Here I am, sitting at home, jotting down in my notebook potential areas and trials for my main character to go. I don’t have a name for him yet, so I just use a placeholder in the meantime. The first area that Little Timmy visits is a jungle filled with signs of a war-torn area that has been lost and forgotten to time. 

Now, what does Little Timmy do to get out of there? I’ve already written how he got into the place in the first three chapters. All I need now is the proper details of how he escapes and makes his way to the next trial. But then again, what trial awaits Little Timmy in the jungle? It could be plenty of things. The possibilities are endless. Some people would think that’s a good thing, but little do they realize that just ends up making it harder to choose.

Although this is a fantasy and I don’t have the time to flesh out an entire world, in a story with the structure I’m working with, I don’t need to flesh anything out. I can crank the absurdism so far high that as long as I keep the rules straight, then I can do almost anything. Again, that isn’t necessarily a positive.

But, as I’m sitting there thinking, I hear something whistle past my house. It was so sharp that it startled me enough to send my heart flying out of my chest. Literally, it’s right there on the floor. Or it could just be that I was startled so badly that I’m seeing things.

Suddenly, I heard someone walk on my porch, and my doorknob began turning. I could hear the lock turn, and the door opened. Harmony stepped inside and closed the door behind her, her shoulders slumped and demeanor looking pretty grim. I was about to ask how her day went, but then I saw her tail. I shouldn’t even be seeing her tail in the first place. It should be hidden where no one can see it, yet here it is, parading itself without a care in the world.

She turned to me after closing the door, and I saw her eyes were red from crying. That wasn’t just a guess either, since I could see tears streaming down her cheeks. She walked over to the chair opposite of me and sat down, pulling up her legs and hugging them. It was like I was looking at a baby through a pregnancy scanner.

The room was bathed in silence. The only thing making any sort of noise was the T.V. which was playing a rom com. Now’s not the perfect time for that, but I didn’t have time to turn it off, cause I’m still wrapping my brain around what’s happening now. 

“Are you really human?” The woman speaks, and with such a weird question?

I stand up for a second and pat my ass, but not feeling a tail. I roll my tongue along my teeth and don’t feel any type of fang. I’m not especially hairy either, so I’m not some kind of werewolf.

“I believe I’m human?” I sit back down and look at her, concerned. “Where did this come up from?” 

“Now, let’s say, hypothetically speaking, that someone you live with hates humans, but finds a specific few to be worth anything. Does that make them a bad person?” 

Well, there are a few things I think when I hear that. For one thing, a person being kind of racist, or in this case speciest, doesn’t necessarily make them bad as a whole, but it does make that certain aspect about them deplorable. What makes a person just or evil comes down to individual characteristics combining and forming a full person, not just one or two awful traits someone might have. I would know. I’ve written stories where the main characters are flawed good guys. Except the second one has a few more issues, but that’s the whole point of the story to begin with.

What something like that reminds me of is when racist people try to justify their racism by looking at a black man doing something helpful and then saying that they’re “one of the good ones.” It not only justifies their shitty behavior, but it also invalidates any criticism because they can just say that phrase anytime someone brings up that minorities aren’t just stereotypes.

“Does that make them a bad person?” Harmony repeated her question.

Truly, that is the question being asked here. Does that make them a bad person indeed? To be honest, I could care less because I already know the answer. Also, Harmony, I may be a dumbass, but I’m not ignorant. I know exactly who you mean in this hypothetical.

I told her exactly what I just thought to myself, leaving out the final bit. When I finished talking, she looked down at the ground, as if she were staring at her own reflection. That’s impossible cause this floor is dirty as shit. It’s been some time since that break in, and the place was already getting crowded with dust and junk again.

If only I could reach into the minds of people around me. Not only would I become a much better writer, but I could evade all the trouble of guessing what to say to people in a conversation. It’d also be easier to get laid if I could do that since I’d know what turns a woman on and which women want to have their way with me. 

I didn’t expect what came next. Tears fell from her eyes and splattered on the wooden floor. I thought what I said was supposed to help her smile again, not cause her more pain. But here she is, her frown widening and her tears raining on the miniscule bacteria crawling and multiplying on the floor. 

“So that’s the problem.” 

She stood up and stormed off to her room. I couldn’t see her face, but I could feel the sadness radiating off her.The door slammed so loud that my heart sank into the deepest reaches imaginable. How long has it been since I made a person cry? It’s been quite a long time since I last made someone cry. Whether it be on purpose or by accident, the reason was because of what I said and it weighed down on me. 

