Hello once again, my faithful ink-stained companion —
you who bears the essence of my rotting mind.
Today, I will tell you more about myself.
I am one with a doubtful mind, one who finds it hard to believe things that I haven't done with my own hands. Not even my eyes do I trust, for illusions are real. I believe in my own failures and successes; I believe in the fact that I am alive, and that I am of myself.
Science and religion have both tried to convince me, but I will not listen to their ideals. Yet one thing remains clear: nothing cannot be without a creator, and something cannot exist out of nothing.
In this world and in others, known and unknown, there are things that are, and things that are not.
But my dear friend, born of the corpse of a tree, I have trenched upon a taboo — for I have created something that should not be, and I have no control over it.
In reference to a certain machine-turned-god, I too bear a deep hatred for this world and its inhabitants. I have despised this world since the day I was born — nay, I have hated it long before my non-existent form was made by the hands of the creator, whoever they are.
Every day, I dream of ending this plane of existence. But alas, I am only mortal.
Yet this thing — this entity, this being that is not of this world but of the one that bloomed in my mind — it might just... no, it can erase all that is, here and beyond.
My name is Ben Ashford, thirty years of age, five foot eleven. Child to James Ashford and Sofia Roselaw. I was once a prized writer, sought after by many — until the day I began to hear her voice.
It began five years ago. I had just come out of an interview when I saw a strangely dressed man — walking in the middle of the street.
Ben: "Hey buddy, ain't it too early for Halloween?"
The man didn't respond. His head jerked slightly, like a puppet with a broken string, and his eyes — no, they weren't eyes. They were hollow, dark sockets filled with a faint, swirling mist. His body was draped in something that looked like wet parchment, covered in lines and symbols that seemed to crawl across his skin.
I blinked once. Twice.
He was gone.
The crowd around me flowed naturally, unaware, unbothered — commuters with their coffee cups and glowing screens. No one screamed, no one even flinched. The crosswalk sign blinked green. Cars honked. The world went on.
At first, I thought it was fatigue. Writers like me live in our own heads too long; the line between imagination and reality thins to a whisper.
But then I heard a voice.
"You saw it, didn't you?"
The voice — soft, feminine, almost melodic — like silk brushing against my skull. It came from everywhere and nowhere.
I froze. "Who's there?"
"Don't be afraid, Ben. You're finally beginning to see."
I turned in circles, scanning the faces around me. No one looked my way. My reflection in a nearby window stared back, pale and trembling. The voice chuckled — distant, but intimate.
That night, I tried to write — anything to distract myself. But the words wouldn't come. Every line I wrote bled into another; letters twisted into runes, sentences formed whispers that weren't my own.
I tore the pages out, one by one, until my desk was a graveyard of thoughts.
Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw them again — those people. Or whatever they were. Standing at the edge of the room, still and silent. Their eyes — all empty. Their presence — heavy, wrong.
I shouted. Threw my lamp. It shattered through them like smoke. And still, they stared.
I checked myself into a clinic two days later. They told me it was psychosis — that the human mind, under stress, creates ghosts to survive its own collapse. They gave me pills and promises.
But the pills did nothing.
Because the more I took them, the clearer they became.
They were not hallucinations.
They were... observers.
And one of them finally spoke.
"The wall between cradle and the world... is gone," it wailed with a voice like static and grinding metal,
"Now the sleeping code eats its own dream. The system will wear your face."