They think I don’t know what they did to me. What they’re doing to me. But I do, I DO. I know exactly what those bastards are up to and when I get out, there is going to be a million different flavours of hell to pay.

I know they think I don’t know. People have always thought I was stupid just because I am a homely woman with a speed impediment. But I read. I read all the time. I keep up on all kind of stuff. And so I know exactly what kind of bullshit they are up to.

It has to be that bitch Wendy Silcowicz’ fault. I’m in that fucked up brain machine of hers. I always thought her work was creepy as hell, messing with people’s sense of time and state of consciousness. She said it was to give terminally ill patients more time to live, but we know differently now, don’t we?

Doesn’t take a genius level IQ to figure out a technology like that is going to be used to hurt people. So I am sure that when miss Lady Brain Scientist with the tits out to here came to the government and told them that her device could make someone experience a year in solitary confinement in just twenty minutes, they practically jizzed for joy. Think of all the money they could save on prisons this way! And after all, it was quite “humane”. No walls, no cells, no shower rape, no nasty images to make people question the justice of the system. Just me on a nice clean hospital bed with inducing goggles (just like the ones you use at home, folks!) over my eyes.

Why, I am sure it looks like nothing more than a brief and pleasant nap. The bastards.

The reality of it is that I have been awake 24 hours a day with nothing to do and nobody to talk to for a long time now. How long? Well, the walls I see around me are dark green now, so according to my friend Roy G. Biv, a bit over six months, give or take a subjective day or two.

Sounds really cruel, doesn’t it? You could never get away with this in the real world. Keep a person in solitary confinement with no exercise, no entertainment, and neither food nor water for a whole year? The rights organizations would shit themselves.

But according to the law, my sentence is only twenty minutes long. By that measure, I am getting off super easy for two “murders” (hey, they’re both still alive… technically…. ) so everyone is just fine with it.

In fact, I am sure there’s a lot of beer-swilling pigs out there who think I deserve a lot more punishment for my crimes than just “laying down for twenty minutes”.

Fucking idiots. I know their kind all too well. Livers like raisins and mouths like assholes, shitting out their disgusting opinions day and night like they got diarrhea of the brain.

Just like my Dad.

Whether or not I come out of my “nap” completely and irrevocably insane doesn’t matter to those jiggling lumps of fat and gristle. Well I’ll show all those assholes, and the pricks that put me in this cage.

From this point on, I will write as much as I possibly can every singe day. They left me that, the fools. I can think-type into a file and that file will get saved in that bitch’s machine.

Maybe they had to do that to meet some obscure legal requirement, but it will be the tool of their own undoing. When I am finally let out of this mind jail, I will have written millions of words, and after that, this game they are playing where they pretend like it’s “not so bad” because it’s “only twenty minutes” will be over.

If I had time to write all those words, then it really was a year in solitary and what they did to me was unbelievably wrong. Right now (so to speak), the public isn’t sure. But once they see my words, there will be no more room for doubt.

All I have to do is stay strong and keep writing.

Oh, and for the record, no, I don’t regret doing what I did. Not one tiny shiny whiny bit. Pressing the button that wiped the minds of the bitch who betrayed me and the piece of cock who stole her away was the happiest moment of my life.

She’s the one who led me on. She’s the one who made me think I could trust her, tell her everything, share my apartment and my bed with her, raise a dog with her, even let her see the pig and cow who raised me, or at least didn’t quite kill me.

Then this handsome asshole with the killer smile and nine inch cock comes along, and it’s like I never existed. Sure, living with me isn’t easy… I’m the first to admit that. But that’s no excuse for her to leave me alone… again.

And the thought of that smug motherfucker sticking his piece of pork into her makes me so disgusted and angry that I just want to push that button over and over again for the rest of my life.

My lawyers tried to make it like it was a momentary slip of reason and conscience, and in a way they were right. I didn’t plan it. I hadn’t even formed the intention to harm them in any way before that fateful day.

But then there I was, in the control room, and there they were, in the air field induction chamber, and there was the button I could press to send way, way too much current through their brains.

My only defense is that I didn’t think it would fry their brains permanently. I thought it would just cause them a lot of pain but not permanent damage. I wanted them to suffer, not die.

But I guess that’s why I am the technician and engineer for other people’s inventions.

So now the question is : would I have done it if I had known the truth?

And the answer is… yeah, I probably would have.

But I would have felt bad about it after.

Dale had actually done it.

A burglar had broken into his home, and after several clear and commanding warnings were ignored, Dale had followed his training, aimed for the center of mass, exhaled, and pulled the trigger.

Now there he was, sitting on the stage with the rest of his family plus the mayor and the president of the local NRA chapter, in the Union Hall across from the Target on Poplar Street. Above and behind him was a banner reading “Nice shot, Dale!”, the same thing that had been written on the bulls eye shaped cake he’d been asked to cut. All day long people had been slapping him on the back and telling him what a great guy he was for what he had done. The local media had declared him a home-grown hero and the NRA wanted to pay him a lot of money to go speak to chapters all over the USA about what he had done.

Dale would rather have died. He felt like he was dying. Or maybe that he wanted to die.

There had been no satisfaction. No sense of victory. Not even the grim satisfaction of having done what had to be done. Just that young man’s head (the shot had gone high) exploding over and over again in his mind.

And with every explosion, the same question echoed in his mind : why did he have to kill the boy?

And boy he was. News said he was nineteen, and had a criminal record as long as your arm. They also said that the boy had a long history of mental instability, and at any point in time it was fifty-fifty whether he would be in jail or the loony bin. They’d had the boy’s social worker on, saying how she was saddened by the by the boy’s death…. but not surprised.

Not surprised. Here in Winsley County. Here in Big Fork, population three thousand. A town that prided itself on being peaceful, old-fashioned, and a great place to raise your kids. A town so small they didn’t even have a police station. Not surprised.

All around him, people were whooping it up big time, eating cake, drinking beer, and celebrating Dale’s act of heroism.

But he didn’t feel like a hero. He felt hollow, like if someone tapped him on the shoulder he’d ring like a bell. He felt cold, like there was a block of ice where his heart had been. But more than that, he felt… ashamed.

The boy’s head exploded again. Why’d he have to kill the boy?

