Fierce 4. A Reason to Live
Fourth installment of the Fierce running story. Stay posted every Monday for a new episode! This one delves into Markus as a character.
A Reason to Live I was alone. I was so far from any other living being. I was all alone. It was then, all alone in the woods that I started to think philosophically. The only way to access the outside world is through senses. The only way for anyone to receive any information is through the five senses. If you cut those off, what happens? You're totally alone. You have no access, you have no outside world, you are alone. You'd be engulfed in total nothingness. In a sense, we are all alone in our own heads. If the senses are the only window into the world, how can we trust them? How can we trust in the notion that our world is real? Maybe everything is just a dream. Maybe we are all alone and there is nothing we can do about it. That's the kind of alone I feel. I feel all alone with my thoughts. My friends could be figments of my imagination, my enemies could be hallucinations. The Earth could be a dream in someone else's head. I will never know the truth about this subject, but I will never need to, because I am alone on this earth, whether it exists or not. I pondered these questions over and again in my head as I consciously paced back home. My furry body carried me home. I was especially glad for the strength of my body to carry me home, because God knows my spirit was not capable of exerting any more effort for a long time afterwards. My hand twisted the front doorknob, I entered. My house was still a wreck. I was still living alone, I was still attending high school, and I was still going nowhere. Somewhere along the line, I really stopped trying. That's not to say I haven't been succeeding, I've just stopped caring. I collapsed into the comfortable floor, rendered unconscious. I did not dream.
******? I opened my eyes to the old world. There was no escaping it, I was simply tired of my life. A sinking feeling started up in my chest, which shouldn't be possible since it has already sunk to rock bottom. I expected resistance from my body when I rose to my feet, but no. I pushed violently on my thighs to stand. My one right thigh propelled the rest of me into the ceiling. "Huh, the attic's dirty too." I tried to brighten my own day with humor. Sometimes it works. So I pushed my hands, or my paws against the ceiling and popped my head out. "Ooff..." my bones vibrated and ached shortly. I was not alarmed for my health however, because I've noticed my body's performance peaked at my anthropomorphic fox-human form. My ligaments and tendons quickly knit themselves back in one piece, and I rose to my feet. Sighh... This is possibly the most fun thing I could possibly think of. I could try anything that I can conceive of, as long as I did not die instantly, and I would heal within a matter of minutes. I should be having the time of my life. But I was most certainly not. I was asking the most crucial questions that could not be ignored, no matter how attractive power or love or anything may be. I
had to put everything else off, I had no choice. It was my livelihood! "Well, I can't go see any friends or anything, I may as well just go back." I felt neither heat nor cold in this ultimate form, no need for clothes. But I kept my shorts on just so I would be comfortable with myself. It was time to face the outside world again.
****** I briskly cleared the concrete fence and landed more silently than a real fox. ?Definitely disliking this emotional slump, I decided it would be best to look for myself as soon as possible. I remember that I had not really fallen asleep, rather I had been taken by some force inside me. It worked like anesthetic in its rapidity, as I cannot maintain consciousness when it initiates. "Come on! Where are you?" I turned amidst the flowing trees and searched the open skies for it. I could search everywhere but inside myself. Similarly to how I could help anyone and everyone but myself... I guess now I'm paying the price. "Come on!" Fox simply was not responding. I relaxed my legs and sat on a tree stump. "I'm never going to get over this..." I veiled my face with my hands, and began to cry into them. The sky might as well have been thunderous. The grass might as well have been dirt, the river mud, and the flowers bristles. The forest could just as well be Hell, and I wouldn't give a damn. I would still feel the same on the inside. It plainly didn't matter. I waited, silently with my face enveloped by my palms, my eyes shut tight. I let myself drift for as long as possible, until... it finally came. Fox heard my call. As if I'd been slammed in the back of the head, I lost my final grip on reality. I was not trapped in an endless black purgatory similar to last time, instead I could not quite define this area in words. Somehow, old experiences of mine were translated on the walls of this room. This was the kind of place that could only exist in a subconscious, anywhere else and it would collapse under the pressure of reality. I knew this experience was a fake, that I was really lying somewhere, drooling on a grass bed, but I could not wake up as in a lucid dream, either. I remained among this new plane of mind, searching for the defining part of me. I was searching for the fox. I was far less confident here, partly because the inside of me was the most unfamiliar land I have ever visited, but mostly because every part of me that forms my confidence and my feral side was reconfiguring in some other location in my emotional purgatory. A little calmer than the last time, I decided to simply choose one direction and start walking. Perhaps I could circle