#knowing that dark chips are a drug allegory… i don’t think this is far off…

[ariaofsorrows]

LEAN CHIPS!?!?!?!?!?

[bluepenguinstories]

Happiness Overload Chapter Sixty-Three

Right as rain, skipper!

I liked my eggs over easy and my people with bones intact. Actually, I think I had it the other way around. People were much better boneless, easier to get to the meat, and eggs always tasted better a little crunchy. But then again, I could have been thinking of salmon.

“So long, and thanks for all the…” Ah, a song of ancient times. I began to hum it to myself as I made my way to meet my date halfway. Such a long time spent in my cave, I began to feel a bit like an allegory for Plato. Or Prometheus if he never did that party trick with fire. But at last I could stretch my legs, and my legs could stretch as far as I allowed them to. Sometimes I thought that if I was a little more boneless, I could be less stretchy. That would have been a goal of mine at some point in time. Maybe in an alternate universe.

But now I had a different goal. One far greater.

“Frankly, my damn, I don’t give a dear,” I chuckled, hands in my pockets. That chuckle soon erupted further. Then I realized that the core of the planet, like ice cream in the middle of a store bought mochi, was what dog owners liked to call “real excitable”.

I didn’t have much time left. Nor did the planet. Neither of those variables were relevant. I’ve been holding the thing together, the same thing I helped destroy, all so I could get a bite in before the cookie crumbles.

Each step was slow and hesitant.

What did I have to fear? Such a good question, and maybe it was the Blanc in me who felt that way. When I say that, what I mean is all of me. I know, confusing. Just like how it all escalated so far, and for whatever reason, I chose to descend below the earth.

Well, if it were to end, I wanted to go out as human. Not because I disliked being part of something which had brought so much joy to my life, far from it. Rather, I wanted my last moment to be beside Euphoria, not us as one. I knew that wasn’t entirely possible, but my current state was something close to that. I felt like such a thought made me sad, but in a happy way. Unable to see the sad, we agreed to do what we could.

Besides, whoever the other living soul was who wanted me to see the end with them, they probably didn’t want to be frightened with the idea of me acting so happy go lucky in such an alien manner.

“Oh, but could you imagine?” I laughed to myself. It felt so hollow. There was genuine emotion, but there were more than just happy feelings behind it. Maybe, just maybe, the reality had dawned on me. Not so much that it was the end of the world just because the world was ending, but yeah. I felt it.

Heaviness with each step. As if my feet had turned to cement blocks. It was really here, wasn’t it?

Total darkness as I descended, stone and soil mingled together as they both crumbled above me. Little pieces fell on my head. If I was more euphoric, I would have made the debris fall everywhere but on me. But I accepted it, just like I accepted my situation. As much as I could, anyway.

Yes, I really did feel the weight of the world.

Such a large stone, hydrated and covered in land formations. In my indifferent, but infinite knowledge (if it made me happier to know something), the best I could compare the planet, my home, to was a parfait.

I gulped. In equal measure to the darkness, it was just as difficult to feel my way around. There were insects on the walls. What little life there was, and it just had to be the sort of things that freaked me out. Oh joy.

These stairs… I wondered. Were they crafted by someone, created as a path by Earth itself, or did they appear as a manifestation from my guardian angel?

Almost as if it were scripted to happen, I slipped and fell a few steps down. Each step scraped against my legs, and the pain surged. Something I had missed. Something I shouldn’t have wanted to miss.

“God damn, I’m so stupid,” I muttered. My voice trailed into an echo, as if other voices circled around me. Whole congregations chanting of my foolishness. Even more foolish, I refused to try and pick myself back up. The pain was minor, just scratches at best. But it was the culmination of both what and wasn’t around me.

It seemed to me like there really were voices. Whispers and chants. Speaking nothing, or maybe having conversations with each other. All of those people who lived on the surface, some sort of surface, and spoke of their routines. Crowded streets in cities. Towns of less than a thousand people as one neighbor greets another. That college student who talked to themselves over how much they dreaded each day and would rather stay in and play video games and forget that the world existed.

...That last one was more personal.

None of those voices existed. The only sounds were of the earth as it gave little quakes and the crumbling sounds from above. Little squeaky sounds from the creepy crawlers. There were no more people going on about their day. There wasn’t so much of a day to go on about. There were just moments. Immeasurable. Brief and endless.

I leaned forward and huddled my head into my knees. The tears came without me having to force them.

