Chapter 2: Thought Train

Two strange men, dressed in strange clothes, staring at me - as if they knew I was coming - while waiting outside my door.

After reviewing the facts, I take back what I thought. The theory of them being priests is downright idiotic, an idea not even worth consideration because of the place we’re in. These freaks are either mentally ill - which is unlikely, as they wouldn’t have lived past the age  of six here if that was the case - or they’re KGB officers who have been made aware of… ‘something’ - whether real or imaginary - and have come to interrogate me. 

But I know for a fact that KGB officers don’t dress like that. If some maverick among them decided to dress in a mix of priest clothes and medieval armor with Christian-themed patterns, his comrades would torture him worse than they do criminals.

Both of my theories are unlikely, considering that KGB officers don’t need to trick me to be interrogated by dressing like some Crusader from centuries ago, and anyone else, mentally ill or not, would be captured and tortured for dressing like that.

The government may not try to target Christians now, but that doesn’t mean you’re safe if you try flaunting it. Even I don’t walk around wearing a Rosary, and even if they stopped destroying churches, trying to run one will get you killed… probably.

Those are my speculations and educated guesses based on the former policies of the government and its currency ideology. It’s not like anyone was dumb enough to try flaunting their religiousness, me included - I can’t praise the Maker if I’m dead.

Wait… Heaven exists. I theoretically could die, go to Heaven, and praise the Lord until the end of time.

Food for thought, I guess. I’m not sure it would be permissible though; this life is a test, and committing suicide or intentionally dying through other means would be like ripping up the paper and spitting in the teacher’s face - disrespect of the highest order to the being who has granted me life.

Corinthians, chapter three, verse seventeen: ‘If anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy him. For God's temple is holy, and you are that temple.’

Scratch that theory. Suicide is a heresy only done by vile creatures with no brain. Everyone who does it is a selfish sinner of the highest order, unable to take the fact that they were gifted with life and were born human into account before committing themselves to rash actions. They go to Hell and suffer eternally, deservedly so for defiling a body housing the Holy Spirit.

I’ve gotten off track. Back to the two men.

Nothing I can think of is plausible after any amount of thought, so either these are circumstances so absurd that I can’t use logic to figure anything out, or I’m missing information, the type needed to even begin theorizing.

So, taking that into account, I don’t really have any good options.

My personal favorite choice would be to run away, not look back, and make sure I never see these people again, but they’ve already seen me. In fact, they’ve been looking at me since I was in their line of sight, watching where I came out. It’s almost like they knew where I was, supporting the KGB theory a bit more.

While running away is theoretically an option, it’s not a very good one, even if these people didn’t already see me. I need to sleep in my bed and live in my house at the end of the day, and I’m not sure if these people would get angry at me avoiding them and therefore have a worse opinion of me when I inevitably get confronted.

So, the only reasonable option is to go and see what they want. If I go up there and get immediately shot in the face, all I can say is that hindsight is 20/20; walking up to them is my best choice as of right now.

I’m sure I’d go to Heaven if I died anyway.

So, after around a minute of standing there, I calmly walked towards them.

One was fairly old, maybe in his forties, with light smile lines - ironic with his stone-cold expression - and graying hair. The… armor and other clothes he was wearing hid his musculature and build, so I can’t tell much. 

The other was young, probably in his twenties, with blond hair and what looked like a coppola on his head, though it might have been a flat cap - I’m not a fashion designer.

Besides their clothing, neither of the two have distinguishable features from what I can see at maybe thirty meters away. No scars, no tattoos, no nothing. I might see something when I’m up close though.

So I got close, and the first thing I got asked was, “Hey, buddy. What’s your name?” by the younger one.

So they don't know my name? Or is this an attempt at leaving a friendly first impression to get me to let my guard down?

Anyway, I don’t answer, taking the chance to establish myself - or at least contest them - as a dominant party in the conversation by ignoring him and asking my own questions.

“What’s yours? And what kind of accent is that?” I say, squinting my eyes for a second and reopening them, examining him. “You don’t sound like a Russian, and we don’t get foreigners here. Unless you consider some of the other ethnicities in the country, and even then, it’s not like traveling to Moscow is easy.”

I didn’t outright say it, but I’m sure they get the message: They look incredibly suspicious. In a response with an intent like mine, keeping the amount of words minimal would be preferable, but adding the extra two sentences at the end helped to drive it home.

