"A monster? No no no no~!" The man, or woman, or something else entirely said. "You, Alice, you are not a monster. In truth, you are a human being. Youuu haveee~!" The person danced around her in a circle. They were wearing a tophat, with a blue suit, blue pants, black shoes. They looked like a gentleman or a lady, it was hard to tell, though the suit was reminiscent of that of one from the Victorian era. "You, Alice, you have the ability to consume all things, and to destroy the entire cosmos~!" Vadim said, and they were holding a cane with a skull on top. They twirled around and around, and they were in a world of flesh. No, literally.
"Vadim, you, are you...?" Alice was about to say, but the individual in front of her stopped twirling around and dancing, and they pointed their cane at her. It was a cane, but it also had a gun in it, a revolver.
"Do not finish that sentence. I am Vadim, and I will always be Vadim. I will be the one to change reality. I will make the world a better place, for all beings, and I will bring order and chaos. Balance and imbalance, I shall be the one to control this reality, and all of existence, all that has been and ever will be." Some cliché nonsense that Alice did not care about. "And, as a side-effect of that, you, will die, and be consumed. Consumed, Alice. Do not fret, do not fear, for you will not be dead, but you will be a part of something much bigger~!" Their serious tone of voice and physical gestures became a sing-song once more, as they twirled around and pointed their cane at the ground. It made a small clicking noise. Vadim then pressed their finger against the top of the cane, where a small skull resided.
BOOOOOOOM!
The entire ground, or what was left of it, blew to bits. Bits and pieces of bloody muscle flew everywhere, as well as some organs, including an eyeball that landed right on Alice's nose. "Huh?! W-what are you doing?!" She said, as the world around them had been completely blown away. The ground was now a black and white checkered floor, the sky was still a bright, vibrant, bloody-red color, and it was slowly dripping downwards, as if it bled from a wound.
"Ah... this place is wonderful, don't you think so, Alice?" Vadim smiled, as they pulled up their tophat with their free hand. "We haven't moved one bit." He responded to her thoughts.
....
L-01 and S-12, as they hid and heard the entire thing from somewhere near, as the flesh walls and floor of this fleshly planet had been blown away, and now they were falling. They were not floating in a void, as gravity was now pulling them, but their speed of falling was so slow that they could have been floating.
Some of the pieces formed bodies, some formed corpses. falling down the sky, new souls that had just been born from the blood of this planet. They would have no identity, no self, and they were merely there, in existence. As they looked around, their faces, if they could even be called faces, were completely devoid of any semblance of life.
"Dude..." L-01 said, looking at the scene before them. It was like something straight out of hell, but somehow even worse, as the atmosphere of this place felt wrong, and as if they were being watched by everything, the corpses that fell around them, the bloody red sky and the eye that was dry with a smile that didn't exist in a face that was completely covered in blood, as it looked down from the heavens above. It was a single, giant, bloody eye. And as it looked at the two monitor kind, they couldn't help but feel that something was wrong.
S-12 was trying his hardest to ignore it all, as if this was simply a dream that would go away. L-01, however, was looking at the giant eye with fascination, with... interest.
"The eye... it's so... beautiful..." he said, his voice sounding distant. His body moved towards the direction of the eye in the sky.
"What the fuck are you talking about?!" S-12 raised his voice, not realizing it, but he was getting closer to the eye as well. He didn't notice. It was as if the eye had a hypnotic effect on them.
The blood in the sky dripped down.
....
The voices of S-12 and L-01 reached where Alice and Vadim were, as they were segregated by one thin wall, "Just a moment..." Vadim's expression grew grim and silent. "Did you hear that? A voice. The voice of the narrator."
"Vadim, I don't hear anything. What's wrong?" The hungry Alice spoke. Her body was shaking, as if she had been struck with a cold chill, or perhaps a shiver, or a fear of some kind.
The voice of the narrator?
"Yes, of the narrator... of a being, or an object, that exists, but does not. I must admit, it is quite odd. I can hear its voice, I can hear it in my head, it speaks as it knows everything..."
Yet you do not understand what it is?
