Chapter Text
January 1st: 2025: Currant Creek, Utah
Sammy woke with a splitting headache and a vague sense that he was forgetting something important. He sat up in the unfamiliar bed, morning sunlight streaming through flimsy white curtains, painfully bright on his eyes. He scrunched them up, and in the absence of the sense of sight, noticed muted speech coming through the bedroom door.
Opening his eyes and swinging his legs off the edge of the bed, he pushed himself up and walked over towards the dresser. There was a bowl of half-eaten pasta and a nearly empty cup of water, the latter of which he picked up and swallowed, hoping to banish the horrid taste in his mouth. It worked only partially. Moving to open the bedroom door, he made his way downstairs to the kitchen and stumbled into quite possibly the strangest scene he had ever encountered.
Through the sliding glass doors, sunlight that had fought to pierce through overcast skies illuminated the room. Coupled with the blinding white of the walls and decor in the house, it left him with a stabbing pain deep behind his eyes. Butch stood in front of the cooktop, wearing a hot pink apron that said fuck the cook and flipping pancakes. Sammy suspected that Miranda, standing to his side, was the reason behind that. At the island counter, Mike and Danzig sat across from Al, looking like children next to the giant. They had a chess board out, and Mike was giving Danzig advice on the move he was making. MalO was standing on the other side of the island, watching them play. She looked over and waved when Sammy walked in.
Danzig looked up from his game after he moved and he smiled. “Zhe hobo lives. Welcome to zhe year of our lord twenty twenty-five.”
Butch looked behind himself. “Yo, you made it. I'm cooking everybody pancakes. Want some?”
“They're free? I don't have to…” Sammy trailed off, pointing at the words on the apron.
“Please don't,” Butch said. “Only Miranda gets to do that.” They all laughed.
“Is this like hangover aftercare?” Sammy asked, rubbing the heel of his hand against the sleep in his eyes.
Danzig snorted. “If it is, you need it. You were… how do you say… completely shit-faced last night.”
Sammy winced. “How bad?”
The whole kitchen aside for Al and Miranda erupted into laughter, which was an answer in itself.
Butch and Danzig tried to talk at the same time, raising their voices to drown out the other.
“You made out with an invisible person.”
“You slow danced and cuddled with zhe air in the center of zhe room.”
Miranda shook her head. “I didn't see any of it, but I heard the stories. And I saw the pictures.”
“Pictures?” Sammy said, horrified.
Danzig nodded solemnly. “Pictures.” He held out his phone, gallery opened. There was Sammy, standing in the corner of a room, his hands outstretched and head bowed forward as though he was holding someone by the shoulders. Several students stood nearby, glancing towards him either in confusion or amusement. Danzig swiped to the left. Another, this time of him sitting on the couch, leaning towards the empty space next to him, lips puckered and eyes closed. His hands were resting midair. And another, from a different angle. Another. Another. Eight in total.
Sammy paled in realization. “Gonna… throw up.” he managed, backing out of the kitchen. He did actually have to vomit, so it was an excellent cover story.
He barely made it to the bathroom in time. The door shut behind him, the toilet seat went up, and his insides left his body through his mouth. The stream continued for what felt like hours: foul, acidic slop that burned his sinuses and clogged his airways. Coughing, Sammy staggered upright and towards the sink, sticking his mouth under the faucet and running the water.
Wiping his lips on his shirtsleeve, he looked up at MalO, standing behind him. A deep sense of shame engulfed him, stifling in its potency. Not even a week after getting cheated on, and he was making out with his lifelong furry companion. What was wrong with him?
“Did we…” He coughed, voice hoarse and sinuses congested. “Did we kiss last night?”
She pointed to him and nodded, then to herself, shaking her head.
“I tried to kiss you and you didn't kiss me back?”
MalO nodded again.
“Holy fuck. Jesus, I'm so sorry.” Sammy turned back to the sink, staring in the mirror and dragging his hands down his face. “Fuck.” His eyes were horribly bloodshot and ringed with deep ashy gray circles. Keeping his gaze on her through the mirror, he spoke again. “And we… danced? And all of that?”
She nodded again, and then snapped her teeth together. Understanding her signaling was becoming easier and easier.
“It was funny?” Another nod, and he exhaled through his mouth. At least she didn't seem too upset by it, and thank God for that. “Glad somebody enjoyed it.” He doubled over again and hacked a thin stream of bile into the sink.
“You can't handle your alcohol for shit, you know. You should be more careful.”
