Chapter Text
..
There is nothing but a vacant void.
…
You are carrion, you are rotting, and the couch is the concrete road you lay on.
....
There is nothing until a rising in volume ringing echoes through your ears, as though your mind were nothing but a cavern, and you open your weary eyes to a dark room, blurriness clearing and allowing you to only faintly be able to make out the outlines of the couch you’ve made your bed and the ceiling right above you.
You have not moved from this spot, it has been countless hours, perhaps even days, you have made it the only place in your home that you've lived in, and even calling it a ‘living space’ is a terrible excuse. You don’t even remember the last time you turned a light on, made a meal, heard the faucet run, opened your front door, or saw the sky. You’ve only seen this ceiling, lying on your back, as if in an early coffin.
You practically are.
What day is it?
You never had a way of keeping track.
It probably means it isn’t important, then.
Though, there’s a chance you have a work shift, and if you don’t show up; well, then you’ll really be dead, won’t you?
You lay against the couch.
Name the things you can feel.
The static dancing across the coat you never took off from work. Your hair is strewn about across it, soiling it with the dirt that’s made its way into it. Each time your hand grazes by your hair, a slick thick feeling of something is left on it, despite the fact your hand is clean. Your hands limp on your chest, fingers only loosely intertwined with one another, looking terribly crooked and an attempt at an amalgamation.
Turn your head, take in your surroundings.
You don’t really want to, your view is typical, the same, and you’d like to keep it that way.
Turn your head.
This requires change.
Turn your head.
After all this time, you finally seek out a change?
Turn your head.
You suppose you do need to, if you want to go to work.
Turn your head.
Your neck makes a crack as if old wood being bent, and you turn your head to your left, albeit at the pace of a turtle. All you see is an empty table and the chairs that accompany it, all of which have collected dust in your neglect. The feeling of your hair brushes up against the back of your neck like a centipede crawling across it, wriggling right under the surface of your skin. This has happened plenty of times. At first, instinctively, you would place your hand there to make sure there was no centipede there; and there never was. You found it pointless to keep checking, but you continued to do so until your energy spiraled and dwindled into nowhere.
The walls, you can’t even name the color they are anymore, despite looking at them more face-on now. They look bleak, monochromatic, but you know there’s color here—there just has to be something within this apartment that retains life; because it isn’t you, and if it isn’t you, it has to be something important. Walls are your shelter, therefore, they should not dull with such mediocre care, they are sturdy, acting as the only thing allowing you to continuously hide from the light.
Your eyes have been in the dark so long, each time, without fail, your eyes naturally adjust with quickness, and you know that the task will arise to turn a light on.
You are delaying the inevitable pain.
Roll onto your side.
You could, or, you could turn your head right back up. Comfortability has been your priority for so long now; why stop?
Roll onto your side.
You will be reminded of the bones beneath your flesh.
Roll onto your side.
To do that, implies you plan to get up. You have attempted this previously, and you don’t know how many failures it’s been, but you do know there’s never been a succession.
Roll onto your side.
For a thing like work, you think to yourself, is this worth it all?
Roll onto your side.
Does anyone even remember your existence now?
Roll onto your side.
Your name is on papers. Of course they’d remember, in some capacity, do they remember you as a person or an author?
Roll onto your side.
As a living being or a contributor?
Roll onto your side.
As anything more than your occupation?
Roll onto your side.
With all the bare minimum of strength you have remaining, you use it to roll onto your side. A large part of you wants to return to the comfortable position and be lulled to sleep by the all familiar darkness. You may not remember your dreams, yet they are more of a blanket than the world outside ever will be.
You really don’t want to go outside, it will only fill you with agony and pain, and a reminder of what you have done.
Something about the sun is so bright, it’s said to bring joy to those who bathe beneath it, but the longer you stood beneath fluorescent lights just as bright at work, the more you hated the sun. Everywhere you went, all you could imagine was the lab you’d find yourself in, you remember the computers, the things that were done in there, and a part of you wants to run and never return, or to allow yourself to be found on your own terms, rotting, decaying, one with the road, run over repeatedly and unrecognizable beyond just the face.
You want people to know it’s you, but you want to look nothing like you.
The thought, now, of having to move off of the couch, to walk by a glass or a mirror and see yourself, it discourages you deeply.
You are having second thoughts about the two, minimal choices here. What will it do to the stats to have another failure? A succession will only odd the evens as they stand.
Perhaps, you think to yourself, you should go back to the vacant void you find yourself in every night, surrounded by nothing and no one.
Another part of you speculates, maybe, that the sun will no longer burn.
