Realism

"WE NEED TO GO NOW." The panic in his voice echoed through the house hard and loud. He insistently threw random objects into the luggage bag and screamed at me to do the same. Still sobbing hysterically, but obliging his demand, I asked, "What does that even mean?!"

He repeated, "WE NEED TO LEAVE, WE NEED TO GET OUT OF HERE, IT'S NOT SAFE. WE NEED TO GO HOME." Tears unyielding, and voice heaving, I asked again, "Isn't this home?? Where is home?"

The journey we took wasn't an easy one.

We had just left one state to start all over again in another one by the ocean.

This time, we had no money, no way out, and at least one of us was heading into incredibly unfamiliar territory. We were about to receive many lessons and undergo many trials.

He paused for only a moment to look at me, and softened. "You're right. I'm so sorry, you're right." He began to close the gap between us, but I was not comforted by the change. I stood shaking, completely unaware of what was going on. I reached back out to mirror his embrace, hoping for any false sense of peace to fall into.

This was only going to become stranger.

I felt anger burn in my chest and erupted, "NO." I pushed him back, "This is insane, YOU'RE INSANE." I stepped away to create any distance I could between us.

The sea outside churned and the sky darkened.

"I'M NOT INSANE," he shouted, "AND I'M TIRED OF EVERYONE IN MY LIFE TRYING TO DIMINISH ME FOR THE VERY REAL THINGS THAT ARE OUT THERE."

I challenged him, "WHAT REAL THINGS? WHERE?! WHERE IS THIS DANGER THAT YOU ARE CONSTANTLY CREATING AND TRYING TO SAVE EVERYONE FROM?"

We continued arguing for several minutes, until I couldn't fight anymore. My face was raw with my own saltwater and my shoulders felt heavy. I gave in and succumbed to whatever sense of synthetic security I could feel. After some time, he spoke.

"Look out at the sea," he said musing, "it's calmed."

He was right. The once stormy setting was now placid, like the day after an episode from an abusive lover.

"Did you see that? It did NOTHING but rage and storm while we were arguing, while you were freaking out, but you're calm and it's PLACID." I stared back bewildered.

"Are you trying to tell me I controlled the weather?" My stare remained hard with disbelief as he replied,

"Yes. This is what I've been trying to tell you, this world, all of us in it, nothing is what it seems and we have power- real power- over it. And THEY don't want us to wake up."

I looked down at the ground and then out at the sea as once again he came toward me to embrace me. I did my best to accept it through the confusion.

"Who are They?" I asked.

"You know who They are. Everyone does." He scoffed, "They are the faceless shadows behind every plot to enslave every man, woman, and child. They are the puppetmasters in the background controlling everyone with bread and circuses like they have since Rome was standing. They're very real, and They're very aware, which means we need to be too."

"How??"

He turned his heel to walk out into the next room. I did not follow.

I gave serious consideration to what he'd said.

Was our world really not what it seemed?

Where was the line between tin foil conspiracy and sterling silver truth?

I imagined it had to be a pretty expansive line, but I had to admit, I wasnt sure.

Since being led down the rabbit hole, I was open to finding out.

In that moment of thought, I found myself distracted when in the corner of my eye, I saw a child.

The child was sitting, made of smoke no less, in the corner of the spare room I was standing in.

"Alright," I mused, "I'm not sure what's going on, but I'm following."

I approached the child. It looked terrified of something, and before I could get too close, he vanished.

I grabbed a sage bundle and lit it, with intention to try to cleanse any evil and unwanted presences.

What a fool, I was, thinking I was in control.

I believed in God, even then, but I was ignorant, misguided, and malnourished educationally when it came to following His will...

And here we were, fighting in a spiritual combat zone, in a house we had just moved into.

Nothing was as it seemed, and yet everything was real.

"Hey," I said gently to the next smokey child I saw, "It's okay. What are you afraid of?"

It too vanished like the last.

More and more children appeared and vanished just like the last, but they all seemed to be leading me to the answer to the very question I kept asking.

What are you afraid of?

They led me to a bathroom, of all rooms, where I saw a woman standing in the tub, protecting two children -one on either side of her- and I asked the woman,

"What are you all hiding from?"

She looked up behind me, to the right.

I was not prepared for the world my partner was trying to show me.

