Life

A staple of everything built upon the foundation of this world, where there are two essential paths of life that come into play. The first being the emotion of love. You know, the painfully fun dumb moments in your life where you’re blinded by one person? Yeah, a moment in your life where either you act a complete dumbass, or try to act a full fledged badass.

It doesn’t matter what you love. It can be anything. Like a person. Or an object. Or even an idea! You can love pretty much any kind of thing in this world, with some ranging into murky water. Though the person aspect can prick if you touch the wrong sides.

Then, there is death. An end game to life. Once this event happens, we could just poof and stop existing, or go to space and cool off with the angels, or just get reincarnated to some other world. There’s pretty much only one way to find out where we go afterwards unless you know a damn handy trick of bringing yourself back before fully dying.

But what about the paradoxes that follow death? For instance, not being able to come back once dying? Or what if you successfully self-revive, but it’s not the you that originally died? Or what if…?

If

Once you think about death, or anything pertaining to a life threatening situation, that horrid conjunction appears. It makes you second guess, and your mind fills with anxiety, clouding your judgement, which then makes choosing a decision even harder.

So then… What if every life could be filled with a happy love story, where death was nowhere? Wouldn’t life be so frickin dandy? Just up close with whatever makes you the happiest, all day. Now wouldn’t that be heaven.

Then when the time comes, it would be a finely tuned death. A peaceful, preferably natural occurring and a painless, way to leave this world. Life would be pretty aight if it was like that.

If it was as simple as that.

But it’s not.

Human desires always have a tail, somewhat like a rope, but more durable. Something like a chain sounds nice. We as people drag a chain behind everywhere we go, allowing it to clamp around the places we leave behind. Now imagine, not only yourself, but the other billions of people moving about, dragging their chains around. We’re bound to get caught in others messes, aren’t we? And if we get dragged with someone, then we’re bound to start dragging another along with us, then them with another, and so on.

Life just becomes a perpetual race of dragging others beside you while having little control of what you do, or how you affect your own actual chain. Only the person dragging you can slightly tilt the direction your being dragged in, while you can only change the life of the person dragging behind you.

Everyone you know is being dragged by someone greater than them, while also dragging someone along themselves. That’s all there is to life. But then… What about the people at the tippy top? The ones who drag everyone down with them; what drives them?

“Hey Mr?”

“Hmm?”

They have enough power to lead how they want to, theoretically without anyone controlling them from above, so why don’t they really steer the world?

“Please, tell me: Why am I the only one left?”

Silence surrounded the questioning boy as his eyes peered deeper for the answer.

“Hmm, you really oughta not know.”

“Oh, why not?”

The answers simple really: We drag the people below us, but that doesn’t mean they don’t drag us with them as well. It’s sort of like a metal fishnet. We toss it down, but our leg gets stuck with it, and soon the fish start dragging us with them.

“Because you’re the sole survivor of this tragedy.”

The words sounded as they were meant to bear some heavy burden, but they only flew right through the boy, as if he were a ghost. Or maybe the words themselves were ghastly.

“But isn’t Effryn still with me? That doesn’t necessarily mean I’m the only one left in the family.”

And once the jagged chains spread like threads, the cursed people from the bottom create a ripple, causing the top to crumble in their safe havens.

“Well...you’re not wrong, but not right either.”

“I don’t understand.”

“He’s still here...but--Everything about him is dying, or maybe even already dead.”

From there, that is how the people at the bottom can control the ones at the top, and steer their nets to make changes for themselves. But only if you have everybody suffering together can this become feasible. Though…

“Ah… I see.”

The boy understood now. The missing pieces were now starting to connect. But even if everything made sense, it didn’t make the truth anymore bearable.

...a person can single handedly control that bottom group themselves, if they have the right pieces and know exactly where to put them. But only a few stupidly talented number of individuals can achieve those levels, and most are automatically born with the talent. So only the gifted of this world can dream of truly changing the world for themselves.

-But don’t exactly kill the entire idea off yet.

What if someone were to undergo a series of events that would forcefully change their perspective on life, while consecutively changing around their inner workings as human? If a situation like that were to happen, and they went through an event that changed the wiring in their brain, then could they do it? Would they have the mindset and will to change and manipulate their surrounding world to fit life for them?

...and if they did, by what means would they do it?

“So there must have been a reason why Effryn killed father, right Eizer?”

The boy asked the question that had been pressuring his mind ever since he hopped in the backseat of the car, and watched the passing world around him while rain tapped away at the glass. He let his gaze drift from the crying world, and focused it to the bigger kid sitting up front.

“I really, really hope so. ‘Cause if not, then I really don’t know what to do Gale.” Eizer muttered, looking back at the sleeping boy who was slightly older than him at the back seat. His corrupt snores indicated that this must be the first time he rested in a while. “I really hope you have one, Effryn.”