The third whispers, this is not worth anything.
The fourth preaches, you have to redeem yourself.
The fifth believes you should decay.
One part of your mind is lying.
One thing that is abundantly clear; you want to curl up and die.
Get up.
You won’t.
Get up.
You refuse.
Sit up.
You refuse.
Sit up.
You refuse.
Sit up.
You are fighting yourself, will it be worth it at all?
Sit up.
So much effort, another failure to a pile of them is better than attempting to create a balance.
Sit up.
You don’t want to.
Sit up.
You will only be soiled again, the energy, it’s not worth it…
Continue rotting.
You opt for lying in the tomb you now call home.
Sit up.
Your muscles are weak, when was the last time you ate?
Sit up.
How many times have your limbs fallen asleep before you have?
Sit up.
Your arms drag themselves lazily tuck themselves back in. Maybe a nap would do you well, anything else other than this.
Sit up.
The uncomfortability of the couch settles into your hands: you feel its fabric underneath your nails that you have bitten to nothing, your teeth are your nails and your nails are your teeth.
Sit up.
The walls around you creak, as if giving encouragement.
Sit up.
You consider letting yourself collapse into the shell you’ve made yourself into.
Sit up.
You want to sleep.
Sit up.
You will only be soiled again, the energy, it’s not worth it…
Continue rotting.
You opt for lying in the tomb you now call home.
Sit up.
You’re exhausted.
Sit up.
Go back to sleep.
Sit up.
Maybe you’ll dream.
Sit up.
Everything will hurt, you are already dirty, it will not be hard to bury yourself within it.
Sit up.
You will fail.
Sit up.
You will always fail.
Sit up.
You flatten your palms against your cushioning, and you feel your body slump when you bring yourself to sit in an upward position. Your brain became so accustomed to laying down on the couch, you forgot what it’s like to have your head on right.
It does not feel good.
Your stomach aches, not for food but to not move, your bones feel rattled, your muscles are weak, you are weak, yet you insist upon using useless energy to merely move, for something that will not matter at the end.
Your eyebrows furrow, when was the last time you cleaned, when was the last time you even used anything in this place? There is nobody living here now, your eyes no longer recognize the floors you used to walk on, the walls that surround you, it is not your home, is it? Whatever place it is, it is a stranger.
Get off the couch.
You are dirty, but you do not want to be clean.
Get off the couch.
You let your legs dangle above the floor, you wonder if this is how kids feel upon sitting on a swing.
Get off the couch.
Would he have enjoyed being on a swing?
Get off the couch.
What awaits you at the end of all this?
Get off the couch.
No one will be there.
Get off the couch.
(Being clean, you suppose.)
Get off the couch.
(Is being clean worth all of this?)
Get off the couch.
(You don’t know.)
Get off the couch.
You push yourself up, and your vision blurs; a television with no connection; until it reconnects, and you find yourself barely able to keep yourself steady, like you were just born. You keep your arms outstretched and hands too, using that to be your balance.
You have gotten off the couch.
Look around the house.
Your ‘home’ around you, decays, not much different to you.
Look at the pictures on the wall.
You don’t remember the faces you see anymore. Perhaps that’s for the best.
Look at the front door.
It’s so far away. The doorknob itself hasn’t been turned in so long that some dust has settled on it. The lock never unlocked. You wonder if it even remembers how to.
Look at the dead flowers.
A bouquet’s worth. Each day, a petal would die.
Water them.
There’s no point to water them now, you can barely even water yourself.
Look at the kitchen.
The warmth from it has long faded. Was it even there?
Look at the door leading to the bathroom.
In the night, you’d hear it creak back and forth, from what, you aren’t sure. It felt like, for however long it lasted when you first laid down on the couch, someone walked around and went in and out of the rooms.
You wonder, if…
Look at the door leading to the bedroom.
Anyone has occupied that room since your disappearance.
You have not changed your clothes in a long time, but you’re unsure if you’d recognize anything in the closet. Nor do you know if you can muster up the energy to do such a small task, that really, at the end of it all, may contribute to nothing at all.
(If you clean yourself up only to dress yourself in the clothes you will be buried in, will you expect anything other than a gloomy sky to accompany your funeral?)
Your mind needs to decide.
Enter the bedroom (Retrieve clothes.)
You don’t want to see what it’s become because you know it is not yours anymore. At the same time, if you truly wish to wash off all of this, you suppose you have to venture in at some point. You still hesitate. Although closer, it is less familiar than the bathroom. You don’t even remember what it looks like anymore.
Go inside.
You are in a stranger’s home, that is their bedroom.
Go inside.
You will see them.
