Oscar felt a sweeping presence over his mind, combing through them, shifting through memories as they flickered quickly through his thoughts without his prompt. A dizzying flicker of mind-numbingly quick thoughts along with memories rushed past his mind before stilling just as fast.

He felt like he had run a marathon, barely able to stand and his head felt like chilled gravy, thick and uncomfortable. He couldn’t feel his body at this point and was surprised he still stood despite his state.

The presence that had drawn back after its scan, flared for a moment before calming. It caught Oscar’s attention as he directed his focus back to the being in his room. He felt it still in his mind, and it terrified him. He felt so open and bare to this entity who had seemingly gone through his life with… such ease.

As it sensed his attention, a memory, slowly, gently surfaced in his conscious mind. It clearly was the work of the being as he felt its guiding touch bring it forth. It almost felt reassuring how gentle it was with him now, like a mother handling her child.

It began to show the memories of daily life, of the bustling streets he had walked. Yet they were shifted, grey and dull, colorless with people only being hazy constructs of dim figures of light. Ash covered most of the sky above, obscuring the view. Only the sun hung above with cold light, seemingly made of the same substance as the pedestrians on the street, only differing in the sheer radiance of the sun.

Oscar could feel the sun with an aura similar to the visitor, only it felt hollow and without presence. Still, there was something nascent to it, primal and without focus. It bore an unfeeling radiating heat, detached from mortal ken.

The visitor itself felt suffocatingly heavy. Old, callous, and expansive that was overwhelmingly lethargic with a touch of entropy. There were hints of something more buried under its aura, obscured by indifference that held dominance on the surface.

Slowly the world shifted, something rose from the beyond. A planetoid of scarred grey slowly shifted to obscure the sun, slowly darkening the skies above. It bore the presence of his visitor.

In a daze Oscar watched the celestial that eclipsed the sun, radiating its own silvery light down upon the ground. Beasts howled and water rose in great waves upon the shores of the island nation in unnatural fury. Night arrived, yet the celestial held no reservations for it, illuminating the long dark in its silver hues.

In the darkness of the night, the true self of the visitor directed its perceptions upon Oscar in full. The immense glow of silver intruded upon his mind and blinded him with its presence crashing upon his mind. He felt his mind give out, slowly shattering from a great being’s attention laid upon him in full.

He felt himself wash away, his sense of self vaporizing, slowly drifting into oblivion. There was no scream no whimper or pain, the things governing those were washed away first, even before the overwhelming presence steeled his mind and held it together.

Everything in the background washed away as the connection between Oscar and the entity strengthened. Wisdom was given in exchange for the loss of parts of self, mending them in place of holes.

A calm understanding came to Oscar's mind that this connection had broken something in him as the wisdom became part of himself.

It was not knowledge or wisdom of the nature and real, but of things beyond the veil of law that is nature’s mandate. Most of it swirled beyond his mortal grasp. A mere glimpse of a glimpse of the metaphysical. A teasing flash of the lore of ancient beings that no longer adhered to the natural order.

It withdrew from his mind, leaving Oscar dazed from the sudden lack of stimulation. The presence left him behind from the visions and he soon found himself in the small attic room.

He felt alone. The connection, the intimacy of sharing his mind, left him shaking in the room. He only knew the cold he felt now and the warmth of the connection before.

His mortal self felt hollow and empty. His gums itched from the desire as the euphoria from the contact drew from him faster and faster. The forbidden knowledge, fragmented and difficult to decipher whispered seductively drawing flames from the absence.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

Rationale whispered of guiding hands and laughing gods before delirium swirled from the fevering mind and silenced all else. No longer did the mind note the twitching hands, glazed vision, and sweat that began to flow as time flowed with it.

The hateful sun rose, piercing the room and burned his sleep-deprived eyes. He felt the drag of his eyelids but was unable to sleep as he curled tighter on the cold floor in a pool of his caked vomit. The divine was all he could think about. It’s divine self in his mind. He felt himself grow to an erection, shuddering from the simulation. It felt filthy to react as such to such pure intimacy of connected minds.

It took him a week of lack of appetite, vomiting what he forced down, and spats of loss of control from where he found himself shaking.

Oscar had recovered mostly but the hollow absence remained. He cleaned the strips of cloth in warm water before applying them over his forearms again to cover the scratch marks. Bouts of itch and a lack of sense of pain had marred his arms with deep gashes.

There had been no chance of subterfuge of his condition with his bouts of delirium. Today was the day he would be kicked out into the street. The family’s kindness had allowed him to remain till today, but their tolerance had broken with his condition. ‘Addict’ they had called him upon giving him their verdict.

