Why I have Cherophobia

This is an AASP Competition submission.
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Now, I know that you have probably heard of arachnophobia; the fear of spiders. Or a more common phobia like Trypophobia. That would be the phobia of irregular patterns of small holes. Cherophobia is something else. Cherophobia is the fear of happiness, and smiling. Now, I have to answer the question of why is it not heard of? 
First of all, Cherophobia is the fear of happiness, and happiness is an emotion that drives our will to live. If we lack such an emotion, it greatly depletes that will and desire of continuing to live a normal life. However, the more common reason that some people have it, is because of trauma. They don’t want to talk about it. Some of them have PTSD and are living a sad life avoiding happiness. I was 10 when I had my first encounter with this certain figure that I will talk a little more about later. 
My mother, who was in a pink dress skin and at the dinner table was always in a conversation with her friends on her blocky phone in this Minecraft world. Sometimes, I can slip out and she won’t even notice. I myself, as a mischievous 10 year old made frequent trips to and from the park by sprinting and my blocky body made my arms stiff when I swung and same things with my legs and feet. After all, I’m only a Minecraft character in a Minecraft world. A vast world that goes endlessly with a blocky and pixelated civilization that surrounds me. 
I breathed in the fresh air of this world. There are no diseases that threaten my health, nor is there too much turmoil because in this Minecraft world, we are all made equal. We are nothing more than objects for humans to move around with on a joystick and buttons. Wherever they press or move us, that is what we have to do as objects. Be submissive to the laws of motion that apply even to our world. 
However, just because I can sometimes move as I desire doesn’t mean that I am truly free. The human comes back and controls me once again and takes me to different worlds far away from my family.
I have seen many biomes that were all in different worlds.
I saw the nether, and the jungle biomes. The jungle is my favorite, I guess the human controlling me knows as well. I’ve seen paintings of humans before back in my default world with my mother and father both as blocky figures and showing me pictures of them online. However, that is all we see. A figure with 4 limbs, a face, and hair. Except, it’s just in much finer detail. We were created in their image. Except we are more simple and basic. 
Nonetheless we are still toys for those humans. We still are forced to obey their command when they put their finger on the touch screen.
We are still just characters made by them, but little does their world know that we have feelings, and we come alive when they are not around. 
We are still subordinates to the human race, and their will bends ours. We are still attached to invisible strings that force our arms and legs to move as they desire. No matter how happy or sad we are, our personal skin still hides our true feelings and what we really are. 
are still slaves. We are slaves because the human controlling us does not need to know how we feel or even know that we have feelings. We were made by them and are destined to be their inferiors.
It was just that day that I asked my mom.
“Mom, how do you know what humans truly look like?” I asked. 
“We only see them by what they post online. We never know what they actually look like.” she replied. 
When she said that, I began to doubt the pictures of the humans I saw online, and it bugged me to know that I may never know what is really controlling my blocky figure in this virtual world. 
You know when something bugs you so much that you are just itching to get the problem out of the way or else you can’t sleep? That was how I felt. I wanted to know who was controlling me and I wanted to get the relief to know that I am in good hands. 
I had to sneak out again. 
I went off when it was dark, and I was the only one in my world still awake. Due to that, the human had to choose me to play with. I was the only one moving independently. In case you didn’t know, the software selects the most active entity to be played with by the human. 
Just as I predicted, I was promptly selected and I was transferred to the jungle biome where it was day and there was serene waters and a good house with gates which was to block certain creatures from entering the virtual residence. I let myself get controlled by the human. It just reminded me that my goal is to find out more about who was controlling me and my existence. I wanted to know that they were good and that I wasn’t used for evil. I want to be a slave to a good owner. We are all being restrained to this software that gives our controller supreme power.
I was being moved around the forest and had some blocks to start with. There would probably not be any more civilization for miles, kilometers, stadions, worlds, and universes. 
I heard the mobs and creatures of the nights as they tread through the grass and making sounds audible to my controller who led me away from the sounds. I was then given a pickaxe from a chest and I began to dig down. I was moving as stiffly as possible and I wasn’t able to change my view unless the controller did a command that let me look up and down. 
I’m used to that.
Being controlled and manipulated.
After all we are just tools.
Right?
Good tools……
Good tools that obey every command.
Slaves to the touch screen.
Created through the imaginations of humans,
They don’t know we have feelings.
I turned 10 already.
Us characters have ages.
But the humans controlling our blocky bodies don’t know.
Actually, they don’t have to know because we are inferior and I accepted that.
Why? 
They don’t have to care when we die in a world. 
We just respawn.
Right? 
We are just supposed to be used over and over again.
For their pleasure.
Because we are not human.
The human got me out of danger and once I looked back, I only saw more and more woods that surrounded the house in the clearing. At that point, the human left the controls, and I was alone in this new world.  
However, I was still unable to move. The device was still on. I heard steps in the woods that I just came out of and I really wanted to move but I couldn't.
The noise just got closer.
It kept coming, until I could feel the presence of a separate entity.
For some reason, I heard something. It was like laughter. I was spawned into the house afterwards and the laughter just kept going. It was a CD. I was able to audibly hear words. 
“Hello,” was the first thing I heard. “Thank you for all the fun. I truly appreciate it.”
I saw the world glitching, and I was automatically spawned back to my original world. I saw no one.
