We’re flying in the clouds now while sitting on our swings. Mickey told me that clouds are water in the air, but they don’t feel like water. They feel like soft pillows. They balutin around us and feel cozy. Chowder’s clouds are black and begin to run into our white ones. The clouds turn grey.

The clouds go away from us. “Where are they going?” I ask Mickey.

“I don’t know.” He replies. He puts me on his shoulder and increases his speed. “Let’s go after them.” I feel the wind in my face again as we fly towards the clouds. Fly… it’s a strange word. Mickey told me that it means to be able to stay in the sky, the big blue thing, in the air, and ilipat around in it. I pag-ibig flying.

The clouds go down, and so do we. I hold on tight to Mickey and feel a strange tickle in my stomach. We’re about to catch them then-

*PLOMPH!* I land on a white cloud. I laugh… I don’t know if that’s the right word for this, it’s a different kind of laugh, a playful one. Then I realize… this isn’t one of the clouds. It’s my blanket, on my bed. I’m in my room again.

I’m surprised… I mean I’m sad, I don’t know. That was a dream… I didn’t want it to stop. If I’m here then where are Mickey and Chowder? I have to find them! I try to get up but I’m Gusot in the blanket. I tear through it with my claws and teeth and run downstairs as fast as I can.

I don’t see anyone in the living room. “The kitchen… they- they must be hungry and-“ No… I open the doors to the kitchen. No one is there. My breathing feels strange and my throat feels weird, almost like it hurts. I yell their names. They have to be here! They have to be here!

I run around the whole house. They aren’t in the bathroom, they aren’t in the treadmill and wheel room, they aren’t anywhere. But they have to be here… I keep calling their names over and over. Eventually I can’t anymore. I’m crying too much and my words just turn into a weird breathing sound.

My nose bothers me. I keep snuffling. I lay on the ground curling up, still crying. I was with someone. I wasn’t alone. Why did it have to end? Will I see them again? How long? I don’t want to wait I just… I want to see them, again…

I keep asking myself why they had to leave. Did the arms separate us? Why did they have to be taken away then? Why did I meet them at all if I wouldn’t get to see them again? My brain hurts but I keep trying to think. I’m thinking over madami possibilities when I wonder…

Were… were they part of the dream too? I’m still crying but my eyes flash open. Were they pretend? They had to be real, I- I talked to them I touched them, they… they taught me h-how to swing…

Hours pass… I, am still, alone.

I want silence. I want to be left to be upset, but the clock’s ticking is so loud, it gets louder when I realize that it’s ticking. “LEAVE ME ALO-“ Leave me alone? W-, why would I say that? … wait, the clock? W-when did a clock… There wasn’t one before.

I sigh. Does that even matter? I get up again wiping my face off from the tears. I look up and see that there is a clock hanging on the pader above the couch, as if that is supposed to make me feel better. I have to wonder though why there is a clock now and not before.

The ticking is annoying. Why do clocks tick? Or why do they have to make sounds when they tick? It makes it hard to think. My thoughts keep getting interrupted when it makes that noise. “I didn’t need a clock before… I don’t need it now.”

I climb up onto the sopa and grab the clock. I prepare to throw it on the ground but I feel bad now. Should I break it? There has to be a reason why I’d need it. *sigh* I put the clock back on the nail it was hanging on. I don’t care about the clock right now. I just want Mickey and tsauder back.

I go into the Treadmill and Wheel room so that I don’t hear the clock. I don’t know if I feel hungry or not but I don’t want to eat right now. I remember how the air felt when I was where the sky was, with the playset, outdoors. It was nice. The air in here feels stuffy and makes it harder to breathe. It’s not because of the hyper-word this time, it just feels… unclean, somehow. I try not to think about it since I can’t change it.

I hear a large thump from the living room. It is a loud large thump… I think that means the same thing. I walk towards it. Maybe it’s tsauder and Mickey? I try not to get excited. I don’t want to be upset… madami upset.

It isn’t them… Even though I knew not to get my hopes up it still hurts to see that there was no Mickey or Chowder. Instead it’s a brown box. It’s about half my size and feels both rough and smooth at the same time, sort of like paper only thicker.

Boxes have things in them usually so I use my claws to rip it open. Something makes a weird squeak from inside. This startles me and I yank my hand back. It could be a mean person so I give the box a good shake, then I kick it, then I manuntok it. I hear a crunching and breaking sound.

Instantly my half-rage-half-fear is turned into sadness. I just broke what was inside. I carefully pull it out. There is a large white squishy thing surrounding what probably looked like a rectangle at one point. It has buttons on it, and a glass rectangle in the middle but it’s cracked and parts of it is completely broken off.

