Chapter Text
“Uh, actually, no! Have your key, this was a really bad idea!” Sure, he couldn’t prove his eyes had been replaced with glass for some probably really messed up reason, but the woman in the lobby went against every part of him that was able to recognise a normal human guy, so he was so ready to get out of there. He took the key out of his pocket, the thing looking even more rusted in the slightly dim light, and he could see John flinch when he pulled it out, and step forward.
“Do not move, boy,” John said, seeming to shift on his feet, and the weird density feeling that was there seemed to increase. So, bad decision to offer him the key. Good to know. John stared at him, the glassy eyes still seeming to look at him more than they should. John cocked his head, and it seemed a touch unnatural. “Have you ever heard the term stranger danger, Joshua?”
His grip on the key relaxed and he put it back in his jacket pocket. This felt a little stupid. “...yeah? Listen, I graduated from uni, I’m not a child. Do you want your key or not? And I’d like my money.” John sighed.
“You are going to cause your own demise with that thing, do you think I want it?” he looked down at his pocket and squinted. Sure. “You willingly chose to take a strange package from a strange man, and did you question how I got your address? Why I shipped you a coffin?”
“Yes?” he said. “Wait,” he looked at the man's demeanour, and how he seemed to be angry that he was there, alive, key still in hand, and the fact that he hadn’t had glass eyes before, and he took a breath. “Was I supposed to open the coffin that said do not open on it? I thought it was filled with drugs or something! I mean, after it started singing in the rain that was kind of out the window but still. I wasn’t going to open it!”
“That coffin,” John said, leaning against the wall, the ceiling seeming like it was about to cave in already. “Is a creature unto itself. A package without a destination. Breekon and Hope,” he spat the words, “have been carrying for years. You were supposed to be that destination,” he said, sticking his finger forward at his chest like a metal rod. “A claustrophobe, a drunkard, I thought you couldn’t resist. So I promised you money and left you with it, and now you’re offering me the doom you refused? How much do you know about what you’re dealing with, boy?”
“It is a coffin filled with drugs,” he said. “I don’t want to know anything. You know what I want? My money. I survived your coffin. I’m sorry? It’s Doom apparently? You can run that shit on anything, I guess. And I don’t know what's up with this place, but I’ll keep the key, even. Just give me 10K and I’ll call it even.” The earth seemed to sink in on itself, and he realised he had never told John, even in his drunken stupor, that he was a claustrophobe.
“I made a promise, Joshua. Breekon and Hope told everyone firsthand how I broke that promise. I should’ve held that key and opened that coffin and lost myself in its embrace. But now you’ve split it from its key and are walking around with it like you can control it. You are digging your own grave,” John said, and he took a step back towards the door. Haha, when had that closed?
“Did they blind you?” he asked, trying to at least play along with this shit because the door handle just wouldn’t fucking twist when he tried to. “The woman outside or something. Cause your eyes, uh. Listen, don’t put ‘do not open’ on something you’re supposed to open, please.”
“She is far worse than a woman,” John said. “Breekon and Hope said that because the coffin couldn’t be my destination because of that key of yours, they would have to make up for the time. And I thought I could escape it by becoming unknown, playing into their hand, but it is a far worse and vast hell. I am saying this, boy, to save your skin. Do not meddle with any more of this once you leave this room. Drop that key down a gutter and never speak of it, and you will be lucky if they do not come for you again. They should have no ill will towards you now, but if you use that key of yours, they’ll know.”
He was silent. Please, what do you say to that? ‘Thanks bro, taking that advice to heart.’ “Listen, if you would explain what you’re doing here, I might believe you, all of this is weird, but why should I trust you, anyways? You gave me a coffin probably filled with– I don’t know what, dead people? Something was singing, I don’t think drugs do that yet,” He was beginning to get a bit frightened, so he gripped the key in his pocket, trying to use the way it pressed against his hand like a lifeline.
“I’m afraid explaining things is now too far against my nature,” John said, in a tone that seemed almost melancholy. His nature? What the absolute hell was going on? “You will not listen to me? You will continue to follow the ever pressing path? No matter how far down it takes you?” John paused, and he just stared at him, wide eyed, and tightened his grip on the key. John somehow saw that, and he saw his eyes, unnaturally bright, flick down to his jacket pocket. “Then I cannot stop you from its embrace. May you find peace in it.”
John took a step back, and he heard something creak from the ceiling. The room seemed to be dirt covered itself, and he wondered how structurally sound it all was. It was a Smirke building, so it wasn’t likely to be horrible, but… of all the deaths in those buildings, there did seem to be a trend for getting buried alive in rubble.