“This is why...this is why I depend on you so much…” I wept. I once likened the feeling of being one with happiness to like a drug, so it would make sense to think that I was experiencing some sort of withdrawal. But no. That wasn’t it.

It was the situation. How I came to be where I was.

That I lived on such a tiny fragment of this fucked up sphere (sorry-not-sorry flat earthers) for such a fragment of time. Less than a speck when compared to the life of this who-gives-a-shit planet. What good did it ever do me to live on it, anyway? It was always in a state of decay due to the decisions of the greedy and powerful, so maybe a quick death was better.

If I thought about how long I lived, as a copy of some other bloke with the exact name and face as me, it would only have been a little more than four years. In that time, several extraordinary things happened, and I got to experience much more than I ever thought I would have. I got to meet stoner aliens and time travel and meet all sorts of friends. None of that would have been possible if not for the circumstances that befell me.

But what I remembered of my life went beyond that. I remembered myself as someone who lived twenty years longer than I did. Someone named Blanc Slait. Even if that name could have been a further fabrication due to Etna’s memory interference, I believed I would have picked a name like that anyway.

My life consisted of confusion in the face of the world around me, a world which was much smaller than the entirety of the earth. Much of the time, my world was my bedroom. Video games and doodles. Comic books scattered around. Bags of chips and candy wrappers that I’d forget to pick up. Short and violent tempered parents who liked to see me neither in my room nor around them so long as I continued to be who I was. My brother, equal in being closed off, would try to bond with me and we would try to do things together, but it never really got much further than attempts at getting along.

I knew he struggled with his own things: we both had varying degrees of depression, and although he didn’t understand my issues with gender, we both shared similar interests. I wasn’t really sure how our parents were toward him, and thinking about it now scared me. Yet that never really mattered to me at the time and when I got the chance to bail on that house, I didn’t look back.

So maybe I eventually developed into what you might call ‘happy-go-lucky’, but what was so wrong with that? What was so wrong with being happy just to be happy? The life I remembered as the person I imitated was anything but lucky, and mine may have been much more fortunate than them. It was fine enough to think of myself as them, as the memories and the feelings behind those memories were the same. I wasn’t lying when I told Ves that her, Juniper, and Trent were like the family I never had. If Blanc had the same relationship with their brother that Juniper had with hers, maybe they would have led a different life.

But luck was what it was and some things just happened the way they did. Even though the life I had memories of wasn’t an easy one, so what? Should I have earned the right to my happiness? I hated such a thought. It made me unhappy and soon the thought vanished.

“This is why I depend on you so much,” I said once more. “I’ve always been on the verge of giving up. I’m scared. Unsure of myself. When I’ve acted in the past, it was with little rhyme or reason. Always ready to play the martyr just to have an excuse to die all while well aware that any action of mine will have little impact. I never felt like I belonged anywhere, and maybe I just felt like doing something, for some cause, would grant me the happiness I so desired. Less than from others, I wanted a smile from myself.”

“But now,” the tears crept out of me once more. “Even though I managed to be happy, and I managed to feel loved, and I got to see my friends again. Well...truth be told, I miss Conrad. There’s no getting around that. Err...I...where was I?” God damn. There was that too. Being human was so hard and having a train of thought was just impossible. “It’s just, thinking about all that’s transpired, and how now with the world ending and me along with it...what has it all amounted to?”

“HAPPY IS WHAT!” A little fairy appeared beside me. Or maybe it was one of my hands talking, and either way, they were comforting images.

I smiled.

“Yeah, you’re right, but…” But I shook my head, even if I agreed with her. Or what I agreed with was her enthusiasm. “I still feel I may as well sit here. The world’s going to end anyway. What reason is there to do anything?”

“DO ANYTHING!”

“Yes,” I changed my tune and picked myself back up. I could do anything. So what would I do? The answer was clear: meet up with whoever was so desperate to see me, then sit and allow the world to end with me in it. That seemed reasonable enough. Yeah.

At this point, one wouldn’t be at fault to suspect that I too would start doing the tried and true expression of Introspection™. Such a reliable tool, like a mallet, or a paintbrush. But there wasn’t anything of the sort, and not to mention, there wasn’t any reason to look inward. After all, I was the least complex being in the universe. I could live as a single-celled organism, except then I would get bored of being but a lonely little cell. So no, I couldn’t.

