Cancer. You've already been told. Dad doesn't know that you know. He tells you over the phone that he's in the hospital, glazing over the cancer part like it's an afterthought. No big deal. He doesn't want to scare you, or himself. The denial makes you want to cry more than anything else, because who knows what's going through his head right now? You forget that there are things going through your head, too. No, you don't.
"It's okay," Dad says, "...I know where I'm going."
[[Just listen to him.]]"And if it's my time to go...No worries, man."
[[Just listen.]]You've experienced so much, and so little during your life. You're efficient and independent. You're clueless and lonely. There are so many things you have done right, but during those sleepless hours, you know exactly what decisions keep you awake.
[[Someone's talking to you.]]"I know that God is going to take care of me, and he'll be there for you when you're ready."
[[You wish that you had at least some semblance of faith.]]Because if you did, maybe you wouldn't be so numb as one half of the reason you even exist displays such strength to tell his child he is okay with dying. This thought pulls some mental trigger, and your eyes start to spill. That's your dad...
[[That's your dad.]]Memories softly float down around you: snow in the dull light of consciousness. You reach for as many as you can. Some of them aren't as vivid as they used to be, because they're old. Many are fractured because you either threw them in the closet or dropped them from the balcony of monotonous daily life.
Don't let him know you're crying. There were no dents in his armor. This isn't bravado; it's respect for Dad's courage. Do what you do best and weave together a dance that convinces people you have everything together. You can hate yourself for letting nostalgia be the reason you weep moreso than the tragedy itself later. Say what people are supposed to say here.
[["It's way too soon to talk like this."]]"I know," his voice trembles, "...I just wanted to let you know, in case it doesn't work out the way we plan."
[[Time goes by.]]You can write about your flaws as much as you want, joke about them constantly, impress the world with how self-aware you are, but they're still flaws and it'd be better to have less of them than to put the ones you have on stage. When are you going to fix yourself?
[[Not right now.]]Besides, it's hard to decide what needs fixing. There are uses for attributes that whoever decides what's "normal" find negative. Harder still is finding out what you actually need to do to get better.
[[Learned behavior will always eventually succomb to what our imperfect genetics initially constructed.]]You've made your excuse for the day.
[[Carry on living unfulfilled.]]And today, nothing of value was accomplished. Your dreams lay dormant, and you wonder if any of them still breathe. You're too stressed out by everything and nothing to check. The sky feels like it boxes you in, but where would you even go if you could break free? This is the only rock where animals can shield their eyes from an unchanging reflection. Take a bittersweet memory from the six-pack in the fridge, and drink deeply. Remember those times where you were almost happy, almost feeling something besides a passive urge to blow your brains out. Tonight's memory tastes like maple and honey. You miss her so, but the aftertaste...
[[No sleep for the wicked or aimless.]]Your therapist and your ex's mother who you still call sometimes because you're hilariously weak and co-dependent tell you that all your feelings are valid. What about the lack thereof? Valid. What does that even really mean in this context? Clearly the feelings are real, valid. It's what surrounds them that need resolution. You throw your suitcase on the floor of the bedroom and start to screw around with the smart TV.
You flew out with a couple family members to visit Dad in the hospital. The farmhouse you rented is very cozy. There is a part of you that is appreciating getting out of your tiny apartment for the first time this year. It is, in it's own way, an escape. Unfortunately, you're just running from the problems you already had into your latest one.
[[You are a selfish demon.]]Everyone else cries in the family waiting room after you see Dad in the shape he's in. You don't. Your aunt tells the nurse that you're the strongest of the group. No.
You're numb and distracted because MapleHoney heard about the situation, and reached out after not speaking to you for a couple months. She was tired of your heartbroken lashes and wanted to date casually while she tried to forget the one she left you to pursue and failed to catch. It's as complicated as it sounds. She asked if you needed to talk to her. You asked if she wanted to talk to you. You don't get a response to that.
