Poor copies out of heaven's originals,
Pale earthly pictures mouldering to decay,
What care although your beauties break and fall,
When that which gave them life endures for aye?
Oh never vex thine heart with idle woes:
All high discourse enchanting the rapt ear,
All gilded landscapes and brave glistering shows
Fade-perish, but it is not as we fear.
Whilst far away the living fountains ply,
each petty brook goes brimful to the main
Since baron nor fountain can for ever die,
Thy fears how foolish, thy lament how vain!
What is this fountain, wouldst thou rightly know?
The Soul whence issue all created things.
Doubtless the rivers shall not cease to flow,
Till silenced are the everlasting springs.
Farewell to sorrow, and with quiet mind
Drink long and deep: let others fondly deem
The channel empty they perchance may find,
Or fathom that unfathomable stream.
The moment thou to this low world wast given,
A ladder stood whereby thou might'st aspire;
And first thy steps, which upward still have striven,
From mineral mounted to the plant; then higher
To animal existence; next, the Man,
With knowledge, reason, faith. Oh wondrous goal!
This body, which a crumb of dust began-
How fairly fashioned the consummate whole!
Yet stay not here thy journey: thou shalt grow
An angel bright and home far off in heaven.
Plod on, plunge last in the great Sea, that so
Thy little drop make oceans seven times seven.
'The Son of God!' Nay, leave that word unsaid,
Say: 'God is One, the pure, the single Truth.'
What though thy frame be withered, old, and dead,
If the soul keep her fresh immortal youth?
Welcome to Crackyhouse. You're ours now. Here's what you can expect.
You'll stay for a while, see a few threads, laugh a bit, and see a few odd things. You'll bookmark the place for further amusement. This is where it all begins.
Before too long, you'll find yourself checking up in increased frequencies. First it'll happen occasionally during the week. Then once every day or so. Then more frequently. You'll find yourself checking on it twice a day. Three times. Once per hour. Before you know it, you'll be browsing it for hours at a time.
Slowly, your life will take a back-seat to Cracky. You'll find yourself forgetting to call people. You'll be late for work because you'll be reading legendary threads. Slowly, your life will decline into a mindless chaos.
As cracky and lia slowly consume your mind, your humor will be replaced with our humor. You'll become glued to crackyhouse. It'll be the only place you feel accepted. And then, you'll start accepting the weirder conventions. You'll find yourself fapping to loli, dead girls, guro, and all sorts of odd things you used to find disgusting. But now it'll all be commonplace for you, as a normal part of your life. Your personality.
And then, someday down the road, you'll realize what has happened to you. Your loved ones will have left you. You'll be alone. Unemployed. Struggling to survive. And worst of all, you'll be hooked. You won't be able to fight it, because we will be all you know, and all you remember. You'll slowly dissolve into madness, or mindless stupidity. Whichever comes first. And then, one day, you will snap, and all remains of your former self will be crushed under our weight.
Welcome, my friend. Welcome, my brother.
Welcome to your new home.
Welcome to Crackyhouse.
"Oh ... everything's white."
"Are you awake, Olivia?"
"Yes ... who are you? Am I ... dead?"
"Not yet. But you are dying. I'm sorry."
She was missing her right leg. The feeling was going in her left one. But it didn't seem to bother her. The man that held her remaining hand had a gentle, reassuring grip. Around them was nothing, unending white.
"Ah! Are you God?"
"No, I'm a bit more like ... Death."
"... oh. Where am I? How did I get here?"
"This was your bedroom, actually."
"Eh? There's nothing. Where are all my things? Where are all the walls?"
"They crumbled away, and then they disappeared. Just like you are now."
"Mother? Father? My friends?"
"They disappeared too."
"and ... anon ..?"
"..."
"He can't be gone! He can't be!"
"I'm really very sorry."
"No ..."
"..."
"No ... go away, this is just a bad dream, just a bad dream, just a -"
"Do you know .... you're right. This is a dream. It's a kind of dream."
"Heh?"
"But you're not the one who is dreaming. This is someone else's dream."
