You have a purpose. Maybe you’ll be the inventor of flying cars, you’ll develop the world’s best VR game, or even just make a very nice pattern of curtains.

Then you’ll die.

Not immediately, of course. The world is cruel, but not that efficient. You’ll get to have your “grace period”.

That’s after you’re of no more use to the world, but before you’ve died. You had a purpose, you fulfilled it, and now you’re done. You have no more reason to be here any longer, but you won’t make any particular trouble, either. So, the world takes its time. Killing someone isn’t easy, but the cosmos will find its way to you eventually. It’ll nudge you just a little too close to the edge of a cliff, or convince you that looking both ways before crossing a road isn’t necessary.

The universe will always find a way.

...The universe will usually find a way.

This is a story about when it didn’t.

I feel numb. Cozy in bed, but still numb—emotionally. I was thinking, but not my own thoughts. Someone else was sending me their thoughts and making me think them. I had no say in the matter; someone else’s experiences were being beamed directly into my brain. She was using magical self-referential geometric parasites of squiggles and strange loops. The parasites are entirely abstract, only having fleeting traces of physical existence. (Usually etched or drawn into stone, paper, or most recently; light itself.) They hold no meaning individually, but when combined they’re beings of limitless power. Primarily, they allow your brain access to foreign thoughts, as if you had just thunk’d them yourself. That’s how they get used. Almost like their “job”. But they are alive and dynamic, not only conveying the programmed thoughts they were intended to. They also live lives of their own, looping about one-another, recursing themselves and casting new and exotic existence into form. Large clusters of them are more potent with biological energy than the entire Cambrian Explosion, each one its own Garden of Eden for all kinds of strange life. Don’t be naive and assume that life requires physical material in which it needs to be lived. I assure you, just as I will soon experience, that is a dangerous assumption to make.

Though, it’s time to come clean. It’s not telepathy, technology, or even occult in nature. Sorry for being intentionally misleading. I’ve just been talking about letters and words. My friend was sending me a text file. Feeling let down? Don’t be. Nothing I said was a lie, not in the slightest. Words are alive, and very magical in nature. If you examine carefully, you’d already realize that. In fact, I just infiltrated your mind with many of them just now. All that text about what words are and what they do, swirling around in the back of your mind like the moments before the big bang. And they’re words about words! Remember how I said they’re self-referential, recursive? That’s extremely important too, that recursion will nearly cost me my life. But not yet. The only words I have to worry about now are those that my friend was sending me. And regardless of how these thoughts arrived, and whoever was currently thinking them, these were her thoughts.

And her thoughts were so sickening, so disturbing, that I was forced by my stomach to take a break unless I preferred dinner on the floor. The wall of text manically darted between assertive theories of individuals and unbelievably cruel crimes, how society can be crumbled to dust at any moment, and excruciating details of horrific underworld conspiracies. It would make even the most seasoned horror authors question when they had lost their touch.

No sin or moral crime was left forgotten: they all had their place in the proposed schematics of our past, present, and future lives. It seemed that the author may have invented new strains of soul-draining filth when none of life’s abundant problems were as morbid as the things she could imagine. There wasn’t enough evidence to call her rabid theorizing “true” per se, but there was enough to make anyone unfortunate enough to read it sleep with their lights on for weeks to come. Illuminating as it might be, one can only read so much about child-soldier organ-farming prostitution-rings before wanting to scrub their brains out with soap. It was at this point, approximately 40% through the Word document, that I chose to prioritize my own well-being and stop reading.

My fingers slid over the pleasantly smooth surface of my smartphone as I struggled to formulate even a half-assed response.

“Wow, heavy stuff.”

“You say that every time. How about some actual criticism?”

This conversational pattern never ended well, I thought. What can you say about something like this? I don’t think she really cares what I have to say about it anyways. But whatever, I’m good at bullshitting meaningless words.

“Are you sure that the North Atlantic garbage patch is really the breeding grounds for human chimerae? Don’t you think the possibility of infection is too high for them to survive with open mutation sores?”

"Mina, that doesn't make sense. Chimeras thrive on foreign microbes and strains of rapidly-mutating DNA so that they can evolve to..."

