r/twosentencehorror except i fucked up and wrote 600 words
cw for gore, child death, unreality & eldritch horror as pornography
Though you haven't travelled by train enough to have Adapted to it, you've travelled enough to know how this goes: before a Storm starts, it announces itself with a clap of thunder, and you have two to five seconds to close your eyes before it gets going, but really everyone always closes their eyes immediately after the peal just to be safe, and you parents always said you should do that too, so when the first Storm gives its warning you close your eyes and in four seconds the train shakes, and in three you hear the usual screaming, in the voices of all the other passengers you think might scream when something goes awry, and you feel someone grabbing you, begging you to open your eyes, to help them - you think it's the photographer, maybe, but you're not sure because you haven't gotten a chance to talk to them much - and you forgot how bad the Storms get and you try to stay strong and keep your eyes closed but then you hear blades rending flesh and bones breaking and the strangled, bubbling cry of someone getting their neck slashed open and trying to wail, and suddenly you can't convince yourself it's just the Storm tricking you, begging your eyes open, and you reach for where you know your classmate was and she's not there, shit, so you open your eyes - just for a second, just to make sure she's safe, fuck, she couldn't actually be stupid enough to take someone else's - and the train is soaked in a sick, pulsing violet light and there's blood clinging in the corners and the windows are growing teeth and the seats are writhing and you see that every other passenger is dead or dying, gaping wounds showing shattered yellow bone, and you can't breathe, you're choking, something's choking you, there's a hand at your throat and nails digging into your trachea drawing blood and god, you fucked up, you're going to die, shit - but it really is beautiful, isn't it?
The screams of the dying sputter out as you watch, enamoured with the gore, and the hand around your neck reaches into the wound it's created - that you didn't realize was big enough for that because it hardly hurts at all anymore - and the hand crawls up into your mouth and you shudder, and you can start to see why your classmate offered to take this from you, because even though it's horrible, some part of you feels chosen to see this, the crumpled bodies around you and the hulking silhouettes through the windows, and the little girl's plushie is stuffed into her open chest cavity, and the train and the Storm both sing, in a way you've never heard before, electric whining and pumping pistons and thunder swelling and throbbing and the rain whispering awful, scared things as it paws at the glass in an effort to get close to you, to hold you, soak you in itself, come out, please, fuck, i need you, but you can't move because the hand has moved from your mouth to your brainstem and is massaging it, and you're trembling and whimpering because you want to break the window and embrace the Storm, but you guess the hand is the Storm too, its touch searing and holy and so, so loving, and maybe you're going to die like this, but damn, you think, what a great way to go, and
then you wake up alone in the observation deck and the train is not moving anymore and the sky outside is hauntingly clear.
“What We Lost,” an Animorphs and Miraculous Ladybug crossover fic. [Can also be found on AO3 under the same title, penname anidiwa136.] Character and species guide, timeline (with ML episode spoilers, if any), and other notes can be found in the doc here: http://bit.ly/2EpntHr . Tumblr tag is “MLA What We Lost.”
Summary: Marinette never expected it to be this way. She was only fifteen at the time and was supposed to be stressing out over school and crushes. Not this. Definitely not this.
She was a collège student, not a hero. She wasn’t supposed to be part of the Earth’s only hope in a war.
Spoilers: None
Content Warning: N/A
Notes: Aaaaaand we’re back after over two year hiatus!
Chat: Adrien
November 22nd, 2015
I had recognized the bright light almost immediately. I wanted to open the door and see what Ladybug looked like immediately, but Plagg had suggested I waited, to give Marinette a chance to adjust to the new look.
So I had waited.
And waited.
And waited.
And… waited.
According to the clock on my phone, it had only really been about ten minutes, but it had felt like I was waiting for hours before I finally decided I was going to open the door.
“Marinette, are you—”
I stopped before I was even halfway through the door. She wasn’t there.
“Maybe she went home.” Plagg suggested. He flew towards the drawer I had reluctantly designated as camembert storage, phasing through and returning with another chunk of the disgusting stuff.
“She would have said something. Besides, there was only one flash of light, so she couldn’t have detransformed,” I countered. I walked over to the couch, hoping she had left even a note on the table. Her purse and textbook were still on the table, along with the now empty box from Elfangor.
Wait…
I looked over and noticed a panel of the windows was now open. Of course! She must have decided to explore in her new suit.