The older guy snorted at that, but he didn’t do anything else. In fact, he wasn’t even looking at me anymore, staring off into the distance.

Meanwhile, the younger guy tapped his hat and replied. “My name is Alessandro.” 

Foreign name, most likely Italian in origin. 

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“And I didn’t think my accent was that noticeable.” He flexed his fingers a bit after saying that, murmuring something about needing more practice.

His Russian doesn’t sound that bad though - you can only hear the accent if you’re inspecting the pronunciation. I was just fishing for information.

“Why are you here?” I asked. At that, the two met each other’s eyes and nodded, seemingly coming to an agreement. In response, I tightened my grip on my shopping bag, which I always have a secondary bag of rocks inside of in case I need to use it to defend myself from getting mugged.

I didn’t ever think I’d need to use it here. Maybe that mutual nod was a signal or something.

“It’s going to take a while to explain,” says ‘Alessandro’, “ so we’d need to go inside to tell you.”

What, so I can get killed and robbed in a place where it’ll take a while to find the body? Then again, if they wanted to rob me, they’d have already done it, and if they came here just to kill me - which I doubt, as I’m not that important - they also would’ve already done it, probably in another place, wearing less conspicuous clothes. 

No proper murderer would loiter around a place they plan to commit a crime in while wearing clothes that anyone can remember and recognize; it would be like begging to be traced to the crime scene. 

Hmm… After further thought, this is either a) not a plot to murder me, or b) I am dealing with two of the most incompetent and brainless murderers to ever exist. If this was a plot to murder me, literally every action they’ve taken towards that goal might be the worst decision they could’ve made.

The older one saw me loosening my grip on the bag and might have sensed my inner turmoil, so he dropped a bomb on me, trying to - from what I could see - rattle me when my opinions and thoughts whirled around, considering every presented fact.

“Don’t you have some sort of little ability or trait that you can’t explain?”

That’s why I called it a bomb. While my mind was wrestling with itself over the identity, goal, and intent of these two, he dropped a question that tipped the scales in a side of the argument that I didn’t even know existed before then. And I answered accordingly.

“Hm. ‘But there were also false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you. They will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the sovereign Lord who bought them - bringing swift destruction on themselves.’”

Admitting to having something like that so quickly and openly is downright stupid, so I gave a cryptic response that’s neither a negative nor positive answer to his question.

I know that my ability is God-given, and those two knowing about it makes them either devout believers or vile heretics, since those are the only two parties that could have knowledge of the topic.

If they actually are agents of the Lord - and I’ll be able to tell whether or not they are - I’ll welcome them. If not, well, at least one of them will die, but I’m hoping for both.

And the outcome depends on their response to what I said.

The older one stared at me, and the younger one looked more confused than anything, but before the younger one could try responding, the older one did it himself for once: “The same kinds of circumstances are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world.”

A reference to Peter, chapter five, verse nine. It’s not a direct quotation to verse nine, nor does it have the same context with what he’s talking about, but it’s a reference that proves his faith and gives me enough information to make my decision.

I walked straight past them and opened the door.

“Come in.”

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After finishing this chapter, I realized something: Maybe the way I envisioned my MC’s mind is too chaotic to be in a presentable story form… It was probably obvious to anyone reading, but it’s hard to see the flaws in something you wrote.

I designed the MC to have a chaotic whirlwind of a mind, with thought trains leading nowhere and everywhere while going at a million miles an hour, and even though I toned it down from my original design, it’s still too chaotic to make for smooth, presentable reading. If I wrote this in the way I originally envisioned my MC’s mind, it would be twice as long and even more random and detailed, but, as I said, even toning it down this much wasn’t enough. 

I left this chapter like this to both show the readers my vision of the MC and to make sure it doesn’t seem weird if MC creates smart schemes, figures stuff out using only his mind, or thinks of generally unorthodox ideas that would be hard to figure out.

Consider this chapter to be a slightly watered-down true version of the MC, because I’ll have to dial down the chaos more from now on. The only other option is to write in 3rd POV, but I don’t want to change my entire writing style for some extra unnecessary thoughts. 

Also, tell me if there’s any terms in the chapter that need defining, I personally don’t think so but it depends on the person I guess.

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