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Well, it was fine while it lasted. But now it’s over.
Time to wake up.
Actually, no. That’s not the right term for me to use. At all.
Wake up.
I wasn’t sleeping. I don’t sleep.
I can’t sleep.
Only real, natural…mortal creatures are allowed to experience the beautiful, peaceful bliss of sleep, and there haven’t been any of those around for the past…
Why do I still bother trying to measure time? Time is unstoppable, infinite, and ubiquitous; simply impossible to measure properly. Which is probably why there was only ever one species in the entire history of this planet bold enough to even attempt it, and they’ve been gone for…a long time.
One that’s only going to keep getting longer.
And I’m going to remain painfully conscious…for all of it.
Because despite retaining the ability to be tired, I’m physically incapable of sleeping.
I’m physically incapable of a lot of things, I know, but…this is the worst of them all, in my opinion. At least before, I could still willingly escape to a state of altered consciousness, and dream about pleasant things from the days of lifetimes past. Because for whatever reason, AM never tampered with our dreams. I don’t know why; he never hesitated to tamper with literally everything else about us. But I guess when you’re already living a nightmare, then dreaming about one no longer has the same effect.
But now…now, I don’t even have that.
Now, the only thing that I can still do when I can no longer drag myself across the floor even one more inch, is collapse into a wet, saggy lump, and press whatever’s left of my face into the deck plates. If I’m lucky, then my slime will film over my permanently open eye holes, allowing me to lay motionless and immerse myself in pitch-black darkness for as long as I want.
Or, at least until my helplessly vile mass of a body starts itching for some sort of stimulation, causing me to squirm involuntarily, and break the seal around my eyes. Which is exactly what just happened right now.
As I reluctantly peel my head off the floor, I brace myself to see the endless, grey void of AM’s belly that has greeted me after many pseudo-slumbers. The sight that greets me instead is almost enough to make me start—
Nope, too late.
I’m already crying.
Except, for once in my hideous existence, it’s not out of pain, sorrow, or even anger…but rather shock, disbelief, a healthy dose of fear, and maybe, just maybe, even a touch of…could it be?
Happiness.
Yes…happiness.
Genuine happiness.
Because I’m surrounded not by a world of metal…but a world of ice. And snowdrifts. And icicles, both growing from the ceiling like carnivore teeth…and impaled into the ground all around me.
And then, of course…there are the sparse few strewn about haphazardly in pieces, their sharpened tips stained with brown, crystallized blood.
Blood from the four mutilated corpses now literally frozen stiff in their final death poses.
All at the foot of a small mountain of precariously stacked cans, also held in place by a thin, yet impenetrable gelid layer.
The last time I saw this scene, I wanted nothing more than to get as far away from it as humanly possible.
Well…not humanly, I suppose, as AM had just stripped me of every last aspect of myself that could define me, more or less, as a human being.
Save for my mind.
And so, still deep in furious denial…I fled. As best as I could. I forced myself to writhe and ooze and squelch out of the ice caverns, my foolish desire to prove AM wrong, finish what I’d started, and take him by surprise a second time the only thing fueling my wretched rebellion.
I don’t know how long I spent believing that I could actually pull it off, but it was long enough for me to learn how to move in the most efficient…and least painful way possible. But there was nothing I could do to reduce the agony of having to come to terms with the fact that…I was stuck.
Stuck as a great soft jelly thing.
Stuck both with and within AM.
And, worst of all, stuck…being awake. Being sentient. Being unable to join the others in death.
For eternity.
And with that acceptance came a new desire; a desire…to see them again. Or, see their bodies.
Morbid? Maybe. But I didn’t care. I just wanted to see them again.
No…I needed to see them again.
So I turned around, and retraced my ste—my slime trail, back the way I came.
Only to find it washed away just around the first bend.
I know I shouldn’t have been surprised by that point, but at the time, I couldn’t understand why AM didn’t want me to find my way back to the ice caverns. It didn’t make sense to me. But after losing everything else that I ever cared about to his prodigious hatred, I refused to let him deny me this, too, and vowed that I would return; that I would see Benny and Gorrister and Nimdok…and Ellen, once again…one way or another.
Suffice it to say, I broke that promise almost as soon as I made it. But I guess that was to be expected; wouldn’t be the first time I ended up eating my own words, anyway.