Truth be told, there wasn’t much more interesting to tell. I decided that my thoughts were done narrating. So I decided to think up an essay, instead:

In the amateur novella, ‘Happiness Overload’, the story opens up with the line ‘11:30 A.M. Fuck. Those numbers followed by those two letters would be the end of me’. That opening line is significant as the narrator (yet to be named), Blanc Slait, describes how they feel about such a time. That it would be the ‘end of them’. At first seeming random, the author chose 11:30 A.M. because of the phrase ‘at the eleventh hour’, signifying that the story already begins at the end, or, by the time it ends, the story has begun. But it hasn’t ended yet, as the end would have been noon. So with it being the eleventh and a half hour, it gives off the impression that there is still time before the end to change things. For the better? For the worse? Rather than answer those questions with a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’, the narrator instead chooses to answer with a ‘fuck’.

That one word stated after that time is a little ambiguous, as it could mean ‘at the eleventh and a half hour, it is time to fuck’ or it could mean ‘fuck. It is 11:30 A.M.’ As we soon find out by the next sentence, it is the latter. There is a term for such an expression after a time of day coined by scholars, known as ‘fucktime’. Fucktime can happen at any time of the day, regardless of the amount of fucks given. But, seeing as the narrators’ ‘fuck’ happens at a quarter past the eleventh hour, it can be assumed that many fucks (or just one) were given. That the fact that things were so close to the end warranted such a ‘fuck’, because what else could one say when one sees a disaster and is standing in the middle of it, but to say ‘fuck’?

In truth, the narrator could have said, ‘aw, shucks’, or ‘this is fine’, but the narrator chose fuck. Probably because such a word resonated with the narrator to such a degree that it was the only word appropriate to such a situation.

Later on, the narrator, a wisecracking, but demotivated college student undergoes a transformation, not too unlike Franz Kafka’s ‘The Metaphor’. Such a transformation is cause for another ‘fuck’, but instead, the narrator goes off on a quest for vengeance against the ones in power who spurred such a transformation within them.

It is by that final chapter, the eight chapter (another significant number, as eight sideways is infinity, suggesting that the story could have gone on much longer than eight chapters, but because the eight is not sideways, such a continuation is denied) that the main character dies to a villain who only appeared in brief spurts, Dr. (or Professor) Etna. The fact that she (an Artificial Intelligence, which says something, as all characters within a novella would have artificial intelligence, as their intelligence is reliant upon the author) insists on professor when she is also a doctor has such a great meaning that the meaning is obscured by the fact that the main character dies.

Although there are loose ends by the end of it, such as the clone of our protagonist, Blanc Slait, still roaming around, as well as Velvet and Conrad (two unrelated characters, save for the fact that Conrad was a friend of the first Blanc’s) trying to escape from a raid on their base, it can be inferred from the villain of the story that they will soon meet their untimely end as well. Thus wrapping up a short story in which a continuation is denied.

If the story were to continue, literary critics have argued, then the clone of Blanc could have gone on many adventures, while Velvet and Conrad...I don’t know? They could have sat on a beach sipping on coconut oil, the possibilities are endless. Yes. Such endless possibilities, like a sideways eight. Just imagine all of the other characters that could have been introduced, had the story a means of continuation. But at ending there, we can finally understand the true meaning behind ‘Happiness Overload’.

But before we get into that (which being an essay, the thesis statement should be at the beginning), notice the similarities between Professor/Dr. Etna and a James Bond(age) villain: for one, there are lasers involved. Second, Etna gives long speeches to the defeated Blanc Slait, powerless in all but their words. If the story had been a James Bond(age) movie, or any other kind of spy, secret agent, or superhero movie, then one would expect that at the eleventh (and a half) hour, our Blanc Slait would figure out a way to break free, either through words or actions. However, such a thing is not granted.

It is also in the final chapter that a few more things are subtly revealed. The first of which being that ‘Happiness Overload’ is a story without characters. Case in point, think of how many characters there are in the novella: there’s Albacore (not a character, a type of tuna meat), Blanc, Conrad, Ecstasy (not a character, a drug), Etna, Euphoria (not a character, a feeling often associated with taking Ecstasy), Kelly Roger, and Velvet. If one were to think of other characters, one might come up with the clone of Blanc, as well as the second clone of Blanc, who later became a tree. But because those two characters are also Blanc, they do not count. Also, one could count the old man that Velvet both helps and smuggles food from, but that doesn’t count, because the old man doesn’t have a name, and thus, nothing to project onto.

