#its giving i took the bus down from the station now im in the woods. . . vibes

[thanatoseyes]

I'm still trying to figure out what chaos magic is. . .

[f-724-morty-blog]

724 Journal Entry 001

724 Journal Entry 001

[A series of 724′s journal entries following his Rick’s death. Consider this a consolation prize until Im well enough to draw again. I hope you all enjoy!]

I feel numb. It’s been a few weeks since Rick...passed, and the whole world feels fake. Summer said I should try writing things out, to help process or whatever. I don’t know if it’ll actually work, but why the fuck not, right? It’s not like I can talk to anyone about it. Whenever I try my throat closes up and I feel like I’m drowning.

She bought me the journal, anyways, so I might as well use it. I’ll try and recount as much as I can as accurately as I can. This part isn’t just for me, this is for Rick, so someone will always remember what happened to him. That even after all the wrong he did, he died a hero.

Rick died saving my life.

___

“M-oUGHRty, g-get dressed, Morty, we gotta go to Pouirte N-683 th-they just opened the pl-AUGHnet again, we, we can finally get this crazy rare substance, Morty, a-and I can synthesize it into a serum that’ll let me, just, just rearrange genomes like nothing you’ve ever seen!”

Morty scrambled out of bed, glancing at his alarm clock as he frantically yanked on a pair of jeans. “B-but Rick, I-I-I’ve seen you m-mani-manip-mess with genomes before, s-so what makes this so special?”

Rick looked manic, pacing the room and throwing his arms about wildly as he spoke. “Th-this stuff makes it so much easier, Morty, wh-when I do it from scratch i-its just overly complicated and fr-uAGH-strating. A-and this, i-it creates new stem cells, Morty, y-you know the kind that can become a-anything, the ones that b-become your whole body when y-y-ou’re in the womb, and look, theres, there’s a lot of complicated science stuff, b-but basically I can reprogram y-your body as if it were still developing and change your appearance and all kinds of stuff Morty, all kinds of science!”

Morty’s shirt was half way on when Rick grabbed his elbow and yanked him out the door, the boy stumbling after him as he struggled with the fabric. “O-oh jeez, Rick, I-I-I dunno if I want y-you to mess with my, my appearance, I think I like-”

“M-oURty we all know y-you’re insecure as fuck, just, just get in the car, Morty, I-I can always reverse it i-if you don’t like it,” He plopped into the drivers seat, kicking a few empty bottles out onto the floor and fumbling with the seatbelt. Morty finally yanked his shirt on properly and went to his place in the passenger seat.

As apprehensive as Morty was to have his genome fiddled with, he hadn’t seen Rick this excited in a while, and the scientist’s mood was infectious. He was only about half as condescending as usual, more willing to pal around and joke as he explained some of the ins and outs of this ‘rare substance.’ Although he didn’t quite understand most of what Rick said, his enthusiasm was warming, and their flight through space was a pleasant one.

“A-alright Morty, Pouirte is, it’s probably one of the safer p-places we’ve visited, there’s no biological land-mines o-or governments who hate me,” Rick said, landing the ship in a vacant parking place.

“R-really, Rick? You mean you haven’t p-pissed off their government yet?”

“Nope,” Rick replied, exiting the vehicle. “W-well, I did, but then the wh-OAUle planet had a Civil war, a-a-and all the old governments were dismantled. So I haven’t pissed off the new government yet.”

Morty chuckled nervously, following Rick out of the car and down the alien streets. The sky here was a light, dusky purple, only a few shades darker than Earth’s blue, and currently dusted with wispy clouds. The city around them was reminiscent of one on the east coast, parts of it clearly unplanned and much older than the more modern landing pads and sky scrapers. Its buildings were made of some sort of shimmering, cobalt material, reflecting the sunlight and neon signs subtly.

Rick, as usual, was unphased by the stunning visuals, and kept up a brisk pace through the winding city streets. “S-so, Rick, where are we going, t-to find this stuff?”

“W-we’re taking this planet’s equivalent to a, a bu-URRP-llet train t-to a nature preserve,” Rick replied, taking a swig from his flask and glancing at a few street signs. The language was unintelligible to Morty, but he’d seen Rick read so much alien nonsense that he figured he had some sort of translator like, built into his eyes or something.

“R-rick! W-w-what the hell, we, we can’t do that! N-n-nature preserves, they, they preserve nature, Rick! W-we might seriously screw things up!” Morty yelped, tugging at Rick’s sleeve.

“Sh-shut up, Morty,” Rick hissed, elbowing his grandson in the ribs as the mounted the stairs to what he presumed was the train station. “This stuff lit-literal-, it makes areas uninhabitable, Morty, i-it makes your biology unstable if you’re exposed to the unprocessed version. A-any animals near it b-basically get cancer, a-a-and any babies they have are born horribly mutated, Morty, we, we’re pretty much doing them a favor.” Rick passed an alien currency over the counter and retrieved two blue stickers, one of which he slapped onto Morty’s chest.

