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Raymond wakes up to the ringtone of, “So call me maybe.”
He groans and rolls over, pulling a nearby pillow over his head in hopes to muffle the music. No such luck as Carly continues to sing, “Hey, I just met you and this is crazy, but here’s my number, call me maybe.” He sighs heavily before heaving himself over to the bedside table.
It takes him a moment to arrange the letters into actual words but when he does he curses softly before answering. He wonders why he ever let Fairia touch his phone in the first place.
“Hey Fairia,” he drawls, dragging out the “ey” sound longer than necessary. He can practically hear Fairia’s pout through the phone.
“Rude,” she mutters, probably not realizing that Raymond can hear her, before continuing in a chipper tone. “Morning Raymond! I just called to tell you that today you’ll only be focused on packing up the Dreamsend facility. Nothing else. Nothing. Okay?”
“Yeah, okay, now let me go back to sleep.”
“Sweet dreams!”
Raymond wakes up to the ringing of his phone. He considers turning over and ignoring it but the ringtone indicates that it’s Walter and ignoring Walter is never a good idea.
Raymond has never been known for having good ideas anyway. Besides, he had spent all of yesterday packing up the Dreamsend facility in the kid’s dream. He deserves a break.
It’s on the fifth time his phone rings that he answers it. He immediately regrets not answering sooner when Walter quietly states, “Russell is dead.”
He knows he isn’t supposed to be doing anything but packing up the facility as Fairia had already stressed earlier. But when the kid shows up with sad eyes and shyly asks for Raymond to accompany him, what is he supposed to do? He’s not heartless.
Yue wishes them luck and jokes that she was faster on her own anyway. They pick up Walter, whose tent is nearly all put away, and continue on.
(The place reeks of booze and sex and not for the first time does Raymond truly wonder about the kid. Who he was, who he is, who he will be. What kind of home he had or what kind of place was called his “home.” What had happened to cause the split between him and the fragment that called itself (himself?) the Informant.
But he pushes it down because he’s not attached, can’t afford to be. The kid’s dream is ending today and then he’ll be either be “reformed” or not and Raymond’s involvement will end.
The place is hot as well, dizzyingly so. The heat must be getting to his head because Raymond doesn’t see aftereffects but more like beforeeffects, if that made any sense. In quick, rapid succession, no image lasting more than a second, he sees the kid standing alone next to an orange balloon up ahead, then the kid and themselves and his hand is in the kid’s hair, then the kid and some residents in the dream, the kid and some residents again and again and again and again, and then the kid and themselves but his time they’re hugging—
Raymond blinks and the images vanish. The kid is staring at him with a curious expression. He waves the kid off but can’t help but to reach out and ruffle the kid’s hair. The kid blinks in surprise and the sides of his mouth twitch like he wants to smile but doesn’t know how. Raymond counts it as a victory.
The kid continues alone and they wait for a while before conceding and hurrying back to finish packing. Raymond doesn’t see the kid for the rest of the day and tries to ignoring the growing unease in his stomach.
He wakes up to the sound of Walter calling. A sick feeling of déjà vu makes him hesitate before answering. The words “Russell is dead” don’t surprise him as much as they should have but they do hurt a whole lot more.)
Raymond spends the whole day packing with Yue but he’s agitated for some reason. He keeps glancing to the entrance and expecting the kid to show up, for some reason. He keeps wanting to see the kid, for some reason.
He doesn’t share his thoughts with Yue when asked.
The words “Russel is dead” slide down his throat like bitter honey.
He shares his thoughts with Yue when asked.
“Does it feel like… this has happened before?”
Instead of giving him a small smile and gently explaining no, Raymond, you’re being an idiot, Yue frowns.
“Yes, it does…”
They fall silent after that and complete their packing. When Raymond steps out later, Yue doesn’t comment on it. When Raymond comes back later, dejected, Yue doesn’t comment on it and hugs him.
He doesn’t have to pick up the phone to know that Russell is dead.
“Hello, it’s me.”
“Hey Walter,” Raymond greets casually but he knows that if Walter is calling him, of all people, something must be up. “What’s up?”
“There’s something I have to show you.”
“Oh?”
“Not anything like that, idiot. No it has to do with… the dream and its dreamer.”
“It’s about the kid, isn’t it.”
“Just get down here.”
Raymond arrives to find Walter buried in reports. He hands Raymond a report and he skims over it, eyes lingering on words like “loop” and “strength of guilt” and “the gravimental pull of a dream.” He looks at Walter for guidance.
“The researchers and I,” Walter begins, a pensive look on his face, never a good sign. “Believe that Russell’s guilt is causing the dream to strengthen itself and… pull others in. However, there also appears to be an unknown outside interference that is effecting the dream. And…”
He hesitates and that’s when Raymond knows that something deeper is going on.
Walter pulls a folder out of the pile and hands it to Raymond. Raymond flips it open and finds reports on Russell’s dream that is going to happen today. That hasn’t happened today.
