Chapter Text
Sasha does not spend a great deal of time ruminating on her encounter with the Distortion.
As far as she’s concerned, it was a fluke. A one-off. A rare side-effect of a very weird job. It’s something to laugh about with Tim, and certainly not something to think about at night when her head hits the pillow. (She definitely doesn’t lose sleep over it. The encounter hadn’t scared her at the time, and it does not scare her now. If there are darker shadows under her eyes than there used to be – if she takes her coffee stronger these days, with a tremor in her hand as she stirs it – that’s a coincidence. Nothing more.)
Michael’s presence in the street below her building, its knowledge of her name, her colleagues’ names… none of it, she knows, had been personal. Worrying about how it knew those things was like worrying how a phishing scam had found her email address. It didn’t matter how, not really. It only mattered that it had.
Their conversation in the café had felt personal, sure. Especially when it had put its hand in hers. She can remember it now, every detail: the empty coffee mug, still crusted with foam from whatever had been in it, a slight dip marking where it had put the cup to its lips; the lilies languishing in their brown paper wrapper on the seat beside its knee; the blandly pleasant face she wouldn’t have glanced twice at if she hadn’t known better. That awful, alien hand. But she knew in the moment that it was only using her as a courier, talking to the Institute through her face. Its offer of friendship had not been aimed at her, though it was she who watched its mouth curl into a smile around the words.
“I want to be your friend,” it had said, and it had drawn out the word friend like a question.
It is waiting for her, this time, in the stairwell.
The same stairwell whose windows she first spied it through, mere days ago, though the world outside is so bleak now – the late-night streets so empty – she can’t fool herself into believing it’s there to take in the view. The sight of its lanky frame - its back turned, silhouetted in the dark and winding space - sends a shock like ice water through her veins. She fights a shudder and keeps walking.
There’s no choice. She has to pass it if she wants to get into her flat.
Its hair is haloed orange in the glow of the streetlamps outside. She could, she supposes, spend the night at Tim’s. He might laugh at her initially, but he would be good about it once she explained. He would set her up on his sofa, with those cushions that always made her sleepy during movie nights, and he would make her a hot drink and stay up chatting and watching old Vine compilations with her until she felt better.
“That one’s Elias when he hasn’t had his morning latte,” he would say.
“That one’s Jon when Martin does literally anything,” she would answer.
She wants to do it. Wants to turn and go, and leave Michael with no choice but to find another messenger.
She doesn’t.
Three steps closer, she considers the Institute. Martin will be there, sleeping on the spare cot in the filing room, but there might be space for her to wriggle in, awkwardly, keeping her back to his. She doubts he sleeps well anyway, not with Prentiss circling the place like a shark. He might appreciate the company. Might read her some of his poetry. A night spent nodding and pretending to like it would be better, surely, than this.
She reaches the landing. A metre separates her from the Distortion now. With its back still turned, she's tempted to walk right past it, but there isn’t enough space to give a convincing performance of simply not having seen it there. If she keeps walking, its coat will brush against hers. She will, at minimum, have to mutter “Whoops, sorry,” and it will know that she's avoiding it. It might turn to face her. Might grab her. And what then?
Sasha stops walking.
“You again,” she says.
It doesn’t turn. One of its hands – deceptively normal, with prominent tendons and bitten-down nails – is playing against the mottled window-glass. The index finger and thumb are stained dark, like it's been twiddling a leaky biro between them. Sasha hadn’t noticed this little touch before, too preoccupied with the overall picture; with trying to catch distorted glimpses of it in the polished salt-and-pepper shakers.
Now, she says – with a boldness she doesn’t feel – “Nice illusion. Very thorough.”
It says nothing; just goes on tapping its fingers on the glass. They may look like the soft, rounded fingertips of a human, but the noise they make against the glass betrays them. Clack, clack, clack. She wishes it would stop.
“You know, I didn’t actually plan on spending my evening loitering with monsters on the stairs,” she says. “If you’re here to help like last time, please get to it. I want to take off my coat and my shoes.”
Eventually, it deigns to acknowledge her. “I can see why you enjoy this window.”
“Again, please get to it, or I’m going.”
The monster rolls its shoulders – a languid gesture that takes far longer than it needs to – and does not turn to face her. “Did it ever cross your mind that you could take your shoes off the moment you enter your building? Such an arbitrary rule, to wait until you cross the threshold of your own living space, even when it aches. You're indoors. Your feet will not get hurt.”
Sasha answers it by turning on her heel and starting up the next flight of stairs. It lets her go. The last she sees of it, it’s still there, its long, crooked fingers clack-clack-clacking on the glass.
The next time Sasha finds it on the stairwell, it’s a Sunday, and she’s lugging three heavy bags of groceries up the stairs. This time, it twists around to face her at once.
“What have you there?”
“Food,” she says. “Toilet roll. Tampons. I guess it’s all quite novel to you.”
She doesn’t mean for the words to sound as terse as they do. Only once they’re out does she register what a bad idea it is to get snippy with a monster. Michael only smiles, closed-mouthed, and reaches out a hand.
“What?” she asks it.
“Would you like a hand?”
Sasha falters. She knows the logical answer: No, thank you, I’m fine. Please leave.
But she also knows, by now, that this thing doesn’t run on normal-person logic.
And she remembers with a start that neither does she.