my subconscious enough to arrive in the right place. "Hello?" no answer. I kept pacing around my little world, a little faster than before. "Anyone? Fox?" Didn't know its name, but it didn't have one anyway. It was a longer wait than before, at least in my experience, likely because this meeting was not quite as urgent as the
last. As I marched around my subconscious, I came across many memories I had forgotten I kept in my mind. My mind relayed memories to me not as if I were watching a screen, but I experienced them as though I were simultaneously reliving them and walking around in my subconscious. I would rather not divulge these memories, however. They were extremely personal. I was staggering about my mind when a figure protruded my thoughts in both realms. The face of a fox was directly in front of my face, and I was now sitting on the ground with my legs splayed forward, as if I had fallen down. The chilly emptiness took me, similarly to last time. I knew why I was here this occasion, I wasted no time. "Why am I so unhappy?" I had forgotten how shocking his voice was, like a cypress in the desert. "We've had this conversation before." I cowered ever so slightly in his wake. I was abruptly on my feet and he was pacing in a circle around me. "I want to know what to do to make me happy." The words flowed surprisingly smoothly for how intimidated I was by the apparent part of me. Old memories began falling away from the four new walls surrounding us, as if they were collapsing from the source-- me. "I know only as much as you do. How can I help you more than you can help yourself?" The pictures also began to fade to a tannish-yellow as the corners curled away from their adhesive. "If I don't know myself, then maybe you do." Wait a minute, this fox is me! Why am I afraid? I stepped in front of him and folded my arms. "It seems like your contentedness hinges on some missing dependence." I blew air out my mouth and gazed at my surroundings. Old images were colored completely golden-yellow now, but still decipherable. I started to relax around the fox and see him more as a guide than a negative motivator. "What would that be?" I glanced back down at him to look in his eyes as I said this. He let out a great amount of air too. I guess he could be bothered just the same as I could. "To find that out, we will have to delve into your past." He stooped into jumping position, and a gaping, rotating rip in the floor enlarged to several meters across. "I know the way." He lunged in. "Well, no point staying here." I left the uneasy room of fading pictures and allowed my body to be sucked into the hole. What I experienced next could not have been sensed in reality, let alone described. I was traveling in an unknown location, as everything was too streaked to recognize. The only thing I can vaguely recall seeing was straight blurs of blue hovering over blurs of gray. Also, a feeling of morbid death. I could not place quite where I was speeding over, but that was irrelevant. The colors changed to brown and black as my speed gradually slowed. "Do you remember this?" I met back up with fox and his harsh glare was focused on more images hovering in front of us. I
turned my gaze to it as well. "Mom!" Some invisible wall stopped my hand several yards away from her. "It's you!" She continued to walk away from me to some 5-year old, crying and sprawled out on the ground. His pant leg was caught in the chains of a colorful tricycle. The child was bawling, should have made a terrible racket, but I couldn't hear a thing from them. "They can't hear you, and even if they could, you couldn't change anything. These are nothing but your memories." My heart sank. "Well why am I seeing them, then?!" My stare bore into the fox's, as I shifted it from his left eye to his right. I was more than displeased to be even reminded that I had parents. He simply turned back to face the scene. I felt a little like Scrooge standing beside the tall dark ghost of the future, and although the fox was knee high, his aura held the ability to psychologically tower over anyone. I closed my eyes and turned my back to my unwanted memory. "I don't want to be here. Take me back." I covered my lip with my curled finger and crossed my arms. "Turn. Around." Fox's mouth moved, but the rest of his body held fast to his position. "Why should I? Why should I torture myself?" I unfolded my arms and held open palms to fox. He turned his head to me, aimed his snout to the ground, and stared intensely into me. "You came here willingly with the goal of bettering yourself. If your motive has changed, I would be most happy to wake you up." My memory failed me. Yes, I did need to go through all this, for my own good. I sighed heavily with my eyes shut and allowed my head to fall to my chest. "I know. Just- nothing's free." I opened my eyes. "I'm alright." Although I'll bet fox didn't care about that at all. I looked back at my past and tried my best to embrace the deep pain. I couldn't hear a thing behind that invisible barrier, but I understood the general idea behind this scene. The child's pant leg was released from the monstrous teeth of the tricycle chain, and he happily spoke as he skipped up to his mother. But directly after his lips moved, his mother violently grabbed his arm and pointed her finger at his face. She held an expression of strong anger and scornfulness. She at last let go of his arm, and the kid was in tears again. I was perplexed by this. "Why can't I hear what they're saying?" I turned my face halfway to fox's but maintained my gaze on the event. "The most meaningful moments in life are often silent." He did the same. Well, that was helpful. I held my hands behind my back and rocked forward and backward on my feet. The mother's face had shifted to a forlorn glare, as though she were staring through the earth. The kid was a little disturbed by her expression, as his mouth was not quite as open. They held their positions for a long time until the kid closed his mouth altogether, I'm assuming stopped making noise completely as
