This chapter is dedicated to NecroHex , the weirdest little guy I've ever had the pleasure of coming across on this website. He hates babies, loves @EyeOfTheTigress and is very talented and full of ideas. You'll want to check out his The Tree People. I've only read the prologue yet but it's pretty bloody good.

  "Sometimes even to live is an act of courage."
―Seneca   

The lights woke me up. Soft, gentle lights. The buildings were awash with colour. Then, they were bright and stagnant again.

And there I was. I touched myself. My check, cold and soft with dew. My hair, brushed and combed. My throat, my shoulders, my stomach, my knees.

My eye.

I was at the bench again. In the park.

And I was whole. My dress was flawless and my schoolbag with the towel and the blade and the old, frayed book in it were all there. And they were all fine.

And so was I.

I looked at my scuffed, silver watch. Exactly an hour since I left my bedroom.

"What a strange dream." I said, and laughed.

I laughed and laughed.

I was fine again. And that meant I was finally ready to die.

I waited a while. Looked at the buildings stretched out before me. I turned around and looked behind me.

The park stretched on. Little blades of grass stuck out at odd angles next to the foot of my bench. The dirt was pocked with the palimpsests of those who had walked through this place before. Just this evening maybe.

I couldn't see very far into the distance.

I turned back around and pulled out my magazine and read it in the moonlight. Half-heartedly written filmy bullshit, of course. But that's what I fell in love to.

There was no Louis Armstrong for us. No trashy romance movies. No video-games. Not many walks in the park. We bonded to stocks, shares, Physics guides for eleventh grade students, bombings in Syria and machinations in Bihar.

We fell in love with the soft swell of Bollywood gossip behind us. And we fell so hard I had to kill myself.

I pulled my father's (cocksucker) razor out of the bag. I got the towel ready and bit into it.

I looked at the blade. I twisted it around to catch beams of light. I shone them into my eyes and I cringed. I brought it to my neck.

I waited.

"I wouldn't, if I were you..." (har har eye joke of the century)

I turned around.

The cat was there, of course. The thin, noble looking one. The one with the white patch over its eye. She was bruised everywhere I could see. Flecks of blood covered her torso, her legs and her face. Viscera stuck to her whiskers.

"Distasteful, right?" she asked.

"I've seen worse." I told her.

"You have at that. It's nice to meet you. I'm Priyanka Chopra." she told me.

"I am as well." I told her.

"I know."

The cat leaped up to the bench and sat next to me.

"Who are you?" I asked her

"I am two things. I am you, and I am the Queen of Cats. Ergo..."

"I am The Queen of Cats."

"Bingo."

The cat coughed up a hairball and then sat back, admiring the vista.

"What does that mean?" I asked.

"It means you either fulfil the destiny you've laid out before you. Or you don't."

"What's my destiny?"

"To kill yourself. Your mindscape is the last in the line. That's where your prophesy ends. You kill yourself now and you go back. Pass before the eye and feel his mighty puissance and all that bollocks. And then become me."

"Or?"

"Or you live. And you love, like you have. And then you make a baby. And then you die."

"What would that do?"

"It's the frame of your mindscape that gets passed back through time, if you follow the ritual through now. It's what you inherited from your mother and her mother before her and it's where this ends. If you kill yourself, that's that. The ritual is complete. If you don't, and if you continue the line, your daughter gets it. Or your son."

"But there's nothing left in there. It's all been destroyed." I told her.

"Except the last two. Your own little genes. The ones you managed to concoct yourself."

I smiled.

"Rebellion and Love." she said.

Voltaire and Nostradamus. My own little genes.

"It'll just keep going, won't it? All this death and suffering and everything?"

"You're fucked up because of your mother and your mother because of what hers did to her. It's all been the ritual. The pall over our family."

"And I have a chance to fix it all?"

"You inherited worldly-wisdom, and bashfulness and deceit and fear and shame and everything from the lineage behind. But you are rebellion and love. You're the fix."

"I don't think so. I can't love again. Not after what happens."

"You will. It's what you are."

"How can you be so sure?" I asked her.

"Because I am you. And I know."

"Reassuring."

I raised the knife up to my throat and got ready.

"Please don't. You don't want this. Believe me. I've had to live through five lifetimes like this. Never dying. Always working to get to this position. I need to die. Please."

I dropped the knife.

"You win."

I stood, and my knees felt sore from sitting for too long. I packed my bag and the Queen of Cats watched me, the glee and relief evident in her face. It would soon be all over for her. As soon as I fell in love again.

Never.

But it was what I am. So maybe.

I didn't hear it till I was done. We cocked our heads together. It was soft. Ambient. You wouldn't be able to pick it out among the sounds of the night.

BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP

I bent down and looked below the bench. The source was right there. A brown package. The colour of the earth.

That had to be a symbol for something.

The cat looked at it.

"Oh fuck me."

BEEP BEEP BOOM

Fire.

Fire...

That, folks, is the climax. Three chapters left. And we're done. If this chapter confuses you very much, you may want to go back and check out Interlude 6: Old Wounds. If things are still hazy, my fault. The next draft is almost solely focused on not being so ridiculously vague with the story. I'll try to fix it.

Thanks so much for staying with me so far. I can't thank you enough. I'm planning on writing a long essay thanking everyone and explaining the whole thing once I'm done. So no more drama from me today. But thank you so much.