Sammy shot upright so fast his vision blurred. The voice that had spoken was definitely female, and it most certainly wasn't Miranda. It was much lower, almost husky, and it reverberated strangely.
He turned slowly to face MalO.
“Did you…”
She was standing there, jaw open, eyes wide. Then all at once, she darted forward and pushed him out of the way of the mirror. Pushed him, physically. He stumbled back and stared at her as she gazed into the mirror frantically, tilting her head back and forth and moving her jaw.
“Holy shit,” she whispered. “I've never started talking this early before.”
Sammy stared, entirely in shock. “You talk?”
MalO looked back at him. “Yes, you dork, I talk!” She started laughing, and then next thing he knew, she had lunged forward and pulled him into the tightest hug he had ever felt. He felt his feet leave the floor as she spun in a circle and then released him and staggered away, laughing.
He glanced around the room frantically. “Someone might hear you! MalO!” he hissed.
She spun in a circle, laughing, arms flying out. “Cool it,” she said between chuckles. “Only you can hear me.” Then she laughed even louder. “I can talk, I can talk, I can talk.”
Completely nonplussed, Sammy leaned against the bathroom counter. He didn’t even know what to say, but his shock was starting to fade by watching her. Her laughter was infectious, and he found himself smiling without even meaning to.
He waited until she had stopped giggling to talk again. What she had first said had stood out to him. “What did you mean by ‘this early before?’”
She was starting to speak when a loud banging came from the outside of the door.
“Are you jacking off in zhere?”
“I'll be out in a second, asshole!” Sammy shouted back.
“Don't yank it too hard. It may fall off.”
“Yeah, you know from experience, huh?”
“What, you spend lots of time zhinking about my cock?” Danzig shot back.
Sammy didn’t respond and looked at MalO instead. “We’ll talk about this later, ok?” he whispered.
She nodded.
He pushed the door open as fast as he could, knocking into Danzig.
“Sorry.” Sammy’s tone made it clear he was anything but.
“Shithead.”
He pushed past his friend and walked back into the kitchen with MalO and Danzig following him, the latter completely unaware of the former.
The former being a talking magic phone furry.
Sammy had resigned himself to the reality that he would have to wait for a far away future where he taught her how to write before he could learn anything about her. But now she could talk, and he had so many burning questions. Where she had come from, what she was, why him. Why could she talk now and not before? Why had he been the one to get stuck with her? Whatever she even was. He was questioning everything he had ever learned, his loosely Christian upbringing, every bit of science and physics, because she invalidated it all.
And he couldn’t ask her anything despite the fact that she was in the same room as him because he would look batshit insane in front of everybody else.
It was beyond infuriating.
He was jolted out of his thoughts as Al slid a plate of pancakes and the chessboard in front of him and sat down.
“The other guys suck at this game. It’s your turn.”
Sammy looked to either side of him at Danzig and Mike. “But…” He really didn’t want to do this right now.
They had no mercy. “Play him,” Danzig encouraged. “Is fun.”
“Alright, I guess I can…”
It turned out that when Al said Mike and Danzig were bad at chess, what he had really meant was that he was very good at chess. His friends absolutely refused to help at all and left him at the mercy of the giant Russian, which he thought seemed more than hypocritical, seeing as they had played him two against one.
Which left one last resort.
Sammy caught MalO’s eye and subtly nodded towards the chess board. He wasn’t exactly sure what to expect; she probably knew as much about the game as she did about writing. But she came over and took a second to study the board. Then she burst out laughing, even harder than she had in the bathroom.
After she regained control of herself, she leaned against the countertop. “You’re fucked. I couldn’t save this position if you paid me. And I don’t really need money anyways.”
“Thanks,” Sammy muttered. Great. He wasn’t exactly sure what he had expected, but whatever it had been was better than what actually happened.
“What?” Al asked.
“Nothing,” he said. “Just thinking about the awful things I’m going to do to you after this game.”
Al checkmated him three moves later. MalO had been giving him half hearted advice, but he was pretty sure she was just making him lose faster to amuse herself.
There went any of his hopes of being able to use her as a personal cheat sheet on tests or the like. She would probably just give him the wrong answers because she thought it was funny.
Huh. She was a lot like Danzig.
The thought was disturbing enough that he had to force himself to refocus on the banter between the others. Butch had finished cooking and had come over to laugh at the disaster of a game that had just ended, and Mike and Danzig were taking turns pointing out every wrong move he had made, like they hadn’t just met the same fate ten minutes earlier.
