Chapter 7 (2/2)

I just stared at her with a bit of an open mouth. My arms and legs were shaking. I recognized this from, it was one I had seen late in my childhood and saw every day until some time back in second grade. It wasn’t possible that it stood before me though, it never really existed. She spoke again.

“One Two Two One… You seem qui-et One Two Two One… Did you miss me?” Her head twitched upward for a bit, and she shook her head back and forth, an expression of pain on her face. It left quickly, and was replaced with a somber expression. I worked my jaw for a second, and then spoke.

“Ze…Zeta?” She waited a few seconds, trying to organize her words properly. Once she came to a good combination of syllables, she spoke.

“One Two Two One… Yes it is me.” I clenched my teeth for a moment. She was silent for a moment; she does that when she thinks hard. Her head started twitching more, and then she furrowed her brows in anger.

“Enemy…” She glared at me. She then made a number of confusing facial expressions, some of which looked painful, others like she was confused. Then, she screamed.

“Enemies! Enemies everywhere!” I just watched as she slowly had a mental breakdown. I understood what was going on, it was an issue she had long ago. It had gotten worse as she, the others, and I continued our journey. It wasn’t getting progressively worse; it got worse only when she had forcefully assimilated another personality. It’s what happens when a personality is composed of conflicting traits and ideals. She was contradicting herself just by thinking, and so it was hard for her to exist without being in pain. I suppose that could make her sound like a victim, but the truth is, she was dark and twisted before she had this problem. In fact, it was fortunate that she was suffering. It had saved me from her a few times.

I had gotten into a trance, listening to her spout gibberish. It made me feel like I was back in the old days, with Gamma and Omega. They were the ones I liked. Gamma was kind to me, and Omega always… knew things. Anyway, I was in such a trance I almost didn’t notice when Zeta took a step towards me. Fortunately, I had. I jumped back from her, and she stopped and tilted her head to the right. Well, to her left, my right.

“What’s the matter, my silly child?” She said, taking another step towards me. “You aren’t afraid are you?” Another step, my blood felt frozen. “You know there’s nothing to worry about.” I finally found the will to start walking backwards. “If you die, you will just come back, like you always do.” I suppose that deserves some explanation. Back in that dream, that world of illusions, I had received a great deal of abuse. Some off the time, I didn’t understand that I was in pain, so I just sat there. Other times though, I would realize that I was being raped, beaten, burned, or whatever other sick thing that Zeta or Beta had chosen to do. It had become their way of releasing their stress, by abusing me. Well, whenever they went too far, and something was done to me that I could not trick myself into thinking I could live through, I would, in a way, reset myself. I had a new body. That’s not to say I would be completely healed or anything. There were some injuries that never went away. Things like my burned up arm, or my bloody rectum.

“No Zeta, wait what the hell is-” I didn’t get to finish that sentence, as she leapt for me and took me to the ground. The gravel cut into my back, and it felt like I had hit my head on solid stone. I looked up to see Zeta sitting on top of me. Her eyes were almost devoid of color. There was a great big area of white with just barely a pinprick of her iris. I think they were purple, but that could have just been the light. Again, it sounds hot for a naked women with these perky, wet breasts to be sitting right on top of you right? Not this time. She was slimy, pale, and fucking gross. And despite that; her off putting behavior was a major boner killer.

Her right hand pushed down on my chest, making it harder for me to breath and pushing me further into the gravel. Her face moved to my right shoulder and she started licking me. Her left hand went down to my crotch. She gripped me roughly and began pulling and twisting. She stopped licking and started biting my shoulder, drawing blood. The pain brought me back to reality. No! Not again! My right hand came up and knocked her bluntly in the side of the head. I really feel like that could have killed her.

Scrambling to my feet, I ran through the muddy gravel and stumbled around. I didn’t look back, and I didn’t listen for her, I just ran as fast as I could into the darkness. Shit! I lost my glowing stick. I ran through the cave and bumped into a wall. I inched along it until I saw a light in the distance. I just sat and watched it. If I saw it, maybe Zeta did also. I fell silently to my belly, and crawled across the ground on my elbows and knees. I got close enough to see what the light source was. It appeared to be these strange mushrooms on the cave roof. They didn’t exactly glow, but they were spitting something else out that glowed. It was interesting to look at.