well. Then, the mother snapped back to reality as though her mind was recently light-years away. Her tear stricken eyes instantly met his. They simply gazed back at each other for a good 15 seconds until the mother aggressively embraced her son. They both let their tears run down their faces and on the others' back. Without knowing it, my eyebrows drew near on my forehead. The "stage" turned black. For once, fox turned to me and I kept looking forward. Fox appeared to express emotion for the first time, and he simply turned back and this memory faded into the next. I did not break my concentration on the stage. As though I had stared at the sun too long and my vision gradually came back, the next memory faded in from pure white. A 12-year-old version of the kid in the previous sequence was playing an intense game of basketball with his father. First the kid would have the ball, shoot, and then the father would swoop around him and receive the rebound. This carried on for some time until the child made a mistake. He tried to step through his other foot and ended up flat on his face. Audio to the situation flashed in. "It hurts, Dad!" He was on the edge of tears, and his knee was in very poor shape. The dad was equipped with bandages and some small amount of alcohol, due to this event's frequency. After he applied the alcohol, the kid wailed with greater volume. "Dad, can we go home??" He cried. The dad laid his hand on the child's shoulder and wrapped his knee with gauze. "Markus, you're nearing an age when you will decide what kind of man you want to be." He smiled and patted his shoulder when he talked. "Markus, don't give up." The child stopped making noise. "Okay." The father helped his son up from the ground. Fox didn't move a muscle. I did exactly the same. I was absolutely not enjoying this, but I knew it would be worth the extreme unpleasantness. I simply shut my eyes tight as a brief stress relief... and opened them again. I witnessed one of the more prominent memories in my suppressed past. A 16-year-old boy was calmly napping in a secluded area of the fourth story of a department store. The only problem was that no one had woken him up on their way out. His parents were already heading back home before that stranger discarded a lit match in a full trash can. I watched as an endless stream of people threaded the needle to reach the stairs. Finally, he woke up. His lips moved again, but no sound escaped them. He shot out of the pristine mattress and looked all around him. Certainly if the store had allowed him to fall asleep in their merchandise he would have chosen a more heavily populated area and thus been woken up... but he was already too late. A horrid inferno surrounded him to the point of no escape. His throat vibrated and his mouth stretched very far open, several times, but he must not have heard a response. He began to stumble in a randomly chosen direction,
having forgotten the location of the exits. He sidestepped to avoid the blazing walls, simultaneously watching his feet to be sure he would not fall through the rapidly collapsing floor. As I watched him do all this, I began to sweat from just thinking about that hell. I wiped my forehead with the back of my hand. Fox looked over at me, raised an eyebrow, and stretched his legs by walking around me. "Help me!" We heard a faint voice behind a wall. cough cough! It was a young child, but he was in as much trouble as she was! And he didn't know where she was anyway! The older boy continued to make his way to the assumedly safe stairs. "HELP!!" Her voice broke and resonated horrifyingly. The boy cringed and wiped sweat off his face. He simply remained in his stance for 15 seconds before yelling out. "Where are you?" cough The boy cupped his hands around his mouth and continued to search. "Markus? Is that you?" The poor quality of her voice intensified. My heart raced insanely, but I couldn't let Fox see it. "Yes! What's your name?" The boy didn't really care, but he needed to hear her voice as often as possible to know where she was. "help me, Markus!" The urgency of her voice alone was enough to trouble anyone. "I'm coming! Just keep talking so I can find you!" Markus stepped even more carefully as he neared a barricade of quickly disintegrating wood. "Well, I'm... seven years old." Her voice was louder, maybe Markus was coming closer to her. "My name is Emma." Markus heard her voice directly to his left. He shortly disoriented himself due to the rapidity with which he turned his head, but he didn't even notice. "That's good! Keep talking!" A board crunched under Markus's weight, he fell directly on his gut. It made one hell of a noise amongst even the constant crackling of burning wood. "don't leave me!" Emma must have thought that was the end of him. "I'm... I'm alright!" He felt as if he were paralyzed, but he just couldn't be! He had to save her! There was no time for this. Markus ignored the pain searing through his body, and pushed his feet under him. His legs buckled under him, but he was standing. "I'm over here!" Something else must have been happening to her, she sounded far more urgent this time. Markus knew it was either now or never. If they were going to get out of this alive, he would have to wake up and move. Markus exploded from the falling floorboards and reached a solid piece of floor. "Whew..." He stopped to catch his breath. "Markus! Help me!" The voice was piercing! She must have been right behind this door! "Just hold on!" cough cough "And stand back!" He hurriedly examined the door and shut his eyes. He raised his left leg and kicked with all his might. SMASH! The door flew off of its foundation "Markus!" She was surrounded by flaming
