"Fourth," Calvin continued, "Paradox permanent markers from the Dollarstore. They write things backwards through time."

Kristi stared at Calvin, clearly becoming irate with the escalating lunacy of his quest.

"You can tell Paradox markers apart from others because the words appear before you even write them. Get five markers."

"Let me guess," Adelle grinned. "The corrupted Dollarstore employees will want to snack on our livers?"

"Oh no," Calvin chuckled. "The pens will defend their marker brethren. They hunt in packs, shaped like flying fish. Each pen can accelerate fast enough to go right through a person."

Adelle whistled.

"Fifth," he flipped to an image of a small clock. "Time Zest. Snip off five arrows counting time backwards from the central clock above the fountain. The fountain water can move out of the fountain to drown any who dare mess with the clock tower above it."

"Murder fountain, got it," the cheetah commented, amused by the local Systemfall madness.

"Sixth, you'll need Forgotten Music. Songs of bands that nobody remembers hearing. The record store has vinyl discs that play songs wiped from collective memory. The catch? Every time you listen, you forget something important about yourself. Get five vinyls of Forgotten bands."

"What's guarding 'em that I can pulverize?" Adelle asked.

"Nothing," the concept farmer said. "The music playing from the shop's speakers is incredibly potent. It will make you do things against your will."

"Charisma?" I asked.

Calvin nodded.

"The seventh ingredient must be collected last. Five Conceptual Contradictions from the food court. For example, order something that doesn't exist from a fast food place that never opened."

"What?" I chortled.

"Exactly," Calvin said.

"How the fuck are we even supposed to find such a thing?" The raptor demanded.

"Be creative," Calvin smiled.

Kristi's eye twitched.

"How do we make the chalk after we get all the stuff?" Nessy asked.

"Find the kitchen supply store on the first floor," Calvin instructed. "There should be a blender there labeled 'REALITY MIXER.' Put all seven components inside, blend until smooth, then pour into chalk mold from the Dollarstore. Simple!"

"Simple," Kristi echoed sarcastically. "Riiiiiight."

"Yeah. Real simple," Adelle elbowed the raptor. "This is some Lewis Carroll Through the Lookin' glass shit."

"Is that all?" Candace asked.

"That's all I know about current chalk procurement," Calvin said. "My information might be slightly off though as I haven't actually been to the Nameless Mall recently on the account of how nippy the First Person Hunters get. Their nest got rather big recently and they're real nasty buggers, very difficult to target in First Person."

"How long would it take for us to get all of these ingredients you think?" Candace asked.

"The entire evening, maybe more," Calvin said.

"Hrm," Candace chewed her bottom lip. "I won't be able to hold the second-person binding that long on everyone. I'll have to activate it manually whenever the FPH buggers show up."

"That sounds like it's going to be hell-a disorienting," Kristi observed.

"Better than becoming FPH snacks," Candace shrugged.

"Aight," Adelle said. "Loops, how is this second person shit going to work exactly?"

"I'll bind our consciousness to the mannequin drones," Candace explained. "We'll observe ourselves observing the mannequins controlling the mannequins who are observing and controlling us."

"And that sentence gave me a migraine," Adelle groaned.

"Don't think too hard 'bout it, Ads," the fox giggled.

"Alright then," I said. "Let's do a basic test run. Sounds good?"

The girls nodded.

"Grab a mannequin each!" Candace drew us closer, her paws glowing with silver fractals as she traced lines between each of us and the mannequins we were facing.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

"Bind perspective shift!" Candace declared. "Second person observation!"

The silver light washed over me, and suddenly the world tilted in an impossible, mind skewering, unexpected direction.

You're experiencing everything differently. You see yourself standing there, yet you're still inside your body. It's disorienting.

You remain aware of your body, but you also perceive yourself through the mannequin's monitor-head cam.

"Did it work?" you ask.

"You tell me," Candace replies. "Are you thinking in second person?"

You realize she's right. Your thoughts have shifted from awareness of self to something completely absurd. You find this incredibly annoying.

"Yes," you confirm. "This feels…"

"Fucked up," Adelle interjects.

"I hate this," Kristi comments.

"It's fine," Candace laughs. "Right doggo?"

"S-okay," Nessy looks left and right. "Weird… but tolerable."

You agree with the cheetah and raptor. This is all sorts of fucked up. You want your proper perspective back, don't like this one bit. The branches of your liminal tree soul wiggle in irritation, trying to get you back to what you are supposed to be, to Reconstitute your awareness back to a correct mental state.

