Lab C: Chapter 5 - Seeing

“2……2……2……2……2……2….” John’s walkman calmly, robotically says into his ears via the warm honey drip of an older mans voice. He breaths intentionally, the front of his fishbowl helmet fogs.

Around him the shadow figures look at him, inching closer. The inky dude sits back and observes, a clear crescent of sand pushed in front of him.

“2……..” John says in a whisper, deep breath in, holds, and out, “2……”

Around him, the warm red light fades away. The details fade away.

“3….. return…. 3….. you’re ascending…. 3……3……3…..” The walkman says as John’s breaths become more intentional and interspersed. Like a cheesy 1960s film special effect, a bright red space suit, the color of his robes, appears over our guy. All around him fades except the eyes.

“3…” he says, breaths in, “3….” lets it out, “3”

The walkman begins to repeat, “remember… remember… remember…”

Outside of John perception, which will be lovingly referred to as the creepy ass apartment, Lily stretches in her regal lounge chair as a shadow figure reaches over the sand and pokes John’s hand, ever so lightly. He doesn’t react.

In the void, sound echoes from him and he catches it out on the way back. “I am more than my physical body,” he whispers to himself, “what makes me is what makes reality. I am love. I am light. I try my best.”

John’s body begins to shimmer, and vibrate.

Walkman, “4….. 4….. 4….. detach….. 4….”.

His body begins to separate. A glowing red body, encased in a ruby red astronaut suit floats up as a greyed, unconscious, bland body wrapped in reddish robes stays on the invisible plane of a floor.

The eyes begin to float up towards the center, like bubbles in the bottom of a thick, sweet, matte obsidian “milk” tea. They stay focused on him even as they bump up against each other, “popping” into one another to form larger, and larger eyes.

Walkman, “5….. 5…. awake”

He tilts perpendicular to his physical body a mile below him. He looks around into the void, slowly at first, then rapidly. His eyes shift around in panic, then GAHHHHHHh, John takes a large breath in.

“I am alive. I am ok. I just need to breath” he focuses in on deep, intentional breaths. He looks slowly and searches the nothingness. In the distance, he sees a small red spec, like dust on a soft breeze, floating up. Another, and another. He smiles, then his eyes widen and he shakes his head before GAAH, he takes another breath in.

“fucking, breath, idiot.” He shakes his head. A gentle *blub* pulls his attention up, as the final softball sized bubble melts into gargantuan eye that eclipses him completely. It’s red iris like a halo meant to dwarf him into feelings of immense insignificance.

“Ah.” he says.

He and the eye look back into each other, and reality begins to melt. As in, the farther from his eyes his body is, the slower moves and the looser it holds together.

John floats up towards the eye curiously, kindly, and all that moves at first is his eyes. His form melts out as it follows him up, filling the void like dye in water. The eye looks him over in jerky, miniscule movement.

His reflection slowly appears in the reflection of the iris as his own eyes come face to face with it. Even in the darkness, he can see himself, or the foggy of him at least, in the mirrored surface. He and the eye investigate each other as his body reshapes behind his eyes.

John moves a hand onto the iris and it SHRIEKS. Empty void juts through the red warmth he had emanated and binds him, forcing his body into concrete shape.

Back in the creepy ass apartment, the shadow figures poke and dig their nails into his hands and wrists. His body remains calm, but his breaths are slow, deep, intentional. Lily lifts her head, her face settles into a serious placidness.

In the void, John struggles and tugs on the tentacles. His face in pained frustration. Then, he pauses, relaxes, and lets the tentacles hold and tug on him. He looks up into the eye with a somber face.

“Ok.”

They grip tighter and he holds back a grimace.

Back in the apartment, the shadow figures begin to find blood in their investigative touches. John’s fingers tense, but he stays still. The inky dude shrinks more into itself, sadder, defensive.

In the void, John can’t take it and lets out a loud sob and the tentacles twitch, then drop him. His eyes fall down and the astronaut suit floats up, stretching his image down. He takes a deep, pained sob in, then flexes himself to ground his sensation, pulling his form back together.

His breathes are slow pained sobs, but through the pained expression he opens his wet eyes. The void has become a grey cloud, slowly pulling together like gravity shaping a planet over time.

Red seeps from him, staining the ground around him, coffee on a wood table. The cloud hardens into an empty studio apartment. The red finds cracks in the image the fill the room like an endless children’s maze. The lines form words, and through pained twitches, John looks over them.

“Leave.” “Alone.” “Pain.” “Danger.” “Help me.” “Stop.” “Don’t.” and more and more and more. The lines begin to glow, the line word art thickening like balloons. John, looks around, trying to ignore all that, looking for something.

He hears the lightest, faintest sniffle and pulls his head up. In the corner, the outline of a small child, clutching its knees as it digs its forehead into them. It twitches, crying.

“I’m John. I was sent to help you.”

The crying gets louder, with a hint, just a whisper, of a laughter. A wicked wide smile of blinding white teeth creeps across its buried face. More and more the crying becomes laughter. The bottom of its jaw digs into its thigh as it pulls its head up, ripping it’s head into two revealing shark rows of teeth extending deep into its throat.

Wurf.

Back in the creepy apartment, Lily is standing, growling. wurf. Wurf! WURF!

