“Hey, Snow White, it's gonna be alright, it's gonna be alright

  Hey, Snow White, it's gonna be alright, it's gonna be alright

  How can you win some?

  How can you win some?

  When the company goes public

  You've got to learn to love what you own.” — Hey, Snow White by Destroyer.

  Black, white, and grey are the only things filling in the environment around me. Maybe Death is coming back around, and the first thing it's taking from me is color. I guess Death is a fan of the golden age of noir.

  Can’t tell if I’m tired enough for death. I’ve been awake for too long; I broke past my limit of wanting sleep, and now I’m just wandering the land of the sleepless. Wandering between the thin line that stands right between life and death.

  My hands.

  I look at these hands.

  Yuto's blood painted on my hands.

  The moonlight would make it impossible for the one-eyed being to see the blood, but down there all I see is black.

  Blood still soaks my hands that are black. All of man know that a child's blood will forever soak into your skin, never to be removed until the skin decomposes. But the blood will only seep into my bones, and when those are gone, the ground will drown with all the blood that is held within those bones. Another curse that draws upon my soul.

  Miyamoto’s taken up driving the cycle so I wouldn’t kill us by knocking off halfway through our drive or being unable to see shit… being one-eyed makes people really distrustful of a person driving at night, it seems. As well as being a mad drunk who has never slept and can never sleep again.

  Keep playing Hey, Snow White on repeat. Still don’t know what’s actually happening in this song. All the chaos in the song, all the instruments just going off, and the same words repeating again and again really fill a normal man's mind up trying to flush out the troubles. Rather awful that my mind isn’t normal… Not anymore, just a mess of wires all crossing around each other, all trying to get to the same place, all trying to get in, and all getting in at once. All just very, very strange.

  This drive doesn’t feel much like a drive after one of our so-called “missions” or whatever these things could be called. All of it just feels like we're driving away from a crime scene I orchestrated, or at least one that I set up the dominos to fall for.

  What was I doing in that void? I’m better than that, better at inhumanity, rathness and not jumping at one of the oldest tricks in the bloody handbook. Making an ass of myself, killing a kid… A count to three—maybe I’m really slipping from all of reality, and the color of this world being erased from my eye just proves it even more.

  Just the indifference of heaven.

  My hand reached into my coat without need of my mind to tell it, and my body is once more being filled with the fuel for dead men walking.

  The horror that has surrounded us through our journey across the continent, of Fernweh. That cave, those slaves, a war, and a city… and a town with a bar. Always ending up in the grimmest places—well, I got to meet those two.

  Underneath everything there are always bodies, and that’s why I’m here.

  Guess I finally found the caliber of individual “the great sun goddess” Amaterasu finds acceptable to be around. Ones that kidnap and murder children. The god of madness—what would a being expect?

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  These bikes' final location will be a part of the country of Salzwasser in the port town of Brandungsrückstrom. We will then find a boat to take us to the continent of Zugzwaug and finally get to fucking Yugen. Get my eye and leg back; found a way to kill Keyser, and get out of this world… How to do something like that. That kid said the only way was killing “The Demon Lord,” or whatever that kid called Akuma, but the reality of that statement definitely isn’t true.

  There’s always the favor to fall back upon.

  If Amaterasu is going to fucking jerk me around, having a good laugh at me with her good old buddy Konran, well, fuck me. Jerk me around all they fucking want, make me the Devil, I don’t care; none of it matters. All that matters is getting out… all that matters.

  The black of the night starts to engulf my whole surroundings, and a deep pit in my stomach starts to form like a bladder stone in… the bladder. The black of the night that the void had consumed is turning into this light grey, with the scene around me being this little opening inside this forest I’m standing in.

  Looking up, I found a straight shoot to the sky, which was a dark grey, but no storm could have been brewing, for the rays of the sun were cutting through the branches and foliage. As well as the feeling of the atmosphere itself, a storm could not form, for the world does not wish it so, at least not now, not here.

  The faint ringing within my ears broke a bit when the sound of a twig splintering form from behind.

  The rigid impulse that has been grooved within my mind begins to play out, one where I pull my pistol from its harness and place my finger over the guard. Then scan the area for anyone who is trying to put their blade through my neck or an arrow through my skull. Possibly a dagger to the heart, or be cut in two by a M60… My eye found the source of this disruption to the sound of silence; it was that of a rabbit, as well as a few other rabbits standing with the disturbance-of-the-peace’s rabbit. I release the magazine, discharge the round in the chamber, place the round in the mag, then reload the magazine, and return my Jericho to its harness.

  All these middle-sized blobs of white, grey, or black all just trying to survive… eating grass and leaves or whatever the hell.

  Why am I here, to pet rabbits?

  I began to pet the rabbits.

  Another sound of a twig splitting, but this time that foot was much heavier—heavier than a pound.

  I start to rub my right leg.

  The way I was squatting was incurring a rather good sum of pain, so I decided to sit down upon the dirt to continue petting the rabbits.

  I lay my cane across my lap.

  “Why am I here?” My fingers run through the fur of these little mammals while I speak.

  “I didn’t know that Konran was going to do what he did.”

  “So you pull me here to clear your conscience.”

  …“Yeah.”

  “Why do you care so much? Aren’t you a god? Being able to change reality with a snap of the finger. Just let me sit here and look at the innocent.” When I finished talking, I felt my collar being grabbed. Amaterasu stands me up and forces me to look at her, asking, “What the hell is wrong with you? You would be all over me before, but now you don’t give a shit at all.”

  “You want to know something?” I grab her collar back and reply, “Every second I spend breathing is wrapped with immense regret in neither taking my own life nor letting another take it. Within every millisecond a lifetime passes. Bodies of men, women, and children being raped, murdered, or doing things infinitely worse fill my eye and mind. My leg pursue to grow in pain with every approaching day and my half-blindness has weaken my possibility of survive within this world as well as greeting the amount of pain I carry once more… Amaterasu, I don’t know what you want from an old dying man whose hair is filled with more white than an 80s businessman’s nose. What surrounded me now is nothing but an illusion. I'd rather be in the abyss filling myself with that sickening feeling that rips apart my guts than ever have you fucking pity.” Amaterasu loosens her grip on my collar, and my mind starts to rip itself apart trying to rid this sickening mind.

  The flood of reality is starting to sink me. Everything was just attacking on all cylinders, and all I could do was to stand still. There was no possibility of escape or that of battle, just to plant myself in like a tent peg. The treacherous inhumanity of humanity—how dare man call himself such.

  The horror never leaves; it is something that could never leave. The horror has been with me from the beginning and will be with me at the end, but it will never truly reveal itself. The horror is truth, and the truth is a white whale that, no matter how great a man has taken it on, has never been able to return from.

  Bang!

  Bang!

  Bang!

  Three corpses of allusions lay dead.

  Three rabbits.

  Three fake rounds.

  Blood on my hands.

  I stare at Amaterasu… “Never have sympathy for the fucking Devil.”

  “Hey, Snow White, it's alright, it's alright

  Hey, Snow White, it's alright, it's alright

  It's alright.” — Hey, Snow White by Destroyer.