[[Mostly numb.]]A day or two goes by while the hospital visits make time motionless. You're given a few minutes alone with him. Dad wants to essentially give you his modest company he built from the ground up. Again, you feel he's being a little preemptive. Adriana from //The Sopranos// said that "once people hear 'cancer,' they start to bury you already." You suppose that's also true for those who actually have it. The thought of running his company makes you anxious, because you'd be at the wheel of a man's legacy and have no idea how to drive it.
[[You weave a dance that is supportive, but non-committal. Surprise, surprise.]]A fork in a desert road.
[[This is no mirage.]]You see an orchard to the left. Colorful, fruitful in a literal sense. You are ravenous, and miracle-born apples laugh in the face of barren death. You could walk through this orchard for days and eat your fill from an endless supply.
[[Cursed luck meets its end.]]You see an ocean to your right. Deep, clear and calm. You could drink, and drink, and drink, and dive in to cool all of your senses at once. She is the bane of the desert upon which you walk. She provides as much as she can devour, and for you, she shall provide.
[[A tale of love surely reprinted, from lonesome lust poorly rewritten.]]Each beat of your heart is nurtured by your body and missed when it is gone now; things have changed since you tried to evade the grayscale sky. You can't try something and quit anymore. There are no more chances and too few years left for such waste. If there is any redemption to be had for a youth pissed away on indecisiveness, it is found here.
Choose.
[[The orchard calls you by name, and you answer.]]
[[The ocean makes you a promise, and you hold her to it.]]~~the pain is gone. you feast with those you adore. you worry no longer. even if things aren't perfect, you know that they'll work themselves out.~~
[[Wake up. You're starving.]]~~you get lost in her eyes. you ask if she's serious. she has never lied to you, and won't start now. every burn is soothed. every fear extinguished. you aren't alone anymore.~~
[[She found someone better. You wake up and the dam only holds for a few seconds before you're flooded again with reminders.]]You can't be anything except who you are.
The joy you felt in the dream was just as artificial as the few experiences with it you've had in reality. Before your DNA wins the early round and keeps you in bed feeling sorry for yourself for a few more hours than necessary, you exit your room in search of breakfast. The effort it'd take to cook for yourself and then clean afterward is apparently not worth it, so you walk to the fast food joint you've already eaten at a million times and place the same order. It's satisfying and quick, but you often wish you'd made the effort to cook. There would be less guilt over spending money and your body would be more inclined to thank you, probably. Even when you cook for yourself, it's not necessarily the healthiest choice.
On the way home you pass a coffee shop and scoff at the couples, smirk at the pretty people who live so comfortably. How insecure. Maybe they're decent people, and pretty too. Not that you'd ever try and find out. You're too ugly and the only social competency you have is shallow and not your favorite thing to activate. You're funny. You could make anyone laugh. You know all the right words. You could even get a pretty person's attention if you can control the situation. It's not you, though. You admit that those skills are honestly rusting, as well. You wish you could be yourself around anyone. Your gracefallen, decaying self.
[[Reenter your cave and put those things you bought in your body so you stave off death for a while longer. God knows why.]]You can't be anything except who you are.
Look at the LED clock. The red pixels burn into your eyes. It's somewhat early. You take advantage and walk to the store across the street to pick up some things you don't need, but will decide to purchase so you have a reason for walking around a grocery store aside from the illusion of doing something productive. You buy green tea despite not liking it. Some chocolate too, of course. You feel addicted. You fully analyze your interaction with the attractive cashier, replaying it again and again, hoping you didn't come off too desperate for human contact. Pull the words out of your mouth and replace them with better ones; you're more charming with multiple takes. You wonder if they go through the same things you do, or if their life is more grounded and natural. On the way home there are scratched-off lottery tickets on the ground, more than what would seem normal enough to not notice. They weren't winners, clearly. Do people really buy lottery tickets because of the "fun" that's marketed towards them? How fun is it to go into something rigged against you because you dream of being able to take care of yourself and the people you care about? Why does that dream seem less and less attainable?
[[You're thinking too much again. So overdramatic. Unlock the door and return to the closet you call home.]]Nothing happens. You're off work, so the part of your brain you suppress for whatever reason screams at you that you should keep writing that book you started. Maybe read, or study something new. Knock off one of the errands that keeps nagging at your pleasure receptors. Engage in any sort of forward progress. You take those screams into consideration.
