Fifteen-Year-Old Angst Crap

So, this is hilarious; going through the back catalogue of stuff I emailed to myself before moving I came across the folder of Crap I Wrote When Fifteen. Since my sister is demanding things to read right now to get through some boring work training I thought I'd put it up. WARNING: fifteen-year-old angst ahoy. And bad writing. It's all part of the charm, though, eh?

They call for all of us but me.

Not always, you realise. Humanity's greatest blessing is that which it possessed abundantly as a crawling beast; the ability to narrow its mind, and close its eyes, and achieve if not happiness then... contentment. Then, there were fewer of us, only three, and none called for us. We were dreaded, hated, loathed. We were fear and horror, primal and barely-understood conceptual. Evolution came with its price, however. Sentience brought Understanding, its sibling. Understanding transformed us.

I don't aim to mislead; we are still horror. We are still dread.

But Sentience and Understanding run deep, and convoluted and many-layered complex. When beasts, we were things to run from, however futile the flight unknowingly was. Humanity sees us... differently. Humanity sees us... in categories. The one to flee. The one to fight. The one to avoid. And the one it cannot.

I don't aim to mislead; I am not the fourth.

Indeed, the fourth is the most accepted. The only defensible action for creatures who have no other choice, perhaps. Not that all call for him. Humanity still has its blinkers, still wears its yoke. There are many, so many, who curse and revile his name, and scream and fight his coming with tooth and nail and words and tears, and end in despair. But there are those who welcome him in, who see their final moves upon the board, who are weary of the game, who never wanted to play. They are grateful for him. They smile softly, and say goodbye, and slip away upon the edge of the blade to the next game that awaits them.

I don't aim to mislead; it is not easy to accept him.

He is revulsion. He is dissentient juxtaposition. He is inherent conflict. He is Wrong to humanity. But he is also inevitable. Nothing lives forever.

He sees everyone eventually. No achievement, no status, no possession can hold him off. He sees the young, and the old; the rich, and the poor; the men, the women, the white, the black, the kings and the beggars, the good and the bad. He is hated by all, and ultimately accepted by all. He sees them all. He accepts them all.

He is lucky.

I don't aim to mislead; his luck is not his acceptance.

We are all horror. We are all dread. The third came to us with Sentience and Understanding, grew from Squabbles into one of us, into the fully-fledged destroyer and avenger he now is. He laughs and shrieks and burns as he moves, carving his paths across the world in his lustful frenzy of blood, addicted to the screaming. His wake is rock and ash and bone, broken minds and broken lives and broken survivors. Where he dances his frenetic beat, the fourth walks behind him, serenity after the madness, the price for hosting the third. The third is decried. He is deplored. He is deprecated. He is never without victims. He is never without sacrifice.

But I don't aim to mislead; there are still those who call for him.

With Sentience and Understanding came Pain. Wounds of the mind, of the soul, of the ego; wrongs that needed, demanded, avenging. There are those who accept his price in the names of Greater Things, in the names of That Which Must Be Done. There are those who see a farm as dearer, as superior, as more important than those who must be sacrificed for them to keep it. There are those who see the path to riches as being a worthy goal to invoke his name. These are the people he sees. And these are not good men. These are the depraved, the lustful, the selfish and the arrogant. These are what the third sees reflected back at him every time he hears his name. The good he only sees as he rides above them, crushing them beneath his dancing feet or - sometimes - he sees fleeting glimpses of the good, before his very presense corrupts them, corroding them like rust and leaving only parodies in their places.

But I don't aim to mislead. Those who call him only truly do so out of fear of the fourth.

Those who fear the fourth call the third to make the game better now. Those who don't call the third to make the game better next. But still; the third is more fortunate than us.

The second is to be fought.

And oh, he is.

And humanity fights well when it can. So much so that he is nearly part of their game, locked into his own ever-changing, ever-decreasing pattern, ever aware of his slowly-approaching nadir. His feet dance intricate steps, his clever fingers reaching for the next moves, the next tricks to attempt, the next turn to take. They mirror every step, pre-empt his plans, throw up barriers and shields and barricades, hone new weapons and adapt with him. He has long been retreating, defending, seeking new ground and finding none. He has only one weapon remaining in his arsenal, only one play left to hold out against them: mutation. His time is limited to its effectiveness.

But I don't aim to mislead; it is effective.

Where he takes his victories he does so with the full authority of his power, unyieldingly and irrevocably, claiming devastation in his name. He spreads his influence through humanity itself, through its interactivity and functions and in ways it cannot prevent. His strikes are random, inexplicable; he targets those seen by the fourth, the young and old and rich and poor and men and women and black and white and kings and beggars, indiscriminate. He also sees them all, sooner or later, but not for long. And there are those who call for the fourth. They may well do so because of the second.

But I don't mean to mislead; there have been those who have called for the second.

The blandly, blindly innocent. The children who wish for there to be no school today. The workers who long for a break. They call on a force they don't understand, and once, once upon a time, his price would have been terrible. But no longer. Not usually.

Sometimes he is called by the ambitious. These are not good men. These are the ones who dream of power of their own, lesser and far more insignificant than our own and yet seemingly irresistable. These are the ones who seek to gain influence through the misfortune of others. These are the ones whose sense of entitlement obscures their sense of right and wrong. And these comprise the people who call his name: the stupid and the vindictive. He sees the good only while destroying, and serves the petty.

And I have misled. I say no one calls for me.

But this is a lie.

I remember all who have called my name. I remember their minds, filled with blood and foam and vicious, malevolent amusement as they giggle and sing for the agonies I bring. They are the ones who see the game for what it is, see humanity as a sea of pawns, see the world as built for their own hideous entertainment. They are kings. They see their numbers as a measurement of their power. They see the presense of the fourth as a measurement of their influence. They wish to see their people shrivel, and scream, and weep, and hollow. They wish to see the skin stretch over bones, the eyes bulge in deepened sockets, the failing strength leech from the staggering frames.

These are the only people who call for me.

I say the luck of the fourth is not because he is accepted. I say he is lucky because of whom he sees. I say he is lucky because of who calls him. I say he is lucky because sometimes, sometimes, he is called by the good, the innocent, those who ask for him for themselves. Sometimes, the third is called by those who at least have their convictions. Sometimes the second is called by the innocently stupid.

I am only ever called by the evil, the psychotic, the Wrong.

No one else would call for starvation.