E V E R Y T H I N G I S F I N E

AROUND THREE HOURS AGO

You laugh as your daughter flees out the door. For some reason her whimpering manages to occasionally humor you. Christ, girl might have the spine of a snail, but at least that makes it easy to mold her. Not like your son.

Ingrid dotes about the kid like the pitiful thing she’s become. You’ve tried to tell her there’s no point, kid is ‘bout as livid as a rock, fool just drooling and staring into nothing.

You told her. You told your wife that all those days and nights spend outside the valley had messed with your system. She wouldn’t listen. You had that dumb daughter, so surely the problem had to be with her. If you both just kept trying. And kept trying, and kept trying, and she kept crying every time nothing happened. Then it did. Now it just sits there… drooling.

Your daughter doesn’t venture beyond the valley, like you used to, and – due to sheer dumb luck – those gullible kids still managed to find stuff. As long as she just sticks to the valley, you won’t need to do anything about it.

Then it hits you! Your slut-of-a-daughter forgot to command the robot.

Without her around, it loses all semblance of sentience. It just… stands there. You know it’s not possible, but you swear, sometimes it feels like it’s watching you. For fucks sake, Eigel, you tell yourself. Look at the screen. It’s shut off. Did so the moment the whore left. If somebody gets hurt tonight – that bitch will feel it doubly so. An entire town depending on her and she decides to gallivant away with her cuck-club.

Wrath gets the better off you. You’ve always had this… thing inside of you. A churning knot folding in on itself, threatening to explode at the lightest breeze. Maybe if you’d found a family that didn’t provoke it, you’d be better off. A fuck-able wife, a son to teach in your workshop, and a daughter to look pretty and admire you. No. Instead they decided to poke and prod you, forcing you to smack some sense into them. It’s not your fault. You’ve told them. They don’t want to make you angry. They know how you are. It’s their fault.

You’d take a wrench to the wretched robot thing. Wreck something, she loves, maybe that’ll teach her. But… last time did not go well. Sure, it didn’t hurt your body. No, much, much worse. It hurt your pride. You kept wailing at it and it just deflected your blows. Your daughter still got what she deserved, afterwards, but if it wasn’t for her robot you wouldn’t have gone as far as you did.

Deep breaths. Don’t let the thing inside get a hold of you. Deep fucking brea—

Screaming in anger, you send Shiva’s mess, littering her table, flying and skipping across the floor.

You’re not going home tonight. Ingrid’s going to make you hit her. You can just feel it.

You’re not going home tonight.