Chapter Text
The last time Sunny went outside must have been months ago. Years ago, most likely. The events feel too distant to be anywhere near recent memory. But no matter how long ago it was or how distant everything seems now, Sunny still remembers it thoroughly.
He opened his eyes to a crumbling ceiling. Dark stains ate away at brittle drywall, back when stains were enough to make him shudder. Occasionally, he was naive enough to try and discern something in them and find sense in the senseless. The second he caught an outline of an eye staring back, he'd yank his blanket over his head and try to retreat into his dreams. He wasn't quite that foolish that day. He simply lay in bed and listened. Cars steadily left their driveways. Birds chirped from the nests under the roof Dad always complained about. There was a conversation too. At least one voice. Someone talking under the deep blue skies of the early morning.
He was relieved it was that time of day. Even without the sun fully showing, the world was bright enough to chase away the haze and shadows blanketing his room. Night only compounded the darkness, and he had managed to evade it. He had hours to fall back asleep before he couldn't bear the house anymore. Back then, there was a difference between night and day. He still treated them the same, sleeping away no matter the time. The rare occasion he left his room were either from Mom's fervent pleading or Dad's quiet ridicule. He'd join them for some meal and obsess over the too-dark shadows and invisible eyes.
But Sunny was alone then. He had every reason to close his eyes again and get back to sleep as quickly as possible. What was different about that day? What could have possibly pulled him away from the world of his dreams?
Was it really just annoyance?
Cars grated against his mind. Birds pierced his subconscious with each chirp. Whispers of conversation tugged at his chest. The world was taunting him. It told him of a world that he'd abandoned. It told him of a life he should have been able to live. It told him he was failing. And all of those subliminal, nonexistent messages must have been enough to drive him to stand.
The floor creaked loudly the second his feet hit the floor. His heart leapt into his throat. He could hear the covers calling his name. His resentment and his fear clashed to leave him motionless. He stared at the floor, trying to organize his scattered thoughts. That was the idea, anyway. He looked down to see the shadows and stains pooling together. His heart screamed for him to retreat. His heart screamed at him to do anything.
All of that was before he saw something.
Murky hair. A single eye. A mass that towered over him. He never named it. He could never imagine naming it. It was Something. A monster. A demon. Something that haunted him every waking moment, tearing into him with a mere gaze. Its gaze that told Sunny he was vulnerable. Compared to it, he was nothing. It was holding back. He was alive because it wanted him to be.
Sunny could gather so much from a mere look. It never touched him. It hardly even moved. All it had done was terrify him by floating there menacingly. That day, he reminded himself how ridiculous that was. This isn’t real. Just keep going and ignore it. His resentment grew the longer he ruminated over that bout of fear. He was fourteen—more than old enough to know that monsters weren't real. All he had to do was get himself to believe that. They scared him, they made it all the more easy for him to stay in bed. They did nothing other than make Mom and Dad worry about him. Their son saw monsters no one else could see. Yet another reason to be disappointed in him.
I’m better than this.
He still took care to avoid the puddles on the floor. He kicked himself for each careful step. He was moving forward, that was all that mattered.
“Monsters aren’t real.”
Saying it made it feel true. Perhaps speaking the sentiment made it closer to being the truth. Sunny told himself that. He told himself a lot of things back then.
“Monsters aren’t real. Act normal.”
There were teeth in the darkness. Fragments of a disjointed grin that just barely revealed themselves. Sunny squeezed his eyes shut no matter how much his mind yelled at him for it.
“Everything is fine.”
With his eyes closed, he let himself remember. He had eaten dinner with his family once. His father wore a subtle smile much like his own, while Mom eagerly asked him about his day. They were happy back then. His parents had an actual son back then, even if he fell short of being their perfect child. Then there was Basil. Sunny's closest friend—his only friend, really. There was a time when Sunny spent every day with him. Basil rambled about anything to Sunny. Books, his flowers, his day, his frustrations, his happiness—anything. Basil would ramble, and Sunny would be happy to listen.
Sunny opened his eyes again, feeling the cool brass of the doorknob. Slick hair draped against the skin of his arm. He clenched his teeth, allowing his resentment to push him one step further.
Sunny opened the door.
Sunny saw more of the same—hungry shadows, a stained, hazy hallway. Sunny told himself he was free. He was seeing things, sure, but he figured he would always see things. He was free. He let that freedom energize him, powering him through every further step. Sunny approached a staircase he couldn't see an end to, numerous steps stretching into a pitch-black void. He stifled his sinking heart, trying not to grip the railing quite so tightly. Keep going. He told himself nothing would happen if he went downstairs. Nothing stopped him except an overactive imagination.
