Chapter Text
A perfectly ordinary day of waking up to stare unseeingly into a cup of coffee ended with an unexpected, rather extraordinary event.
Your roommates had already left the house for work, leaving you to force yourself into enough wakefulness to eat something and not go another breakfast with just coffee for sustenance. As you debated what to eat, a sliver of bright sunlight beamed directly into your face, forcing you to squint and turn your face away.
Ugh.
Bright light, go away.
The sunlight did not move at your internal commands.
A shame.
This meant that you would have to get up and tug the curtain in the living room close to eat in peace. Without being stabbed in your poor blurry eyes by vicious bright light making its way into your home unsolicited.
Squinting, you get up to shuffle over to the window, moving out of the way of the slowly growing patch of sunlight hitting the table and wall behind you. With a swift flick of a wrist, you closed the curtain.
Ahh.
Sweet darkness.
You felt better already.
Turning, you’re ready to the kitchen to scrounge for food, only for there to be a resounding crashing noise. You barely had time to stumble back in alarm right before a heavy thud sounded overhead; you could have sworn the whole house shook.
What in the hell had that been?
Drawing the curtain back open a touch (ugh, bright sunlight) there was no sign that indicated the neighbors’ houses across the street had been disturbed. Tugging the curtain shut with a grimace, you walked to the back of the house, casting a suspicious glance up the stairway and the sight of a small cloud of dust. You continue to the sliding door that led to the fenced back yard; you peer out to survey either side to the next-door neighbors' yards.
Nothing.
There was no activity whatsoever that whatever had (likely) crashed through the attic to make the second level of the house had disturbed anyone but yourself.
Wonderful.
What could possibly have hit the house at such a force that it sounded like you and your roommates were going to be coughing up some cash to fix whatever happened? And to make it even better, sarcasm fully intended, the forecast called for rain later this week. Which mean that the damage would have to be taken care of sooner rather than later. At most, you and your roommates would have to find out how much (and how long) the damage would take to fix. It might even mean rigging up a tarp over the roof and attic ceiling in the meantime, while hoping any rain leading up to repairs.
…you were stalling.
Best to go see the scene of the crime where a heavy unknown object crashing through the roof and see the damage.
Then you could get going before you were late to work.
Ahh.
The joys of one of your roommates owning this house; all of you were trying to figure out how to get things taken care of around the house after being thrust together into sharing it after said roommate inherited this place from a relative.
Later.
Think about it later.
Look first, worry about logistics later.
Heaving a sigh, you head for the staircase. The sight of the dust cloud looked like it was partway down the hall. Reaching the top of the stairs, with a hand resting on the banister, you look up.
There was a hole in the ceiling, just to the side of the door that could be used to lower a ladder to get into the attic. Because of course whatever had landed in through the roof couldn’t have damaged an easier to replace foldout ladder door…on second thought, maybe that would have been more damage.
Craning your head to the side, you peer through the hole and see that yup, the attic roof had a decent-sized hole in it.
Wonderful.
Just great.
The cause of the damage?
An innocuous-looking older box tv, somehow not smashed to hell after crashing through the roof and attic flooring, then down to the hallway floor, debris all around it. The tv, for whatever reason, had a little fedora on top of it that the antenna (the left one crooked) poked out of. The tv screen itself was shattered; the pieces of glass that remained appeared sharp and jagged.
Honestly?
The tv looked like it went through a tornado with how dirty it all was, debris clinging to it. There was even something leaking from somewhere within the broken screen, sluggishly dripping onto the floor beneath it. The name ‘puzzlevision’ was just beneath the broken glass of the screen.
You’d never heard of that brand before.
But in any case...
What a mess.
Stooping to carefully heft the tv up into your arms (weird, it wasn't as heavy as it looked like it should be), you awkwardly carry it over to the nearby table in the hall up against the wall. Conveniently, it happened to have a bath towel tossed over it. With a whoosh of breath, you set the broken tv down onto the towel, and, grumbling, set about cleaning up the mess that covered most of the hallway.
What felt like hours turned out to be about 15 minutes for a decent cleanup.
