Dungeon Item Shop - Chapter 365: The ways I have gone (Patreon)

It’s raining outside. So heavily in fact, that it almost sounds like she’s underwater.

Fresh exhales, watching her breath visibly leave her body, as she lays in her old, unmade bed all by herself.

It’s cold in the room, like it always is and the several layers of soft, fluffy blankets that she lays on-top of, rather than beneath, do as little to keep her warm as the set of unwashed elephant-pajamas that have become soft and thin, not from care and from washing, but from simply being worn for so long that the material has become broken and loose.

It’s cold in the room. But she always keeps it cold in her room. She always keeps it dark in her room. That way she doesn’t have to look at the mirror that sits on the other side of it.

It used to be that she had spent her free time outside, playing with the others. Her classmates, her cohorts, her friends. Well, ‘friends’, in the sense that they’re people who were around her for a time, simply because they were always at the same spaces by sheer happenstance. But these were more childhood acquaintances than real friends.

Then, school stopped and she stopped having a reason to go outside. It’s not that she hated school, but she never liked it that much either. It was fine. The same with her ‘friends’, she was never too unpopular. Sure, there was some bullying here and there, but it wasn’t the worst thing ever. She had gotten off more luckily than others. She wasn’t ever popular, but she also wasn’t ever unpopular. She was just kind of always… in the middle.

Then, work-life was supposed to begin. But… work for what? For what purpose? For money? A shitty pittance of a paycheck that she would spend weeks working for that would barely cover anything that life could offer. And what would she even do? All the things that interest her, you need money to start with.

That’s what she tells herself at least. It’s easier that way.

- No, instead, she closed the curtains and blamed the world.

Days had passed like that.

Then, those days somehow turned to months. Then those months somehow, through all the impossibility that was held in the visions of her mind, turned into a year.

And somehow, all the while, the girl manages to just live her life, just kind of… laying there. Sure, she gets up now and then to go to the store to buy a new bar of the cheap chocolate that she’ll eat about three-quarters of, before she leaves the rest of the bar on top of a stack already several layers high. Candy, chocolates from a month ago, soda cans, they all lay stacked up in the corner, a testament to the life that she’s built for herself. Sure, sometimes she’ll watch something; a show or a movie or whatever. These will let her escape for a while, but they all end too soon and somehow, every time she watches some great, heart-yanking adventure that fills her spirit with an unusual fire and hope, somehow, after they are over and she realizes that she is sitting alone in her room again, as before, as always, the girl in her elephant pajamas finds her way back to the old, unmade bed and becomes a part of it once more.

- It’s cold.

But the cold itself is desirable. Because as miserable and sad as she is, as horrible and stupid and pointless as her life is, at least it lets her feel something, right?

She exhales again, playing around with an old coin that was laying on her bed, some loose change left over from her last ‘grocery’ run. Her body hurts, as it has been doing so now for a while. Sure, she eats some junk now and then, but it’s really never enough to sustain herself. Not for a, physically at least, grown person.

She’s decided to make herself feel hungry now too. Maybe not on purpose, but maybe just because the feeling of being hungry, that shooting pang which runs from her stomach to her heart which beats only weakly now beneath her visible ribs, it makes the cold feel stronger. Besides, she doesn’t really want to eat anymore. It’s too hard.

It’s been about a month now, since she stopped eating. She’s only eaten a bit of trash and she doesn’t remember the last time she had gotten out of her bed. Her body doesn’t seem to have any such requirements at the moment, likely because she just hasn’t eaten for a while.

So now, she continues to lay there, unwashed, unfed, unnourished in both body and soul as she plays with the coin that just so happened to be laying there perchance, watching as its slips back and forth through her skeletal, pale, shaking fingers, together with the vapors of her weak breath.

She’s tired.

Slowly, she notices that her eyes seem to be falling heavy. Her body, having perhaps now finally realized in the same sense that her spirit has long ago that there is no way out of this, has given up the ghost. She notices that as her eyes droop, as the coin slips from her fingers one last time, as the world goes dark and as she finally falls into a merciful sleep, she notices the incredible pangs of hunger tearing through her like the terrible claws of a witch, she notices that…

- That this end, that it brings her no relief. The rain continues to fall.

Sure, she might finally be able to ‘get away’ from life. But what was the point? What was it all for? Why did she even have to bother?

This doesn’t make her happy like she thought it would. But it’s too late now. Oh well. Whatever. Not even death can be satisfying. Someone like her, someone as dumb and worthless and ugly as herself, someone who is nothing but similar to the trash that surrounds her, she doesn’t deserve nice things.

What a nightmare existence is. She’s glad that it’s over, if not unhappy about the entire journey itself and as the darkness takes her, as the coin nosily falls from her fingers, striking against the mounds of garbage on her floor, she silently wishes a true wish in her heart of hearts, that she’ll just never, ever, ever, EVER have to wake up again.