Suddenly, a jolt of fear rushed up my back as I heard footsteps near me. They were evenly spaced and were walking towards the light from somewhere behind me. I rolled over to the right to distance myself from the sound, and then lay silently. The figure I assumed was Zeta walked past me, and approached the area of light. It was another human, not Zeta. It was a boy, but he looked odd. He looked old, but also like a child. It’s hard to explain that. He was short and had other child features, but he seemed… old. I can’t really describe it. Once he stood in the area of light, he cupped his hands in the air, and walked back into the darkness. He made some form of movement with his hands and a small area of light went ahead of him. What the hell am I seeing? I wondered. Is this guy doing magic? He repeated the process a number of times, and it was then I figured it out. The mushrooms were expunging a light source into the air, and this guy was taking it and spreading it around so he could see for a short while. Wow! That’s very clever. I was impressed by the ingenuity. Unfortunately, having figured out what he was doing hadn’t given me the sense the keep myself hidden from him. He faced toward my general area and sent a small flurry of these radiant particles.

His hair was a light black, almost grey but not quite. His skin was whitish, but not bone pale like Zeta. His back would hunch occasionally as he walked. He was speaking to himself, but it was at a bare whisper so I could barely hear it.

“I request identification.” He stated. His voice was entirely monotonous and without feeling. His face was frozen in what seemed to be an entirely neutral manner. It looked stuck up to me and it kinda ticked me off. I stood up and got a good look at him. He looked rather weak and I was confident I could impale him should the need arise. And then I realized something. This was Delta: the sort of brother to Omega.

“Delta, it’s me, Alpha.” I said, feeling slightly at ease to have him around. He wasn’t the nicest to me on our journey, but he had never abused me before. He treated me with the same respect he treated all the others, despite how inferior I was to them at the time.

He was silent for a moment.

“Proceeding to eradicate Alpha.” He stated. He didn’t waste time trying to intimidate me. Instead, he began a steady paced march towards me. I began to back away, but he leapt through the air and landed on my chest. He clenched my neck with his two hands and squeezed tightly. My head was getting filled with a warm, dizziness, and my vision started to dim as I thrashed and struggled beneath his grasp. I moved my hands up his arms that clenched me tight, and I pushed them by the inside of the joint. This caused him to collapse on top of me. I can’t really detail the rest of our struggle, as it was all very confusing to me, but in the end I was on top of him shoving gravel into his mouth. When I felt confident enough, I jumped off of him and he rolled over onto his stomach and began coughing up the rocks and mud.

I searched through my blurry memory for a set of words. Omega always used them when talking to Delta. They were like commands that put him in a state of…  Well, they seem to make him more cooperative. Come on, think damn it! What was it? Delta continued to choke and cough up mud and gravel, and I  worried the noise might draw Zeta. Delta seemed to want to kill me, but I can only imagine what Zeta may want to do with me. Delta was cold, but she was twisted. As Delta finally got to his feet, and prepared to charge at me, I made an attempt.

“Delta, information request.” It failed. He didn’t even pause as he began trudging towards me. Fuck! I mainly wanted to ask him why he wanted to kill me, but I also knew that he tends not to move when he’s talking: he isn’t much of a multi-tasker.

“Shit uh… Data Request!” I was lobbing any combination of words that I could remember Omega saying, and fortunately, this one worked. Delta paused for a moment, then began looking in different directions.

“I… I don’t-” He stopped talking abruptly and just stared glazy eyed for a moment. My heavy panting was the only sound around us as he made little twitches and spastically looked left and right. Finally, his eyes locked on me.

“I await your query.” Thank God… Now that I finally had him docile, I was unsure what to exactly ask. I settled on this.

“What is your current objective?”

“Eradicate Alpha.”

“Why?” He cocked his head to his left.

“Rephrase the question.”

“Why do you want to kill me?”

“Because you’re destruction is beneficial to me.”

“How so?” He was silent.

“How is my death beneficial to you?”

“Incorrect. I don’t need you to die.”

“You just said you did.”

“Incorrect. I need you not to exist. If you died, then that would be… bad.”

