Passive Dream Recording | The Box

[notachickenhawk]

Sender: Tobias
To: Everyone
Subject: Passive dream recording
Warnings: Torture, PTSD, hunting


You fly on auburn wings high above the field, looking down at it. It's far below you, and yet you can clearly see the rats scurrying in the grasses, the rabbits hopping into their burrows as your shadow passes, and you know you could swoop down and kill them in an instant. All of them, if you really wanted - the mother and her babies. You can almost taste the meat and blood and fur - but no. You're not hungry right now, and better to let them grow so you can hunt them later.

You turn, wheeling up towards the sky. There's a forest nearby, and you have a destination. You tilt your wings downwards until -

Wham! You slam into what feels like a glass window. Shrieking, you try to go around it, to find where the edge is and - and you hear a teenage girl's voice.

"You are obviously not a leader. You are not even second-in-command. You are a nobody." The voice makes you panic more than the words, and you kick off of the 'glass' to try to dive towards the field and -

Wham! There's another 'wall' - floor? - beneath you. You push off again and panic, trying to find the exit -

Wham! Wham! Wham! Wham! Four more walls, making a cube. You're trapped. You're trapped and you know it's closing in and you can hear the girl laughing. It's a dark chuckle, and you know what that means. You're in the box again. You're in the box again and you know what that means, you know that she could pull you back to reality once again and cause you pain and you're panicking. You flutter around the box, trying to find something, some exit - but you know it's useless.

"Demorph!"

<No!> You shout it wordlessly, struggling against the inevitable. You reach up a wing in front of your face and see - a hand? But it's also a wing? It doesn't make sense, and you hear a gruff man's voice - older, raspy, cold.

"What good is it?"

What good is it anyway? You're going to die here, you're going to die and no one is going to help you and all you can see is your wing/hand and the blue sky and you tense your body, ready for the pain and -

Blackness.

Comments

[notachickenhawk]

What do you think? Shutting down completely. Permanently.

[He doesn't want to think about dying, but he's had to. A lot.]

[your_best_friend]

Golly, that's dark, isn't it? I couldn't ever imagine myself ever laying down and stopping anymore. I'm too determined to let that happen to me.

I'm still going after the things that I want, even if they seem impossible to grasp.

[notachickenhawk]

Good for you.

It's not like I don't want to do things. That was a last resort. Better to go out than let everyone get hurt, though.

[your_best_friend]

And what if people get hurt BECAUSE you gave up?

[notachickenhawk]

Then I wouldn't. Obviously.

[your_best_friend]

Well, you never know~.

[Flowey draws a =P face to go along with the message.]

[notachickenhawk]

Hence the 'last resort' bit.

Why do you care, anyway?

[your_best_friend]

I can't afford not to. Not while I'm unable to feel emotions or compassion or empathy. I'm just after making my own form of them. And I'll never give myself a last resort. That would be too easy.

[notachickenhawk]

So you're a sociopath then? I know some people at home who are the same way.

[your_best_friend]

I wasn't always. And there was a large period of time where I just didn't care and let myself do whatever to stop myself from getting bored. But around a year ago, I had a little change in perspective. I know what I did was wrong, but I don't need to self-exile myself away from everyone else.

[notachickenhawk]

Oh. Well. Better than them. They don't care who gets hurt, as long as they win.

[your_best_friend]

If you got any tips for little old me, I'm all ears.

[notachickenhawk]

[Wait he's confused now -]

Tips for what? Emotions?

[your_best_friend]

Tips for creating my own form of emotions and compassion, yes.

[notachickenhawk]

I mean... focusing on how you feel after someone is nice to you. Like actually trying to find the emotion - or your own form of it. How does it feel? Maybe write it down and look at it when you're trying to remember what it feels like.