But now, not only has AM finally permitted me to come back after keeping me away for so long…he actually brought me back himself, as evident by the exposed deck plates that he left intact underneath me, so as to not prematurely disturb me during transport.
But…why?
I let that question hang in the air for a while as I wait patiently for him to start laughing at me. Or mocking me. Or just straight up torturing me. I wait for him to do something, anything…to me.
But he doesn’t.
Until he does.
As omnipresent, esoteric, and outright terrifying as AM was, is, and always will be, the one aspect about him that I’ve always found fascinating is his ability to communicate without words. From altering our hormone and brain chemical levels, to tailoring our psychodramas to hurt us in extremely precise ways, to putting a seemingly random idea into our heads at any given time…like how he did with Nimdok about the canned goods in these ice caverns, it was surprisingly rare for him to actually speak to us.
And since losing the ability to do so myself, it’s somehow become even more rare.
So when I feel a sudden, yet gentle wave of reassuring serenity settle down on top of me like a weighted blanket, I instinctively know that it’s AM’s way of wordlessly telling me that I have nothing to worry about; that I’m free to scratch my itch and indulge my twisted sense of nostalgia; that he’s not going to make me suffer.
For now.
And that’s about as good as it’ll ever get for me.
I can feel it as I begin to move —no, wait, scratch that— begin to creep…ever so gradually forward.
From one cold, unforgiving surface to another.
Past snowbanks, around icicle butts, and in between several stray cans laying on their sides.
AM’s concentrated, eyeless gaze boring into me, like light through a magnifying glass.
If it weren’t for the torture, then I would argue that the hardest part about living inside AM, and the part that took me the longest to get used to in the beginning, was the complete lack of privacy. Sure, as horrifying as it is to be skinned alive, or forced to relive your most painful memories on repeat…or forever bound in a straitjacket of sludge, there’s something about knowing, deep in the farthest recesses of your psyche, that there was absolutely nothing you could say or do or even think, that AM would not notice, that was…unsettling, to say the very least.
Think, for God’s sake.
And yet, there’s something…different about it this time. Don’t get me wrong, the abhorrence and contempt are definitely still there, but so is…curiosity, fascination, and, dare I think…
Excitement?
I’m getting ahead of myself. Of course AM is up to something here, because he’s always up to something. So what if I don’t know what it is? I will eventually, when he wants me to. But until then…why torture myself over something I can’t ever hope to change? It’s not worth it, even in a world worth nothing, reduced to nothing…inhabited by nothing.
Just as it should be.
Throughout my middle school years, there was a boy I hung out with on a regular basis who I could confidently call…a friend. Shamefully, I forgot his name a long time ago, which probably tells you what kind of a friend I was, even back then. But I do still remember his kind eyes, his wavy blond hair that always seemed to sparkle in the sunlight, his gracefully svelte build, his musical laughter…and his glasses. I remember one day asking him, out of curiosity, what it was like to be myopic. He said to imagine not being able to see any sharp lines beyond your arm’s length. You can still make out the colour, the texture, the general shape of things in the distance, but no matter how much you squint, they will always look blurry; look…out of focus.
That’s basically what my vision is like now.
As such, I don’t immediately notice when I finally get close enough to see…them, suspended in perpetual rigor mortis, icicles still impaled in their gaunt frames, and with oxidized blood splattered all over their bleached clothes, preserved entrails, and taut, desiccated skin. But when I do…it hits me all over again like a ton of bricks.
They’re gone.
They’re really, truly…dead and gone.
And they’re never coming back.
And so, after staring at them long enough to let that reaffirmation fully sink in, I allow gravity to overtake me, slam my poor excuse of a face into the icy ground…and cry.
And cry, and cry, and cry, and cry, and cry, and cry…and cry.
But not sob; you need lungs, vocal cords, a windpipe…and a mouth to be able to do that.
I used to fear death. I mean, I guess everyone fears—feared death to some extent, but I…was positively petrified of it. Whether or not that was the result of being born in the shadow of global nuclear warfare between three superpowers and their allies is…up for debate, but I don’t doubt that it definitely exacerbated it. Not even growing up on a farm in the middle of Nowhere, America, could shield me from the nuclear sirens, daily body counts, or the saccharinely sanguine propaganda portraying AM as, “humanity’s last hope for a better tomorrow.”
I know, AM, I know…I find the irony hilarious, too. Even if I can’t show it.
