Tiffany stabbed the final few scraps of eggs remaining on the plate. I could hear their screaming, even when they never opened their mouths. Eggs have mouths, believe it or not. It’s right there. That wrinkle that looks like a smile. It isn’t a wrinkle.

She brings the fork to my lips and I open my mouth willingly. She places the cold metal on my tongue and I chomp down. They were actually pretty delicious, all things considered. Their screams vibrated my cheeks, but the butter tasted way too good for me to stop chewing. I may need to use butter when cooking eggs next time. 

I savor the taste and swallow as Tiffany removes the fork from my mouth. The irony taste leaves, leaving only the taste of food behind. My stomach, now satiated, quiets and hides until dinner time when it will inevitably roar again.

“How was it?” Tiffany asks.

I stay quiet for a moment, but I know I can’t keep the silence forever. Who knows what’ll happen to me if I do?

“It was good.” I say. 

I wince as my head aches from my talking. A piece of cloth looped around my forehead, and I could feel a wetness at the back of my skull. Hopefully, the cloth she used isn’t dirty, otherwise, I’m not going to live to tell the tale about when I was kidnapped by a crazy chick. I can imagine it now. Gathering the wife and kids around the campfire, and I tell them how they shouldn’t walk home from a Wendy’s alone at night, then peer down an alleyway thinking that’s even slightly a good idea. Not my proudest of moments, but it won’t be the last. 

Am I being too optimistic? Probably, but someone needs to be in this cold void of space where the only evidence that I exist can easily be burnt away along with the ashes of civilization if the sun gets slightly too big. Now I have cosmic nihilism to deal with. Thank you, kidnapper.

“You’re welcome.”

“Okay, what?” I ask.

“For the food.”

I sit in silence and shake my head. Immediately, it begins pounding incessantly, and I regret my decision almost immediately. What fills in the time of almost and immediately is a very much pleasant sensation that is quickly replaced with pain. Then what happens directly after is even more pain. Isn’t being way too descriptive fun? 

“I think I’m losing it.”

Tiffany looks worried when she hears my words. “Do you need some medicine?”

“Nah, I’m good.” I say as my wrists burn from the tightness of the rope. “Nothing to worry about here.” 

She sighs to herself while clutching her chest. “Good. I thought I hit you too hard.”

“No. It was the right amount of hardness.”

She smiles as she picks up the plate and stands up. Either she missed the sarcasm in my voice, or she deliberately ignored it to cleanse her guilty conscience. It could be both, but I’m not going to ask that. Instead, I want to know something else.

“What made you such a big fan of me, anyway?”

Her eyes lit upand the plate fell from her hands. It cracked along the middle, but not enough to shatter like the last one. Bummer too cause then I could have gotten a second try if lady luck would be kind to me. 

“I’m so glad you asked.” She sat back down and pulled her chair up so close to the rolling table that it slammed right into my stomach. I grunt, and my eyes close naturally from the suddenness of the action. Once I open my eyes, I lean my head back sharply as she leans forward so close our noses almost touch. 

“It’s a tale as old as time.” Tiffany starts dramatically, waving her hand above her head as if tracing a rainbow. “A young maiden blessed with riches at a young age goes to a facility filled with many like her. There were other young maidens with much wealthier backgrounds. One was the daughter of a regional manager of a pie manufacturing company. Another was the daughter of the mayor of the very city they lived in.”

Once she finished with that idealized introduction, her face grew more somber and lost. “However, there was one maiden that attracted her the most. A young maiden who was simply the daughter of a rich man that was the CEO of a toilet paper company. They were the best of friends ever since they laid eyes on each other. Going through the school years, day after day.

“But then it began. Once they broke the barrier of child to teen, something began changing in the maiden’s friend. She started sneaking out, leaving the maiden by herself. Every time she returned, the sun was rising and her eyes were bloodshot from tiredness. She would tell stories of the people she met. There was a lot of talk about the brutish men of the city as she told her those perverted and nonsensical tales.”

As Tiffany went further and further into the story, her voice grew quieter and quieter. Once she reached the interesting section of the story, her voice stopped working. Her lips still moved, but no sound escaped, her words trapped within her mind. Her eyes constantly shifted to the farthest right corner of the room. Each time she looked at the corner, her body trembled more and more violently. 

I didn’t know what to make of what I was seeing. In my stories, I wrote about characters suffering from mental illnesses before. It’s the bread and butter of what I write. Lucas suffers from PTSD built up from his childhood, and the main character from Hikikomori suffers from several mental illnesses, all culminating into one messed up human being.

However, seeing the real thing in front of me taught me something. When someone heads deep inside their minds, and their brain destroys itself from the inside out, it’s never a large, dramatic affair. It’s a quiet and eerie spectacle of someone contemplating one’s existence, not only about their place in the universe, but their place within their own minds. Mental illnesses such as depression don’t come about due to a person not feeling welcome within the universe. It comes about because they don’t want to welcome themselves in their own flesh.

Tiffany’s breathing becomes increasingly ragged and unpredictable. Her chest moves in and out quickly as her eyes dart about the room. A battle hardened mind fights to keep the last of its morality and sanity in check, and it ends with a loud shout.

“Well then!” Tiffany shouts out of nowhere. “Everyone, shut up and let me get back to my story.” I wasn’t even speaking.

