Work Text:
You’ve had a rough day exploring the depths of the basement. The massive amounts of enemies hiding in the sewers nearly cleaned your clock, and yet, the danger was exhilarating, in a sense. However, the main reason you even remember today’s events was this morning. The Shadow. The… thing. It followed you to your apartment door, whatever it is. You remember nearly jumping, seeing it staring you down near your door. Yet, just as quickly as it arrived, it dissolved to nothing, leaving behind a single rose. You twirled the flower in your hands. For some reason, you felt a knot in the depths of your gut.
Sleep always was a battle in of itself, but with this gift, it only made the subtle unease build more within you. Maybe you’ve indulged in too much alcohol. It wouldn’t know what a rose means, hopefully. Even if the rose was not only thornless, but proudly scarlet. At least it smelled normal. You didn’t need something else to be tense about; it’s been nothing but nice toward you since you gave it a chicken sandwich and let it follow you a little. You almost feel bad for it.
You glance at your alarm clock. 01:35. You’ve thought about this for over an hour, but you don’t stay up much longer.
Dawn breaks, and you don’t hear your alarm. 05:28, too early. Your eyes are still lost in a haze, your body shivering from a sneaky March cool front. Or was it your missing arm getting infected? You should cover it, but you don't want anyone catching whatever diseases are surely on the stump. Your bed would be an ideal place to stay, but not only would it mean you not taking care of the three kids you’re housing, but also the germs possibly spreading to your bedsheets. You swing your legs off the side of your bed, ready to start the day, when you feel more than one eye watching you. Sybil could easily be the culprit, but this is more intense. Sincere. Beckoning. Sybil is typical, and leaves after telling a story about possibly knowing the astronomers.
You aren’t given much of a warning to notice the Shadow right behind you, making you back into your wall in surprise. It isn’t upset, you don’t think. Sybil’s window to your room is empty, and you wouldn’t want to bother her, anyway. The creature encroaches, leaving you about a step between it and yourself. How it got in without alerting Leigh, Hellen, Rat, Ernest, or Morton, you aren’t able to guess. What you can guess, however, is its expression. It is enamored, adoring you, even as sleep deprived as you are. You open your mouth to say something, but you feel like your mind is drifting.
The cloak it always wears shifts, and it opens the right side wide, like an arm open for a friend. From the pure darkness inside, you feel… warmth. You don’t even need to get close to notice your skin quiver. The left opens, too, and it waits. You understand now.
You lift your foot to get closer, but then, you begin to doubt. Is this truly safe?
But it just waits there. It is no more harmful and violent than you are. You put your foot down, getting a little closer.
Your mind feels a little more synchronized, being so close to what looks like a safe, dark, warm place to sleep. Even here, part of you is apprehensive.
It only wants a hug. Maybe a kiss, if you’re so generous with them. Nothing unreasonable, and no risk. Never a risk, not with how much it cares about you. Embrace it.
You cave. In a moment, you wrap your arm around the Shadow, pulling it close. It only gives a few soft sighs in response, even as you feel emaciated limbs wrapping around you. They, too, feel comforting, safe, loving. So many thin arms hug where they can. You feel many around your own, but some take interest in your abdomen, too. A few, your legs; three, your throat. Some rub your face, feeling your cheekbones and jaws. One even winds around your hairline, stopping short of a complete circle to pat the bridge between your eyes. You let a sigh of your own escape. You don’t want to let go, not even for a moment to adjust yourself.
The mask moves to your face, bumping the open mouth toward your own. You can’t help but feel a need to reciprocate. The mask is warm against your lips.
Once you do finally feel you need to stop hugging, you keep your internal promise. You gently let the arms squeeze you one more time outside before you go further in, letting its cloak close behind you.
The inside is almost perfect for someone like you. No bright lights, no loud sounds, no intrusive thoughts. All that greets you as you stand here is the toasty interior, hundred-thousand hands, and your newest best friend. You wonder how long you’d need to stand in here, when, somehow, your feet aren’t actually on the floor anymore. If anything, you lean back, now at a truly comfy angle to rest.
The hands both exist and do not, hold you and leave you suspended in the endless void. From the shadows, you see its mask eyeing you, making sure you are as relaxed as possible. The idea of moving is almost an enigma.
There’s always more limbs than you believe there to be. As soon as you think there couldn’t be more, there’s a new area being handled, a new hold on your body. It’s a good thing you’ve not taken anything off before you went to bed last night; at least, you assume it was last night. You can’t be sure what time it is anymore, not when there’s a lack of confirmation of when. All you feel confident about is your comfort, the masked creature not letting you feel even a slight cramp or mild annoyance here.
It focuses on your face as the countless hands and fingers begin to feel you over. Despite the amount, it’s all coordinated, precise, calculated. It doesn’t want anything but perfection when handling you. It traces your skeleton, a little tilt of its head confirming a curiosity it had. The delicate architecture of your form must leave it yearning for more.
And then, you feel a hand somehow nudge itself under your shirt, lifting the underside up to remove it. A few others join, and you don’t exactly mind removing such a germ-infested garment. The Shadow is even more fascinated, now that it sees more, feels more. Your skin twitches and tickles as it runs several hands over bare skin. What hands approach your stump are equally curious, and they don't even mind the mess they're making. It doesn’t bother with your pants; your upper body must be good enough for the moment. You want to say something, but the words can’t come to you.
You’re practically massaged into a state between sleep and wakefulness. It’s so cozy, you hardly notice the hands beginning to press in a little more than before.