“…and we’re pretty certain that this isn’t the first time it’s happened.”
Raymond doesn’t know how to react. How is one supposed to feel when you’ve been told that you’re in some fucked up version of groundhog day that ends with a mentally unstable kid killing himself?
“I feel…” he laughs weakly, licks his lips, restarts. “I feel like you’re going to call me tomorrow and tell me that the kid—that Russell is dead.”
Walter’s eyes are sad. It’s a weird feeling to know that the normally aloof Walter is sad but it would be even weirder if he wasn’t, wouldn’t it? “I feel like I’m going to call you tomorrow and tell you that Russell is dead.”
He requests for tomorrow off. Fairia doesn’t so much as blink an eye and whispers, “Take care of him.”
Raymond dashes down the hall. He had woken up early today, a miraculous feat in itself, but then he proceeded to come to the Dreamsend Research Facility (the real world one, not the dream one) early. Needless to say, it was a morning of miracles.
Now if only Raymond can make one for Russell.
The orderee’s and researchers delay him for a good four hours and eventually he snaps at them to get the hell out of his way… which led to now. He stumbles to a halt in front of a door with the word “Russell” carved above it. Why did they carve it anyway, if they had to get rid of it in the end? No, focus.
He throws the door open. The syringe is already in Russell’s throat and blood sprays out. If he looked hard, he could see specks of flesh that dotted the red liquid. Bile rises in his throat and he heaves. Russell looks distressingly apologetic, like he had gotten caught with his hand in a cookie jar, not a needle in his throat.
He lurches forward and yanks the needle out. Dimly, he knows that yanking something out of a puncture wound only makes it bleed more, but the kid’s throat is already mangled and the needle is just in the way. He presses down on the kid’s throat to stop the bleeding but the lights in his eyes are already gone.
The kid’s mouth is open but slack. His fingers are curled around Raymond’s sleeve. His eyes are bright with unshed tears. Only in death did the kid look alive. There had to be some cruel irony here.
Raymond reaches into his pocket and pulls out his phone. His only joy is that he isn’t the one to receive the phone call this time.
“Russell is dead.”
He didn’t see the kid walk past the Dreamsend facility. Walter didn’t see him pass by his tent either. They don’t know how he managed to slip past them but the kid was nowhere to be found and that only left one place.
Unfortunately, a barrier prevents them from storming the castle. Raymond has already fired off one too many annoyed shots at the barrier and Walter theorized that the barrier was the dream’s way of pushing the dreamer. Pushing the kid to what? Raymond didn’t know and he was growing more annoyed by the second.
“Goddamit, we can’t just let him go through that—that hellhole alone!” he snarls. “You remember how it was—”
(The place reeks of booze and sex—)
“I remember,” Walter says levelly. Raymond turns to snap at him but he holds up a hand. “I also remember that today is the last day.”
“Exactly! So we should—”
“What are you two doing?”
The new voice, the oh-so-familiar voice, startles the two bickering men and their heads turn so fast to the speaker that Raymond is afraid that their necks might have snapped. Blonde bangs hang over unfamiliar green eyes and Raymond is crushed by disappointment.
“We are waiting for Russell,” Walter, the first to recover from the Informant’s surprise entrance, replies. His eyes are wary—both of their eyes are wary, Raymond weakly realizes. It’s like watching a clash of titans, if titans were cold, calculating, and blonde.
“Why?” the Informant guardedly asks.
“Doesn’t it feel like this has already happened before?” Raymond finally butts in. Something flickers in the Informant’s eyes and he goes to respond but then Russell is there.
Russell doesn’t say anything but a muttered sorry before grabbing the Informant’s hand (the Informant has a deer in the headlights look on his face and it would have been funny under better circumstances) and dragging his other away. Raymond is tempted to run after them but one look from Walter keeps him rooted to the spot. Somehow, they both know that it is beyond their hands.
Raymond doesn’t receive a call from Walter the next day. He doesn’t need a call from Walter to know what’s happened. He spends the rest of the day waiting to pass so they could begin again.
Russell disappears. That’s the most logical explanation they can come up with. The Encarner that last saw him said he headed off to the Resort but they’ve already checked the place from head to toe and there was no sign of him. They admit defeat and wait for the next day.
It makes sense, in a twisted way. How the Informant killing Russell would be considered a “reformation.” After all, Russell had technically killed himself many times now.
After all, Russell had technically killed himself a long time before that.
Russell comes to him. It surprises him so much that he doesn’t ask where they’re going. It’s only when sand has already found its way into his boots (and his pants, dammit) and a nearby Kelpie dances up to him that he recognizes that they’re at a festival.
A nearby vendor asks if they want their fortune read. Raymond declines, and thankfully Russell does too, but they drift over to a stall selling icecream. One look at Russell and Raymond is pulling out his (dream) wallet and paying a couple of Walnuts for two cones.