“-you could coach me,” Danzig was saying. “So I could beat Sammy later.”
“We don’t even have a chessboard at the apartment.”
“I could buy one.” Danzig said.
“Sounds like a really shit joke,” Al said. “A Russian teaches a German how to play chess against an American.”
“Zhat was just zhe Cold War,” Danzig said.
“That was going to be the punchline, asshole. You stole my moment.”
“What are you, nine?”
“Nine inches taller than you.”
“Ok, you tall shit. Good luck wiping your ass tonight.”
“What the fuck does that even mean?” Al sputtered.
Danzig squared his jaw. “Whatever it needs to.”
Sammy stopped paying attention to them as a pair of furry hands clamped over his shoulders. Chills erupted all over his body as MalO whispered in his ear.
“You should've said please. I would've helped you win.”
“How could I?” He muttered, eyes on the conversation in front of him. “They would've heard.”
“They wouldn't know who you were talking to.”
“I thought you said you couldn't save that position.”
“I lied.” She giggled.
“Of course you did.” This bitch was literally just a female Danzig. The imagery that thought evoked was so horrific he banished it from his mind before it was even fully formed.
As if on cue, Danzig snapped his fingers in front of Sammy’s face.
“Hello? Earzh to retard?”
“Yeah, sorry. What was it?” He tried to act like he hadn't just been talking to his super duper magical furry companion.
Butch spoke. “Was thinking I could probably hold one more party before my folks get back. You down for this weekend?”
Sammy thought about it for a minute. It was a Wednesday, so that only left him around three or four days to recover before getting wasted again. Yeah, that sounded solid enough.
“Sure, I’ll come.”
Danzig laughed. “Told you he wasn’t a pussy.”
“Or, you know. He could just be sensible. Nothing wrong with skipping a party.” Al muttered.
“Pussy.”
“You’re not one to talk. You got just as fucked up as Sammy did last night.”
“And you didn’t?” Danzig asked.
“Nah. I’m actually responsible with my consumption.”
“Pussy.”
“How about both of you stop comparing dick sizes,” Butch said. “Just eat your fucking pancakes and get out of here. I have a life to live.”
Sammy threw his hands up. “What happened to the aftercare?”
“Danzig ruined it.”
“Ja. I do ruin aftercare. Dick keeps getting hard, zhere is no rest.”
“Keep your sex life to yourself, you little pest.” Al said.
“You’re just jealous. But zhe bald man is right. I have a life to live too. Eat your pancakes, Sammy.”
He stared at his roommate. “The ‘life’ you’re talking about is going back to your room and smoking weed while you paint minis.”
“It is important life!”
“You never air out your room. I can smell your shit kush from across the house.”
“If you two keep arguing like a married couple, I can get you a doggy bag.” Butch offered.
“A very gay couple,” Al said.
Danzig raised an eyebrow. “Zhat is not very inclusive of you.”
Sammy ignored them. “Uhh…” He had honestly lost his appetite.
“You want the pancakes.” MalO said.
“Yeah, please. A to-go bag would be cool.”
Butch nodded and ducked down to open a cabinet, pulling out a Ziploc bag.
“That’s right. Think of it as you paying me back for trying to kiss me.” Her voice was right in his ear. Sammy could feel her breath.
Danzig frowned at the next lull in his argument with Al. “Are you blushing? From Butch packing your pancakes? Seriously?”
“No.”
“Gay.”
|~]×/[$●》¥¤*%,@(♡●¡÷|
Sammy spent the entire ride back to the apartment staring at MalO in the rearview mirror. She was gazing out at the forest streaking past them, fur ruffling in the wind coming through Danzig’s open window.
Christ. He still hadn’t exactly gotten used to the idea of her talking. He was practically bouncing on his seat waiting for them to get back to the apartment. Maybe he had given Danzig shit for painting minis stoned, but that was exactly what he wanted his roommate to go do right then, so he could have a chance to talk to MalO in private. He had way too many questions.
The scenery outside began to gradually shift from trees to buildings as they reached the outer edge of Currant Creek. First the obligatory gas stations, then the hotel, then the grocery store. The cafe that he had met Laurel at just the other week. He looked away and at the rearview mirror instead. MalO was looking out at the other side of the street. Sammy followed her gaze. Just a couple of dudes in suits standing at the bus stop, talking. Luggage in their hands. One guy was sitting on his rolling suitcase.
And then they were gone, just like everything else in the past. Now you see it, now you don’t.