At first, it’s just your face. You don’t mind a deep facial massage, though the spread is quicker than you expect. It hears a shocked sound from you. It doesn’t hurt. Neither does it hurt when one hand feels a little too deep to be pushing in your skin. The hand passes through your cheek, reaching to feel inside your mouth. It tastes like nothing. Another weaves itself between an opening of your ribs. Another, the space between your shoulder blade and spine. You’re no better at resisting than you were before you woke up.
You never expected it to take the idea of a full-body massage and follow to the letter. And yet, here you are, having never felt so relieved of pain and anguish and self-loathing. It doesn’t want anything from you, only you in its purest form. So much love…
… even as it runs a few fingers within the cavity of your chest. It’s so gentle and slow, wanting to make you feel great this entire time. A hand touches the electricity of your heart, the whoosh of air within your lungs, the constant of thrumming venous tissue. Your liver squishes in its fingers. You should be screaming for help. You don’t; you still feel no pain.
It grows more curious, more thoughtful about you. It shouldn’t let you back into that terrible, apocalyptic world, not when it causes nothing but the cruelest of fates and the most volatile of suffering. You’ve somehow lost your arm out there, and for what? Survival against a monster it couldn’t protect you from? You shouldn’t need to be hurt anymore. You should stay.
A hand begins to gently feel its first target: a wisdom tooth. The little fingers feel at the protrusion, before it grips firmly. A slight wiggle, one or two twists. You didn’t think it was loose before you got here. Nevertheless, with a painless motion, the tooth dislodges from your gums, roots and all. The hand phases out of your skin, treasure in hand. It really is yours. You aren’t even bleeding from the new hole in your jaw. For only a moment, you wonder why, but the idea clicks in your mind: you’ve been so, so tense, so tired, so pent up and pressured. It only wants you to decompress. For a lack of better words, it hopes to let you unwind.
More hands press into your flesh, though some stay outside to keep petting and caressing you. Some hold your jaw, rubbing where the bone connected to your skull. Even with this tender motion, you feel the jaw loosen. You open your mouth, and hands eagerly dig in. A few more teeth are carefully collected, from back to front. Two hands join to pet your tongue before one reaches back, inside your throat, finding the base. A bit of rubbing and coaxing later, and your throat helps the hands relieve you of your ability to clearly speak.
Like warm, wet clay, you’re soothingly dismissed of anything your body could use to hurt you. Sometimes, you would bite your tongue, so your teeth, tongue, and lower jaw needed relinquished from you. Your feet would hurt after long walks, so it’s no surprise when your shoes and socks are removed to get better access to your tired soles. Handling sharp or hot objects with your hands would hurt; you feel your remaining fingers being bent back and forth, until, at once, they pull out of the faulty joints keeping them secure. Your feet and hand alike twist off effortlessly like unsealed jar lids. You watch as the separated parts are further unwound meticulously, bones and nerves and veins and nails and adipose sorted into neat bundles. Even your muscles and skin are peeled away, suspended in the void’s air as if they were cumbersome socks and glove. The stump, lined with all the goodies an untreated amputation would have, was spared, the phantom pains deciding to not haunt you. Soon, even those wouldn't exist anymore.
And it didn’t end there, either. Your eyes strained you after staring at a screen for too long, and your indication of their removal was a gentle tug and subsequent unraveling of the little cords in your now-empty sockets. Hunger and thirst, cured by bidding farewell to your poor stomach and intestines. Back pain, likewise, was no more once the spine and its inner cord were plucked like a friendship bracelet hidden in a backpack. It brushes hands in your hair before it cures your fear of future eczema and grey hairs. Inside is a skull, and your wishes of pulling it open to fix your migraines is granted.
Anyone rational would beg for this to end, but it’s beginning to save you from that torment, too. Your perspective is higher than you thought, but not outside the weight of your physical form. Your vitals are slowing, readying your body for the perfect vacation. You know you don’t need to breathe anymore.
Before you know it, all your memories, all your thoughts, all your ideas of everything you’ve ever known… they’re all cradled in its soft embrace. Pulled free of its tiny, calcified cocoon. Maybe your soul is in there. At least five hands work to let the most compact version of you luxuriate in empty space. Even as they reach inside, you feel nothing different.
It won’t be much longer now. It pulled your arm and legs out, decompressed and freed your lungs, pried into your heart, and, most importantly, learned of all you were. Sure, you were both aware you as a construct was a fatal flaw that must be corrected, but it needed not a sound to assure you of the ultimate gift of unconditional immortality. It's waited to give this to someone so eager to love it back, and you'll be forever grateful.
And suddenly, your thoughts were slowing. It’s so hard to do more than feel. To surrender entirely. To lie here. You will be better. You will become one with it. Loved. Cherished. No pain. No fear. Only null.
Strangely, you feel great.
For many, many days, no one knew what happened to Sam. There was no blood, no sound, no witnesses. Even Sam’s clothes were missing. Most believed the Visitor had somehow got involved, and Sam was nothing more than either a pile of flesh they’d not found yet, a tiny insect, or simply no more. It was only when they told Lyle about this that the Shadow took an interest. It saw a part of itself scattered all over in his darkroom. Sam… he must like Sam.
It came to him one night, as he mourned in the same place it hugged Sam. It shuffled its robed form, and two little limbs emerged with a gift. Each lens on Lyle’s spider-like face whipped from despair and grief to a hateful scowl once he saw the present. Between sobs, he hissed, spitting caustic fluid.
“Y-You…”
It was a bundle of still-warm clothes.