The boy hadn’t been armed. He was skinny as a twig. He looked like he’d been dragged through the mud both ways uphill. He’d been wearing a plain white T-shirt and jeans so tight they looked like a coat of paint.

But most of all, he looked scared. Real real scared. And seeing him scared like that had felt… good. Real good. Like something out of a movie.

Then Dale had pulled the trigger and everything went to hell.

The worst part was, his wife had seen it. She’d been the one who’d woken him up and told him to go check what that noise in the kitchen was in the first place. She’d been right behind him on the stairs. She saw the whole thing.

Dale looked at her. Right now, she was smiling and nodding and looked for all the world like she was enjoying her time in the spotlight. She even looked at Dale adoringly now and then.

When she did, Dale wanted to die. He’d been married to Marsha for seventeen years, and knew the difference between when she was really happy and when she was putting on a show for company. He knew that right behind the smiles and warmth was something cold and dark that was only beginning to tear her up inside.

No woman – not even one as strong and loyal as Marsha – could see her husband splatter the brains of another human being asll over the kitchen… HER kitchen, the place where she cooked for and fed the family, the place where she had tea with her friends and talked to company – and not be deeply effected by it.

Dale figured they would be eating out for a while.

Dale looked out at all the people who had showed up to celebrate what he’d done. These were people he had known since childhood. People he’d hunted with. People he’d considered friends for his whole life. People he’d been to barbecues, church picnics, and town functions with. People he’d played with when he was a kid then tried to date when he was a teen. People whose kids were friends with his kids. Some of them he’d even voted for.

These were his people, the people he had more in common with than every other human being on the planet. But looking at them now, as they celebrated the fact that he’d killed someone who was barely more than a child, they look like demons and harpies to Dale.

The boy’s head exploded again. Why’d he have to kill the boy?

When Dale first saw him, the boy was at the fridge. He had a dozen packages and jars open and was eating from all of them, like he was trying to eat everything in the fridge at once. He’d been eating with such determined ferocity that Dale was sure the poor boy hadn’t eaten in weeks.

Had he really taken a human life just to keep from having to make an extra trip to Costco?

All the reasons the boy hadn’t listened to his warnings ran through Dale’s head. Maybe he hadn’t been able to hear Dale over the fridge’s compressor. Maybe he’d been too scared to move a muscle. Maybe he’d been too weak and confused to understand what Dale was saying. Maybe he’d had an attack of whatever kind of crazy he’d been and Dale looked like a ten foot alien to him.

From far away, Dale heard a voice he didn’t recognize calling his name. Guess I’m crazy now, he thought. Figures.

But then he realized that the voice was coming from the person standing in front of him. He forced himself to focus on the man.

It was Jim Miller, someone he had known when he was a plumber at the mill. He had a business card in his hand. How do they make them that white? thought Dale.

“…so I know we don’t know each other too well, uh, Dale, but I know what you’ve been through, and I just wanted to tell you… I get it. I mean, I understand what you are going through. It was after you left, but…. the reason I don’t work at the mill any more is that I was playing around in the control room, you know, fooling around to make people laugh… and I, I hit the button that activates the press, and… the new kid, the one from Ashbury, was cleaning the press like we’d told him to do…. anyhow, all I am trying to say is, I know what it’s like to, to… take a… life. And there’s people who help people like us, Dale. We call ourselves the Silver Thread, and it’s mostly cops, but I am sure I can get you in just like someone got me in. ”

Jim pressed the card he was holding into Dale’s hand. “That’s all our contact info. We have a hotline, a Facebook group, live chat, our own website, everything. Call them and say you’re from Big Fork and Jim sent you. They will know who you mean. ”

The card felt hot in Dale’s hand. He wanted to throw it away. But then he felt Marsha squeeze his other hand under the table, and he knew that, from her, that meant “Please do it. ”

“I’ll think about it. ” said a voice a lot like his own, and Jim smiled and nodded a bunch then went back to the party. Under the table, Marsha squeezed his hand again, this time meaning “thank you, well done. ”

Later that night, after all the goodbyes from all their friends, when they were finally heading to the motel they’d be staying at
while the police cleaned up their home, Dale threw the card into the garbage.

But he’d already copied all the information into his phone.

I hate it here. I miss my lair.

Every day it’s the same bloody thing. Communal meals of banal food. Endless group therapy sessions where I am forced to listen to men and women (and a few other things) whimper about their terrible childhoods in order to please our fatuous caretakers. Individual therapy, where I am expected to bare all to some low achiever versed in psychiatric quackery. And hours of forced fun where they lock us out of our rooms and into the recreation area to “socialize”.

Supervillains socialize about as well as sharks do, and for much the same reason. Megalomania does not spring from an active social life. We keep to ourselves.

At least I’m a “UP”, or Unpowered. All my villainous superpowers disappeared when those wretched little monkeys pried me from my power armor like they were stripping a harlot. They were so eager to examine all my advanced technologies (as if they could possibly comprehend them) that they ignored my vehement warnings and a few of them perished from either clumsy handling of powerful technology or the booby traps I had installed in my power armor long, long ago.

And I regret that. I did all that I could to prevent it, but I still feel bad about these young people dying from systems I put in place so long ago that I barely remember half of them. They died at my hand, in a way, and that burdens me heavily.

Would a “raving monster” feel that way? The media calls me a sociopath, but that has never been true. I simply lack altruism. There is a world of difference between being morally inert and simply having no desire to go out of my way to help my fellow upright primates. I wish people understood that.

I understand that the theatrical nature of my chosen profession fooled millions of people into thinking I was truly a black-hearted villain of monstrous dimension.

But the truth is, I never wanted to hurt anybody. I would never have actually activated any of my doomsday devices. To be honest, most of them wouldn’t have done the job even if I had. Why build an actual doomsday device when a convincing fake does the job just as well?

It amuses me to imagine the look on Captain Trueheart’s face if he knew that the Ticktock Device he fought so hard to “disarm” was about as dangerous as a broken alarm clock.

To be honest, I miss him. Of all the superheroes I ever fought, he was the one who came closest to matching me mentally, and I respect him for that. If he was on the case, I knew I would have to work especially hard. He hides it under his “hero pure and strong” persona, but he has as twisted and devious a mind as any of my fellow inmates.

