• He/Him/She/Her

Oscillating rapidly between fox twink and wolf tomboy
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Profile image by @Raibys


The cloying scent of cleaning products optimized for marketability.
The inoffensively beige walls and ruddy seat cushions.
The artsy yet meaningfully void patterns in the carpet.
A place designed for only the most hollow and superficial of hospitality.
Seconds pass slowly in a place like this. There's nothing here but the anticipation. Thoughts about conversations you'd like to never need to have becoming imminent. Places you'd rather be. Things that could be happening that you're not there to see.

"Sir?"
An anonymous voice pokes out of the crack in the door as it opens only just enough.
"The doctor will see you now."
Spoken like this is any other appointment. I am left to wonder if she knows why I'm actually here.

The office interior is, at the very least, more decorated. Stock-standard black cushions are impersonal, yes, but the shelves are lined with baubles and shapes. I don't concern myself with looking closely; it's not what I'm here for.
"Go on, have a seat," says the man in the expensive-looking suit. "I'm sure you know we have a lot to talk about."
The chair's leather squeaks under my weight. I don't like the way it breaks the silence.
"It's nice to finally meet you, Mr. Dossa."
"... 'Kent' is fine," I try to insist. It feels more than a little pathetic, being so bleached of social contact, but I can't stop the reflex.
"Right. How are you feeling, Kent?" Even with first names, he sounds too cordial.
I let myself lean hard against the backrest of the chair. "Jet-lagged." That was the only word for it. It may not be perfectly accurate, but it gets the point across. "... What time is it, right now?"
"Three in the afternoon," he responds in a matter-of-fact tone I'm already sick of, looking past me at a clock on the wall.
I end up staring at a map of the states pinned on one of the office walls. I don't realize it, but I'm talking out loud when I have the thought, "... I don't remember Mississippi and Nebraska being so far apart."
It becomes obvious I hadn't kept that to myself when I hear how confused it makes him. "... They've always been this way." And I watch him lean in with manufactured concern, to say, "Are you feeling alright?"
There's a lot that goes into the restraint I put in towards the simple act of not hitting him square in his smug jaw. I think he sees that, too.
"... I'm only doing my job, Kent."
"Yeah. Your 'job'." I wish I had the patience to take the idea seriously. Instead, I'm sneering at him already. "I don't know if my life will ever be the same again, and all you have to hock at me is the product of your own existence."

There's a brief hesitation that lingers in the air. Then, "... I assure you, I'm real this time."

I let out the breath I've been holding onto. I'm unsure how long I'd been doing that.
"... It's all the same."
"Would you like to start telling me your story?" He flips to a fresh page in his little notebook. "I know they aren't pleasant memories, but I'm sure it would do you good to get the feelings off your chest. You can trust me. I promise." I don't believe him.
Staring into the borders on the map starts to make my eyes hurt.
Picking a place to begin hurts more.
"... It was around 2:30 in the afternoon in Nebraska, when it happened in Mississippi." Admitting that out loud confuses even myself, staring directly into that statement's implausibility. "I don't know why that's how I remember it, but it is."
"You're sure of that?"
"It's one of the only things I know for certain. That was the day the tower fell."
"Speak the words as they come to you. I'll write down every one."

The air was really foggy and muggy that day. It happened sometime in June, I think. There were a lot of bugs, being really, really loud. I don't know for sure if that was unusual.
Me and some of my friends at the time would always go to this old building out in the woods to waste time playing games. I never found out what it was for. None of the adults ever talked about it. I always thought of it as a church, but... it wasn't really the kind you would see built in that part of America. It was old. Really, really old. Big, dark, grey bricks and half-rotten doors. Busted up windows, where the vines would creep in.
The part we liked about it was how big it felt on the inside. It had a huge, wide center room, and each corner had a little chamber with a spiral staircase going up it. God knows they were too tall and too unsafe for kids to be clambering up and down. Maybe it was a church, it took a miracle for none of us to bust our heads open falling down them. I hope it wasn't. I don't want to think about what kind of god would let this happen.

I remember, we were getting ready to play hide-and-seek. And, as a stupid kid, I had a problem. I was a real sore loser, and I would cheat my ass off playing that kind of game. Everyone knew it. I don't know why they kept me around.
So this particular week rolls around. We're running up and down and all over like usual.
And I found this spot, in the... southeast tower, I think it was.
It had some kind of... fresh cement in it. That's what I assumed.
And, just, to be clear-- This place must've been a solid few miles from any roads. It was up a hill, in a forest, and none of us had ever heard a grown-up acknowledge that it was even there. Someone should've been concerned. But, no. We were young. and dumb, and had stupid ideas.
One of the older kids, he picks me up, and plops me down feet-first into whatever this sticky black stuff is. And he says to me that this is how they'd know I wasn't cheating. I think it was a stupid excuse to ruin my shoes, in retrospect. He does this, and he and the other four all dip out down the stairs and out the door. So I start counting.
I was a stupid kid. Pretty unrepentant, petty, generally unpleasant. But, you know, when five kids you're trying to be friends with all stare you down and call you out finally, you start to feel bad. So I just... tried to do it right this time. Close my eyes, start counting.

