Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want…

Originally published on Furaffinity on September 9, 2024.

The temperature was perfect; There was never a dark day and he always felt like he was flying. Gods, he absolutely hated it. Every day he wished he was stuck somewhere else. Stuck in a cave, stuck on Mars, stuck at an East German burger fool job, stuck in a black writhing mass, literally be stuck anywhere but here. It didn’t matter if anybody can pull him out alive or not, having his flesh and genetics be ripped apart would be something. Having his head dunked in a deep fryer would be something. Having his white and orange suited corpse stick out in a dark, wet cave or a cold martian desert would be something. Literally anything one could think of would be something, but he didn’t even get that. Not even hunger, nor pain, nor aging, nor the need to test out whether or not the suit he was wearing had a toilet, nothing. The only thing that happened to him was existence, and he even doubted that.

Six years. That’s how long this silver fox has been here. Well, six years and eight months, to be precise, but in the void, that might as well be a femtosecond. He doesn’t remember much of his life before this. All he remembers was being sucked into some moon base by some cultist, checking out some of the features of the base, wondering who could have made it, and then chasing after one of the people in his group, the names of whom are now lost to him. In fact, he’s been here so long, he doesn’t even remember what his own name was. Aneirin Krizman, if you must know, but it’s not important, there’s nobody else that can call him by that name, or any name. All his other memories are just…white. His dreams are white, he sees white when he closes his eyes, all his existence is just white. That color is so pervasive that he ends up sleeping with his arms wrapped around his face just so he could see something that isn’t a perfect white. It’s bright and it’s pure, yet it feels so much like hell.

The worst part of all is how he was cursed to this fate. It wasn’t a heroic sacrifice nor was it a punishment towards damnation, it was just simply a case of The Gods forgetting he existed in the first place. He just vanished from the face of the Earth, or in his case, moon. He wasn’t killed by anything or anyone, he never died or any disease, he never physically died, but everyone forgot him. From the smallest proletariat to the most powerful god, nobody remembers him. A victim of a collective abandonment of memory. A fate like that is enough to drive anybody mad, drive them to silent hopelessness…but he wasn’t anybody.

The days inside the void have no separation, no distinction, nothing to set them apart from one another. The days are instead a flowing river. Uniform, yet formless. Rippling, yet still. But every once in awhile, the water crashes. One day, and only one day, sticks out inside the Silver Fox’s head. He didn’t know when the day was in relation to now, nor when he was on the moon base, all he knew was that it happened. On that one day, there was a merciful blemish of the monotonous white, in the form of a violin, floating off in the distance. He didn’t believe it was real, at first. Maybe it was his mind finally hallucinating, but maybe it’s not. It looked real, more so as it got closer to him, but still, the mind is more powerful than we give it credit for. When it got close enough, he reached out to it, expecting his hand to phase right through the violin. Instead, in his shock, he was able to grab the neck. He quickly pulled it close to examine it, feel all of its crevices, its holes, strings, the bow, everything. It felt real. He took a quick pluck of the strings, it sounded real. But, maybe it was still a hallucination…He had to know more, no matter the risk. With a small hiss, he quickly opened his helmet and took a big, yet quick sniff of the violin. It even smelled real. After putting his helmet back on, he continued to examine it. This is the first time he saw anything else other than the white and his body.

After what felt like hours, he began to want to play it…“Play it?”, he thought. He never played any instrument in his life, he never knew how…and yet, he had a tune in his head. He took out the bow from the back of the instrument, tucked the violin under his helmet, and ran the bow across the strings. Before he knew it, he started to play the tune in his head, and played it as if he had played the violin for decades. The beautiful sound of his playing pierced the air. As he continued to play, he started forming words in his head, lyrics for the tune. The more he played, the more coherent the words were. Eventually, he started to sing the words in his head, quietly, to himself: “Haven’t had a dream in a long time…”. He sang what sounded like a plea, to anybody who might be listening, anybody who could listen. Yes, he got something, but he wanted more… “Please, please, please, let me, let me, let me, let me get what I want…” He continued to perform for whomever, or whatever, may be listening. Eventually, the performance ended.

Krizman had been taken aback by himself. No way. No way did he gain these skills out of the thin air. He never played an instrument, he was never great with words, and he absolutely could not write a song if his life depended on it. This had to have been an outside force. He knew he wasn’t going crazy, the instrument was real. It was in his hands, he felt it, smelled it, he played it, it was real. How did he get it? How did it get here, and how did he suddenly gain the ability to play, to sing, to perform with it. Not only perform, but perform a song that, to him, was original. He wish he had answers. Maybe one of the gods gave it to him, but if that was so, then the gods would pluck him out of this and back into his reality. It just made no sense…

But, this was a reason to have hope. If nothing else, it was a reason to have hope that someone out there is listening to him…he was remembered. This was a gift from a being that knows who he is…while it certainly doesn’t solve the problem he is in, it’ll help ease the tedium. So, every day from that point forward, he sang that song. That plea. He sings it in the hope that someone will let him out of this white void, and somewhere where he is truly remembered.

Story based on Issue 16 of the webcomic The Order of the Black Dog by NX-42.