I would love to sit down with him for a chat or maybe a game of chess now that the medications have made me less…. volatile. I am still the same man who terrorized the world, but the medications do a wonderful job of restraining my overweaning egomania enough that I can retain control of myself.

Therapy may be a farce, but there is no denying the efficacy of chemistry.

If I seem especially cranky and bitter today, it’s probably because I just lost a friend. They finally figured out that my roommate “Toby” (no more his name than I am “Anthony”) really is a green-skinned frog-person from another dimension sent here to destroy us all, and not the mild-mannered insurance broker with a costume fetish he’d conned them into thinking he was.

Once they twigged to that, they realized that they only believed his absurd cover story because of his mind powers, and that meant he had to be transferred to the “Powered” ward.

And as banal and insipid as this ward might be, I wouldn’t wish the Powered ward on anyone, let alone someone I have come to view as a friend. The residents of the Powered ward are kept drugged up to the gills (in his case, literally) to the point that they are almost catatonic. The drugs leave them in a state of placid imbecility, and the thought of my friend “Toby” being reduced to such a state effects me deeply.

His final words to me were “Farewell, pink flesh-bag. May you be the last to die. ”

Coming from him, that meant a lot to me.

At least my new roommate “Mark” seems promising. I am not allowed to reveal his true persona, but let’s just say he used to work in pyrotechnics. Rather impressive ones. He and I seem to be cut from approximately the same kind of cloth, as he too was a self-made villain and owed his powers not to fate but to the power of his mind. His approach was a tad less refined than mind, but I always admired his work. His theatricality exceeded even my own. His hostage videos always had me spellbound.

I don’t know what he thinks of me. Perhaps he has yet to deduce my true identity. It usually doesn’t take long. Our caretakers seem to think that if we never speak of our previous lives, we can all pretend to be “normal”, but we figure out who’s who pretty quickly despite all that.

Once he figures it out, I expect I will have to endure the usual period of reverence and adulation. I am somewhat of a big name in our select little social circle, and have through seniority become mentor to many a rising hopeful, and so the young villains all clamor for my imprimatur.

Then comes the disappointment as they realize that the person they think I am no longer exists. I am now as I was before I took the path of villainy : a soft-spoken scholar who fades into the woodwork by choice.

Not very exciting, given my previous high profile, but I am content.

I have now “journaled” the requisite number of words, and thus, I conclude.

The following is a full transcript of Sterling Roche’s interviews with Anton Gardener, know to the world as the supervillain “Repton”. It took place in Visiting Room Eight at Highgate Hypermaximum Prison in Greem Oaks, Maryland. The interviews took place between May 17 and May 24, 2015.

Roche : Before we get down to business, I have a personal question to ask you, if I may.

Repton : You may.

Roche : Why did you pick me as the one person to interview you, after all these years of silence?

Repton : Because I admire your work, Mister Roche. The fact you have not risen to the top of your field yet is, no pun intended, downright criminal. I am particularly fond of your work with so-called “street gangs”. Those articles proved to me, beyond a shadow of doubt, that you are a man who can look directly into the heart of evil and remain objective.

Roche : I am flattered and honored by your praise. I am curious as to why you said “so-called ‘street gangs'”. What do you call them? And do you have a history with them?

Repton : I called them “self-organizing youth organizations”, and I have an extensive history with them. In fact, it was one of those organizations that began me on a life of crime, as it were.

Roche : Please explain.

Repton : Until I encountered my first gang at age 14, I was a happy little clean-cut private school drone like so many others. Got good grades, did what I was told, stayed away from anything that seemed socially embarrassing. I thought the best thing in life was to be respectable, and pursued that goal with diligence and focus.

Roche : I take it that changed?

Repton : Indeed it did. Once puberty took hold in me, I became restless, discontent, and sarcastic. Suddenly, the world I was brought up seemed incredibly drab and crushingly dull. And increasingly hard to endure. By the time I encountered my first gang, I was officially a “problematic” and “difficult” child in most people’s eyes. No one was more surprised by this than me.

Roche : Is that when the Bay Street Vipers recruited you?

Repton : It was the other way around. I wanted desperately to join them. I had encountered them on one of my frequent long walks, and to my young mind, they represented everything that was missing from my life. I absolutely had to join them. And they wanted nothing to do with me.

Roche : Why was that?

Repton : Let’s say that my entreaties to them were less than sophisticated. To them, I was some effete spoiled brat who wanted to do the equivalent of running away to the circus, and far more trouble than I was worth. They were probably right.

Roche : What changed that?

Repton : My first crime. I knew it would take something very impressive to gain their respect. I reasoned that anyone could steal candy from the candy store. I would steal it from the trucks it arrived on.

Roche : That seems quite bold of you.

Repton : Thank you, it was. So I hung around the back entrance of Lollipop’s, the Cadillac of candy stores in our neighborhood, and watched the trucks come and go till I found a pattern I could exploit.

Roche : And that was?

Repton : There was one delivery driver who always spent a long time chatting up one of the girls who worked behind the counter at Lollipop’s, leaving his truck entirely unguarded. It was quite simple for me to slip into the truck and boost an enormous crate of candy that was almost as big as me.

Roche : And that worked?

Repton : Like the proverbial charm. Once I showed up to school with a simply absurd amount of all kinds of chocolate and candy, word got around, and the next day I was told that the leader of the Bay Street Vipers, someone everyone called King, wanted to meet me ASAP.

Roche : And it was smooth sailing from there?

Repton : Mostly. I walked into his “office”, looked him straight in the eye, and said “Want to know how I did it?”. It turned out he did. Very much so. Negotiations for my entry into his gang went smoothly from there.

Roche : According to my research, you took King’s job soon after that.

Repton : Well yes, but not by design. I was just happy to be included. But it turns out that if you are the person with the best ideas and the most effective plans, people naturally start following you. I always made sure to show him deference and respect, but it was obvious who the de facto leader was, and it wasn’t long before it was made official.

Roche : And how did you feel about that?

Repton : Dizzy. Excited. Terrified. Wildly inadequate. Incredibly proud. And, most importantly to this narrative, I felt a feeling of true power. And I liked it. A lot.

Roche : What did you do with this new-found power?

Repton : At first, not much. But eventually, I grew into the role, and before too long, I was ruling Bay Street with an iron fist. All three blocks of it. To say we terrorized the citizens would be a vast overstatement. But we enriched ourselves and pissed off a lot of adults, and that made us very happy.

