Chapter Text
It’s over. And over. And over and over and
It rumbles slightly as it turns and turns and turns, every five rotations causes the front right foot to hit the linoleum with a BANG as it turns over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and
A bright blue sock comes to the front, frothy with soap and water. A pant leg replaces it and it disappears into the mass of shifting and swirling and over and turns and over and …
BANG
Every thirteen bangs causes a shudder in the machine. It scrapes against the machine to its left which transmits a screeching vibration through to the next one. The washers sing together, hauntingly brilliant and dissonant, they shout as though they expect not to be heard, they rotate as if they know nothing else.
The woman sitting in front of the washing machine knows nothing else. Not in this moment, in any case. She rotates her head slowly with the dizzying spiral of laundry, dreaming of shapes and colors within the never ending madness of beauty before her, she brings her head back upright with each BANG then gets transfixed once again to the over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over…
She reaches out to touch the glass seperating her from the meaningless shapes. If she had a consciousness of her own at this moment, she would wonder at why she wants to join it. She’s a hardworking woman, she lives a full life, she has family and friends and everything one could want out of life. But the shapes in front of her swirl with color and she drifts imperceptibly closer, pressing the flats of her fingers into the glass as if it will break and she needs to be ready to dive in.
BANG
In her momentary break of delusion, she rights her head and notices a faint crackle behind her. It pops and statics, it has low sounds of despair and high pitched hacking that could almost be a laugh if you’ve never heard a laugh before. It could almost be crying, again, if you’ve never heard someone crying before. And this woman, in her stupor, could swear she’s never heard crying before. So, she guesses, this is it.
It’s hard to rip her gaze away from the laundry. It’s hard to turn her head away from the enrapturing mixture of colors and bubbles, from the over and over she has become a part of.
Thankfully, she finds a new over and over and over to stare at as she turns around. It’s nothing like the washing machine, and yet exactly the same. It has golden spirals of color and shifting and over and over and over and over
The woman finds herself lost in these spirals-of-curls, of hair-that-never-stills, of forever-swirling-insanity. They go on and on, splaying over the floor in meandering pathways that her subconscious traces down. They spill over the maybe-shoulders of the thing in front of her. They jumble in traffic jams and sort themselves out, they move together and deviate and come back together, they are everywhere and nowhere and somehow and nowhen.
The creature the hair belongs to is shuddering with not-cries, it moves as shapes with shading and objects with outlines, it takes arms that must be arms but cannot possibly be, long and spindly and too much for a person, it pushes them against the floor with hands that must be hands but cannot possibly be hands, too long and too knuckled and too much for a person. The creature the hair belongs to cannot possibly be a creature, it is and it is not and it is not what it is.
It sits up now, if a creature-that-is-not-a-creature can do something as simple as sitting. It shifts in color and texture and lighting and sound. Tears made of light and denim streak down what must be its face but cannot possibly be its face. Music makes up its legs that it tucks beneath it. The purple of it’s outfit-suit-sweater-tshirt-dress shifts to blue shifts to orange shifts to plaster shifts to text.
The eyes (that cannot possibly be eyes) meet the woman’s gaze and blink. The woman jolts back upright with the BANG behind her, but quickly tilts her head with the curls of gold she is reaching a hand towards. The creature sniffs - it sounds like what a dog sniffing looks like - and swallows - it looks like what a cube being forced through a slinky sounds like.
“I wouldn’t,” it says. It sounds croaky and raw, staticy and backward.
The woman brings her hand back to herself, snatching it back like a child from a flame. Her eyes widen in panic as they see the situation in front of her. She meets the things not-eyes and feels her body relax even as her mind splinters off from it. Her head tilts with the swirling creatures rainbow eyes, her mind screams at her to run. Her head makes it all the way around to the floor, her mind wanders.
It looks away from her, though she continues her spiral. It sees the laundry machines behind her, she starts to move closer to it. She reaches a hand out, slowly. Her head is coming back up now, 75% of the way around a circle.
“Where am I?” It says, taking small glances all around now.