“O-oh jeez, Rick, are you sure?” Morty was apprehensive; this wouldn’t be the first time Rick had lied to make him go along with things.

“O-of course I am, when am I ever wrong?” Rick rolled his eyes.

“Lots of times, Rick! Y-you make mistakes, just-just like everyone else,” Morty retorted.

Rick just glared and proceeded to stride onto a large blue train, forcing Morty to either follow or be left behind. He followed.

When comparing the trains’ speed, ‘bullet’ was an understatement. Morty couldn’t look out the window for more than a few seconds before he became dizzy, the landscape flying by too fast to pick up any real details, only a blur of purples, blues, and oranges. Eventually he gave up trying to pick anything up, and turned his attention to the other train riders. Usually, the aliens he saw most often on a planet were the natives, and so far the planet was abundant with tall, centaur-esque creatures, their skin a golden brown and dusted with deep, sunset orange freckles. The upper torso supported a head resembling a giraffes, with two large black eyes and four curved horns sprouting from where the eyebrows would be. The ‘taur half had six spindly legs, jointed like a horses would be but evoking a more spider-y feeling. They wore long skirts, buttoned at the upper torso’s waist and laying across the back to drape around the rump and six limbs. Morty was fairly fascinated with alien life, and while he’d seen some much more bizzare and alarming creatures, this planet’s inhabitants were just as interesting, and their sunset colors struck a chord of beauty. When he had first started his adventures with Rick, they would’ve felt like monsters to him, but over the years he had ditched the ‘planetary mindset,’ as Rick put it, and was learning to appreciate all the variety in the endless multiverse presented to him.

After a moment he glanced away from the alien across from him; he didn’t know if they considered staring rude, but he didn’t want to risk it. Their pointed, spider-toe feet would probably slice open his flesh like a fillet knife if he upset them.

The train shuddered to a stop, and despite the obvious attempt at gradual braking, the riders almost all lurched forward. Morty had to scramble for purchase, and Rick, who had a firm hold on the railing overhead, grabbed him by the back of his shirt collar to stop him tumbling forward.

They exited at another station, this one surrounded by wilderness rather than city. Based on the nature-y vibes, one could assume this was the welcome center for the reserve, or park...whatever it was. Rick bypassed the gift shop and waltzed straight out the door, over the parking lot, and into the woods.

Morty scampered after him, chewing his lip nervously. They had forgone any pathways, instead descending directly into the mire. That was the closest thing he could approximate the ground here to; a mire. It was soft and spongy underfoot, sinking a good half-inch with each step and filling their footprints with greenish liquid. The reddish purple earth was host to a strange plant, one that grew like a net over the ground, thin orange vines interwoven loosely enough to show the soil beneath. The closest approximation to trees were huge pires of dirt, seemingly trained upward by a dark blue ropey plant, which grew around the pillars in a spiral and blossomed into long dangling ‘branches’ at the top with translucent ballon-esque flowers. Deeper in, creamy tan ‘ferns’ began to shoot up in spaces between the suffocating orange vines, soon joined by tall blue flowering plants. The further they went the more variety there was, until it was a dense jungle all around.

“S-so, uh, wh-what are we looking for here, Rick?” Morty stammered, trailing his fingers over a silky flower petal.

“D-don’t w-UURP-orry about it, Morty, we, we’re almost there, thi-is device,” he holds up a remote-sized device with a simple screen, “I-is leading us right to it.”

“O-oh, okay, th-that’s really cool, Rick,” Morty replied, jogging a bit to catch up. His shoes kept getting sucked into the earth, and his shorter strides caused him to fall behind. Rick mumbled something incoherent and took a swig from his flask.

Time passed, the jungle grew denser, and Morty sweatier. What had started as a leisurely walk was now a multi-mile hike that he was ill prepared for. The mire was becoming steep, craggy hills, and he could barely keep up. How Rick, his sixty year old grandpa, could do this so effortlessly was beyond him.

“Aw hell yes,” Rick stopped suddenly, and Morty stumbled over himself trying not to knock into his grandfather. “C-come on Morty quit fooling around, we, we’re here, we gotta drill down right here.”

“R-rick, shouldn’t we be wearing, like, hazmat suits or something? Y-you, you said this stuff b-basically gives you cancer!”

Rick rolled his eyes and rummaged through the seemingly endless pockets of his lab coat. “M-morty trust me, you, you’ve probably already got cancer, it’s fine. But!” He cut Morty off before he could panic. “I-Im already going to be messing with y-your genes, I can just repair any damage, easy.”

“O-oh, jeez, okay Rick, i-if you say so,” Morty stammered. Now he could be glad that the hike was over, and he quickly sat down on the rock to catch his breath.