Which meant… I would have to search for her, potentially all over Paris.
I groaned.
“Plagg, claws out!”
There was no sign of her over an hour later. On one hand, at least I was getting more practice running around on building rooftops. On the other hand, where the hell was Ladybug?
Times like this, it would have been awfully nice if my magical companion was available to give me advice. Or if there was this sort of vibe that drew me towards Ladybug. If we were like the soul mates of superheroes, shouldn’t there be something that directed us towards each other? Maybe there was some sort of gadget in our uniforms that let us communicate to each other, that would be extremely helpful. I’d have to look into that eventually, because wandering around Paris looking for Ladybug was going to get exhausting real fast.
I stopped on a rooftop, trying to figure out where she could have gone. She wasn’t in the immediate vicinity, which was interesting considering I had left the house only about ten minutes later. She must have gotten a hang of rooftop travel pretty fast to have gone outside of visible range that fast.
Think, Adrien, think. Maybe she went to the Eiffel Tower to see the view? No, too many people… Maybe…
Alya’s, of course! She had mentioned Alya was trying to get her to go visit the construction site to try to get an article done for her blog. If she could find Alya, she could probably figure out what she knew without having to explain to her how she got home without passing through the construction site. There was even a chance that Alya would know what happened to the dead Prince’s ship—there hadn’t been any news about it all day, so someone must have covered it up.
Hopefully she wasn’t trying to talk to Alya straight up. She and Alya were best friends, it was very unlikely that Alya wouldn’t be able to tell it was Marinette right away. Of course, I didn’t know what her outfit looked like, but unless her Kwami gave her an outfit that covered 99% of her… Well, it would probably be extremely easy to figure out her secret identity.
But enough musing. It would be extremely helpful if I found Ladybug before she found Alya.
Ladybug was pacing on a rooftop across from Alya’s home when I found her. She looked like she was heavily debating something with herself, and couldn’t decide which action made more sense. I watched for a minute before joining her on the roof.
“Hey Bugaboo~” I greeted as I landed a few feet behind her.
She flinched, turning around suddenly as if she hadn’t expected someone to be there. Though, in all honesty, not many people roamed Paris via rooftop anyway.
It took her a bit before she finally replied to me, her eyes looking me up and down as she took in my outfit. Her eyes stopped at the cat ears resting in my hair, only moving away when she realized the thing the wind was moving behind me was my tail. Her mouth twitched, stuck halfway between surprise and amusement. “Adrien?”
“Chat Noir,” I corrected her. “I see that someone was a little excited to spread their wings,” I circled her as I spoke, trying to see if there was anything to her outfit other than spots. “Though it doesn’t appear that you actually have any…”
Ladybug blushed deeply behind her mask once we were facing each other again. “I… I just felt this urge to be free… I just acted on impulse. I’m sorry for not telling you first.”
I flashed her a bright grin. “It’s cool. When I first became Chat Noir, I was feline the same. It was such a pawsome feline.”
Her eye twitched at the puns. “Feline is a bit of a stretch there,” She commented. “Do you always make this many puns?”
“Kind of? I’m not used to doing cat puns though,” To be fair, there were only so many the internet could suggest before it starting getting repetitive. “Anyway, are you planning on trying to talk to Alya dressed like that?”
Ladybug tensed up at that, stammering as she tried to figure out how I knew. Her eyes glanced over to Alya’s building just across the street, answering her question, and her shoulders slumped, eyes downcast. “I… don’t know.”
I offered what I hoped was a comforting hand on her shoulder. “Still feeling guilty about lying to her?”
She didn’t answer for a bit, but she didn’t shrug my hand off either. When she spoke, her voice was quiet, uncertain. “While I was running, I… I realized how much Alya would love this. She loves superheroes, and she would be so excited if she found out that I was Ladybug. Imagine her journalism career. She’d be getting probably the biggest scoop Paris has had in years and she wouldn’t even be out of collège yet.”
“And she’s your best friend.” I supplied the unsaid thought. She nodded hesitantly, looking back at me. “Normally, I would say to tell her, but…”
“But Tikki said we can’t.” She finished.
I gave her a weak smile, knowing that it wasn’t what she wanted to hear. I patted her shoulder before taking my hand back. “Come on. If we hurry, Nathalie won’t even realize we left.”