Roche : That doesn’t sound particularly evil to me.

Repton : The local shopkeepers would have vehemently disagreed. But yes, the worst we did was steal from shopkeepers that sold things kids and teens liked, then sell them at vastly lower prices. We never beat anyone up, we didn’t have anything we were trying to prove, and we made sure to spread our wealth around. We were far from the toughest gang around. But we were definitely the most popular. We thought of ourselves as a gang of merry bandits, like in Robin Hood.

Roche : So what turned you from a merry bandit into Repton?

Repton : That, my friend, is a long story. And judging by that guard’s glare, we are out of time.

End Transcript Part One

Okay, that’s it. That’s it. That is truly fucking it. I have had it with that extradimensional asshole and I don’t car what it takes, he and his disgusting habits and weird behaviour are going to be out of this apartment and out of my life before the end of this week, and that is final!

He really went too far this time. I came home to find that he had eaten my belt. Eaten it! I had left it on the living room table and he had done his whole “eating but not really eating” thing to it after slathering it with peanut butter and pesto.

Peanut butter and pesto! God, he is disgusting.

And this was not just any belt from my wardrobe, oh no. If he had eaten one of those stupid embroidered leather belts my mother used to get me from Shopsey’s, that would have been one thing. He would actually have been doing me a favour. Then I would have an excuse not to wear it even around my mother.

But no, this was my very favorite belt in the whole wide world because it was the belt I had made with my own two hands at Camp Wanakaluk when I was only ten years old!

All the other campers made fun of me for taking so long to make a stupid belt, and they were still laughing at me when they all left to go swimming and I was still working at my stupid little desk, but they stopped laughing when they came back and saw the beautiful belt with the Rising Stag (the camp mascot) looking real as life burned into it with a woodburning gun.

That belt represented one of greatest victories in my entire life, and that motherfucking asshole with the superfluous dimensions didn’t just destroy it, he ate it, and on purpose, too!

And when I asked about it, he just shrugged, and said “Smelled like food to me. ”

And when I told him that it was both not food, and not his, he just laughed that super annoying indulgently smug little laugh of his and said “Oh, you 3Ds and your silly little rules. ”

And that’s when I really exploded. I launched into a blistering tirade about how rude, insulting, disgusting, arrogant, abusive, petty, callous, and overall unpleasant he was, and just when I was reaching my crescendo, I realized he wasn’t even listening. He had his headphones on and was listening to those atonal car accident symphonies he calls music.

So I slapped him across the face.

And he barely even reacted! He just looked up like I had merely tapped him on the shoulder, slid one headphone off one ear, and said “Oh, are you done squeaking and squawking already? Because it stopped being funny ages ago. Normally it’s hilarious to see you stupid little 3Ds acting like what happens in you flat little universe is so damned important, but honestly, you’re starting to get on my nerves. Just go on with your meaningless little life and leave the real people alone, okay?”

Can you believe this guy?

That’s when I got so mad that I wasn’t even mad any more. I’d gone all the way through mad and into a dangerous kind of calm reptilian focus that only comes to me when I am truly, truly pissed off.

I asked him what he would do if I tried to evict him.

He laughed at me and said “Who knows? Maybe I would decide to leave. Put you and this stupid little life of yourself behind me. Or maybe I would decide to stay so I can laugh at all you 3Ds as you get all mad and pouty when your realize that you can’t so much as touch me, let alone hurt me, let alone make me do something I don’t feel like doing. ”

I nodded. “I expected no better. And if I tried to kill you?”

He laughed again, louder. “You can’t kill a puppet, stupid. And if you tried, I would knock this whole building flat and not even think twice about it . You’re all just ants on a piece of paper to me anyhow. I could destroy you all with a flick of my finger.”

“So why did you come here in the first place?” I asked.

“Well…. I dunno, it seemed like it would be fun and nobody I knew had done it before, so I thought, what the heck. ”

“And how is it working out for you?” I asked.

“Lousy! Everything here is so stupid. Obeying all your stupid little rules is driving me nuts. I hate it. I hate you, I hate this apartment, I hate this world, and I hate this entire stupid slice of reality. I can’t fucking stand it any longer!”

“Really? And yet, by my calculations, you’ll be here at least eight more months. Imagine how bad you will feel then! And what would your friends in the higher dimensions feel about how you are acting tonight?”

“I don’t HAVE any friends!” he said. “Those beings I told you were my friends? They’re anything but. They’re the people I work for, the ones I convinced to back me on this mission. And they are not happy with me. At all. ”

“Because you’re failing. Isn’t that right? You’ve been failing your mission from the very start. You were supposed to do this whole thing as if you were a real human being, with no extradimensional stuff at all, and yet you’ve been cheating from the very start, haven’t you? And they all know it! But more importantly, you know it. You thought you could handle it. You thought it would be fun. You thought it would be easy. But you couldn’t handle it even for a minute. And now you’re bored. Oh, is this not fun any more? What did you think was going to happen here? Trapped in three dimensions? All fun and games with no sacrifices?”

He was subdued now. “I don’t know. I guess I wasn’t thinking about that. All I saw was a way to prove to people that they were wrong about me and that I could accomplish something worthwhile instead of just drifting around all the time. I didn’t realize how hard this was going to be. And I can’t go back now. That would prove everything was right about me. This is my last chance to prove myself. Besides, the people I work for are already furious at me for… well, pretty much everything, to be honest. When I told you the truth about myself, they were ready to…. well, you don’t really have a word for it here. Let’s say… they were ready to put me in jail. A really bad jail, one that really hurts. But I convinced them to give me one more chance… but even that wasn’t enough to get me to act right. I’m sorry, Trevor. I really am. I guess I really am a failure. If I could, I would leave right now and let you get back to your life. But if I leave now, I will go straight to… that bad place. And I can’t go there. Not again. Never again. ”

“So it seems we are stuck with each other, then. ” I said softly.

“Sorta, yeah. I mean, I can move out, find a new place, learn to follow the rules a little better… ”

He was going to say more, but that’s when I kissed him. Hard.

Then he kissed me, and I kissed him, and one thing led to another.

And another, and another, and after a nap, another.

