Archive of Our Own ^beta

I am too inebriated to say with the confidence of a true scholar but roughly a billion years ago the first life form, or perhaps analogous jelly that could constitute a weak definition of life, began slithering the ocean. A few million years after its propagation, diversification and that eternal quest for individuality that is led by egoless evolution, something took a similar yet separate path. Thus was born the not`s. I do wish terribly we had a better name yet none yet fit. If you are of an american persuasion, you may have heard mumbles of the not deer . A simplistic enough idea, a thing that looks like a deer, yet in behaviour and the subtle tinges free from gods ironclad grasp, it is not.

What is a not-deer ? Exactly within the name, a not-deer . I confess this to not be a satisfying answer but yet who are you to ask, a fellow is , to quantify those strange nots ? Only they are capable of knowing their own perturbed, mirroring nature in truth. None of us, not even them, are at fault for this universal divide, a simple matter of the cruelty of the randomness of evolution. The not-deer is not alone however, there are many nots. Not-houses, not-rivers, not-people , though those I find tedious enough to not bother discussing. Anything that exists within stable definition has its not . The false thing twitching and flaring in ways not natural for its false adoption of a harsh edges definition, trying to blur lines not ever meant to be nought but solid and iron.

Birthed by nasty, uncaring processes, it continued to be shaped by such. As human evolution escaped the physical into the mental, granting them power over the baser elements of their simple reality, the nots had to change too. They learned to differ with the rapid environment. Once there was the not-machine , the not-hat. Many were flawed and unsuccessful ,quashed and quelled into shallow graves behind poorhouses for those with a keen eye for rules of the world. Stability suited their empire and as such the nots faced a near extinction level event in the human obsession for obedience, calm and repetition. Their bare slight uncanniness unacceptable in times of such terrible and violent providence. Even ignoring the things they did to animals and people, this was but a tertiary issue to those hunters of days gone by. The problem was their maladjustment.

Luckily for the nots , the human craving for paradoxical and nonsensical contradiction is stronger than even their faith in lies, the humans changed once more, valuing such quaint concepts as freedom and individuality. The nots were all too eager to take advantage. imagine for me now, if you would indulge me, as is your hypocritically human  nature.

You are at a train station. Like the hundreds of others in London, a dismal white tube with a few spare benches and gaudy advertisements plastered across your eyes unwilling vision. Perhaps a dotting of artwork to convince you the place is lively and not mere functionality buried under earth. It is  terribly late, too late for any responsible soul. Drunk after a beautiful night out full of the microseconds of mournings and the raucous laughter unbefitting any moment you are not truly unbridled and free. Stumbling at blackfriars station, praying on the night train to whisk you home for a morning of regret and rebellions within one's stomach once safe in one's own bed. The tepid nature of the station boring you as your devices gasp in suffocation for signals buried under the earth. Waiting for perceived eons but truly only minutes as lights glare just slightly the wrong colour as it screeches into the station, emerging from abyssal black and the edges of the perceivable world.

You drunkenly inspect the train as it screeches to its halt. It seems dented yet clean, no graffiti dots its walls yet its mishapenness bears its only sign of wrongness. There is no wear, this is worse than if it was covered in the beatings of an existence lived, the shades are wrong too but you will attribute to harsh clinical lighting of your soon to be autopsy, not that you think of it as such. It simply will be. So many subtle off details with the train you never even could see. The lack of a driver, the trillion tiny feet upon each wheel, the furiness of the chairs. 

As you analyse the train setting off subtle and ancient security of the lizards and fish of the world who faced the nots in their truest reign. You will find your eyes drift unto its not-yet-ghastly innards. There seem to be people upon it, still ,terribly still, if you were not drunk you would check for breathing, for how odd they barely look. Their clothes seem wrong, not quite not-damp and details are flung with none of the paranoia of the perceived human. You look at the board again.

It promises no new trains after this. If you looked harder, perhaps you would have spotted the authentic board, thrown away behind a not-bench , which is eager to board the train as soon as you foolishly step upon its entrance and surrender yourselves to those demons of biology. For you will of course, you are too inebriated to focus, to think, to indulge the paranoid illogics of the situation. Doomed from first ale to see the patchwork to make the skins convincing. You will look back the way you came, consider those late and dark London streets where every human shape bears a risk buried and rattled into you so repeatedly that this mantra of safety, this will doom you to a death no aunt nor mother could dare predict for the world their loved one lived in. you will step unto the train and find out all too quickly the true machinations of the nots as it speeds off, you its only authentic passenger being you, resting within its eager and hungry anatomy.

This knowledge will of course be wasted on you, terribly awfully wasted with nought a second to even begin the process of documentation for the safety of others. The nots will claim a new victim and speed unto the next station - perhaps you will join the train's patchwork, invite new flesh in with a glassy eye turning to look to make the illusion you remain of humanity convincing. Perhaps you will join some great nightmare of consciousness bound to fleshy mound where the beating engine of the train should be. In truth I know nought, as I said the machinations of the nots are simply not my domain.

Next time though, from taxi to train to plane. Mayhaps you will look, stare terribly upon passive faces that are too passive. Retreat to the mind of the prey animal.For there are certainly things in this nasty world that look upon you with the philosophy of predator and the stomach of one too.