★ Paranoia

Chapter 58

Night used to mean something different to JJ, before all of this.

It used to symbolize the peaceful end of a fulfilling day, promising relaxing rest and a feeling of anticipation for the next day. Now, it meant nothing more than hell. It meant that his demons were going to show themselves, and if he dared to fall asleep, they would find him and score their claws through his flesh, laugh at him, taunt him, excitedly torture him... to avoid it, he would bring that same torment onto innocent people past midnight, and use their corpses to satiate the aching pit in his stomach. The one that craved power and control; the feeling of being above others. It was all he ever wanted, ever since he'd known what it was like to be below human for ten months straight. To be a slave, a number, a tool for laboring away for rich people, and an object for pleasure.

He used to be on the opposite side of the prison experience. He used to be the one ensuring captivity of the poor souls, including his own precious at one point, in a distant time when he'd been unlike himself and had deeply pushed away his true feelings for the turtle more than ever. He used to think of it as normal, so much so that he hadn't though too gravely of it when he'd willingly admitted himself in to punish himself for his crimes after the end of the world. But all it took was to be on the other side of the spectrum for just a little while to understand everything. To finally realize why prisoners were hollowed to the utmost desperate version of themselves to escape the hell, when previously, he'd thought of it as "dramatic" and "entitled."

After everything, he wanted to feel alive again, to feel fit in his own skin. To feel clean inside, and to bring some enjoyment to his soul, even if it was for just a few hours in a tiny stone room.

He wanted to feel human again.

And to not just be human, but one that was a hunter instead of the hunted. That was another thing he'd come to realize about the world - even when there wasn't an active apocalypse or catastrophe, the world was still kill or be killed. The truth just liked to hide in the darkest of corners, and it worked. People still mourned for the world before it ended; before the potions of healing and command blocks went away, and life had supposedly been easy and fun.

It had always been the same, just in disguise at times.

JJ suspected that humans were created solely for experimentation. That an entity, or a god, or a divine figure, or whatever people believed it to be, made humans to push boundaries that hadn't been pushed with any other species. It made them overly intelligent, and opened human minds to information that was never supposed to be known. Any other species on this earth was not meant to know anything else outside of waking up, eating, drinking, finding shelter, sleeping, and repeating it everyday without question or ulterior motives until death. Humans were purposely allowed to break out of the cycle, just so this entity could watch in amusement as the human brain collapsed under the pressure of having their awareness expanded. Mental illnesses were stigmatized, but in reality, JJ knew they were the most normal possible things to have in a world like this.

Cruelty was allowed to fester as well. All the vast ways one could come up with ways to torture, to start wars and bring millions to suffer, to rape, to kill, to see the innocence and happiness of young children, and instead of feeling wholesome, feeling a warmth in the lower regions or the urge to harm and murder, to start experiencing the illness of fetishes or sociopathy in the mere child years... it was all a calculation. JJ thought scornfully of every person who would look up to a god figure for guidance, when in his mind, he knew that the very one they looked up to caused all of the problems they sought help with to begin with. And this entity did not just cause it, but it let it continue, and it enjoyed every moment of it. Until eventually, it became bored of its little creation, and plagued the world with back-to-back apocalypses and ripped away their healing tools to ensure it was destroyed forever.