Nighter: A Town In The Middle Of Nowhere - Second Edition

Chapter 13 - Your God Is Dead

It was the seventh sleep of rotation 300567*, five sleeps after Tyler's arrival at the house. The house seemed to have calmed down and return to how a normal house filled with seven young adults should be. Tyler felt comfortable with her existence in the house, and continued to live like the teenager she is, surrounded by friends. But she saw them more as family, closer to her heart. Nadess had recovered to her normal self —well, as normal as she can be—, and everything was sorted out with Toby, who eventually just ended up acting like a domestic cat, demanding food and attention every five seconds and ripping up the sides of the furniture until it can hardly be called 'furniture' anymore. Everything had carried out like it had before. Except for Phoxen, who sat on the sofa, mindlessly staring at static on the TV, with an face that showed distress — fear, possibly— watered down with a neutral expression.

Tyler walked over to him, with a mug filled to the brim with a boiling hot refill of the blood of Christ in one hand, and a coffee in the other. She cautiously sat down on the compacted couch cushion next to Phoxen, and turned her body towards him, extending her arm out and gently touching the mug of coffee against his arm to get his attention. He looked at the mug, then at Tyler, emotionlessly, and grabbed the coffee from her grasp, holding it close to his chest and letting the warm, damp vapours collect up on the peach fluff on his chin. His attention moved back to the grey lines and pixels of static on the smallish screen of the television.

"So, the TV reception's not too good here, is it?" Tyler asked, honestly not giving a shit about the reception of the TV, "That must suck."

Phoxen nodded.

"But seriously, are you okay?" Tyler continued, showing eyes filled with consern, "Because you don't look it. Is there anything I can do to help?"

Phoxen looked back at Tyler's distressed, desperate face.

"It's nothing you should deserve to get involved in," he responded in a monotone.

That was the last thing anyone could get out of him for the next few sleeps.

—

Sleep twenty, rotation 300567.

Tyler could feel the house slowly falling apart, one by one people became silent, or silent-er for Hsakia. A powerful wave of bad vibes congested the house, slowly replacing the oxygen and threatening everyone to drown in the damp, fearful atmosphere. The house gave hints to the cause of the worry, Phoxen's eye, and how it hadn't shown any signs of healing. Although surrounded by people she knew, Tyler felt alone. Like she was surrounded by strangers, just 'things' that controlled the skins of her friends. She tried asking questions, but they didn't reply. She tried and tried, and had been for the past thirteen sleeps. She was scared. Almost at the point of giving in to the weight of depression, and be pushed under the surface in a pool of dread. But there was a light. A light of hope, as Tomasn walked towards her. He sat down next to her on the sofa and looked deep into her eyes. There was a pause, then he opened his mouth and mumbled: "You're dead."

"W-What?" Tyler replied in confusion.

"You're dead."

"How can I be dead?"

"You died."

"No, but... I'm clearly living...Right now."

"No you aren't."

"Then how am I dead? Are you dead too? How do you kno—"

He placed his finger on Tyler's lips to silent her.

"Alright, I'll make it easy for you to understand..."

Tyler sat there, staring with a face of confusion and a mind going haywire. Everyone else in the house had stopped their actions and had turned their attention to Tomasn too.

He continued, "You're practically in Heaven. And this whole town is just one of many sets of Heavens, each with a different god, used to experiment with unknowing souls. Everyone that lives in this town are just recycled souls given another shot. And this town specifically is the third out of nine shots. Your memory gets wiped each time you cross over to another stage, which you can do by dying in the previous stage."

"So... there are just a bunch of floating towns in the middle of nowhere filled with dead people?"

Tyler just realised her entire 'life' was a lie.

"Well, not exactly. This town in particular is a shitty product of a lazy god who couldn't be bothered making an entire world for us, and instead placed us on a singular, tiny town floating in the middle of space, expecting us to believe something like that is actually possible. And each Heaven has its own replica section of the universe, so in other words, we're alone. Really alone. The citizens of this town are the only people in this universe."

"Wait, hold on, hold on," Tyler gestured a stop signal with her hands, "How do you know all this? And why didn't I know this?"

Tomasn took in a deep breath and sighed, repositioning his body to a more comfortable position on the couch. Tyler knew this was going to be a long conversation, so she did the same.

"Tyler. The god that rules this town is dead. Permanently. Phoxen and I worked for him, as guardians, and we are the last ones left. But we had no choice in whether we accepted the position, not that we wanted to argue about it. A guardian's job is to pretty much be the police of this town, but in secret because only the guardians and the god himself is supposed to be aware of the existence of a god. And honesty, I'm surprised you haven't noticed the lack of political systems and shit. Anyway, that's why we know what we know, and we just didn't tell you before because we didn't want to involve you. Also because Terrenc—our god probably would've killed us if we told anyone, like the other guardians, but more importantly we didn't want to complicate your life. And now that our god recently died, we can release all the information to anyone and everyone and not fear for our 'lives'," He made quotation marks with his fingers, "But it also means that out jobs are finished, for we can't work for a god that doesn't exist, and without a god, we have no powers. A town without police or any sort of law enforcement is corrupt."

Tyler noticed no-one else seemed surprised by anything Tomasn had said, so she asked:

"So... that's cool and all, but how are the others aware of the whole god thing? I thought you said that if you told anyone you would die."

"We found out on our own. Terrence isn't too good at hiding secrets." Wester announced for Hsakia.

"What kind of a name for a god is Terrence?" Tyler replied.

"A cool one," Phoxen interjected, repositioning the bandage that wrapped around his head, "Any more questions, Tyler?"

"Uh... Just a few more, if you don't mind."

*Rotations are the Nighter equivalent of weeks or months, and are approximately 27 Earth days long. Sleeps are simply the amount of times Hsakia had fallen asleep per rotation (Note: he tends to fall asleep whenever he feel like it, since there is no specific designated time). Sleeps are a loose equivalent to days, but can vary in length dramatically. There is an average of 20 sleeps per rotation. This system is only used in this specific house and was created by Tomasn in order to stop confusion with having to explain to everyone in the house that days aren't a thing in Nighter.