“Music, that is the incarnation of the collective human soul; I am no harbor of this, I should not profit from the absolute joy one feels throughout the intense emotional presence of music itself. I am simply its vessel, for it is poured into me and trickles down my fingers; I am a boat on the sea of tunes and screams, for I do not own the melody that torpedoes onto instrument after instrument.” - Phua Sheen.
At some point during this, I should’ve self reflected, I know. It’s late, much too deep to have a large self intervention of this sort.
But… I can’t help it. I can’t help but wonder what the point of it all was.
It was all a mischievous ploy, the largest scam I’ve ever partaken in, though many had my name under sheets, never to be seen.
I’m only writing this because of the overwhelming guilt that has backed itself onto my shoulders, forcing me to rip muscle and tear sockets. I am not writing this to save others from what I’ve done, if that is even a feasible option for any else at this point.
I am a selfish man.
I won’t deny that, especially not after the years of my life in which I destroyed everything. I am selfish; I am greedy; I am self-absorbed; and I long for something: a role model.
Only now do I realize that.
I’ll hush my heart for now and spill the actual meat and beans of the truth to you: My name is Ember Sheen. You have never heard of me and most likely never will again, if this even reaches the web. I used to belong to a group, one you’ve at no time caught a whiff of, because it makes sure you don’t and never will.
I am the exception.
This knowledge, it is forbidden; This tale, it is forsaken.
You all might wake up with massive headaches and fall ill, dying within the day.
Or they’ll pass this off as nothing, another story with no aim, simply fiction.
The first day I was introduced was one of wonder: I sat, lonesome, at a party on some unwritten island, one that the average go-rounder couldn’t point out on a map. I was the product of a douche, said bastard would’ve been at this party.
I was my father, at least in that room. People had no idea. I looked just like him, save for the younger features; and none of them kept up with one another.
They were all junkies for everything in the book, no doubt, and they only talked in these spaces, high and horny.
At the time, I was what some would call a hobo, no real purpose in life. School only failed me, mainly because I couldn’t keep my mind on the work. I’d have other things pinned as more important: my social status, which under no pretense reached the heights I wished it to.
My home life was a pile of rotting garbage, to keep the least of it under the rug.
So… There I sat: A party in which I knew no one, a party that I had an executive ticket to, being flown out, pretending to be the man who never raised me.
I wondered how he sat. Should I have a masculine stance or was he more of a feminine man?
Did he drink? Or did he just snort the mix of who-knows-what straight into his nose?
I worried for an hour before someone approached. “Theo,” she began, sitting next to me. She was, to be quaint, your average fanatic, of what I didn’t know yet; Be it something mainstream, like crack, or an off the books, mind-altering pill.
She, also, had the curves of a Goddess.
“You okay?” She quizzed me, leaning on my shoulder. I had come to realize my father must’ve been close with this woman.
How many times was I almost created with her rather than my own mother?
“I’m fine,” I said solemnly, trying not to make too much of my own personality imprint onto my words.
She leaned up, staring me in the eyes. “Something’s different about you, Theo.”
Sweat built on my forehead.
“Are you… turning civ?”
I didn’t even know the meaning of her words, but the tone of her voice let it be known that whatever she spoke of was a sin in her book.
“No,” I answered quickly, perhaps a bit too quick. “Just…” God, I was panicking, trying to come up with any excuse. “Thinking.”
She laid back down. My heart beat a tad slower. “Don’t think too much. We’re all shitty. It’s a human virtue.”
I slowly began to feel more comfortable with her.
And in this role… This role as my dead-beat father.
“I abandoned them,” I said steadily after moments without speaking to the beautiful junkie.
She sighed. “I have left some behind me, too.”
“My son, he’s out there somewhere, without me,” I was pretending to be him and it was making me sick to my stomach, but healing something within.
I needed this closure, this false reality in which he thought and cared for me.
“My family wonders where I’ve been, what I’m doing. They think I’m dead, which I might as well be,” she retorted.
“Why’d you leave?” I quizzed.
“It was…” She grunted. “I don’t wanna get into that, Theo.”
I nodded. “That’s okay. I understand.”
“You seem nicer.”
I coughed. “Maybe it’s the regret.”
She looked into my eyes. “I’m dating someone now. Someone I met at one of these.”
My heart tripped into my gut, for I knew this was the worst place to meet someone. Her life: This young, gorgeous girl was ruining her life for the hell of it.
