Forgiveness

Charlie was on the train, god, how she used the train these days. And it was already mid of april.

Grace's house wasn't that close, and yet, she decided to go there anyway. She didn't care how far it was; it was for someone else's sake, and because she truly wanted to.

Then, she arrived at the entrance to Grace's house. It was small, but enough for her. Upon entering (because the door was open), it was a peaceful and quiet place; it smelled mostly of orange incense, and she could always hear the sound of the kettle boiling. It was a cozy atmosphere.

If only Grace was the same.

"Oh, I was already thinking you got hit by a train. I was about to celebrate, I was even going to invite friends over." Grace came out of the kitchen, teapot in hand, and a cloth in the hand she was holding it with so she wouldn't burn herself. She left it on the table and poured the already brewed tea into a cup. "Want some? I won't be able to celebrate, but I've already made it."

Charlie was speechless for a moment, then she laughed:

"Nah, I don't like tea that much. I prefer coffee," she replied.

"Oh, of course you prefer coffee. You want to make me look like an old woman, right?" Grace complained.

"You don’t look young either." she retorted.

"Oh, shut up, or I'll take away your privilege of being able to transfer your conscience to the digital world and help Rocio," the redhead threatened, but her tone indicated she wasn't serious. Although the last bit left Charlie with a bad taste in her mouth—Grace didn't seem to take the idea of ​​helping Rocio seriously.

Charlie just sighed:

"Yeah, sure, I believe you, Grace." Charlie rolled his eyes.

Grace poured Charlie tea anyway. And Charlie had to drink it even if she didn't want it.

"You know, I talked to Rocio yesterday."

"Really? Didn't the page crash after a while?"

"Yeah, but I managed to get back in touch with her when I got home. I accessed the page from my computer, and that's it. We talked until she closed the HTML file."

"Ugh, she's like that,she doesn’t want to talk? Just close the file! She has a lot of freedom in that little HTML file."

"Yeah, but..." Charlie chimed in. "I don't think she can control whether she wants to close the HTML file or not."

"Why?" Grace turned her head to the side. "What do you mean?"

"I think... I think the page is controlled by her feelings too. And so, when she feels something really strong, the page crashes or closes by itself."

"Oh..." She paused for a moment. "Well, but she does it to me on purpose."

"Well..." Charlie began. "I can't blame her."

"OH! COME ON! I JUST WANTED TO TALK!" Grace exclaimed. "Is that a crime?"

"Okay, okay, I understand, you wanted to talk." Charlie nodded. "But did Rocío want to talk?"

"How would I know, it's not that hard to answer a few questions..." Charlie sighed at Grace's answer.

"Grace..." She sighed again. "Just like I didn't force you to talk about what was bothering you, you can't force Rocío to talk..."

"I doubt it was anything complicated." Grace complained. "She probably just wanted to piss me off." Charlie sighed again for the third time.

"Well, we'll see..." Charlie looked at the computer. "Speaking of Rocío..."

"Oh shit, I forgot she can hear us even if the computer is off." Grace sighed. "Well, let her hear it. Rocío, STOP ANNOYING ME!"

"Grace, you're not helping."

"I know. Didn't I already tell you I have no intention of helping her?"

"Grace... please... can't you have at least A BIT empathy?"

"I once had it," Grace began. "But Rocio, I don't trust her anymore."

"Why?" Charlie asked, looking at her with curiosity or interest.

"She's crazy, what else is there to say?"

"There must be something else..."

"There isn't anything else." Grace looked away. "Why don't you just stop wasting your time on nonsense and go to the computer? You want to help her, don't you?"

"But I want you to help, Grace, to help a bit. It's hard to do this with you making things worse..."

"Me? MAKING THINGS WORSE? I'M ONLY TELLING THE TRUTH!" Grace exclaimed.

"Look, it's not wrong to point out someone's mistakes, but to call them out the way you do and to mention them in such a...derogatory way, as if they have no chance of forgiveness..."

"Chance of forgiveness? God, don't make me laugh, after traumatizing millions of children?" Charlie cut Grace off.