Ladybug gave one last look at Alya’s home. Her mouth parted ever so slightly, as if she wanted to tell me something, but she shook her head and whatever words lingered were now gone.
“Okay. Let’s go, Chat.”
Things were quiet for a few minutes once we returned to my room. We didn’t transform back to our civilian selves right away, and Ladybug looked uneasy again. I had sat down on the couch, but she had started pacing almost immediately.
“…Is something bothering you, Bugaboo?”
She paused pacing just long enough to make brief eye contact, averting her gaze with a small frown. “Won’t we… get in trouble with the Kwami?”
It didn’t sound like that was what she really wanted to ask.
I shrugged, leaning back into the couch further. Probably best not to press. “Plagg already knows. He’s not too happy about it but we can’t change how we got the Miraculous. I’m sure your Kwami will understand too,”
“Tikki,” Ladybug provided the Kwami’s name for me again. “I… I guess…”
“Do you want the room alone when you change back? So that you can tell Tikki in private?” I didn’t really want to leave the room, but things might go smoother if Tikki didn’t immediately see me or Plagg there.
Ladybug hesitated, but nodded. “Yeah. I’ll try not to take too long.”
“Your wish is my command, my lady~” I teased as I stood up, laughing a little at the blush that overtook her entire face. “No sudden flights this time, all right?”
There was a small embarrassed noise of confirmation as I once again walked into the bathroom. I changed back, sighing softly as I once again became Adrien Agreste, the normal teenage boy, and Plagg appeared nearby. A bright light from outside shone from under the door, and I inhaled sharply, ignoring whatever it was Plagg was saying, waiting to hear from Marinette that she was ready for me to come back out.
when a god is left without its ability to create, it must steal the things nobody has claimed.
you are the god of bones. of leaf litter. of the scraps nobody wants to eat. you are the god of the hour after midnight. of nail clippings and shed fur. wasted tears. too-small fabric swatches. trash, but not recycling.
Eyes of the faintest breeze;
A tickle at most.
Each time I freeze–
Did they see me?
Then the air is still;
My skin aching, longing
Their blindness sends a chill
Through my veins.
Look at me.
Look at me.
See me.
See me.
Remind me I’m real.
I’m worth being real.
But over me their gazes pass,
A single shape in the crowd.
My heart of glass,
Blown and warped, unrecognizable.
I see why their eyes slide over: I’m transparent.
Not that they don’t care, but that I’m hard to notice.
Evidently, an assumption errant,
Because someone does.
They look at me.
They see me.
I’m real.
Don’t go.
Don’t look away.
I need to be the only thing you see.
Yet I’m not the only thing.
The world is vast, I know,
But that doesn’t dull the sting
Of a gaze breaking from mine.
I need someone to see me, so I take my glass heart
And cast it onto the ground.
The fragile form shatters, spreading apart
Across the concrete, shards piercing their eyes.
Look at me.
I’m real, don’t forget.
I’m real, and that’s why it hurts.
I’m real.
You can pry that out of my hands,
Scraped with broken glass
From my demands.
You need to see me.
And then they do, more eyes than I can count
Land on this desperate show,
Wondering: to what does it amount?
Not even I know.
But one thing is obvious: I’m a parasite,
Clinging to anyone who spares me a passing glance.
I leave all those I touch with a heavy blight,
Always the same song and dance.
It is dark, it is quiet, and you are alone. This is not new, but it aches all the same, like a muscle you stretch too far every day. “I’ll get used to it,” you say, hardly tasting the lie on your tongue.
You push on through the solitude. Waiting to adjust, even as the fog batters your body and tugs at your hair and your clothes with force stronger than any storm. Your breath catches in your throat, every exhale choked back into your mouth by a thick wind.
Once, long ago, you might’ve been a lighthouse. A beacon, a checkpoint of safety, a hearth. That time has come and gone, your circuits fizzling out from overuse. You’re the one at sea, now, salty air ever present in your lungs as you navigate under the sun and the stars. You’ve kept so many others afloat, surely you can manage this one ship.
It’s freeing, for a time. From the steady rock of the waves to wind tugging at your hair, it’s invigorating. Liberty has always been a sharp craving, and you’ve been waiting to indulge.
But what are you to do when the initial high lulls, and the sun sets, and you realize that freedom and isolation are not synonymous? The stars, the moon, and the ocean are your only company, and what you thought was independence leaves a silence louder than the wind and water rushing past.