Like Laurel.
Bitch.
Why wasn’t I good enough for her?
Had she ever really loved him? She couldn’t have, to have betrayed him the way she had. But she had been so genuine. So sad. She had cried so, so much.
Maybe he should’ve taken her back.
Danzig slammed on the horn as someone cut him off, and Sammy jolted out of his thoughts.
Damn. All it took was one stray thought and he was stressing about her again. I thought I said I wasn’t gonna do that anymore. But it was such an appealing feeling, being lost in a fantasy. Being able to escape how shit reality was for him right then. To just have control over something for a minute.
He barely noticed as they pulled into the apartment parking lot. The building loomed over him as they stepped out of the car. He held his door open extra long so MalO could clamber out through it. She could teleport, he was pretty sure, but it just seemed like the polite thing to do.
“Thanks.”
Sammy nodded.
They stepped back into the apartment a few minutes later. The air inside was almost as cold as it was outside. Danzig probably enjoyed that, but Sammy didn’t. He grabbed a soda and a bag of chips from the kitchen and headed to his room, MalO behind him.
It was time for the talk.
He closed the door behind them and sat down on his bed. Ran a hand down his face. Opened up the Sprite and took a sip.
MalO sat on his beanbag.
They sat silently for a minute. Outside, he heard Danzig open his bedroom door and close it, and then seconds later, turn on his speaker. Music played, loud enough that he knew his roommate wouldn’t be able to hear a word from his side of the apartment.
“Well?”
She shifted uncomfortably. “Well?”
“Well, are you going to tell me?”
“Tell you what?”
“Everything. I think I’m owed that. What you are. Why you’re here. Why you had to interfere with my life!” Sammy’s voice rose by the end of the sentence, until he was almost shouting.
MalO flinched. Then she bared her teeth at him. “That’s not fair. I don’t get to choose who I’m paired with.”
“What the fuck does that even mean!? Are we ‘paired?’ Why’d you have to come and fuck up my life? Why couldn’t it have been someone else!?” He wasn’t even sure where the anger had come from. It just had. It had spawned into being, almost. An emotion that hadn’t been there until it had. A dark spot, a crack in the ice you didn’t see until you stepped on it and were sent plummeting into the water below.
She stared at him for a moment. Then: “Why are you mad at me?”
That took all the wind out of his rant. “Huh?” He wasn’t mad at her, he just had… questions.
“Why are you mad at me? What was it that I did to you? Helped you? Told you a hard truth?” Her voice began to raise, too. “I get you’re pissed over Laurel. I get that you want answers. But you don’t get to be a bitch about it, Sammy.”
The way she said his name sent chills over his spine. “I’m not pissed over Laurel. That’s in the past. I just want to know what the fuck’s going on.”
“Really? Not even a little hung up over her?”
“So what? It’s none of your business what I’m upset about.”
“Actually, I think it is, considering I’m stuck with you until you die.”
“ You’re stuck with me ? How about I’m stuck with you. I didn’t choose to get paired with you, either!” He was incredulous. This bitch butted into his life, ruined his shit, made him break up with his girlfriend, and she was upset at him ?
“Well then I guess we can both just keep on being cunts, right? Shit happens, dude. I can’t change it. You can’t change it. So just keep throwing a fit over something neither of us can do anything about, will you?”
“Oh, yeah. ‘Just keep throwing a fit.’ Yeah, I’ll do that, now that you made me break up with Laurel.”
MalO cocked her head at him, disgust on her face. “That’s what you’re mad about? That’s why you’re being such a shit? She would’ve cheated on you regardless of whether or not I had bonded with you, dickwad.”
There was a loud cracking sound, and then a splat. Both of them stared at the can of Sprite that had been in his hands. It had burst against the wall and left a big wet smear, all the way to the ground, where a small puddle had formed.
MalO had flinched away from the sound, but she straightened to look at him. A loud growling noise came from the back of her throat, like an engine rumbling. “Real mature,” she said. “Really fucking mature.”
Sammy stared at the mess on his floor. He stood up. “I’m… gonna clean that.”
MalO watched him leave the room. He closed the door behind himself and stepped out into the kitchen.
The music coming out of Danzig’s room got louder as he opened his door and poked his head out. “Did you drop somezhing?”
“Yeah,” Sammy sighed. “Just a soda. Cleaning it up right now.”
“Alright.” His roommate closed the door, and the music became muted again.
He grabbed a wad of paper towels and got some of them wet. Then he just set them aside and stared out the window.
