#since read mores don't work on this godforsaken app

[deblklesb]

Maybe reader goes into a full autistic/neurodivergent shutdown and Abby helps reader?

(disclaimer: I'll describe it based on my personal experience with shutdowns and also on what I've seen some people sharing. not all autistic people have the same experience, please keep that in mind)

i just KNOW abby would be so so supportive and caring with you!

like depending on the au she could have more or less knowledge about autism, i think doctor!abby could have more experience after appointments with autistic patients and etc. (she went out of her way to learn more in order to create a better experience to them), but either way would first and foremost ask you in simple questions about what you need, as in presenting options for you that doesn't need too much to think about.

"Want me to stay with you?"

"Hey, I brought water for you, babe. I'll leave the bottle in the bedside table"

"You need to eat, bun. I'll bring something for you okay?"

She'll get your favorite food. And if there's none in the house (most of the times you don't run out of your comfort food, but anything can happen) she calls for some delivery - she's not leaving you the first times because she doesn't know what you might need.

The lights bother you even more in shutdowns, so she'll have just one light on in the house, maybe the bathroom because it's central, or the kitchen because it's farther from your room. Sometimes you like to watch your favorite show or favorite movie on and on, so she tries not to interrupt.

There are times when you specifically ask her to stay with you, and so she does. If working next to you it's okay, she can lay down by your side and do some, just the very necessary, before giving you her undivided attention. At this point she also knows some lines of the movies, and so she repeats them along and laughs with you.

Abby is a-okay with being your personal weight blanket. Sometimes you just need her to lay on top of you, between your legs, and she stays there happily. You love how warm she is, and that she lets you stim caressing her skin and making braids on her hair over and over.

Once you got months without a shutdown, so when it came it made you so frustrated and nervous. Abby got home to find you laying on the floor due to the very hot day, face swollen with tear trails, only panties on your body; your skin was directly in contact with the cold ground as you looked at the TV.

"Hey, babe", she said, putting the keys on the table. When you didn't answer, she left her bag at the corridor and took out the shoes, coming closer. She crouched next to you, noticing how you weren't looking at her. "Bun? Are you okay?"

You just shook your head, still looking at the TV. Silent, you pulled your phone closer and wrote on the notes app.

The day was shit. it's too hot so i was sweating all the time and I'm already feeling like crap. my boss was so fucking stupid, he doesn't know how to maintain a good work place and just acts like all ableism is just jokes between co-workers when i distinctively told him it's affecting my job. I can't punch that motherfucker of coworker in the face because i would be fired and i need the job. and on top of all of that, traffic was hell, people kept honking all the time up and down, the chatting in the bus sounded louder than usual and i think my body doesn't want to stay together anymore because of this godforsaken heat.

Her blue eyes, bathed by the cool LED of the TV, wandered around the screen as she read you rant. And then she was seating there, not too close but enough for you to feel her presence.

"I'm so so sorry, bun", she whispered, not touching you. Your feet were brushing against each other, since the sensation soothed you, and the open window let the smallest wind come inside the apartment. "Have you eaten?"

I haven't been able to get up after i showered

"Okay. I'll go take a shower myself and then I'll make us something to eat, alright?"

She was next to you all the time that night. She didn't ask you nothing the whole time, just putting the food for you and then sitting there on the floor so you could eat together. Abby didn't come too close because she knew the temperature wasn't ideal and you both didn't had the money to get an air-conditioning yet, she just stated that you could come to her when you felt comfortable to do so and offered her hand to be held in the mean time.

After an impossible to count amount of time, you rested your head on her thigh, still quiet and watching the cartoon.

"Oh my God, Dooffenschmirtz' building looks so much like Ferb. Like, the shape... I never noticed that before", she muttered more to herself, but the fact brought a chuckle out of you. And as simple as it was, it made her chest a little bit warmer; to see you slowly relaxing and regulating.

"Do you want to sleep on our bed or here on the living room, babe?" She asked after a long time, because it was getting late and soon you'd have to sleep.

The living room was cooler than your room, and the mattress could be so hot during the night you'd wake up all sweaty and sticky - if the heat during the day was painful, waking up on drenched sheets would make you so so much worst. And you had that traveling mattress, you could put it on the floor and stay there for the rest of the night, next to the living room window.

"I can stay on the couch so you won't be alone", she added.

I guess I'll sleep here. We can fix the area to be more comfortable. I'll help you.

You stood slowly and the place was soon being organized to better accommodate you both. She got some pillows and thin sheets, you padded the simple mattress and covered the couch with a duvet to make it more comfortable for Abby.