Now, with all of those characters in mind, which is a very small cast, to a very short story, how many characters does that make? The answer is zero.

First off, let’s start with Blanc, as in the final chapter, the shocking truth comes out: Blanc Slait is a pun on ‘Blank Slate’. Now, a blank slate, or tabula rasa, is a theory that individuals are born without built-in mental content. There is more to the theory, but it is irrelevant, as Etna points out in her next shocking reveal to the protagonist: Blanc’s memories were a fabrication. Meaning that what we had seen of Blanc up to that point, did not exist. And because we had nothing to project onto Blanc before the start of the story, Blanc as a character, does not exist (there is also the fact that the entire story is fiction, despite some eerie real world parallels, like how there are buildings). Take the age-old adage: ‘if a tree falls in the forest, but no forest was ever mentioned in the story, did the tree exist?’ The answer is no.

So because the answer is no, that can only mean that Blanc’s second clone, the one that became a tree, also did not exist. But what about the first Blanc clone? Easy. A clone is just a division of one’s self. However, because Blanc does not exist, Blanc cannot be cloned, because one cannot divide by zero.

What about Conrad, then? Blanc’s conspiracy theorist best friend? Well, the answer may surprise you: Conrad is a nihilist. See, Conrad is Blanc’s best friend, but Blanc does not exist. However, this is more metaphor than simply an ‘imaginary friend’, as Conrad also does not exist. Conrad is a friend of nothing, and what else is a friend of nothing? Nothing else.

Other scholars have argued that the significance of Velvet as a character cannot be overstated. However, that is an understatement. Velvet’s name begins with a ‘v’. As Velvet is the only ‘character’ in HO to contain a ‘V’ in her name, there can be no V’s. However, if there was more than one V, it might look like this:

VS.

As in, versus.

Therein lies Velvet’s true nature: a contrast. An opposing force. Both opposing force to what? Simple: existence. Kelly Roger, the supposed other character who lives in the same bunker as Conrad and Velvet, doesn’t trust Velvet because Velvet does not exist, yet hangs around Conrad, another character that does not exist. Because of Kelly Roger’s doubt of Velvet’s existence, Kelly Roger is ejected from the story, by none other than Velvet, thus barred from existence.

As we refer back to the possibilities as to how Happiness Overload may have continued, we are left to suspect that the character who utters the title of the story, Euphoria, is the only character in the story. However, since the power that Professor/Dr. Etna holds and the peril that is implied to befall the Blanc clone, as well as Conrad and Velvet, such a continuation of the story would have had to require something akin to a ‘deus ex machina’, or ‘god is in the machine’.

Euphoria, with her angelic power, is thought of as a god-like substitute, but because Euphoria in the end, is nowhere to be found, one can argue that no, god is not in the machine. In fact, there is no god because the god (Euphoria) is absent, and since the machine itself can only be run with a god within the machine, then the machine isn’t a machine at all, but an object. And an object without a soul cannot do anything.

So there can be no conceivable continuation of Happiness Overload, and it can only end on the eighth chapter. If there were more than eight chapters, it would be reasonable to assume that the story would go on to have 86 chapters, a number which is often referred to mean ‘get rid of something’. What would be gotten rid of? The idea that the story could continue past an eighth chapter. In fact, the story could never continue past the first line, because it was already half past ‘fuck’.

In conclusion, many a scholars in academia have posited that in the pulp erotica ‘Happiness Overload’, the author intended to try to find what it means to be happy, but upon further analysis of the final chapter, as well as the title, it all becomes clear that the answer is that there is no happiness to be found, as in spite of Euphoria’s best efforts, the story carries on with its grim conclusion, and all throughout, not a bright spot could be found. If anything, the author sought to create a story in which nothing can be found. With that, the author succeeded.

Furthermore, –

– If the story were to continue, disregarding the entire essay, it may go something like this:

At last, I saw a faint glimmer of light. Maybe that was what I wanted all along. To descend to the depths of hell, but arrive to a light at the end of the tunnel. Even if such a light was an inferno.

I looked around and noticed the light shouldn’t have been there at all, and it was a mere reflection from a steel pipe. I looked up at the cavernous ceiling, which up to that point, had been nothing but dirt and rock formations. Now, however, it was a rusted steel grating. I looked down to see what else but a steel floor. I stomped my foot and sure enough, the metallic sound reverberated through the air.

