[The skill AVOIDANCE is a type of cognitive strategy employed to preserve safety of the SELF. This skill is automatic and therefore incapable of being changed without external intervention]
[As you use AVOIDANCE to deal with situations, the more readily AVOIDANCE skills will be used automatically].
[Current Emotional Health: 7]
“You’ll be performing for each other at the end of class,” said Mr Durm.
“Wait, what?” panicked Rod, trembling inside.
“Mr...” began one of the students in the corner.
“Durm. Mr. Durm,” said he proudly.
“Mr Durm, do you mean we’ll be performing to each other or to everyone?”
“What did I say?”
“You said we’d be performing for each other.”
“Yes; so, what exactly are you having difficulty with what I have just said to everyone, sir? And you may use ‘sir’ to address your male teachers just to add.”
“I’m confused sir.”
“And what are you confused about, exactly?” the teacher asked with a bent brow and an exaggerated sigh. He was leaned back on his chair with his arms folded. He wore an immaculate grey two-piece suit like a yakuza.
“Are we performing for each other or to everyone else?”
“What did I just say?”
“I think he means,” interrupted Jaz, “are we performing for each other or... for everyone?” and she gestured with her hand a sweeping motion over the entire class.
Some of the students giggled. “No,” pipped one next to Sethan, “I think we’re performing for each other.”
“Yes, but does that mean to all of us or just the person we’re working with?”
“No, it means to everyone,” said Mr Durm, burnt out already thirty minutes into his first day as a secondary school music teacher.
“What the hell is going on?” Rod thought. “Can’t he define his terms accurately? It’ll cause chaos otherwise... Fuck,” he began to sweat, “I don’t want to perform in front of the class... What are you talking about? You’re an adult; you’ve got nothing to worry about. It isn’t life or death. I’m not going to let this idiot tell me what to do. I know better now than to trust authority figures.”
[Regressing almost to completion. Please demonstrate ADULT skills to prevent neural degeneration]
“Oh shit, I have to find that fucking uniform,” Rod muttered exasperatedly, almost throwing himself backwards out of the chair. His face was shiny now.
“What?” Klaudia said, startled. “What did you just say?”
Rod could not but stare at her face, his heart lodged in his throat like an apple. Her skin was olive like his, though a bit darker, and her presence was warm like sitting next to a hearth while it was raining outside on the fields, and you had just come back from walking all day in them so much so that your feet were soiled and aching and you were tired. She had that over him, and he resented it like he resented his teachers and parents for gobbling up his youth.
“What the hell is going on?” he repeated, his eyes wide with terror. He turned away quickly, unable to take a second breath, and forced his eyes to the mound of swaying grass outside. “What the hell is happening to me?” he thought, his stomach churning with disgust and shame. He could hear the accusations now as though they were happening to him right then and there, and they were boiling up in him like a community kettle, and he wanted to get out and far away from life and all his sins. What was worse, though, was that these feelings of his that he felt were not in fact his but placed there by some other party with their own interest: that is what he told himself, and that is what he wanted to believe.
“I don’t see fingers,” interrupted Mr. Durm, spreading wide his own hands like pompoms with a forced smile. “Mr. Beasley, get those fingers on that keyboard right now. You’re going first.” He was having difficulty now hiding his own distaste for the work and so wanted to have fun with it; he had long settled on the idea of turning these children into musical prodigies, whether they wanted to or not.
At the window a shadow passed by the classroom in a blur, and this filled Rod with a sense of dread because it seemed too real to be just a figment of his imagination. Nevertheless, he chalked it up as such because what else could he do? He was powerless. His mind was collapsing in upon itself. What was that phantom?
[Sanity: -1 (-1)]
[Emotional Health: -1 (6)]
[Regressing 67%]
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“What?” Rod jumped. “No, no, no...”
Everyone’s eyes fell on him at once, and he sunk back down like a dying man in his chair. He was exhausted. “What’s wrong with him?” he heard them ask themselves. His shame was incredible, and he could hardly breathe.
[Paranoia increased]
Rod flicked his eyes to the teacher and wondered at him. Something about the middle-aged man had changed considerably from when he had first seen him, and this sent a chill down the young boy’s little spine. He found himself ruminating about it, confronted with a possibility that something had been unsettled from its natural place in the universe. What was it? He had never experienced such a sensation of perplexity before, nor had he ever expected to undergo such a process that he feared had just occurred moments ago with the speed of a train passing by the platform. The details of Mr. Durm had not changed, but his feeling towards them had. Although undoubtedly the same height as when he had first walked in half-an-hour ago, to Rod his presence was larger and meatier than before. This change in impression Rod had engulfed him entirely in a rumination he was scarcely aware of like a reverse cocooning, whereupon his thoughts were nature's stitching and fibres. At the same time, he fought this intellectual and emotional invasion of his maturity like a primate being dragged to an enclosure – so inescapable was his fate that he wanted to set the whole place alight, for he was hopelessly confused as his brain racked for a logical explanation to this madness, and he hastened to find the magical-girl uniform to prevent the total obliteration of his self.