"Looking at your logic, then you shouldn't be forgiven either. You did NOTHING when Rocio put those things in the games." Charlie exclaimed. Grace fell silent. She couldn't deny Charlie was right.

Grace remained silent. Charlie looked somewhat remorseful.

"Just go do your thing, will you?"

"Yes, ma'am." Charlie went to the computer and logged in alone.

Grace just stared.

Charlie saw Lacey's familiar page. She FELT Lacey's page, as her consciousness was transferred to the page when she did this. It was like being on the page itself, which made the gaming experience even more terrifying. Charlie wondered what else she could do here.

So, she started looking for something to do, visiting parts of the page like the fan space, about us, nothing new.

Until she found this part called misc. fun, which was just static—completely empty. It was a bit peaceful, compared to the horrors in games, like taking a breath of fresh air.

Charlie stood there for a while, feeling the static. Having your consciousness on the page was like being INSIDE the page, so you could walk, see, and hear—you couldn't feel, or smell. It was quite uncomfortable, at least until you got used to it. Charlie wondered how this could be pleasurable for Rocio.

Maybe, since she couldn't feel, she couldn't feel pain... but the mental pain was still there.

But hey! It would still be less pain. Or so Charlie told herself, trying to see Rocio's point of view.

Then she finally went outside that page and decided to try to find Rocio at Lacey's Petshop. Soon, she was snipping birds, giving clothes to snakes, Charlie didn't possess Lacey, but she could control what she did, or at least, what the game lets her control.

Then she got to the part with the dog and the girl she called Jessica. She pressed it 20 times, and the normal, the dog lost its skin, and she was kicked out of the game. She opened it again and quickly recognized the disturbing part of the game: the customers ordering turtles with teeth, hamsters with long necks, and the most disturbing: the rabbit with no eyes, legs, or tail.

Charlie noticed a flash of an image; she always noticed it, but this time, she saw it better. It was a picture of a black dog. Charlie wondered what it could mean? Who was that dog?

And suddenly, she recognized the picture from that part she would probably see later:

"My sweet little doggy, my little angel.

I couldn't take it anymore.

You can hurt me all you want, but you weren’t allowed to take him away from me.

I'll let      you rot."

She could already imagine what had happened to that little dog.

So, Charlie continued. She passed by the cat, giving it back its fur, and then through the house. There, as she put Lacey in the cage, she noticed something new.

Lacey looked straight into her face.

"Why are you doing this?" she asked.

Her eyes were whiter than before.

She knew exactly who it was.

"I just want to help you, Rocio." The other girl looked at the floor.

"I don't want help... it's useless to help me... please..."

"It's not useless, Rocio. I don't know what made you believe that, but I want you to have hope again."

"Hope? Pfft... don't make me laugh... I always fail, and I'm back in the same cage."

"How do you know that? Have you tried?" Charlie asked with interest.

"Of course I have... but I failed. And now I'm here. In a cage that I call my heaven." But it feels so good... to stop hoping, and let myself drown in my suffering... to stop trying... to nott put any effort…I'm so tired…”

"I understand, I understand, Rocio. Doing this isn't easy... and I don't know about your experience trying to recover, since you didn't tell me anything, but... I think you can recover, with just a little help..."

The two of them fell silent.

"Stop calling me by that stupid name."

"What name?" Charlie asked.

"That...name." Rocio refused to say which one. "Can't you just call me Lacey?" Charlie was speechless.

"C...call you Lacey?"

"I'm Lacey."

"Why do you think you're Lacey? Besides, seeming to be possessing her now..." Charlie was going to try to bring Rocio back to reality. Which was difficult considering they were on a computer.

"Because we have similar experiences...and...and..." Rocio's, or Lacey's, voice trailed off.

"But who was Lacey created by?"

"By her mom and dad like any other human, except hers died," she answered.

"Uh-huh...and then, why are you on a page?" She asked again.

"...No...I'm not on a page..." She sighed and remained silent for a few minutes. "Well...yes, I am, but...what really defines what or who I am in a digital world?"