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Fresh opens her eyes.

Darkness fills the room ahead of herself. The same room as before. Her stomach hurts like it did before she slept.

She’s still here.

It sounds odd, even in her own head, but she was sure that she was dying. She sighs, watching a vapor of breath leave her body. She supposes that it would be uncharacteristic of life to let her get away that easily.

The girl sits upright, looking around the dark bedroom that she finds herself inside of. Her feet plant themselves on the ground, plastic wrappers, strewn over the floor, crinkle beneath them.

Her eyes wander around the darkness, wandering slowly over the shadows as she tries to remember the odd dream that she had. But it’s vaguely blurry and distant. She turns her head, looking towards the window that the curtains obscure.

It’s still raining outside.

Rubbing her face, she gets up, lowering her head as she walks towards the door. She pretends that she’s just interested in not stepping on any of the garbage, or knocking over any of the cans there. But the truth is, that she can’t bear to look at the mirror to her left.

Weakly, she shuffles to the empty refrigerator, pulling it open and looking inside.

The cans of soda that she bought, she didn’t even bother putting in here. Too much work. Instead, they’re behind her on the table. She sighs, looking at the empty fridge. There’s nothing but some week old bread and three eggs.

She shuts the door again and then stops as her eyes catch the thing glinting beneath her fingers, attached to the front of the fridge.

“Bakaw…” mutters Fresh beneath her breath, staring at the chicken magnet on the door.

The hairs on her neck stand on end, but she doesn’t really know why. Probably because of how cold it is. Fresh looks over her shoulder, to ask the others what they want for breakfast. “Hey, g-”

She stops, staring at the empty table, staring at the dark room.

…Why would she have anyone here to ask? It’s just her. It’s always just been her. She’s always been by herself and why would it be any other way? She doesn’t deserve not to be by herself.

Fresh’s eyes wander back towards the magnet.

Instead, she grabs a can of soda from the table and heads back to the bedroom with her breakfast, lowering her eyes again as she wanders inside.

A loud crashing causes her to jump. Her foot kicks against a can, as she actually wasn’t really paying attention to her path. That was just an excuse. The can hits another one, knocking into a stack of cans that fall over, causing a cascade of half-full cans all over the floor.

The avalanche causes an old glass bottle to fall and it shatters noisily, shards flying everywhere, sticking to the goop of month-old sugar and mildew.

She sighs, stepping around and over the mess towards her bed, where she sits back down and stares around the room that will likely stay the way it is now for the next few months.

Light flickers, the old lamp in the corner, by the withered house-plant, an herb, goes on the fritz because of the storm outside. The faint, second long glow is caught in the shards of glass, covered in somewhat acidic sludge, shining around the room for only a moment.

- She hates it here.

Fresh looks down at the still closed can of soda in her hands and then, instead of opening it, throws it over her shoulder. It strikes against the wall, falling down to the bed.

She’s sick of it. She’s sick of it all. She hates it all so much. She hates herself, this room, this life, she hates it all so much that she can’t put it into words. It makes her sick.

Although the girl isn’t quite sure why, she gets up again, shuffling through the room again, moving into the kitchen again. She pulls out a small skillet and the three eggs and the old bread, setting to work on making breakfast.

She’s never been good at making eggs. But that’s fine. It’s not like anyone she can share them with and it’s only fitting that she herself eats the trash that she herself cooks.

Garbage in. Garbage out.

Half an hour later, the three eggs are fried to the best of her ability. The old, stale bread is retoasted in the pan and she sits down at the table, staring at the food for a moment, not entirely sure what to do with it, in all honesty.

She better eat. Jubilee will yell at her if she doesn’t.

Fresh blinks, looking around the darkness. Jubilee? Who’s that? She shakes her head. She must be getting her dreams mixed up with reality again.

The girl eats her breakfast. It’s warm and simple. But it’s nourishing and whole.

She isn’t sure why, actually. But somehow, it makes her feel just a little better and so, on her way back, she grabs a glass of water to get the stickiness out of her mouth that soda would just make even worse.

An hour later, she returns to her room and looks around it. If Shamrock saw this, he’d listen to Jubilee’s order to whack her over the head.

Fresh rubs her head. There are those names again. She’s being weird again.

The weird girl sighs, looking around the room. Honestly, it’s getting on her nerves. Sure, she doesn’t deserve a nice, warm, clean room. But it’s making her sick being in it. Not physically, but in her core, in her spirit. It’s… suffocating.

She grabs a garbage bag from the kitchen and then goes to her room, haphazardly throwing everything that she can reach into the bag. Cans, glass, plastic, paper, everything goes into the one bag. Sure, the environmentalists might take issue with it, but who cares? This world is hardly worth the effort anyways.

An hour later, she ties the bag closed and throws it out of her door, slamming it noisily behind herself as she decides to finally return to her bed, where she belongs.