There were some bags around, as well as all the labelled boxes, and as John continued to step back, something creaking as he did, he stuffed one of them into his other jacket pocket. Maybe it would be a surprise tool that would help him later, he didn’t fucking know. “What are you doing?” he called out. “I- do you want my help? You seem to know everything, is the key going to- I don’t know, poison me?” he was beginning to shout, and John suddenly stopped.
Then, the room started to close in on itself. “I cannot tell you what I know, for reasons it would help if you wouldn’t comprehend.” Real helpful, great. Drunk him must’ve loved this guy. “The one thing I can do now, unfortunately, is tell a story. Entertain. I found it funny that the thing they hate the most is just some perverted form of their most true joy.” John stepped forward, and he could see the room unnaturally shift to follow him, a box tumbling over where the space it had once resided in was now cold, hard, rock. Yeah, this was something that couldn’t be explained. “Of course, some would say all monsters love to brag,” John took another step. “To boast, to tell their stories to any who truly want to hear them. I’ve never been that sort. It’s why I came here, to hide. They never tell anyone anything. But it doesn’t stop things from hunting you. From finding you.
“I once heard the saying ‘we may uphold the law, but only gods can speak it’. I was told to walk into a coffin that spelled my doom. And while I should’ve been happy to do it, exalted, honoured, I couldn’t. I don’t really know what possessed me to go caving that day. I doubt you’d understand the feeling. But in the end, I begged to differ. It wasn’t till I ran here to hide and felt my lungs stiffen up, stitches on my skin, that I began to feel real fear.” The room was beginning to cave in as he watched in abject horror, the ceiling pulling down unnaturally, the room looking more cave that building, and he began to breathe faster and faster.
“It wasn’t till I stared with glass eyes that I realised,” John said. “Gods have terribly loud voices.” The ground began to shake, slightly, more boxes being disrupted as John held his gaze. “And I have been ignoring mine for far, far too long. I am not a stranger to you, Joshua Gillespie. In fact, I’d like you to meet my god. You may call it, It Is Too Close, I Cannot Breathe.” Near the end, John had started to lose his voice, but the room stayed silent, as if waiting to hear him finish, like the rocks he seemed to command waited for his call, his last almost breathy words of desperation, to fully drop.
The ceiling caved in and he found himself diving into a corner of boxes, hoping he wouldn’t get buried alive. He didn’t want to be a footnote in a Smirke Book, he wasn’t that much of a fanboy, he swore. Thankfully (or unfortunately? There was so much he didn’t understand) the collapse seemed centred on John, the rubble leaving the sky exposed, yes, but leaving the four not-really-corners-anymore almost untouched. He had scratches all up his arm, and he could feel some stinging on his face, but he thought he’d somehow escaped… relatively unscathed.
He heard the door unlock before he saw who was doing it, and he immediately turned around to face it. Oh god, how would he explain this? Should he explain this? John had called the woman at the desk far worse than a woman, which did imply women were bad on their own, so… eh, you shouldn’t speak ill of the dead. “Um, can I have my 10,000 pounds?” he asked fruitlessly. You know, cause John couldn’t give it to him? He was probably in shock.
“What have you done, you little -” The woman's eyes caught him, and he recognised them as, unlike any other feature on her face, real. Human. John’s. He stared at them in horror, eyes boring into eyes that years before has stared at him as well. The womans face morphed into anger, lines forming unnaturally. “It is a shame ,” she said. “That I will have to destroy one of your bosses precious assistants before you become part of her eventual plans ,” the woman said. “But I will not let some little Watcher distract me from my mission .” She put one hand on the doorframe, the sound it made when touching it plastic in nature. She cocked her head. “Orsinov will not appreciate you ruining my mannequin. Those eyes rival your own, you know? I used to love them. Of course, nothing would hurt more to you than losing them, wouldn’t it ? It’s always so fun to make those who love to look completely Unknown .” She entered the room, and looked at him peacefully, her smile still fake and painted on. “The man you knew as John wasn’t ready to leave yet. I don’t think you are either.” And then she lunged.
She moved deceptively fast, and he entertained the idea that potentially she could literally just be made of plastic, in which case meant she was so much lighter and quicker that him and he needed to fucking run. He had dodged her first lunge and ran over to the other side of the room, almost tripping on a half opened box as she did. She stared at him, eyes unblinking, them no longer seeming to match her face. Every detail about her was so almost human, but now that he knew her eyes couldn’t be hers everything else felt so, so wrong. Another box creaked as she walked forward slowly. She knew she had him cornered.
