Well, I have been playing far more
Cloudbuilt than could possibly be healthy.
Bad news: I'm pretty sure I nearly gave myself RSI.
Good news (maybe): It gave me a new one-shot idea!
***
A Personal Inferno
I can’t make sense of any of this. I remember hearing upon waking up to this room that I was undergoing “epidermal replacement” and that I would be “woken up soon”. I don’t understand.
The room itself is Spartan, containing only a laptop on a desk, a window showing only clouds and a… a hospital bed, containing a small, solitary figure. A little girl with awful burns covering her entire right side, her head nearly bald but for a few strands of long, dark hair that cling to her scalp.
This room is where I return after my excursions… I’d say every day, but I have no idea of the passage of time in this place. It’s where I come to rest, to think and to try to understand. It’s what’s outside the room that I have yet to grasp.
Every time I leave, I enter a world on fire. I don’t know why, but I see images of things I can hazily remember… a stuffed bear… a toy car… a black cat… all burning. Sometimes they scream, too. I can’t always make sense of what they say, but it sounds like they want me to run. Or find somewhere safe. Or they just scream a name. I think it’s my name, but I can’t be sure. It’s all so muddled right now.
There are several routes that I can take when I leave. All of them are burning, but they are all distinct. One has blue flames, ones that I know to be hotter than any other, but they are sparser than in the other places, manageable. One has flames that burst through a wooden floor, unpredictable, yet oddly familiar. One is almost wholly composed of flames, ones that are admittedly cooler than in any other path, but the constant burn is almost too much to bear. The last… I can never see the flames, except for a few flickers in the smoke that chokes the way forward.
Despite the horrors and the pain that I endure in each of them, whenever I make my way through a part of it, I can feel like I’m making progress. The previous part hurts less each time and I navigate my way through the flames with greater skill the more I try. The pain always becomes too much for me – even in the smoke, I feel pain, the clouds stinging my eyes and scorching my throat when I breathe – so I return to the room before I can reach the end, but I can feel myself getting stronger.
More than that, though, I wonder if this world is more than just a hell for me to exist in. I wonder if, perhaps, there is a message in all of this. From what I heard at the start, I could be imagining it all. Maybe this is my literal trial-by-fire, so to speak, my personal inferno. Perhaps the sparser, blue flames indicate a resolve to overcome whatever obstacles block my path, taking them on one at a time. Perhaps the desolate smoke is a manifestation of my hopelessness, my desire to stay in the room or take the easiest way out. I can’t say for certain, but my outlook seems to be changing as I keep going.
Tomorrow, I’m taking the path of blue flames. I think I’m nearing the end of it. I’m certainly getting more restless as I progress, perhaps getting closer to being “woken up”. Maybe that’s my way out. I just hope that I can take that little girl with me. She seems so alone here. She’s never awake, though. Maybe she’ll never wake up.
There’s one last detail I recall that stands out. Every so often, I see not things, but people, a man with cropped hair and dressed smartly and a woman with hair like the little girl’s. I don’t know who they are, but I cry when I see them. They don’t seem to do much, just look at me, sometimes with this sad smile, sometimes crying themselves, sometimes with no expression at all, but still an air of melancholy. I wish they’d stop looking so sad.
I wish I could ask them why.
I shouldn’t delay my excursion any longer. There’s no reason for me to stay here and I hope that I may reach the end today.
I have no excuse for taking the easy way out.
