A Ripple in Fate
It appeared the heavens were more sorrowful for Chen than he for himself. They sniffled upon the sand in which he knelt; their pristine tears rained upon his outstretched palm, and the small capsule of poison there as well. Ampule of cyanide is a potent little suicide mechanism; brain death within minutes, and a ceased heartbeat to follow suit. It was during the twilight hours, to be exact, as the moon took the tide by hand to meet the shores of The Gaurdian Sea, that Chen knew the hour had come. He acknowledged neither seawater lashing, nor thunder barking to drown his hysteria.
There are things to be felt and seen, roared the wind. But he heard not; defeat, after all, roared with a vengeance too. As he raised the ampule to his drying lips, hope and reason aside, a flash of white imposed upon his line of vision.
"Who's there?" He called. The ampule slid from his grasp and rolled out to sea.
"No time to speak, I'm in a hurry!" The intruder replied. Chen sprang to his feet and pursued the echo of the voice, which to him sounded like a child of sorts. He happened not upon a child at play, but a short man, pale as porcelain with strange rabbit-like ears. He wore a sepia vest over a dull striped shirt, with a fresh bundle of hyacinth tucked behind one ear. Upon his head sat a lopsided, dirty hat with the phrase 'King of the Inconstant Moon' embroidered in cheap yarn. He did not pass even a glance to Chen, as he was quite occupied with his golden timepiece. He shook it from side to side in a rhythmic fashion, and each time he did so, the atmosphere began to ripple like a pebble on the surface of a sleeping pond. Chen felt his eyelids grow heavy. He stumbled backwards as the world about him spun in various directions, "What are you doing to me?" He cried.
"It's time for you to face reality my little dreamer boy. You must leave this Wonderland ."
Chen watched helplessly as the elaborate dream began to fade. He awoke to a large white room covered in black ink scribblings. Locating a patch of uncovered wall, he began to paint the unconvetional canvas with a fury of words. Behind the panes of a one-way glass, doctors looked on with fascination; it seemed their administered doses of shock therapy and medication had not stopped the young man's psychotic episodes. This time he'd written a new mystery for them to ponder:
To perish within the subconcience is a deadly thing, for that which the imagination conceives is eternal. The dreamer cannot cheat death with intellect. But how on earth do I explain The King of the Inconstant Moon?