Chapter 1

There he stood on a precipice, his dreams laid out before him, and all it would take was one simple action.

“I can do this!” he said to himself, repeating the mantra over and over. Each time more forceful than the last, louder and louder until he was bellowing it to the heavens above him.

But, what if he couldn’t. The thought had crept in through his defenses like a thief in the night, silent and unbidden. He tried to push the errant thought away, but like a stone mired in the earth, it refused to budge. In fact, it was getting larger, darker, more imposing and inside him doubt grew. With each breath, each attempt at his mantra of resolve, his words grew softer, more uncertain. No matter how certain he had been before, that this time, unlike all the others he would actually go through with his plan he just couldn’t bring himself to take the final step; that last leap of faith.

His fingers smashed Alt + F4, probably harder than they should have, his web browser blinking out of existence, replaced quickly by the desktop behind it. He could have pressed “X”, but this felt more forceful, more final, and he realized a moment later, a mistake.

“What the hell was I thinking?” he sighed, loudly to no one in particular.

His thoughts raced a mile a minute. He was so sure this time he could do it. Why was this so hard? The answer never came, no matter how many times he pondered that question. Glancing down at the clock on his computer, he realized he had made yet another mistake.

”Fuck…” he said under his breath, ”Is it really that late already?”

He had work in the morning, early, as usual. He couldn’t keep staying up until 3:00 AM every night putting himself through this. He was getting sloppy, his exhaustion causing him to make stupid mistakes he couldn’t afford to make. His coworkers were now noticing. This charade was over now though. With this, his most recent failure, he was done, that much he was certain of. No more of this, what had become his nightly ritual for the past several months. Closing the lid on his laptop, he headed off to bed. Hopefully the few hours of sleep he could muster before work would be enough; there were deadlines to meet after all. As he laid his head down on his pillow, and as his mind crossed into unconsiousness, he swore he heard someone say, “Good.”

The workday was a flurry of meetings, projects, and check-ins from useless middle managers with much less work than anyone else, and with much more time to waste. Somehow he made it through without making more than a few minor mistakes, and while he was glad to be home, now he had a new set of tasks to complete. Dishes needed washing, laundry needed doing, and the house… well, cleaning was kind of an understatement as to what needed to happen on that front.

He wasn’t messy by nature, but depression had caused his life to fall into a routine of work, come home, try to muster motivation to do what needed to be done. Eventually failing at finding the motivation, and “watching” television until he inevitably passed out. All of this meant that he really wasn’t taking care of himself or his needs, let alone his wants. Wants ... what a funny thing those were these days. He didn’t know when it started, but he had been wanting something, something different lately, and he didn’t know how to feel about it. It had kept him up at night, day after day, week after week, and now, month after month. What he wanted now… well, what he wanted now was not something that a 28 year old man should want, or at least that’s what he told himself. It made no sense how this even came about! He wasn’t a child for gods-sake. He had no fear of the dark, he wasn’t having nightmares. Yet, all he wanted, all he could think about night after night, was about buying a stuffed animal. It was stupid, it was silly, even inane, and yet, it’s what he wanted most. Yet the more he fought this desire, the harder it struck back at him, dominating his thoughts, refusing to give him any reprieve. He had to put a stop to this, he needed to find a way to get this weird desire out of his mind.

“Maybe if I go back to the beginning, I can figure out where the hell this even came from.” he thought aloud, eyes closed in concentration.

“Couldn’t hurt, now could it?” said a voice deep, masculine and yet vaguely familiar.

”No, no it couldn’t.” he replied. Then the alarm bells went off.