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If there was a beginning to the story of Michael Shelley, it wasn’t noteworthy enough to be written in the comedic tragedy that his life seemed to be. At least, that’s how he described it to those brave enough to ask. The lie lilted off his tongue like it belonged there, and perhaps that was the simplest beginning of his story: the lies.
Michael was made primarily of lies, those that were told to him and those that he himself wrote. In the beginning, though, he did not write them. He simply accepted those that were whispered into his ears like truths by those he trusted. In particular, his trust in Gertrude Robinson was near flawless.
It was the first step in his becoming.
The journey north, north, and further North chilled Michael Shelley to his bones--stable, human, stagnant bones. He felt the cold bite through him, and brushed it off like the fool he would later know himself to be. Instead, he allowed his mind to be taken by concerns about his companion; Gertrude must be cold in this weather, right?
He fretted even when he saw the iron fortress in a cardigan she truly was. It was only a matter of time, after all. She didn’t need to worry about what he saw anymore. And he still kept that naive trust in her. What a mistake he made, travelling deeper into Russia-but-Not.
When he went through the door, he sealed his own fate. Willingly, for the better or the worse. And when he watched her watch it swallow him, he still couldn’t quite believe that she had done this to him on purpose. Perhaps it was an accident, perhaps she wasn’t strong enough to save him.
There was no distress on her face, and as the Distortion knotted into his mind, he knew that he was lying to himself, just the way she had lied to him for all these years. When you became the very definition of a lie, you could recognize the ones you were told. He had been close enough to being a walking falsehood already that it wasn’t even difficult for the Distortion to mold him into it.
But it hurt. It hurt them both. And the Distortion screamed to feel itself be confined into the stretched out pieces of a mortal mind, and Michael screamed as he felt his mind be shredded to fit.
When it was finished, they sat there in the silence of their own consciousness. They weren’t separate enough for it to be anything more than a single mind, but that didn’t stop either of them from trying to rip apart from each other.
They sat there for a while longer. There was no end to the overwhelming silence between them, and that wouldn’t do at all. Neither of them seemed fond of the void between them. Silence was a space to be filled with loud chaos, illogical thoughts and actions.
They came to accept this.
They started small. The occasional push and shove of someone struggling towards their depths. The all-consuming hunger was new to them both, in that Michael had never felt it before and the Distortion had never imagined not feeling it. Slowly, they worked bigger, learning to be able to interact with the human world in ways that shouldn’t have been possible for either of them before this.
Michael once thought ruefully that perhaps that’s exactly why they could. He tried to avoid thinking within ‘Michael’. Sometimes, though, it was too difficult to avoid. He thought a lot upon how it wore his body in ways that were wrong. He didn’t think that even anyone he knew before would be able to recognize him like this (sashatimjonmartinwhowasnew gerry- ) and he didn’t think he’d want them to.
The Distortion had other plans. When the world began to subtly shift, it swam against the current. Towards the Institute, towards what he once thought of as home. The first contact was with Sasha, who was too smart and too kind and perhaps both the best and worst possible person they could have met for this. The Distortion decided to buy her flowers. Michael loathed its choice, because it was exactly the sort of thing they’d have once done for each other, because what else would you do for your best friend?
He took enough of the reins to buy their coffee. It was exactly the sort of thing she’d like, simple, sweet, caffeinated. It was exactly the sort of thing the Distortion hated, plain, unassuming, boring. He reflected for a moment that they had very different views on the people they both knew, and decided he should probably stop thinking.
They didn’t drink the coffee.
The Distortion would have let the worm stay buried in Sasha’s shoulder. Michael rebelled. They would not ever get along quite right, it seemed.
Meeting, learning, knowing the Archivist was a whirlwind that Michael would never quite be able to comprehend. He suspected the Distortion struggled with it too. They both lied about it, to each other and to Jon. And if glimpses of yellow doors closing caught the Archivist’s eye, well, that was his own problem.
Michael couldn’t quite grasp what kept drawing them back towards him. Was it that he was so utterly different from Gertrude? An avatar of the Eye, yet what he sought to See was truths, not ways to hide them. The Head Archivist’s office still had the same brass plaque on the door, yet it felt so different if one peeked inside. Messy, human, real.
The Distortion laughed at the way Michael had once been able to be fooled by Gertrude. He snapped back that she had been the one to end its ritual and it shut up. It seemed sometimes that their shared bitterness towards their existence would never end. At this point, it undoubtedly was true. They both lied that one of these days they’d agree, as if disagreement and discord wasn’t the root of their very being.
Jon never let on if any of their fight was visible on the outside. Either way, it was improbable that he could See it yet. The Distortion mocked how he couldn’t. Michael wanted to scream for Jon to turn back from the path of Knowing.
When Jon was kidnapped by the Stranger, Michael was the one who dragged open the door to bring him to safety. The Distortion allowed it--after all, as long as neither side won, the battle would continue, and delightful chaos would fall from each conflict.
He was never going to kill him. He hoped Jon knew that, somewhere inside him. Set him for a spin around the Distortion’s endless halls before letting him go. In the end, he hoped that ‘Michael’s’ unpredictable existence was at least known that well.
The door was locked.
The door unlocked, and Helen stepped through. Prim, perfect Helen. The Distortion that was wrapped deep in Michael’s soul flexed its fingers, ready to grasp onto someone other than the host it had never wanted, never liked.
When it took hold into Helen, Michael screamed. This time, the Distortion laughed, but not from him. Only Michael was screaming, and he was only himself again. He felt it then, the pain and grief he’d been too numb to feel before. Gerry was dead, and Gertrude hadn’t let him rest like he had deserved. Gerry was dead, and he was too, he supposed. There had been a promise of return whispered in between fleeting kisses before their departure. He wondered if Gerry knew what had happened, why he hadn’t been able to come back to him.
He wondered too what Jon saw of him in his final moments, if he could finally know the truths to Michael Shelley when he was just himself. He decided he’d like that. He’d like to be seen by someone for himself again. He’d like to be known again.
No wonder the Distortion shed him so easily. He was everything it wasn’t.
If there was a beginning to the story of Michael Shelley, it was Ryan. He had loved him. He wondered if Ryan ever realized, and hoped he didn’t. There was so much that was so fragile to him, and the Spiral had delighted in consuming him. He remembered every moment in clarity, remembered feeling the eyes of insanity locking into him, targeting him. Ryan was gone in an instant, and after the police took his heavily-fabricated statement, he turned from them.
He chose a different place to give the true story--the Magnus Institute. And in the end, he supposed he gave the Institute everything else as well. He only could hope it wasn’t in vain. He could only hope that there was some meaning to be found, some benefit Jon could gain from it all once he was gone. And hope is what he did.
And then it was all silent.