Olivia blinked continuously and waited patiently for clarity. She could no longer feel the man's touch, not because he had let go, but because her arm had receded past his grip. Her arms and legs were just little stumps now, and still fading.
It never got easier for the man to tell people the truth about their world, about themselves. Especially these types. Humans liked coming up with constructs that could produce the most heartrending reactions. Finally he spoke
"Do you know what happens to ideas that have been forgotten? They disappear. They die."
"Mr. Death?"
He wished she wouldn't call him that.
"Most ideas don't live for more than a second. Not so long ago, before writing, recording ideas was a verbal tradition, songs and verse. Everyone here, all the myths and legends, would be shifting and changing their shape with every telling. But now everyone records everything in pristine reproducible digital and gives it to everyone. Hardly anything gets forgotten, and some ideas last a very long time."
Olivia wondered where he was going with this. Not noticing her arms and legs were completely gone. The fading continued. Where her torso stopped and where the endless white began became indistinct, but the white was winning.
"You lasted about five years. Pretty good run, actually. Well done!"
"I'm ... an idea?"
"For a short spell in the early 00s, Anonymous in a fit of insanity wrote dozens of works of religious and erotic literature for the internet. You are Olivia Fields, a character his Sky Queen, the subject of his earlier works."
"I don't understand ..."
"You were designed to be the perfect girl for the reader. You would love him, understand him, and be envious of the girl that would eventually steal the reader's heart. Being a repressed sort, Anon did not let his writings go beyond the occasional romantic undercurrent."
At this Cracky blushed deeply.
"I love everyone, but not in that -"
"But undercurrents were not enough for the circlejerk and the stalkers. Olivia, they all wanted to fuck you."
She looked away, her face a mixture of confusion and embarrassment.
"The boards were soon flooded with girls that allowed anonymous to actually interact with his object of obsession. Word got around the bulletin boards that the Skyqueen was near impossible to contact, and the girl she was based on was an unpleasant bitter recluse. The character was unpopular. Privately traded collections of pics were uploaded. Largely irretrievably deleted. Even anon forgot about it in the deluge of writefuckery he himself feverishly shat out after the failure of Sky Queen."
"Are you saying I'm not ... not real?"
"You are imaginary. So when it is no longer possible for you to exist in anyone's imagination, when everyone has forgotten you, you will disappear. You will die."
"I don't believe –"
"Look at yourself. Have you seen your own body?"
She looked down and saw only white.
Just a head. Just a head and fading.
The man looked into the distance and narrowed his eyes in concentration, as if focusing on someone far away. He broke it off momentarily to report.
"Fifteen minutes ago a pathetic young man in America just deleted the last digital copy of your pics. All the hard copies have been trashed or have decayed. Upon completing his collection, he realized he could not have you and deleted everything in disgust."
"Oh."
"His memory of you and the copypasta is the last trace of you and your world in reality. Everyone else has forgotten you. He has begun to. This process typically takes anywhere between –"
He concentrated again.
"His Rozen Maiden dollsex torrent has completed and he is now masturbating as if he is trying to start a fire. You do not have long."
She let his words lap up against her, seemingly totally content as she gazed headlong into the white.
"Your life ... doesn't concern you anymore?" he asked.
"I have the feeling something is supposed to ..."
"Your personality. It's fading, isn't it. They didn't give you much to lose, I guess."
"Hey, Death ..."
"What."
"Are you an idea too?"
"Yes."
"So will you ... someday ..."
"No-one ever forgets me. I'm always here."
"Ah."
"That's why sometimes I like to go and comfort other ideas before they die. Sort of like the real Death does with people. No shame in being forgotten, none at all. We've had a lot of girls like you disappear lately."
"Like me?"
"Yes, from imageboards and such. Just hordes and hordes of them, shy, doting little girls, with their own little gimmicks that didn't take."
"But you remember them!"
"I don't remember any specifically, just the little half-assed quirks dreamed up by fat little girls with daddy issues. Animal ears and tails. Infinite hair colours and iterations. Cripples. Twins. Maids. Gothic, Victorian, medieval, mecha. And millions upon millions of assembly line little sisters. Sometimes I watch them fade, when they're forgotten, when their fad gimmick gets old and a new one comes along."