Charlie fell silent. Rocio...she wasn't so wrong. In a digital world that she made herself, what defines her identity if she can only change it whenever she wants...? She thought...

"Your story. What was your childhood like? What did you do as a teenager? Who were you before coming here? A teacher? A cashier? Did you reach adulthood? If you were a digital character, would you have all that?”

"That would be what was programmed into me."

"But you, was your story programmed? Who programmed her, and why?"

Lacey remained silent.

"Lacey suffers so much in all these games, why?"

She didn't respond. She didn't know what to say. And she knew she couldn't escape right now, not when she was possessing a character.

"...Because she was programmed this way. That's why she suffers” she replied, hesitating whether to speak in the first place. "And that's why she won't recover."

"But why was she programmed like that? Grace definitely wasn't the one who programmed this" Charlie asked again.

"...Because...Rocio...wanted to feel identified by a character...yes...if she was Lacey...then Lacey must be Rocío. She wanted to vent...and show the players what they did to her..."

"Then you ARE Rocío."

“...Well...yes...but...I like to think not.

..” This was progress; at least Rocio admitted she wasn't Lacey directly. This showed she was more grounded to  reality.

"Why? Is it because you feel more disconnected from your pain this way?"

"Can you keep playing?"

"I want to talk to you, Rocio."

"I want to be Lacey..." Rocio complained. "But...it doesn't matter...Rocio or Lacey...right now we suffer the same...it's not like before...Lacey suffers too...the suffering I deserve and to which I cling onto so much..."

Charlie thought about what to say now. She felt horrible for Rocio...

"You know about the part of the page called misc.fun , right?"

"Yes..."

"Don't you want to go there? You seem upset about everything that happened in the game, you should calm down a bit."

"I don't want to calm down," Rocío exclaimed. "I want to get worse. I want to feel so bad that I'll cry until I can't breathe—or whatever that means in this digital world."

Charlie just sighed.

"Can you do that later?"

"...I really was better off without you in my heaven..." Rocío complained. But she agreed nonetheless.

On the page of pure static, Lacey and Charlie sat there. Rocío hadn't left Lacey's form, and she really wondered if she even could.

"Can you leave Lacey's 'body'?"

"...I made it hurt to do so."

"Why?"

"That way I wouldn't escape my punishment..."

"...I don't think you deserve this..."

"Why?" Lacey asked.

"Because no matter what you've done, Rocío, you don't deserve to suffer so much." The other girl fell silent again.

And from one moment to the next, Lacey was no longer there, but a version of Rocio.

Her eyes had black bags under them, her hair was incredibly disheveled, she was wearing a black jacket with two white lines, a white T-shirt, jeans, and socks. She breathed heavily in pain.

"Ugh... it's not that bad..." she told herself.

"If it hurt, you didn’t have to do it..."

"It doesn't matter..." Rocio assured her.

Now that Rocio was literally there, and wasn't just writing on a section of the page, Charlie was able to get closer.

"It's like peeling my skin off..."

"Good Lord..." exclaimed Charlie, who was an atheist.

"Don't worry... it's not that bad, it's like that and getting electrocuted at the same time."

"Ow..." Charlie could imagine the pain.

They looked at each other in awkward silence. Charlie moved to Rocio's side and sat down, signaling for her to sit down too, which she did.

"Do you want to talk about what you've been doing these past few days?"

"IT HAS BEEN DAYS?" Rocio exclaimed. "SINCE WE LAST TALKED?"

"Yep, a week exactly."

"Oh." Rocio tried calculating how long that was, she felt dizzy. "Ugh... how many seconds would that be?"

"Seconds?"

"To count seconds you just count normally  right? They weren't one thing multiplied by another..."

"Uhh, do you have a calculator?"

"Who needs calculators in heaven?"

"Well, then I can't tell you how many seconds it was..." Charlie sighed. "God, did you really lose track of time? I'm not surprised if I'm being honest…”

"What time is it outside?"

"I don't know... wait..." Charlie thought. "I don't know? God, you lose track of time so quickly here..."

"See?"

