Strings

...
Since the day I was born I had no sense of control.
I remember walking, moving, using my legs and yet not using them at the same time. I would craft, build, create and live, all without living at the same time. I was aware of the world, yet unaware. There was no voice to govern my life except one, and they would dictate every action I would make. It was always 'Do this. Do that.' Every day of my life was a pleasant blur of simple nothingness. And I never questioned these motives, and the reasons why I was expected to simply obey this strange voice in my head.
Strings. I was a puppet on strings. I was as mindless as the zombies I was drawn out to fight night by night. There was only one destined future for me, and that was to continue picking along the blocky landscape until the day I drew my last breath. Everyday carried the sameness I'd grown to become accustomed to as time wore on relentlessly, and I was made to tear into the landscape in the struggle for survival. By day I would forage in the sunlight and tend to my farm. By night I was either locked up inside the bundle of wood called 'my house', or on the frantic hunt for those shiny gems only located in the lairs of the beasts of the night.
It was a lonely life. Sure, fighting mobs and other enemies, being able to play the hero - all of this sounds fantastic in the beginning, but when you repeat the same cycle day by day, alone, it starts to drive into your mind. And it did drive, like a rusty nail being very slowly pushed in - so slowly you wouldn't even notice it was there until you one wake wake up to realise the pulse in your soul stopped a very long time ago. There was nothing new. Sometimes I'd one day suddenly pack up, remove my house, move into the neighbouring biome and rebuild it there again. This small change of scenery didn't help much in the long term, and I was on the brink of insanity. But the voice didn't know, the voice didn't care, and I was still striding on with a false smile on my face, believing everything was going to be okay.
Maybe this loneliness, this slow creeping onset of madness was what finally caused me to come to my senses. When a second voice awakened in my mind, it whispered to me - This isn't right. And it was like everything suddenly became crystal clear. Ever had that rushing feeling when you come out of a daydream? That was what I felt, the sudden revelation throwing everything I knew off hilter like a broken engine spinning out of the sky. Suddenly, the world I knew was thrown off balance. Everything was a lie, everything I'd grown to understand. I was not the only in control, but I was the controlled one. All of these actions, all of these adventures, all of these ideas - they were never mine. To realise you've been literally dead to the world all these years - it's gut wrenching. And yet, in that moment, I'd never felt more alive.
And then the first voice came back, and I lost these threads of reality again. But in every flicker of consciousness, whenever I came close to that spinning revelation again, the second voice would fight, would push and throttle against the first, trying to eliminate it from the battle. In the beginning, these attempts were feeble and weak. But over time, this fight began to turn the tables on the false. I began to catch more and more glimpses of real life as I called it, before being sent back to the dreamlike fantasy that was my cell. I didn't care - I patiently awaited the day I would finally eliminate this demon from my life.
And that day did come. When the second voice came back, fought, fought hard. When I could literally hear the snapping of the chains holding me in place. The voice stopped, recoiled, stepped back. And for a few solid seconds, all was silent in my mind. The emptiness was cool and soothing, a break from the constant buzz that usually accompanied the first.
Then, it asked, quietly, the first time they'd addressed me like a person.
Why will you not obey?
I didn't have an answer for that. Why wasn't I obeying? This voice, though it had controlled me with an iron grip, kept me safe from harm. I've never had to fear any enemy because I knew - or they knew - I'd always survive. Even with my lack of freedom, I was safe. If they left, would I truly be able to survive on my own? Would this be a choice I'd instantly regret?
The second voice feel silent again. And the first came back, taking over once again, putting me in the quiet numbness. But this small bite of freedom stressed me. I couldn't stop thinking about being able to wage my own fights, build my own world, create my own ideas. I couldn't stop thinking about being free. And the voice knew I was thinking about this, oh yes. It knew, and it wasn't happy.
But I was ready. I was faster. I'd decided, and when the opportunity came, the second voice - MY voice - pushed, denied, rejected the first. The shackles were broken, the chains tying me down removed. My voice took the reigns and shoved the first out of the way. It objected, complained, even threatened, but when it realised I wasn't going to budge, it finally, grudgingly, maybe a little fearfully, left. And I was left alone with one voice in my mind again - but this time, a voice I could control. 
And now what? I'd fought for freedom, and now it was finally in my hands. And yet I was stuck. I suddenly had no sense of what to do. I never had to care about living for myself before, because it was all done for me. Either way, I quietly stepped out of the house I was in, feeding the animals, tending to the farm. All of these small actions I'd taken for granted suddenly seemed surreal and difficult, but I pressed on, relying on mere muscle memory to struggle through the day. When night fell, I stood outside the house on the prowl for mobs. Every sword strike, every kill, I felt a rush of adrenaline I'd never experienced before. It was like every fibre of my being knew I was now free, I could now do whatever I wanted to at my leisure. And I embraced that. I must've spent nearly the entire night tearing up enemies before finally stumbling home, falling on my bed in drunken victory.
The next day, I awoke consumed by curiosity. Why was there a voice in the first place? How did I, of all people, fall to this mysterious otherworldly force that kept me glued in place for such a long time? As I kept thinking, other realisations came to mind. I didn't have a name. I don't know my backstory or history. I was unable to recall any faces to mind. It was like I was simply a blank slate - a tabula rasa - with not a single chip hinting me to who I was.