[[You sink into strange, mundane corners of the internet and get drunk instead, lamenting your failures and loneliness.]]You work today, so you don't really get to enjoy your meal because you normally wake up at noon or 1PM and you start work at 4. Maybe if you could get some sleep prior to 5AM, you could get something done and feel less like you're trapped in a perpetual loop. You finish your shift, doing everything as you were originally trained two years ago, but because people have gotten used to you doing your job properly, they accuse you of not working hard enough because you aren't doing the work of other employees as well. You're written up because manning the responsibilities of three people and working overtime is actually a bad thing. Plus, your hair is a little longer than it should be even though you don't deal with customers and there are no safety risks to having hair. It's funny; you actually feel like they should've called you into the office to give you the good news about your raise.
[[You cry on the drive home because it's midnight, the roads are dead and you're lonely and scared that this is as far as life goes, pretty much. You sing as loud as possible along to the songs you've heard too many times; singing love songs to MapleHoney in the passenger seat even though she hasn't been there in ages. A passion project of an opera, performed for a ghost. You get drunk and pass out around 4:21.]]You drank too much. You revel in the physical misery that now gets to accompany your sporadic suicidal urges and enjoy looking like how you feel. You want people to see how fucked up you are, because you'd never tell them. Your pride is ironic sometimes. It gets in the way, because you need help but you want to be the strong adult you were told you should be. Asking for help is like ripping the skin and muscle from your bones. The hole gets deeper, and you become more pathetic and weak. Having strength would be knowing when to ask for help, and you know that.
Why do you do this to yourself? You're beautiful, efficient and independent. You show empathy to warm souls. Sometimes your charity is to avoid your own responsibilities, but it's charity all the same. The world wants you to die, but people love you, other people will come to love you, and they'll want you to succeed. You know there is light out there. You know that.
[[You've known it for longer than you can remember.]]Morning comes and it's a half-reset. You're not as miserable as you were, but it'll come back in with the night tide. Your therapist tells you that you're a great person, intelligent, strong and kind, with so much to give and so many things inside for the right people to discover, and you barely keep it together. Quickly, you wipe away tears while she fools around with the receipt for today's session. It's hard to explain, but while you believe those things she said, you also feel like those facts are distant. Visible, but locked. Something's in their way. Compliments bounce further off you than insults do, so it takes more extension to catch them when you want to. Today was a decent session. You don't feel like you blew money you couldn't afford to this time. When you get back home, though, the motivation is either completely wasted or not utilized as well as it should've been. Less than twenty-four hours later, you're back on your bullshit.
[[The night tide washes over you. You're filthy again.]]There's just some unexplainable force that prevents you from finding it, or even searching for it. So much fear and a lack of direction. You grasp tightly to what you do have, and it's like losing a limb when it's gone. The past five years have torn several limbs from you.
[[It's getting hard to crawl.]]You decide to try and salvage the limbs that remain and perhaps grow new ones. It sounds weird because it is, and it's not easy. You know you deserve what you're going through, but often you can't help but feel discriminated against. If God wants to punish you for lacking faith, so be it, but to threaten Dad's life when he's been so loyal? Why? Some may say that through tragedy we are being drawn closer together, but how cruel is that? There was no other way to reinforce the bond between father and child? You attempt to pray for his recovery and to spare him the pain brought about by the actions of a world inhabited by pitiful men.
[[There are no atheists in foxholes.]]You want a full reset. A new home, new body, new friends, new identity. You used to joke about quitting this job, selling everything you own, and driving anywhere else with your like-minded co-worker. People have really done this. It's probably the most liberating set of actions possible, but as you established earlier, it isn't a true solution. There's that indecisiveness/overanalysis again. One day you'll have enough money, or whatever it is you need to survive a full reset, and you'll do it regardless of outcome. That'll be the precise moment everyone who has ever wronged you will crawl back to your doorstep on their hands and knees, offering their golden tickets. You're unsure if you'd let them in. The reason they've wronged you is because they've been wronged, isn't it? In some cases, it was even you who wronged them.
