Chapter Text
He didn’t know where he was.
He didn’t remember how he’d gotten here. He was stumbling through the halls of some brightly colored theme park, it seemed. His body felt fuzzy, distant, like his limbs were wrapped in a thick blanket, the air was far from his flesh.
He was trying to breathe. It felt ragged.
He stumbled against the wall — bright yellow polka dotted wallpaper — and inhaled as deeply as he could. His jaw was clenched tightly, teeth set against each other. Even that felt wrong. Something about the shape of himself, everything, it all felt wrong.
Slowly, he closed his eyes, hung his head, and inhaled deeply.
When he opened his eyes, he jumped and yelped.
His body was wrong.
He was wearing bight pink overalls, for one. Something he wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole. He’d never dress like this.
What. . . what did he dress like?
He couldn’t remembered.
He was wearing huge, ugly lavender shoes. He tried to wiggle his toes. The tip of the hideous shoe wiggled. He paused, squinted, tilted his head.
Were those. . . paws?
Slowly, he lifted his hands. They were covered with big yellow gloves, like a rubberhose character. He’d liked rubberhose cartoons. Had he? He didn’t remember. He didn’t remember anything.
His gaze traveled down his arms. He was skinny, unnaturally so — did he even have bones? — and his skin was the same lavender as his shoes. Paws. A strange, pixelated fuzz hovered over his skin, like an old video game trying to indicate fur.
He started shaking.
What was he?
“New guy?”
He jolted and whipped around, stumbling back to the middle of the hallway. Stupid. Now his back was exposed. But he’d be able to run more easily from whatever threat was facing him.
The threat was a frog.
It also resembled a rubberhose character — tall, stretched out, bipedal. It wore nothing but a pink bow tie. Long lashes curled under its hooded eyes, which were watching him with a bored curiosity. It was sucking on a popsicle stick, which it removed to speak again.
“Or did Caine start an in-house to wake us up again?”
He slowly tilted his head. “What?”
“Hm.” The frog straightened up a bit. Its eyes lit up a bit, looking more alert and curious. “New guy, then.”
“New to what?” he snapped.
“The game.”
“Game?”
“Yeah, the video game we’re all stuck in.”
The purported ‘New Guy’ blinked at him. His brain felt fuzzy, staticky. “That’s not —” He shook his head rapidly. It felt wrong, for some reason, like the balance was off in a way he didn’t recognize. “There’s no way —”
“Hey, take a —”
The New Guy jumped back, smacking away the arm that reached for him. The frog stepped back, holding up his hands.
“Alright, you want your space, just —”
“I don’t want space!” the New Guy snarled. His fists curled by his sides. “I want to get out of here!”
The frog scoffed. “You and everyone else.”
The New Guy lurched forward, grabbing the frog’s bow tie. “Do you think you’re funny, you —?” He broke off. He was falling back. A kick to the back of his knee, and he was flat on his back, his head spinning.
It. . . hurt.
The frog stood over him, looking down with a vague amusement in his eyes. His hand was pressed to the New Guy’s chest, but he pulled it to rest on his own knee when he saw his victim struggling for breath. The popsicle stick was still clenched in his grinning teeth.
“Oughta learn the rules before you try anything, kid.”
The New Guy blinked owlishly up at him. He inhaled finally, fighting against something that didn’t feel like gravity pushing down on something that didn’t feel like ribs.
“If — if this is a video game,” he gasped, “how come that hurt?”
The frog chuckled and sat back. “Wouldn’t you like to know,” he yawned. He tossed the popsicle stick aside. The New Guy glanced to see where it landed. He saw nothing. “You and everyone else.”
The New Guy laid there for a just a moment more. When the frog did nothing more but watch him curiously, he slowly pushed shaky arms under him, propelling himself gingerly upwards. He looked down the hallway, trying to remember where the frog had come from, where he had come from.
It all looked the same. His memory felt rubbery. His brain was scrambled.
He looked up, shoulders tense.
The frog’s smile widened a touch. “Ribbit.”
He stared in confusion. He threw his arms out in dismay. “Meow?” he shouted. The anger, the frustration, everything just burst up at once. “Are we just making animal noises now?”
