Painful remembrance

He first tapped on a dating app notice, where a girl named Ewelina had matched with him. He took a look at her profile and liked what he saw, so he texted her:

"Heyy"

Alan switched apps. He thought: This might take a while. So I'll be looking out for guys. He tapped on the most recent message. Herod got on his nerves, with a series of three messages:

"What's up?"

"Look, I'm going to be one hundred percent real with you."

"Are you straight? Because you don't look queer at all. Not one bit."

Alan contemplated his options: If I ignore him, he could report my account. I should probably respond with something unorthodox and at the same time flamboyant. And Alan started typing away until he arrived at the message he wanted to send, and send it he did.

"I'm straight... outside the online world. But I can be your princess for a night."

Fortunately for Alan, he had the rest of the gays eating out of his hand. Their chats were nothing but compliments and date offers. Unfortunately for Alan, his gambit didn't pay off. Herod got back to him with a harsh:

"Yup, you're a straightoid RPing. Say goodbye to your account, retard."

Alan sweated bullets, but he gathered his thoughts: One report can't possibly have my account taken down. I should pay him no mind.

Alan saw another notification pop up. This one caught his attention because of the name: "Ex". He resisted the urge to open it, but it was in vain. After seven seconds of hesitation, he opened up the chat with his ex. The most recent message was her saying:

"you missed Annabeth's play at school"

Alan typed frantically, changing the message he wanted to send because it wasn't perfect enough to him. Finally, he settled for:

"Annabeth is nobody to me and you know that. Stop playing games."

His ex's reply was succinct:

"she was your whole world"

Alan blew air through his nose. He paced around the room. Then, he placed his phone on his couch. He stood besides a short table. Alan remembered to do his breathing exercises in order to calm down. He focused on his inhaling and did a countdown. Ten. Nine. Eight.

The sound of the furniture cracking filled the room. Alan looked at his handiwork. The short table was split in two and there were some splinters on the floor. The white man reflected on the quality of the destroyed table: It was old, but still, one punch? It's good that it broke down, then. Alan proceeded to kick one of the halves away. He fell in the couch and retrieved his phone. He had new messages. Ewelina had replied to him:

"what u up to?"

Alan could not give a shit about text game, not in the headspace he was in at the time, so he opted to play it straight:

"Tomorrow, Zhao Palace, 21:00. Take it or leave it."

Her response came swift as a panther.

"ya"

"do u open like that always?"

Alan typed:

"Not really."

"then what do you usually do?"

"Beauties like you."

In his mind, he already won the interaction.

"that's a dad joke"

"see you never, boomer"

Alan scowled and thought I'm already too old for these brats... He got up and made his way to the kitchen. It was necessary for him to have his froot loops for dinner. He retrieved the cereal box from a drawer and put the portion on a bowl, then added milk. The following step was to get a spoon, so he did that. He transported his guilty pleasure around the house back to the living room.

He turned his TV on and tuned in to MSNBC to get his news. It was yet another horrible day according to the show, with eighty five percent bad news and fifteen percent good news. His preference for this media channel stemmed from the fact it was less woke than TV series. News knew they had to feature attractive anchors, TV series chose to bombard the viewers with the ugliest, queerest actors the casting agencies could ever find. On a personal level, he liked the way they animated the transitions. That was it, Alan knew mainstream news was slop, but he liked his brand of slop nonetheless.

Upon the conclusion of the news, Alan booted up his console to resume playing the JRPG. He was watching a cutscene play out when his phone played a song: an alarm. It was time to shower, so he turned off his console and TV.

The software developer would always take warm showers. Images of the past came to his mind while the running water cleansed his meatsuit. He remembered quite a few days, such as doing an art project for the last month of kindergarten, his first day of elementary school which was the time he befriended a certain person, an occasion when he was reading books under a blanket while a scary storm raged outside at fall, playing marbles with his female childhood friend, the time he found his vocation, the first fight he got into as a kid, playing doctor with his female childhood friend, the three nerds who comprised the music band he joined in year twelve, the occasion where her parents weren't home so he first had sex, how the music band drifted apart after a disastrous performance and so many more things. He remained stoic, recognizing the nostalgia but letting it go promptly. Alan wasn't ready for what was to come, however.