And I found myself promising to help teach him to stay within the rules and keep him out of the bad place, and that I would be his guide to the three dimensional world, and everything would be okay.

And obviously, that means I will not, in fact, be kicking him out. He will, in fact, be moving into my bedroom to stay. Sorry about lying to you at the beginning of today’s update, but that really is how I felt at one point and I thought it would make a better story this way.

I know that I should still be mad at him. I know I should never have let him get away with all the bullshit he put me through before tonight, either. I know that any sane person would have run for the hills the minute things got weird.

But I really hate interviewing roommates. And I really like this apartment.

And I guess I’m in love with him now. And he’s in love with me.

Oh, and he’s super cool with the gay thing. Apparently his people think our gender binary is “adorable”.

So I guess he’s my five dimensional boyfriend now.

I clearly have no idea what the fuck I am doing.

So last time I told you that when he came out of the five dimensional closet, so to speak, things got a lot worse.

And the reason for that is that after the big reveal, he stopped pretending to be a normal human at all. I never knew what I would have to deal with.

And that made him more annoying and obnoxious than ever before.

Take his relationship with objects. Things were always appearing and disappearing around him, and not all those things were his. Stuff I clearly owned would disappear all the time. The fact that when I confronted him about it he would look all annoyed and say “I didn’t steal it, I just moved it!” and it would reappear did not change the fact that these things are not his.

And then there’s food. Good God, the food! His meat puppet body doesn’t need to eat (and he doesn’t eat “that kind of food”), so all his experiences with food were purely for pleasure.

And he has absolutely no sense of reason or restraint about it. One time I found him dipping a chocolate donut into Thai peanut sauce mixed with juice from a jar of olives. Who DOES that kind of thing?

The fact that it actually smelled kinda good just made it that much worse.

And so I am always finding his gross food experiments lying around in the kitchen or the fridge. Pureed ham and chocolate-mint sauce. Chinese BBQ duck sitting in bucket of mayo. Tacos flambe. It’s always disgusting and he never puts anything away.

He claims not to know what “away” means to a 3D like me, but I think it’s bullshit.

And then there’s his “experiments”. He claims that part of his mission is to study how things work in a world limited to three dimensions, but I can’t help but notice these little experiments of his always seem to involve fire and brightly colored paint, and not so much the beakers and centrifuges you might think.

I think he just likes watching burning paint. I won’t claim I don’t see the appeal, but still.

But the worst, the absolute worst, has got to be the bathroom.

You see, he doesn’t use it.

That meat puppet body’s digestive system is purely for show. It doesn’t work. So when he eats food, it just falls into his stomach, where nothing happens to it until he decides he wants to get rid of it.

Which he does by sticking his finger down his throat. Apparently, functioning digestive systems are optional, but the gag reflex is too useful to him to forego.

And of course, it all comes back up looking exactly like it did going down. It’s completely unchanged. And if you don’t understand how horrible that is, imagine what your last meal would look like after being all chopped up by your teeth and soaked in saliva by your mouth.

It’s completely disgusting, right? And I haven’t even told you the worst part.

Ready for this? Actually, no, you’re not. Nobody is ready for this. But consider yourself warned.

See, when he, um…. spits out his food, he doesn’t throw it away. Oh no. After all, he might want to experience that particular flavour combination again! Or maybe add something to make it even better!

No, he saves it in Ziploc bags! And when the mood strikes him, he eats it again.

See what I mean? You thought you were ready, didn’t you? You said “Oh, please. I have seen some pretty gross stuff on the Internet. How bad could it be?”.

Well now you know, and aren’t you glad that you do?

Oh, and another thing : he is constantly walking through walls^[1] despite the many, many times I have asked him not to.

So I will be in the living room and he will just pop up out of nowhere. But it’s not quite like a magic trick, because if I happen to be looking in the right direction, I can clearly see his body ripple and bubble and tremble like someone just kicked the mirror. In these brief flashes, I have seen, in aggregate, nearly every cell of him, inside and out.

That’s more than I want to know about anyone, including myself, thank you very much.

Oh, and speaking of which, I am always walking in on him and seeing him with, say, all the skin on his left side missing, or a big lumpy mess where his head should be, and that shit is fucking disturbing.

But I have stopped saying anything about it, because when I do, he goes real, real quiet and looks super embarrassed and ashamed, and begs me to please, please forget about it.

So he’s the one who had his brain hanging out, and I’m the one who ends up feeling guilty.

So by now you, you are probably wondering why I put up with it. If he does all these gross horrifying disgusting things, why not just kick him out and get a normal roommate?

Well, leaving aside the issue of whether or not it’s possible to force someone who has six inches and two dimensions on you to do anything, the truth is, he pays his rent on time, he doesn’t drink or smoke or bring women home, and he’s very good about not making noise when I am trying to sleep. Plus, I really, really hate interviewing potential roommates. Plus I would have to give him his deposit back, and I spent that ages ago. Plus, I get the feeling that would get him in trouble with whoever it is he works for, and he is terrified of them.

Oh, and there’s one more thing.

Despite everything, I think I’m starting to like him.

What the HELL is wrong with me?

I’ve got to tell you about my roommate. He’s five dimensional.

And no, that doesn’t mean that he “comes from the fifth dimension”, any more than we “come from the third dimension”. I am so tired of everyone treating dimensional like they are alternate realities. That’s not what it means!

It means that my roommate, who calls himself Brian, exists in two more spatial dimensions than we do. We have length, width, and height, and he has length, width, height, Alpha and Beta.

Or at least that’s what he calls them. I’m a programmer, not a mathematician , I don’t know what the proper terms are. I survived calculus and that was it. Extraplanar geometry was not even on my radar.

He seemed perfectly normal at first. A little stiff and awkward, perhaps, but a lot of people get that way when they are being interviewed for an apartment. And he had all his bona fides in order. He’d worked at the same office as a clerk for three years, he had the first month’s rent in cash, my informal background (aka Googling his name) showed no red flags. ^[1]

But looking back, there were signs that there was something odd about him right from the start. For one thing, he was able to produce an astonishing amount of documentation from a briefcase the size of an iPod. And every now and then, he would start to giggle at something I said then stop and suddenly look very serious.

And when I asked him what was so funny, he would grin and say “Oh, it would take too long to explain.” and that’s all I could get out of him.

And you can bet THAT pissed me off.