“So you don’t want me to die… you just want me not to be alive?”

“Incorrect. I want you not to exist.” … Are you fucking with me? I gave an exasperated sigh, talking to people like Delta, the overly specific ones, is never easy. The worst part is, he doesn’t know better. I can’t call him a jackass because he doesn’t know better. He’s built on a very crude way of thinking.

“So… why do you want me not to exist?”

“… Because it pleases me.” He stated, after a long period of what seemed to be internal conflict.

“Pleases you?” This confused me, as none of the Logicians felt pleasure in much of anything. Not only that, but the phrase ‘Because it pleases me.’ Is a term that is only used by the Manics. I suppose this is a good time to illustrate the difference.

So way back when, when there were who knows how many personalities, I think it reached 40 at one point, pretty much all of the personalities could be grouped into one of three categories: Manic, Logician, and there was a third but it had a weird name. I just call them Instinctual, although I remember them having a different name, something beginning with the letter O. Manics were dependant on emotion and cared not for physical needs of the body, focusing solely on pleasure of the mind. There were Logicians, who were incapable of these emotions, and revolved solely around some area of logic. They were all built on a flawed logic, and it is sort of why the strongest of them was the lesser of the three greatest personalities. There was also these Instinctual ones, who craved and lusted after pleasures of the body, things like sex, eating, shitting, all that stuff. There were some personalities that didn’t really fall into any of these categories, and they were usually so unstable they just ended up being assimilated by someone like Zeta, who lusted after the assimilation of others. I’m unsure why she never assimilated me or the other four.

Alright, now that I explain all that annoying stuff, each of these factions had some distinguishing traits that make them easy to differentiate them from other factions. The Instinctual ones were entirely self centered and only served themselves. The bad thing about that was, they didn’t put thought into things to figure out whether or not helping others would help themselves, so they tended to hate everyone else. Zeta was like that for a time, before she became so screwed up she had no more concept of hating anyone but herself. Logicians only do things to benefit themselves, but they have all this confusing shit to decide whether or not helping others helps them, they really are my least favorite group to talk about. Especially since I was a part of the Manic faction. This group was more diverse than the other groups, though that isn’t saying a lot. There are three types of Manics, essentially. There are ones who go out of their way to serve others, disregarding whether or not they are helped or harmed by it, these tend to be more simple minded ones. Then there are some who go out of their way to harm others, also disregarding whether or not it benefits them. These also tend to be more simple minded ones. Then there is the third group, the ones who do whatever they feel like doing at the time. Probably the closest thing to intelligent in the Manic society, though there really wasn’t much society when it came to any of the three groups. Everyone was on their own.

Well I suppose I put way too much effort into explaining this. I could have just as easily summed all of this up with ‘It is strange for someone like Delta to say something like that.’

“What do you mean by, ‘because it pleases me’?” He stalled for a good while, but then answered.

“I don’t know. This is… abnormal.” He clenched his teeth in an expression of pain.

“Gah! Holy fucking shit!” He shouted. I started to back away slowly. I didn’t know what was wrong with Delta, but if he wasn’t thinking properly then maybe the hold I had on him might wear off. That means I needed a good head start. Instead, I found myself getting molested.

I gasped as a pair of hands wrapped around my body, and a distorted chuckling ementated from behind me. It was Zeta.

“I found you, silly. I almost lost you.” As she pulled me to the ground, I was filled with something I really had never felt for any personality, not even Beta, who had spent days torturing me simply because… ‘Because it pleases him’. That feeling was hatred, I felt honest hatred towards Zeta.

Just as suddenly as I began to feel an honest loathing for Zeta, she disappeared, and a chuckling seemed to fill my head.

“I crawled up from the floor in time to have my face pounded by a fist. Delta stood before me, raising his fist for another blow. We had one small exchange.

“Why?” I asked, desperate to stall him.

“Because it pleases me!” He shouted as he leapt towards me, his fist colliding with my jaw. I coughed roughly as I fell to the ground. I found myself being kicked in the rib cage repeatedly, and as I lay there, only a few thoughts went through my head. I can’t believe how much I hate them all right now… There was more chuckling as my vision dimmed and I passed into a sleep.