He continued, steps echoing through the abyss. Countless eyes mottled the walls, ravenously watching his every step. They narrowed with spite. barely containing their bitter amusement. Sunny's nails dug into his palms. It doesn’t matter. He had spent too much time in his own head. His imagination was powerless. Sunny told himself he was in control. He ignored the gazes that shouldn’t have existed, the whispers of his own construction., and the invented haze that numbed his thoughts. Sunny was in control. He wanted it to be true, so it had to be.
Sunny tensed as his foot hit level ground. He cracked an eye open, gasping at the sight of the ground floor. He had descended. The darkness had been cast away. He could finally accept that it was all in his head. The victory was almost enough to make him smile.
The living room was also bathed in that odd, imagined haze. Each step felt more comfortable than the last, more familiar and more certain. The room was empty, just as Sunny expected. He caught a hint of conversation again. Someone was talking outside. A voice louder than Sunny expected. A repetitive thumping. More than enough to make Sunny curious.
What would have happened if he gave into his fear? It had never truly quieted. There was always the option of letting his aching chest guide him back to bed. Should he have listened? Would that have been enough?
Does it matter anymore?
Sunny approached the sliding door, pressing his palms against the glass. In the distance, hunched over and almost heaving, was… someone. Someone raised an axe in a swift, yet labored motion, haphazardly working away at a lone tree. There was a wild, frantic look in the stranger's eyes. Shadows clung to his skin, blemishing his appearance even more. The shadows stretched far beyond him, revealing an awful, broken grin. Something laughed at the stranger's agony.
Worry stifled the dread of leaving the house. Sunny jumped outside, screaming for someone. His voice was strained from the moment he spoke, too quiet to make a difference. His staggered steps weren’t enough, nor were his continuous cries. Someone only noticed him when the tree finally fell. Sunny looked at the stranger with pleading, wet eyes.
What was he going to say? What could he have said? Would any of it have been enough?
“Demon.”
Maybe not. Did the answer ever matter?
“I don’t care what you are. I’ll kill you.”
An axe rose. Eyes burned with hatred.
“You are nothing to me.”
Sunny screamed until his throat was raw and worthless. He collapsed in a world stained black. It was impossible to see anything. Sunny told himself there was nothing to see.
Reality finally asserted itself, and all his fantasies shattered.
Something tore. Something snapped. Something screamed louder than he had heard anything scream. And eventually, it was quiet. The air was metallic. Sunny sat alone in a dark, empty world. Sunny wanted it to be empty. He begged for it to be empty.
“Still with me?”
A voice cut through the quiet. Not his own, not anything, yet too many things to count. The voice tore his heart from his chest, tethering him to discolored grass. Something dark stained his hands and legs. That was all he would let its voice make him aware of.
“I helped you. Why are you so upset?”
Something latched onto his face and chest. Countless hands as cold as ice dug into his skin. Too many arms. Too many hands. The world was consumed by body parts. In the storm of stray limbs, Sunny's voice died out. They sapped away Sunny's strength, bringing him moments away from death itself.
“I helped us both. He won’t be mean to you anymore. I don’t have to deal with his annoying yelling.”
The truth tore down every fantasy Sunny held of a world he could live in. The truth salted the earth such fantasies could sprout from. Sunny was weak. Sunny was never to forget his place compared to them. He lay limp in its crushing embrace, just as weak as he had always been.
“He didn’t matter. None of them do. You’re getting upset over stuff that doesn’t matter again. It's getting old.”
Sunny could do nothing more than gaze into the shifting darkness. He had still hoped, then, that he would be able to understand. Maybe he could learn just what was haunting him. Maybe he would see a point to all of this.
He remembers falling. He remembers crying out with a dying voice. No one heard him. The void around him shifted. Broken, devoured souls cried out to him. They formed something, everything.
“You shouldn’t be upset at all. You get to see us. You always get to see us! You should feel special, Sun, not scared!”
Sunny called out to the hopeless souls. They had minds once. They had wills, they had lives. Then they were nothing. He pitied them. There was nothing he could do. There was nothing he should have done. They were nothing, worthless, meaningless forms whose deaths meant nothing.
He would never understand.
“You’re special. You’re important and you get to see us. That’s what makes you different from him. He screamed and he cried and he scared you a little. You scream and cry and don't do anything but sleep.”
He clung to life. He rejected the choking void, rejected every soul that was offered to him. He kept himself together, rejecting the chaos.
There was never anything to understand. It was a foolish want to begin with.
Sunny lay at the foot of the sliding door. His entire body stung, his ribs aching with a dull, pulsating pain worsened by hardwood pressing against him. He took in labored breaths, his lungs desperate for air. His head throbbed with the hum of bitter, vengeful laughter.
“I’m just trying to help you get it.”
A multitude of hands clung to his body loosely. Eyes narrowed with satisfaction. Something still loomed over him. Its mass was stretched across the glass panels, its maw wide enough to devour him.
“There’s barely anything worthwhile here. If I let you go, you'll go right back to rotting away. You’ll keep hiding from the only ones who can help you.”