“I wanna feel normal again, I think.” I let her speak instead of interrupting, it was better that way. “But I’ll never be back there, as a civ. I’ve felt too many things here. I’ve had one too many rushes. I’ve heard one too many secrets.”
I felt tears knocking on my eyes, but I told them off, for it wasn’t a good time.
“Do you wanna meet him?” She asked me.
I began to shake from indecision. Do I go further with this? Do I walk completely into the role as my father?
“I can meet him,” I ended up saying. Why?
Because I had nothing else. This was giving me purpose.
She was silent for ten minutes, her eyes closed. I figured she had fallen asleep.
“He’s an asshole,” she spoke, “but I think he’s the best I’ll get.”
No reply came from me.
“He wants to run for office soon,” the woman continued.
I put a sorrowful hand on her head, stroking her hair. I don’t think she had anyone, either. I think she was in my same position, yet so much worse. She’d be me in the future if I kept attending these parties. Addicted to so many substances you can’t stop; In a hole that only gets larger with each passing day; Having to settle for the worst due to the insight you obtained unwillingly.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered to her.
Things went on like that for another hour, ending with her trying to please me, but the sadness was too much for me. I couldn’t get it up.
“I have never even thought about a life in which I don’t live this way. This is my passion, my truth. I can eat the scraps of nutrients for it; I can drink the rejected water in turn for this. To be honest, the where and how and when do not matter for me: I could eat tomorrow or tonight; I could drink in a week or today. My craft is over all Earthly desire, you see?” - Phua Sheen.
I ended up attending another one of the outings, this time with her beloved coming, too. We had planned it awkwardly that previous night, after events that I don’t care to recall took place.
On the way to said celebration, I wondered. Someone with infinite money, spending it like paper-dollars in a board game, bought me and everyone else another ticket, looping us around the world onto another continent, another property, another home.
One they owned.
As the private jet flew me in stride, I pondered my limited awareness of who that could’ve been, and how you get that position. How do you get atop the world? How do you spend money as if you have no care for it? Is it a billionaire? A famous one?
That is the conclusion I landed on, as no other answer made sense to me.
The jet landed and I came out from within, thanking the driver with a wave, and jogged into the building, finding people standing all about everywhere.
I tumbled around for a moment before seeing her, that alluring fiend. Walking over, she noticed me, choking on her drink for a sliver of a moment.
“Theo!” She barked. “Meet Braydon.” I came to be shaking hands with a man who I thought looked to be a vampire. The sides of his head were shaved, leaving speckles of hair in a stubble manner, with the top slicked back; He wore a black vest with yellow accents and fancy shoes, ones that had been polished within the hour.
He didn’t speak, just bowed his head.
Eventually, after a clenching of palms that was too lengthy, he asked me a query: “How’d you meet Amy?” His voice wasn’t friendly, but it wasn’t hostile.
It seemed like he was waiting for something. A sign maybe.
Lost in thought, it took thirty seconds before she, Amy, took the lead for me: “We met at the slums many years ago,” she laughed. “He was only there to pick someone up, I enticed him, and here we end up.”
That backstory was for my father and Amy? It sounded like a summed up love story.
But me and her had dialogue like we had barely ever talked.
Was this a lie for him, this man? Was she trying to make him jealous? Or was it in a different context? Did my father pick up women and ruin their lives, bringing them here?
Is that what he did instead of buying me toys and eating dinner with me?
“Sounds interesting,” he replied, his voice deeper than I knew one could be, like coals on a flame. “She told me about you last night,” he said confidently. “Said she wanted me to meet you. You must be close?” He smiled, as if he knew we weren’t.
“Yeah,” I replied, fixing the collar of my shirt. “We’re close.”
The sounds of the people around us suddenly got louder, intensifying the aura.
He smacked her on the bottom. “Go get me and,” he nodded at me, “a drink, would you?”
She looked nervous, blinking at me with scared eyes.
Amy scuttled off into the distance to gather beverages, after.
He then had me alone, just me and him to speak, the people around us only adding ear-aching background noise.
“Something about you.” He broke our silence.
“Hm?” I moaned in confusion.
“You have more potential than this. You aren’t even supposed to be here.”
My heart sunk deeper than into my gut, it was already ash at the bricks of a fireplace. “What?”
“You aren’t one of these people, Theo,” he knew. “You’re something different. A watcher. You come here to watch. To figure things out.”
What had I gotten myself into?
