She's Darryl's Harp

The key to survival isn't just in tactics. It also lies in persistence and in innovation. Without persistence there is no will to survive. Without innovation there is no hope! I can smell the weak. Rather, I can smell when someone has no will to live, no true survival instinct.

When I was a boy I had to learn the ins and outs of life. I didn't have a normal family. We didn't go on picnics, or take outings to parks. I never knew a ferris wheel until I was well into my adulthood. Life wasn't conventional, and because of that hardship came easily.

Whenever you allow for the uncanny to dictate your day, you allow evil to loom near behind. Evil... this evil, will always press to enter your heart. It will always attempt to destroy you, and the ones you hold dear to your heart. This I learned at an early age, and how to stave off iniquity I learned soon after.

When I was twelve, my mother died of ailment. When I was fourteen, my father followed, leaving just me and my sisters, and a harp. I knew that my sisters were envious of my possession of the harp... I knew they wanted it for themselves, and they knew how much I treasured it. What they didn't know was that the universe wouldn't let them have it, it wouldn't grant anyone unworthy of it its possession, because they weren't survivors. They hadn't the will!

Cordelia, my older sister, she was the first of my two siblings to go from ailment. I don't know if it was the same ailment that came over my parents, but I know it was because of her weakness!

She was twelve years older than me at the time. I was about eighteen at the time. Four years had passed since my parents were gone, and now that I was old enough to be on my own, I could find my own way out, just me and the harp. It was a sturdy, oakwood harp, with brass strappings, and majestic cords. She played like a beauty. I'd go no where without it.

We finally settled in to a small apartment in a sleepy town over east. I kept her in a secret hatch, to keep her safe from the elements, or so I thought at first.

Before I even got to this place of final resting for the harp, we had many a journey across the country. Of course our journey began in the midwest where my family and I lived, until the tragic deaths had occurred. We mostly made our living off of odd jobs. Trade work mostly, but the occasional landscaping would pay the bills, and pave the way as well. We'd seen many people and locations the harp and I, and with people come weakness, and with location comes the need to survive!

How we never broke down from all of the failed attempts at survival by the weak, the harp never struck its cords to tell me. Of course, I'd never ask an inanimate object such a question, but until this day, some nights all I can think about are the ailments which plagued them. So many had fell, that it almost saddens me. Almost, but time turns your head away from grief as you are hardened by the will.

But for me, it wasn't just the will. No, for you see in my case I had the harp! Its beautiful tones, and its awesome form were powerful enough to guide me through those times desolate. With the harp, I could accomplish what no other could, feats astounding, what the average man would flee from!

For you see, the harp's secret lie beyond just "the will to survive!" You see the harp's true nature allowed me to become one with the universe with every stroke of her strings. When I played her music, it tuned my mind too, making me become a test to mankind. Who could pass this test?

With her lulling vibrations, I, Darryl, sprung to life, the very thing I detested! I could become mighty enough to seek out those not worthy of her sound, and wise enough to see their envy. I became a hero, ridding the world of weakness, just as I did with my parents, and my sister Cordelia. I became the ailment in a sense, but it were not Darryl! No it were not regular old Darryl you see, it transforms those who are worthy of her strings!

The secret is it makes you an extension of the universe herself, and oh, as an extension, I reach out and wiped clean the weak. They would never survive anyway, and this I knew because of the trail I left. Now, the harp and I, we sit triumphant in our small apartment, worthy, and proud that we had done the universe's work.