She takes a moment before realizing she is a person enough to answer. “You are here, doll.”
A ripple of some sort of emotion crosses its face at the unhelpful answer. It takes what can be approximated as a breath and seems to focus. It’s light and color and music dies down into texture, it’s flickering steadies to the beat of the banging washing machine. It’s hair moves only as if a strong wind was twisting it, it’s eyes still to a soft baby-blue with just an insignificant swirl of dark blue around the pupil.
It almost looks like a man now.
Almost.
The woman returns almost entirely to her body, suddenly tired beyond exhaustion. Her hands drop heavily onto the floor and she has just enough wherewithal to sit up and lean back against the machine behind her. She eyes the almost-man with what would be suspicion if she had the energy for it.
Its legs are made of fabric - or, no, it’s wearing pants. That’s more likely. It’s likely the creature in front of her is wearing pants, a sky blue pair of bell bottom jeans, but that would require more focus than the creature is actively giving it. It’s likely the creature is wearing a purple long sleeved shirt, but what is the difference between shirts and skin anyway? Its arms are long — too long — but reasonably so. Its face would pass as a happy man’s face if happy men tended to cry light and smiled through the light-tears as if its smile was the only thing keeping it grounded. Its hair reaches the ground behind it, and doesn’t extend further than reality.
She lets out a sigh and closes her eyes against the headache that now presses onto her temples. The key difference is not the presence of the headache, but the presence of her temple to be ached upon.
“Where are we?”
Its voice sounds like a man’s would over a phone. She gathers the energy to talk, deciding this person would be better to entertain in light of recent developments that she starts to reason could not have been real. “Manchester.”
It shifts slightly, leaning up against a different row of machines. “What’s the date?”
She ponders for a second. When had time ever mattered when the hair on your head is endless and the colors in your eyes could rival the stars? “uh… the 14th. I think.”
“Of…?”
“March.”
It seems to huff in frustration and she cowers slightly against the cool linoleum floor. “Of?”
“2007?”
Through her eyelids she can see the shifting of light emanating from the creature. It spasms in shock, color and texture and light flashing before it can reel it in again. Screeching notes of harmony from the creature play with the screeching texture from the laundry behind her. She cowers further.
It settles down again, and now with most of her wits about her she can realize that the creature is definitely, assuredly, 100%, absolutely crying right now. Some people laugh when they cry. Some people sound like whining dogs when they cry. Some people are not people when they sound like both of these things at the same time.
She is at a loss. Does she comfort the insanity-inducing demon creature? Does she ask it what it is? Does she run as soon as she can move her arms again?
It shakes in grief and terror.
“Are, uh, are you okay?” She winces at the terror in her voice. She winces at how shallow it sounds. She winces as she notices she cannot feel the depth she associates with her own humanity.
The cracking sound from the creature registers in her mind as laughing. “What an interesting question!”
She doesn’t understand why the question was so interesting.
“What’s your name?” It says callously, switching between topics just as fast as it switched from incredulous to spiteful.
It should concern her more, that she cannot provide an answer. “I… uh.”
“Right. You. Don’t. Know.” It spits the words out in fury. It must be glowing, it must be shifting again, it must be filling the room with golden curls of spiraling hair, forever turning and continuously changing.
She huddles into herself and firmly keeps her eyes shut, shutting out the light and unnatural pathways that she finds herself wanting to imagine.
It cackles again, “Good luck ever finding that out.” It goes quiet, just the sound of the washing machine slowing down now. “I’ve been trying for a while. I guess I have more time now.” It lets out an incredulous snort, then it’s standing up. “You should go.”
There is a burst of energy and she can suddenly stand up. She grabs her basket and piles her wet clothes into it as fast as she can. She opens her eyes just enough to see the ground on the way to the exit.
It halts her just before she leaves. “Oh, and a word of advice.” She freezes, one hand on the glass door outside. “Don’t use the yellow doors.”
With that she steps out into the cold air, holding a sopping basket of clothes that feels like it’s freezing against her pants. She opens her eyes fully, taking in the look of a street of hard edges and normal looking people. There is structure to the city. There is substance.
