Untitled Fiction 1
From Create Your Own Story
"yes, i'm doing ok."
the distress didn't seem real - this hadn't changed. however, with this lapse in identity you assumed petry was blind to the emotions she was conveying, which, given the lack of expressivity in your face, seemed almost comically severe. petry hunched over apathetically, strung up as if she was prepared to walk away.
"i hate this. i hate that you have to live in the mind of an oaf. we are both somehow forced to be a different person. but it's not possible to do that well."
she looks at you, able to listen. somehow petry for this short moment looks more engaged than you've ever been able to look, even while goading a mental reticence from your ugliness so that you could concentrate on yourself at the least. you thought of yourself as the one subject for which any ideation is acceptable. like staring at yourself in the mirror and fixating on your blemishes and imagining how they might look homelier - much like you are incapable of preventing yourself from doing at the moment. but you continue
"it relies on one very specific sort of memory. we're deteriorating without it, without being born as us."
"well, there are many things that could do that." she forced a smile. "form a callousness around my identity. many years of living, becoming 'weary of this feint', isolation. even losing interest in myself and wishing for a different history." "i guess i would have been held responsible if these things affected me instead."
smoothness of your voice feels grotesque in knowing that it was stolen and somehow unearnt. the lack of animosity from your theft is baffling to you. guilt in enjoying the freedom and capability of dreaming. the magnesium is rapidly affecting the images on your mind.
"have you done that before, wished for a different history?"