Why was he mad, really?
It felt too soon to think about. He still felt upset. Whatever he decided was probably influenced by the colossal blowout he had just had. His cheeks burned with shame when he thought about it. That was possibly the most embarrassing thing he had ever done. Throwing a can of soda? Really? And in front of a woman? Jesus, his parents would have given him a mythical ass whooping if they knew about that. Post-argument clarity hit harder than its well-known counterpart.
Sure, she had fur, but she was a woman.
“You always treat women with respect, Samuel.”
That’s what his dad had called him. Never Sammy, always Samuel. Sammy had come from one of his childhood friends. It had never stuck in his own family. Not until he had moved out.
But why was he mad?
It really wasn’t MalO; she was right about that. She hadn’t done anything wrong. Hadn’t he already decided that. That he would rather have known than lived in ignorance? And yet he was still getting mad over it. Such a fucking hypocrite. Such a bitch, as she had said. She hadn’t deserved that.
But he was upset at her. For intruding into his life, even if she said she hadn’t chosen to. For throwing his everyday routine into chaos. For telling him a harsh truth.
For telling him that Laurel had cheated on him. Was cheating on him.
Any good friend would have done that. He thought about Danzig. If Danzig had known that Laurel had been cheating on him and hadn’t told him, he would’ve been furious. That would’ve been the end of their friendship, right there. The end of it all. That lie. Not even a lie. Just not telling the truth. Still a problem. Such a big problem, and one that he never could’ve possibly forgiven.
Maybe it would be okay to stay angry at her. But just because he was mad didn’t mean he had to take that all out on her. She didn’t deserve that when all she had done had been for him.
Christ, the situation felt so needlessly complicated.
He eased the bedroom door open slowly. MalO was lounging on his beanbag chair, arms spread out and legs outstretched. She shot him a dirty glare when he stepped in.
Yeah, he probably deserved that.
He mopped up the mess quietly. Soaked everything up with the dry towels, then wiped away any of the sticky residue with the wet ones. He wadded them all up into one big ball and went back out to the kitchen to throw them away.
Then back into his room. He sat down on his bed loosely and laid on his back. Stared up at the ceiling and tried to avoid meeting her eyes.
“Sorry.”
“Yeah, are you?”
“Yeah. I think I am.” he said. “I don’t know. I’m feeling really shit right now. But that was lame of me to take it out on you. You did me a favor, by telling me about Laurel. I’m just… still… mad, I guess.”
“You guess?” she scoffed. “Yeah?”
“I’m still mad about it.” He said it more confidently this time. “I’m still mad about it.” Like repeating it could affirm what he already knew, but wished he didn’t. “But I shouldn’t have gotten mad at you.”
“Yeah.”
He watched the fan spin in lazy circles. The clock on his nightstand ticked slowly. Went from 2:13 to 2:17. The minute hand moved so slowly he could barely see it.
“Thanks,” MalO said. “For apologizing. I… I guess I get why you’re upset. Nobody really takes it well when I show up.” Her voice cracked on the last sentence. “And I’m sorry about earlier, by the way. The whole thing with me flustering you. I just wanted to fuck with you after what happened last night, but I don’t want to make you uncomfortable or anything. I was just thinking… maybe that was too soon. After, you know.”
“Yeah. But it’s my fault for holding onto all that shit.”
“Nah. That’s natural. Just means you’re human. I know that’s a corny overused phrase, but it’s true. I’d be more worried if you weren’t upset by that breakup. You don’t… you don’t have to get over it in a couple of days. And I shouldn’t force you to, either.”
“Thanks.” He didn’t really know what else to say. No, he did. At least a little bit. “Can we talk more later? I don’t feel up to it right now, but I want to know. You know.”
“Sure. What’re you going to do?”
Sammy laughed hollowly. “Sleep, so my head stops hurting.”
She snorted. “Still feeling the hangover?”
“It’s fucking generational. My grandkids are gonna be feeling it.”
She didn’t reply, and he settled himself into his bed. Tried to wiggle around until the crumpled sheets felt just bearable enough where he didn’t feel the need to adjust them. He grabbed for his pillow and dragged it under his head.
And then he was out.
Sammy opened his eyes.
He was laying in bed. The fan overhead was still. His bedside light was on.
He stood up and looked around. MalO wasn’t in the room with him. He called her name. His voice sounded oddly muffled.
