Chapter 1: TELL ME WHAT YOU WANT

I know what you want.
Tell me what you want.
I know what you want.
Tell me what you want.
I know what you want.
Tell me what you want.

You say what you want is to want something in and of itself.
But I know what you really want.

What you seek is a story to be so immersed in, so identified with, that it's personal, real even.

And so, our protagonist sits atop his balcony.

His eyes seem to stare at things that are of little significance to him today, but everyone else expects him to at least act like he cares, so even when completely alone he subconsciously chooses to look at these things that don't even grab his attention, like the sunset, the traffic below, the subtle raindrops that hit the railing, the glow at the end of his cigarette.

He can logically identify beauty through reference of a time where he empathised with it, but within his experience today, there is no beauty.

He waits patiently for something big enough to happen, a life changing event, where even his dissociated self will have his attention finally grabbed strongly enough to be able to feel certain of what he wants and who he is.

…

The sound of the rain begins to grow more ferociously, but that sound of a chaotic storm isn't evenly dispersed over the night shrouded city. It appears to have a centralised area a couple of blocks away from his apartment complex.

He looks in that direction, and the amount of water and wind is so strong, that it's like a water-tornado has been formed as a result over the top of the major apartment complex in the vast and repetitively designed architectures of the city.

Something is finally making itself stand out in this industrial landscape, and its nature itself.

It continues to swirl and strike the surrounding buildings hard.
It's hard to notice the dispersed volume of water through all the rain overhead and the darkness of the night itself, however, all the lights as per usual are on within most rooms of every building, so the light pollution is making things easier to see temporarily.

The busy streets below continue to move as normal, and his no one seems to be reacting to this event

He's in the right place at the right time, and because of that, he gets to see the moment that most people are too busy to notice.

But then, nature decides that it doesn't like this, and forces everyone to stop being busy.

The electricity in the entire city goes out, all the light go out, all the streets go black, and the pitch black sky only has the luminosity of the full moon to break through the clouds as a source of a illumination.

"What the fuck."
Suddenly, our protagonist feels a sudden silence, noticing just how alone he is in this moment as he looks out to where he was once able to see the centralised storm, hearing its raging winds and collisions with its surrounding buildings more vividly than he did previously, even though nothing but the lights have changed in reality.

Like a nightmare, where everything that you think you are is dropped and all that remains is the yourself and the monster, the vivid experience of the present moment is as real as the terror of fearing for one's own life.

…

He is now in a story.