chasms. Markus inched near the fissures in the ground and reached as far as he could over them, clutching a pipe for support. He soon was entirely hanging by the vertical pole over the hole. "Just give me your hand..." Markus reached for her, but she was wary of leaving her safe spot with the dresser. "It's scary... I don't want to move..." She moved behind the piece of furniture and looked down at her feet. Markus shut his eyes once more, to concentrate. "Listen to me. This is not a game, and if you don't come with me right now, you will die." She looked even more scared. "Just come with me! We'll be out of here in no time, and we'll look back on this and laugh!" Markus spurted out clichés, hoping they would convince her. Emma stood in front of the dresser. Markus was only a foot from her, but he couldn't move an inch more. "Just trust me... come here..." She was perched on the edge of her floorboard, and she was reaching out as much as she could. "You'll have to jump!" Her eyes widened and her pupils dilated very quickly. "No! Are you insane?" She stood back and clutched her dresser again. "Now or never. I believe in you, Emma." Markus's hand was becoming exhausted. She shut her eyes. She was young, but she understood the extremity of the situation. She breathed heavily and stood alone. The cogs in her head stopped moving. "Okay, will you catch me?" "Absolutely. Hurry!" She stared at him, and jumped. Markus's mouth was open. Her flight seemed to last for an hour, until she started to plummet. Markus missed her arms, and she was headed straight into the flames. He remembered something... "Don't give up." Markus's concentration put a halt to his perception of time. He held on more tightly to the pole, and allowed the rest of him to fall down. He reached from this lower level farther than he had ever reached before, and simply waited for her to reach him. She accelerated faster... faster... "Gotcha!" His hand clamped onto her wrist. With ease, Markus pulled the both of them back onto "solid" ground. They were both standing again! "Okay Emma, now just hang onto my back as long as you can. We're leaving." He lifted her into a piggyback position and took in a deep breath of air. However, it appears this room also was surrounded with flaming barricades. Markus explored the room as much as possible before deciding to try breaking one down. He lifted his leg and-"No don't touch that one!" She spoke up. "It's the only thing keeping that roof up!" Markus couldn't believe he didn't even think of that. Markus continued exploring. Then, a gleaming sense of hope. The window! He moved lightly on his feet to the open window and stuck his head outside."HEEEEEEYYYY!" Markus spotted a crowd of fire trucks and people gathered behind safety perimeters. He heard a loud voice without a megaphone from the ground."MARKUS!!!" It was hard to
tell among the crumbling wood, but he thought it was his mother. He was too weary to respond. "Stay right there! We're coming to get you!" Markus identified his mother on the ground, and she was currently conversing with one of the firefighters. After a few lines of inaudible dialogue, she was visibly distressed. Then, another voice made its way to Markus."We can't reach you with the ladder, you will have to jump." They had already set up a massive safety net down on the ground. I guess they didn't have time for those huge inflatable ones... "They've gotta be nuts." Markus was obviously displeased with his situation. He looked behind him to find the flames engulfing the room, hot on his tail. "Shit." He reached to his back and put Emma on the ground in front of him. "Emma, have you ever gone on a drop-zone ride?" He smiled slightly. It was all he could manage. She nodded and beamed. "Okay good! This'll be just like one of those. It'll be fun!" He picked her up by the shoulders and held her directly in his center. He pushed up to the window and stood atop four stories. He gazed out on the gorgeous city line before glancing down. SHIT! There was no escaping this fate, but he sure hoped there was. His heart was racing past what was biologically possible, and his throat would not allow nearly enough air to pass. His eyes burned intensely from so much smoke in the air. He shut them, as they would be no use here. He turned around, with Emma's back held fast to his chest. He locked his body in a straight position and breathed one last breath of air. "Markus, noo!!" The harsh voice of his mother was too late to stop him. He fell backward. Parallel to the ground, his motionless body raced to the ground at a frightening speed. For Markus, time stood still again. But to everyone else, it was six seconds of terror until he hit that safety net with his whole back. "Oh my god..." Her voice was no louder than a pin dropping. The rest of the crowd rendered silent. The net slowly lowered down to the ground, and Markus's head made a soft thunk! on the ground. Emma woke up from her brief fainting. She rose to her feet and ran, crying, to her awaiting parents. Markus made not a movement. His mother at last infiltrated the safety perimeter and raced up to the safety net. She arrived at his side. So did several firefighters, who, one by one, removed their helmets. "Is he okay?" She yelled at them. Markus's hand twitched, and he opened his eyes to an entirely new world.