Melody.
Her name is Melody. She doesn’t know why she couldn’t remember that. She doesn’t remember why the world not spinning is a good thing. She must’ve met a dangerous person in there.
There was never a person there. She doesn’t know why she’s making things up now.
Nothing happened. If you can’t even trust yourself to know that you’re safe, then what can you do? No, there was nothing wrong with the laundromat.
Still, she decides not to go back in for the dryer. She goes home.
And she doesn’t even look at the mysterious door lurking in the alley by her house.
***
It was a pop.
A shift of pressure within its ears, a readjusting of the fluids trapped therein. One second to the next, everything changed, and all it had as an indication was a single pop.
Maybe there’s going to be rain soon.
One second - screaming, terrified. Trapped, locked out, rejected from the entity that it was and was-not. It was a hand cut off from its body. It flailed and banged on the door. It bled color and sobbed light, a marker that the entity that had killed who it once was was about to finish the job. It was reduced to nothing, tainted by its own inhumanity, flung from power and grasped by the aching jaws of all-that-it-is-not. It was dying and it knew it.
Pop.
Then it wasn’t.
It wasn’t dying physically, anyway, in whatever physicality it has. It wasn’t being reduced to ash or color or blood. No, it wasn’t being reduced to anything.
It was still… all of it. It shifted rapidly between it all, between line art and highlighters and harmonies and light and over and over and over and…
It was over.
It’s death, or it’s not-death, it was over. It was done.
And now the pain hits.
It tears through its ears first. It’s a bright pain, neon pinks and highlighter yellow zaps through what it called its head. Its hair wraps around it, comforting in the way a creature of it-is-not-what-it-is can be. It shifts and spirals. The pain manifests as a cutthroat melody creaking down its throat and as a deep cold within the veins of its wrists. It clutches its body close, forming a golden ratio - the most comforting shape - and lays limp against a ground that is no longer tainted with the blood of the Stranger.
The pain pierces through its core, a knife made of the same not-matter that it is manifested of. It curls deeper into itself.
It knows it can never escape. Not truly. It knows the pain never goes away. It knows pain. It knows nothing. It knows it knows nothing. It knows the pain of its inhumanity is the pain it feels more than any other and it knows that pain never leaves.
It lists all the things it knows. It knows it needs to stop listing things it knows. It knows it needs to stop needing to stop listing things. It knows its knowing of needs is worse. It knows this is making it worse. It knows it cannot stop.
It thinks of all the things it has done wrong. It knows it could have done better. It knows it should have done better. It knows it’s breaking. It knows there is no part of it left to break. It knows there is one thing left for it to break.
Gerry
The one thing it had left. It had lost its humanity. It had lost its mind. It had lost its ability to quantize itself.
But Gerry could see him.
The memories of Gerry could, anyway.
But Gerry isn’t anywhere, now. Gerry died 3 years ago, in 2014.
And all that Micheal had left was its memories of him. A good life together.
And now they fade away with the pain. This is what causes the most pain. Michael clutches to the memories of its boyfriend, and it slips through the cracks made by too-many knuckles and unwieldy lanky arms. It claws at its brain, it shuffles through textures and lights and sounds and forms and it continues to leave. It throws a metaphorical chair while searching for the memories of treasured experiences, it considers for a second to make that a physical chair. It doesn’t even know the meaning of the word, physical.
Micheal knows it is crying. The thought of Being enough to cry is enough to make it laugh, a hideous, heinous laugh that just makes it cry even more. It bangs its tweed-leather-concerto hand against the ground. It rips at its own eyes. It pushes against the floor and crumples again in agony, cold spikes causing its cotton-green-paper skin to break out in feverish sweats. It scrambles for a memory to hold onto, anything that will give it a sense of belonging, of wanting. Nothing.
It tries to remember his eyes, the way they measured him, the way they let it consider itself a ‘him’ in their presence.
Nothing.