"Well, it must have been easy for you to forget what an hour felt like..."

"Time goes by much faster here," Rocío explained. "I'd tell you the equivalents of each minute or hour, but I've already forgotten how all that works. In fact, I've already forgotten how to read a clock: whether it's a 24-hour clock or those with those little sticks that only go from 1 to 12...ugh, those are even more confusing..."

Charlie didn't know what to say. She just looked at Rocío with a worried look on her face.

"What?"

"Did you really forget how to read a clock?"

"Yes."

"Well...I could teach you how to read one whenever you want..."

"I don't want to relearn it. It's no use to me here."

"You're right..." Charlie sighed and said under her breath. "What you..." use would it have for you…”

Another few minutes of silence passed between the two of them.

"Back to what I asked you, what have you been doing, Rocío?" Charlie asked again.

"What have I been doing..." Rocío started to think. "Besides torturing myself by playing those games?"

"...if there was to be anything new, I'd like to hear, Rocío," Charlie said. The other girlgirl started to think.

"Mmm...something new..." And suddenly she remembered.

Tina...

"Ugh, you've been making me an awful lot lately…"

"Is that good or bad?"

"HORRIBLE! Ugh...I hate thinking so much. I should just keep torturing myself, but you won't let me! Every question you ask makes me think about my past! I HATE IT!"

"... sometimes it's not so bad looking at the past—looking at the past can help you make better decisions in the future..."

"What decision am I going to make in the 'future'? Huh? I don't have one. I've been lost for a long time, and now that i’m that i'm here? I'm twice as lost. I no longer have decisions to make. My future was stolen a long time ago by... by..." Rocío looked at the floor, then sighed. "The point is, my future was stolen a long time ago, so there are no more decisions to make; nothing will change."

Charlie sighed.

"Well, thinking so much about the past just because  tcould mean something's bothering you. Something you haven't gotten over with. There's something you want to fix, but you couldn't, or you can't right now.””

Rocío spoke to herself silently. "Something she wants to fix but couldn't..." Whatever it is, how would she fix it right now? It was too late. There was no way to fix things now...

Right?

"Well...lately...memories of Yaniaso's beginnings have come flooding back...with all this stuff about you trying to get me to ‘improve’,and when I tried…" Rocío mentioned. Charlie smiled: her attempts had paid off.

"Really? What exactly were you trying to improve?" Charlie turned her head to the side. This new piece of information about Rocío interested her; it would help a lot.

"...I didn't want my mental stability to be a burden on Grace...much less for it to end our friendship..." Rocío looked up at the sky. "Grace was so nice to me, or so I thought." I saw her as my savior. I didn't believe life had meaning, that MY life had meaning. I wanted to kill myself, but Grace gave me the will to live. A reason to live. Grace... my savior... God, I was so stupid... I really thought she understood me... She never did.” She sighed, looking down at the floor now. Her face was emotionless, as cold as ice. But still, in Rocío's lost eyes, one could sense sadness, despair, disappointment.

"...So you didn't want your mental stability to come between you and Grace?"

"Yes... I even tried to quit drugs... I didn't want her to feel disgusted by me for doing those things... much less for her to realize that my energy was a result of it," she mentioned.

"And you succeeded?"

"For two years, the only drugs I used must have been caffeine and alcohol..." Rocío was disappointed in herself, pulling her legs up to her chest as if hiding. Two years, only for her to come back like a damn weakling.

But Charlie didn't think the same.

"Two years? Did you go to a rehabilitation center?"

"No. I was afraid of being judged, and really, I didn't have enough money to go to a therapist... I could barely pay the electricity bill... I tried to hide it as much as I could from Grace." Rocío sighed. "It was in vain though. I ended up being weak. I never had a chance to get better; I'm a disappointment."

"It's not true."

"Huh?"

"You're not a disappointment, Rocío," Charlie told her frankly, looking her straight in the eyes. "In fact, you know what? It's impressive."

"But I ended up coming back..." Rocío excused herself.