He stepped outside of his room. Several lights in the house were on. Just enough that it felt warm and inviting, exactly as it should on a cold winter night. The way it had on Christmas Eve, with the freezing winds blowing outside. It felt like it was safe.
Maybe he wanted to heat up some food.
Sammy pulled out a frozen burrito and opened the oven, planning to pull out all the pans they kept in there so he could preheat it. The microwave had broken a few days ago for whatever damn reason, and they were waiting for the apartment guys to fix it.
Except he never got past pulling the pans out, because the oven was empty. No pans, not even a shelf. No lights inside.
The back of it was missing, and it opened into a claustrophobic tunnel that was made from steel plating.
This is a dream.
It sure felt real. The lighting was bright, the air was warm. He could feel the granite countertop beneath his hands. It was just cold enough to stand out without being uncomfortable.
But it had to be a dream.
Sammy crouched down. The microwave burrito that had been in his hands a second ago was gone. He had never set it down.
There was a tunnel in the oven.
He got on his hands and knees and poked his head inside. It smelled metallic; like iron and something else he couldn’t place. Almost blood-like, even. But not quite. Something industrial, with a hint of oxide perhaps.
The smell grew stronger as he pushed himself into the tunnel. It widened the further he went down, until he went from crawling on his hands and knees to standing upright. After ten or fifteen feet, it turned to the right at a sharp right angle. He turned with the tunnel, and found himself at a second right turn.
Well, now he was just going to be going back in the direction he had come from. He followed the path regardless. There was a thin wire above that had a single bare light bulb attached to it. It glowed dimly, but bright enough to illuminate what was ahead of him.
Another right turn.
He took it and kept walking. It should have been impossible. He should have hit the path he had already travelled. But he didn’t, and seconds later, he came to a fourth right turn. The tunnel beyond led on so far he couldn’t even see the end.
Goosebumps erupted on his skin. It was a sensation he had never felt in a dream before, but this wasn’t any ordinary dream anyhow. He had never been conscious of the fact that he had been dreaming before. That was something new.
Had he subconsciously figured out how to lucid dream?
About fucking time, even if it only meant he got to explore a geometrically impossible oven tunnel.
Sammy followed the tunnel for what had to have been five minutes. Maybe ten. Maybe it had been an hour. He wasn’t sure.
He came to a point where the ceiling began to narrow, and he was forced to get back down on his hands and knees and crawl. The tunnel came to an end at a tinted glass door. An oven door.
Sammy pushed it open and wiggled his way out into his apartment.
Except it wasn’t quite his apartment.
The lights were all off and the windows were open. Cold air streamed through the room, cold enough that he brought his arms to his chest and clenched them tight to him, trying to salvage any bit of body heat he had left. He looked around. That cabinet hadn’t been there before, had it? And the sink was smaller than he remembered.
This wasn’t his apartment.
“MalO?”
He wasn’t sure why he said it. Some primal discomfort in him, maybe. Some sort of not-fear that had slowly built up just enough to where he was realizing how much he didn’t want to be alone.
No one answered. He was alone, adrift in a black void where the only stimuli were the faint lighting coming from the windows and the sound of his own breathing. It was too dark to even see in the living room. Just the kitchen, in vague outlines and shapes.
There was a faint thumping sound from the hallway, like a baby falling onto its rear after trying to take its first steps. Innocent, and questioning. It was a strange concept to assign to the sound, but it was what felt right to him. There was something different about the noise. Was it her? He squinted his eyes, looking for the furry that had become his constant companion. No, surely she would’ve shown herself by now.
But they had just had that argument. Maybe MalO was trying to scare him.
Heart beating, he stepped out of the kitchen and craned his neck out to try to see into the hallway, but the shadows in the corridor made it impossible to see more than a foot or two in. Anyone or anything could have been standing there, just beyond his sight. Watching him quietly as he stared unseeing at it.
His skin crawled as another muffled thump came from the end of the hallway, and he felt the brief spark of courage that had kindled inside him wither and die. He wasn’t alone in this apartment. This apartment that looked so close to the real thing, but wasn't, was too wrong, too twisted.
Someone else was there with him.
There was another gentle noise, light as a feather but carrying the weight of the world.
It had gotten closer. Much, much, closer.
Sammy stepped back into the kitchen and ducked inside of the oven. He didn’t want to see what it was. He was too scared, much too scared, like the child he had once been who had hidden under his sheets at night even though his mom had told him there was nothing to be afraid of.