The frog tossed its head back and laughed raucously. “It’s my name, idiot!” it cackled. “My name is Ribbit!”
He scoffed. “Oh, you’re a frog named Ribbit? Real creative.”
“Yeah,” Ribbit yawned, pushing himself to his feet. “I was pretty out of it when I picked it.”
“Picked it?”
“Sure, we all pick a name. Or someone picks it for us.” He nodded over his shoulder. “I’m pretty sure Ragatha came up with Zooble’s, but I could be —”
The New Guy caved forward, pressing his hands against his head. “You’re not even saying anything,” he groaned, pressing his hands deep into his eyes.
“Okay, yeah, that’s fair.”
“How do I get out of here?”
Ribbit hummed. “Here.” He held out a webbed hand. The New Guy took it with one yellow glove. Ribbit pulled him to his feet. “I think you’d better follow me,” he said, turning back down the hallway.
The New Guy looked down at his hands, the weird yellow gloves. “You didn’t ask my name.”
Ribbit shrugged. “I assumed you hadn’t picked one yet.”
“Why do you keep saying that?”
“Alright, then, what’s your name?”
“I’m —” He broke off. For whatever reason, he couldn’t remember. “Where am I?”
“Nice to meet you, Wherimy.”
“Oh, cute,” he grumbled, scowling at the weird red carpet before them.
Ribbit grinned at him. “We’ll work something out for you.”
“Where am I?” He shook his head and looked down at his body, around at the eerie paintings lining the walls. “I don’t even remember how I got here. I just. . . I didn’t even wake up, I just. . .”
“I didn’t exactly wake up at all,” Ribbit drawled in a strange accent, “I just sort of found myself walking, all alone on that road. . .”
He stared at Ribbit with trepidation. Ribbit glanced over and smiled again.
“The Twilight Zone? First episode? Guy walks into an empty town and —”
“Are you seriously quoting The Twilight Zone at me right now?”
“Ah, you’ll get used to everything soon. Your memory will start coming back soon, too.” He waved a hand. “Most of it, anyways. It comes in chunks. Very disorienting chunks.”
The New Guy scoffed and shook his head. “The Twilight Zone,” he muttered. “Nerd.”
“It’s one of the most well-known shows in the world, it’s not exactly a deep cut.”
He huffed and shook his head again. “All this, and you still haven’t told me what the heck is goin’ on.”
“Here.” Ribbit gestured him through a doorway. He couldn’t see through it for the blinding light that poured through. “It’ll be easier to explain with everyone.”
He grimaced at the onslaught of light, but followed Ribbit through.
They walked into a cavernous room. Overhead criss-crossed slides and jungle gyms and giant versions of indoor playgrounds. He squinted up at the ceiling — red and blue stripes, and pointing to one high peak like a tent. The floor was black and white tile. It gave him the impression of a giant chessboard. There were a few areas cordoned off with couches and chairs, one with a circle of hammocks around a patch of turf with a fire pit flickering strangely in the middle.
“Hey, everyone!”
The New Guy jolted at the sound of Ribbit’s voice and turned his attention back before him.
Geez, and he’d thought the frog was weird.
“We’ve got a new guy,” Ribbit announced. His voice was cheerful, but heavy, like he was saying something that this ‘new guy’ wasn’t privy to. “New Guy,” Ribbit continued, nodding to the motley crew in front of them, “meet the gang!”
The New Guy frowned and crossed his arms, cautiously regarding the collection before him.
“This is Ragatha, Kaufmo, Kinger, Zooble, Gangle, Wormy, and Dobby-Dog.” Ribbit gave him a conspiratorial smile. “And you thought Ribbit was dumb, huh? We just call him Dobby, mostly.”
The New Guy said nothing, frowning at the group.
In order, it seemed to be a giant rag doll, a clown, a chess piece, a. . . Picaso painting, a ribbon with a tragedy mask glued to the end, one of those fuzzy worm toys, and a slinky dog.
“Oh, um, hello!” The doll — Ragatha — waved with a smile. “Welcome to the circus!”
He squinted. “The what?”
“You got a name yet?” Zooble asked. Their voice was deep and raspy. It disturbed him that they spoke without a mouth.
