as good as when I committed Sudoku, but… it just wasn’t enough. I’d thought I could surpass Sudoku by allowing him to live on in this lifeless hollow shell form, but despite the amazing result it yielded, I wanted something more than just this. My thirst for art beyond Sudoku couldn’t be quenched even with a piece of this caliber. It was at that moment that I finally understood I had killer’s block.”

What the actual fuck? How the hell does this not satisfy her? What more could she even want? Killer’s block? What killer’s block! It sounds like you’re doing god damn fine to me! Did you come here because you just wanted to brag to someone about your work or something?

“God, I’m once again requesting your guidance. What can I do to overcome my killer’s block to reach new heights?”

“This might sound strange, but have you considered laying off on killing for a while?”

“Stop… killing? How would that help me? Shouldn’t I be killing even more than ever to overcome my killer’s block?”

“I understand your strong desire to create something superior to Sudoku, but don’t you think it’s your impatience to perform that’s holding you back?”

“My impatience?”

“Yes, typically after you complete something really good, it’s not uncommon to burn out. If you try to forcefully keep going after you reached that peak, what you create will end up shaky. It’s a result of burnout. You’ve exhausted your supply of emotions you put into that piece and you’re running on empty. At times like this, rather than trying to run on empty fumes and damage yourself in the process due to the pressure to perform, you should take a step back from it all. Take some time to slowly refuel on inspiration.”

“What you need now the most is to take in the world around you. As you create things, you exhaust the paths you can see at that present point in time, by exiting the cave you’ve dug you can research and survey the surroundings. By doing so, you will see new paths your creations can take with the new information available to you at a future point in time. When people are creating something, they often lose themselves in that process and forget about everything else.”

“Now that your fuel has been expended, it is time to forget about the thing you want to create and focus on all the other things you ignored while you were in your creation process. For you, I’d say watch some thriller or horror movies. Maybe some snuff films while you’re at it. They don’t even need to be particularly good as it’s often the poorly executed ideas that have the greatest potential to be improved upon. Take these ideas from others, innovate, and build upon them until what is born from what has inspired you is something completely new and never seen before.”

“These are the things you need to do to overcome your killer’s block.”

“Once you feel an intense desire to kill well up in you, only then might you be able to create a piece that will surpass all of your prior creations. But even with that strong feeling, you don’t need to rush into it. You should take your time. Start with smaller projects to establish a strong foundation in the early stages, then gradually work your way up to reach a new peak. Creation is a slow and lengthy process, trying to rush it never ends well.”

“It is only because you took your time with Sudoku that it turned out the way it did.”

“Hmm… I think I understand. It is as you said, completing Sudoku took much more time than my recent works. Only a few days to a few weeks to complete them while Sudoku took a year. It’s also true that I‘ve been overly engrossed in my work.”

“Good, now that you’ve been enlightened, please leave.” You’ve ruined yet another game for me and I’m pissed. I’ll never be able to look at Connect Four without associating the yellow pieces with amputees and red pieces with skinned ground-up corpses. I hope you’re happy, bitch.

Sudoku, jigsaw puzzles, The Game of Life, Monopoly, and Connect Four, create your own original game name and stop ruining the classics damn it! I can’t unsee these things you know!