Work Text:
Stanley sat. Simply sat. He made no movement toward a door to his left or right, he interacted with none of the objects in his vicinity, and he made no choice.
“Well, you've gone and ruined it all.”
Ah. There it was, the voice that he had ignored and obeyed, the one who had already led him to both salvation and inadvertent madness.
The Narrator called overhead, “You've buggered the whole thing.”
Stanley could no longer consider time as remotely valid. Each hand of each clock remained sessile and at different times, which gave the strange illusion that even as he passed hallways time would always seem to be moving forward, though it never truly did. And in this indescribable amount of always-within-never, Stanley, had apparently exhausted the Narrator’s imagination. It was laughable really. He looked toward the ceiling and closed his eyes.
“You can’t just...just hijack a story! You’re the character damn it! I’m the writer!”
Are you though? Dumbly, Stanley wonders if the Narrator is an essence ground into the very threads of this strange universe, or if he is simply a voice projected through speakers that he’d yet to notice.
“I-I can fix this. Stories are just ideas, and ideas are just words...if... if you simply take all the words and rearrange them randomly enough times, you’re bound to hit upon at least a few great ideas eventually. Then…, ‘The compound bolts the bare relative’, I- no that doesn’t make any sense. Hmmm.”
Stanley stands.
“Wait! Where are you going? You can’t just-just leave! I've not come up with a script, there’s no build from here!”
Stanley walks forward.
“Oh why do I bother, you’ll just ignore me anyway.”
Stanley nods in agreement as he examines one of the many replicated photographs of an unidentified plant. The Narrator comes back on, voice contemplative and lighter than before.
“I could do anything you know. I could be- no, I am a God, in a way.”
Stanley stops for a moment, cocks his head and waits. “Think about it. No, really Stanley, remember the cognitive thinking exercises, yes, just like that. Anyway, I created this place, I-I created you, I can tear up this script and make an entirely new one. One without you, without this office building, without any of this damn insubordination and certainly with less doors.”
Stanley reaches for the door to his left and peels it open, revealing a white canvas that stretches just beyond the barrier of his eyes. He closes the door and glares at the handle, a challenge in his eyes as a question is silently hung in the air:
Not much of a God, are you?
Stanley opens the door again to be greeted with a broom cupboard. He steps inside.
“And God if this isn’t a rather dull setting for a story isn’t it? It’s best if I liven it up a bit.”
The cupboard rattles underneath Stanley’s feet, brooms and buckets topple as a scraping noise is heard and the small room seems to shrink even more and jerk upwards shakily. Quite suddenly the rumbling stops and the doors flies open wide, to reveal the roof of Stanley’s office building. Except, there is no blue sky or green grass, only white. Blank, the building the only blotch among the eggshell backdrop. For a few precious minutes there is only silence as Stanley contemplates jumping.
“This has to count for something, right Stanley? We’ve been horribly cruel to one another, like sharks to lost swimmers. But, we’ve also been lifeboats. It has to count for something.”
Stanley steps closer to the edge, but rather than jump, simply sits, his khaki’s color match the concrete of the building.
“Is it strange that I don’t remember anything outside of this? Do...do you have any thoughts?”
Not original ones
“Oh God, Stanley, I don’t-”
There is a frantic shuffling noise and Stanley’s shoe’s fall from his feet into the white of the world around him. They do not stop where the building ends, but rather float back upwards, till they sit next to him on the concrete.
“I can’t find the script.”
We’ll write our own “
How are we supposed to finish the story? How-how does it end? I don’t even remember!”
The Narrator’s voice is cracking and the frantic shuffle of paper steadily grows louder. Stanley feels sweat drip down his neck, it’s cold and he tries to think, to think about anything other than this situation, but can’t. His memory can’t extend past the start of work this morning, and as hard as he tries to look forward into his own future, to imagine himself holding a baby, to holding a wife, to- oh God- to dying, he can’t. There is only now. Stanley stands and looks off the side of the building. White.
“Why did this have to happen? Why couldn’t you just listen to me? You’ve ruined us. There’s no fixing THIS.” The Narrator’s voice rings inside of Stanley’s head like an angry trumpet.
“Wh- Stanley? What are you…?”
One step forward.
“Damn it no!”
Stanley was falling. Falling through time and space and white and black and everything that remained both sideways and vertical. He fell for days and weeks and what felt like eternity. He fell until he forgot that he was falling and believed instead that he had simply taken a walk among a white world. Stanley closes his eyes- And opens them to his office.
“This is the story of a man named Stanley.”