... I don't remember exactly how young I was. But I was also kind of shit at counting. So instead of thirty, like usual, I probably went a lot longer.

I had a lot of time to think about how loud the cicadas were being.
I didn't know if cement was supposed to be this warm.
Or if it was supposed to cling to my ankles like this.

And about then is the first time I hear something 'thump'.
My eyes were closed. I have no idea what it was. All I know is that it sounded like it didn't belong. Not like something old in this shitty, run-down building finally falling over. Like a... a burlap sack full of meat hitting the floor.
But I figured, you know... maybe the others were messing with me. I did kind of deserve it. I stick to my guns. They're probably fine. I keep counting.
And it happened again. And again. My gut was telling me, they're paced like footsteps. By this point, I'm trying really, really hard to ignore my gut.
Then, this... just this, awful, wet...
It was like someone was trying to plunger something. But it was bigger than that. The room was too big and too empty. I can't tell you where it was coming from.
I wasn't counting anymore at this point. Around now I was shouting out after the others that this shit wasn't fun anymore. I don't know who would've heard me.
Then there was that huge, deep, low, metallic... 'groan'. Like something enormous was straining its hinges. It was so loud that it made my eyes hurt. I didn't know that could happen.
By this point, I'm clutching my head and crying. I'm doubled over in the corner. I can't move my legs and I don't know if I would even want to. I'm dizzy and I don't know where 'up' is anymore.
And once the groaning stopped, there was just this constant, constant drone. No cicadas anymore; just an indistinct auditory mess. Like TV snow, or standing under a waterfall.
And it kept going. And going. And going.

I don't know how long it took me to open my eyes. I finally realized that something... happened, to the tower with me in it. My feet were glued to a wall and I was leaning on the floor. As if it'd fallen ninety degrees. It felt like more than that.
There was a good ten or fifteen seconds of me looking around, before I realized I hadn't gotten put in a tunnel or anything; I was just looking down what was supposed to be the spiral staircase. It was way, way too dark to see what used to be the bottom. The light from the window was coming in from the wrong angle now, obviously. And I remember the light was... too perfectly white.

But, somehow, I can still tell there was a door, way back there. A door, on what was supposed to have been the floor.

I started trying to struggle myself free, but this tar or cement or whatever won't let go. I pull on my legs until I feel my knees start to pop, but nothing gives.
I tried taking my shoes off, but it had seeped straight through. I could feel it on my skin. It didn't want to let go.
I wanted to scream out for someone to come help me. I was too afraid of who might've heard me. I don't know if they would've heard at all over the noises.
I wasn't screaming. I promise I wasn't.
Something heard me anyway.

That door in the back opened.
Just, this... slinking, creeping, shapeless... thing.
The color hit my eyes like carbonation hits your tongue. Like it was fizzing. Popping. I couldn't tell if it was black or white. It felt like it didn't want me to know.
It just... peered at me through the door, and I couldn't take it anymore. I started screaming.
I didn't recognize the noise that came out.
After that, the roof gave out. Falling apart, brick by brick. Getting pulled upward.
The sky isn't there when I look up after it.
It was a triangle.
It was a triangle.
It was a triangle.

"... I understand, Kent."
My palms are tingling from the way I'm rubbing the texture of my pants along my thighs. Back, and forth. Back, and forth.
"Take a deep breath for me. Alright?"
I hate when a person I don't like has a good point.
"... You need to remember," the man told me, in that same, condescending tone all the others had used, "all the other victims who had been returned have had the same form of neurological damage. You are suffering from a disease, Kent."
God, I'm so fucking tired.
"Your brain as it is now is unable to properly distribute adrenaline and other such chemicals that cause things like fear, and anxiety. You have a medically explainable heightened receptiveness to these feelings. We need you to think rationally about what happened."
Something about that finally gets me to snap.
"Then why the hell are you asking for my side of the story in the first place?!"
He tries speaking up, but I'm shouting over him.
"You live in that nightmare for ten years of your fucking life and try acting 'rational'! And I'm one of the lucky ones; they put me back, because apparently I didn't have whatever they wanted. Can you even begin to understand what it's like just being looked at by one of those things? They can see all of you at once. You're not any different from a butcher's diagram of a pig, squealing and screaming and completely at their mercy."
He's trying to talk me down. I don't let him.
"I don't know if they couldn't keep me from knowing what else they were doing in there, or if they just didn't care. I heard everything. I heard everything, I couldn't keep myself from hearing it. They'd do something to one of the other kids, and it felt like they were screaming into my liver like a stress pillow, getting that feeling transmitted straight into my fucking brain. There is no 'rationally'; things didn't make sense in there."
"We just need you to try--"
"How much more do you 'need' from me?! Can't I be done?! Are you not happy that they didn't change me, like all the others?! One stroke-- one touch of one of those, those 'paper knives', and...!"
Nausea. Fear. Cold. I can't talk anymore. I wouldn't be able to keep my lunch down.
He gives me a second. Thank fuck.
"... All we want is to know where they took you. Can you tell us anything about that?"
"... That's the worst part. I don't know that I ever left. I think they were always here. And I don't think they're gone."


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