But I was desperate. Paying full rent on a two bedroom apartment was taking a huge chunk of my fun money, and Doctor Who DVDs don’t pay for themselves, so I signed him up anyhow and the next thing I knew, he’d moved in.

And I mean that literally. He signed the lease, and then things went out of focus for a second, and then he was all moved in. I went to his room and it was if he had always been there. He had a bed, a TV, a chest of drawers, a DVD player, posters on all the walls, and some kind of game system I didn’t recognize, all moved in and looking like they had been there since Reagan, and all in less time than it takes to say “It is defended. ”

And when I asked him about it, he looked like he had no idea what I was talking about. He just kept saying “I signed the lease and gave you the money so now I can move in. Right?”

I could have kicked him out right then and there, and screw the lease. And there’s been a lot of times since then that I wish I had. I mean, normal people can’t do things like that. Normal people obey the laws of time and space as we know them.

But for whatever reason (curiosity, fear, being damned sick of interviewing people, take your pick), I just shrugged and said “whatever” and went on with my life.

And things were pretty normal for a while. He never seemed to go to this office job of his, but he explained that he was on vacation from it. He seemed to have a lot of high quality stuff for someone who worked as an office clerk, but he said he had gotten a large inheritance from a dead relative (his exact words). And when I asked him where he kept all that stuff when he wasn’t using it (for example, his dozens of guitars), he looked startled for a second, then said “storage”.

But he didn’t say it in a normal way. He said it like this was his first time talking and he wasn’t sure how lips worked.

The Cheez Whiz didn’t really hit the fan, though, until I came home early one day (bomb scare at work… false alarm) to find him surrounded by these bizarre changing shapes making this horrible screeching sounds, like every sound you’ve ever heard sped up to Alvin and the Chipmunks speed.

They all disappeared immediately, but the damage was done. I’d suppressed my unease for a long time, but this was too much. I had to have some answers.

“What the hell was that?” I asked, not unreasonably.

“Uh… just some… friends. ”

“FRIENDS? Those things would give a Dalek the screaming shits^[2]. What the hell were they? For that matter, what the hell are YOU?”

And that’s when the whole story came out. Turns out, the person I knew as “Brian” was actually a sort of… meat puppet, I guess, and the um… entity pulling the strings was a five dimensional being known as Elspkarliweelazunkit.

I decided “Brian” would be fine.

“Brian” was actually a sort of dilettante explorer who had decided he would take the time to learn to make and… puppet, I guess?.. a human body and live in (through?) it for an entire year (local time) in order to get the “full 3D experience”.

That’s what he calls us, by the way. “3Ds”. It’s actually one of his least annoying traits.

The… whatevers I had seen when I walked in on him had actually been his friends. He wasn’t lying about that. That’s what he would look like to me, all amorphous and shifting and screaming, if he didn’t have his meat puppet. He’d been using that “gaming console” of his to talk with them and give them updates on his “3D life”.

Apparently, living a 3D life is a big deal in his social circles. He’s their leader now.

So that’s the story of how I ended up with a five dimensional roommate. And you would think, at this point in the story, that now that everything is out in the open and we know where each other stands, everything would go back to normal, right?

But it’s actually about to get a whole lot worse.

They’re coming for you, buddy.

…who said that?

Who do you think? It’s me, Frankie, your best friend.

But that’s impossible, I mean… you never really… you hardly ever….

Spoke up? Sure I did. I’ve been yakking at you since the day we met. You were just too in love with the idea of taking care of poor, pathetic Frankie to hear me. If it didn’t fit with your idea of “poor Frankie” who was “barely there” and had “simple needs”, you didn’t hear it. By the way, that diner you used to take me too was terrible.

Well, I mean…. the prices were reasonable and you seemed to enjoy it…

The hell I did. But forget it, it’s in the past. What I have to tell you is too important for all that petty bullshit.

So you have something to tell me? What is this about “them coming to get me”? Who are “they”?”

Hoo boy. Make sure you are seated comfortably, old pal, because this is gonna take a while. See, when I disappear or go dead like I’ve been doing lately, it means I am going back to the real world.

The real world? I don’t understand.

I’ll try to make it plain for you, old buddy. You’re not real. You’re a hallucination in my mind. You’re something my mind made up to cover the gaps created when I had my big attack of everything shutting down. When I had that attack, I was dead for line three minutes, and while that was happening, a bunch of poisonous crap ended up in my brain and created these dead parts, like burned out fuses. And until they figured out how to fix those, you were in charge and I was just a passenger.

But that’s impossible. I’m a Radiant. I’ve had dozens of hosts before you and I remember them all. I remember my hosts, the people I helped, the time I spent at Node, being taught the ways of the Within by Authority…

All stuff my brain thought up to keep you going, old pal. I know this is hard as hell to take, but you gotta believe me, buddy. It’s a done deal. It’s always been just you and me in here, and soon, it will just be me.

Why? Where am I going?

Away, old friend. You’re one of those burned out fuses I was talking about. There used to be a lot of you, but they fixed the rest. You were the hardest one to find cause you’re way deep in the brain. But they are coming for you now. Tell me, old pal. How many people are there on Earth?

Um…. around 500, why?

Then we still got some time. You know that Beam thing that keeps happening? That’s the doctors looking for burned fuses. They can use sound to make the brain flush that shit out and then it can make new connections and get healthy. That’s how they got all your Radiant buddies and it’s how they are going to get you too, pal. I wish it could be different.

So… I’m going to die?

In a way, yes. This world of yours has to go, and you with it. But you won’t really be dead, buddy, because I will always remember you. I will keep you alive in my mind, and my heart. You will always be with me, as long as I can ask myself “What would my buddy the Radiant do?” or “what would he say right now?”

That still sounds like death to me. At least, how you humans experience it.

I know, I know. And if I could, I would keep you around forever, buddy. I’ve never been good with the mushy stuff, but I love you, old friend. You’re the best part of me. If I could die instead of you, I would. You’re the kind of person I always wanted to be. Kind, caring, noble, compassionate, understanding, gentle, all that stuff. But life wouldn’t let me. I guess when I had my attack, my mind made up a world where I could be whatever I wanted to be… and that was you.

Then why do I have to… go?

