A Morning Stroll

You wake up at 5 AM on a brisk autumn morning. You’ve never woken up this early without an alarm, but for some reason you’re wide awake now. It’s a strange sensation. You get out of bed and have a look around, making sure nothing is wrong in your house. You figure something had to have happened to wake you, but ultimately you find nothing out of the ordinary. You shrug the whole thing off and decide to go for a walk.

Once you step outside you realize you forgot to put on shoes. You decide to continue without them. The air is a bit nippy, but you don’t mind. You’ve always liked cold weather. Or have you? You can’t really remember… Maybe you never really formed an opinion about what sort of temperature you prefer. Either way, you don’t mind being out on this particular autumn morning.

As you walk down the dirt path near your house that leads to the park you used to visit every other day as a child, it occurs to you that you no longer live in your childhood home, which means the park you used to visit every other day as a child must have moved closer to your current residence so you could access it more easily.

As you take a moment to appreciate the park’s considerate nature, you’re startled by a figure flying past you on a red bicycle. You then see that the cyclist is in fact a young boy with a cantaloupe for a head. You hate cantaloupes, and for that reason and that reason alone, you decide to follow him. He turns onto a trail that leads away from the park.

The boy with a cantaloupe for a head notices you and slows down, seemingly accepting the fact that you are essentially stalking him. As he has no mouth, he cannot tell you where he is going, but you trust that it is somewhere interesting. You fantasize about smashing his head with a large hammer.

Cantaloupe boy leads you to a small, secluded house hidden behind a dense grove of walnut trees. He explains to you, via a form of sign language only you can understand, that he is not allowed to enter the house. He bids you farewell and rides off. You hope that you will get to see him again someday, if only so you can dismantle his head and feed it to ravenous pigs.

You approach the house. It is a sort of neocolonial bungalow, painted a pale green, either sea foam or mint. The front door is mahogany, and very shiny. You give it a knock.

There is no answer.

You give it another knock.

Again, there is no answer.

You turn the knob; the door is unlocked. You let yourself inside. The house appears to be abandoned. The lights are all off and every room is empty. You consider leaving but then you hear music coming from one of the rooms, what appears to be the faint sound of a vibraphone. You’re not sure you’ve ever heard a vibraphone before, but you are certain this is what they sound like.

You walk down a narrow hallway, your bare feet nearly disappearing amid the threads of the thick shag carpet. You follow the delicate sounds as they become louder and louder. Then — they suddenly stop. You couldn’t ascertain the source of the music, but you now see a dim fluorescent light emanating from the room at the end of the hall. You decide to enter the lit room.

Inside, a single lightbulb hangs from the ceiling above a wooden desk. Sitting on the desk is an original model Apple Macintosh. Behind the desk is a leather rolling chair. You take a seat on the chair and inspect the computer. A word processor is open, displaying some kind of story. You begin reading.

You immediately regret your decision when you realize the story is written entirely in the second person. The pretentiousness makes you cringe, but you figure you have nothing better to do so you keep reading anyway. Then you get to a point in which the story becomes self-referential, and you instinctively roll your eyes. You lose any respect you may have had for whoever wrote this drivel. But you’re close to the end, so you decide to finish reading.

But there is no ending.

Instead, the story continues on forever, and as you scroll further and further down, you notice reality is beginning to change around you. The room is no longer a room, but rather a single atom as well as the entire universe. You yourself begin to change as well; your genetic makeup is rearranged and you become a small lizard.

With your new lizard body, you traverse this dark world. You scuttle along, almost excited by how tiny and nimble you’ve become. You enter a small cave. You immediately notice the stalactites and stalagmites are arranged in perfect symmetry. Then you start to feel the ground become oddly moist and spongy. Then you realize you haven’t entered a cave at all; you’ve entered something’s mouth.

Before you have a chance to escape, the mouth shuts, and you are sent down this thing’s esophagus. You brace yourself for certain death. But you’re in luck, because rather than a stomach full of digestive fluids and enzymes, you are led to a small amphitheater. You take a seat in one of the frontmost rows.

After a few minutes, a very shiny black ball rolls out onto the stage. It then begins emanating a sort of vibratory energy which your little lizard brain is able to interpret as the following:

Welcome, you blasphemous rock-demons. Though you may not realize it now, you are about to become privy to some really cool information. And it’s all super secret so make sure to keep it quiet or I’ll fucking kill you with an energy beam or some shit.

So here it is: Basically, the world you live in is a lie. It doesn’t really exist, it’s just an illusion created by four out of the five demigods that run shit around here. And by ‘around here’ I mean the universe. They made what you might call the ‘material world’ basically by accident, and they were really proud of it, so they decided to put some people in there to enjoy it with. But little did they know they were actually keeping those people from experiencing the fullness of existence due to their own hubris. I mean, it’s way more complicated than that, but this is like the cliffnotes version.

Who are these demigods? Well I thought you’d never ask. Essentially, there are four creators: They’re known as The Architect, The Artisan, The Alchemist, and The Apothecary. The Architect designs things, like I don’t know, the universe for example; The Artisan creates things, like people or flowers or rocks; The Alchemist transforms things into other things; and The Apothecary imbues things with unique properties. And there’s also another god-thing, called the Arbiter, who can’t really create anything, so instead it goes around passing judgement and fucking with people. Got it? Good.

Now all these demigods are basically assholes, who are fucking up existence for you. The real god isn’t even a god, it’s The Word. And The Word doesn’t even exist in this universe, so you’re all more or less shit out of luck. Unless you die, in which case you have a chance of finding The Word. But even then, it’s a small chance. And um, I’d tell you The Word’s name but…I can’t really remember it right now. Sorry about that.

So yeah, now you all know some cool shit. There’s obviously more to it, but I don’t have all day.

Then the black ball cracks open, and out pour a billion centipedes, which proceed to devour everyone in the audience, including you.

As you feel the centipedes eating you, you think about how you probably should have gone to the park instead of following that weird boy with a cantaloupe for a head. But that already feels like a lifetime ago. You are surrounded by a bright light, and everything becomes clear; you understand more than you ever have.

You wake up. It’s 5AM and you can’t remember anything. You’ve never woken up this early on accident. You look outside and notice a bit of frost has built up around your bedroom window.

You decide to go back to sleep.