[Stress levels rising... Protective measures implemented. Maladaptive coping skill activated: Avoidance]
“I am not a good person; I am not worthy of being accepted and loved,” he told himself like a drill sergeant.
[Emotional Health: -1 (5)]
[NOTE: The use of these affirmations serves to prevent the USER from entering into dangerous scenarios]
“But you are,” the Polish girl seemed to say with her flickering, magical eyes.
Rod frowned, ignoring the condescending voice in his head. “My breath stinks,” he thought self-consciously. “I can’t speak to her.”
“Fingers on the keyboard!” commanded Mr. Durm. “I won’t tell you again!”
A nervousness from his youth washed over him and he felt sick and embarrassed. He finally put on the headphones connected to the keyboard, before hovering his digits over the white and black bars and pressing down on them, generating an awful, whiny and uncoordinated pattern of sounds. All the while, the girl next to him played her part beautifully and seriously. “I hate it here,” he began ruminating, “I’m not good enough... Mum is going to kill me if I get in trouble... I must... find... the... uniform.”
The most terrible guilt clung to him like a wet rag or a stubborn, hanging nail, born from the vivid recollections of his previous actions toward the opposite sex, not only because he had lost out on their friendships and thus the experience necessary to emotional development, the lack of which he was now and had been suffering hence, but because it was not what he wanted and yet it was what he enjoyed; and this confused him. The way that he had treated his exes mortified him all of a sudden. But he did not know what else he could do. And even now, as he ruminated upon these things, he did not know how he could change, how he could prevent such an error from occurring again. And why should she not give up on him? What right does he have to be taken care of by this woman who had once agreed to be his girlfriend? Was it that unthinkable that such a good woman would give up on a toxic relationship with a man who refused to take accountability for his destructive behaviour? He must be the one to change. After all, he could not and cannot change her. Rod felt his mind slipping...
After a few moments, Rod felt her looking at him and he tried to ignore it, but he caved and raised his eyes. She was frowning.
“I can’t play,” Rod said with frustration, his cheeks red. He dropped his hands and fidgeted underneath the table between his knees. “I haven’t been practicing.
[AVOIDANT STRATEGY LEVEL UP!]
[AVOIDANCE NOW LEVEL 1! Avoidant strategies are now stronger and quicker to automatically apply in the future. Expect more Avoidant skills to be in effect]
I’ll go work alone so you don’t have to play with me,” he said with a bowed head and a trembling voice. “I’ll never be good enough to have friends,” the thought pounded again and again in his head like a grandfather clock.
“It’s okay,” Klaudia said, smiling warmly. “I’ll teach you,” she added with an innocent, palpably sweet gulp.
“What am I feeling?” Rod asked himself accusingly, his heart pounding in his ears. “Of course,” he muttered bitterly, “of course, that depraved con man would implement such a debased feature into this game. It wasn’t enough to add all these stats and levels and complex technojargon... he had to gamify emotional maturity as well! Well, well, well. I bet he’s out there watching me humiliate myself and having a good old time of it... Oh, if I see him I’ll give him a right good pounding...”
[Regression almost complete. Prepare for age-dependent cognition...]
“Oh, shit, oh shit, oh shit...” he thought, sweat-stricken and mortified. He was engaged in such ruminations when the girl next to him leaned closer.
“What is it?” asked Klaudia again. “Are you nervous? Do you want me to go get the teacher?”
“No...” his voice wobbled tremendously, “no, please... stop.”
“Why?”
“...Why can’t I move? Why does it feel like my brain is being plugged up all of a sudden?” he thought, sinking back into his ruminations. “I... I need to find that fucking uniform or I’ll, I’ll... what? What will happen?”
“Come on, I’ll help you with your piece,” she said brightly.
“You don’t understand,” he muttered, almost melting in his seat. A surge of contradictory emotions was ricocheting inside of him.
She looked at him and said nothing for a moment. Then she said with a smile that dripped honey, “I think that I do.”
He blushed and became speechless. “Why am I nervous?” he thought.
“Do you have an Xbox?” he blurted shamelessly.
“No, but my brother does,” she replied, slightly taken aback by the suddenness of the question.
“Why did I ask that?” he wondered. It was as though his mouth had a mind of its own. “I don’t care whether she has an Xbox or not. I would never say something like that...”
[Regression almost complete (87%)]
Without knowing where Aleku was he obviously had no idea where he could find the magical girl uniform, and this perturbed him. He tried to concentrate on the piano, but his mind drifted to the voice in his head which read out every few minutes the countdown to his adult demise. He could no longer remember what he felt that he ought to have been able to remember, and this petrified him; and the constant chatter of his classmates added to his anxiety. At the corner of his peripheral vision, he saw once again a large black shadow but this time hanging over the teacher like a lamppost.