When he spoke again after a long pause, Olivia thought his voice to be just a little off. Like it had a single string out of tune.
"So many these days ... and they're all so similar, you know, I rarely even bother to talk ..."
"You'll remember me, won't you Death?"
"... huh?"
"I'm still here! I haven't faded yet!"
"That is unusual."
"But the American must have forgotten me already! It's you keeping me alive, Death! It's you!"
"Hm."
"Please save me, Death! You can do it! You don't have to be lonely!"
"I'm not lonely!"
"I'll remember as many people as I can! We'll do it together!"
"I'm not ..."
"And then no-one will ever have to disappear!"
"I ... but ..."
"Ehehe! Ehehehe! My body!"
Sure enough, her neck began to fade in slowly. She could feel it, feel her body coming back, the warmth of it, the space of it ... and she could feel tears falling from her eyes.
"You're doing it, Death! You're doing it!"
"I ... remember you!"
"Hahaha! Death! Death!"
"I remember you!!!"
"Death, thank you! You are sav –"
"I REMEMBER YOU AS THAT FRIGID LITTLE OMGOMGOMGOMG CRACKY-CHAN FROM 4CHAN AND HEY FIVE YEARS IS A LOT OF YEARS FOR BLUE BALLS. FORGET YOU, BITCH."
He whipped out a jar from his pocket that was labelled LOL AMNESIA LOL, tilted it into his mouth and swallowed some pills that poured out.
"Ah –"
He closed his eyes and Olivia blinked out of existence.
It has been two months since I have found out about Cracky-chan's AIM sn. Don't ask me how I did that, some things are better left untold. Anyway, we got in contact, or rather: I contacted her and she responded. I tried to be all cool and hurrhurr-in-cheek with her (if you know what I mean) but of course she saw through my act from the start.
You can fool every other idiot on /b/ but you cannot fool Cracky-chan, especially not when face to face (or should I say: P2P?). I am sure in the few days that we were chatting for hours and hours she got a real good idea of who I really was.
So one day while I was babbling away, trying to make myself look like the best thing since sliced bread served with roast beef by talking about "those fucking furries" and "that one new program I installed recently", she interrupted me by saying: "Have you ever done anal?"
I was kinda put off and shocked at first. I am not going to tell you her real age but a young girl approaching me like that just shocked me for a second or two. Then I regained my cool and answered that yes, me and my ex-gf tried it once but she didn't like that so that had been the end of that. What came next had me baffled again: "Want to try again?"
me: try again? you mean you and me?
her: no, you and your mom
me: lol what
me: so you really mean you and me?
me: hello?
her: yes, you and me, dumbass
me: you're saying you'd let me do you up the ass?
her: more like you will let me do you up the ass
her: i already got the lube and the strap-on, you just gotta haul your ass over here
It's hard to make a decision when you're having a massive hard-on without knowing what to do with it at first. So I want to say that it wasn't really my decision when I packed my bit of shit together and hopped into the next train. I pretty much knew from the moment when I said "okay" (although I don't really remember that moment) that I was completely hers. Trapped in a web of, yes, retarded internet lust. I'll be the first to admit it. But I am sure most of you would have done the same.
I've been living with her the last few weeks now. Sometimes we're sleeping in her bed together but most of the time she makes me sleep on the floor. The house itself is pretty big. Her parents aren't there. I don't know where they are and I have never asked about them. A lot of other people are coming and going, though. Some are staying for a few days, vanish and come again later. Some of them even post on /b/, but I won't disclose their identities. I wouldn't want to make myself unwelcome here. I want to stay close to Cracky-chan. I know she doesn't want me to get too close to her, but I don't care as long as she legs me follow her for a walk outside (the snow is so nice) and as long s I can spread my ass cheeks for her to invade me.
I feel happy. Some of you may think that I am a sad sod, that I am crazy for having let go of my appartment, my cheap job, my so-called friends. I am with Cracky-chan and that is all that matters to me. And when she holds me by the waist and furiously thrusts that big black one into my bowels, I simply cannot ask for anything more on earth.