I sat down on the ground after such a draining experience. Especially after repeating it. Fox treaded up to me. "You should stop pretending you don't know who that brave soul was." I rested my arms on my knees and allowed my head to fall near to my lap. "Of course we both know who it was. What difference does it make?" I pulled my head up to stare at Fox."You already know what importance it holds." He turned around and walked away from
me. He was right. There was no point in pretending not to know that person. There was simply no point in arguing with something that knows all about me. I had no choice but to endure this horrid marathon. ******"Markus, we're leaving." My mother explained to me, relentlessly trying to make me understand. "Why? Why do we have to move now?" I firmly asked, looking down at her from my height. "I'm 17, shouldn't I have a say in what we do as a family?" "You know this is the best thing for us to do. We simply can't stand to be in this town anymore after your-"My incident?" "Well, yes..." She pushed her lips together and sighed. "I won't survive in the city. I need to be around nature." It sounded corny, but it was the absolute truth. "And I have friends here. What are we going to do when Dad gets an even better job in some other state? Are we just going to keep abandoning our friends like this?" "But this place has Central Park, that's nature enough, isn't it?" Her voice started to break, and her eyes teared up only so subtlely. "You can make new friends! Just like you did four years ago!" "It's not the same. Maybe if we visited here every week or so, but I just can't live in the city otherwise." I knew fully well of my proposal's infeasibility, I merely said it to make a point. "Markus, you know that we're-" Her voice was softer and her lip quivered."-we're never coming back" I interrupted. "You've told me that enough times, I don't think I'll ever forget!" A tear ran down her face, but I was too angry to care. "I'm sorry, Markus... we have to do this together." She put her hand on my shoulder and lowered her head. "Markus, I love you." She said this from the back of her throat, she was crying too much. I was too enraged to immediately see the error of my decision."I hate you." And I sprinted out the door. I imagine she bawled for hours over my outburst, and I was sorry for it only days later. They must have searched for me, but I was too fast, too good. I was far into the neighboring town in one day. My parents never saw me again, nor did I see them. Two months after I turned 18, I was informed of their death, a car accident. I knew that if I were there, I could have saved them like I did for that little girl, Emma, but I was too self-centered. It was another four months until I decided to restart school, from sophomore year. There was enough money in the bank to survive for years the way I had to live, more than enough after the life insurance paid off. We were in the room of fading pictures again. I noticed they were all unrecognizable, all faded completely into a bright white. Fox paced around me again. "You know now what you have to do." He kept staring at me. "...Yes." I replied without moving anything other than my jaw. "The guilt will never go away, will it?" I turned my
head to him and watched him circling. "No. But without it, you would not have a purpose. It had to happen that way, and it could not have worked any other way." He was right. My parent's death gave me a motivation. I had to do it for my mother. For my father. I had to do it, plain and simple. "I know what I want to do now." Fox sat in front of me, raised his eyebrows. "I want to help people in need. With my newfound abilities, I can perform feats that would put the police and the firefighters to shame. I can do it in spite of the guilt now." Fox smiled. "I'm going to help people." "Good. You have remembered enough for now." I smiled too. It was time. I laid down in the lining of my mind and waited to disappear into reality. "Thanks, Fox." He nodded, and padded away slowly. I closed my eyes, and felt something, reality, nearing my mind. I left the old photos, old memories, old pain.