“Hello?” I cupped my hands and called out. No answer. Of course. What did I expect, being so far below ground and all. “Echo…” I tried to call, but there was no echo. Couldn’t fault me for trying. I was still human, after all. Human and afraid. I had to find whatever levity I could. Even a faint glimmer of light was enough to make me happy. All I needed was a little bit of happiness to get me through the end of the world.

Gee, I wonder what kind of place this once might have been. Maybe a factor? Or an underground laboratory? Or maybe it was something simple, like someone’s last happy wish.

Before I could wonder what else such a thing was doing there, and marvel at the shape, an empty, small rectangular area with a path on the other side, I heard footsteps approach. Then a series of claps. My heart wanted nothing more than to burst out of my chest.

“Those are my hands, not my buttcheeks,” a low voice crooned. Something charming, something menacing.

I should be relaxed, but I’m ill at ease. The only living soul remaining, but I feel no soul at all.

“Who are you?” My voice, and perhaps the rest of me, shook in fear.

Soon ‘he’ came into view: a tall, shadowy mass of a figure, a pencil-thin beansprout of a mountain, must have been between six and seven feet tall, and then some. Then some...somewhat of a misrepresentation, as this humanoid shadowy figure couldn’t be contained to a size and, although clothed (in what? Jeans and a T-shirt? A nightgown?), the clothes themselves were indeterminate. In other words, for all intends and purposes, as menacing as the figure was, ‘he’ was really just average in appearance. Save for the grin on ‘his’ face, that is. That grin stretched so far it seemed to encompass ‘his’ entire face.

I felt like asking, “are you the one who wanted me to come down to Earth?” But before I could, and before I could ask my follow up, “if so, have you figured out a way to stop the world from ending?” He spoke instead.

“At last. You look like you could use some help,” he flashed his grin, which I thought couldn’t stretch any further, but it did. “Allow me to give you a hand!”

He extended his arm toward me and out from his sleeve shot forth several masses of tentacles, which I assumed were meant to grab me, or pierce right through me. But luckily for me, I moved out of the way just in time.

“What the –”

Shadowy tentacles? Who else do I know that could do that? I wondered. Wondered because perhaps he was someone I had already met.

“Ecstasy? Is that you?”

“Babe, I’ll fuck your brains out,” came his ever so rude reply.

“Hey! Nobody calls me ‘babe’! Ecstasy may have been a literal double crossing succubus, but at least she was respectful!”

“Please! I’m no one!” He retorted, and that’s when it hit me: the dark clothes. The edginess.

“Albacore?!” Thank goodness. It only took four years to get his name right.

“I’ve no use for a name!”

Then both arms spread out and from them were an even greater array of tentacles. Every little one surrounded me, and against the claustrophobic nature of their being, I proceeded further while avoiding each one until I stood right next to this nameless person.

“But,” he looked down, us standing next to each other. “If you wish to call me anything, you may call me Marco.”

He then closed his arms in on me, or rather, tried, but I ducked down and swerved around him until I managed to get just behind him.

If up to this point, it seemed like I was untouchable, then the very next moment proved otherwise: Marco shoved right into me and I fell onto the jagged ground.

“Rather than try to attack, you thought you could avoid me and go on about your way. Is that because you know that you cannot harm me?” He chuckled, as if he just thought of a really good joke, but the joke was, I didn’t even consider trying to fight him. Yes, my prosthetic arm had a blade that could pop up, as well as my palm able to fire lasers, but if I was being honest, I didn’t even need such weapons. If I wanted to fight, I would. There was no reason, no stake for me to do so. Even if he had promised that the world wouldn’t end if I could defeat him, I wouldn’t care.

I shrugged and laughed, as if to react to the joke he might not have made.

“We met before, you know. Actually, we didn’t. But I ate your arm once. It was tasty, but without the nutrients I wanted. That was because I didn’t eat your arm, but the arm of another you. That was also because you weren’t ripe yet. But now that you are, I can swallow you whole.”

Oh. So I remind him of a long-lost lover. Right. Happens all the time.

“Please, Marco, sir, flattery will get you nowhere,” I tried to do my best flirty impression, but ended up coughing up spit on the last syllable and it was rather un-sexy of me, to be quite frank.

“Then again, I doubt you know that you can’t attack me. Well, you could know. But to know that, you would have to know about me. All the same, now you know.”

His mouth then opened wide and continued to open wide as it extended and multiple tongues slithered out from his mouth. Fear rose in me and I decided at last that the best course of action would be to run.