Go inside.
You will see who lives here now. Is that what you want?
Go inside.
It is further than the bathroom door.
Enter the bathroom (Save energy and time.)
You forfeit the idea of possibly escaping this cycle with the same ease it came to you. You place your hand on the couch’s arm, walking, one step at a time, and you look towards the bedroom door and the front door, not directly across from each other, but close. It is then you feel like you are crossing over an empty road, while there is no danger present at this very moment, it feels like it could change. The same as an empty swing going back and forth endlessly, no purpose, no reason to exist, yet accidents can always happen.
You reach the bathroom door, placing your hand on the doorknob that while left untouched, you feel no dust on it. It makes you pause, and wonder, if you look inside your bedroom; is someone else sleeping there?
You choose not to even glance in its direction, if you see headlights, you’ll run.
(Or you won’t.)
You don’t need to even open the door, it is practically already halfway there, so you use the doorknob as support before you pass through the doorway and feel your way to the sink, dragging yourself like a limping animal. While your eyes may be used to the darkness, are they used to all of it that surrounds you? Your hand drifts up the wall, your eyes squinting out of either frustration or an attempt to see, and you find the lightswitch.
Yet you don’t flick it on.
You wonder if you’ll wake who sleeps in the bedroom.
Or if it is even worth it, to feel the sun’s caged and contained child burn your eyes by being so bright.
When did you last brush your teeth? You don’t even know, but that isn’t your worry right now. You have to get in the shower. You said you would bathe the gunk out from beneath your skin. You have not. You have to, you have to get to work.
You wonder if this is worth it all.
Turn the light on.
It will hurt.
Turn the light on.
You will regret such a thing.
Turn the light on.
Why do you always cause yourself this pain?
Turn the light on.
You don’t know.
Turn the light on.
Maybe it’s because you deserve it.
Turn the light on.
Your hand feels around instead for the nightlight—which is not too far, finding its switch and turning it on instead.
The room is bathed in a quiet golden light, though it blends with the walls, which have the color of the same yellow as your teeth. Your eyes burn at the edges while the shadows fall into ash, yet remain in the corners of the room, still enshrouding the shower and only leaving its curtain really visible.
Look up.
The ceiling is peeling and things are living inside it, you see one crawl in between the cracks out of desperation at the sudden light, as if it thought it had all died out a long time ago.
Look down.
The tiles are cracked and crumbling, not cleaned yet walked on. You wonder if this stranger ever showers either.
Look at the mirror.
I can’t look at myself. I’ll wonder what he would’ve looked like.
You refuse to look into its reflection.
Look out of the bathroom.
Your eyes see the darkness outside, though the light does not reach out. You do not believe the stranger will awake.
Look in the bathroom cabinets.
You don’t want to reach that high, your energy is a skeleton you are trying so hard to move. You are not here to do more than you said you would, despite yourself insisting you should return to that comfortable cocoon of slumber, however, you suppose that your work cannot wait.
Look at the shower.
You think it’s writhing in agony.
Prepare to shower.
You place your hands on the sleek slimy labcoat, pushing it with the least amount of strength you muster, letting it fall down primarily on its own, before dragging your limp arms out of its sleeves. It falls to the floor in silence, bunched up and crumpled. Sometimes, you forget why you work, and then you remember, and sometimes, it’s worth remembering. You can’t remember now, though, so at this very moment, it isn’t.
You have not had your hair up in a long time, you thank yourself for refusing to take care of even your hair for this moment, as your arms, if they had to lift themselves up, would not hold enough strength in each individual finger to undo even a ponytail. The fatigue that has kept its grasp on you so tightly still is strong, as you find yourself leaning against the sink, contemplating its ability to be a good resting spot. But you would be found by the stranger in this home, and you cannot be found, when you are on that couch, you are invisible, unseen; and when you leave this house to work, you will not need to worry about the stranger.
Continue to prepare to shower.
You can still turn back, leave just now; but you will get stares for your appearance.
Continue to prepare to shower.
You cannot really bring yourself to care about that.
Continue to prepare to shower.
But you already made it this far, dragging yourself back would only be more work.
Continue to prepare to shower.
Everything around you is falling apart.
Open the shower curtain.
You find yourself barely able to keep yourself upright, lowering yourself to the ground and crawling over to the shower, tugging the curtain open. Inside, a hoard of insects scream and spread all throughout the bottom of the white tub, the light seeping in making them hiss and cry, retreating on and on until they all spiral down the drain as if sharing the same mind. You find yourself only able to watch, yearning to disappear down that same drain. A gurgling hiss comes from it, and your eyes look slowly up at the faucet.