They spend the rest of the day like that, drifting from stall to stall buying things. Russell buys a weird one-eyed doll that the vendor calls Pi-something. He looks at it a moment before quietly naming it Yuuya. It was a gentle name and Raymond finds himself agreeing that the name suited it better. The Kelpies eventually pull them into dancing and they bump into a rather old one and sent on a quest for a missing torch.
By the time they find it, it’s dark and Russell quietly points out that he’s needed back at the town. Reluctantly, they leave the Festival and make their way towards town. It’s when they enter the forest that a monster (there’s no other word to describe it) rushes past him. The next few moments are filled with running and fighting and terror but also a fierce protectiveness that this thing (there was another word) was somehow connected to Russell.
It doesn’t escape Raymond’s notice that the thing is an amalgamation of beer bottles. It doesn’t escape Raymond’s notice that when the thing roars a noise that could sound like words, Russell flinches and draws back as if he’s about to be hit, either.
The thing escapes and they follow, like hunting dogs to scared prey. They eventually defeat the monster and pause to lick their wounds. The resident they had run into earlier, who Raymond was just now noticing, talks to Russell for a moment before heading back. Russell turns to him.
“Tomorrow…” he begins.
“Don’t even worry about it kid,” Raymond interrupts because he can’t deal with the feelings that threaten to rise in his throat. He grins and rustles Russell’s (ha) hair. Russell blinks at him but the gratitude is shown clearly in his eyes.
(Raymond hugs the kid like there’s no tomorrow. Walter’s grip isn’t as tight but the feelings behind it are just as powerful.
They still have to say goodbye at the orange balloon. Raymond convinces himself that goodbyes don’t have to end horribly.)
“Raymond,” Russell whispers, kneeling before him. His hand shakes and he swallows down his fear.
“I-I can’t kid,” he stammers and the shaking has expanded to his whole body. Distantly, he wonders if the kid would be consider “reformed” like this. The thought of Russell possibly dying not by his (Russell’s) hand but by another’s leaves a sick sensation in his soul. The thought of Russell dying by his (Raymond’s) hand leaves an even sicker one in his soul.
“Please,” Russell pleads, turning guilty blues eyes to him and oh. That does it.
“Russell,” Raymond breathes and he watches over Raymond’s shoulder. He floats above the scene, the man with the gun looking scared out of his mind and the kid the gun is pointed at looking serene and peaceful at the coming prospect.
He thinks that he can see thin red strings strung around the figures like puppets. A fated event tied by its bloody strings. He thinks that he should stop Raymond—stop himself. He doesn’t.
In his own twisted way, Russell was seeking redemption. It wasn’t his fault that he was looking in the wrong place. That church guy was the better option but Raymond was sure that Russell had already asked the church guy to kill him.
His finger twitches, an uncontrollable movement with uncontrollable consequences. A shot rings out. Russell slumps forward, blood pouring from his head, and in the instant between dream and reality, Raymond raises the gun to his own head and shoots.
The dream shatters.
He wakes up to the worried faces of Yue and Fairia. Walter looks constipated so he must have been worried as well. It’s such a weird thought that Raymond can’t help but laugh and laugh and laugh. He can’t stop laughing.
He abruptly lurches to his feet, still caught in his giggle fest. There was a reason people didn’t linger in dying dreams, much less until one shattered. Oh well, someone had to be the first.
“Russell,” he gasps and they understand. They haul him to his feet. He sways drunkenly, even with their support, but they’re off. He hopes they’re fast enough.
Russell is shockingly still alive when they arrive. Even he seems shocked by the fact. Or maybe it’s the way Raymond grabs the needle out of his hands and jams it in his own throat.
Yue and Fairia shriek and even Walter roars “What the hell!” Russell stares at him in his eyes and finds a part of himself in Raymond’s eyes, a part of himself that drove him and now Raymond to this: Guilt.
Yes, guilt. If Raymond listens close enough—
(+5 Guilt
Your Guilt Level is 85, your Guilt Level is 85…
+5 Guilt
Your Guilt Level is 50, your Guilt Level is 50)
—he might have heard the whispering. But all he can hear is the blood pumping through his ears as it slowly fills his throat. It was only a small puncture wound but it goes all the way through his throat. He’s drowning on his own blood and there had to be something poetic in that.
“Don’t worry,” Russell whispers. He cards a hand through Raymond’s hair, Raymond’s hand in his lap and when had they moved to the floor? Yue and Fairia are crying and Walter looks steamed. It makes a laugh like the one from earlier gurgle in his throat. Walter’s expression changes to horror so fast that the sound dies as quickly as it was born.
Russell’s hand comes to a stop. Raymond’s breathing does too. “The game is broken.”
Raymond’s pretty sure that they are too.
Raymond wakes up to the ringtone of, “So call me maybe.”
He’s already mourning tomorrow.