And Then The Murders Began

Chapter Thirty-Eight: Technically The Truth

The pain is almost completely overwhelming when my eyes finally open again, and I don't know why I'm surprised at this whole deal by this point. I really really shouldn't be, given how many times and how many various iterations of something like all of this has happened to me and or something or someone that I know or love over the course of the last almost year or wait now, it's been more that a year at this point I think but I don't even know what today is or what month it is or at this point I don't even think I know what year it is.

My best guess on that front is that it's nearing summer, and seeing as it was eighteen years since everyone flipped their shit because they thought that the computers that basically had been given unrestricted rights to essentially run and rule the world unnoticed and that they were accidentally dependent on to keep their world running as it should be running, at least when I graduated it was and now it's been almost a year since then if I had to guess, so I'm probably going on twenty at this point but god damn it I guess all I'm trying to say without making this a fucking shaggy dog story is that I'm far too used to having to deal with this because it's, well, I'd say that it's not my first rodeo, but then, even at a rodeo there are controls and if things start to get out of hand well then they'll shut things down right then and there without even being forced to, all just so that people can stay safe and enjoy the entertainment without being asked to trade a life for it, to risk actual harm for it and in this wild ride there aren't any controls so I guess that I shouldn't be saying that it's a rodeo.

Better way to put it probably would be that this isn't my first go round, or my first trip round the Sun, or my first winter, as some wolves in the pack would say when someone was insulting them, calling them a fool; hey, this isn't my first winter, motherfucker- I almost just mentally put a space between those two words, and speaking from experience, putting spaces between words when they're supposed to be a pair, well, not a good idea, like "girl friend" versus "girlfriend," the first is how I referred to Lylah and I when we first started dating, the second is what I was to her and she was to me. She wasn't just a 'girl who is also my friend,' she was, despite all of her faults, the best friend that I ever had, and yeah, no, put a space in motherfucker and you get what most humans around here assume that goes for the Jerenteka birds and the bees-

All this to say, and hey look, it's a little shaggy dog story there- all this to say, not that like Weird Al's song protagonist, who hated sauerkraut because his mother tied me up and force fed him nothing but that very same until they were twenty-six and a half years old-

All this to say- please, brain on fucking track here Electra, I know that you're distractible as fuck and also ditzy as shit when you're as stressed as you are come on I can see that you're trembling- all this to say that this isn't new, that it shouldn't surprise me how these things end up working out when shit hits the fan and it all goes down, and yet even now it still does somehow, I don't know why or how, but I can't ever even seem to learn from experience unless it's a horribly negative one, and one that'll probably have left me quite literally scarred for life.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it is what all of my older family members used to say, and then they met me and they said, even if it ain't broke, fix it so that it doesn't become as fucked up as Electra is, fix it now and fix it well or hell, even don't fix it at all really, just ship it to a repair shop and then never pay them and hope that your thing somehow ends up getting shipped back to you in better shape and you'll never ever ever never have to have lifted a finger. Work, why would you put in the work to fix this thing that you know will at least still seem to be working properly every once in a while, after all, even a broken clock is right twice a day.

Well, if I was right twice a day that would be nice because I feel like I'm much more often wrong, but even still, if I was right twice a day then why didn't they notice that I was always striking the same tune, that my two hands were stuck on the same time for forever, the 'hey this isn't going well and my girlfriend's in trouble' tune-