You know that all those inside the drain will be drowned. You do not care and push yourself up on the edge of the tub, and reach for the valve, turning the water on. If there are any more screams, they are drowned out by the rushing water.
The water runs down your hand. It is freezingly cold, and somehow, your body has the energy to jerk your hand aggressively away from the cold, the water dripping onto the ruined tiles and in between the cracks, allowing the rot growing beneath it to only be strengthened.
You have to change the temperature of the water.
Adjust the valve.
You wonder if you even have the strength.
Adjust the valve.
Just be quiet.
Adjust the valve.
Left
It makes a shrieking sound as you turn it slightly.
Test the temperature.
While not freezing, it still causes a shiver to run through your body. This is not the temperature you want.
Left
It makes a shrieking sound as you turn it slightly more.
Test the temperature.
Warmer, but there’s an underlying feeling of cold to it still. This is not the temperature you want.
Left
It makes a shrieking sound as you turn it more.
Test the temperature.
You think it’s perfect, and a sudden tinge of cold water sprays out into it. This is not the temperature you want.
Left
It makes a shrieking sound as you turn it more.
Test the temperature.
A comforting warmth in the coldness of this home. When you wait, there is no underlying cold. This is the temperature you want.
You’re satisfied with that.
Prepare to shower.
You decide it is useless to move back where your coat lays, and opt for letting your clothes that have clung to you for so long finally slip off of your skin. When they are left behind on the ground, you realize how dirty they really are. Still, you choose not to use all this energy just to go find some new clothes, you’ve gotten this far. You place your feet into the tub, before moving yourself into it and sitting down.
Turn the shower head on.
You pull on the thing on top of the faucet up with thankfully only a few tries, and the head above allows water to begin raining down; missing your own head by only a few inches. Soon, you feel water race down your head, front and back, through the strands of your hair, and it feels weird, unfamiliar, and almost makes you want to get out. But now that you’re here, you’re not sure it’s worth it.
Stand up.
This is uncomfortable, but you don’t want to.
Push yourself back.
The feeling of the water running down your back is unwelcome, so use your hands on the progressively slippier and slipper bathtub floor to scoot back from the water and push yourself past the fountain of water—getting drenched in the process—and up against the wall. Despite spraying outward now, it still slowly leads back to the drain, just like the swarm inhabiting the tub moments prior. You notice that some of the spare insects attempt to swim their way out, yet the water only sends them swirling right back down once they grow tired enough to let its current take them, like a cat playing with its prey.
You find your eyes dwelling on the drain, hearing the hollow echo of water gurgle down it, going deeper and deeper into the earth, places most people will never ever see; returning to the dirt and soil that you try to wash yourself of.
It is mesmerizing, calling to you, and a part of you wishes you could disappear right down it too.
But you can’t.
You’ll dream you did.
The one thing you can thank the curtain for is it shields you so valiantly from the light that illuminates the rest of the bathroom, and at the same time you somewhat miss it, even though it seeps in just at the corner where you did not close the curtain. What you are not fond of is the squeaking metal that holds it up, rocking back and forth. In the quiet house, it sounds so loud, even louder than the attempts at turning the valve did, which surprises you. Maybe it is your breathing that rocks it, maybe it is the breath of the stranger’s that lingers throughout the whole home, the breeze of someone else’s life being lived, you aren’t sure.
The water laps up at your legs.
You dream to fall asleep here, and let the water overtake you, but you think that would be an unkind sight to the stranger that lives here. You do not move to do anything.
Look around the shower.
Nothing too fancy.
The sides of the tub make you feel cramped.
The curtain is patternless and blank.
A bar of soap lays on the side of the tub, right next to the shower curtain. It’s mostly white. You aren’t quite sure what other color is overtaking it, all you know is it looks more like clumps than an inventive pattern.
Reach for the wall.
You reach for it, your hands flattening out against it, and you pull yourself off of the floor, almost slipping, but perhaps your balancing act over at the couch pays off and is what allows you to mostly catch yourself. You put your other hand on the wall too, just to make sure.
Wash yourself off.
The water runs over your body and through your hair. It sounds like a parade of rain, but you have no umbrella. Experimentally, you bring one hand (keeping the other on the wall and leaning on it) to your hair and run your fingers through it, allowing the water to wedge its way inbetween. You continue this process a few times, but your arm already feels sore from doing it. At the same time, some of the dirt feels like it was easily washed away. When you look back at the drain, you cannot tell if what lays there is dirt, or the dying insects. Maybe some decided to live in your hair when you weren’t looking, you have no clue. Your hand returns to the wall, and you feel no need to rub the water into your skin, it does that by itself over the course of however long you stand there.