“No,” I said in alarm.
“I’m not gonna hurt you,” he assured, placing his hand on my shoulder. “Kid, do you have a job? A family?”
The answer was displayed on my face.
“I can help you,” he swiftly asserted.
No response left my lips.
“You can be someone you’ve never thought to be, someone unknown, yet flourishing in celebrations grander than this shit.”
I was confused, but intrigued.
He grinned. “You won’t even have to cut the act, Theo.”
So many emotions flew through me, I wanted to vomit and not wake up after a cleansing slumber.
Then the answer to a question I had prior came to light: This was who commenced these outings, someone nameless to the public.
They had no one’s standards to care for, so they did what they pleased; No one knew of them, so nothing could harm them; And, with their unlimited funds, no one cared to mess with them, anyhow, for a good bribe no one can pass.
He looked at me with an understanding that I now got him, what he was. “Here,” he reached into his vest pocket, slashing out a card, a pristinely printed namesake giver. “Take this, kid, and let me help you.”
I was Amy and he was my father.
I was being pulled out from the slums into something astrologically more glorious.
I took his card and drank with him and Amy, not saying too much, thinking all the while.
“I’ve walked this path for almost the entirety of my runtime. Soon, I’ll be on the last thread of years here. This body will float away into the Earth, becoming a part of the next bustling life it needs to; I do not claim to be anyone, anything, for I am just a creature haphazardly making my way through events. And, knowing my futileness, the moon gazes at me after each passing of the sun, and I tell it to give my message to the rest of beings, but it ignores me.” - Phua Sheen.
I didn’t go to another one of these events for what felt like an era, even though invites arrived in my inbox. For a while, I let the average cyclical nature of my daily living return to me.
I ran my fingers across it all, mentally making my decision all along.
I lived in an absolute dump, a barnacle on the back of an industrial facility. The only reason this rural place even existed was to fund the factory nearby, of which almost everyone around worked for.
My mother, too, lived here, living and breathing in the basement of our rotting apartment.
She almost never left the underground domicile, and when she did, she was only gone for bare moments, escaping to the grocery store by-weekly to purchase her minimum of gatherings.
We hadn’t had a conversation in weeks, for she didn’t need me until she ran out of money.
My cash influx came from the government. Eventually, they had fallen to pity me and my lack of being able to get a job or move from those stranded woodlands; So, for that time being, I lived off government aid in the form of unemployment, indefinitely.
I had no plans on where to move or even how to begin; I had no idea where to go.
After a week of being back home, I picked up that somehow still immaculate card from Braydon. I dialed the number on it with ever so hesitant fingers, the resounding ringing only flying out every few seconds.
I thought of every possible root for my life from here, most ending in a depressive suicide.
This one, though, the one in which I call up this man, had no known conclusion in my head. It was a completely unseen avenue and, in knowing my other choices, I chose it.
Nothing else was comparable.
Soon, his assistant grabbed the call, telling me when and where to meet, and gave me a flight ticket to get there.
The anticipation swelled in my heart. The next couple of days in wait consisted of me loathing myself in bed.
I left money at my mothers door, and went on my way, after all had passed.
Knowing her, my leaving wouldn’t be a nick in her skin, she’d preach her mantra about how all are free, and not a wonder of me would ever reappear in her mind.
I arrived at the manner of someone unknown hours later, deep within the snow of a country I didn’t even care to read the name of before boarding. My cheap sneakers crunched into the snow below me, mashing every particle, and a chill smacked into my soles.
Trudging up to the door, I watched the sun set off in the distance, a gloomy orange blow-out.
Knock. Knock.
The gateway came to an open with a dramatic pull. I came face to face with the man who offered to save my life.
“Ah, Ember, I see you’ve made it.”
I nodded. “I’m open to whatever you have for me,” I said with a drawn out open of my arms.
He smiled, an insidious mark of a predator. My hands began to shake, from the cold or his eyes, I do not know.
“Come inside,” he ordered, revealing the blood and guts of this home.
It was, ironically, a very vampiric house, if that makes any sense; Chandeliers could be spotted above an extensive spiral staircase, coated in a gloomy black paint with steps lined with velvet cloth.
I entered, and the frigid air was shut out.
“You like the place?” He questioned me as he rubbed his hands together, blowing heat from his mouth into them.
“It’s cozy,” I replied after consideration. Though, in contrast, the place was doused in areas with Godless shadows, streamlined spiderwebs, and, overall, a sense of awful fright.