Rick shoved his detection device into a pocket, and produced a small, black bullet, which he placed on the ground point-down. The black casing clicked open, revealing a sturdy metal interior, and a nozzle on the top. Rick attached a small hose, pressed a button, and it quickly whirred down into the earth, spitting up multicolored dirt in its wake.

After a moment, a black, murky liquid began to flow up the hose and into a canister Rick placed on the ground. “All that’s left to do now, Morty, i-is wait, a-and then we, we can do am-URP-amazing things with this stuff.” Rick grinned, reclining on the rock beside Morty.

It was rare for things to be so low-key; Rick was relaxed, like this couldn’t possibly go wrong, and that put Morty on edge. But then Rick’s hand found his, fingers intertwined. He looked up and Rick smiled, a rare, affectionate expression as he looked at Morty.  Morty blushed and smiled back shyly.

The old scientist kissed his forehead quickly, and then reclined again, gazing up at the alien sky while his companion blushed furiously beside him and the machine whirred away in the background. Morty bit his lip and grinned, tipping his head back to watch the sky with him.

___

Fuck. I’m crying again, I have to stop. I’ll try again tomorrow, I guess. I’m sorry Rick.

[chipsanddespair]

{Go to Part 1} {Go to Part III}

A good man

Youre a good man, David said, But youre too generous for your own good. You let people use you.

Chris couldnt respond because what he wanted to do was scream, No. No you are wrong. You dont see. I am not agood man. But it was no use, it never was. Goodness and generosity. Kindness. How many times had he had to listen to himself described in those terms? Everyone had decided that he was good and kind and they were blind and deaf to anything other than confirmation of his goodness and kindness. His attempts to protest his ordinariness were not so much dismissed as co-opted as proof of his saintliness.

And it wasnt just goodness and kindness. Tell people that he was a lawyer and immediately he was a legal eagle. Tell them he liked to sit down at the piano and he became an accomplished pianist. Try his hand at writing and he became Chris, the Great Writer. Tell them that he was proud of his children and he was branded as the perfect parent.

Was that so bad? He had asked himself many times. Surely, it was better to be thought well of? Some people might consider it ungrateful, arrogant even, to reject the worlds assessment in favour of his own. Anyway, people saw what they wanted to see. If that was what they saw, or thought they saw, was it his problem?

The answer, he knew, was yes. Tempting as the argument was, it ignored the burden that fell on him as a consequence. His whole life until now seemed to have been devoted to propping up the image that people had of him. Because they would not have it any other way, that was the image he had to maintain. He had become, if not the embodiment of a lie, then a character in a play that could not end because the audience would not allow the curtain to fall.

And it had all begun, he was certain, with the dream of making a model to impress his mum and dad and his teacher. A dream made of balsa wood. A simple dream begun with utter confidence but one that proved as hopeless at it was flimsy. But a dream that could not be seen to fail.

*****

There had been no hesitation about the deception once it had formed in his mind. He thought about that much later on in life when he was remembering how it all started. No Jiminy Cricket alighted on his shoulder to give him a ticking off. No miniature Chris in white robes and halo. It was the only solution. He could not meet the expectations he needed them to have of him. He could not let them down by showing them how far short he had fallen. Better to show them nothing. Let them fill in the undrawn canvas. The only question was how. And now, at this distance, fifty years on, he found that, to a degree, he could admire the almost effortless shift in planning from making the perfect model car to creating a perfect lie. Time, and his forty years experience as a servant of politicians, had made him cynical and cynicism had given his thinking nuance, the ability to recognise something as awful and yet to appreciate the cleverness of it.

But time had not drained the shame. That first terrible encounter with the thought that he was not as good as he needed to be, had sent a shock through him so intense, so visceral that each time it resurfaced he had to clench his fists and slam the door on it in his mind. Sometimes, the need to shut it out provoked an actual howl that he had quickly to stifle in case the company he was in should think him in pain or mad. And it was no longer alone. Many more had joined its ranks and sat on the walls as he walked down the streets of his life, taunting, calling out the worst obscenities imaginable. Useless fuck. Tosser. They broke into his house and stood around his bed as he tried to sleep chanting failure, failure, youre rubbish, mate, until he feared that the neighbours and his family would hear and realise the truth about him. They followed him into work and sat in front of the screen when he was trying to read some dense legal judgment reminding him that he was not clever enough to understand it. They followed him into the pub and whispered to him that his friends there would shun him if they knew.

Knew what?

Objectively he was a success. Objectively he had done well. But according to his own assessment it was unmerited. He was a fraud. A fraud trapped within his own scam, forced each day to perpetuate the lie of his worthiness by the insistent self-deception of those around him. Maybe not an actor, no, more like a conjuror required to keep pretending to pull coloured silks from his mouth because the audience, believing him to be a real magician, would not let the trick end.