I need to make this right. I need a smile to appear on her face again. Whether it be for the sanity of my heart, or just to make her feel better, she needs to smile. If I can’t make the person closest to me smile, then how am I going to make the world grin in joy, celebration, and good tidings to come?

I stand and walk to her room. Standing in front of her door and raising my hand, I prepared myself to knock on her door. I could hear her crying from out here, and it tore me to shreds. I have to do what must be done. There has to be a smile on her face by the end of today.

As I went to knock on the door, I heard something loud crack inside the room. I gasp in surprise, caught off guard by the sudden loud noise. With zero hesitation left in my body, I open the door and leap into the room, ready to help with whatever just happened. 

As soon as I walk into the room, I get an eyeful of something I don’t think I was meant to see. Harmony looked at me as soon as I opened the door, and I could see something in her eyes. It was something that I’ve never seen in her eyes before. Correction, I have seen it, but she just hadn’t shown it often enough that it was hard for me to pin down the look she was giving. It was the same look that she gave at the rich side of the city as she stared at all the mansions and rich people homes passing by. It’s the pure anger that creeped into my muscles and forced my hair to stand on end.

I shut the door immediately and don’t look back, but my hair won’t quit standing. All of a sudden, I hear a buzzing next to my ear. I begin swatting at the fly, but it keeps darting out of range before I can hit it. 

***

I went to sleep like before, and I expected the normal dream that I’ve been having every single night for such a long time. The dream where I get closer and closer to the mountain that I want to climb, but everything wants to stop me from reaching it. I want that dream again, just to shove in its face that I can overcome the last obstacle in my path.

However, this is a different dream. This is a dream that I’ve never wanted to have. There are dreams that make everyone sweat with anxiety and make their hearts beat so quickly that they pass out and have that dream, anyway. For me, I despise dreaming of my past, a past that should be worth forgetting. 

I can see my mother’s face as she smiles at me. I’m a small child. Small enough to fit in her arms and suckle at her bosom for a meal that will feed me healthy milk that will improve my immune system. A mother’s breast milk will pass on immunities that the mother has to her child, helping humanity reach immortality. In thousands of years from now, will the human race be so immune that we really do become immune to death itself? Probably not, but it’s wishful thinking. 

She’s saying something, but I can barely hear it. It’s muffled and indistinguishable from hearing an alien robot making noises in movies. I could hear another voice, but they were also muffled and alien robot-like. However, I hate this voice, whereas my mother’s voice was lovely. I begin crying, just like the little baby I am.

I’ve grown up a bit now. My mother’s voice is still somewhat muffled, despite me being five years old by this point. I’m playing soccer with a few of my kindergarten friends, and although we were shit at it like most five-year-olds, we still had the time of our lives. I couldn’t hear my mother, but I could tell she was cheering for me.

It’s a bother that I can’t see her face. Before, I thought it was because I was a baby, but I still can’t see it. Where is the person that made me who I am?

I’ve grown up again, and I hear loud muffling in the kitchen. I don’t know what it’s coming from, but it’s growing even more intense by the second. Meanwhile, the T.V. is turned on to an interesting show that cultivated my interests of anime. In the show, a kid throws red and white balls to catch monsters then uses them to fight or whatever. 

The T.V. wasn’t filled with muffling, however. I could hear it quite clearly, actually. The main character was using his yellow mouse to fight a red crab, and it was glorious. It was the first time I’ve seen something so cool. A kid as old as I am is winning a championship that he spent nearly a year training for. I wanted to be like that kid. I want to be special.

Not a lot of time has passed. Only like a month or so passed by and I just watched the final episode of that season of the show. The kid lost, but he’s traveling to a whole new place and started his journey back from square one. If only I had the strength to do that. 

However, something else was happening. My mother is crying, hugging me close to her chest as tight as possible. She didn’t want to let me go, grabbing onto me for dear life, but she had to separate. She took herself away from me, but she grabbed onto my shoulders and looked into my eyes. For once, she isn’t blurry.

Her dark blond hair, her blue eyes, her face that said that no matter what horrid things could happen to us in the future, it wouldn’t matter, cause everything would be okay. As a child, I believed she was an invincible superhero, always making me and her friends smile when we’re down and times were tough.

She said something too, and unlike before, it wasn’t blurry.

“Please, Ty, whatever happens from here on, just know that I will always be here for you. Smile when the times are tough. Become-” 

Something happened, causing her head to jerk to my bedroom door. I don’t know what it was cause I couldn’t hear or see it, but I could see the fear on her face. She pushed me into my closet, and I fell into the darkness. 

Falling.

Falling.

Falling.

Falling. 

Down and down again.

Until I hit rock bottom.

And the darkness engulfed me.