“Not yet,” Ribbit answered for him. “I just found him in the hall. He’s a little disoriented. But I figured we could work together on something.”
He growled through his clenched teeth. “What is going on?” he howled, stomping his oversize foot on the ground. The ribbon-thing squeaked and hid behind the chess piece.
“Oh.” Kinger looked behind him in mild surprise. “There you are, Gangle.”
“What’s this?”
A deep, booming voice filled the tent. Loud music followed it, bouncing off the walls. Gangle squeaked again, looking up in surprise.
A new creature appeared above them. Giant teeth, giant eyes, in a pinstriped suit.
“Has a new human entered the circus?”
“Oh, good.” Ribbit pointed up at the creature. “This is Caine, it’s the AI that runs the circus.”
“Thanks for the introduction, Ribbit!”
The New Guy felt himself being snatched up, lifted into the air.
“Now let’s get going on the grand tour!”
He was dropped to the ground after the tour, where Caine explained the Amazing Digital Circus, the adventures he led everyone on every day, the lake and the carnival, the fact that he couldn’t control anybody’s minds.
And the fact that nobody could leave.
The New Guy stumbled back onto the tiled floor. His legs crumbled under him. He collapsed, hugged his knees and buried his face in his arms. He gasped sharply, fighting the sob in his chest.
He didn’t know what to think. He couldn’t feel anything. Just a yawning, existential pit of dread in his stomach.
This was his whole life.
Caine was talking again, prattling on about some adventure. The monologue was muffled by the buzzing in his ears, and the sound of footsteps approaching.
“We were thinking something like Jack?”
He lifted one eye from his arms. Ribbit was crouched in front of him, tilting his head.
“Jack?” he echoed hoarsely.
Ribbit pointed to his head. “’Cuz of the rabbit thing.”
He squinted. “Rabbit?”
Ribbit frowned, then stood up and turned back. “Hey, Caine!” he called. “Can the new guy get a mirror for a second?”
“Oh, of course!” Caine clapped his hands together, spread them out, and threw the mirror that appeared between them to the ground.
The New Guy flinched as it spun towards him, but it stopped before hitting anything. Hesitantly, he cracked open his eyes.
He stared.
He looked like a toy.
He was, indeed, a rabbit. Two long, purple ears sprouted from his head. But that wasn’t the worst of anything. His face looked freakish. His eyes were huge, jaundice-yellow, with two swollen ink-black pupils flicking about within. They reflected his reflection right back at him, an eon of that monstrous face reflection back.
He tried to open his mouth, to see his wrong-feeling teeth. They were long, yellow, split into neat rows like a child’s drawing. His mouth wouldn’t open. His lips split open, wider, wider, but his teeth remained locked together. When he finally managed to pry them apart, wrenching them down with a hand, they were sharp and brutal, more like a monster than a rabbit.
He let his mouth shut with a skull-aching click and shuddered, looking away.
“Alright.” Ribbit turned the mirror away and crouched by him again. “Anyways, Jack was just a thought. You got any ideas?”
He squeezed his eyes shut, raked a hand over the curve of his skull. He felt his ears — that was a weird sensation, a whole new part to his body that wasn’t there before. He felt them curve under his hand. He pinched one, twisted it, tugged on it. Pliable, rubbery.
Like a toy.
But he wasn’t one. He pulled harder on his ear. Harder, harder, longer, longer, unnaturally so, freakish. It would have been nauseating on any human, but he felt no pain at all. Pulling, pulling, pulling, under he felt something. A sting, a warning, no further.
Satisfied, he released it. It snapped seamlessly back into shape.
“Jax.”
“Jacks?”
“With an X. I’ll be Jax.”
“Jax.” Ribbit grinned and nodded. “I like it. Hip, cool.” He pushed himself to his feet. “Sounds like something an annoying minor celebrity would name their unfortunate kid.”
He snorted, shaking his head.
“Alright, that’s a smile! That’s something!” Ribbit held out a hand. “C’mon, I’ll show you the ropes of these stupid adventures. You learn to play them right, they’re almost fun.”
The new guy — the rabbit — reached up and took Ribbit’s hand.
Jax stood up and followed him into the portal.