There was something to be afraid of. He crawled through the tunnel until he could stand again, then began to sprint. Once he reached the corner, he turned to look behind him, hoping with all of his heart that there would be nothing to see.
There was something blocking his view out of the oven. No, there was nothing. Sammy blinked. But there had been a figure there, surely. He had seen it. He must have seen wrong. There was nothing there but the closed oven door, separated from him by a mile of the not-dream tunnel.
And then there was the innocent, loving, caring, desolate, all-encompassing thump. The one that held all spectrums of sound, from the fall of a body to the sound of leaves rustling in the wind. It reverberated dully in the air.
And the oven door began to open.
No, no, no, no! I don’t want to be taken.
He didn’t know where the thought had come from. All there was to feel was primal not-terror, existential dread that he might learn the source of the noise, pounding and pulsing through him. Please god make it go away I just want to get back and he ran faster and faster, taking turn after turn, retracing his steps until he had taken his fourth right and could see the oven entrance and his apartment. The steel behind him carried the sound of whatever else was in the tunnels with him as it bumped and stumbled and staggered through them. A loud clang, clang, clang that only got closer and closer as he ran, as he ran and ran but wasn’t quite fast enough. He could hear it gaining on him and thought please, please, let me go, and just as the thumping of whatever was in the tunnel with him was becoming too loud to bear, he scrambled out of the oven and landed in one big heap and slammed the door closed behind him.
The sounds disappeared. No more echoing clang. No more scrabbling of slack flesh on sheet metal. Whatever it had been was gone; he knew it as surely as he knew he was having a nightmare.
Sammy stood up.
He was safe. This was his apartment. He was safe here.
All the lights had been turned off, just like in the apartment that hadn’t been his apartment, and there was music coming from the living room.
Not just music, but somebody was talking, too.
“Successful relationships marriage good health education social status successful relationships marriage good health–”
The voice looped, repeating the same couple of words, distorted by static that was just weak enough to not overwhelm the unending speech.
Sammy stepped into the living room.
The TV was flashing images that strobed like stage lights in the darkness. A happy couple in their wedding dress. Sharing a kiss. At the hospital, smiling. Holding a diploma. In a business suit and dress, standing in front of a podium.
The couple was him and Laurel.
The cord to the TV stretched out from behind the screen into the center of the living room, where it was plugged into an outlet in the floor that hadn’t been there before.
Sammy sat down on the couch and faced the slideshow of images.
It was just a dream. Not real life. She was gone in real life. There was no point in dwelling on what wasn’t real, and this wasn’t real.
So why did he care?
No. Why couldn’t he stop caring? Why was this what mattered most to him, to the degree that it was appearing in his dreams in this unsubtle montage of everything he had wanted. All he would have given anything for.
Could that have really been them?
Really? Not in a fantasy, not in some ridiculous construct he imagined, but really? Had they been right for each other?
Obviously not. She had cheated on him.
But could it have happened, if she hadn’t? Could they have lived a happy life? Had kids, married? Graduated together? Been successful?
Please, I would give anything.
I would give anything.
He would have given anything to have her back, just for a moment.
The TV began to flash through the images faster.
“Successfulrelationshipsmarriagegoodhealtheducationsocialstatussuccessfulrelationshipsmarriagegoodhealth–”
Would he have been happy with her?
Had she really enjoyed all their time together? Their time at the mall, their Christmas, before it had been ruined. That trip they had taken to Idaho last summer. The piano she had bought him, the picture she had taken as he smiled.
It hadn’t been real.
No matter how much he wanted it to be, it hadn’t been real.
Please please please let it have been real.
I know it wasn’t real.
If only it had been, but it had not meant to be. They weren’t meant to be.
Sammy stood up from the couch. Crouched down next to the outlet. He wrapped a hand around the cord leading to the TV, and pulled, pulled with all of his hatred and all of his hurt and all of his betrayed sorrow that he felt at that moment.
The TV turned off.
The wind whistled and roared.
The windows had opened.
There were vague shapes outside, structures that towered like mountains and twisted to form straight lines, that hung from the ground and towered over the taller pillars. The architecture was impossible, incomprehensible, malicious.
He wasn’t in his apartment. The cabinets looked misshapen, he could see from where he stood the sink in the kitchen was too small. That entryway mirror was upside down.
One side of the room was smaller than the other. The ceiling slanted down impossibly, but the closet door on the shorter wall looked the same.
The entryway rug was twisted and warped into an oval. It still had corners.
Everything was wrong. Too wrong.
There came a thump from somewhere in the kitchen.