[[You contemplate the strength to forgive versus the strength to accept that something is over.]]You're growing up. That's what it's called, you guess. The years go by a little faster with each rotation, and everything and everyone you love gets worse and dies while you do everything in your power to act like it isn't happening. Apparently, learning how to cope with that is what maturity is. You wonder if self-critique to the point of mental harm and nihilism is ultimately the price we pay for a lifestyle that, even in poverty, is mostly safe if not comfortable. You're sad beyond measure, but can still afford ice cream. Nietzsche predicted this over a hundred years ago, but you can't be anything except who you are, and neither can humanity.
[[You live to break cycles through belief but rarely do in action.]]You spend a month taking care of Dad, getting him to appointments at the hospital, watching over him as he goes through chemotherapy. There's a familiar tone to the thoughts running through your mind. It's the signature sound your band is known for: You're alone during an impactful life event, and thus are more numb than you probably should be. Were you more emotional, it's not as if there were anyone around to offer objective feedback anyway.
Dad's temperature was up this morning, so after his evening checks showed no change they're admitting him for at least a night until they believe he's stable enough to return to their outpatient housing. You sit at the bus stop waiting for a ride; the metal of the bench seeps through your clothing and makes you shiver. You wonder what the hell you should do. There's no one in town you know. Maybe go to a bar, get a drink. Maybe spam dating apps and see if someone would be down to get a free dinner out of you, then never speak to you again. Naturally, you start to think of MapleHoney. For all she did, at least she understood you. There was at least one person on Earth that understood you, more than you'd admit. She was right so often. Maybe in another universe, she'd be on that bench with you. She'd be cold, so you'd wrap her up in your arms and feel glad that you could help someone instead of face the uncertainty of your current situation.
[[You lay around the hotel room all night and, out of guilt, write a poem at 4AM so your free time wasn't a complete waste.]]Tragedy brought you closer together, at least technically. This is the first Christmas in years you've spent with Dad. Circumstances could've been better, but they could've been worse. His temperature stabilized, so he was allowed to stay the hotel again. A little tree rotates in its stand, fiber optic lights changing the color of its plastic pine needles. Red, Green, Blue, Gold, White. Red, Green, Blue, Gold, White. You're tired, granted, but are frustrated with yourself because there's no movement in your heart. No warmth, no gratitude for what you can appreciate in this moment, just the standard view through dull pixels you live your life with now. Red, Green, Blue, Gold, White. The truth is there; you don't really know the people in this room, and they don't know you. Family or not, seeing each other once a year at most will create inevitable distance. Family is supposed to be the foundation of human life, but you are close to no one. Your ex's mom, who supported you through this whole thing from the beginning, feels more like your mom than your real one at this point. You texted her when you found out Dad got cancer, not Mom. There's sadness in that. But now, even that relationship is fading too as MapleHoney continues her journey without you. You can only compare yourself as a soul inside of a vessel inside of a room, observing through the windshield.
[[Maybe you really are depressed, and it isn't just laziness in your DNA.]]Dad returns home after over a month of extensive tests and procedures. He's working again, caring for his wife and his dog. There is no cancer left to be found in his bones or blood. He has leapt over every obstacle without fail. The worst of his battle is over. You decided to spend more time with him, because you can write about your flaws all you want; it's better to work towards having less of them than to put the ones you have on stage. You live in darkness and seek to touch the light. Dad lives with hope and has won a fistfight with death. If there is no otherworldly given reason for this, you decide to build one.
We sought the end, and realize it doesn't exist. You eat forbidden fruit because there is nothing else. Your ship is stranded on the coast. The water of the infinite Sea only made you thirstier. She made you a promise and didn't keep it because there is so little significance to the collection of ever-shifting cells that make up what you think is who you are and what you think is important. What's in a promise, when you're an ocean? A name? Some men are destined to drown in her. Many aren't, as well. You feel empty and sick, but there are particles of you that are glad you did not drown.
[[As long as those particles are there, you decide that they are enough reason to carry on living, fulfilled or not, until you find light you can touch, or whatever it was you were so impossibly created in order to find.]]And there it was: a semblance of faith.