They push up against the floor again, forcing itself upright (or as upright as a creature with no form can be). It wipes its light-diamond-Tchaikovsky tears from its sorta-face. The memories of Gerry are gone and they cannot even be upset about it anymore. They don’t know what to be upset about. It is still in pain, though. It just died. It just lost itself. It needs to be found.
It will never be able to be found.
It looks up at its surroundings for the first time. Michael is particularly surprised to find a world of reality. These are not its hallways, shifting and gradients. This is the real world.
And there is a woman in front of it.
She has dark wavy hair that goes down to her shoulders. It’s greasy and needs a wash. She’s wearing sweats and a T-shirt that has likely seen better days. She’s a mess. Her eyes hold wonders and nothing and everything and swirl ever so slightly.
She is also reaching out to touch one of its curls. “I wouldn’t,” Michael tries to warn her.
She snaps her head up, meeting his eyes. That’s not good. Eye contact, you know?
Her hand reaches up again, her head goes down, and her body starts to spiral with it. She resembles a slow moving smoothie in a blender. It sighs and decides to try to get something out of this situation.
“Where am I?”
She is not currently in control of her self, so she waits before answering, “You are here, doll.”
Not a great answer. This is its own fault. It is the distortion, it-is-not-what-it-is, a creature of lies and madness. This is its own fault. This proves its own inhumanity.
Okay. It takes a deep breath and focuses on its appearance. It stabilizes its textures - it creates the semblance of skin and fabric, though the two meld together at the edges. It ends its hair before infinity, though the spirals can never truly be beheld. It calms its flickering and forces itself to stop spinning.
It’s hard to make an unfathomable thing become a being.
The woman is slouched down against the laundry machine behind her, and Michael understands why it got to this place. It’s almost like home, almost like it’s hallways, spiraling and swirling and continuing and over and over and over… It’s a place of power for it. A place of comfort when the hallways are too much but the city is too little.
And the woman was likely entrenched in the spiral long before it showed up. That makes it feel a little better, it supposes. It didn’t ruin a whole life by showing up.
Not that it had much cared in the last 3 years, whether it was ruining lives.
“Where are we?”
Michael is not usually one for knowledge, that’s the eye’s realm, but Michael also usually doesn’t just, appear like this. Not without specifically intending to, anyway. It is confused and needs to know what happened when it died. Or, possibly didn’t die.
It’s really confused as to how it’s still alive. (‘Alive’ is a strong word in this context, but for the purposes of proper storytelling, we will let it slide.)
“Manchester.”
Michael lets out a huff. Right, as if that would help. 300km is nothing to an entity such as it, and yet it didn’t feel as if it entered the hallways to travel. It seemed to just… move.
“What’s the date?”
“Uh… the 14th I think.”
Useless. “Of…?”
“March?”
Oh? It was just June though? How long was it out? Time had always been rather meaningless to the distortion, days and weeks and months and years would bleed together and fractal apart in its domain. 9 months was nothing to the endless spiral of time. Though…
Something still doesn’t feel right. Maybe it had been dead, or asleep, or whatever, for much longer. Maybe it had been a year, maybe it had been more. It glances around the room, the technology looks the exact same as Michael remembers, but it’s not as though it had been paying attention to the technological upgrades done to washing machines.
“…of?” It prompts. If it is capable of hoping, it is hoping for her to say 2018. The least amount of time (such a human concept, time) to have been out of commission the better.
“2007”
It breaks concentration.
Light fractals out of its amalgamation of lines and shapes. It shines burgundy and phosphorus. It tears into 3 entities made of yellow, magenta, and cyan, then it transforms into a trombone quartet sung by penguins. It sounds like denim and it feels like whispers, though its feelings are anything other than conceivable. It is an amalgam of all the head aches humanity has ever had and every head ache humanity has never had. It is all it is not.
It is shocked, to say the least.
In all the years - again, time is such a silly concept - Michael has been the distortion, even pulling memories from before it was Michael and Michael was it, it had never been able to go *backward* in time. It could go forward, it could send people into states of warped time. It could change time as it happened. But it couldn’t reverse it. It could never reverse it.
So then how is it 10 years before when it died?