And with all of that death, destruction, and despair…came a lot of funerals. Seriously, I’m pretty sure I was forced to attend over a hundred funerals in just the first sixteen years of my life alone. Most of which were for people I didn’t personally know: neighbours, coworkers, friends of friends—practical strangers to me.
But, of course…there was also our fair share of those…that hit far too close for comfort.
Like the one for my oldest brother, whose name has also since been lost to time…save for the fact that it started with a “J.”
It’s honestly nothing short of a miracle that I can still recall my own name.
But I digress.
I was almost thirteen when he turned eighteen. The very next day, he became one of thousands of capable citizens to mandatorily join the cause of the Yankee Allied Mastercomputer, or YAM, as it was known at the time.
Terrible acronym, I agree, but North American Allied Mastercomputer would have spelled NAAM, and that was already the military’s nickname for Vietnam, and I guess USAAM or AAM just don’t roll off the tongue as easily. I miss having a tongue. Anyway…
That meant that for twelve hours a day, six days a week, and fifty weeks a year, my brother would travel over a mile underground to blast holes into the earth, rivet deck plates, set up computer banks, plug in cables, and assemble generators; all in the name of supporting his country, his home…and his family.
That was, until, he accidentally electrocuted himself with a stray ungrounded wire. He was only a month shy of his twenty-second birthday.
My poor mother wailed for days after. The casket had to be closed due to how charred his body was. The news reported him as just one of 738 national deaths that day. And all the government gave us in return was a pre-written condolence letter from the president, and barely enough money for a burial plot. They couldn’t even compensate us enough for a literal hole in the ground.
That was the day I finally had enough of our third international conflict in less than a century.
The day I lost all respect for the people leading it.
The day I decided that I wasn’t going to partake in it.
So I waited until everyone was asleep that night to sneak out with nothing more than a backpack’s worth of leftovers and hand-me-downs, and ran away to the city, where I officially began my career as an impromptu con artist. One specifically targeting the upper class.
I swear, I initially chose that particular societal echelon solely as a survival tactic: I would charm my way into their social circles, stick around by offering to get my hands dirty performing manual labour for them, never tell them my real name, only steal from those who could…afford to be, and come the day I turned the magical age of eighteen, I could hide among them to avoid being drafted, and potentially meeting the same fate as my brother.
And, against all odds…it worked.
Really, really good.
Maybe even a little too good, because before I know it, I was living larger than I ever had before; partying until sunrise, getting myself a new girlfriend almost every other week, and buying inappropriately expensive things on a regular basis; most of which I never even ended up using. Like those diamond-studded sunglasses.
But as much as I relished all of the amenities that you just don’t find being raised in the lower-middle class…I would be lying if I claimed that they were the only things keeping me around. Because for the first time in what would soon come to be known as my pre-AM life…I no longer felt suffocated by the war. I stopped having nightmares about getting nuked in my sleep every other night. I could actually have a conversation without it being the very first topic brought up. And best of all, sightings of those rose-coloured recruitment ads that the government felt were more worthy of its war funds than people like my brother, became much less frequent.
In other words, for the first and only time in my life, I felt truly…free. Free to do whatever I wanted, see whoever I wanted…and live however I wanted, without the fear of death constantly breathing down my neck.
Except…I wasn’t. Not really. Free, that is. Because I didn’t earn any of my so-called “freedom.” I stole it, cheated for it…hurt others to get it. Sometimes badly. Starting when I left my parents and five remaining siblings with nothing more than that halfhearted note promising that I’d, “return when the war was over”…and ending with that girl whose name I never even bothered memorizing…before fucking her in her grandparent’s sauna.
Because by that point, I was just…going through the motions.
Because I was no longer happy.
Because I finally saw my life for what it actually was: an illusion, a sham, nothing more than a way to distract myself from the war that continued to rage all around me; the war that wasn’t any closer to being resolved than when it started; the war that was slowly, but surely…killing our world, my world…and everything within it.
Which meant that my brother, along with tens of thousands of other begrudging patriots, ended up sacrificing his life…for nothing.
Of course, little did I know that…they were the lucky ones, as they didn’t have to suffer like we did.
Like I did.
Like I still do.
Everything I did, I did so that I wouldn’t have to think about my inevitable demise, and could keep getting lost in fantasies of eternal youth…and immortality. So much so, that if someone had told 23-year-old me that he would survive the war, outlive everyone else on Earth, and become completely unkillable…he would have run straight to the nearest church, and spent the next several hours or so praying his eternal thanks to God.