Something abhorrent had taken place here, I thought, or still does.
He came up at my back swifter than I thought he could move, his hand landing on my shoulder, guiding me towards the steps. “I want you to meet the boss, friend. He can, eh, approve of you,” he told me. The last part sounded mischievous.
What kind of tests would they perform on me?
“What traits is he looking for?” I asked the man.
I felt like I heard a chuckle, but it was gone before I could confirm. “You’ll absorb all you need when you meet him.”
The steps were long and anxiety inducing, making a clambering echo each time my foot hit one.
We both said nothing as our journey was leading us up.
When we reached the top, he went ahead of me, lending me his hand for the last step. On this top floor, there was only one room, a hallway leading to it. The door was encased in what looked to be a spice, covering the door frame and the floor around it.
“Please,” he begged, “step over the protection.”
I assumed he meant the unknown specs scattered around, and I didn’t mean to mess with them, anyhow. He walked in before me, leaving the door ajar, and I jumped in behind him.
The air was different in this room; Everything was. It was akin to swapping worlds, for the background sound was a low hum, scratching at my brain; and the air was hotter, like I’d entered a sauna; and the interior was odd, like that of a cabin, including a fireplace, which burned on, and a comically large small table, able to house only three people.
He sat down.
I followed, sitting across from him.
Only one more seat awaited a joiner, the one at the front.
“Who else is coming?” I implored.
Braydon’s joy came back in full effect, yet no answer laced my ears.
With no warning or reasoning, a deceased deer, one with its antlers gruesomely carved off from its head, swung down onto the table with a meaty plop. I jumped back in my seat, causing a jarring screech.
Another chuckle roared from him.
And, on queue with my rapidly advancing aversion to this ordeal, the fire from the fireplace began to take the shape of something impossible. The flames licked the bricks surrounding them, eventually taking on semi-solid forms, pulling out from within its containment.
When they escaped, it looked to have grown into a molten man, burning the floor underneath him with whipping balls of smoke floating away.
The lava began to harden, cracking and falling, and I was met with an unclothed, cardinal male. His shading seemed to be in a full ebony rather than a normal humans darker hues, and his skin was crackled, charred, and dry; The features of his face were unnervingly sharp: his nose was a point more marvelous than a hunter’s blade, his chin was a sloping triangle, ready for stabbing, and his cheek-bones and eyebrows were extended and sandpapered until perfection.
As he got closer, I took in the two deer horns on his head, an opposite to the rest of him.
The situation was obvious to me now: a sacrifice had been made and, in turn, this stereotypical devil had been called to play.
In my seat, I felt my own piss dampen my legs and pants.
He walked forwards, clutching the last seat and entering it stiffly.
“You wish of me to approve of this peasant? He has not for the guts; He has soiled himself within seconds of grazing my appearance,” the gruff devil responded. His voice was that of mysterious origin, not physically possible according to my standards.
Braydon adjusted his comfortable sitting position. “The boy has potential.”
I felt Satan’s eyes land upon me, sucking me of information. “Lowlife. You bring me a bum. A fucking beggar wretch!” He lashed out in anger, crumbling his end of the table in a fatal slash of hatred.
“Listen!” Braydon screamed back. “He is more than you can feel!”
“Is he?” The beast shrieked, a groundbreaking huff in his tone. “I’ll put him through the trial, but you are wrong, damn infidel, and you will wreak urine endlessly if you continue to bring me bastards.”
My vision had gone blurry. I felt myself fading from here and, looking down at my fingers, they had begun to dissipate.
In the spur of a moment, the reality around me changed. I then was captured in what looked to be the interior of a chest drawer, a latch miles above my head.
Slowly, with the thundering of vast storms, it came loose, and was opened by a creature bigger than my comprehension, looking at it made my brain crunch like a stressed, sopping towel.
A boom and a reverberation stronger than an Earth-quake hit me, the chest’s lid dropped to a close.
Something else stood in that room with me.
Gandering up, I saw what was thought to be a lanky cryptid, its bones obvious under sagging skin as its eye bags were larger than rivers themselves; a horrifying caricature of bodily decay.
It was just a human, though, one tortured to its end, forced to move about in a body not fit for living.
As it slithered to me, a voice no longer apt to speak spat out from its throat: “You,” the full word took endless seconds to push out for the poor creature, “are a worse sinner than I.”
