196

You're alone, just as you wanted, just as you like, and you'll stay alone as you please. The absence of human presence surrounds you, almost crushing you as you stand there, waiting for nothing. The only sound is the sound of your own beating heart and the ever so slight creaks of the wood as you shift on it. You're alone. The thought resonates with the pressure of the emptiness around you. It bears down on you, crushing and squeezing you in a hug that tells you it'll never let you go. You're alone. It gnaws on you in a comfortable sort of way, the silence and loneliness. The room is as empty as your life and with a smile you embrace it all, feed yourself to the it that gnaws and comforts and crushes and hugs. You'll stay alone, and the moment the thought drifts past your head a wave passes over you, a sensation in every joint and limb. It's as though your body emptied itself, as though for the first time you're feeling the warmth of yourself, because you know you'll never feel the warmth of anything else ever again.

You're alone. Just as you wanted. Always.

You split a wicked grin as you pick up a hammer and go to town. Everything breaks under your unlimited rage and glee; the bookshelf falls apart and the books go flying, the table cracks and splits in two, the pots all shatter, the pumpkin explodes and sheds pumpkin goo everywhere. Nothing is safe from you. Nothing, except the anvil in the corner. No matter how hard you strike it, your hammer does nothing to it but ring out and send painful vibrations up your arm. It's frustrating, infuriating that something could survive and withstand your rampage. The anvil sits there, unbroken and mocking, until it's all you can think about.

The first place you would check is the fridge; the problem is, there doesn't seem to be a fridge here. There's a spot that seems like it would clearly house a fridge, but it's not there. You could have sworn you saw it out of the corner of your eye before you turned towards it, but there's no real point thinking about it now. Unless you count books or strange flowers as edible calories, your search turns up empty. Whoever was here before left no food.

The only place you hadn't checked is the attic, but as you stare at the ladders ascending upwards, you get a most ominous sensation; chills creeping up your spine...

There doesn't seem to be a fireplace anywhere in view, nor a source of water. You could burn the books in the middle of the floor, but you have a sneaking suspicion that'll cause the whole cabin to catch fire. Even then, where would you get water from? To that end, what about tea leaves?

A sense of sadness flows through you. You really wanted some tea.

The covers on the books are all strange and esoteric. Such titles as "The essence of the Rain" and "A treatise on the ergonomics of feathered fountain pens against modern ball point pens." One is simply titled "First", which, oddly enough, is the last book on the shelves.

You pick one at random: its title reads "Odd happenings of collective hallucinations: reported appearances of the gongachu." It initially goes over what the gongachu is; some kind of folk lore creature, incredibly dangerous and hostile. Following the initial description, it compiles a list of reported sightings, before correlating the sightings to occasions of mass hallucinations caused by local volcanic springs. The author does not believe in the existence of the gongachu, that much is clear from the tone. Still, the number of sightings is massive. If there is a gongachu, surely one would have been killed or captured by now, no? In one case, a third party entered a town that was living in terror of the gongachu lurking its streets at night, but the traveler spent the night in the middle of town and was still there in the morning. The author concludes the report by firmly stating his disbelief in the gongachu, chalking it up to mass hysteria and cultural delusions.

A few hours have passed by the time you've finished reading. Dusk settles outside, the orange light of the dying sun bleeding in through the windows and casting the room in long shadows. There's still plenty of books on the shelf, but it's getting late, and for some reason you get the feeling something is watching you.

When you try the door, you find that it's locked tight. Looking outside through the window, you do in fact spot some suitable nodes to hit, if only you could get to them. Your forge does require ore and minerals; your stocks are getting low. Unfortunately with no way outside and no rocks to hit inside, you're left stranded.