*****

One lie, done to save face, had set the pattern for another and another. It was like when you had boarded the wrong train, which was now rolling through the countryside, and all you could do was look out of the window and let it carry you on. The train Chris had boarded took him away from his home station of truthfulness and diligence to deception and disguise. The gentle but relentless motion of the train and the passing landscape through which he was carried, remote and indifferent to his existence, gave his lulled mind space to admit a new and awful thought: that you didnt have to stand and face your failures. You could leave them behind, just by keeping the momentum going, and just as long as you didnt force the people who stood in judgment over you to question the good impression they had of you.

It was a thought that came wrapped as the present of comfort but something about its slipperiness and the way it seemed to change shape as he tried to look at it made him feel queasy. Everything about his life up to now had seemed solid and dependable, based around standards of integrity as ancient and unyielding as monoliths. His Mum and Dad had made it plain that they expected nothing less from him. He must not be as others were, sloppy minded and careless of the value of honest dealing.

But all that was back there, at home, out of view. He wanted to stop, to go back. But the train was in motion and the ticket in his hand was for a one way journey and somehow he already knew that the gift he had been given, this brazen insight, was something that he would have to carry with him, concealed, all his life. And with that, anxiety, a feeling he had not known until he tried to build his dream car, welled up again inside his stomach and churned and burned like an acidic hunger.

*****

At the grammar school, Chris found himself alone, buffeted and mocked by boys tougher than he was, beaten in class by people who were brighter than he was and knew more than he did, humiliated on the rugby pitch and on the athletics field and in the swimming pool. Each day he could feel himself shrivelling inside. He wanted to cry, to howl out his misery but he knew that any slight display of weakness would be caught and picked on. He wanted to run away but he couldnt let his parents down. He couldnt let them see him defeated. It couldnt be his failure.

His stomach began to hurt again. It wasnt much but it was enough to make a start.

Yes, Hatch?

Please, sir, I dont feel well. I think Im going to be sick.

Take yourself to the office, boy.

And on the way to the office, he found he had induced a cold sweat. He heard himself sounding disorientated. He hadnt intended it but some part of his brain had taken over the task of lending authenticity to his ploy. And in moments he had his permission to go home. He checked himself from showing any sign of pleasure or relief and by the time the bus came he almost believed that he was ill. And his mother received him with concern, put him to bed, brought him hot milk and honey.

In time, he could set himself off within the space taken up by the first hymn of Assembly.

His schoolwork suffered. It wasnt just the missed days. It was the homework not done because he was afraid of committing to paper and risking the red crosses and starkly scrawled admonitions that showed he had got something wrong. It was the books he couldnt concentrate on because he was afraid he wouldnt be able to make sense of the words. It was the times when the teacher asked if anyone needed something explained and his hand remained down because to raise it would risk admitting that he didnt understand. But, as if to confirm the rules of his ordeal, just as it had been with the balsa wood car, none of this brought investigation or judgment or punishment. At worst, an end-of-year report would say disappointing, or could try harder. And nobody asked him what was wrong.

He lived his days now in a fog of terrifying unhappiness and fear and his nights chasing away dreams filled with anxieties and recriminations. He felt a drenching cold loneliness even in company but still he must perform for those around him. This was his punishment, his penance. Every day he rose and put on the make-up of a dutiful, sensible schoolboy and went out onto the stage to play his part. It was all they wanted of him. His teachers would speak positively about him and his parents would lap it up. Because, he realised, they were not looking at him at all. They were looking at the image he had created for them, the image of a boy he had once learned to be to gain the grown-ups approval, quiet, well-spoken, polite. It was what they wanted to see and they could not, did not want to, see behind it to the tired and frightened child anxiously holding up the mask for them to admire.

Once, just once, Chris tried to talk to his mother about the sadness and anxiety that he felt inside. She shut him down in an instant. Nobody wants to know, Christopher. Christopher. The name she reserved for when she was displeased.

At the time it had seemed so cruel. Only later, when he had come to understand his own condition, did it dawn on him that she had been chiding herself, not him.

Failure succeeded failure, each one dressed as success. His O and A levels a mess. A poor degree. A poor showing in his Bar examinations. A worthless pupillage. And then, when it was plain that he could not sustain himself at the Bar, a civil service job that owed much to his fathers reputation and had the approval of his mother.

He wanted so much to do well but his mind was so wrapped in its own misery that it would not support him. And the world would only accept the version of him that he had painted for their pleasure. Heres the house, heres the door in the middle, here are the windows, two up two down, heres the chimney and heres the smoke. And heres Mummy and Daddy and heres grown up Chris immaculate in his suit and shiny shoes. See how the sun shines on his smiling face. He is a success. He is happy.

To Part III - Happy