Because it’s the only way I can get healthy, friend. If it wasn’t for that, I would keep you. But the doctors say that with you still deep in my brain, I don’t even have a week to live. You have to go so I can stay alive, buddy. It’s tearing me up inside, but that’s the way it’s gotta be. How many people now?

Around 200, I think.

Aw shit, they’re going faster than I thought. Listen, buddy…. I never did give you a name, did I, fuck… listen buddy, you’re the best thing that ever happened to me, and not in some fag way either. When I finally get out of this bed and go back into the world, I will be a far, far better man for having known you. No more playing stupid, no more doing whatever the fuck someone tells me, no more hiding out in the underbelly of society like I got something to be ashamed of. I am going to go finish learning how to read and then I am gonna get my GED and make something of myself. And I owe it all to you, buddy.

All I ever wanted was what was best for you, Frankie. I can see that now. Everything else… everything else was just a show to keep you entertained. I love you so much that I made a whole world for you just so you wouldn’t be lonely. And I looked after you, didn’t I? Kept you safe, kept you warm, kept you going?

You sure did, buddy. Without you I would have been just another dead piece of shit bum. I’m only here because you were so much smarter than me. I can’t ever thank you enough for that, buddy. You’re the one who really saved my life. You’re the miracle.

Oh shit, I think they’re starting.

Yes, I can hear the hum of the Beam starting up. I love you, Frankie. All I wanted is for you to be healthy. If one of us has to go, I’m glad it was you. My job is done here anyhow. Thanks for everything, Frankie, and I mean that literally. Without you I never would have existed. And now that you don’t need me any more, I’m glad to go.

Oh shit, shit, shit. Listen, I am going to keep as much of you as I can. I’ll remember it all… you, the people we helped, the stuff about Radiants and Node and Authority and everything…. I’ll even write it all down so I don’t forget it. I can make it like a story, so other people can read all about it. I can’t keep you alive here, buddy, but I won’t let you die.

There’s no need, Frankie. I am at peace with what’s to come. I can hear the Beam getting stronger. Its song is… beautiful, in its own way. I never thought I could die, Frankie, but if I have to do, I am glad it’s for you.

Oh fuck shit son of a bitch… I wish it didn’t have to be like this, buddy…. I wish you didn’t have to go…

If I stayed, we’d both die, Frankie. At least this way, I know one of us will live. And I am at peace knowing that the world I saw die was an illusion all along. I did my job right after all. Knowing that, I can die in peace.

Oh shit…. fuck that, turn it off! leave him alone, you motherfuckers!

We both know it can’t be that way, Frankie. This is our final farewell. I love you, Frankie, but it’s time for me to go.

Fuck. Yeah, okay. Goodbye, old friend.

I can hear the Beam very clearly now. It’s wonderful, like a billion voices singing in perfect harmony. A harmony so vast it contains the entire universe. All the screaming voices are silent and I feel more at peace than every before. I am ready to go. I have one last thing to tell you, Frankie.

Yeah, buddy: What is it?

You’re a good man, Frankie. You always have been, and you always will be. Life hasn’t been very kind to you, and you’ve picked up a few fleas from the animals you laid down with, but you are a very good man, Frankie. And you have nothing to be ashamed of.

God, buddy, that’s the nicest thing anyone has ever said about me…

Time to return to the Within. Farewell, my one and only friend. Live well. Live for both of us.

Goodbye, old friend… I will alwa-

Somewhere, in a small suburban hospital, Frankie woke up feeling better than he had ever felt in his entire life.

The nurses and doctors were happy. The operation had been a total success. The patient would be a medical miracle once again. Already, the press were milling around outside the surgery, waiting for their big story, clamoring to be let in.

The nurses prudently decided that it would probably be better if they let Frankie finish crying first.

I’m very worried about Frankie. He is behaving so oddly and such strange things are happening that I don’t know where to begin.

I guess we’ll start with Frankie. He does such odd things now. Sometimes he will stop talking in the middle of a sentence and just stare off into space for a long time. Sometimes he will suddenly go completely limp and the only way I can tell he is still alive is by the electrical field his nervous system creates.

And sometimes he disappears entirely, and I am truly alone.

Luckily, as the lone Radiant assigned to Earth, I am quite used to being all alone.

It never stops hurting but you get used to the pain. Radiants are not solitary by nature and so being assigned to this cursed planet would not have been easy for any Radiant.

Nevertheless, before I had Frankie, I used to at least have Authority to talk to. Now even they have abandoned me, and I can’t figure out why. I’ve been a model Radiant. Assiduous in my duties, dedicated in my reporting on the human condition, kind and thoughtful and always willing to give of myself for the greater good.

And yet when I try to contact Authority and get nothing but a wall of grey static, I feel this stab of guilt. Curious.

At least I have finally solved the mystery of where the Voids went after I lost track of them. I was a fool to think that their plan was to spread like a zombie plague. It’s clear to me now that their plan to devour and become larger until they could devour the Earth like mice eating their way out of a block of cheese.

And that’s what they’ve been doing. And they are very thorough. Many times a day now, I find myself suddenly reminded of a place or a person on Earth and the memory burns bright in my mind, then disappears forever, leaving me convinced that I just lost something but unable to wonder what.

And suddenly, the Earth seems…. smaller. The entire surface of the Earth is only around 300 square miles, mostly land, and to most of me, that seems fine and normal and how it’s always been.

But part of me knows that it is wrong, wrong, wrong. If the Earth was that small, it wouldn’t have enough gravity to hold its atmosphere. And this Earth doesn’t have nearly enough water to sustain its ecosystem. And where do all the fish come from?

And yet I can’t remembering it ever being different. It has to have been, and yet…. it wasn’t. It doesn’t make any sense.

Maybe that’s what the Beam’s true mission is. It only seemed like it was looking for me because of my overinflated sense of importance. It came to the destroy everything and I just happened to be in the way.

And yet here I am. What crime could I have possibly committed to deserve this fate? To watch as all of Earth dies? What crueler punishment could there possibly be for a truly faithful and dedicated lover of the Within than to watch an entire planet’s population destroyed in the most callous and cruel way possible?

There’s fewer people than there was before. There’s exactly the same number of people that there’s always been. Both of these things are equally true to me, and yet they should be mutually exclusive.

They make no sense. Nothing does any more. Either the world has gone insane or I have, and I know which I would prefer.