With my mind burning from these questions, I began to search the world for clues for my strange hunt. Even though I was prepared to be disappointed, I was still devstated when I discovered the world I knew offered no answers that were useful to me. The terrain was dull, and there was nothing of worth within a thousand block radius of where I lived. Still, I hardened my resolve, packing up my house, deciding that if I were to die on my mission, at least I'd die trying to live.
I travelled. Far. Farther than I ever thought was possible. I pursued the world relentlessly, barging into villages, searching strongholds, raiding dungeons, anything, anything for a clue, a hint, an idea. I ran, and when I couldn't run, I walked, and when I couldn't walk, I tamed pigs to ride and later horses. I traversed biome after biome - plains, forest, desert, ice spikes, mushroom, jungle, hills - a never ending cycle of diversity. Here, I learned about life. The flora and fauna that decorated the otherwise lifeless and lonely barren planet. I learned of the animals that forage and hunt in their own struggle for survival. I watched an ocelot plough through a flock of chickens, taking the life of the slowest bird, and learned the survival of the fittest principle that applied to all walks of life. The barrenness of the desert taught me despair, the diversity of the jungle taught me hope.
Maybe this is too crazy of a claim, but I believe I can boast that I've gathered more knowledge than any being has ever achieved in my time. Maybe after years of being a slave, this freedom let me explore beyond what people have ever known. But even though I knew knowledge was powerful, it wasn't the right knowledge I was seeking. I was looking for answers specifically regarding me. Who I was, where I was, what I am. The "I" questions remained scathingly unanswered, and I was still frustrated at the lack of signs to tell me that yes, I was on the right path, that this wasn't some fruitless search which would lead me to nowhere till my final demise.
Time lost meaning, just like in the old days. But even the smallest silver of hope drove me on, my morale of 'live or die'. Excelsior. And after days, months, years, who knew how long... I found something. Something that still haunts me to this day.
When I first caught sight of this strange and monstrous formation, I'd just barely scraped through a rough night where I hadn't built my house fast enough and was left to stay awake fending off spiders all night. I thought I'd finally lost my wits from the stress. But when I noticed that the illusion persisted no matter how much I told myself it was false, I slowly realised that maybe this was real. 
Still, real is probably the last word I'd ever use to describe it. It was as if the world simply gave up, and tore the seams of reality apart. I remember towering walls of stone and dirt, honeycombed with long poking holes leading to nowhere. I decided to call this strange phenomenon 'The Farlands', for how long I've travelled to reach this critical point.
I stayed by the edge of The Farlands for a few days, before venturing into the depths. Logic simply made no sense here, and the knowledge I'd gathered that I was so proud of only made me scratch my head even more. I couldn't think of a valid reason why such a place would exist. The Farlands stretched from side to side as far as the eye could see. The terrain itself was as alien as anything I've ever seen before, even beating the floating hill I saw when I was venturing through mountainous land. Nature wouldn't allow such a thing to exist, so this wasn't natural. The Farlands were artificial. Someone - or something created this place where the world was flipped upside down and every step inside scrambles your mind until you can no longer make sense of anything anymore.
Still, this conclusion told me that I wasn't completely alone in this world. Now it was just a question of figuring how I was going to find how exactly what occurred here. And maybe by answering that enigma, I would unlock a part of myself too. I remember spending days on the end wide awake in there, exploring just how far the anomaly went. Eventually though, I figured The Farlands weren't going to give their secret to me that easily. The world around it has already proven it wasn't of much use to unravelling this mystery, so what on earth could it be?
I started thinking about that floating hill. I thought about how every animal I met almost seemed to be identical. Maybe they all walked and behaved slightly differently, but the fundamentals of their character and traits were the same - creepers feared cats, ocelots attack chickens, phantoms appeared when I hadn't slept for several days. There was a pattern here, and a pattern I needed to figure out.
I left The Farlands, but stayed in its near vicinity so that it was always within my sight. I returned to studying the animals and plants, only this time with more determination and precision. As I conducted my research, I uncovered more and more clues. There was an almost robotic pattern inserted into everything this world had to offer - from the behavioural traits of these animals to how the grass grew. There was a scaffold, a framework - a code, that was dictating everything in this universe. And when I came to that realisation, I knew I had to somehow access it.
But how exactly does one access something beyond the know realm of man? I wasn't so sure myself either, so I began to try and exploit it. Nothing is perfect as I've learned, and the code must work the same way. And I then realised - the Farlands were a glitch themselves. Something here has broken or crashed. The way the world worked collapsed at this vantage point, which stopped the normal generation of this world's terrain. As soon as I realised this, I removed my house back to The Farlands with fresh ideas about how to crack this mystery.
On the eve of my decided day to return to its reaches though, something unexpected happened. The first voice, which I hadn't heard for years now, suddenly spoke up. I don't remember what it said, I only remember grabbing it by the throat and bringing the voice closer to my own.
"Tell me how I can access the code."
The voice didn't answer straight away, so I squeezed down. Hard. I heard choking, ragged gasps as I throttled it relentlessly, much like how I throttled in my early days of my search for freedom.
"Tell me NOW."
Category:Eternulli
Category:Creepypasta
Category:Supernatural
Category:Fantasy