You force the urge down, resist the reconstitution of self back to First Person Alec. Unfortunately for you, every moment of second person existence feel like some kind of irregular mental torture. You, Alec-ness masquarading as an individual human, don't like this POV. It hurts you on a personal level.

"Christ," you comment, rubbing your face.

"Alec, you okay?" the husky asks.

"No," you reply. "This is awful. My… skill or soul-whatever really doesn't like it."

"Want me to drop it?" Candace asks.

"No," you shake your head. "I… I need to get used to this bullshit. We need the chalk, yeah?"

"Yeah," Candace affirms. "We need the chalk."

You stare at yourself through the webcam of the mannequin following you. You lift your left hand and take a few steps back and forth, trying not to trip over your feet.

"Good!" Calvin claps his hands. "It seems to be working."

Your pradavarian companions make various animal noises as they move around, bumping into each other. Candace seems to be handling this unusual torture best. Nessy is a close second. Adelle and Kristi are clearly suffering. You're not sure if they're suffering as much as you are. Possibly you're suffering more than them. It's hard to tell for sure.

"Remember to stay focused on your mission," Calvin comments. "Don't let the Nameless Mall convert you into her employees or supplies. She's quite the tricksy bugger, that dungeon."

You follow Calvin outside. Evening sunshine beams down on your face. It would be enjoyable if you weren't perceiving it in second person. You want to die, reconstitute, to drive a knife through your eye. You grit your teeth, assuring yourself that this is fine.

This is NOT fine. This is the worst thing to have happened to you. Reality around you wobbles, feels less and less real.

Are you real? Or are you just a character, just an idea of a person stuffed into a sack of flesh tagged as [Alec] by your observers? Are you a multidimensional actor trying too hard to be someone else, liminality pretending to be a finite, three-dimensional being?

What's the point of all of this? Is everything just a narrative? Are you just words on a page? Do you even exist?

"Fuck," Candace looks at you with a concerned expression and snaps her fingers. "Unbind Second Person Perspective!"

A snap skewered me sideways.

I collapsed onto all fours, head swimming, stomach heaving. The ground beneath my palms felt wrong. Not solid earth but an abstract concept of "ground," a placeholder where reality should be, a word, an idea of a thing.

"Alec!" Nessy rushed to my side, her paw on my back. "Are you okay?"

"No," I gasped.

Everything around me still seemed unreal. The trees, the buildings, the sky… mere words arranged to simulate a world. "Nothing is real."

"Shit," Candace crouched beside me. "I didn't expect it to hit you that hard."

"His soul isn't linear," Calvin observed from a few feet away. "Second person observation must have created a significant cognitive disruption."

"You think?!" Kristi snapped, steadying herself against a mannequin. "That was fucking horrible."

I tried to stand but my legs wouldn't cooperate. My perception kept slipping, reality fragmenting around the edges. The branches of my soul-tree thrashed internally, desperate to re-anchor me properly.

My hands dug into the earth, branches spreading out, rooting myself to the spot.

"Give me a minute," I mumbled.

"Maybe we should find another way," Nessy suggested.

"I got it," I lied. "I'm fine."

"Alec," the husky said. "You don't smell fine."

"I'll be fine," I insisted. "Give me a minute, damn it."

Red flowers blossomed across my fingers. My fingernails dug into the earth, rooting, spreading out.

"Alec!" Nessy yelped.

She wasn't real. She was just a word. Just a title. A husky girl. Somewhere beside that word floated another. A fox girl.

Funny. Funny how fake it all is. Funny how none of this is real.

"Alec! Focus on me!" the husky yelled. "Focus on yourself! You… you're blooming! You're coming undone! Please!"

More red flower eyes continued blooming across my arms, spreading up to my elbows. They saw the same, inevitable conclusion.

Words.

Everything was just words.

"Alec!" Nessy grabbed onto me, her blue eyes wild with panic. "Come back to us!"

I stared at her.

Husky. Dog. Pradavarian. Construct.

Fiction.

"Nothing exists," I muttered.

My legs rooted into the ground. Flesh-leaves sprouted from my hair.

The local three-dimensionality was inferior, false, wrong.

"What the shit is happening?" the cheetah barked.

"Fuck!" Candace yelped. "He's going physically liminal! Blooming. The second person perspective broke something in his perception! Bind First Person! BIND ALEC!"

I shrugged off her attempts at containing me.

You're not real, fox. None of this is real…

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