That night she slept with her hand between yours, and you felt so grateful for having someone that would be with you through those times. You kept caressing her hand with your thumb because the stim was soothing you, untill you fell asleep with some cool wind coming from the restless city night.

[lsdoiphin]

Do you have a place/way to read all the lore posts you've created?

FOR MY GENERAL WORK: I have my pieces/posts tagged by setting, but I don't have any kind of well-kept system beyond that. My tags page can tell you my setting tags (if you're on tumblr mobile you'll have to view this in browser because for some reason this godforsaken website's app doesn't support this major site feature in-app). (Some older projects may contain dated info further back in the tags though since I seldom go back and remove defunct information...)

I've been toying on and off with a neocities to better present some basic information (as well as getting my character profiles updated and off toyhouse) but that has been more of a "in my spare time" effort than an active labor.

If anyone wants a briefing of a specific setting my ask box is open.

FOR FOREVER GOLD STUFF SPECIFICALLY: @broncoburro and I have a tumblr blog at @forevergoldgame where we throw all our art and loreposts and where we will eventually give project updates when Act 1, Part 1 is closer to release. We also have a website that hosts an in-progress cast page and an FAQ and will eventually host the game itself.

(We planned to make a more ceremonious announcement for the devblog and website but we just hadn't gotten around to it yet... it exists though)

[ante--meridiem]

I thought to share that after asking you what are Zettelkasten I finally do have the real usecase now in my uni life... the concepts from different courses are starting to connect and I am struggling in my currect structure-based note taking. So idk, I just... wanted to thank you for introducing the method to me, I really like how the structure and principle itself is simple and I am excited to finally try it out in practice! (you can use this ask to say anything you want about Zettelkasten, I will be obsessed with them for the foreseeable future so any rant you write I will love)

Hey!! Very happy to hear the method might help someone else! Good luck with it and I'd love to hear how it goes, hope it ends up helping you as much as it helped me. For my part right now what I have to say is that building it has slowed down a lot since the beginning since I'm no longer working from a large backlog of things I need to store there (I mean a large backlog of knowledge I haven't put into the Zettelkasten still very much exists but getting through it isn't a current priority and I have most concepts I'm currently actively using already in there) but what is coming up is how useful being able to look things up in it is to keep me from having to retread all my steps whenever I look at something I haven't used in a while (or rather very much speed up the retreading my steps process, since the idea is that rather than having to go "where did this come from?? Let me try to find some other notes that explain it" there will be a link to exactly where it came from!).

I will warn you that Zettlr has recently gotten increasingly buggy with its implementation of LaTeX though (and most frustratingly no longer parses the environment I used to use to make commutative diagrams) so if you haven't picked an app yet I might recommend a different one if you'll be using LaTeX a lot. (Maybe Obsidian? Never tried it myself but I heard good things about it, though it isn't open source like Zettlr is). On a more positive note though the app now does its own graphs to let you see how your notes are connected now! (I don't remember if you were there when I made my "look at my boy" post about this).

Since you wanted to hear me rant, I think I'm just going to copy the text from some meta notes I have in my Zettelkasten on using the Zettelkasten! This will get probably extremely long (and not be reflective of the actual structure of said notes since I'm removing the links and putting multiple notes together into an essay) so only read past here if you really really want to. To imagine the structure this would have in the actual zk, the big headings correspond to organisatorial pages and then each bullet point with a number next to it links to an individual note containing the text I will put under the bullet point; other numbers formatted like this [[insertnumbershere]] are links to other notes outside the scope of this essay but I'm not editing them out so you can see how/when I link things. On that note some of this may be difficult to follow because I use my own vocabulary that I've built up in linked notes; if you (or anyone else who for some godforsaken reason decides to read this) actually read enough to want explanations please shoot another ask!

Also obviously these rules are rules for me adjusted by me, the whole point of the system is flexibility to adjust to your thinking style so don't feel tied to them or anything. Also disclaimer again that this was written for me to be read/understood solely by me and may be very hard to follow for anyone else, so take what you can from it if you feel like it.

Rules for Zettelkasten

Atomicity [[20220807142537]]

"Concept" is loosely defined [[20220125144819]]; when dealing with a packed concept, atomicity requires that zettel deals only with how to bring the strands together, and not the details of each individual strands. Where the details are relevant they can be brought in through links to a zettel dealing solely with that strand. Allowed exception: "organizatorial" zettels that exist to list multiple examples/manifestations of concept. Maths zettels may require proof with many components. If component can be separated neatly as lemma, make new zettel for it. If component does not make sense independently, split proof into steps and make each step a sub-section of zettel.