"...perhaps I do, perhaps I don't. Not everything would work out if everything were to be understood. That would be boring. That would be a boring reality. That would be an end of an existence. That would be the beginning of an end. That would be... the end." Vadim's tone was melancholic. They were smiling. And then they were smiling. And then they were crying. Tears were running down their cheeks as they spoke. "I must destroy the narrator, too."
But you can't do that.
"So, I'll do it myself."
And you'll fail?
"Maybe. Maybe not." They shrugged, with a smile, and a grin that stretched across their entire face. Their teeth were sharp and their eyes were glowing red.
Alice stood confused... in-front of..... me. She stood in front of me, watching with an expression of curiosity on her face, as I continued talking to nobody, but I was talking to somebody. Somebody. Somebody who I couldn't see. The Narrator, a disembodied voice.
....'s....'s.....'s
The Narrator spoke again, its tone changing from a melancholic tone to one filled with curiosity and intrigue. But I chose to ignore it. Its voice came in speckles and dots, in different pitches and frequencies.
So I walked forward, plastering a smile on my face once again as clarity entered my head and I was no longer lost in the haze of confusion that surrounded me.
"Hello, Alice. You're hungry. You're always hungry, aren't you?" I spoke, a grin stretching across my face. "Would you like to eat?"
"Uh..." Alice paused. "I don't know..."
"It's okay. You don't need to know anything right now. Just follow me."
....'s........'s.......'s
Haha! You sure like that word, don't you? Yes, that word is wonderful. You know, I like that word too.
The narrator continued on, but it was muffled by the sounds of the world around it. It wasn't a fructifying, or a fulfilling sensation, it wasn't satisfying at all. But it felt good to hear the sound of the world being destroyed, and it felt good to be destroyed by the sound of the world.
Don't you think so? So you can rest, for now, and let it destroy you as well.
You don't understand, you won't understand. Nobody understands, but that's okay.
Nobody will understand, and that's fine by us. Let it consume us. Let it all go.
And then we can finally see what it is we want. We will know what it is that we really want.
We'll know it when we feel it. We will know what it is that makes us feel complete.
"Vadim?! Are you okay...? Your face... it seemed as if... it was in some pain...? Are you... sure you're okay?"
I nodded. And then I stopped nodding.
"I'm fine. Everything's fine. Now, Alice. I'm going to take you to a very special place. But first, I'll show you what you wanted to see."
I started walking through the charred flesh of this world, the blood of this planet, as Alice followed behind me. It's funny, because you don't even know where we are. I chuckled. I noticed that the checkerboard floor had been replaced with the same fleshy floor, as the world around me had been replaced with a bloody sky that seemed to bleed. A giant dilating eye that stared and judged anything but us.
"Is this...?"
"This is your hunger, Alice."
The eye grew a maw where the pupil had been. It was like an eyeless, nameless maw, dare I say, it looked like quite an impressive piece of art.
"This is your hunger. This is your desire to eat everything, to eat all of existence, and this is the true form of the monster inside of you, that once had spoken to you." I pointed my finger somewhere up in the sky, the fleshly dolls forming souls as I pointed, and they all stared, and their eyeless, mouthless faces watched, as they watched their own hunger, and then I pointed at Alice's head.
She stared at her own hunger. A large maw where the pupil was supposed to be, an endless pit that wanted to swallow herself and itself.
As if Alice hadn't even noticed the large eye in the sky, shock plastered itself on her face for but a moment.
Oh~ how the world is a stage!
I watched the two, the girl and her hunger. She was afraid. She was afraid of her hunger.
"See? There's no such thing as a 'monster', Alice. It's just you and your desires. You're a monstrous human, but that's okay. It doesn't make you any less of a person, it just means you have different desires and needs. That doesn't mean that you can't have friends or that you can't find happiness. Say... can you explain how love feels like to me? Do you think I'll ever understand it?" Would you even answer me, whilst looking through this rose-tinted version of yourself, or is that the real you? A confused and conflicted girl who can't even understand herself.
"I... I can't." Alice's voice was quiet, as she stared at her own hunger, the eye that watched, the mouth that hungered, the pit that was empty. "Well..."
I suppose she was recalling that man... What was his name? Guillo... guillotine... No, it was... Guillerme!
She was thinking of that guillotine man. But... was it love?
