"Yuri! Yuri, let me in!!"
"I can't hear him, he's not even there."
"Yeah, sure, just ignore the man screaming for you to stop."
"Would you shut the fuck up! I don't need both him and you distracting me."
I look over the table in the science room. Sitting on a smalletal plate is a single dead chipmunk. I didn't kill the poor creature, it died in the earthquake somehow.
'Resurrection.'
At first, I wondered how I would resurrect the little thing, but then I realized, it would be easy. Reality is falling apart. That earthquake was it bending to the last degree it could manage before it breaks. At this stage, it's focused entirely on preventing that break, that's why I have powers now and that's why they're getting so easy to use. All I have to do is the same thing I've already been doing; just use the right words.
"With the universe in such a state, the rules are out the window. Just applying a jolt of electricity will be enough to bring this rodent back from the dead."
I grab the cut electrical wires going to the outlet and cross them together to generate the sparks needed to truly solidify the scene.
'This is it. It's more than enough to convince the rules of fiction that this should work.'
"Yuri!!!"
Suddenly, Terri bursts into the room. I grab the squirrel and the wires and hold them in my two hands, ready to touch them together with a single movement.
"You're too late. You're not gonna stop me."
"I'm not here to stop you, I just want to talk."
"No. Talking is a psychiatrist's most powerful weapon."
"I'm not a psychiatrist, not yet; not until I graduate. No one would send an unqualified student to do a master's job."
"Still, you have most of their teaching. You think the same as them and-"
"What the hell do you even know about psychiatrists? You act like we're one unified force, like a hive mind, but you know nothing."
"You're all the same. You all just push me to go back to the way things were. I can't go back, and this is the escape I told you I'd find."
"No psychiatrist worth their degrees would ever try to convince a client to do something they didn't want to do. They may make suggestions and try to push you outside your comfort zone-"
"Wrong! Everyone my parents send to, they just parrated back the same talking points."
"Because your parents sent you to them. I assumed they paid for them, found them for you, right?"
"Yes."
"Then they were the ones who were wrong. You got a biased service because the employee who should have been serving you was serving your parents. But I'm not like that. I had my own reasons for wanting to help you."
"What reasons are those?"
"The day I revealed the truth to you, you said a lot of different things. You described a condition I had already learned about in class. The switching and the loss of control over your actions. But that wasn't what convinced me to help you. When you told me about the music, the way you explained it, you've used that before. You've probably spoken to a dozen different doctors, slowly crafting your little explanation as to why you can't accept reality; but, it's a lie, isn't it?"
"It's not a lie. It's the truth; I can't hear the music."
"Never?"
"Not ever."
"Like never ever ever?"
"What?"
"Even when you're doing this; trying to break the world with me; that doesn't bring you joy? It doesn't make you smile? It doesn't have you switching over to a manic episode shouting 'teleport' over and over again?"
"That's not the same thing. This is just temporary relief. Unless I enact my plan, this will eventually end; then reality will step in and bring me back to that place."
"And that's what I saw. The truth. Beyond the lies of music was a truth that no one has been able to help you with the real issue. You hide in sophisticated euphemism so no one sees the true reason for your pain. The thing you don't want to go back to is ordinary life. Something about it broke you, didn't it?"
"That's- None of them have ever figured that out. They all believed I lost some kind of spark in my life and I just needed to be gotten back on my feet; and I let them continue on with that idea."
"You didn't want to talk about it."
"Why should I?!"
"Just say it. No bullshit. Just say what the real issue is; you can't make any progress until you're honest with someone."
"Fine, but don't complain if I start ranting. It's work. Well, not just that, but mostly, yes, work."
"I thought so. I asked you about it before and I noticed how you avoided the subject. What about work is bothering you?"
"I wasn't happy."
"Most people aren't all that happy with their jobs."
"It's not that. I can't even say that it was that I hated my job. It was something so much deeper. It was torture. Fuck anyone who ever actually got tortured, that shit was torture. It's the most miserable mind breaking thing you can ever do. And you do it every day for eight hours a day, five days a week. At first you think the weekend is an escape, but eventually it becomes an avenue for you to slowly dread having to go back. I thought about spending the rest of my youth dealing with that, and it broke me."
"I get it, realizing how terrible work is. Maybe even not getting what the point is?"
"There is no point. Am I the only one who sees that? They say it's responsible and it's what you're supposed to do. To spend your life suffering so when you're too old to enjoy life, you can sit back in a recliner and just watch TV all day in a nursing home."
"And that's exactly what it feels like to everyone else at your stage in life."
"Really, cause the others don't seem to show it. No one is happy! We all know it's true! Everyone is miserable and they just sit there and suffer day after day because of this idea of stability and safety! They spend every weekend dreading the idea that they're going to have to go back to work. They can't even enjoy their time off because the torment is always around the corner. They're just like me. And it never ends; they just want to make people do it for longer and longer. What is the point of ensuring security for a future I don't even believe in? I genuinely don't believe there is a future, at least not a good one."
"What is the future to someone who thinks they've already seen a sample of the rest of their life?"
"It's all a joke; a giant game they make us play and we think we'll be rewarded at the end, that it's just the right and responsible thing to do. I can't be like them. Something is wrong with me and I'm just not able to handle it! I want to enjoy my life, not sacrifice it. So, I gave up. I got out. But the system is still broken, and I can only avoid it for so long. Unless I break it."
"Yuri, I know I'm gonna sound like the other therapists for saying this, but there are more things in life you just haven't gotten to. Things that bring deeper meaning and new happiness."
"So I should just do those deeper things like everyone does, that'll make me happy. Perhaps I should find a significant other in the belief that that'll patch up the misery. Then, when I eventually realize the feeling was only temporary, I can then be stuck in a loveless marriage. Maybe then I'll have a kid to try and save our relationship and permanently lock myself into my misery."
"I don't know how much I can say against that. The divorce rate probably backs you up a lot. But there are people who still find that type of happiness. I still have hope."
"And that's why you can't help me. You grew up having hope, I grew up knowing it's all just a cruel game. You want me to trust that it'll work out? I'm sorry, but I can't"
"Yuri, no!!!"
I touch the wire to the squirrel and a single large spark shoots out.
"The world is over. Long live the new world."