“I have to fix it…” I rub the pieces together. Why did I have to break it? This… was this for me? What was it supposed to do? I feel sadder now. I don’t know why but I feel… bad, like I betrayed someone. This was for me and I broke it. It was… a gift.

I push the buttons, maybe it will turn on still. It doesn’t. I don’t want to cry again, my eyes are hurting from it. I feel too tired to cry. I wish I could fall asleep and this would be changed. Maybe if I do I’ll wake up back with Mickey and Chowder. It took… three sleeps last time I think. I would have to sleep three times.

I walk over to the sopa and lay down on it. Nothing is going right today but maybe tomorrow it would be different. But… I feel like I’m forgetting some- the arms. I’v- I’ve never slept without the arms… I think. Would I be able to sleep? Mickey and tsauder didn’t remember sleeping without eating the pills.

I feel less tired now, and instead nervous. Do I have to wait until the arms come out? How long will that be? It hasn’t been very long in the day, and they usually came later. Maybe I could fall asleep on my own? How does that work? Being tired has to have a part in it, maybe when I become really tired I can fall asleep.

When had I been tired before though? Is there something I can use to make myself tired? There was the wheel I guess, but that just hurt me over and over. Maybe I should try using the treadmill.

I get up from the sopa and try to not look at the thing I broke. I go to the Wheel and Treadmill room and step onto the Treadmill seat. There are strange legs on it, peddles, that’s what they are called. I need to push them.

I don’t think they’re for my hands because there are handles at my side, so I push them with my feet. The peddles and the handles both begin moving. I’ve pushed it hard enough that they begin going in a bilog pattern. I almost though they were supposed to just keep going straight.

I push them now in the bilog pattern. It’s hard and puts… pressure, on my feet and hands. I find that when I push and pull with my hands on the handles they help make the bilog pattern go faster. There’s a rectangle on the top-middle of the treadmill in front of me, like on the… thing I broke…

It shows numbers. Ten, eleven, thirteen, it skips numbers sometimes. What is it doing? I slow down a little so I can concentrate, and the numbers go down… hold on. I speed up, and the numbers get higher. That… that is the speed. It’s telling me how fast I am going.

I decide to try to get to the highest number I can. My arms and legs hurt, they feel sore, but if this will help me get tired enough to sleep it’ll be worth it. I end up going so fast that the number eventually becomes a eighty-three. I keep going still.

I don’t know how long I’ve been doing this now but I feel dizzy so I slowly stop myself. It’s hard to do with my feet feeling very weak, but I don’t want them to get Gusot in the peddles and broken. Once I’ve stopped I step off of the treadmill my legs shake uncontrollably. I sit down quickly while I pant quickly. My throat feels sore from breathing like this for so long. I feel the need to get water but when I start moving I feel madami exhausted so I wait until I’ve stopped breathing so hard. It hurts to wait so long. I feel briefly scared about my throat being hurt forever, but I think I’ll be fine sa pamamagitan ng the susunod time I wake up. That’s what happened every other time.

I crawl using mostly my hands to get to the kitchen, and barely stand up long enough to get a drink of water. My legs were not supposed to run for madami than two hours. Was it two hours? I don’t know. My head feels madami dizzy but I don’t feel the right kind of tired. “Maybe I need to be on the couch.” I think.

I lay down on the living room sopa and close my eyes, waiting to fall asleep. I do start to feel sleepy at one point. I yawn, that’s a sign of sleep I remember… I don’t remember where I remember it from but I do remember none the less.

My mind begins to think about different things. My thoughts are about the kitchen, the treadmill, the wheel, or anything else that would not remind me about tsauder and Mickey. Every time I try to think of something else my mind goes back to the swings with the cold breeze, the structures around us, or the sky… the beautiful sky.

I don’t know what sleep is like, but I feel a sudden jolt at one point and get up. I don’t know if I actually slept so I turn about, looking for something that will tell me if enough time had passed. I don’t have to look long because the rectangle with the buttons is fixed and not in its box any more.

I walk over and pick it up. It might do something now. I push the buttons but they do nothing. I notice that it has a strange cross-button on it. There are arrows on the ends… pointing… directi- directions? These point with directions, to move… ilipat what? I don’t see or hear anything happening so I keep looking around it.

At the tuktok I see a strange small black rectangle. It has a jagged top, and is susunod to a rectangular hole. I try to push it down but nothing happens. I push it again, which hurts my hands, but instead of going down it slides to the right, covering the rectangular hole it was susunod to, and making a new one on the left of it.

