Archive of Our Own ^beta

~ He was drowning, the water filling his lungs; yet he wouldn’t die. His throat burned, his lungs pleaded for air. His entire body, protesting against every movement he made.

He struggled, trying to breach the water, make his way to the air, the oxygen that fueled the very lungs that were screaming and protesting.

He was stuck. Stuck in eternal suffering. Always drowning, always suffering, never to be pulled out. ~

Jax shifted his mind back to the present, trying to forget the nightmare that haunted him every night. He looked down at his hands. They were shaking. He clenched them into fists. His breathing was ragged.

He stood up and went to the bathroom and stared in the mirror that mocked his every existence. ‘I look terrible.’ His fur was soaked with what he assumed to be the tears he shed during the nightmare.

He reached for his brush, precariously perched on the edge of his sink. His still trembling hands knocked the brush onto the floor. He cursed under his breath.

As he reached town to pick up the brush, he saw his hand morph into something un-earthly. His hand had turned into black sludge. ‘Wha-? No! Is this-?’ His thoughts trailed off as he saw a vibrant colored eye appear out of the sludge. ~

He didn’t realize he was screaming until he popped up from his bed. ‘Another nightmare? What is going on?’

He took a shaky breath. “I’m fine, it was just a dream, nothing was real.” But he couldn’t help but shake the feeling that his dream represented something else. He shook his head.

‘I’m fine, it was all a dream.’ He changed into his overalls and brushed his fur clean from any gunk and goo still stuck from previous adventures. As he reached for his doorknob, he plastered on his smile, and walked outside.

---

Jax arrives in the common room, seeing everybody else already there. Well, everybody but Zooble. “Zooble doesn’t want to bless us with her presence again?” He mocked.

“Can it Jax.” Pomni said harshly. “Woah! Look who woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning!” Jax teased, refusing to let his mind wander to the events of his night.

He spotted Gummigoo towards the edge of the crowd with his brothers. ‘This’ll get my mind off of everything.’

He walked over to the small group of misfits. “Hey guys! Have a decent sleep?” Jax ignored the confused looks he received from the other members of the circus.

“I think? I mean, I don’t know if I actually slept at all.” Gummigoo chuckled.

“Boss? What’s sleep?” Chad asked. “It’s when you lay in your bed dummy!” Max scoffed. They began to fight about the meaning of sleep.

Gummigoo sighed. “I swear, they act like children.” Gummigoo looked at the fight, which had turned physical. Well, as physical as two toddlers fighting over a stale cracker.

“Well hello there my favorite superstars!” Caine said as he poofed into existence. Caine made his way over to Jax, invading his personal space. “How are the totally-not-NPC’s?”

“At this point you’re just doing this to piss me off.” Jax backed away from the floating teeth. “And why don’t you ask them, they’re right here.”

Caine looked skeptical. “Well then, I hope we’re excited for today’s adventure!” He exclaims, changing the topic.

“Today we’re going to Mildenhall Manor! Martha Mildenhall has told me that ever since her husband killed her, paranormal activity has been off the charts! Your job is to go and capture all of the unwanted ghosts lurking around the Manor!”

Caine creates a portal that leads to the Manor. “Wait, where’s Zooble?” Caine asks.

Jax enters the portal before he can hear the rest of the conversation.

---

When all of the crew had entered the portal and Caine had wished them luck, Jax could finally look around.

“Woah, this place looks like a piece of crap.” Jax commented on the spiderwebs and peeling wallpaper.

“It’s not that bad.” Pomni said, in a very non-convincing way.

Before anyone else could comment, a ghost appeared in the lobby.

“Hello! I’m Ghostly, your personal guide for this adventure! Behind me are 2 doors you can go through! WOW, rated for all ages, and AAAAA, rated for Mature Zoobles Only! I-” Before he could finish his sentence, Jax had sucked him up in a vacuum.

“JAX!” Ragatha screamed at him. “What? Caine said to get rid of the ghosts.” Jax retaliated.

“Yeah, the UNWANTED ones!” Ragatha snapped back.

“He was unwanted by me.” Jax said. Ragatha just sighed.

“Well, what door should we go through?” Gangle asked. Jax grabbed Gangle’s mask and threw it into the Mature Zooble door. The door turns into a big, monstrous mouth and eats the comedy mask.

“Jax! Why would you do that?” Pomni screams.

“Oi, keep your voice down. I’m thinking that there are worse ghosts here than Ghostly.” Gummigoo warns, looking around wearily.

