She was My All, but she did not see me as the one. I was the bit of fun, to use and bin.
I did try to fix it, to be for her day in, day out, but she saw Him as her One Man. She ran to him as I ran to her.
One big day, I had had it, and I did the yap.
"I ask you, how can I be The One for you? How?"
She was mum for a bit, but she did say.
"You can be a bit too ABC, 123."
I was so diminutive.
"So, to get to cable you need to hold this cable here at this angle while you hold down the SYS-ENG button until it registers, then you can let the cable go. Switching channels is fine, but if you want to turn the volume down you need to go all the way up to 100 then up again until it goes back to 0. I won't try to explain the DVR, that's a whole other kettle of fish, just don't bother trying, you get me?"
"...
Dude, why don't you get a new TV?"
"Huh? There's nothing wrong with this one!?"
I saw the photo online as part of a montage from some nightclub, taken from the New Year's party a couple days earlier.
The girl I had loved, until she had died. Looking remarkably alive, considering.
Naturally, I immediately confronted those I'd met through her, but they were all as shocked as I was, or they were all great liars. Given they might have been lying to me for years, that was a possibility.
It took me a lot of time, but I finally tracked down the woman I'd seen.
She proved to be a worse liar than her friends.
I waited eagerly as the smoke formimg in the chalk circle created...
A 'humanoid' monstrosity.
I looked between the book and the figure with confusion before it made what sounded like a sigh.
"Let me guess, you were trying to summon a succubus?"
"Incubus, actually."
"Ah.
Well, those are just different departments, we tend to swap around every few years."
"But you seduce people looking like this?"
It laughed, I think.
"Our job is to punish sinners. We stopped needing to create more of them centuries ago. So we-"
"Let yourselves go?"
It snapped a claw and the chalk vanished.
My Bag Of Holding was the first loot I ever got, from the adventurer that turned up dead on the doorstep of my mother's farm.
Well, near enough to dead.
But anyway, it was so useful, no matter how much cool stuff I'd find, or 'find', I could get it in there and carry back to a town to sell, and then it'd carry the gold!
Mages and the like that I travelled with were always wanting to examine it, sure it was evil or something.
I disagreed, until I reached in one day and felt a hand reaching back.
Eight months ago.
"So what brings you in today?"
"My ex-girlfriend."
"What do you mean?"
"Well she dumped me a few weeks ago-"
"I'm sorry to hear that."
"Uh, thanks, but I had suspected it was gonna happen sooner or later. But in either case, in the breakup speech, she told me I was, well, 'fucked in the head', she said. I don't think I am, but I thought I better get it checked, you know?"
Now, today, I know that I shouldn't have bothered, but better to check and be sure, right?
By the way, can I borrow $10k?
I woke up alone.
Nothing unusual about that, but quickly I realised I was actually alone. Everything online that wasn't automated had stopped a few hours earlier.
I left my dump apartment and quickly drove downtown, passing crashes, empty cars, and abandoned items.
I got into town, and tried to think of what I should do, as I helped myself to the best stuff from the supermarket.
Eventually, I posted online on every platform I could think of, calling out for anyone to respond.
Turns out that when there's only one person posting, every bot gets very eager to post...