Out from its back, it snatched its own spine, toppling over but still functioning. Its spine was lengthier than it ever should’ve been.
It pulled back and, at quantum speeds, whipped its spine at me, cracking into my skin and leaving bloody blisters. I howled out in pain and fell to the floor.
I was cemented in my position, the agony only rising, and time became faster, noticeably. I felt the wound heal in real time, but my hunger and thirst grow, my longing for sleep begging for attention. Soon, it began to whip me again, faster than my eyes could perceive.
I endured the passionate anguish of infinite damage and unkempt bodily functions.
I survived longer than I ever should have in that state.
A week in the chest felt like years.
When it ended, I was surprised to feel no lesions in my skin, no cuts in my muscles. I looked up from where I sat, Satan and Braydon staring me down.
I was in shock.
The words coming out from their mouths didn’t even register with me until minutes later, when I finally got used to the painless continuance.
“-it seems so,” I caught wind of Braydon saying.
“Why?” I managed to yelp.
The blood-red man chortled. “The endorsement of this job was not a walk through daisy fields, boy, yet… You survived.” His sharpened fingers tapped the table.
I was still coming to; Trying to get the last week washed from my brain.
“Shall we get through the approval?” Braydon prompted.
It was then I noticed that everything was the same as it was before I left.
No time had passed, contrary to my reasoning that it wasn’t possible for that to be the case.
Satan sighed. “Yes, I’ll let the man pass, but mark my words, Braydon, you bring me any more of these Jesus-esque pansies, and I will give you a year in your personal, awaiting end.”
With that, the devil vanished into a smoke, billowing into the air.
“Hell?” I uttered.
He nodded.
I vomited onto the table.
“Now,” he began, disregarding my slop across the deer’s decaying body, “I’d like to welcome you to the board. We are humanity’s true fate dictators, this government’s real leaders, you understand?”
If it weren’t right then, I would’ve had a million questions.
“Executive decision makers,” he continued. “The fate of all in our hands for the small price of a stay in the underworld.”
I had nothing to answer him with.
“Your opinion over all else,” he remarked. “Right,” he said, getting off his power-trip, “we’ll ship you to Washington, give you an apartment at the top of some skyscraper, let you file the paperwork for your chosen choice-makes, and leave you with Lucifer’s contact information, any questions?”
I didn’t respond.
“No one knew that the beloved American government had swooped directly into Pakistan with a team of disheveled Navy Seals; The pakistanian’s highest officials didn’t catch word of it until America decided to reveal that a pair of bullets were lodged into Osama Bin Laden. We have no true idea of what all they do that we have not caught word of yet, and perhaps never will. All I say is that I live a lifestyle that this untelling government would disapprove of, and I find that more worthy than any cut of meat.” - Phua Sheen.
I found myself in the heart of the states, high up in the clouds. I began immediately on making grand-scale decisions that affected everyone, even if they knew they were made or not.
The government would puppet what I told them. I’d see it on the news: The action of my wants being played out in real time under false pretenses.
It was exhilarating and addicting.
It was also my preferred facet for pushing back the memories of that chest. In full clarity, what I needed then was therapy, but who would believe a man living on the brink of his dead father’s name with a bank-account of a billionaire?
That was a big plus, too. I bought anything you can imagine, since money was nothing but a number for me, that number being infinity.
Clothes, toys, cars, houses, land, deals, businesses- I went down the paths like a rapid fire machine gun, anything to suppress the images of that hell, but each path was moral to my own standards, and legal.
It was like this for me for months, though they passed like seconds. I was the man behind the scapegoat thousands of times before the hell-bound man contacted me.
It was in the middle of cleaning up the governmental drug works when the ding on my computer distracted me, making me leave the in’s and out’s of removing hard narcotics from uncared for cities.
I clicked it, revealing a lottery-esque checklist sent directly to me from Satan.
If I went through with making each policy and change to our society he wished to see, he’d award me with HP- or heaven points.
By going through with what he wanted, I would be guaranteed a spot in the bright, comfortable home of paradise rather than that chest.
Rather than the underworld; Than hell.
The first thing on the list was dastardly: “Go about creating the first instances of a government beginning to accept pedophilic stimuli as a form of regulated therapy.”
I wanted to jump from the top of my new home, but… I knew what awaited me if I went through with doing so.
I knew what awaited me if these actions weren’t followed through with.
Everything I’d done, I’d made sure it was morally correct, bettering the world through my past suffering.