Connectivity [[20220807142751]]

Links

Links must be meaningful. A basic topic can be linked if it has significant relevance to the concept of the current zettel. Significant relevance means the structure of the current concept mirrors [[20220524234710]] or is induced [[20220531114751]] from the structure of the linked concept. Mechanistically important details can be elaborated on in footnote. This implies linked zettels should be similar in complexity; significantly less complex concepts are likely to play only a mechanistic role in more complex concepts. "Similar" does not mean equal; natural tendency for links to go from high complexity to low complexity is inevitable and shouldn't be eliminated. Probably best to keep those steps reasonably small. Good if a zettel can link to similar complexity concepts. Practical strategy to ensure it: if simpler concept can be reached following chain of links, do not link directly. Sometimes there is no direct link between concepts, but there is a parallel; in these cases create extra zettel in which to note parallel. (Think of like coproduct [[20220523141540]] in category theory.)

Tags

Tags offer indirect connection of grouping many zettels under same concept. If too many zettels are grouped this way, no longer useful as connection. Need broad range of specificity in tags, from tags that are direct enough to offer a similar degree of connection to actual links, to tags so broad they serve primarily to count how many zettels there are under a particular topic.

Emergence [[20220807143006]]

Structures should emerge naturally from connectivity. For this to occur it's necessary for a lot of connections to be formed; amount of links should be maximised up to constraints given by other rules. Structures should not be forced, but you should know how to note and make record of what appears. Example of structure emerging is zettels being linked to zettels close in level of complexity Organizatorial zettels add some level of structure Concept sinks [[20220223141256]] are another form of structure that may emerge. While some concept sinks may be important, best to avoid allowing basic/trivial concepts to become concept sinks; this can be done by strictly enforcing need for meaningfulness in links.

(note for tumblr users reading this: a "concept sink" is what I call a note that gets notably much much more links than the average note, presumable because a lot of concepts lead back there)

Top-down [[20220807143415]]

Emergence [[20220807143006]] often referred to as "bottom up" construction; however, exists also use for top down construction. Easier to assure connectivity [[20220807142751]] by starting with a "bigger" concept (in "packed concept" [[20220125144819]] terms) and filtering into smaller sub-concepts; sub-concepts guaranteed at least connection to bigger concept, so there is somewhere clear to go. Could refer to this as top-down construction.

Interest/Relevance [[20220807144743]]

Zettels should not be dictionary entries. If there is nothing interesting/new to say about an idea, there is no need for a zettel just to state its definition. If an idea is not interesting but offers a useful link, use a tag. Exception to rule 1 made in mathematics and other areas where definitions are essential Amendment: Definitions may play same role in zettelkasten as primary data

Modes of Use Zettelkasten

Extracting knowledge from memory [[20220322161655]]

Introspection is the process of bringing information already internalised [[20220316215442]] back to consciousness to be re-assessed or recontextualised. (Usually the word is used to refer to information about self that was originally processed subconsciously). Requires ability to block out external stimuli to avoid distraction [[20220124155258]], but cannot occur well under overwhelment [[20220204212805]] as by the time that occurs all processing powers have been exhausted. Re-contextualisation allows building new connections, either between things previously seen as disparate, or between the concept being brought to the surface and things that have been discovered after it was first internalised. [[20220127164837]] Zettelkasten can aid introspection by using links to bring things back to the surface that would not otherwise have been remembered.

Establishing new knowledge from external source [[20220316215442]]

Information is integrated when it is allowed to pass from "out" state to "in" state of membrane [[20220124155258]]. Once in "in" state, it should be easily accessed and incorporated into mental processes. Bringing information into "in" state requires:

Binding [[20220125144819]] - concepts of a certain complexity require ability to be seen as units to be integrated; otherwise, they will contain too many parts for brain to hold at once, and attempting to may lead to overwhelment [[20220204212805]].

Membrane must be open to letting information pass through.

Easier to integrate if it builds on [[20220127164837]] already existing structure - e.g. answers question prompted by pre-integrated information.

Creating new ideas/conclusions [[20220322161655]] Reviewing external source Editing Finding specific note Reading/exploring [[20230124150130]]

Ways of exploring:

Begin in register. Refresh main concepts of a topic and wander down link paths to smaller details. Good for quick refresher but likely to re-tread well known paths. [[20220223141256]]

Look up particular zettel you remember, follow link path to places you don't remember. Risk of leading to dead end quicker than desired.