The tears Sunny wept burned. He rasped out a sob in the face of the mocking shadow. His entire being screamed at him to run, but his body lacked the energy to. It became a cage, yet another chain locking him to the demon before him.
“That can’t be what you want.”
It cupped Sunny's face. It was still so cold, freezing to the point of searing him. It stuck to his skin enough that Sunny feared it would tear it off. It slowly, almost carefully brought Sunny’s face to meet its own. The second he met its beady, burning eyes, his stomach twisted into knots.
“It… isn’t.”
A single sentence stole whatever was left of Sunny’s strength. Its grin grew radiant, eyes piercing Sunny with light alone.
“It isn’t! I’m right! You don't need to say anything. It’s written all over your face.”
Countless hands crawled across Sunny. They propped him upright, carelessly moving his aching body with their freezing touch. It was careless, yet slow. Careless as though it had failed to be deliberate. Sunny couldn't make sense of it.
“You don’t want to live like this anymore.”
Sunny opened his mouth, yet he had nothing to say. He hadn’t been devoured, nor had he been torn to shreds. His breaths were still too quick, his heart pounding too harshly. Somehow, he was still alive.
“We don’t want that either.”
Eyes surrounded him, stabbing him in a way the demon’s own gaze failed to. Stabbing, judging, wailing eyes that made Sunny’s head spin.
“Tell me that’s what you want. Tell me you’re done with this life. Tell me you want to be way better than you are now.”
Sunny reminded himself he needed to survive.
Sunny needed to survive no matter how much the offer made his heart ache, no matter how much he thought of what lay beyond the darkness. He couldn't think back to the room that had been so hard to leave, the outside world that had always been so intolerable, the relationships he let wither away. Sunny met its gaze and felt nothing more than the need to survive.
Sunny clutched the arms binding him, digging his nails into fragile, shrouded skin. His strength was as meager as always. Even he was surprised when his nails pierced it. Its grin froze in place, jittering shadows dying down. Its eyes grew wide and trembling. Sunny knew he could survive. Sunny tried to wrench himself free, knowing that he just had to make it out of its grasp.
“What are you trying to do?”
Its voice was tinged with a satisfying confusion. Sunny wrenched an arm free. A little further, and he could make it out.
“There’s nothing left for you here! I thought we agreed on that! You’ll spend the rest of your life suffering! Is that what you want? Do you hate me that much?”
Another arm freed. The sight left Sunny elated. Keep going.
“No one’s coming for you!”
Images haunted Sunny’s mind. Screaming. Dying. The overwhelming stench of copper. Limbs fading into murky ground. Keep going. They didn't matter. Sunny was safe to shove the memories into the recesses of his mind. His motions only grew more desperate, wrenching turning to clawing and biting. Eventually, he couldn’t feel its grip anymore.
“No one here cares about you!”
Sunny opened his eyes. He flung himself to the ground, numb to the pain of hitting the floor. He tore his body off the hardwood, forcing his heavy legs to stand. Eventually, Sunny grasped the railing again, surrounded by an increasingly frantic darkness.
“Why are you being so annoying?”
By the time Sunny opened the door to his room, he knew to ignore the shattered voice. Sunny slammed the door shut, trudging through a curtain of dark, slick hair. He threw himself onto his bed, curled into a ball, and pulled the covers over his head. It screamed. Nothing it said mattered. Sunny knew all he had to do was close his eyes and dream. He could escape as many times as he needed to. He could survive. He slipped into his dreams, finally safe.
Sunny was still exhausted when he woke up. He could sense his mother's presence beside his bed. His ears still rang with phantom, demonic noise. It almost drowned out his mother's soft voice. Sunny knew she was speaking, yet he couldn't make out a single one of her words. Not that he was trying too. Sunny couldn’t even bring himself to open his eyes. She caressed his hair at some point. Even that touch wasn't enough to stir Sunny. By the time he even turned his head to look at her, she was on her way out. She shuddered as she passed through the curtain of hair, saying nothing else.
Her voice had been strained.
She could’ve tried to wake him up fully. Sunny could have forced himself to listen. Sunny wishes he clung to her, begging her not to leave. He needed her then, especially then. He needed her, he loved her, he didn’t want to be alone with them. No, he should have begged her to bring him with her. The trip was probably meant to be quick. She likely just wanted some time alone. Sunny still should have begged her. They both could have been free.
Instead, Sunny did nothing. She left, never to return. Sunny never left his room again.
The last flickers of the past dissipate. Sunny only stares at a dark ceiling. There isn't anything to make out in it, nothing that won't make him yearn for an unreachable past or some choice he never made. He closes his eyes. Sleep will take him in due time. He will go through yet another cycle of dream, wake, yearn, and regret. Yet before he can truly retreat into his dreams, one thought floats to the forefront of his mind.
What would it take for something to change?