“So then the maiden grows up and heads to the library and picks out a book. Your book, Hikikomori, to be exact. She reads it and falls in love with the story. The world behaves just like the main character. He’s shallow, impulsive, and unknowing to the damage he causes onto others cause he only worries about himself. A delusional wretch like him isn’t just one person in real life, however, Everyone around me is nothing but a delusional idiot.”

She stares at me hard, a golden glow shining so brightly it blinds me. “Except you. You are the only one that understands this world for what it truly is. You and I are Maria, fighting against the world filled with Takeshi’s. But we both know that isn’t his real name. Say it with me. What is his name?”

I swallow the fear and nervousness resting in my throat. In turn, that turned my throat into a barren desert, begging for any moisture to cleanse it. 

“William Freeman.” I say the name that she wanted me to so desperately tell her.

She smiles, showing off perfectly glowing teeth. “That’s right. Freeman. Such an ironic name for someone that was never free to begin with. You are a master at writing, Ty. You are someone that people should aspire toward.” 

She finally moves away from me. I exhale all the built up air in my lungs and tears stream down my cheek. Her footsteps echo along the basement walls as she leaves me and heads up the stairs. Before she exits through the basement door, she yells one last thing down to me.

“You’re my hero, Ty Peon.”

The door closes shut, and I’m left by myself with my own intrusive thoughts. Why are thoughts so intrusive in the first place? Well, that’s because they’re our thoughts. Our thoughts are what make us the way that we are. A person filled with nothing but optimism won’t imagine the universe might one day become an empty void. That’s the nihilist’s job, and there are too many of them, anyway.

Then what am I thinking about? I’m thinking about thinking. Isn’t that obvious? How else am I talking to myself like this normally? Unless if this is all a part of someone else’s imagination and they think they’re clever for talking to themselves. If that’s the case, then they’re just crazy. 

“Will you just shut up for one second?”

Oh great, someone else looking into my brain.

“I am your brain, dumbass.”

Are you sure about that cause I don’t think you are. I can hear you clear as day. 

“For fuck’s sake. You’re not talking to yourself.”

“Huh.”

I look up and notice everything’s different. The basement disappears, leaving me sitting under a blue cloudless sky. The sound of water crashing against a stone surface makes its way to my ears, and it is positively beautiful. 

To my left, sitting next to me, Jessica is looking over the sea at the boats floating along the surface of the water. People fish along the side of the dock while others walk by without a care. The sun reflects on the surface of the water, nearly blinding me. 

“Why am I here in the first place?” 

“You don’t remember?” Jessica asks.

“I was talking aloud again?”

She stared at me with a look that screamed that she thought I was the dumbest man alive. She’s not wrong, but it still hurts when it’s pointed out directly. Like a fat person being called fat instead of plus sized. They know they’re unhealthy, but they don’t want to hear it. 

“I want you to stay away from Freya.” 

Now that got my attention. 

“The fuck you mean?” I don’t even attempt to hide the disdain in my voice. 

“You’re a bad influence on my sister. She may be a bit weird, but she’s a nice person.”

“And I’m not?” 

Jessica chuckled. “You’re really going to say that shit.”

“I can say it again if you want?”

She shook her head, almost in disbelief. However, I wasn’t lying when I said that I’d say it again. I am truly the nicest person in the world, and no one can tell me otherwise. If I want to say words, then say words I shall say until my voice gives out. 

“I don’t know what you said to my sister to make her fall so far for you, but if you are as good a person as you say you are, then you should stay away.” 

Jessica stood up and walked away. I didn’t look where she walked off to. Instead, I stared across the sea, wondering what piece of land I’d be staring at if I could look that far. 

The sound of waves of H2O crashing against the stone dock was the only thing I heard. Every other sound that wasn’t that of the crashing tides vanished from my mind. The sound of people chatting about a nice catch. The sound of a giant fish flopping about as it suffocates from the lack of breathable water. Even the sound of footsteps was drowned out by the waves. 

I inhaled and exhaled. I could also just say that I sighed, but that’s not clever enough. I’m a clever boy indeed. There’s no need for me to use cliche lines and overused phrases. I’m so clever I use I so much that I have no clue if I even has any meaning anymore. 

Straining my head to look at the surface of the water, I find my reflection looking back at me. What stared back at me was a man with a rag wrapped around his forehead and bags weighing down his eyes. That’s not me, however. I’m a young boy, sixteen years of age. Sophomore year is nearing its end and junior year is coming upon me faster and faster. This year will stay the same except as the last except for one thing. I’ll finally have someone that doesn’t see me as a Peon.

Jessica is right about me, to some extent. I’m not a good person. In fact, I’d call myself a genuinely trashy human being. She has every right to hate me as much as she does. Although, she’s not that good of a person either. The only time that harsh tongue of hers comes out to play is only when she’s with me. Otherwise, she’s the upbeat, peppy cheerleader that people read about in every teenage romance story. 

There is one thing she has wrong, though. I never said anything to Freya to make her fall for me. She was the one with all the words. I close my eyes, remembering those words that she said to me the first time we truly talked. It was around five months ago, and I remember those words clear as day. 

As the words bounce around in my head, I open my eyes and find myself somewhere else. I’m in a basement, staring at a table that was right up against my gut. All sense of time vanished. Day or night no longer exists. The only thing that I know that exists is this table and the single light that struggled to light up this tiny room.

I know it hasn’t even been a week since I was thrown down here. Hell, it might’ve even been less than a day. That didn’t matter. I was trapped down here for years as far as I was concerned, and that time will only get longer.