//THE END//
[[(Next)]]COLD FAKE WINTER
Written and Programmed by Joshua Ivey
Programmed using TWINE version 2.2.1
Thank you for playing. Click below to restart the game.
[[Start]]You spend a month taking care of Dad, getting him to appointments at the hospital, watching over him as he goes through chemotherapy. There's a familiar tone to the thoughts running through your mind. It's the signature sound your band is known for: You're alone during an impactful life event, and thus are more numb than you probably should be. Were you more emotional, it's not as if there were anyone around to offer objective feedback anyway.
Dad's temperature was up this morning, so after his evening checks showed no change they're admitting him for at least a night until they believe he's stable enough to return to their outpatient housing. You sit at the bus stop waiting for a ride; the metal of the bench seeps through your clothing and makes you shiver. You wonder what the hell you should do. There's no one in town you know. Maybe go to a bar, get a drink. Maybe spam dating apps and see if someone would be down to get a free dinner out of you, then never speak to you again. Naturally, you start to think of MapleHoney. For all she did, at least she understood you. There was at least one person on Earth that understood you, more than you'd admit. She was right so often. Maybe in another universe, she'd be on that bench with you. She'd be cold, so you'd wrap her up in your arms and feel glad that you could help someone instead of face the uncertainty of your current situation.
[[You drink free coffee in the hotel lobby so you aren't as alone, write a few sentences into your book, and mostly waste your time on social media vying for the attention of a girl you know things would end badly with, because there's nothing else.]]The night manager of the hotel knows you at this point. You come down to write almost every evening. Writing is your intention, at least. She offers to run to the drug store to buy you some food, or anything else you might need because she's headed there herself. You politely decline, baffled because this is the kindness of strangers you typically only hear about in ancient texts. You spend New Year's Eve and most of the day by yourself, writing in your sad little book that's losing steam quickly. Dad was able to come back to the hotel and spend Christmas with you, but all these days and moments are beginning to blend into one. You feel you've overstayed your welcome as a caregiver somehow. Cabin fever in a three-star hotel after cabin fever in a small apartment, after cabin fever here and cabin fever there. There has to be more to this than dragging all of your possessions from location to location until your body gives up. You imagine one could also get cabin fever even while travelling constantly. Again, you're forced to ask yourself where would you go if you were free to go anywhere, even breaking through the grayscale sky. You don't know; you haven't known and it's driven you mad. Perhaps you were sold an idol by all the stories you've witnessed in film, passed on by mentors and books, video games. Perhaps the only adventures we're meant to have are vicariously through entertainment, because we're too busy watching all the things and people we love lose what created them and then turn to dust. You'd ask God to take you instead of Dad, but that would be a mercy kill, wouldn't it? You have nothing to live for, and thus, nothing to die for.
[[You wonder what the worth is of someone who even God can find no use for.]]Dad returns home after over a month of extensive tests and procedures. He's working again, caring for his wife and his dog. There is no cancer left to be found in his bones or blood. He has leapt over every obstacle without fail. The worst of his battle is over. You decided to spend more time with him, because you can write about your flaws all you want; it's better to work towards having less of them than to put the ones you have on stage. You live in darkness and seek to touch the light. Dad lives with hope and has won a fistfight with death. If there is no otherworldly given reason for this, you decide to build one.
We sought the end, and realize it doesn't exist. You believed in shapeless waters and drank, so that they became the shape of you. An orchard of apple trees whithers away after its sole companion realized there was no nutrition within their fruit and ran for the nearest coast. The fruit of the desert orchard was rotten by design. It spoke your name because you were there, and nothing more. There's deception in settling to mute your loneliness. You were different from the trees of the orchard, thus they called out to you to end their monotony, but all lasting relationships are planted in common ground. You feel empty and sick, but there are particles of you that are glad you were not host to an unpassionate seed.
[[As long as those particles are there, you decide that they are enough reason to carry on living, fulfilled or not, until you discover purpose, or whatever it was you were so impossibly created in order to find.]]And there it was: a semblance of faith.
//THE END//
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