So through more dark caverns I went, and although I couldn’t see very well, that wasn’t a problem as I no longer felt any fear in me. As it turned out, being afraid didn’t make me very happy. So I found my composure, and what’s more, there was a faint light around me which allowed me to see any obstacles ahead: pipes blocking paths which I had to duck under and cross through. Boulders blocking every which way. The path itself was linear, but the clutter seemed random at best.

All the while, I heard Marco give chase behind me as he tore through each obstacle as if it were wallpaper. I looked behind me and a tentacle had shot forth and missed my face by just a hair as I had my head turned to the other side just in time.

“Only once I devour the angel will I be satisfied!” He declared.

So that’s what it is, huh? I should have known as much. Everyone and everything else got to experience happiness in some way, but he didn’t quite see the same results. If that’s what he wants, I’d be happy to oblige, but first, I need to see how far this rabbit hole goes.

Again, his voice rang from equal measures close and far behind:

“Tell me, traveler, what is your goal in life?” His voice took the turn of some wise old man, or one I’d imagine in a high fantasy novel.

“As long as I’m happy, I don’t need anything else!” I answered.

“An unfulfilled life is an unhappy life,” he then said, and this time, he sounded mournful. Then again, it sounded like a playful mourning. Like someone in a theater production trying out melodrama.

“Can’t relate!”

“To what?” He asked.

I shrugged as I descended further down, and heat rose around me when before, it was actually rather chilly down there.

“I just can’t relate.”

But then again, if that was the way he saw things, maybe there was some truth to it, as I had two goals over the course of my journey: to be happy, and to see my friends again. And yet, even though I didn’t get to see all of my friends (RIP Conrad), I was still happy. As long as I was happy, then no other goal mattered. Because happiness itself was the ultimate of goals. Maybe he felt the same way, but as I was satisfied to be happy, he seemed like he couldn’t be happy unless he was satisfied. Then again…

I stopped.

I turned around to face him and I saw as plain as day with his hands raised, each finger turned into several worms with razor skin.

“You’re someone who loves contradictions, huh?” I proclaimed in what may have been my boldest statement yet. “You accelerated this, didn’t you? Because once the world ends, and you having devoured the same creature which overjoyed everyone else, then you would finally be ready to die? Because you’ll have fulfilled some lifelong goal, is that it?”

“Birds of a feather make for chicken strips!” He growled, or giggled, or groveled.

“Is it pretty fun for you? Getting your kicks chasing me, your ultimate goal?” I couldn’t help it. Now I was getting into the fun as well. I didn’t even want to, but I couldn’t help myself. “Then let’s keep up the chase. Come on, we’re almost there. Except it will never end.”

Where such a burst of confidence came from, I wasn’t sure. Well, I had a few hunches. Did I really know something he didn’t? No. But I knew things that he did, because I was happier to know than to stay in the dark. I understood now why Etna had given up and I understood how he would be defeated. Just as he did. The way he saw it, he’s seen such things play out several times now, and in his inconsistent mind, such an ending was an ending for him as well. But Marco was a being who craved opposites. The only thing that would satisfy would be utter disappointment.

So I ran and lost my footing. Maybe on purpose. I slid down and down for miles and kilometers on end. Darkness gave way to light, which gave way to further darkness, until at last, I arrived at the end of the cave where a faint blue glow welcomed me.

I stood up and looked around. As I felt the warm, yet cool to the touch stone wall, I nodded. Beside that wall was a rock. One which I could sit upon. So I did, and as I took my seat, Euphy, Euphoria, and all the other names that made her happy, sat beside me. Then Marco arrived and stood there. He looked me in the eyes.

“There’s nowhere else to run,” he declared. Something told me he really loved to play up the villain angle. Well, of course. Playing hero could only be fun for so long. But so could playing villain. And the back and forth must have gotten boring for him as well. All the same, I couldn’t disagree with his statement. So I smiled.

“Indeed. That’s why I’m sitting.”

All around us, the ceiling and the floor shook and crumbled, yet above and below us, we remained. Heat rose, but neither of us seemed to pay the intense temperature any mind. There really was little time, if any time left at all. He knew that he won, or believed so to such a degree, anyway. Yet in his victory, instead of open his mouth wide or chew apart my limbs and organs bit by bit, he just fell to his knees and sat.

For whatever reason, I became the one who grinned. His epiphany was about to set in, and no amount of high would stop the realization.