You couldn’t linger for much longer, since you had to leave for work soon. But this meant you didn’t have time to go up in the attic to survey the damage to ceiling and roof of the house. You’ll just have to cross your fingers and hope it would be fine until you came back home. With your phone back on the dining room table, you'd have to remember to send a group text to your roommates to let them know about the incident.
One last thing, before you went back downstairs.
Turning to face the broken tv, you decide in the moment to put the damn thing into your bedroom. To try and contain the mess with the likely wrong assumption that the tv could pitch forward and crash onto the floor to make more to clean up later. Using the towel to avoid touching broken glass or any other sharp debris (if you hadn’t already), you pick the tv back up. Awkwardly carry the tv along the rest of the way down the hall to your bedroom. With a shove of your foot, you open the door and shuffle over to the closet. Leaning the tv into the crook of an elbow, you use your free hand to partially tug the closet door open. Getting that hand back under the tv for support, you crouch slowly, carefully, to set old tube tv just inside your closet, on an open space of the floor, towel still beneath it. Sighing, and muttering mutinously to the inanimate object about causing property damage, you slide the closet door panel to align with the other one to close it.
There.
Dealt with for now.
You’d have tossed it out, but you wondered if there might be some parts of the tv’s insides that could be salvaged, or, if there wasn’t too much damage, fixed and sold online (or dropped off at thrift store).
With a groan over a few tiny cuts you'd accumulated on your hands, you wash them in the upstairs bathroom sink (and hope there weren’t microscopic pieces of glass). Trudging down the sitars back to the dining room table, you were much more awake. Scrounging something out of the kitchen to eat, and finishing your coffee after reheating it, you were ready to go, and relieved you'd already been dressed for the day.
After locking up the house, you were off.
The cafe was thankfully slow that day, but you'd still managed to get there a few minutes before opening. The extra time gave you the moment to send out a group chat to your roommates, to let them know what happened that morning. And once lunchtime rolled around, you heard back from your roommates, unsurprised by both of them expressing exasperation over the odds of something crashing into the house. And since one of the roommates owned the home via inheritance, all three of you would discuss how one was supposed to go about fixing the damage at dinner that evening.
Nothing out of the ordinary happened at your shift that day.
There was nothing to indicated that something would happen later on that would change things up in your life, for better or worse.
The first inkling of something not quite right was when you’d returned to the house. You got back before your roommates, since the cafe closed earlier on Mondays. The house, once you’d entered and flipped the lights seemed…dimmer in some way. The bulbs didn't seem to be as bright as they were that morning. Maybe you just hadn’t noticed, what with your eyes being blurry upon waking up.
The second sign was a thumping noise from upstairs, but you didn't hear it as you'd just begun to go up the steps at the same time. If you’d heard it, maybe the next week or so would have gone much differently.
Inwardly groaning over the dusty bits of debris yet to be swept up and vacuumed in the hallway, you stepped around the pile to avoid trekking it everywhere.
Hopefully.
You'd not noticed if you’d brought any of the mess downstairs earlier.
Entering your bedroom, you cross over to the closet, thinking that you should have just brought the broken tv downstairs.
Oh well.
You’d take care of that now, before your roommates returned.
Decision made, you slide the closet door open, but as half of it folded back to allow for space to crouch down and pick the tv up with that towel, you see something. You are able to acknowledge what you see, but your mind struggled to comprehend it as you freeze in place.
There was a man in your closet.
Why was there a man in your closet?
There should not be a man in there.
Or anywhere in the house, really, since this wasn't one of your roommates.
You know for certain the doors and windows were locked, and you’d locked the front door before leaving the house that morning. And your roommates hadn’t mentioned expecting any visitors.
You stare into the closet.
The man in the closet stared back, before slowly raising a hand to offer a little wave.
Why did this man have an old tube tv over his head? A tv that looked suspiciously like the old tv that had crashed into the house, the screen displaying a partial test color card that appeared as a smile, or rather, a frown, circles above for eyes small.
Had you mentioned there was a whole man in your closet?
A man who wore a white dress shirt and gray button-up vest with a black bow tie, and suspenders attached to pants covered in a puzzle design. The man watched you while cowering in your closet, his lanky body pressed into the back of the closet, tv tilted up for the screen to face.