But this… This would undo all of my efforts; This was the start to my downfall.
The truth of the matter was that I could never see that place again, that chest, no matter how much I wanted the world to be a safer place.
I started to accept that I’d be the one to sin, worse than anyone before me, yet still cheat my way into a good ending.
That night, I watched the news: “Oregon is trying to pass a bill that will begin showing artificial-intelligence generated, lewd children photos as a form of therapy for pedophiles or, now called, ‘disorder-enslaved patients,’ according to Oregon’s medical professionals.” I was glad to see that the world was denoting the disgusting acts as what they were, but disheartened at the same time.
This had to happen for my admission.
I worked day and night, forcing individuals to do my bidding and create false studies and statistics about this.
I cried while writing them up; I turned toward harming myself in turn for my actions. Nothing helped except the knowledge that if I continue with this checklist, I’d be free from an eternity in the locked chest.
By the end of a six-month period, I’d done it, despite the efforts of thousands, and I had locked in place the start to my heaven points.
“Our society, it turns dark. Everywhere I turn there seems to be something lurking, something of an unfavorable taste, be it from another snide individual or the decisions of the ones who rule us over. I do not care to see the end of this story. Now, at the very click of nightfall, I tell the moon to smack us off our directory around the sun, but it ignores me.” - Phua Sheen.
I woke up in my bed, of which was larger than life. I pushed myself over, seeing a woman slumbering in nothing but under garments. I rose, exiting the covers, and stepped onto a condom, the wet slobber of it gracing my sole.
I jogged into the bathroom, as I passed her, I saw money tucked into her bra, hundreds of bills.
The light came on immediately, revealing me. I scoffed in anger, my hands turning to fists upon seeing myself. My arm swung the mirror aside, cramming my fingers into the drawer behind it to gather a treat.
I snorted it off the counter.
Afterwards, I came back into my bedroom, ripping the covers off from the woman in my bed. “Leave,” I told her simply and adamantly. She shot up, covering herself before gathering her clothing and running out.
My bum hit my chair with my body flopping down aggressively. My computer came to life, my eyes meeting several notifications from each business I owned, some of which containing the information on a plethora of deceptive deals.
I ignored them for now, clicking onto my checklist, prepared to rot my day into the ground.
I was on the last stand of these tasks. I had completed two-thousand of them within a six year time period.
The years passed like weeks. It was as if I had aged a million years in six weeks.
I was so different than I used to be.
Scars from fights on my knuckles, the evidence of intoxicants on my breath and in my nose, the list of heinous acts committed under my name- the lists were infinite in category and length. The sorrow of my actions lessened as time went on and they came to feel unreal to me, like video game objectives.
In saying that, I formulated an email at the time: “Hello, Smith. I’d like you to have a chat with the founder of CompXETra.”
I ordered hits on men from the comfort of my home on a bi-weekly basis, using people like chess pieces in order to build up my underground empire.
My last stand against the sanctity of heaven was likely the worst: “Kill fifty-million humans.”
I’d started diseases, viruses, wars, trafficking, hate groups, new addictants, genetically modified insects, assassins guilds, mass food poisoning, water tampering- everything in the book, yet the check mark never came, as my number hadn’t been met.
I had no idea how. I’d done everything in the book.
Except for one thing, I finally thought, stumbling into it accidentally.
The wars I began were simple proxy wars, nothing special.
I raced to my computer, typing up document after document depicting how the next year of the world would play through.
I watched it from afar.
The start of conflict between us and China, before it ended in a double nuking. Part of southern America had been blotted off the map, the areas around it deemed unlivable.
A majority of China had been smeared, a tear on every map.
The infrastructure of society had been shaken, tinier wars within countries flew at rapid speeds.
During all this, I watched my endmost check mark tick, and awaited my death to come.
It was then that I knew what I really was, what Satan had used me as.
I was the anti-Christ, even if I had no idea.
I brought about wrath, and eventually the end.
It was when this came to mind and began to cement that I contacted the devil once more.
I asked him if any of it was true, any of his promises of the heaven I’d see, or if he’d lied to me on an astronomical level.
The only response I got back before my ultimate fate marched up to my door in the form of vengeful, vexed Chinese soldiers, the one ending I still ignore as I note this: “The devil went down to the recluse snows of Greenland, searching for a soul to take in stride; Instead he found a fiddle, and he played it until the dawn of tribulation.”