Most ten-year-old kids would see a weird bug in the playground and run from it, shrieking and exclaiming, “Euww!” Ten-year-old Sasha would see a weird bug in the playground and sit with it until the bell rang for class. Talking to it. Sketching it. Taking careful notes.
She’s curious. She always has been. It’s why she works at the Magnus Institute.
And so, she hands Michael one of her shopping bags – it’s heavy, full of tins, but its arm doesn’t dip under the weight – and then puts down the other two in order to unlace her shoes. “Thank you. One moment.”
Michael makes no comment as she shucks the shoes and tucks them under her elbow, but it looks rather pleased.
“How was your day?” it asks, when she resumes walking.
“I only woke up an hour ago,” she answers, aiming for the breezy, casual honesty she might use in a passing chat with Martin. It doesn’t feel right to treat Michael like a close friend, but she doesn’t want to upset it. A work-friend dynamic is an easy compromise to make. “Not much of a day yet,” she goes on, “but the weather’s nice and my bags haven’t split, so I can’t complain. How's yours?”
It blinks at her, working its mouth, and Sasha can’t help the rush of pride that comes with confounding the Distortion. She watches as it knits its brows, shaking its head like its brain is a snow globe and it needs to stir the glitter from its thoughts in order to see them more clearly. “I forget,” it manages.
“The time? Yeah, me too.”
She isn’t sure how she understood what it meant, but its smile is enough to tell her that she understood correctly. A small smile, much smaller and simpler than the last dozen. She senses that this one, of all of them, is the closest to real.
“It’s easy to lose track when you’re distracted,” she adds. “Or busy. Or… you, I guess.”
“Yes. Days are arbitrary things.”
“Like rules about shoes?”
“Like rules about shoes.”
What a strange way it speaks, she thinks. Choosing words like arbitrary, where words like silly or pointless might carry the sentiment just as well. Like the details of its illusion, she wonders what goes into the makeup of its vocabulary. Why arbitrary, and why the biro-smudges on its hand? It claims to exist beyond comprehension – “How would a melody describe itself?” she remembers it asking, as if daring her to ask what on Earth it meant by that – but there are always, always threads to pull. And Sasha didn’t get her job for nothing. She knows how good she is at pulling threads.
“This is me,” she says, when they arrive outside her door. She drops the shopping bags and fumbles with her key.
Michael taps the door with that same clack-clacking noise. “This is you?”
“This is where I live. Want to come in?”
It nods and follows her inside.
Michael barely talks to her as she unpacks her shopping. Sasha doesn’t try and encourage conversation. She's content to sneak glances at it from the relative safety of her kitchenette; to study it as it prowls about her living room. The Distortion is a stick insect in a shoebox, and she, the child with a magnifying glass.
It looks taller in the low-ceilinged space. Taller and, simultaneously, less formidable. (The loss of its power to frighten her may or may not have coincided exactly with the moment it hit its head on the paper lantern covering the ceiling bulb.) She watches as it picks up a photo frame: one containing a picture of her childhood dog. It smiles an idle smile and sets the frame back in place, moving on to examine her books. They're displayed on a cheap flat-pack shelving unit Tim helped her to throw together when she moved here. Most of them are sketchily-peer-reviewed supernatural studies, which she bought for research purposes, though she has some sci-fi and horror paperbacks crammed here and there. Michael extracts a copy of The Long Way To A Small Angry Planet, flips through its pages – upside-down – and puts it back in the exact place it found it. Odd, for a creature of disarray, she thinks.
She tucks the thought away with the biro stain and its vocab choices.
Eventually, Michael grows bored of her living room and sidles into the kitchen, where it starts to fiddle with the letter-magnets on her fridge.
“Having fun?” she asks it.
Michael pauses, repeating its motion of shaking its head to clear its thoughts. “Yes,” it decides. “I visit many houses, but I am rarely invited.”
Her groceries are all packed away now. She should ask the thing to leave – knows she should – but her hands have busied themselves in the familiar ritual of brewing instant coffee, and without thinking, she has set two mugs down on the counter.
“That must be lonely,” she says.
It wrinkles its nose. “Ugh. Lonely.”
“What are you writing?” she asks while the kettle boils. Michael messes up the letters on the fridge door before she can get a glimpse at whatever it was trying to spell.
“I can’t read,” it says, with a burst of laughter like startled birds taking flight. “Or write. Letters are—”
“Arbitrary?”
“Precisely.”
She doesn’t call it out on what was obviously a panicked lie. Instead, she serves Michael its coffee, which it drinks with her at the kitchen counter in an odd, peaceful quiet. She studies it more as it swings its legs and runs its biro-stained fingertip around the mug’s rim. It’s wearing a thick coat – thicker than one would typically choose for English springtime – which could matter, but could just as easily be another pointless contradiction. Underneath, she catches the peek of a collared shirt, buttoned not-quite to the throat. With its free hand, it winds a lock of blond hair around its finger, coiling it tight before letting it spring free. Again and again.
Eventually, it leaves. She doesn’t hurry it, but nor does she invite it to linger. The end of its visit comes with the familiar awkwardness of any two almost-friends parting ways. It smiles too wide when it makes its excuses and actually looks at its wrist, though there isn’t a watch there. Sasha pulls an “It was nice to see you,” from somewhere, and it nods and agrees.
When it’s finally gone, she feels a fluttering relief, mixed with a weird exhilaration.
And then she turns to the fridge, which reads, in a mess of childish rainbow letters:
dOnT L3t THeM taKe U AL!ve