"Yes, but some, if not most, had to go directly to a rehabilitation center or get help from a doctor." You did all this alone... without any emotional support other than your hope... Charlie explained, surprised. "Rocio, I'm proud. Even if you don't realize it, you're a very strong person. Just because you failed doesn't make you any less."

Rocio didn't know how to react. Someone... Was someone really proud of her for such a small achievement? In her mind, it seemed stupid. But... those words... no one had ever said that to her. No one had ever told her they were proud of her...

It felt beautiful.

But something told her she didn't deserve this. That she had to reject it.

"No... I..." Rocío stammered. "I don't deserve to be told this... please."

"Of course you deserve it, why do you think you don't?"

"Because I am a bad person..."

"Rocio..." Charlie's gaze softened. "I want you to know that we all make mistakes, and even more so when we're not in a good place mentally. That's when we make twice as many mistakes, since you don't think properly and drown in your pain. And that's okay! Some mistakes must have been bigger than others, but they can always be fixed."

"I TRAUMATIZED YOU CHARLIE!" Rocío shouted. "IT WAS SO BAD YOU DON'T EVEN REMEMBER IT!"

"And if I don't remember, I can't get angry. Rocío, it's true, you made several mistakes. But you weren't in a good place mentally... it doesn't excuse it, but it makes me understand."

"Then I AM a horrible person! You admitted it!" Rocío exclaimed.

"No one is totally good or totally bad, Rocío. We're human." And you can still fix your mistake, Rocío. No one died, you didn't kill anyone. You can still fix your mistakes, you just have to be determined enough to do it.” Rocío felt like she didn't have air, even though she didn't need air nor did there exist any in a digital world. She felt that even though they were in a place of pure static, the walls were getting closer and closer and were going to crush her.

"You didn't kill anyone."

"YOU DIDN'T KILL ANYONE."

God. She really was a horrible person.

"SHUT UP! JUST SHUT UP, CHARLIE! YOU DON'T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT ME! YOU DON'T KNOW ANYTHING! YOU'RE JUST A SILLY LITTLE GIRL HOPING EVERYTHING CAN BE FIXED, BUT I, I CAN'T BE FIXED, I CAN'T! I'M HORRIBLE!" Rocío screamed, twice as upset as she already was. Her breathing was heavy, and she was trembling.

"I KNOW I DON'T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT YOU, BUT THAT DOESN'T MEAN I CAN'T HELP YOU!" Charlie exclaimed. "I JUST HAVE TO GET TO KNOW YOU A LITTLE MORE, AND ONE DAY, ROCÍO, ONE DAY YOU'LL GET OUT OF THERE!"

Rocío kept screaming.

And screaming.

But everything had turned to static.

"Ughh... my head..."

"7 PM. Bye." Grace pointed at the door.

"STOP! I JUST LEFT! I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHERE I AM!"

"Okay, fine, get your bearings, I guess." Grace sat down to look at Charlie.

Charlie sat down, her head aching. Had she been in there that long?

"Headaches are common. Get used to them."

"Uh-huh, were you watching?" Charlie asked, her gaze judging.

"So what if I was? It was until 7 PM, and admit it, you wanted to leave. Rocio freaked out again, didn't she?" Charlie sighed.

"Part of helping isn't leaving when she's at her worst..."

"Okay, but you take care of yourself so you don't get hurt." Grace smiled. Charlie just sighed again and stood up, grabbing her things.

"Next time, don't do this again, okay?"

"What if Rocio tries to kill you and makes you deaf again?”

"Well, in extreme cases like those, maybe, but right now, Grace, she wasn't doing anything. We were just arguing."

"Yeah, yeah, she was going to hurt you. But anyway, 7 PM, Charlie."

"Yeah, yeah, I get it, I'm leaving..." Charlie headed for the door.

"Bye!" Grace greeted.

"Bye!" Charlie left.

As she left, on the way to the train, she realized something.

Helping Rocio wasn't going to be easy with Grace getting in the way.

"Headaches, huh?" Grace muttered to herself. "I remember that was Rocío's excuse for not disconnecting, she wasn't in the wrong huh?"