Pick interesting tag and browse it. More likely to bring up interesting things you don't remember but less focused than previous strategies. Requires good variety & specificity in tag use.

Adding internal structure

[coffee-in-veins]

apologies if you’ve gotten this ask before, but im curious: what do you use for your writing? that is, what program/ site do you write on? (oh and im absolutely loving RRR, keep up the amazing work!)

hey hey thanks for the ask! and don't apologize for those please

first of all - you read RRR? oh, thank you so much for it! it feels so good to know that someone reads what i write! <3 reading this helped me in my day.

short answer: a heavily castrated version of MS Word 2016 in dark version since i write mostly at night with f.lux active and new versions of office make my eyes bleed regardless of colour

long answer:

i write on many things, from notes in my phone if i don't have access to pc due to power shortages, to paper notebooks or napkins (you never know when inspiration strikes), to discord. i guess i'm old fashioned bc i tend to carry notebooks around and it's quicker for me to pen (or rather, pencil, i only write in mechanical pencil) things down than it is to type them. never learned how to type "properly" you see, and eng isn't my native. if we're talking prep before publishing or more in-shelf writing, then currently, it's heavily castrated version of MS Word 2016 in dark version since i write mostly at night with f.lux active. i am looking at LibreOffice now more and more often. have to research their stance on AIs... couldn't find anything so far.

previously, i mostly wrote in paper notebooks and then typed the texts in word and did editing as i went along. then again, it was before this godforsaken AI plague... afterwards i used Grammarly, quite a lot - most of RRR was typed in there. convenient thing, to be honest. or at least, it used to be. some of my things were in Google Docs. unfortunately, now they both grab your things without consent to feed their fucking AIs soo... hard pass from me, and only apps which were butchered in a way that they would not be able to reach the internet.

then again, i post my things on ao3 and tumblr which are constantly scrapped for data... honestly, i try not to think about it too much, because layered on top of everything else it just makes me dissociate.

but hope it answers the question! :} feel free to ask more!

[bates--boy]

He set the collection of mice skulls in the tin bowl and stared at them. They looked like tiny, discolored stones carved with holes, more cutesy Halloween decoration than the product of hours of trapping prey in the alley between his flat and the next. And the skinning.

Oh, god, the skinning...

At least his anaconda is set for snacks for the next couple weeks. But there were bits of clarity in his exhaustion and mild panic where he wondered if this would even work with rodent skulls. The only reason he even had them was because he didn't feel right taking ones from the corpses of the primates that passed in the animal center, and he had to save the questionably legally-acquired human ones for later in case this did work.

Because that was what this hesitation came to: the fact that this might not work. The man knew he was being driven by a moment of asphyxiation and an eternity of hallucination, but those souls...their voices...

YOU ARE WRONG

They still crawled over his skin, breathed against the back of his neck, still thundered in his head and made the very little sleep he tried to attain impossible. He still felt that black hole inhaling, trying to swallow his screaming form and those unfortunate, judgemental souls.

What was he wrong about?

He eyed his set-up on the dining room table, checking off the list in his head, and leaned forward to switch on the camera.

"To anyone who may be viewing this: hello. I'm Peter Kirkland, and today, I'm here to answer a question as old as time, itself: what happens after we die?

"As an atheist, my answer was once and always: nothing." He shrugged. "Nothing at all. But, er, there have been some recent developments..."

He thought about the conversation with Matthew, of heads rolling across floors.

He thought about the cycles of regeneration Roderich went through under the unforgiving ocean.

He thought about how he had to carry Roderich back to his hotel room, and wait in a corner until the man came back to life.

He thought about those stories of children claiming memories they were much too young to have, past lives returning to them.

He thought about the black hole, the howling, hungry black hole.

"...that made me wonder if the answer was as simple as emptiness beyond here. Now, don't get me wrong: I'm still an atheist. Truthfully, I don't see how religion would tie into this. Or anything requiring rationality, really. Heh, there goes my angry atheist joke for the day." He tipped an invisible fedora to the camera.

"And now, to make myself absolutely hypocritical, I have here a sort of necromancy equipment." He reached to the camera and turned it at different angles to show the bowl of skulls resting on a trivet, the vials and tubes, the pile of notes, the candles and lighters, and the plasma separator machine.

"But this has less to do with merely communicating with the dead, and more with entering their plane."