Loud sounds come out from the large rectangle, and the rectangle inside of it light ups brightly. I instantly drop the item and jump back. It falls to the ground, making a strange jitter sound. I hurt it. I grab the item, checking around it to make sure it is not harmed. It seems okay.

The rectangle in the center, the one lit up, has a picture on it. There is a person on it. The person is a man wearing a yellow suit. He has a large head. The rest of the area in the rectangle look… hilly. A burol is… it’s a mound of dirt right?. There is a burol and a set of words on the… rectangle. There is a word for this I suppose. Maybe Mic-… I start pagbaba the words so I don’t start thinking about that again.

“S…sl- si… Side. Side scraller… scrall?” Is scrall a word? I don’t think it is. Did I say the word wrong? Oh well. Below these is the word “start”. I know that one. susunod to it is a red circle. One of the buttons is a red circle. I push it, and the screen changes. The person and the hills are still there but the words disappear.

I press the red button again. The person jumps. This is interesting. I press a different button, a green one this time. Nothing happens. I press the yellow button and the person punches the air. What are the directions for?

I push the one at the right and the person moves to the right. I push the left, and he moves back. I push up and the scre-… SCREEN! The screen goes up, looking at the sky. I do down and it looks down, with the person crouching.

“There is a goal, and the goal is what you want to get to, the end of the game. And sa pamamagitan ng winning it means that you reach the goal” I remember Mickey saying. So the goal is further on the path of this game. Okay.

I make the person walk forward. He walks along grass, and the damo makes a sound when he steps on it. This is fun. I keep making him go forward. At one point there is a square in the path. He walks up to it but not past it. It’s in his way so I push the jump button. He only jumps up.

I need to make him go over the square while jumping. I push the right button and the jump button at the same time and he does that. What happens if I push the down button and the jump button?

I do this and all that happens is the person crouches then jumps. Maybe I have to do it a different way. I push jump and then down. He just jumps, nothing else. Oh well. Maybe I will learn madami later.

I pass madami obstacles, and come across a crab. When I touch it with the man, he turns red. The person also makes an “oof!” sound. It seems funny how he says it so I make him touch the alimasag again. I do it a couple madami times after this and the person collapses with X’s on his eyes.

I can’t ilipat him. I realize now that he was dead. The alimasag hurt him somehow, and I was supposed to keep that from happening. I don’t know how to restart this game though. I turn it off and on again.

It gives me the screen, and so I start from the beginning again. When I reach the alimasag I attempt to jump over it, but the alimasag jumps with me, and hurts the person. Maybe if I manuntok the alimasag it will die instead… should I do that though? It seems mean. But it killed me first… I manuntok the crab. It turns red, making a screech sound. This doesn’t feel right, but I do it again, it screeches again. I want to stop but I force myself to push the button one madami time.

The alimasag hisses as it collapses instead of my person, with X’s on its eyes. It flashes for a moment then vanishes. A glowing ball appears where it was. I walk to the ball and the person lights up blue. I push the hit button sa pamamagitan ng accident and his hand turns into a claw, hitting forward. I got to have the Crab’s claw, its power, sa pamamagitan ng killing it.

I still feel bad about killing the crab, but I want to find out if there are other powers to get. I walk forward. There are a few falls in front of me that I jump over, madami crabs that I kill, none of which will give me new powers, and eventually a set of posts. I reach the post and a song plays. It’s short and cheerful. Numbers susunod to letters appear on the screen.

The first says “Time: 3:10”
The segundo says “Health “8/10”
The third says “Enemies killed “5”
At the bottom it reads “Total score: 4000”

The numbers above turn into the Total Score. I get this total score with those numbers. The time is how long it takes. I want to be quick. I also don’t want to get hurt. The madami enemies I kill the madami points I get also. But was that the only part of this game?

I push one of the buttons and the numbers and letters go away. The person walks forward, and I see madami enemies, this time they look like snails. I kill these using my alimasag powers, and even though I feel bad, I’m happy to get a new power.

I can now use the suso power to stretch my attack. Also when I hold down the attack button I can switch between the types of powers. I’m getting excited, happy… but… I still feel like I’ve done something wrong. Would Mickey like seeing me hurt people? I never asked him. Maybe I should wait to ask him if this was okay. Was it? I was rewarded so maybe it was. You get stronger from killing?

All that I know is that I feel ill now. I feel confused and alone again. I don’t want to play the game anymore, it… frightens me. I put it down, I don’t break it, but I leave. I’m hungry so I get something to eat. I don’t know if the game wants me to kill people, but I know that I wouldn’t want to die, and if other people don’t either am I supposed to kill them anyway? Mickey will know… or Chowder… they have to… if I see them again.