Epic Fail - Page 8

Chapter 4.5: Flashback.exe—Or How I Became the Punchline

 

Sometimes when the servers go quiet—when Lank.OS glitches and the fake sunsets freeze in mid-burn—I get memories I didn’t ask for.

Not memories, really.

More like... error files.

Fragments. Shards.

 

Like the day I first saw Vidyuj.

Yeah—him. The one nobody talks about. The one the official myth deleted because it didn’t fit the pretty story.

 

He was Danava-coded. Wild-eyed. Electric.

He smelled like rust and rain. He kissed me like he meant it.

We burned the rules together.

We made promises the simulation couldn’t hold.

And then Ravn—of course it was Ravn—killed him.

Right there. Right in front of me.

Blood on my face. Static in my ears.

And something inside me—something soft—died.

 

They never tell you that part, do they?

They never tell you how I loved first.

How I lost first.

 

And the worst part?

I still went back.

Back to Lank.OS.

Back to the same rotten palace where MandOS patted my broken head and said:

‘Go find another one, darling. That’s what women do.’

 

I should’ve burned the place down.

I didn’t.

I glitched instead.

I cracked in the quiet way—the way that looks like a smile. The way that turns you into a cartoon villain in someone else’s story.

 

Flash.

Shift.

Next memory:

I’m standing in front of Ram.exe.

All soft-ware and no soul.

I’m begging.

I’m flirting.

I’m collapsing in real time.

And when LX-One slashes me—when the blood spills—I don’t even scream.

I laugh.

Because by then?

It’s already too late.

 

I’m already gone.

I’m already Surpa 2.0—the nose-sliced, love-lost, rage-fueled glitch-witch of this broken sim.

The villain. The joke. The ghost.

 

And somewhere, deep in the background noise of my own collapse, I can still hear the old code playing:

Be beautiful. Be small. Be desirable. Or be destroyed.

 

I chose none of the above.

I became the error they can’t erase.