The now mouth door then decides it was still hungry, and eats Gummigoo and Jax.

---

The pair appeared in a new room, and the door that had eaten them closed and locked, preventing their escape.

“Now this is what I call an adventure.” Jax says.

“It’s certainly…something.” Gummigoo replies.

They walk around the new room, and mounted on the walls, they see deformed and horrifying versions of their heads.

“Eww.” Gummigoo says, his mounted head practically melting.

“Heh, cool.” Jax says. He thinks back to his dreams. ‘Y’know, my mounted head doesn’t look too different from what I look like in my dreams.’ He shrugs it off.

“Keep looking around, there has to be something here to help get us out.” Gummigoo says. Jax nods, but he stays looking at his denatured head for a second longer.

‘Knock it off.’ He spins around and looks at the table behind him. He finds a tape player, and he presses’ play.

*I have successfully hunted every creature here. They have all been mounted on my wall, all for one. This creature has eluded my hunting for far too long. This creature, it is not a man nor an animal. I want to free my family from this constant fear of having to live near this creature. I want to be free from this awful feeling.

I was never free.*

The recording cuts off. The pair sit there in silence, contemplating what the hell just played on that tape.

“Let’s, um, try to find a way out of here.” Gummigoo suggests.

“I’m right behind ya’.” Jax said, following him in suit.

They start to walk down a hallway, the only thing illuminating it was a flickering lightbulb. On their left was a door that was chipped and stained.

Jax reaches to open it, but is greeted with a wall of bricks.

“Helpful.” Jax sighs. They continue walking, and come across a dumbwaiter.

Gummigoo attempted to enter it, but it was locked. “Great, I guess the only way out of here is to do the adventure as planned.” Gummigoo said.

They continued walking, the silence growing awkward. ‘Crap, what do I say?’ Jax could feel his face getting hot.

They exit the hallway into the next room, and there's another tape to play. ‘Thank God.’

*I’ve shot this creature multiple times this week, and ended up decapitating it. Its head is now finally mounted on my wall. But tragedy struck, I turned my head for a split second and its body disappeared. I think the creature isn’t dead, and I warn anybody who hears this tape to not let the head out of your sight.*

“Well $#!%.” Jax looks around. “That head, we left it in the other room.”

“Look, there’s a key.” Gummigoo says, picking up a key off the ground.

The lights go out.

“$#!%.” They say in unison.

---

They made their way back to the trophy room, tripping and tumbling through the darkness.

They make their way back to the room, a faint glow leading them.

“Where d’you suppose this light’s coming from?” Gummigoo asks.

Then, a huge head appears behind them, and shrieks at them.

“I think this is the part where we run.” Jax says. “Agreed.” Gummigoo replies.

They sprint out of the room and back to the dumbwaiter. Gummigoo tries to unlock it with the key he found.

“Hurryuphurryup!” Jax screams as the screeching becomes louder and the monster come into view.

“I’m trying!” Gummigoo screams back.

The door unlocks with a small click.

“Get in!” Gummigoo screams at Jax, who was paralyzed with fear as the head came into view.

Jax feels himself get yanked into the dumbwaiter. “Thanks,” he said. “I don’t know what got into me.”

The dumbwaiter then begins to go down.

“Wait, we don’t want to go down, we want to go up-” Before Gummigoo could finish, the dumbwaiter drops.

It crashes to the ground, sending the pair flying into the sides of the dumbwaiter.

Jax groans and cups his head. He opens his eyes, and sees he has landed on Gummigoo's lap.

“Crap! Sorry!” Jax says as he scrambles off of him. He felt his face heat up again.

“All good mate, now let’s get out of here.” Gummigoo says, standing up.

They exit the now broken dumbwaiter into what appears to be a cellar. On one of the walls there was a skeleton holding a shotgun.

The next tape player began to play on its own.

*Things have become terrible. I am paranoid, so paranoid that I shot my wife thinking it was this monster! I am not the protector this family needs. It’s ironic, now I’m the monster in this story. I stay here now, trapped in this cellar, waiting for the very creature that stripped me of my wife and sanity.*

The player ends.

“God, Caine really outdid himself with this adventure.” Jax declared.

Gummigoo pried the gun out of the skeletons hands.

They hear a distant screech. “It’s gonna know where we are. There’s 2 bullets in here, we best make them count.” Gummigoo says.

Gummigoo points the gun towards the only entrance to the cellar. Jax shuffles behind him.

