Cover art by Steamboat Nighty.
The quiet of the darkness was like that of a cool breeze in his mind. There was nothing but calm, dank black and his single warm aura.
He opened his eyes to be greeted with a table and television laid to rest in front of him. It was old, as old as he was. It was a sight that had been unearthed from his memory, and now, it was ready to be turned on one final time. He tried lifting his arms, only to be greeted with a tug of defiance. He looked down to see he was partially strapped to a bleak chair, dredged in a saturated red and white, like it was bleached. His legs were strapped, and he realized his efforts to move would be futile.
Admitting defeat for now, he looked back up to the TV to see it had moved farther away from him, like he was being taunted with its presence. Then it began to turn on, crackling to life with minimal sound that dulled. The static seemed to be pulling from something faint nearby, and it was giving its all at that. Soon enough, that static started clearing up, revealing a sight. It showed a video from the view of a young man, playing with a dog.
He was shocked, recognizing the dog as his own that had passed long ago, and then tried picturing where the video came from. He thrust himself into his mind, but alas, the memory was not there. It was like it had been ripped away from him. Then he understood; it was right in front of him. The TV embodied it. He began feeling pricks, plucking in the back of his head as more TVs emerged from the darkness.
They were all coming together, showing pictures, slideshows, videos of his life. One showed a slideshow of him getting into a fist fight with a bully at school; he went down victorious. A picture of his mother and father in a group photo at a wedding. He was the flower boy. Then there was a home video he had made, showing how to prank your friends into thinking you were dead, with ketchup stains all over a white shirt he was wearing. It was all so surreal, humbling, but they all had a worrying undertone.
Why were they here and not with him? Was he doing this intentionally? There was something being left out, so he dug harder into his memory, causing all the TVs to flicker in compensation. Something was being hidden from him, but it couldn’t be removed. "Okay, bring it a little more to the-" a TV uttered, flashing in a dim light. "No, no, that won't do. Where's-" a name cut from the other memory. Why were the names axed? He dug even harder. "Do you mind telling-" the static screeched, but it was forced to continue playing - "about the electrical problems? The recording equipment wasn't juiced up enough, and I can't find-" the hissing turned into a scream, and the static filled into the main tv, causing it to burst.
He jolted back. The pain was unbearable. He held in a holler of pain, not intentionally, but instinctively, as if a failsafe went off. He opened his eyes to see the TVs dimmed, some cracked, all pulsating with static slowly, randomly. They were disrupted by something angry and displeased. From the darkness that once stood still came arms that held him down with too much strength. He could no longer speak. They had dug their hands into his head, bringing on an awful migraine. They were planting themselves onto him, and he couldn't argue, because they had surrounded him.
Finally, they situated themselves, with some of the hands now digging into his brain. His eyes were opened by force, like they had pressed on something within his optical nerves. He looked around in a panic, seeing all the TVs were now all turned towards him, just enough that felt uncomfortable. The static seemed to be bubbling but it couldn't escape the TVs; there wasn't enough pressure to allow for it. Then he felt a tinge within the front of his head that slowly moved to the back of his skull. It felt horrible, like something was pulling the threads that held his brain together. That tingle slowly turned into a pull, and then a ripping that started him begging to not go any further. His body began shaking, and slowly the hands that were holding him down began to lapse themselves up, pulling themselves into the pores and holes of his head.
He could feel all that was making him up to be pulled back, played with, every part of him that ticked was toyed with. Finally his eyes began to roll back into his head, only to be rotated back to face the TVs, which were once again displaying his memories. But now, the wrong that he felt before intensified, and he could see it. In total disbelief, he watched as his memories were being changed, disfigured and adjusted to show a new standard. That standard was nauseating, bright, monochrome, saturated, like a reel of film was being written over his happiest thoughts. And that reel was being injected into them. As he screamed in horror, his happiest places were pooled up into nightmarish exaggerations of themselves, too much to look at or describe. And they were coming to life.
They began to mock him, laugh at his being, made from the hands that had invaded his world. He tried to express emotion through his body, but all that came out was more hands, fingers that were coming in and out, threading him together. His pain was theirs, and they indulged in it like a joyous dessert. It started to become intolerable, as no human being should have been able to withstand the psychological torture of being ripped apart like machinery, and the beings that had taken on their own life from him began to shake the very fabric of the valley of dark, festering to create something for him. As they pranced around, etching their force and will together, they began to create a body. It was a cold husk, needing a heart to keep it alive. It was everything that they were made up of, coming together to make a cocoon that he would come to lay rest in.
The suit that had taken shape split open with a burst, filling all the televisions with dark tentacles and mist that finally broke through. Appendages, faces, and corpses that made up his once bright world were now crawling on and through the ground as one, coming to bring him to his now rightful place. He pulled back from his chair with as much strength as he could, but he was no longer able to do so as they had rooted themselves far too deep into his body, controlling him like a flesh puppet. The mere strength he uttered in his mind to conceive the idea of breaking away from them made him bleed, and they made it his punishment. What had grown inside of his body like a parasite burst from his arms and legs, the main force congesting in his torso and beating with vigor.
He burst from the pressure and a new force had taken control of him, seeing with small white dots that immediately expanded to form thick rings of white that sought to bring him a new light of life. His body now moved without his accord towards the army of monsters that compromised his remaining power. The chair had become laced to his back and had sunk into it, feeding to creatures. All he could do was cry and whimper as the massive tumor consisting of all that was left of him dragged his embodiment into the TVs, where part of the suit was exposed to take him on.
Finally, he was at the brink between his dying consciousness and the demons that had converged to witness his turn to a new man. It would be one unburdened by a frilly family, and no fear of existential dread. Never would he have to feel true sadness again, as he would be eternally happy, and would have new friends to guide him away from the oblivion. Never again would the outside world's light drudge him around through the endless sands of age and time. And then they launched him towards it.
As he collided, his essence exploded into a fit of agony, as he was being tied and burned into this new him. They cheered as he bled, and his blood spread from his corpse into the static, becoming interlaced with it as new memories formed from the deep crevices of their imagination to his. New faces he should be familiar with, new friends he should be akin to. The world shook and turned in on itself as a new collective was birthed. New smiles represented a turn to a darker world as their once human appearances now reeked of sketched caricatures without real world detail. Everything started to collapse in on itself and he beckoned to the endless skies of his realm to spare him of this pain, finally allowing him to wake from the dead.
He was away from his mind and all the torture he had to endure, never wanting to go back to it. He knew he couldn't, though, as it was there with him, now and onwards. He pressed down onto the ground, perspective and depth perception being given to him once again, and he attained his senses one by one. He could start to see the new body he was 'graced' with. It was old, rotting, and represented the new him. It was a transition that he despised, but he couldn't make out what was supposed to be different. Not that he didn't want to, but that he wasn't allowed to, like it was his new normal. He hated it so much, and tried to take it off. The pain that came with breaking out of it was still there and had seeped in from that mind drenched in fake. His anger grew, and just as he stood, he fell into a deep sleep, back to the detention camp now home to his nightmares. As he tried breaking away from the wasteland within him, a single word was uttered from his surroundings as he reached for a wooden railing with his gloved hand caked in decay.
“Checkmate.”