***** "Unghh..." I opened my eyes, and viewed the beauty of flowing branches against a palette of different shades of blue. It was midday, and I was where I wanted to be, nowhere else. As I gazed upon true beauty, the dream slowly came back to me. I remembered it all, now. "I'm going to help people." I smiled and jumped to my feet. "I've got a purpose." I checked my arms to gauge my fox levels. "Alright!" Most of my forearm was enveloped in black fur, and the rest of it in rusty red fur. My fingers were shorter their normal length, but claws substituted them. I turned my hand over. Five thin pads replaced my palms. I beamed and cracked my fists. *CRRRRRACK! I checked my wide open chest... yup! A wide streak of luscious white fur presented itself directly in the middle of the rest of the red-orange fur. An indescribable power surged through my entire body, and my conscious was at last clear enough for me to enjoy it. It was time to give myself another little workout. "Alright, just a few minutes. Here we go..." I cracked my neck as well, and my paws tightened into fists. In my anthro form, I had a potential for strength that I had not reached yet. I walked up to the previously fallen tree from several days before. That's not enough. I can do better. It was only solid wood, three days dry. Certainly I could find some better test for my ultimate form... Ah perfect. The old boulder in the park. The rock was almost a sphere with a diameter greater than 7 feet. It seemed to have the hardness of quartz, and it was half-buried. I raised my fist behind my shoulder, straightened my knuckles, and slowed my breathing. Let's see what I'm made of. Like the hammer of Thor, I drove my fist at a fantastic speed straight through that boulder. A smashing sound like that of a major car accident echoed twice throughout the forest, and I imagine scared away every animal for a mile radius at least. I opened my eyes. "Fuck me!" The boulder was split into three major pieces, all spread
far apart from each other. The rest of it had disintegrated on impact, and sifted into the air as dust. I was admiring my colossal handiwork for quite some time, and something darted in my peripheral vision. I whipped my head to stare it down, and remained totally still. It moved again! A flash of orange was visible only to my eyes in this form, and I relaxed when I saw it. "Just another fox." Although I never questioned why it came toward the earth-shattering noise instead of fleeing from it.
****** It was the morning of a Monday, and my fox form appeared only to include ears, eyes, and a tail this time. I had decided it was safe to attend school today, and I was searching the campus for my three friends. "Markus! There you are!" The voice of Irene from behind me made my fox ears twitch, I suppressed the instinct to turn them to receive from her direction. "Hey, Irene. Herman. Is Donald off getting high?" I casually slipped my fingers into my pocket. Herman snickered. "Let's just say he isn't here today." We laughed a little to ourselves. I smiled and looked at Herman and Irene's faces; I had never been more content to see them happy. I felt an urge to say what needed to be said. "Hey guys?" They both nodded and made eye-contact with me. "I haven't exactly been the best friend to you both, but I want you both to know that I couldn't ask for finer friends. I've recently come to a realization, and I want to tell you that I'm going to be able to spend more time with you all and just be there in general for you." They were both smiling, and Herman's eyebrows were furrowed together. He wasn't usually comfortable with such close encounters and revealing his emotions, but the three of us were pretty close together. "Markus, you've always been a good friend to us. We understand that you have a life outside of just us, and of course we'll be a little sad without you there." He grabbed my upper arm and shook me a little. "But we want most of all for you just to be happy, so if you're doing this for us, we'd rather you be happy." My eyes teared up slightly, and I looked over at Irene. She was pushing her lips together and blinking often. "Believe me, I'm doing it for the right reasons." I put my hand on Herman's and Irene's shoulders. "I love you guys!" Herman hugged me, soon followed by Irene's loving embrace. Before school, many people were passing us by, and only now looking back can I notice the harsh words of those who took notice. We held one another close for quite some time, comforting each other. Indeed, if we don't comfort one another, who will? They say that everyone is alone in their own brains. Since the five senses are the only thing connecting us to the outside world, we have no other sense of reality than through them. And what if they cannot be trusted? We are only reminded of how alone we really are amongst
other beings, inside our own heads. In the end, we can't spend every waking moment thinking about how we may all be totally insane. We only have time enough in this life to love and be loved.