Well, there was one idea he had. He picked up the box by his feet, accidentally fully opening it, before throwing it at her with as much force as he could and then making a run for the door around the rubble. When he got to it, he spared one look back at her, and immediately regretted it.
What had come out of the box wasn’t pencils, or paper, or even petrol, but skin. Layers and layers of it all stitched together oh so neatly with a striking red thread. It was folded so many times on itself that the more she struggled the more it smothered her, and imagining that sensation made him grip onto the key still loose in his pocket and run. He ran out of the building, pushing the door open with a throbbing shoulder, and immediately getting on to the nearest tube. He didn’t even care where he went, he just had to get away. And get a goddamn drink.
When he finally sat at a local pub somewhere a few miles from his home, in fact, he heard the crinkling of the bag he had stuffed inside his pocket. Was it going to just be more skin? He hoped not. He drank some more of his drink before opening it, just in case. He untied the knot with his fingers, before peeking inside, to be met with a wash of small, tiny, white objects. Teeth.
Seems the guys (or girls? They weren’t human, anyways, so was gender even really a factor?) who owned human skin also owned human teeth. Well, he could make these into a coffeetable, so why the fuck not. He closed the bag up, more securely than just the one knot, and stuffed it back in his pocket. He eventually pulled out his phone, half-drunk and trying to see if there was anyone who had also met the weird skin people, or Breekon and Hope.
His increasingly frustrated and vague searches eventually led him to the Magnus Institute, some place where people catalogued others ‘supernatural and paranormal experiences. He certainly had some of those. It was in London, though, and he certainly wasn’t going there now, not at this time of night and in his state of mind. He would probably remember it sooner or later, but now was not the time.
Why, oh goddamn fucking why, had he accepted John’s offer? He was probably the most drunk he had ever been, sure, but surely he wasn’t stupid enough to just do that, right? He knew stranger danger and all of that. Maybe he was persuasive enough– he can’t remember their conversation enough to recall more than his face and the general area of the pub, and certain things that were said.
All of this talk about getting buried, and being a claustrophobe, and skin and whoever Orsinov was, he didn’t want to deal with it any more than he had to. Just like with the coffin, he didn’t want to open it. God, he wished he could encase his life in a block of ice. Checking the time on his phone, it was getting quite late, so he paid his tab and headed out, walking through the streets slower than usual, a mix of tiredness and drunkenness making him feel rather lethargic. He gripped the key in one hand, and he felt somewhat better after that, more aware the dirt under his feet and everything. It was probably because the rust was slightly painful, or the key was magic or whatever like John believed it to be. All he thought it did was open a really fucked up coffin.
Eventually, he made it to his apartment complex, and took the elevator up to his floor, glad for the quiet night. There wasn’t even someone at the reception desk. Thinking about it while leaning on the elevator wall, he couldn’t remember if he’d ever seen someone at that desk. He was probably misremembering due to everything, but it’s not like he could remember any other tenants either, and obviously that had to be bullshit and he was too drunk to think about memories and everything.
He seemed to doze off on the right up, the elevator beeping waking him up. Strange. He had never been able to sleep in small spaces like this before. If it wasn’t ass-o-clock at night, he would’ve taken the stairs. He got off and went towards his apartment door, before a deep, deep feeling of panic set upon him.
He had forgotten his keys when he left. Oh god, oh fuck. He had felt the feeling of a key in his pocket, but of course that was just the key to the fucking drug coffin or whatever, not the key to his apartment! He scrolled through his phone contacts rapidly. He had to have the number of the guy who managed the complex, this would be so embarrassing for him, but he hadn't caused any other trouble, he would probably be okay, he just wanted to sleep. What was the guy's name again? Luke? Louis? Lukas, there he was. Peter Lukas. The man had shown up once, and never again, but hopefully he wasn’t too far away. He pressed call on the number, and held the phone to his ear in anticipation, but the line never answered. Shit.
It wasn’t odd that Peter Lukas didn’t answer his call, as it was 4am and certainly not that important, but it spelled bad, bad news for him. He wasn't going to sleep in the narrow hallway where the apartment doors were. He didn’t think of himself as terribly claustrophobic, just… against elevators and small rooms, but he didn’t want to fall asleep out in the hallway, where who knows what could happen.
He felt awful as he moved to the apartment door next to his and raised his hand to knock. He’ll give them so much money if they let him in, he promises himself, and hits his fist on the door, it…. Swinging open to a perfectly empty flat.
What the fuck?