He glanced towards the mirror as he took his meager belongings.

The young man in the mirror with dark circles underneath his eyes looked back. Intensive gaze fixed itself on himself. Dull and unwashed curls drooped over the eyes yet were unable to contain the flames flickering in them.

The former young man would have been ashamed of the eviction. Now he barely only felt a tinge of doubt before steel-clad resolve crushed it.

It would suit him fine, the opportunities of the vagrancy fitting with the path laid before him.

He made his way downstairs ignoring the condescending looks of his former hosts. Their worries were so mundane they merely washed over him. The absence gnawed at him. He had tried to contact the being again, but the stars remained inert, and the shell had grown mute.

Oscar barely noticed he was walking on the busy streets of Lindholm. His legs moved without guidance further away from his old housing, houses grew in disrepair and the populace more rugged and hostile towards outsiders.

He came to deep in the night at some point, no longer wandering in the haze. It seemed like he had merely blinked and then found himself lying in the mud face down. His meager possessions were nowhere to be found. A muddy alley stretched in both directions with waste and garbage all around.

It was difficult to rise up, the crunch of bones and the lack of strength told him the unkind reality of his body. He dragged himself to the alley wall and rested his upper body against it.

A calm assessment confirmed unnatural protrusion under his shirt and bare feet. He was wheezing with raspy gasps and out of breath. Oscar feebly with a shaking hand lifted the muddy shirt and looked at his protruding ribs. Mostly merely protruding under the skin but one had punctured trough and now that he was upright began to bleed and smear the muddy skin with vermillion.

In the corner of his eyes, he saw shadows growing. Abyssal black figures, darker than the shadows themselves flickering in and out of existence. Bored spirits gathered to watch his passing with indifference.

Somewhere in the streets, rowdy folks made merry in some alehouse no doubt. The ruckus they caused gliding in the night with no celestial like the entity lighting the dark skies.

Oscar laughed despite the difficulty of such an endeavor. He would not survive the night as it is. His hubris and the contact with the otherworldly had made him callous to the fact he was mortal. No pain warned him of injury since that night and a cold indifference beyond the hysterical desire to reconnect had made him disregard his safety and surroundings.

The implanted knowledge, always a haze of unfamiliar languages and ineligible swirls danced in his slowly dying mind. Sometimes less obscure before escaping into obscurity once more as they danced back and forth in his hazy consciousness to mock him for wasting their potential.

‘Look’ They seemed to tell him as they showed glimpses of themselves and what they contained before quickly growing hazy and elusive again as the realization of their meaning washed away from his mortal mind.

Defeated by the apparitions of insight he gave up.

He let his mind drift freely in swirls of chaos, without any will of his own. His will had been what he had cultivated to move past the withdrawals. He could at his deathbed acknowledge he had been affected poorly by his encounter with a mind so much greater than himself.

Addicted was a truly apt word for it, Oscar mused. Even now his uncontrolled mind moved with thoughts of his experience. Plots of plans on how to feel it again. The desperate need for more. Of the thoughts what he was willing to do for it frightened the feeble part of himself still sane from the madness.

There was no fight of will and addiction, the mere acknowledgment of the latter from the former before it gave up.

Delirious eyes blazed with passion as a smirk rose to Oscar's lips as his mind grew clear and he felt whole. Adrenaline coursed in his veins as fragments reformed and became whole.

A Raspy, stuttering, wet whistle echoed out from the alley in a jolly melody.

An unflinching hand reached towards the bleeding wound and dyed the fingers red. The other hand pushed him off from leaning on the wall as he faced the rotten wood of the alley wall.

He began his work as he drew a figure of a man on the wall with his blood. It was a shoddy smear to call a proper drawing but the artist cared little, transfixed in his work, his everything focused on this one work.

Oscar focused on the eyes of the figure, spending minutes upon minutes and a generous amount of blood on the small detail.

He felt his life slowly drain from him as he stilled upon completion and looked at the curly-haired figure he had drawn, looking deeply into the lifelike eyes.

Serene, curious eyes looked into his. Oscar drew back in a stagger as he watched the eyes acknowledge him with forlorn acceptance. The figure on the wall closed his eyes as its torso shifted, disturbingly realistic wounds appearing upon it. Broken ribs protruded from the figure with a single rib seemingly had opened a wound and crisscrossing splatters of red marred his hands.

The drawing opened its eyes again as the two looked at each other.

Slowly the lifelike eyes of the drawing stilled and glazed over and the red paint of it's being dulled.

Oscar inhaled greedily before exhaling. He nodded at the other self before turning away from it and walking calmly out of the alley, leaving the dead vestige of his former self to dry on the wooden alley wall.