There is a sound of winding. Out there at the edge of the light where everything is blurred and consciousness falls away. A toy made by crooked hands and born under the shade of the devil. A winding.
Billowing clouds of black unfurl towards the sky like decrepit beings breaking apart as they escape. Trees older than mortals succumb to the devastation of nature and flame and all that ruins. The tones of destruction overtake and warp the quiet, becoming an unnatural melody that stirs the darkest crannies of the world’s innards. But no one is watching.
The winding stops. What emerges is a vibration scattered through the air like buckshot in the evening’s whiff.
RATATATATATATATATAATATATATATATATA
There was no time. That which had given the boy purpose was squeezing his mind and soul. His motorbike sprung to life with an erratic jolt, scuttling across the wood floor like a crocked beetle. The engine on the vehicle was silent, completely swallowed in the din of the catty rattle.
Through the archway and into the formless chaos of twisted streets he glided. A feather in the mouth of a fiend.
The walls were shaking a rhythmic jitter of questionable intention. The world was alive and eager, ready to unveil its true malevolence and reclaim the treasures it fashioned. It wanted his anima and all that imposes. It wanted the pizza.
The pie wrought of metal sat atop its tray quivering in the wake of the shrieking monstrum. Part of it wanted the pain and the apocalypse promised. The boy wouldn’t have it. He looked into the bleakness and stared it down until malice gave way to sadness gave way to dissolution. Then he looked up. Beyond the crest of towers was a firmament of rust full of formless shapes nickering through the void in patterns of stutter. But below was his hardihood.
RATATATATATATATATAATATATATAT
Around the corner. A collision. Sitting on the edge of a stark and bright fountain sat a young woman. If she was not already two-dimensional she would now be. The pizza rattled like the walls. Fury in motion, spinning like a top and ready to dive from its perch. The boy wobbled attempting to steady the disc and remain calm in the hellish piazza.
And then it fell. If not for its weight it would have clanged and shouted words of futility. The boy atop his motorbike turned sharply, slamming into the wall and bouncing off with an intensity that would loosen the black matter of a creature’s gut. He was driving but it wasn’t so much propulsion as a violent tugging, a force comparable to gravity’s bitter full-knuckled grasp.
Time was running out.
The Great Maker Pino was still madly kneading like a man possessed, as if he understood at the center of the mystery was not knowing, but an oblique beating of victuals.
The new pizza was not warm nor flush with life. It was cold. It was inert. The boy didn’t care. He returned to the streets lacking a soundness of mind but of stoic resolution regardless.
His motorbike zipped with inherent authority Its movement more precise and deft, like dew riding along the edge of a leaf bound for the earth below.
Then there was a wall.
RATATATATATATATA
The stalwart pizza clung to its pan. He proceeded along the edge of the street, now bouncing around like a fool wed to his bottle. But he was moving closer. Inch by inch he drew near. The shapeless gods in the redness were gibbering now.
The boy saw him. He was an elderly man, sitting on a bench with a glass of wine firmly clenched. His eyes were shallow and dissolved. Next to him was a dog. It’s unknown whether the dog was silent or muzzled by the mad god’s strumming. The boy could see it in their constitution. A deep resonating vibrance emitted from their presence.
They wanted pizza.
It was the last push, the denouement of errand. He rushed headlong into the old man and his dog. The pizza bobbled but it did not stick. Again, he crushed against the compacted cardboard with all of his essentiality. And again. And again.
RATATATA
The final violent act of a desperate redeemer resulted in the pizza ingot flying from its station and adhering to the aged customer’s facial region.
Then the boy noticed. The Great Maker had stopped thrashing. For naught was his feat. It was in that moment that the boy felt the full torment of his predicament, caught in the fruitless dream of indifferent jesters. A proxy for performance. A being without agency or principle. He was jacketed to his ruthless reality and doomed to suffer in repetition. The box closed with no cure to be found, not even in the boundless quiet.
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Player Elimination 