It’s too late to turn back. The tides and undercurrents would rip your ship to planks if you fought them. So you do what you can to fill the gaps left in you by solitude. You write. You paint. You sing, you dance, you run across the deck chasing below seagulls foolish enough to settle for too long. The outlets are nice, for a while, and at least the exhaustion makes it harder to miss the presence of others. When you lie on the deck, spreading your hands above you, sometimes you can convince yourself the stars are smiling back.
Soon, you learn to pretend it’s fine. It gets you a long way through the isolation, and you tell yourself you’ll have much to show for the journey when it’s over. Storms roll in behind you when you finally catch a glimpse of the shore. They threaten to make landfall before you do, and the thunder echoes over the ocean like the rumble of a predator.
You do as much as you can to hurry, and the storm overtakes you just before you reach the shore. The ship grinds to a halt, the hull scraping against stone and sand in the water. Your body lurches with the force, and you just manage to stumble towards the bow. Though you’re not far from the lighthouse on this end, you see other lights, other people crowded as if they’re <i>waiting for you</i>. It doesn’t feel right.
Something tells you there’s no time to get ladders or dinghies. The storm is getting worse by the second, and you’re trembling too much to handle anything needing proper coordination. You shout for the people on the shore, but the rain and wind deafen you. Even if they heard you, there’s no way to know. You need to jump and trust that someone could catch you in the water and drag you to land.
You can’t. You stand frozen behind the bow, staring at the shore. There’s no way they could catch you. There’s no way they’d want to. How are you supposed to take a leap of faith when your faith is broken and rusted over? You choke on tears as salty as the sea, and turn away from the bow. Stumbling, you make it to starboard farther back, peering at the water roiling below. The rain soaks through your clothes, cold seeping into your bones.
You take the chance, hardly wasting the time to convince yourself it’ll have any payoff.
Once you’re safe, all you can do is choke countless apologies through sobs.
“What We Lost,” an Animorphs and Miraculous Ladybug crossover fic. Here on AO3. Character and species guide, timeline (with ML episode spoilers, if any), and other notes can be found here. Tumblr tag will be “MLA What We Lost.”
Summary: Marinette never expected it to be this way. She was only fifteen at the time and was supposed to be stressing out over school and crushes. Not this. Definitely not this.
She was a collège student, not a hero. She wasn’t supposed to be part of the Earth’s only hope in a war.
Spoilers: Tikki’s Ladybug 101 speech from Origins.
Content Warning: N/A
Notes: Well summer semester took a lot out of me, and I’m about to go into fall :| Let’s hope I get back on track with the regular updates.
With Great Responsibility: Marinette
November 22nd, 2015
I nearly fainted when I stepped inside of Adrien’s bedroom. It was enormous! I mean, that was kind of expected given that he did live in a mansion, but some of the things in his room felt just completely unnecessary. Why did he need a… were those for skateboards? A skateboard ramp in his room? Or a firefighter pole?
I was too busy taking in everything to notice that the television was changing channels on its own until an unknown voice spoke up.
“Is that her? The Marinette you were talking about?”
The physics book slipped from my hand and I narrowly avoided having the brick of a thing fall on my foot as I turned around, trying to find the person the voice belonged to. “Who?”
“Plagg,” Adrien answered. He directed my attention towards the table in front of his television, where a small… cat… thing… sat, holding the remote, eating what looked like camembert. “He’s… part of the new ‘heroes of the world’ thing.”
“I thought I told you not to bring her over,” Plagg’s voice was oddly condescending, considering if Adrien were to get fed up with him, he could easily overpower him. “Chat Noir and Ladybug aren’t supposed to know who the other is. That’s how it’s always been and how it should be.”
“And I thought I told you that Prince Elfangor gave her the other box at the same time as he gave me mine. If another superhero had suddenly shown up, I would have known it was Marinette instantly.” Adrien countered. He gestured for me to join him on the couch near where Plagg was sitting. “There’s no point in hiding from each other.”
“What are you talking about?” I couldn’t help but stare at the cat thing as I sat down. “Do I… have one of those things in my box?”
“Kwami.” The both of them corrected.
Plagg seemed to cross his arms in annoyance. If he didn’t say so already, it was pretty obvious that he was not happy about me being here when he was in the open. “But yes. This thief apparently gave you the Ladybug Miraculous.”