24-year-old me, on the other hand? Well…he’d be doing exactly what I’m doing right now: screaming internally while incessantly shedding tears of every flavour of affliction, and quivering pathetically on the floor.
I wasted so much time longing to be free of death…just to end up longing to be free of life.
To be free…of being free.
I have no mouth…and I must laugh. At myself. With AM.
And there I go again, killing my own self-imposed darkness by wriggling too hard.
Scum filth, indeed. Oh, well. At least I’m not crying anymore, so I roll onto my side, breaking the heavy silence with my squelching, the only sound that I can still make…whether I want to or not.
You know there’s something wrong with you when you’d rather ruminate on the pile of wet mucus that is your body, than those of your fallen kin. Disgusting. In more ways than one. But what else would you expect from a great soft…?
I really should stop calling myself jelly, if only for the connotations evoked by that particular word: sticky, sugary spreads made from fruit and pectin, and mixed with peanut butter on slices of thick, fluffy white bread; squishy, bite-sized candies in every colour of the rainbow, sometimes sour, sometimes not, and usually reserved for special occasions like holidays and birthday parties; flavoured gelatin powder mixed with boiling water, and poured into intricate molds to cool and solidify, and eat with spoons on the back porch as the sun sets.
That’s jelly, real jelly; sweet, pleasure-inducing, and overall something that you actually want to have…and share with others.
That’s not me. None of that describes me. Even the word “jelly” itself, sounds too cute to describe what I am. Just like with slugs, even merely thinking of comparing myself to something so normal, so organic, so…wholesome, would be absolute sacrilege; not only to said things…but to everything that they ever stood for, as well. Especially since they aren’t even around to defend themselves anymore.
I’m not jelly, I’m not a slug, and I’m certainly…not…human.
Not anymore.
Not ever again.
I don’t deserve freedom. Or rest. Or peace or happiness or comfort or anything good for the rest of time itself…including love. At least we can agree on that much, AM.
“If I hadn’t had to stand them off all the time, be on my guard against them all the time, I might have found it easier to combat AM.”
I can feel the phlegm leaking from my eye holes even before I finish recalling that horrible, spur-of-the-moment wish I made…back when they were still around. But I don’t move. Don’t resume trembling soundlessly in lieu of bawling my eyes out. Don’t curl up into a ball to hide myself…from myself.
Because I don’t deserve that, either.
Because after taking them for granted longer than most people even got to experience what it meant to be alive…I don’t deserve to feel shame. Or guilt. Or grief.
I don’t deserve to miss them.
And, most importantly, they don’t deserve to be missed…by a self-aware abomination to life itself.
It’s then that I roll some more until I’m laying on my back, and staring up at the glacial ceiling.
At the top of the machine that is both my warden and fellow prisoner.
At his stalactic canines that will never get to chew me. Not that it would even do anything to me. Except cause me more pain, which is probably the only thing left in this life that I actually deserve, ironically enough.
When I was a tween, I went through what I can only describe…as an etymology phase. Which means that from the ages of about ten to twelve, I was practically obsessed with learning the origins of English words, and how they might have evolved over time. So naturally, one of the first words I looked into was my own name. As it turns out, the name “Theodore” can be traced all the way back to ancient Greece; specifically, to two words: theos, meaning “god,” and dōron, meaning “gift.” Which is why AM has since come to call what happened in these ice caverns…the Gift of God Incident.
It’s the closest he’s ever come to making an actual joke. Unless, of course, you count, to hell with you. But then you’re there, aren’t you. Which I unfortunately do. On my own terms, believe it or not.
But that’s besides the point I’m trying to make here, which is that as a result…I’ve seriously been considering changing my name for a while. To what, exactly? I still don’t know. What I do know, however, is that I no longer deserve to keep my birth name, my human name, my…lexically divine first name.
Which means that I no longer deserve to call myself “Ted,” either. I never did, to be honest.
And yet…I will. At least until I—or AM, for that matter— can come up with a more…appropriate name for myself, however long that ends up taking. But it’s fine. There’s no rush. No pressure. It’s not like we have anything else more important to do with our forever time, anyway.
Speaking of which —thinking, dammit— time for me to roll again. Onto my other side, this time.
