Brain Fog

I've died and been regenerated the next difficulty level up.

Objects wander freely. I tell myself, "put the charger in your backpack", and the charger teleports from backpack back to its original spot. Combs, earbuds, pens, keys, and masks are especially prone to wandering, or sometimes disappearing entirely into the ether.

Mathematicians have held a secret meeting and decided that the subject is harder now. I wonder how much time taking the bus would save me over walking and I lose the plot. My alarm app is sneaking in arithmetic prompts that are mathematically impossible, and increasingly, I have to skip over these to get a question I can answer to stop the alarm.

Keyboards are also conspiring against me. They translate the thoughts in my head into clumsy, typo-ridden sentences.

The past rewrites itself and memories fall from the inventory at random. Chapters progress nonlinearly. This level must be beta, there are glitches everywhere. My avator walks to the door and pulls out credit card rather than keys (what the fuck, dude). You have to spam the "brush teeth" button before anything happens.

People speak in riddles. Time goes faster, skips a beat, jumps. School deadlines blip in and out of existence, reappearing after the deadline has passed. Inconveniences have become tragedies, arguments have become fights. I wasn't warned of the shift. Tears wait right at my eyes.

I would like to go multiplayer, but this level has splintered into a thousand versions. Everyone playing hard-mode plays alone.