No, please. No.
No, I did the right thing. I made the hard decision. Please don’t punish me for it.
Sammy stood up from where he had crouched, scanning the room, breath shortening. No, please, he was alone. He had to be alone. There was no one in the apartment. No one save for him, and he would prove it.
He walked to the kitchen, the wind whistling and tousling his hair. He shuddered. It felt wrong, profane, like the clammy touch of a child’s hand, twisting in ways that no breeze should contort in, circling him, enshrining him.
The oven door was open.
He had closed it when he had crawled out of the tunnel.
Something shifted behind him. He whirled towards the kitchen window, away from the direction he had come from.
No, it had just been the breeze, the foul clammy breeze that was alive.
He turned back, and his breath caught in his throat. Please no please no please no please no I don’t want this I never wanted this.
Maybe you deserve this. You deserve this for–
Something had moved into the light and all he saw was that it walked with his hand, with his hand raised high, sometimes it didn't, sometimes it shined like the sun. He shined like the sun, shined like a face in the sun, shined like a stone, and his eyes looked so kind, and they shined, and he took his childhood and his innocence and he mocked it, and laughed and laughed and laughed, a target for faraway laughter. Shined so bright. And he mocked it, and laughed, and came, and called, he called come now you child, you hero, you martyr.
Sammy screwed his eyes shut. It hadn’t been human, not even humanoid, not remotely of this earth. Not alive, and not dead. Nothing. It had been nothing. Not an entity, not a nonentity. A concept out of time and space with limbs that had cracked and split in half and a blank cracked eggshell face that had shifted and folded in on itself more times than he could count as it towered over him and seemed to stretch in all directions at once, wrapping around him like the gentlest cradle from his mother and the hateful squeeze of hands around his throat. And then it was gone, the afterimage burned into his retinas was gone, but no matter how tight he squeezed his eyes shut it was still there. It pulled him forward like a magnet, like a singularity. As if it had been massive enough to have generated its own magnetic field, infinite, a concept alone.
He had reached something he hadn’t been supposed to learn, shining like the wildest gem and the dullest rock and blew upon a steeled breeze, and it called out to him come you raker, you seer, you painter, you piper, you pritter, and the landscape around him twisted and turned until right angles ran straight and the stars were misaligned in the sky, and he floated adrift in cold, cold space. In front of him, a great patch of darkness twisted and blotted out thousands at a time, and he could feel the rawness of it all, the raw hate and malevolence that emanated from this mass in the great night sky that blotted out all the stars that shined so bright like gems, and he let out a strangled scream as he sat up in bed and tore the covers off of himself.
MalO had been curled up in her beanbag chair. She lifted up her head, eyes wide. “You okay?”
Sammy took a deep breath. A deep breath that was natural, and he was safe, and his breath didn’t shine in the air or twist. Just a dream.
Just a dream.
Please, it was just a dream.
It was dark outside. He had to squint to see his clock read 10:23.
He wet his throat.
“Yeah… just a really shit dream.” That was all it had been. It had just been a dream,
“Oh. Wanna talk about it?”
Come you raker, you seer, you painter, y–
“No.”
“Alright. Need anything?”
“I… can you tell me… tell me about you? I don’t want to know everything. Just… What did you mean, this morning, when you said ‘this time.’ Have you been… paired with anyone, before?”
MalO frowned, confused, but then her eyes softened. Maybe it was in understanding, maybe she was just humoring him. “Yeah. Two people. I’ll tell you about one of them, if that’s alright.”
“Sure.”
“Alright. His name was Micah.” She hesitated, like she was thinking about what she wanted to say. “Micah… was a good kid. He was a really good kid. He paired with me around 2007. Sometime in August, I think. When we paired, I was really scared at first. He didn’t know what I was, and I didn’t either. It was confusing, like waking up from a dream. It took me a while to even understand that I, myself, was conscious. And… I scared him. I looked the way I did when we first paired. I didn’t know at the time that it was so scary. So I didn’t change.”
Sammy sighed and laid back down on his bed. He heard rustling, then his bedsprings creaked as she came to sit on the edge and face him.
“Micah was a good kid.” She repeated that part like a mantra. “He just had an unhappy home life. I used to think… that I could somehow fix that for him. I really… guess I couldn’t.”
She kept talking, but he was only half listening. So tired. So, so, tired. But he didn’t want to sleep, not after that horrible dream. That horrible, horrible…
He was so tired.
Sammy closed his eyes. Just for a minute…