“Ohhhh, zero! Zero zero zero zero zero zero zero” John tensing everything in his body as the child springs to, pouncing clumsily towards him. As it lands on him, he cries out one last “ZERO!”

In the creepy apartment he opens his eyes, shooting up. The inky dude is midair about to land on him. John slaps his finger tips to ground and the sand activates, casting a blinding blue light around him.

John rears back, then chucks the fish bowl helmet off his head. It scatters through the shadow figures and disappears into the nothingness.

Lily runs up, tripping a shadow figure. She almost gets to his circle when a shadow figure grabs her tail. She whips her maw back and bites. It releases and she stumbles into the circle, landing into John’s back, not disturbing a single grain of sand.

His eyes are saucers as he looks around. All he can see is a crowd of shadow figures, splitting in various places revealing thick, obscene rows of loose teeth. The inky dude looks at him with its red eyes and shark row smile, circling his circle on its hands and knees, just waiting.

“I am safe.” John tells himself.

John looks back at Lily whose nonplussed about the whole situation. He bites his lip as he looks around, petting Lily.

“Right now, in this space, I am safe, I am safe, I am safe.”

The inky dude rears like a cat and swats at the glowing blue circle. It’s hand bursts into flames when it comes into contact with the sand, and it snaps back, writhing and gripping the hand. The shadowy figures wiggly aggressively side to side in response.

John stares at the dent in the sand it made, the slow dissipation of blue aura emanating from the spot.

“Yep.” He says as he stands up. He grabs his bag, still just wide eyed, clearly on the drugs he’s on, and digs through it. The inky dude runs up and slams into an invisible wall made by the strongest part of the barrier. It looks at him and moves side to side, ready.

“Do you happen to know how to get out of here?” John asks. The inky dude tilts its head, then points towards the direction of the door. “Cool! Cool…” John replies. “Are you gonna grab me?” The inky dude bobs it head like an excited parrot. “yeah, yeah, figured.”

Lily wraps around John like a cat, hugging to his leg and looking for danger. The aura of the circle fades in a crescent moon, a shadow figure steps on the darkened sand with no issue. It puts a hand on the invisible wall as its head and shoulder open like a chest door revealing those wiggly gross loose teeth.

John reaches into an inner pocket of his red robe, closes his eyes, and pets Lily. “I believe.” His eyes pop open. He squats down, tilts forward, then jolts forward, grabbing his red lantern on the way forward.

The shadow figures bounce off him and fall down, solidly. Lily holds tight to him as he barrels through the shadow people. The inky dude gives chase on all fours, hoping through and on top of shadow figures.

The door approaches and John holds up his red lantern. He makes a small hand mudra at its gate and blows into it. A burst of flame erupts out of it, catching the door. He barrels through the firey door, stumbling and rolling, slamming into the wall opposite of it.

Shadow figures fall out of his way, then melt as they form to jump atop the flames.

John scrambles to his feet with no thought and sprints to the stairs. The inky dude blasts through behind him, slamming into the wall. Its arm and head burst into the wall getting stuck. It pulls back with all its might, popping free as John disappears down the stairs.

John and Lily sprint down a flight of stairs, then another, and another, and another. “Aaahhhhhhhh!” John lets out, looking over the side railing to see the floor descending deeper into the earth.

He looks back and the Inky dude is monkeying around towards him. If it weren’t so insistent on jumping from railing to the wall to the ceiling, it would gaining on him faster.

John reaches back into his back pack and digs around. A shadow figure appears and he shoulder checks it too hard, sending himself flying down the next set of stairs. He bounces and tumbles, sliding down onto the next flight of stairs, but in control enough that he can intentionally roll back on his feet.

As he pops back up into his sprint, he has a large scroll in his hand.

Holding the loose end, he chucks it into the center of the space. “Thank god there’s no inner supports.” He looks back and the inky dude is closing in on him in a bear crawl, the top of its head bobbing loosely on a hinge. John grimaces at it, and it’s head snaps back hard, snaping the air.

Snap, snap snap snap snap, it taunts him.

Panicked, he puts his lantern to the scroll, setting the end on fire. He doesn’t watch the trail of fire floating through the air, sparks floating off like fire flies, lighting the space, revealing it’s mundane run down reality.

Instead he dodges and leaps over shadow figures as they block his path.

He doesn’t look back as a piercing shriek pierces the air. The shadow figures pause and look to the center of the stair case. A trail of fire slowly leading too a near floating scroll lights the center and they look on, disappearing in it’s light, while their eyes twinkle.

He does look as the ground suddenly appears at the bottom of the next stair case.

“I’ll come back and help you!”

Blindly quick, he zooms down and is at the ground level in time to catch the scroll before it hits the ground.

“I promise!”

He smothers its flame as he bursts out the front door, falling and tumbling to the ground.

Letting himself lay on the ground to catch his breath, he stares up at the stars. They glitter and glisten in grind dots and constellations forming faces that smile down at him. So stoic, he could be dead, he just stares.

Lily sniffs him over, then licks his face. He giggles. He laughs, then he tustles her ears.

“ooooo, god you’re such a good dog. You’re such a good girl. You’re so good. So good.”

He flops back and relaxes.

“okay. I think we need to go into the office…”

Lily licks his face, “I know… I know… even after last time…”

He sits up and scratches behind her ears, she pants happily, her floppy ears and beard swaying with his rythm. “But just to help out this inky dude. Then we’re out. I promise.”