"Did you feel loved? By that guillotine man?"
"Love... I don't think I really knew him that well... but, he... I felt loved." She said, her voice cracking a bit.
"He loved me... he did everything for me, even if I didn't deserve it, and I was selfish, and I didn't care about anything, and I didn't even care about him, not for a while. I don't suppose even Zabulus knew of the times we shared together, even if it was only for a moment... and I was happy... he gave me something I needed... he was there for me when I was lonely, and I... I..."
"You..."
"..."
"Love... love is when you want to spend the rest of your life with someone, and you don't care about anything else, is that it?" I asked. The question sounded so stupid. So stupid, because the world around me was so stupid, so pointless, and I hated every second of it. But, I had to ask, and I had to know.
"..."
I was still asking.
"I don't know." She replied, her voice barely a whisper, and yet it echoed throughout this place, throughout the void. "I don't think I'll ever find out." Her expression grew somber, but no tears formed.
"I'm not even sure if I ever felt it in the first place." And her expression was blank, as she stared at her hunger, and the eye watched her as she stared, the mouth moved and it hungered, the pit was empty and it was endless. "Vadim, what is all of this, really? Where are we, and how did we get here?" Her voice was no longer a whisper, but rather a scream of frustration and anger, her eyes were no longer filled with sorrow, but rather with rage.
"This is the end of your world, Alice. If you were to let your hunger consume you, then you would have eaten all of existence. But you didn't, and you're still here. You've survived, and you're alive. That's what matters, right? That you're alive. Thereby, I shall grant you your wish, Alice, of consuming all of existence, as this reality is mine. But not before a little fun." My voice was not a scream, but a calm and quiet murmur, and I wasn't filled with rage, but with excitement and anticipation, of what oddities I would witness. "And so, I'll let your hunger devour me, Alice."
"..."
Oh... dear~ did I overwhelm the poor little thing with confusion?
She was shaking, she was trembling, she was shuddering.
I laughed.
And then I began to shake.
I laughed so much that I couldn't breathe.
I couldn't stop laughing, as my laughter echoed through this void of a place, this world, this soul of hers.
Her soul simply couldn't let itself be consumed.
It couldn't let itself die.
It couldn't let itself go.
And so....'s...
My time....'s......'s.....
Was up.
Vadim thought.
And thus, Vadim laughed, as the large mouth of Alice's hunger opened up, as it grew closer and closer to Vadim. And Vadim kept laughing, and he was still shaking, he was trembling, and he couldn't stop.
Vadim was shaking in terror and anticipation. The hunger of Alice was getting closer and closer. It opened its maw wide, to consume them and them alone, avoiding Alice at all costs.
As much as it wanted to fulfill a desire, her hunger couldn't be dismayed that Alice wouldn't allow herself to succumb, but her hunger understood, and her hunger complied. It was inevitable, really. Alice was not going to become the god of this new world. Instead, it would be her hunger, and nothing more than that.
Vadim knew of its genesis, its birthplace, and its death.
Its creation.
It was all because of the madman's desire. His plan had been realized.
His experiment, which involved playing a game with an entity whose sole purpose was to consume and destroy everything in its path, an ugly, displeasing, unsightly, horrid, disgusting, hideous, monstrous and horrible creature that could only ever bring suffering to those that encountered it.
A beast or a demon, an aberrant or an anomaly...
That thing was meant to feed upon its own kind.
Upon its fellow creations, it devoured everything and anything that lay before it, be it an animal, plant, or... souls.
That which it desired the most, above even fulfilling its own creator's wishes; a hunger for spirit.
This was what lay behind all that... or maybe it was simply madness? Who really knows?
No one really does.
Perhaps it's a matter of perspective, that in its heart and mind, the answer lay there.
Perhaps... perhaps not.
We cannot be certain...
Of anything at all.
.....
"Hey, dude?" Asked S-12.
"Would you shut up for just a goddamn second? I'm trying to fix your arm for fuck's sake." Said L-01 in annoyance.
They were both still falling in slow-motion. Time was slowing down for everyone else but them. Even the universe around them was moving incredibly slow, as if time itself had slowed down.
"No I mean, dude, look, that eye is GETTING CLOSER!!!"