Not my mom, not my dad, not my dog, and not my neighbors. Everyone is gone. This world was glitching just like the other one. It all just started to disappear before my eyes. I wasn’t sad. This was probably meant to happen. However, those of you listening might not know what was happening. The human was deleting the game. We were being freed.
I sat on a rock that was glitching as well. 
I looked up, and saw a face. Was this my human? 
No it can’t be….
Humans don’t have a pure white face with no eyes or nose. This figure had none of that. No hair, no nose, eyes, ears, or a body. 
However, it did have one thing: a big mouth with teeth that gave me a big sinister growl. With black substances flowing from their mouth.
It must have been a human that was kind enough to take me through a walk through the forest before deleting the game. I don’t get deleted. I am part of the human’s account and I am kept safe with my memory retained.   
However, this can’t be a human.
My mind raced.
I regret letting my mind race.
My blood ran cold.
As I remembered my mother and what she said.  
We don’t see what humans look like.
We only see what they see.
Since all the laws from the human world apply to mine, I remembered that I would always look at my reflection in the morning to wash up.
However, I never know what I actually look like. 
Humans must not know either.
Come to think of it, that means that humans can only see what they see in a camera, and their true selves cannot be seen by other humans because they are human as well. That form of them is the form that I see on my mom’s phone. They have eyes, a nose, a mouth, hair, and ears. It gives them sight in the world. However, that is not the case when non-human eyes look at them. 
Furthermore, in my world, wild animals always run from me. I never knew why. 
That must be the same in the human world. They must have had other species and life run away from them. Not because of the harm that they caused, but because of what they truly look like. 
Monsters…..
Murderers….
Heads with no eyes, no nose, no hair, no body, and no ears.
Just a head with a mouth. No feelings, and cold.
That is what humans really are.
They have simulated their own world.
Just like they have done to us in the Minecraft world.
They love creating things.
To the point where they have simulated the other features of their body and developed the smarts that got them this far in the world.
They really, are just entities,
who don’t care about anything else,
except for improving themselves, for their desires.
So, they have been long enough in the world,  
and simulated their own world, and physical appearances. 
In reality, they are in fact, the lowest form of life. Meant to be eaten and annihilated. 
In reality, they should not have been able to exist, because they are not living in the real world.
They are living in their own world that they have created themselves.
So, they created us.
Their tools, and slaves.
Just so that they can feel better about their pitiful existence. 
They are my masters.  
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Now remember how at the beginning I was talking about Cherophobia being the fear of happiness? I have felt happy before.
It’s just that humans simulate their own happiness. In reality, they are able to fake happiness. That is no different from my world. We can fake a smile behind a mask, and cry tears of bitterness behind that mask. That’s why I don’t like it. In the human world, true happiness is rare. It’s only natural that you feel joy. However, now, I don’t want to experience and show fake happiness because that makes me think that I have to stoop to a level so low that I have to put on that mask. 
It’s dumb, and stupid.
I hate it, as much as I hate a human’s mentality. 
Positivity is so rare that when you are a kid, you don’t see enough of negativity that you aren’t prepared for the real world. The real world, people will say things and pretend to be happy, or sad. 
Just to lie,
just to deceive,
just to put on a show,
because they are human.   
Then again, I had  to come to realize, that before I turn into nothing more than a file in the vast light years that we have left in existence, I am created in the image of a human.
The same laws of their world apply to ours and I am able to feel the same emotions. 
However, the one thing that confuses me is the fact that we have free will. We are able to move our arms and legs without the control of an outer entity despite us only being objects and slaves.
We have a mind.
We have a body.
We have a spirit.
Except, we are created through code and digital formulas that humans type in their simulated world. 
I can feel happy. However, I can only feel true happiness and not the kind that humans sometimes put up.
To spare the feelings of a friend,
to lie better,
to hide their feelings better.
These are all the things that they do to deal with their miserable lives.
They had to tell themselves that they are the most intelligent life form with a 100-105 IQ average, to hide the fact that they are in fact lower than the animals without brains. 
They deal with money, power, and fame.
It corrupts their minds.
Then comes,
greed, 
lust, 
wrath,
and evil. 
They believe that they are so much higher than they really are. When they are given all the rewards of the world. 
However, that is when their true colors show.
That is why they start war, and that causes famine and debt. They can’t even cooperate as one and divide themselves into countries. They let their own species die and watch coldly just because they are on the other side. 
Then, comes pride, bigotry, and prejudice. Judging their own species for not meeting their criteria without saying a thing. 
The thing is that since we are created in their image, what does that make us? 
I looked down and my legs were starting to glitch and pixelate. 
I figured that I should just let go and become a file. 
I can’t let go though.
If I have free will, a body that is breathing and alive. I have a spirit, and even though I am an object, I have the gift of life.
Just as my torso and neck were also glitching, I just kept thinking.
I have human characteristics.
I have their feelings.
I can feel emotional and physical pain.
Every law of their world applies to this one. 
I have free will, and liberty of thought, speech, and action. 
I can only care about myself and no one else.
Not my family, not my neighbors, not my fellow entities.
Now, that I am about to be nothing but a living file, I decided for myself right then and there as my head was glitching out, that I was no longer an object.
I was no longer a slave, I am free.
The whole world glitched and I watched as the world slowly turned vantablack.
I decided to use what is left of me and my being in this world. To scream at the top of my lungs, my last 6 audible words.
“I am human, I am free.”
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Category:AASPT 2020 entry
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