I was not prepared for the horror they, or maybe even They, were trying to show me.

I looked up to meet what the shadow woman was watching with wonderment and fear.

A being, both visible and invisible, made of overlapping, spinning wheels somehow echoed in the corner. It spoke through vibrations in a low language I could not understand.

In that moment, certainly, I thought it was evil. Was it just evil because I didn't understand it? Maybe I was the evil one? Whose side was I actually on, despite intention, in what particular battle?

-For we do not fight against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, and against rulers of darkness.-

I held my incensed sage stick up to it, and said firmly, "Get out."

It did not yield.

I repeated, naively believing that I was in control still, "GET OUT. YOU'RE NOT WELCOME HERE."

It laughed.

Slowly and steadily, my sage bundle extinguished.

I was trying to fight fire with fire without even knowing it.

I backed up out of the bathroom.

"HEY," I called to my partner, "WE HAVE A SITUATION, HERE."

"I'm dealing with something, myself," he called back.

I went to find him, and he was laying on a bed, paralyzed.

"What's going on??" I asked.

"I can't move. Everything feels...cold."

"What? Okay...don't panic..."

Was I telling him, or myself?

Wasn't he supposed to be the experienced one in this department, and I the rookie?

I should have been praying, but instead, I panicked. I went to find more blankets.

I wrapped him and bundled him to try to stop the shivering. After some time, it worked, and we left to investigate the living room.

He began to hum a melody, low and sickly sweet, and the melody crept from his utterance to my brain like a vine, twisting and curving around the wrinkles in my brain, echoing.

"What is that?" I asked, "where did that come from?"

"Its the bass line melody to 'No Apology' by Nirvana. I don't know why," he answered, "it always comes into my head when I go on these kinds of excursions."

It continued to echo in my brain.

"All in all is all we are," he sang, "and that's what They want us to forget."

"What's that, exactly?"

"That we are in everything and that everything is in us." He sat lazily in an armchair, seemingly breaking free from the chaos we were just entrapped in.

"You look like the devil, sitting like that."

He smiled, playfully, "Because I'm so devilishly handsome."

No, that wasn't it, but I was deeply unsettled by what just transpired. The enemy can use anyone, just as God can.

-Get behind me, Satan, you are a stumbling block to me.-

"So, how do we fight, then? How do we fight this force that we can't identify?"

"You have to be willing to give up everything to do so, but the problem is that no one is anymore. We used to understand that winning took sacrifice. Look at the great World Wars, look at the Revolutions, we knew who our enemy was, and now They've got us fighting each other. It takes sacrifice to save millions."

This was the wrong thing to tell me.

I began looking around the room, as I pondered, and images that once bled into the background started to focus into the foreground. Skulls. Sacrifice. Selflessness. Die to save everyone. You must die to save the world.

No Apology echoed in my mind slowly and deliberately like a war drum.

They had infiltrated our system, I was under attack, and I had no armor on.

-Put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to withstand the wiles of the devil.-

Tears started flooding down my face.

"What's wrong?" He asked me, fearfully.

I stared blankly and said nothing.

Tears continued to fall.

"What's going on?" He asked me, urgently.

Silently, I started to walk to the room where we had left our weapon.

It didn't even take him a minute before he figured it out.

But I was already at the doorframe.

"NO!" He roared and ran toward me.

I stopped and stared.

The weapon had been disassembled.

"I....forgot I did that."

He stared at it and I looked back at him, wild eyed,

"What's going on?" I asked tearfully.

He stared in disbelief,

"I disassembled the weapon. Something told me to before we started this."

God. That was the only answer I had.

"WHAT WERE YOU THINKING??"

He demanded with fear in his eyes, and mine sobbed back,

"I ...don't know...I thought I had to sacrifice myself ..to..."

"OH my ...no. No."

Finally, a real embrace with comfort was given and accepted.

How bad could he be, if he pre-emptively saved my life?

-Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.-

"Here, let me show you something to better explain all of this," he pulled out an old cell phone.

"Shit. It's on 1% battery."

"Well, it'll never make it, you lose cell signal anyway here, and we dont know where your charger is. On top of that, it's dying."

"Yeah, but oh well. I'm going to run it until it does die. What can I lose?"

He logged onto YouTube, of all places, and started searching for a tutorial.

"A video game?" I asked incredulously.

