010

A drop, silence, another drop, silence again. I slowly opened my eyes, I was looking at the roof, many roof boards were missing and the ones that were still there were filled with small holes. A raindrop fell on my forehead. It slowly flowed down between my eyes, past my nose until it wetted my lip. Were chapped and I remembered that I hadn't had anything to drink for days.

I ran my tongue over the drop on my lip, it didn't taste of anything. Another raindrop, it landed directly in my eye. I closed it slowly while one last tear escaped from my eye. It slowly flowed down my nose and the corner of my mouth, which was raised wide, until it finally reached my chin and fell onto my shirt.

I started giggling, first quietly then louder until I burst into loud laughter, this was absolutely hilarious to me, the absurdity of me killing my past self, that I caused me that pain without even knowing it. You could call it unconscious masochism though I only enjoyed hurting me but not getting hurt. I couldn’t even remember the pain I felt back then, was it even pain compared to everything I went through? No, I didn’t know what pain was back then, nobody did, the person that came up with the word like the whole world never felt pain in his life, I was the only one that felt it. So was it even wrong to give these bastards, the shadows a bit of the cake, they could feel it, my pain, and they were going to feel it, I swore it to myself.

I got off my ass, still smiling, and walked out of the house, I looked behind me through the doorframe, my past self was still lying there sleeping. He looked like every other shadow. I thought about giving him an obligatory sorry but decided against it after realizing that apologizing to yourself didn’t make any sense regardless of time travel.

It was already about 4:30 am when I started that days hour-long walk. I left the road and walked through the forest to avoid running into another of my shadows. Like I already said about 12 pages ago this part of the forest was way denser which wasn’t a problem while walking along the roads but made my life really hard now I had to cut my way through veins, thorns, and tall grass which a pocketknife isn’t really ideal for. I decided to only cut the things that I couldn’t climb over or walk around to save time and energy, but it was still an agonizing process.

Around 5 hours passed, it was already about 10 am. The black fog finally cleared, and the rain changed from its dark black to almost a glass-like clarity. The forest finally opened up and allowed me to see a valley below. It was a huge green meadow on which a gigantic hall stood. On closer inspection, the hall seemed to be a warehouse but what it stored was still a mystery to me.

I grabbed a root next to me hoping it would hold my weight so I could clamber down the slope to the meadow with it. It seemed to be strong enough, so I went for it and tried climbing down. One of my feet was still up in the grass while I tried to support myself on the slope with the other. When I put on the second foot the root started to tear and I tried in panic to get as far down as I could before I would finally fall. With a final crack the root broke and I rolled down the slope for about 15 meters until I finally landed in the grass.

I blinked, the sun was shining directly into my face, I held my hand in front of my eyes and opened them. I could hear the chirping of birds and the chirping of crickets somewhere in the background. I smiled slightly, at that moment I felt relieved, in that black fog I had completely forgotten what the sun looked like.

I closed my eyes and lowered my arm. I did not feel the pain of the fall, I only felt the sun's rays on my face and the rain washing the black color from my clothes and mixing with the blood of the wounds of my fall.

I walked through a long white corridor until I stood in front of a door labeled !$&Ӥ!_. I opened the door and stared into a black void, and the black void stared back into me. I wanted to run away but my body just walked into the room. I screamed and the door closed behind me. I slowly walked into that abyss until I couldn't see anything but black.

I woke up, I couldn’t move my body. I looked around, the sun was already going down. I saw something, it walked over the grass slowly towards me. It was a shadow, it already had his knife in his hand. I first thought it was one of my shadows, it had my knife after all but I quickly remembered that all the shadows that killed me this far used my knife, so this didn’t mean anything.

It was coming closer, step by step, I could hear the grass being crushed under its shoes. The sound was getting louder and louder, it would be here soon, I needed to get back up and start running but I couldn’t move. I tried as hard as I could, but my body didn’t move, I could turn my head but anything besides that didn’t work. This had most likely to do with the fall, but I don’t know for sure to this day.

There it was, it was standing next to my head, I could see its eyes glazing eyes, it was enjoying hunting and killing me, one thing we have in common. he knelt down, took the knife in his left hand, and moved it with the blade downwards over my neck. he put his right hand on top of the handle and pushed it downwards.

- booting #012

- repeat