While you watched, the man with a tv for a head drew his legs up while pressing his dress shoes into the floor, as if he could back away further than you. Arms went around his legs below the knees, tv shifting to the side a touch as the expression on the broken screen shifted.
Your mind caught up, making as if to slam the door shut.
The man decided to stop cowering. He moved freakishly fast, outstretched hand seizing your nearest upper arm, as if he held an inkling of what you were about to do.
“D-don’t-“ The speaker on the tv seemed to make the voice muffled, almost pained.
You lean back, but the lanky man’s hand remained firmly wrapped around your upper arm (three fingers and a thumb, what in the world).
The broken screen face looked at you, while you returned the gaze with mounting panic.
When the man sounded like he was going to speak again, or perhaps tug you toward him, from the twitch his hand made, your mind came back online.
Fight or flight kicked in.
However, since the tv headed man was holding your arm to prevent escape, your brain pushed you to abruptly swing your free arm, fist clenched as you let out a scream of alarm with a hint of fear.
Fortunately, it appeared the man hadn’t expected this reaction. He seemed frozen in place, actually, while the expression on his screen face shifted to one that nearly mirrored your own as your fist made a beeline for his broken screen of a face.
Unfortunately, your fist glanced off the broken pieces of glass around the edge of the tv screen, sending sharp, burning pain through your knuckles, back of your wrist, and then forearm when you stupidly yank the arm backward in a pained recoil.
Several things happen in rapid succession.
The front door opened, signaling the return of one or both your roommates.
The man in your closet groaned something out, only to give the arm in his grasp a sharp tug.
Unbalanced, you pitch forward and fall right onto the tv headed man.
Dazed, you only barely note that he'd let go of your uninjured arm as he scooted backward with you sprawled against one side of his oddly wide set of shoulders and almost triangle-shaped chest to waist. So up close with your head hanging down, you notice how ridiculously narrow said waist is.
Your roommates call out greetings, no doubt noticing that you'd brought in the mail.
Closet man mumbled overhead with a muffled, static noise.
You damn near jump straight in the air as an arm looped around your back, tugging you closer against the man as the closet door was apparently, inexplicably, closed with one of the man's dress shoes.
There was a strange whining pitch of static and clicking sounds like the man was fiddling with one of the dials on the tv as the muttering grew quieter.
You crane your head to the side to glare up at the unsolicited touch, only to twitch at the sight of the rather calculating look the tv man was giving you.
"I think you'll agree that this isn't the most flattering of greetings, so how about we fix that?" The man paused, looking momentarily confused, before a patronizing smile of color rose. "It seems that will have to charge up for a moment."
"Let go." You shot back, none too subtly trying to break to rather strong grip Mr. closet man had on you.
"...no." The expression shifted from calculating to amused.
"How did you even get into my closet?" You demanded, doing your best to not think about the aching, slowly growing agony of your injured arm.
"You put me in-" The man's digital eyes blink, and the expression shifted again to a frown as the tv tilted to allow the screen to inspect you. "Did you hurt yourself on the broken glass of my face?"
"When I punched you? Yes!"
"That won't do. That shouldn't have happened at all." The man's multi-colored frown deepened. "Your hand should have just phased through or not touched the glass at all."
"Punching usually means something gets hit." You responded, before shoving at the man's arm with your non-wounded one. "I told you to let go."
"No." Petulant this time. Then, in an upbeat tone, as if some unseen thing had changed. "Let me try something."
You didn't want this random man, who was somehow in your closet and wearing a tv over his head, to try anything while you were within his vicinity.
The extraordinary event of the day happened then, coming in first over the sight of a man appearing in your closet, as the man finished turning the dials on the tv once more.
"There we go!" The man said, voice full of cheer. "Let's get that arm of yours fixed up."
When you turned you head again, the moment you see the suddenly static-filled screen, everything just stopped.
You'd later learn that your roommates had been beside themselves with worry when they couldn't find you, both immensely relieved when you reappeared the following evening. Your two roommates' concern (and the missed day of work) was entirely the fault of the man that had been in your closet, who would, earlier on in the day, introduce himself to you as Mr. Puzzles.