The blue expanse covered the whole sky, not a single cloud was to be found. The serenity that could be gleaned from this atmospheric configuration dissipated and rage passed the baton to bitterness as he took out his video camera and zoomed in on the wench that destroyed his life and her spawn. They were posing in the wheat field that the great grandparents of the little one owned. Those people well into old age gave their explicit permission to the mother and daughter to do as they wished.

Alan pressed the record button, unaware that he would return to that moment many more times as a reminder of his failure. Also, as a source of pain with the aim of self-inflicted masochist fantasies and also also, as a triumphant banality. Yes, a meaningless action that nevertheless managed to shatter the limitations of human experience (hunger, survival, fear, death) into a million pieces. It seemed to scream into the void of an uncaring clockwork universe that Penelope and Annabeth existed. That the two blondes, one twenty three years old, the other four years old, mattered. The footage ran for forty seven seconds and it consisted of the pair of mother and daughter, in the roles of pursuer and runner, running through the wheat plantation. Alan was rendered empty as a person. He only appeared as a brief auditory cameo, as a word that Penelope uttered shortly after catching up to Annabeth. As a matter of fact, even that guest appearance was removed in the Director's Cut of the material, that resided at that time in Penelope's laptop.

Alan was impacted by the mnemonic experience. He pressed the palm of his right hand against his face. His neutral facial expression was contorted by emotion into an ugly exaggerated version, as if it was drawn by a mean artist who had set out to destroy his self confidence. A single tear ran through his left cheek, falling off and blending in with the stream of water coming from the shower.

Most people would assume that at such a point, the correct course of action would be to call a friend, have a heartfelt and honest conversation, obtain some feedback about their feelings and reach a state of acceptance of the situation. Alan was not most people.

After such a shameful display, Alan's actions would teeter in the edge of the incomprehensible. Well, he turned off the shower, gathered the hair he lost and threw it away, dried himself, changed into his pajamas and brushed his teeth. So, to be accurate, after leaving his bathroom, Alan engaged in a series of bizarre, nigh alien rituals.

The first one of these rituals necessitated his return to the studio. He booted up his PC and opened a web browser. He entered the URL of a website, a compendium of creepypastas. The second step of his master plan involved opening his drawer and taking out pen and paper. Once completed, the third step needed a bit more thought. He browsed through the newest entries in search of a notable creepypasta. This step was a lot more nuanced, as its length heavily depended on how often Alan visited the page, if it was already dark outside and if any worthwhile stories had been posted.

A recently uploaded story caught Alan's attention. It spoke of a cerebral type of horror, based on vibes rather than the description of ultraviolence. It was very well written and it kept him in tension until the end, where it mentioned an oiled up bodybuilder wearing a thong and swaying his body flamboyantly. This ending made Alan erupt in laughter. Truly, to him it was a pasta worth preserving.

The software developer started transcribing the story onto paper. In cursive, with the first letter of the story ornated with a floral motif. He worked diligently, but not without rest, for he took a hydration break in the middle of the task. When he was done, he took a folder from his desk. It was labeled with the letter 'T', standing for "trollpasta". He placed his transcription in the folder.

The second ritual was to be performed in his living room. He took a rolled up mat that was in a corner and placed it on the floor so as to perform exercise on it. Alan performed a TRE (Trauma Release Exercise) session. However, his body wouldn't cooperate: he didn't get to tremor that day. Aware that the shaking wouldn't be therapeutic if he forced it, he stopped looking for it. He got up, rolled the mat up and placed it where he found it.

The third and final ritual was electronic in nature. The white man took his smartphone and browsed the Deep Web. His favorite website was an obscure imageboard where most of the userbase opted to remain anonymous. Alan created a thread. He attached an image of an anime girl to his text. The thread read:

"How do I cease to think about a girl?"

He knew better than to waste his time refreshing the page. Owing to the traffic of the website, hours would pass before a single person replied to the thread, if he was lucky enough to get a reply.

The protagonist turned off his phone. It was time for him to sleep. He used the clock on the nightstand to set an alarm. Alan got on the bed and covered himself with his sheets.