“…thief?”
Adrien looked uncomfortable with the term. “It appears that Prince Elfangor was not the person who should have had the Miraculous—the boxes he gave us. Someone else was supposed to hold onto them while the Kwami were dormant, and make sure they made it to the right people.”
I bit my lip nervously. If the Andalite had stolen the Miraculous, then who knew what could have been a lie? How did he know about the Kwami if he wasn’t the person who was taking care of them? Did he even care about humans?
One thing I refused to believe could even possibly be true was that the Yeerks were good. There was no way they could be invading earth for the benefit of the human race.
I was silent for a moment, then pulled the small box out of my purse.
“How do I summon my Kwami?”
Adrien grinned brightly. Plagg huffed and swallowed the rest of his camembert whole.
“Open the box.”
Plagg flew up and tugged on Adrien’s hair before I could do so. “If you won’t respect the fact that Ladybug and Chat Noir aren’t supposed to know the other, then at least let them meet alone.” He grumbled. I looked up at Adrien, about to protest—I’d feel much better if he was there to help me figure out what was going on, seeing how he already went through it. Instead of ignoring Plagg, Adrien gave an apologetic smile and they slipped into an adjacent room.
Great.
I took a deep breath before opening the box. Inside was a pair of plain black earrings, but mere seconds after I had opened the box, a bright red light appeared. I flinched and fumbled to keep the box in my hands. Before my eyes, the light solidified into a small red creature—my own Kwami, red with black dots and bright blue eyes.
“Hello, Marinette!” She flew closer and I flinched, leaning as far back as I could. “My name is Tikki!”
“You know my name?” I asked. That… was kind of scary.
Tikki nodded, bouncing up and down in the air. “Of course I do! I know the names of all of my Ladybugs. I have to say, you are one of the cutest Ladybugs I have ever had,”
Ladybug. There it was again. What did an insect have to do with all this? “I’m sorry? What do you mean by Ladybug?”
“You’re a superhero, Marinette! A superhero named Ladybug with the power of luck and creation.”
Luck. Me, lucky? Pfft, as if!
“I think you’re mistaken. How can I have the power of luck if I’m not even lucky? I fell down the stairs this morning and almost dropped my toothbrush in the trashcan when I was throwing out the toothpaste.” There was also the whole “I couldn’t even have a normal walk and talk with my crush, I had to walk into the middle of an intergalactic war and watch an alien die” thing.
Tikki placed her hand on mine, and I refrained from yanking my hand away. “Marinette, I have had hundreds of Ladybugs in my time. I know what makes a person a good Ladybug, and you have the potential to be the best one yet.”
I took a deep breath. Well, I guess if the Kwami itself said that I was meant to be her charge, then Elfangor couldn’t have been too off when he gave us the Miraculous…
“Okay. What do I need to know?”
It took a while for me to take in everything Tikki said. I was to be a superhero named Ladybug, who would have a partner named Chat Noir. The two of us would protect innocent people using the power of luck and creation, and bad luck and destruction. I had… a magical yo-yo… that would be able to purify evil magic, as well as a skill that would create things that would help me win the fight—one use per transformation, unfortunately. I wasn’t really sure what evil magic I would be purifying, considering I was fighting aliens not wizards, but it was still nice to know. Also unfortunately, it didn’t seem like she really knew what I was talking about when I asked about Yeerks, but she did hesitate and frown when I mentioned Prince Elfangor. There was also the obvious “no one should know your secret identity, not even your partner Chat Noir” rule—whoops, failed rule one. I chose not to correct her just yet.
“So… I just put on the earrings and then you transform me into Ladybug?” I held the black earrings in my hands, wondering how such a simple thing could have the potential to turn plain, ordinary me into this superhero. Would I have to make my own costume, carry it around in my bag at all times? Maybe wear it under my civilian clothes?
“Exactly! When you have them on, all you have to do is say ‘spots on,’ and I’ll do the rest. We can go on a test run now, if you’d like.”
I glanced up at the door Adrien had disappeared behind. He had already been holed up in there for about an hour, was now really the time to go take my new powers for a spin? But Adrien had also said that it was a “purrfect” first experience, so…
I took a deep breath as I traded my earrings for the Miraculous ones. “All right, Tikki. Spots on!”