It knows, now, that it died. It had to have. There is no other explanation. It died.
“Are, uh, are you okay?”
She knocks it out of its revery, it’s shaking, it’s contorting and convulsing. Of course it’s not okay. Could you imagine?
Being okay with this?
Can you imagine the world where this is a good thing? Where Micheal trapped within the distortion is okay with this, and the distortion trapped within Michael is okay with this? With being killed by itself and then sent back to do it all again?
It laughs because there is nothing else to do. It laughs because it’s the distortion and the only way to distort pain is with laughter. It laughs because there is no other way to answer the question.
“What an interesting question!”
The woman is cowering, it knows. It feels the light dancing with its own craze, it sees it play along the face of the woman, trying not to succumb to its luring madness. It sees the insanity that is reaching out to her.
“What’s your name?” It is angry now, upset at its own inhumanity. It shows up here and is met with a piece of meat marked for the spiral. And it’s hungry. It cannot explain the joy it feels when it sees the woman shy away from her own pull towards him. She Is nothing but a meal for it, and it cannot stand it. It needs to know who she is. It needs to let her have some sanity.
“I…uh”
The woman cannot find herself, even when shutting micheal out. The woman closes her eyes against the pressing swirl of light emanating from Michael. She cannot find what she is missing, she doesn’t even know what she’s missing, she is nothing.
“Right. You. Don’t. Know.” Michael is spiteful and bites at every words that spills from its body. It slams a hand against the ground and gets up to pace circles around the laundry units. There is so much hilarity within Michaels inhumanity, it can’t help but to laugh. Don’t you see the joke here? Can’t you see what’s so funny?
Michael suddenly stands still and peers over at the woman. “Good luck finding that out. I’ve been trying for a while.” And it had. It had spent so long trying to find out who or what it was, what that meant for life, for love. It had pondered until it noticed it was saying the same things over and over again. The thoughts had swirled - spiraled - around it, and it was nothing if not on brand. A thought occurs to it. “I guess I have more time now.” It wants the woman gone, it wants the space to itself, it wants to be able to think. “You should go.”
The woman catapults herself out the door, taking her wet clothes with her.
Micheal sighs. It knows she will start to rationalize the situation as soon as she’s out the door. It tries to warn her off of yellow doors, but she won’t remember.
God, Michael is tired of being rationalized out of existence. It wants to *be*. It cannot be in any meaningful way.
Michael locks the doors to the laundromat and sits in front of a washing machine, allowing the spinning water to lul it into a nice spiral-y almost-sleep.
It relaxes.
To a nosy passerby looking through the window, the sight would be completely unintelligible. They may see a shifting mass of hair curling up the windows, blocking the sight. Certainly it crawls up the walls, it layers around the machines. The hair does not have a mind of its own, and Michael does not will it, but somehow the locs come together to turn on every machine in that room. The loud buzzing and clunking and occasional BANGs set a precedent for sound that is far too normal to be in the presence of one-such-as-nothing, so they spice it up a bit.
Static and pop music and cake fills the air in a sweet cacophony of sound and silence.
Michael falls into a deep revery. The part of it that never stops, never goes out, never stills is working overtime in the background. It considers its options, it considers time travel, it considers the impossibility of whatever happened to get it here.
The Michael on the surface hears none of that. It sits, flickering between everything and nothing, and stares at the spinning machine in front of it.
I have to save him.
Michael jolts in shock. This voice was its own, this voice was clear and concise, this voice expressed a want. This voice could not have been that of the distortion. It was everything it is not.
Yet Micheal remembers this voice, this not-of-the-distortion voice that emanates from within it. It has spoken to Michael on many occasions, it is what drove many of Micheal’s more… human urges in years past. Or, years future. God time travel is going to be hard.
This was the voice that drew Michael to Gerry. Sweet, spicy, poor, poor Gerry.
I have to save Michael.
Michael was still alive. Micheal Shelley was still alive, right now. Probably. And now Micheal, the distortion, the one-who-is-and-not, is here too. It can save him.
Micheal is in the hallways before a single additional thought can occur.