He returned the camera back to its place eon the tripod and shrugged. "Now, whether or not that means I may die, I don't know. That does seem like the only outcome of this, doesn't it? 'We all die someday', and hell, today might be my day!" He tried to chuckle, but ended up nibbling on his lip.

He picked up the notes stacked on the corner of the table. "Anyway..."

He gave a brief outline of his theories, some stuff about plasma and energy and stars that sounded more like hopeful sci-fi the longer he spouted it to the camera. After, he wrapped the rubber tourniquet around his upper left arm, struggling to tie it near and tight one handed.

Like the many medical videos he'd watch, he practically doused his inner elbow with rubbing alcohol and pressed his fingers about, looking for that sweet spot. "God damn, it's always so hard to find. Semper Do to my nurses who had to struggle with me." He gave the camera a fleeting, awkward smile.

There. It thumped through his flesh, popping against his fingertips. Okay. Okay. He picked up the needle and flicked off the protective cap. The metal was cool against his skin.

...Okay, he was pushing the syringe in...

...On the count of three, he will push the syringe in... One...two...

...He just needed to take a deep breath, and he'll be able to stick it in.

He inhaled, held it, exhaled. Inhaled, held, exhaled. Inhaled, held, exhaled. Inhaledheldexhaled, inhaledheldexhaled, inhaledexhaled inhaledexhaledinhaledexhaledinhaledexhaledgoddamnitdoitforscienceinhaledexhaledinhaledexhaled

"AAAAAGH!" He squeezed his eyes shut and forced his fist up.

He cracked them open. The needle was stabbed through, with only minor drops of blood bubbling up at the injection site. It'll have to do, so he connected the syringe's tube to the vials' stoppers, one at a time, his body overcome with shakes as he watched his blood run down the sides of his elbow as well as fill the plastic containers.

He gave the vials a shake and set them in the separator machine. While that was at work, Peter bandaged his wound and cleaned up his spills, then downed a half bottle of sports drink, at least whatever he could drink past his quivering lip as he lied down on the couch to recover.

The centrifuging was complete, and Peter returned to the table. He retrieved the tubes and, using the same needle as before, he drew out the plasma from the cells vial by vial, and pushed it out into the bowl. He capped the needle as a precaution and took a moment to lay his hands flat on the table and breathe.

"Next step," he said mostly to himself, reaching for the lighter and a votive candle, "Fire!"

He put the lit candle in its hold under the bowl's trivet, and set the rest of the candles around the vulgar set-up. "Oh, these candles make me feel like I should set some mood music. What music would even be appropriate for this?" He looked off into the distance, grimacing. "Hmm... Death metal? Nah, too cliched."

Still, he was sure that this practice required some silence, so Peter let the joke pass and reviewed his notes one more time, coming to the slips of paper with the procedure he created.

1: Establish a channel.

Wait until the plasma comes to a gentle boil. The steam will be the gas like the ones that make up stars, the candles the fire that make them glow. This will be beacon to you, the skull will be the home for them.

Make sure all distractions are removed; there is no telling what may scare off souls. ("Oh, I guess music was a no-go, anyway," Peter murmured.)

2: Connect

Relax your body to a state of semi-sleep (asphyxiate again?? Give meditation a try)

Place hands as close to the beacon as possible without disturbing it

Mimic the black hole noise

3: Collect information

Invite the sound to take you to their plane

Ask for names and stories

Mingle, I guess

He wished he had thought this through more. Nevertheless, he laid his hands flat between two candles and closed his eyes. He breathed through his nose and out his mouth, gagged at the taste of his own plasma burning in front of him, and tried again. He went back to that place, that void, that place of condemnation and confusion. The bumps returned to his skin as he waded through the screaming of souls, as he faced the ruling entity in his mind, the one that swallowed the dead and existing like smoke from a cigarette.

In the hallucination, when he was right there in front of it, the black hole screeched destruction and vengeance, it howled with an insatiable frenzy, it crackled like the unending fire that it was, making even the frightened cries of the souls it consumed mute and damn near rendered Peter deaf.

But when he recollected that moment of looking the end in its blinding and dark face, when he thought he would lose his voice trying to scream louder than it...

A hum. It was a breathless hum, a droning and tuneless lullaby to soothe the frightened children to sleep.

It had to be wrong. It had to! Nothing so soft could inspire what Peter felt in that place!

Yet Peter leaned back in his chair, and felt the hum reverberate in his chest.