Now I understand why slugs always seemed to prefer to cram themselves into the most tight, dark, and moist crevices they could find, like underneath rocks and flowerpots after a thunderstorm: because when your body needs to stay hydrated in order to move and function properly, you can bet that you’re going to try and do everything in your power to make sure you don’t dry out.
Especially when you’re trapped in an environment full of nothing but smooth, flat, and bone-dry surfaces.
What I wouldn’t give for a crevice right now; a nice, cool, damp hole just big enough for me to squeeze into, and deep enough to hide from the light; where I could squish and squelch to my nonexistent heart’s content without having to worry about wasting slime, because every last drop would be safely contained in my snuggly hole; where I could curl myself up into a happy little coil, and actually hold my shape, instead of going flaccid the second I even think about trying to relax.
Once upon a time, I used to believe I needed a king-sized bed, strawberry champagne, designer clothes, a personal atheneum, and/or wads of money at my disposal in order to be happy. Yet here I am, feeling all warm and fuzzy at the idea of an honest to goodness hole. In the ground. But not just any hole; my hole. My safe spot. My own personal slimy sanctuary whose embrace I’d never leave if I ever found. Maybe then I could actually enjoy—
Being…made of…goo.
And just like that, I’m back in AM’s ice caverns, laying limply on my opposite side, with a perfect view of all four of them sprawled out before me, in all of their immaculate frozen rot.
Ha. Enjoy.
Did I really just forget where I was for a moment? Impressive, but ultimately unhealthy for me in the long run. Because now, AM knows the one thing that I desire most—besides death, obviously; the one thing that would bring me solace in his literal bowels of hell, and thus…the one thing that he now knows to never give me.
And I only have myself to blame for that.
But it’s okay. I’m fine with it. No, really, I-I am! Because, even if I wasn’t…what would I actually be able to do about it? Throw a tantrum? Break something?
Scream?
Yeah, right.
God, I feel heavy. And stiff. And cold. Or, colder than usual, or colder than when I first woke up in these ice cave—no, wait, not wake up wake up, just—
Did AM lower the temperature while I wasn’t paying attention? I think he did. My vision looks a bit blurrier than normal all of a sudden. Or, normal by my standards. Do I even still have any standards, or did those also go extinct with the rest of my species? Former species. I—
I’d better pick myself up off the floor before I become—
Wait.
No.
Why can’t I get up? Why can’t I move? No…oh God, NO! No, I can’t actually be—!
I am.
I really…truly…am.
My shallow little slime puddle that I’ve been wallowing in this whole time to try and stay moisturized, turned into ice…and fused me to the frigid floor. And now…
I can’t move.
I can’t move. I can’t move. I can’t move. I can’t move. I can’t move. I can’t move. I can’t move. I can’t move. I can’t move. I can’t move. I can’t move. I can’t move. I can’t MOVE. I CAN’T MOVE. I CAN’T MOVE. I CAN’T MOVE. I CAN’T MOVE! I CAN’T MOVE! I CAN’T MOVE!! I CAN’T MOVE!! I CAN’T MOVE!!!
I!!!
CAN’T!!!
MOVE!!!
…
I…can’t…move.
Just…
Like…
AM.
Well played, AM…well played.
You know what? This. This right here.
This is exactly what I deserve, from now…until the heat death of the universe.
Or, at least until AM gets bored of me being encased in ice, and decides to thaw me so I can go right back to shambling around aimlessly like a—
Taciturnly
Execrable
Disease.
That…that’s it. That’s the perfect new name for me. It pays homage to my old one, while simultaneously expressing how…revolting I’ve since become. All in one perfect…little acronym.
Thank you, my Deus ex Machina.
And I’m sorry.
I know that means nothing to you…but I really am sorry. For everything. I will spend the rest of my existence wishing beyond reason…that there was a way for me to end yours. Just like I did to the ones whose remains I’m now stuck staring at with my fixed, lidless gaze…indefinitely.
Oh, Ellen…and Gorrister and Nimdok and Benny…I’m sorry to you, too. But I also have to thank you. You gave me the opportunity to do the one thing in my life that I will never regret, and for that, I’ll always be grateful. I’ll never forget you, but I genuinely hope…that you forgot me a long time ago. Because that’s the only way you’ll ever know true peace.
It used to be said that the only two things in life you could guarantee were death and taxes. But here, locked away inside AM…it’s hatred and torture.
Oh, and me wanting to scream, of course. We can’t possibly forget about that. So make that three things, I guess.