entry #5:
quite a bit of time has passed since my revelation that i Built all of this. trying to measure the passage of time has grown somewhat meaningless, but if i had to guess, it's been about 4 months since my last entry. in that time, i have been searching this goddamn psychedelic death spiral of a world for any clue as to how i could trigger an end to it. i saw more of those smoke creatures appear. it looks like every time they break something up, it just starts coming back. i wonder if they're some kind of digestive aid for the After? i digress. after a fair amount of fear and hiding, i approached one of the vapor clouds. as soon as i was within 10 feet, it stopped singing and slashing at the ground. it floated, still in the air, or as still as clouds of smoke can be, and i heard a noise.
it sounded like radio static at first. it was overwhelming, like it was coming from within my own head. slowly, the static evened out. it faded into white noise, then into ambient music, and slowly, into vocal patterns. i made out a voice singing words i couldn't comprehend. i couldn't even be certain it was a language at all and not just vocalizations. as the sound enveloped my senses and evolved, the smoke beings moved ever closer. i tried to run away. i tried to scream, to do anything. i was stuck in place like a statue. my vision began to blur as the smoke came close enough to surround me, and the singing grew steadily louder, almost like screaming. i blacked out.
i suddenly came to in a formless gray void, with nothing to mark my relative position but a chair, a side table, and a beautifully ornate, albeit slightly tacky, stained glass lamp. as i took in my surroundings, i noticed a note on the table, which read, "turn on lamp for help." i pulled the brass chain and the lamp clicked on. a warm yellow light overtook the space and, as if summoned from nothing, a room replaced the gray void, with walls covered in bookshelves with only a few handbound books, otherwise cluttered with carved wooden figures, paperweight-sized statues with impeccable detail, a few tools and piles of sawdust, and other various knickknacks. against the back wall was a desk with an odd mixture of tools, all for different materials and purposes altogether, and a perpetual ceiling that never quite took a form stretched out into nothingness above me. i called out.
“hello?”
"Oh!" a head popped up from behind the desk. "Company? But nobody's gotten this lost in ages!"
out from the desk came a short and stout beaver man. he was covered in graying brown fur and had two buck teeth sticking out of his mouth, but he seemed to shift what mammal he was at different body parts; his tail was more akin to a raccoon's and he had aging chipmunk stripes going down his back from the top of his head. he had a large mustache and eyebrows that seemed to obscure his eyes entirely, save for two small, kind-looking beads that seemed to ache for a task.
“Now, what’re ya in for, bud?”
i couldn’t believe what i was seeing. Better yet, i couldn’t believe what i was hearing. This beaver-raccoon-man in the workshop within the gray void was speaking in the thickest southern drawl i had ever heard. i’d lost it, clearly, after all that time alone. at this point, i was at my wit’s end. i’m not proud of what happened next, but for sake of thoroughness, i am required to share it. I proceeded to laugh hysterically for five minutes before throwing up and immediately passing out in my own sick.