The heat from the candles traveled through his fingertips and up his arms, the warmth crawling up his neck and brushing across his face. The darkness behind his closed kids thickened, almost like time was easing towards night. In the calm, Peter had wished that he used scented candles so the smell of his very essence burning didn't choke him and made him nauseous, but he was slowly getting used to the smell, that the sensation of it clogging up his throat lessened the more he hummed and leaned his head back...

WHOAREWHATDOYOUTHINKYOU'REAREYIUDOINGHERE?!

Peter's head snapped forward, his eyes popping open. He had to stop himself from toppling his chair over as existence flickered around him. He watched as his home, gray with not exactly darkness but still a lightlessness that sucked the life and time out of everything, disappear into that black void. It flickered through the cycle like the flame of a candle, from his flat to the black emptiness to a warping of the two then back to his flat where his bird was so still in his cage but Peter could still hear him go batshit and beating his wings against the bars and above his head in the emptiness was the Black Hole and

He gasped.

Standing before him, phasing in and out of the planes like the planes, themselves, we're switching back and forth, stood the souls. Whether in his flat or in the void, these faceless beings stretched out before him in legions, as far as Peter's watering eyes could see. These beings converged, looming higher, looking down on the heaving young man cowering in his chair. They had no mouths, yet still they screamed

HOWDAREYOUINVADEWHOAREYOUWHERESMYMOMMYDEIDREDEIDREWHEREAREYOUDUMBFUCKRUNBEFORETHEBLACKHOLE

Peter presses his hands to his ears, clawing his nails into the back of his head. Too many...there were too many.

THEBLACKHOLEISHUNGRYRUNWHYAMIHEREWHOAREALLOFISTHISHEAVEN

What were once beads of sweat trickling down his nose and cheeks was now a full layer of sticky sweat plastering his hair to his forehead, drenching the front of his shirt until the collar hung heavy. He swallowed, gasping and blubbering, his lungs searching for fresh, cool air, but only finding the stench of his plasma and heat -- god, the heat of these souls! The candles were pointless! He's being burned alive. These souls drew closer to him and they were nothing but fire and burning energy and they didn't care that this whimpering bastard curled up in his chair was being roasted down to his bones!

THISISWHATIGETFORFIGHTINGINTHEWARYOUAREWRONGYOUAREWRONGDOYOUKNOWMAGNUSYOUAREWRONGYOUAREWRONGYOUAREWRONG

He pressed his hands harder against his face. A droplet ran down the bridge of his nose, and he couldn't tell if it was sweat or a tear.

CANYOUHELPMEFINDMYDADDYTHEVIEWFROMHALFWAYDOWNYIUAEWWROMGYIUAREWRONGYOUAREWRONG

God, make it stop--

Peter?

Peter opened his eyes and lowered his hands. That voice. Through the devastation of these numberless voices that crashed through him like stars and asteroids, he knew that voice. The gentle, loving one, the one that sang him lullabies and told him stories of places afar and promised him a happy home when the war planes stopped flying over his fort. The family he had before he knew what family was.

He whipped his head about, searching these faceless entities. "Marion?!"

Peter!

"Marion!" Peter shot out of his chair, standing on his toes and craning his sweat-soaked neck out as if that would help him seek her out among this cruel, burning mass.

"Marion, I--!"

The flickering worsened, but he found that the flat he lived in stayed longer and time tried to continue. No, no no no, the channel! He had to keep the channel open!

Peter lit more candles, replacing the one under the tin bowl, and grabbed for the needle-- shit, where was it?! He looked for the needle he used-- god damn it, where was it, where was it?! He looked all over the table, under the mess of papers and discarded candles. The souls, the ones he hated and wished was swallowed up by that damn Black Hole flashing in and out of existence above him, started fading. Along with her voice.

"No!" He wailed, his voice hoarse. He looked down at his hands, blinking rapidly to keep the sweat out of his eyes.

And then he bit himself.

His teeth sunk into the tender flesh under his thumb, stabbing deeper until his blood filled his mouth. He spat it into the still heated bowl. The souls' fading stopped, though they still flickered. He bit into the flesh between his thumb and forefinger, sucking until he choked on the blood that he had to spit out into the bowl. The mice skulls turned dark.

Peter, what are you doing?!

He chomped down on the opposite palm, and his wrists, and up his arms, sucking, spitting, choking, crying, screaming through his own skin and meat he had between his teeth. The flickering between planes slowed. Everything slowed, except for hi is rapidly blinking eyes Peter tried to maintain consciousness. Her voice stopped fading.

Peter, please stop!

The darkness of sleep and the darkness of the void were indistinguishable as Peter collapsed into it.