"NOT just a video game," he replied with a smirk, "It actually doubles as a metaphor. Maybe even a guide. You'll see."

He pulls up a video and we sit to watch it together. It looks relatively simple, not unique to any game I've seen before, and yet I'd never heard of the game in question.

The host spoke deliberately but bored,

"This is a good game, definitely one of my favorites, but there's some tips and tricks about it you're going to want to know if you want to have the best experience playing it,"

As he spoke, the game play went on in the background. A character moved across a platform covered in what looked like many different symbols.

"...You know these characters, you've known these characters your whole life. Pay attention to them, they're going to help you on you quests later on, and generally help you be better as you learn more. ...These symbols? They're everywhere. You know them, remember them, they're going to be important later.

...Ope, here we go. Yep," he started to sound somehow even more bored than he did previously, "Check it out, using a sword...uh huh...yep, that's how combat works in this game. Let's move on..."

I interrupt, "I don't understand how this relates to the mission at hand."

"Then listen, you're missing it," he snaps.

"I can't miss it if I don't understand, all I'm asking is for you to give some clarity,"

"Right but I can't give you that clarity if we're on 1 PERCENT AND HES TALKING,"

"WHY ARE YOU YELLING? I JUST ASKED A QUESTION!"

"...Yep...that's how combat works in this game."

We froze.

We looked up at each other in horror and back at the screen. It had not only reverted back in the sequence, but paused.

Neither one of us had touched the phone.

"See?" He probed with a hissing whisper.

The video continued.

"What just happened?" I demanded.

"Everything I've been trying to explain to you just revealed itself."

"But what just HAPPENED?" I panicked, "the video just REWOUND AND PAUSED."

"YEAH I'M NOT GOING TO LIE I DON'T ALWAYS GET IT EITHER BUT FOR GOODNESS SAKE JUST FOLLOW ALONG"

"...Yep...that's how combat works in this game"

We stopped.

It was paused again at the exact same spot.

"Okay," I said, "I'm listening."

The video remained paused.

"...go on?"

Still nothing.

"I'm sorry," I insisted. "Please, continue."

Silence.

"We're sorry," my partner sighed.

The video started back from the beginning.

"This is a good game, definitely one of my favorites, but there's some tips and tricks about it you're going to want to know if you want to have the best experience playing it."

"I'm listening," I said.

The video continued.

"Let's talk characters. You're going to run into tons of them throughout the game, and they're all important. Just because they're NPCs doesn't mean you should write them off. This one: the love interest, this one: the father figure, this one: the age old best friend, those are all obvious, but then you've got characters like kooky neighbor, offbeat sidekick, and even random stranger. They ALL HELP YOU LEVEL UP. You know these characters, you've known these characters your whole life. Pay attention to them, they're going to help you on you quests later on, and generally help you be better as you learn more."

"Look at these symbols, we've been seeing these all day," my partner pointed out.

"Next were going to talk about the symbols all throughout the game play. You might think at face value these are just symbols but THEY'RE NOT. Once again, they're keys to help you figure out where you need to go next and subsequentially where you should not go. These symbols? They're everywhere. You know them, remember them, they're going to be important later."

"Your phone...how is it doing that? It's been on 1% for like 5 minutes, it never stays that long," I asked.

"I don't know. I think it's the video. I think this is a message we need to hear."

"Now, combat is a necessary evil, like it is in any game. This is the most boring part of the game. Do you need it to level up, yes, but there is so much more to the game than combat and honestly if all you get out of the game is combat you're missing out, but let's run the tutorial anyway so you get a basic idea. Ope. Yeah...check it out, using a sword...uh huh...yep, that's how combat works in this game. Let's move on...

The way to finish the game, and honestly the POINT of the game is to make the most amount of connections with all of the characters and determine the meaning of all of the symbols because like I said in the beginning, all of it matters. Everything is interconnected. The way to get the best experience out of this game is just to do good to all of the characters, don't like, experiment with doing mean or stupid stuff for the fun of it, and learn all you can about the world you're immersed in.

I really hope this helps, and I hope you have as much fun as I did. Later."

The phone died.

We stared at it for a minute, and then back up at each other.

"So that's it, then?" I asked.

"Wow. Yeah. I think that message was clear. That's how we win against Them."

-Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.-