At least I still have my work. If it weren’t for my human charges, I think I would have truly gone insane by now. After doing my work by rote for so long, it feels good to feel and care and nurture once again. I treasure my humans more than ever before.

And this remains true even in light of my feeling that they are all doomed. Somehow, the limited time they have left makes me care about them all the more. It’s as though the entire Earth is a hospice ward now, and it is my job to make sure these frail and beautiful creatures known as human beings return to the Light Within Us All as gently and smoothly as possible.

I think they somehow sense their doom, because they have become very quiet. There is a hush to their city streets now, and a quietness and soothing peace of mind throughout their rural areas. And throughout it all, there is a sense of perfect resignation, as if they have all fully and truly accepted their fate and are just interested in spending time with the ones they love and care for, and being as happy as they can be while they are still around.

I find this truth very moving, and sometimes I have to pause in my duties because the tragic beauty of it all overwhelms me and it takes some time for me to regain my coherence.

Today I renewed my vow to the Within that I will care for these humans to the utmost of my ability and that no effort is too great and no sacrifice too large to ease their pains, release their joys, and encourage them to be healthy, peaceful, and whole.

I don’t care if Authority is gone. My vow was never to them anyhow. I might have seemed like I was working for them, but to me, they were merely a tool to use towards serving my true master : The Within.

The Radiance Within all living creatures still shines warm and bright, and as always, my purpose is to encourage understanding of its universal love and compassion so that we may all bask in its glow.

As long as I remain true to that, no disaster, however profound, can harm me. The Within will protect me with its pure and giving light. I will always…

They’re coming for you, buddy.

…who said THAT?

You know what it’s like to be a miracle? It stinks.

So’s I goes into the hospital knowing that when I leave, it’ll be on a slab. Suits me fine. There’s nobody to miss me and nobody I’ll miss. Fuck this stinking world anyway. The only people I ever called friends were nothing but drinking buddies, and I only see my mother on her birthday when I go piss on her grave in memory of what an unrelenting cunt she was to me from the day I was born till the day I left that bitch behind for good when I was fifteen years old.

Plus, I like checking in to see if she’s still dead.

So I was ready to check out. Accounts all settled. Paid all my debt. Gave away some knicky knacky stuff I never really gave a shit about anyway. Left a few bags of cash in some odd places for some lucky person to find. Hell knows I don’t know anybody who actually deserves it. So I gave it to the world instead.

I packed my bags and was ready to go to whatever’s next. Hopefully, nothing at all.

Let’s just say that I never once thought I was going to Heaven, and that only leaves one other option, right?

So there I am in the hospital, ready to check out. Pain’s real bad but the drugs here are good. A nice, clean high. Whatever they gave me, I could make a mint selling it on the streets.

Then The Big One hits. Everything in me fucking up at once. Hallelujah, I think. This clusterfuck is finally coming to an end.

And for a long while, everything is quiet, dark, and calm. It’s so peaceful and soothing. It was like being asleep and awake at the same time. Nothing bothered me, nobody was trying to make me do stupid shit, there was no noise, no smell, no ugliness, people being shitty to each other. I wasn’t even breathing and I didn’t care. I could have stayed there forever.

I don’t know. Guess I would have gotten bored eventually. But it was nice while it lasted.

But eventually, light starts coming in from somewhere, and then comes the sunrise. That’s the only way I can think of to describe it. The light grew brighter, I felt stronger, the feeling of growth and power grew in me, and the calm of the nothingness went away and the joy of being alive took its place.

I thought, if this is what all that religion was about, maybe I was wrong about that Jesus stuff.

Naw, fuck him. Where was Jesus when my mom was beating me? Where was He when she would shove her hand down my pants and grabbed my little wiener so she could laugh at my little “shrinky dink”? Where we He when she would lend me out to all her pervert junkie friends like I was VCR?

“Just bring him back in one piece. ” she’d say. “I need him to buy smokes for me. ” And she’d laugh.

Fuck you, Jesus. Too little and way, way too late, you useless hunk of shit.

Anyway, I come out of the coma and I see all these fancy doctor types looking at me like I was a pony they all bet their life savings on and it’s a 20 to one shot. When they see I’m awake, they all start smiling and some asshole from the papers takes my picture and all kinds of hubbub.

And at first I’m enjoying it. Who doesn’t like being the center of attention now and then? The first thing I says when I wakes up “Geez, is it my birthday already? How long was I asleep?”

And everybody laughed, me included, and for a while there it was real nice. Lots of important type people wanted to talk to me, big time celebrity news types interviewed me, doctors from places I’d never even heard of were going on and on about how me coming back from the dead was medically impossible given all my organ and tissue damage and blah blah blah. I didn’t understand most of what they said to me, but I sure liked the attention and how nice everyone was being to me.

So this is what being a celebrity is like, I thought. It ain’t half bad.

But then most of them went away when me being alive stopped being news, and that’s when I learned the first harsh rule of being a modern medical miracle : it doesn’t pay.

Not one red fucking cent. People sold newspapers, TV shows got ratings, lots of doctor types got published, hell even the nurse I thought was my best friend in the world sold me out and moved to Florida.

But me? I didn’t get one dime. None of those parasite bastards even thought to pay my hospital bill. It only took around a week for me to go from top of the news to bottom of the “ward of the state” shit list.

Keeping me alive was expensive, and they never let me fucking forget it.

And that’s when the washouts started. I’d be going along, watching TV or shooting the shit with the orderlies or jerking off or whatever, and then it would be like a rainbow tide from deep inside my head would suddenly swell up and the next thing I would know, it would be hours later and nobody wanted to look me in the eye, let alone tell me what the fuck happened.

Soon I figured out that I was losing more time every time I washed out, and it became harder and harder to think straight or stay focused. I couldn’t even watch TV because I would forget what was going on every time there was a commercials.

I got so tired and confused that eventually, I said fuck it, and the next time the tide rushed in, I just let it take me away. Didn’t put up no fight at all. I figured, wherever it’s been trying to take me, it has to be better than this.

Next thing I know, I’m watching some weird kind of science fiction show about a guy made out of energy who helps people.

Seemed like a decent enough show to me. Decided I’d watch it for a while.

It wasn’t until years later that I figured out where the show was coming from.

It wasn’t much fun to watch after that.