Her foot sticks to some old goo that had leaked out of one of the many cans, if not all of them. It could also be some melted chocolate, it’s hard to say, really.

She lets out an angry, frustrated sigh and then hobbles back outside on one leg to the washroom, washing her foot off and then coming back with a damp towel. The same towel that she dries herself off with, but that’s fine. She hasn’t used it in a few weeks, so it’s as good as clean anyways, right?

Fresh bends down, wiping through the entire room with the towel, cursing and scowling the entire time as she channels an angry energy through herself that she didn’t know she had. With every spot that she rubs away, Fresh realizes how much she hates herself.

Because of that person, that horrible, terrible, wretched creature of a person, she has to be down here now on her knees to wipe away all of this grime. It’s her fault. She hates herself so much that she can’t even put it into words.

- What an ugly person she is, not just in body, but truly in spirit.

Thirty minutes later, she opens her door and throws the grody towel against the wall. It flops down, falling on top of the garbage bag. She slams her door anew, letting out an angry half-scream, half-sigh as she finally turns to go back to her bed.

The rain continues outside.

The light flickers again, as the storm shakes the world and it illuminates the room, this time, there is no garbage for it to show her, apart from what she expects to see in her reflection, but it does show her the dried out, sad, withering basil plant that she had picked up once with the intent to care for and to nurture it like a motherly figure.

But instead, it had sat on the shelf and it died along with her.

The girl stands there for a moment and then walks towards it, picking it up off of the shelf as she carries it out to the kitchen. There, she sets it onto the counter and begins plucking off the dead leaves and pruning some withered stems with her kitchen scissors. She doesn’t remember where, but someone told her once that many plants need to be trimmed like this, because the old, dead growth is a hindrance to new life.

- It needs to be removed, so that something good can come again. They can’t coexist forever. It’s one or the other.

The scissors click, snipping away some of the old. Before going back to her room, she waters it, taking it with her and setting it back onto the shelf.

Now, finally, she is done.

Fresh stands in her bedroom. She is fed. The floor is clean. The garbage is removed. The plant is watered. Her bare-minimum obligations towards herself have been met. She exhales and the breath leaves her body, filling the cold room, floating away to dissipate like a dying spirit leaving the world.

But it’s a crooked, sharp breath.

Her lower back hurts, from laying in bed for so long. Her hands hurt, from her uncut, unwashed fingernails digging into her palms. Her throat hurts, because for some reason she’s crying. She never cries anymore. She’s usually just… quiet.

Instead however, the girl in the elephant pajamas clenches her fists, her eyes and her teeth as she lowers her head, not sure what to do now.

No, really. What is she supposed to do now?

What is there to survive for? What is there to do? What is there for her to have purpose and intent and calling for? For this dark room? For this lonely existence? If not for what, then for who is she supposed to be doing this all for?

The light flickers a third time and Fresh turns her head, looking at the last thing left inside of her room, at the girl in the mirror.

Through her blurred eyes, through the shadows cast by the dying flash of light, she’d almost swear that the person who she sees there isn’t wearing what she’s wearing. She’s wearing a dress, imperfect but well worn as it shows signs of work and consistent care. Her hair is longer and loose, but well kept. Her body is fuller, fed, trained and used, the same as hers, but just… better taken care of. Her eyes are brighter, well nourished with regular sights of things both beautiful and loved.

The reflection winks at her with a smile that she never knew could be painted on a face like her own.

- It looks very warm.

There’s a crackling outside, it almost sounds like the window is starting to break. Like the heavy, lightless, loveless storm that is raging outside has realized what she has done, what is happening and it is now trying to break in to get her, to stop her.

Fresh yelps as something grabs her arm in the darkness and yanks her towards the mirror. In that instant, as the window behind her breaks.

_______________________________________________________________

Fresh sits upright in the bed, panting. Her hand clutches her chest, feeling her frantically beating heart which is barely able to keep up with her terrified breathing.

A hand touches her on the side and she looks down towards Jubilee, who has opened a single eye in annoyance at her midnight disturbance. Following the pressure of their hand, she lays back down in bed, catching her breath and processing her nightmare.

Another hand places itself on her shoulder, as Basil shifts, also having been awoken by her, its presence letting her know that everything is fine. Everything is as it should be. She’s where she belongs.

Shamrock, being used to this ritual that happens every so often gets up without a complaint and moves to the foot of the bed, where he sits down, leaning back against it to keep watch for the rest of the night, lest any other unwanted specters of the past make themselves shown in the darkness.

Quietly crying to herself, but now for reasons far different than those she had had in a life long past, Fresh closes her eyes again and falls into a much gentler sleep, this time, finding herself in a full, warm, safe home that she might not be deserving of, by any objective or moral standards, but it’s hers nonetheless.

A year has come to pass in full now and she understands that this warmth, this itself is the point. This is the reason for going forward.