Orwellian Wonderland

My sweet apathetic soul, your parents didn't raise you right.

[niesland]

You always call me full of regret

You want me to save you again

[niesland]

Transient eternity held its breath, and my misery is catching me by my ankles again.

Answers come at their own time, not ours; mine keep coming to me at the wrong time. Too early, too late. It's a trap, an amber—hard to move.

Find me, my sense. Release me...

[niesland]

You looked so arbitrary That insolent manner— Q: "May I copy?" A: "May it burn..." Don't look down on me—or try to talk me down, either Remembering that is a piece of cake

To the limit, limit, limit Out of duty, duty, duty I only gave in and gave myself to you because of your smile Without giving a thing away, "You're my everything," you say Your pride is just too large— It hurts, hurts, hurts, hurts...

[niesland]

Death always looks down from above. Decay always starts from within. Psychopaths see easy prey. Normal people don't want to deal with a weakling.

I must be cautious. What do they all want from me?

"Where is he??"

They are worried about me, and allowing them to hurt me will set them at ease.

"Come join us!" "Where are you?" "You're one of us, aren't you?"

...

No! I don't want to be one of you! I want to be with sanes!

I... I'm ready! You can hurt me! I allow everything! If you want, I can break my arms, I'll let the teeth of the gears crush my head, I...!

("But I don't need it! Just go on your way...")

Faceless urges of a born-wronged. I always knew that my soul was deficient, so why can't I just give in?

"You are doomed not to be." "You are nauseating." "What makes you think you can be reflected? You are so inadequate."

⁂

I am inadequate. Barbed wire ensnares my limbs and torso, its tendrils biting into my flesh. Death lifts me, and I scream in agony as barbs tear through skin and muscle, gnawing at bone and skull, piercing my brain. A fountain of pus erupts from my mouth, silencing my cries. My eyelids remain frozen, pupils darting wildly, trapped in their sockets. An embrace. A prison.

The crimson-red aurora stretches across the sky like the smile of a beloved. Her thousands of eye-like stars are fixed upon me.

“I love you,” Death whispers.

“I know,” I reply in my mind, looking down at my maimed body, “I know you love me, because you cause me so much pain…”

The glow in the sky spreads in all directions like magma; thus Death is flooded with the most tender laughter.

I laugh too, because I can't help laughing when I see others laughing. The reflex of happiness, drenched in pus and tears. My eyes and chest are exploding, but I keep grinning in a silent plea.

"Enough... I beg you, enough... Please, stop... Please..."

[niesland]

She hated her own eyes, hated looking at the reflection of them in the mirror.

Vacant and faintly flickering; it was extremely difficult to stay focused on them. When she met her own gaze, she would shudder every now and then. If she managed to hold her stare on them long enough, a warmth would begin to spread through her body. A familiar, otherworldly comforting warmth.

It was the warmth of realizing that she was doomed. The warmth of accepting the inevitable, surrendering to it.

"Are mine the eyes of a future self-murderer?"

[niesland]

My salvation. Your salvation. Die, me. I don't want happiness. I should've died that night. / Kill me. Kill me. / Die. / Haise. I die.

There you go, you piece of shit.

Hey, don't you remember...? It was just a little pleading...

I used to get spanked all the time by somebody I loved.

- I'm sorry, Mom. I don't want it anymore... I don't need anything so... I'm sorry, I'm sorry... I'm sorry. I don't want it. I'm sorry... Please, don't hit me... I won't ask for anything. I'm sorry... I'm sorry. I'm sorry... -

We used to love Mom, didn't we...?

[...]

I am a pleasant dream... Wake up, cry a little, and it's over.

Before I knew it, I thought it was okay to want.

Good night, Haise. I'm done dreaming.

[niesland]

They say they cannot afford the risk, Because they've got a home, There is light there. And I’m not exactly sure who of us is right. Rain's waiting for me outside, Dinner's waiting for them at their place.

Shut the door behind me. I'm leaving.

[niesland]

My agony, and my alone.

Oh...

Warm feelings of mine—nobody'll understand so I'm enduring in silence.

「 They are not important, as if I was never born.

—

But I'm here and they hurt. 」

If the world is a mirror, I can't, I never could and I'll never be able to find my reflection in it.

[niesland]

When I manage to change, will you still be waiting for me? Because when you manage to change, I will definitely be waiting for you...

[niesland]

"You've been struggling all this time, haven't you..? You don't need it anymore. The mask."

"... / I'm seeing things again... / There's no way Hide would be here. It's an illusion. / It's a dream. It's a dream. It's a dream. I'm dreaming. / It happens to me all the time. / Otherwise H-H-H... Hide will know... That I'm... I'm... I'M A GHOUL...!!"

"I knew all along, man! Who cares about that, let's just go home already."

[niesland]

Now I have neither happiness nor unhappiness.

Everything passes.

That is the one and only thing I have thought resembled a truth in the society of human beings where I have dwelled up to now as in a burning hell.

Everything passes.

This year I am twenty-seven. My hair has become much greyer. Most people would take me for over forty.

[niesland]

Disqualified as a human being.

I had now ceased utterly to be a human being.

[niesland]

My unhappiness was the unhappiness of a person who could not say no. I had been intimidated by the fear that if I declined something offered me, a yawning crevice would open between the other person’s heart and myself which could never be mended through all eternity.

[niesland]

I want to die. I want to die more than ever before. There’s no chance now of a recovery. No matter what sort of thing I do, no matter what I do, it’s sure to be a failure, just a final coating applied to my shame.

[niesland]

I feel so on edge I can’t stand it. I’m afraid. I’m no good for anything.

[niesland]

She stood ramrod stiff. But in her wide-open eyes there was no trace of alarm or dislike; her look spoke of longing, almost of the seeking for salvation. I thought, “She must be unhappy too. Unhappy people are sensitive to the unhappiness of others.” Not until then did I happen to notice that she stood with difficulty, supporting herself on crutches. I suppressed a desire to run up beside her, but I could not take my eyes from her face. I felt tears starting, and saw then the tears brimming from her big eyes.

[niesland]

“Crime. What’s the antonym of crime? This is a hard one.”

“The law, of course,” Horiki answered flatly. I looked at his face again. Caught in the flashing red light of a neon sign on a nearby building, Horiki’s face had the somber dignity of the relentless prosecutor. I felt shaken to the core.

“Crime belongs in a different category.”