The Kwami was suddenly sucked into my earrings, a bright light flashing as what looked like hundreds of tiny, glowing ladybugs surrounded me. I closed my eyes tight, unable to look at the light for much longer, biting my lip as it felt like I was being lifted off the ground by a few inches. Something small—the ladybugs, probably—was hitting me, gently but rapidly, and a brief gust of wind hit my face moments moments before I was put back down on solid ground.
I kept my eyes closed, afraid to find out what had just happened. It felt like my clothes were changed, and I had a mask on, but…
“Tikki?”
No answer.
Well, it would have been nice to know that she wouldn’t be able to talk to me while I was Ladybug.
I forced myself to open my eyes, looking down at my hands first, then the rest of my body. My clothes had been replaced by a red leotard like material, covered in black spots. Not the most fashionable look, considering the fabric covered everything from the neck down, but more practical than some of the superhero comics designs I had seen in the past. I stomped my foot a couple times; there was some sort of padding, but it wasn’t a shoe in any other sense. There was a yo-yo clasped around my waist—also red with black spots. This outfit was a fashion disaster. …but still better than running around with a giant “L” on my chest and a cap with antenna.
I walked around Adrien’s room, trying to get a feel for it. Besides my body feeling a little more energized, nothing else felt different. No obvious physical changes, which… probably was not a good thing, considering my mask barely covered anything. There were only so many other girls out there with the same height, build, hair, and eye color, after all. I was tempted to ask Tikki to change the outfit, but at the same time, surely she would have given me an outfit based off of practicality, right?
After a couple minutes, I started feeling a little restless, like something inside of me was itching to burst out. A surge of confidence, a desire to be something more than I could be by myself.
Summary: On nights like this, Uryphe contemplates his life as Uriel.
A/N: Tumblrmorphs verse drabble. Uryphe has been a teen for three years apparently.
“I am just as human as you are.”
No matter how many times I said it, I couldn’t believe it. No matter how long I was in this human form, no matter how many times I woke up realizing I didn’t have to go to the Kandrona Pool, no matter how many times I was able to hold Erek’s hand, no matter how many times I held Zach as he cried himself to sleep.
I knew I wasn’t human. I was born a Yeerk, and even though the Amber device had turned me human, I would die a Yeerk. Just because it had been months—years, I reminded myself—since I had last been in my Yeerk body, did not mean that I would be human forever.
I should have been happy with this mishap. In the years before it, Zach had secretly longed for me to be human. I pretended that I was happy with being a malfunctioning Yeerk, even though I longed to experience the world as Zach did.
Yet when I first found myself in human form, I worked endlessly to go back. It was terrifying, being in a form that didn’t belong to you, to be thrust into the world all alone. I longed to be back in Zach’s head, safe, with his endless babbling keeping me company. Even though it had been years since we had last shared a skull, I would ask a question mentally, expecting him to answer. The silence was deafening, and even though I now had the freedom of interacting with people on my own, I had never felt so alone.
Yes, I had friends. I still had Erek—my boyfriend, a term that still made us flustered—and I still lived with Zach, although I now had the option to leave the room if he got insufferable. I still had Rachel, and it was definitely easier to poke fun at her with my own form. To an extent, I still had Temrash, the huge bag of dicks he was. I had even made a couple other friends, since I was forced to go to school: Johnny, his girlfriend Jamia, and I was slowly learning ASL from Tulio so that we could talk without his obnoxiously loud interpreter, Miguel. And if I ever wanted to talk to someone who wouldn’t judge me, I always had the dog, Lin.
But it wasn’t the same.
I had stopped trying to turn back into a Yeerk roughly three years ago. For the most part, everyone else was happy with this situation, so why wasn’t I? Why go back to being a Yeerk and take away everyone else’s happiness? Destroy the relationships I had that would have never worked if I was still a slug in Zach’s head?
Some nights, though, like tonight, I would take the amber device out of the box in the closet. I would hold it in my hands, and curse at it: for not working like it was supposed to, for making the situation worse, for not changing me back before I had things to lose by going back. I would contemplate throwing it at the wall, letting it break, destroying it from my life forever. But the chance that it would change me back upon destruction was too great.
As much as I missed my old life, I couldn’t give up my new life.
So instead, I put the device back in the box, and the box back in the back of the closet.
“I am just as human as you are,” I whispered.
Maybe some day, I would believe it.