I scrolled past the new wall of text to the bottom of the message.

"...uniting the hivemind of genocidal tulpas within those chosen by the US military to form The Family of Reapers. Good try, though!"

God, I hate her so much. Let’s change the topic to something a little more palatable.

"Did you ever play that Super Mario World romhack I sent you?"

"I was going to yesterday, but I got distracted writing a LitRPG Hamtaro fanfiction in the style of James Joyce and Testuya Nomura."

Okay, maybe I like her a little. We continued to talk about obscure trivia that the other doesn't care about (from our favorite media that the other hasn't seen) deep into the night. She’s kind of fun when she’s not busy with… her hobbies. Eventually, I decided to give my thumbs a break from tapping and relax in the tub before bed.

After meandering to my restroom, I meticulously cleaned every surface with heavy-duty cleaners until it was completely spotless. I'm not a germaphobe, but I can't accept a place as sacred as this to be unsightly.

I dropped a mass-manufactured holy sacrament into the water (a bath bomb). As lavender, both color and scent, filled my makeshift baptism pool I stared at my reflection inside. I've heard that scrying can do wonders for one's spiritual journey. I don’t really have one of those, though.

My hair seems to have grown longer over the spring, and my cheeks looked even more like a chipmunk’s than usual from this angle. I gazed past my own unsteady reflection to check if there were celestial figures floating behind me this time, but for better or worse I was alone.

Rose was hardcore ever since I met her. She was completely immune to any kind of shock or surprise. She was an old soul who has seen all forms of horror before. Her only chance at intrigue was putting them together in novel ways. That's what she told me, at least. Sometimes I think the only thing she’s scared of is herself. Then I'll see her skip merrily down the road, short cherry hair ruffling in the breeze, and greet everyone she sees with a doofy smile. Then I change my mind. She really isn’t afraid of anything.

She's an English major who just started work on her master's degree. A professor once deemed her work an "infohazard", and commanded her to be careful. He said that she needed to carefully think twice before infecting others with her work. I thought this was simply literary dramatics, but after a little research, I agree with him. Infohazards are formally described as any piece of information that can cause a major shift in the personality and thought processes of someone who reads it. My favorite example is the Gödel Incompleteness Theorem. It’s a proof that there are inconsistencies within any formally defined system. That was a big deal, because it was in a time when everyone was trying to formalize everything. Imagine that, dedicating your entire life to a task and then some European guy proves that you were fundamentally incorrect before you even started. Gödel himself died shortly after he discovered it, even. He had a purpose, and he fulfilled it. Sound familiar to previous topics? But I digress.

Do I think Rose is going to hurt anyone? Probably not. Maybe. I guess... I could see it happening. I want to call her well-intentioned, but that's also not really true. I don't think she's out to get anyone. I don't think she's trying to help anyone, either. Writing all this disturbing filth just might be her fucked-up way of having fun with her life. If she can't stop the pain of living in a wicked world, she’ll revel in it. That could be her purpose. I just hope she doesn't do anything to make the world worse.

After the water in my tub lost its heat, and my splashing hid from me foreboding noises downstairs that I really needed to hear, I decided I would lumber back to my bed. Maybe I could just sleep here, but I’m not enough of a badass to try. After putting on my pajamas and brushing my teeth, I stumbled through the dark hallway and collapsed face-first into my bed. I sleep with a total of seven sheets and blankets on top of me. I’ve never had to justify it to anyone. Mainly because no one’s ever examined my bed close enough to notice. I like comfort. I like being warm. I wrap myself into a cute little burrito so I can feel the plush pressure from every direction. The first thing I do every morning is to unravel my nightly cocoon back into its original, flat state. This morning I must have been in a rush because my sheets were still a total mess. I threw them all onto the floor and began unraveling, huffing and puffing at my past self’s arrogance. Why should I have to be the one to do this, and not her? Was I really in such a rush this morning, anyways? I don’t remember doing anything important. I felt my hand pull a clump of hair out of the blankets.

I turned the light on. I expected to see my own hair, but no.

This was someone else’s hair.

Rose