You wonder if you would ever want to leave.
You could always return to that comfortable couch.
Go back to sleep.
Dream.
But then you remember those times you wouldn’t dream, you’d lay staring at the ceiling, eyes too wide to close and at the same time not willing enough to look away. You’d see hundreds and even thousands of bugs over the course of the night, all lingering above you, threatening to drop down and make their home on you.
You were just like a piece of furniture, after all.
Unmoving. Stiff. Abandoned.
No spider attempted to make a web on you, but you’ve seen them dance above you, eating things.
You think they’re why there aren't that many bugs when you sleep anymore.
Or perhaps that’s the centipede.
You saw it, rarely, and it’d never devour in front of your eyes, yet you know it would when you couldn’t see it, out of the corner of your eyes.
Really, now that you think about it, you wonder how many you saw from sleep deprivation or in dreams, or any that were actually there.
You decide you shouldn’t worry about that right now.
You wonder what they’ll say at work.
“Hey, how are you?”
Is that what you ask to a missing person?
Maybe you haven’t been missing at all.
Maybe all your decay has been for nothing.
Work.
Work is a strange thing, to you. You do it diligently, you cannot name any of the faces of whom you work alongside of, you wear the same, routine labcoat to it each day without fail, and you work. You aren’t quite sure what exactly you are aiming to do when you work now, many papers have your name on them, but how many will read them? Will your name truly remain on them, or will one of your colleagues improve upon it and take the glory for themself? You always kept to yourself as a result of that, you notice. Credit is where it’s due, and if you keep it so deep within your chest they have to rip out your heart to take it, you suppose, if that’s what gets your work out there, you’ll do it.
One motivator you suppose you have is to complete the thesis you started. Nobody else will, anyway. You’re the only one who can.
You wonder how many people drown in their own homes.
You wonder how many drown in stranger’s homes, or places that they do not know.
Probably not that uncommon, you think to yourself.
You’ll be one in a hundred at least.
Speaking of drowning, your skin is beginning to shrivel. That’s likely a sign you should be getting out soon, or that you’re clean. You don’t feel clean. You assume you are; you don’t know how much more time you have until the stranger wakes up.
Get out of the shower.
It sounds just like rain.
You don’t know how long it’s been since you’ve last heard rain.
Get out of the shower.
Is it raining right now, you wonder?
Get out of the shower.
If you turn off the water, you’ll know.
Get out of the shower.
It’s getting colder.
Get out of the shower.
It’s getting cold.
Turn off the shower.
You wade your way through the river, being drenched in the process, your hair clings to your face and your eyes, but you open them and push down, making the water then gush out through the bottom faucet instead, and you pull on the valve. It makes a shrieking sound until it can no longer move.
You gasp for air you didn’t know you needed in the consuming silence.
Get out of the shower.
You climb out, grabbing a towel and wrapping it around yourself. It serves as some semblance of warmth aside from your beating heart. You breathe in through your nose, and out through it too. You don’t know if you even remember how to speak anymore. You clear your throat, as a test, and it sounds fine. You sit down on the toilet’s closed lid, feeling the water run down your body and onto its porcelain surface.
You did it.
You showered.
Now there’s just the last important step.
You can hear your own breath, it sounds exhausted; desperate, it heaves your whole chest.
Change back into your old clothes.
You bury yourself into your soiled clothes again.
You feel it creep back underneath your skin, and as you slip the sleeves back over your arms, you feel something secrete itself, trying to escape, only to be trapped. You breathe.
The coffin lid is sealed.
Look at the mirror.
You can’t bring yourself to look at the husk of who you once were.
Leave the bathroom.
You leave without looking into your eyes.
Go to work.
With that, you go to work.
Everyone greets you, but you seal yourself off into your own chamber, returning to the work you abandoned. If you failed the previous experiment, you can at least prove this thesis, you can dig up something.
Your work day is a blur and you don’t remember anyone or anything.
Just like every other day.
Nothing really changes, you find.
(...That’s your personal thesis, not a scientific one.)
Left
It makes a shrieking sound as you turn it more.
Test the temperature.
A bit too warm, it’ll make you sweat and dirty again. This is not the temperature you want.
Left
It makes a shrieking sound as you turn it more.
Test the temperature.
It starts to make your skin red and slightly sting. This is not the temperature you want.
Left
It makes a shrieking sound as you turn it even more.
Test the temperature.
It burns. This is not the temperature you want.
Right
It makes a shrieking sound as you turn it slightly. It then promptly turns the running water off.