They hear another screech, and both the head and the body of the monster stormed in. Jax shut his eyes and he heard two shots go off. When he opened his eyes, he saw both the angel and its body on the ground, unmoving.

“Dang, you’ve got a good shot on you.” Jax tells Gummigoo.

Just then, the tape turns back on.

*And of course, this is what I would say if I didn’t know that this being was an angel. Anyone who brings harm to an angel will be sent to Hell. Sorry, I needed a host to escape this damned Manor.*

Hands then come and grab the pair.

*These next steps in Hell will be your last.*

“^@(& YOU!” Jax screams before being dragged off into the ground.

---

The pair are now sitting in not-so-typical rendition of Hell.

“Holy $#!%, we’re in Hell.” Jax says, laughing manically. “We’re in ^@(&ing Hell!”

“Calm down mate, I bet Caine put an exit here somewhere.” Gummigoo says.

Jax takes a deep breath. ‘He’s right, this isn’t real. God damnit, Caine has really been in my head lately.’

They walk around, and come across a foggy corridor.

Jax looks at the fog, and sees it’s actually many small ghosts swarming around.

He took a step into the fog, and everything went black.

~There he was again, drowning, but not dying. His lungs screamed for air, but this time, Jax stopped fighting. He sat there, accepting his fate of eternal damnation and suffering.

‘This is just my life now, better to accept it than fight it.’~

His vision returned, and he came to his senses with a pained gasp. He was clutching his stomach, and his breaths were ragged and quick.

Gummigoo was looking at him with concern.

“What the hell just happened?” Jax asked, his breaths slowly returning to a normal speed.

“I think you got possessed? You became hella scary mate, but I was able to scare ‘em off.”

“Thanks.” Jax says. He slides down the wall to sit on the ground. ‘Holy crap, I am stuck in Hell, this whole circus is just one big Hell.’

Gummigoo sits next to him, and Jax feels his face heat up once more.

‘God, I can't even control my own body in this circus!’

Jax looks in the opposite direction. ‘Damn this circus, damn this adventure. How are we supposed to cross! We can't even touch them!’

The silence between the two grows awkward. ‘I have to say something, or else this awkward silence is going to turn into torture.'

“Ok, I mean, Caine wouldn’t make this impossible, there has to be a way out of this.” Jax said.

Gummigoo nodded. “The guy on the tapes, Baron right? He must’ve put a clue in those tapes.”

“Now that you mention it, he did say these next steps in Hell would be our last.” Jax pondered. “But how do we get across without walking?”

“Well think about it, there are other means of travelling than just walking.” Gummigoo said.

“You’re right! I bet we can find something around here that can be used as like, a raft or something.” Jax hopped up from where he was sitting.

They began to look around this “Hell,” trying to find anything that they could use to get across the fog.

“D’you think this would work?” Gummigoo asked.

It was a plank of wood with wheels on the bottom of it, practically a big skateboard.

“Yeah that’ll work.” Jax replied.

They set the skateboard before the fog.

“Ok, you get on the skateboard, and I’ll push it and jump on.” Jax said.

Gummmigoo got on the skateboard and balanced himself.

‘This better work.’ Jax pushed the skateboard as hard as he could and jumped on before it could reach the fog.

---

Jax didn’t realize he was holding his breath until after they crossed the fog.

“Holy $#!% it worked!” Jax exclaimed, getting off the skateboard.

“Hell yeah it did!” Gummigoo said.

There was a door in front of them, and it was slightly opened. Jax grabbed the doorknob and walked into the next room.

“Boss! You made it back!” Max said. Max and Chad both came running up to Gummigoo, bombarding him with questions.

“Glad to see you made it back.” Pomni told Jax. He just laughed. “No you're not.”

The portal re-opened, and the crew entered it, going back to the circus.

---

“Welcome back my meowing milkmaids!” Caine said as the portal to Mildenhall Manor closed.

‘Ew, what?’ “Never call me that again.” Jax told Caine.

Caine promptly ignored him. “How was your first adventure?!” He asked Gummigoo and his brothers.

“Horrifying.” Gummigoo said, but you could barely hear him under Max and Chad’s replay of everything that happened.

Jax and Gummigoo shared a glance before laughing.

Jax ignored the questioning glares from the rest of the circus members.

The crew walked back to their rooms, energy drained from the eventful adventure. As Jax closed the door to his room, he walked to his bathroom.

Jax looked in the mirror, and what he saw shocked him.

An actual, sincere smile.