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He felt the stale air around him settle as he slowly rose from where he’d fallen, forcefully ejected from the door he’d been kicked from, hearing the noise of it slamming-- but finding it gone by the time he looked behind him to see if it remained.
Yellow had disappeared, eaten by the unending, unforgiving white of the snowstorm that bit against his skin. He’d lost his coat somewhere in those hellish hallways, ripping it from his body in a bout of madness as he felt… something force it’s way down his throat. It had felt like a desperate animal, being stuffed down into him with just as much pain as he felt, edges pulsating and scraping against the soft tissue of his throat.
He’d seen none of it.
All he’d seen were colors.
Too bright, too off kelter, too impossible to exist colors.
And ever since then he’d been in a constant state of… well he didn’t know how else to describe it but as a pure, liquidated state of delirium. Like something one would experience on incredibly potent and malignant hallucinogens. Nothing seemed right anymore. He could still feel the mass pulsating-- edges nearly sharpening with the pace of his heart, in the pit of his chest now, bad enough it made him stumble, shaking as he half ran through heavy Siberian snow drifts.
They were changing too-- covered in an ever shifting gloss of colors, like they were all covered in an oil sheen--
His hands dug into his stomach as he finally keeled over from the pain, and rapidly focusing and unfocusing grey eyes finally noticed something out of place-- out of place but real-- in the snow.
Red.
Had he gored himself with his own hands? Looking down… that seemed to be the case. A lost voice screamed as he drew his fingers from his massacred gut, looking at them, watching them, as they grew and changed before his very eyes-- the nails, no, the very tips extending, sharpening, becoming spindly and knife-like.
He was transforming to something… more than human. Less than human? Not-- not human.
Defeated, he fell to his side in the rainbow sheened snowdrifts, feeling blood continue to pour from his body as the edges of the creature inside him continued to cut and shred at his insides. Nothing felt like it fit right. His limbs were in agony, agony like his bones were splintering and reforming themselves millions of times over.
He felt tears begin to spill from his eyes as the blanket of delirium began to slip-- to slip just enough to un-dampen his emotions yet again. He hadn’t told anyone about the trip, he hadn’t told his family, he hadn’t told his friends, he hadn’t even told Gerry.
Would they just think he’d skipped town? Would Gertrude even tell them what happened? Judging by all she’d done, she probably wouldn’t.
He squeezed his eyes shut, his body beginning to painfully shake with sobs as he curled further into himself, the once icy bite of the snow into his skin now going numb as he felt everything begin to slip.
Oh god.
Oh god he was going to die here.
It hadn’t hit him until now but… he was. There was no way to stop it now.
He tried to will a happy memory to come to him, trying to imagine he was anywhere but here, trying to ignore the throbbing pain in all parts of himself--
***
He lay with his head on his chest, blonde curls splaying in contrast with one of the dark band tees Gerry always wore to bed. One of Michael’s slim, piano hands interlocked with his stronger one, the smell of jasmine still hanging in the air from the strong tea he’d brewed earlier. He felt Gerry’s free hand running through his mussed curls, and suddenly… all the pain, all the cold was gone. He was warm, wrapped between the heavy comforter and his partner’s chest, snow gently falling outside the windows, gentle and unlike any of the storm he’d just seen.
None of this was real, and he knew that. There were little details that were off-- Gerry was a light sleeper, so he would have woken up from Michael shifting this much. The walls in his room were dark grey, not navy blue, and he usually brewed a mint tea before bed… not jasmine. He quieted, upon hearing soft white noise behind the gentle noises of Gerry’s even breaths and the soft whirr of the fan in the corner of the room-- behind it all, the soft fuzz of an irregular static was heard. The kind of static you get when your radio disconnects, constantly disconnecting and reconnecting again, crescendoing and quieting before growing louder again.
It seemed like disconnected radio was quite close to what it was-- as the static rolled to a low point once again, it faded out completely, giving way to something else.
It was a piano.
Slightly out of tune, slowly played with what sounded to be fumbling fingers, but it was a piano nonetheless. It was… distant, like it was being played outside, but the voice that gently whispered into his ear-- well, it wasn’t quite a whisper, more like an intangible stream of words that somehow unscrambled themselves in his consciousness-- was clear as day.
Sl ee p no w. K n ow n o mo r e pai n.
This was death, then. He was still scared, of course. But… he preferred whatever this delusion was to the Siberian snowdrifts in a place that didn’t exist. He cast one last glance to Gerry’s sleeping form, sending a silent prayer to whatever deity that may exist that this wasn’t all there is. That he’d get to see him again. He gently reached up and brushed a stray strand of hair from his sleeping face, squeezing the hand that was holding his.
He gently rested his head back against Gerry's chest, swallowing the lump in his throat before letting his eyes fall closed, and giving into the oncoming sleep that was pulling him down. Down and away.
***
The spiral is not as good as the end at comforting the good and innocent in their own ends, but it would say it did a decent job-- at least with Michael. Can something that is fabricated upon the substance of humanity’s fears feel pity? That is something it does wonder. If so, then it certainly felt that for this human-- lead like a lamb into a slaughterhouse.
He should’ve gotten to live his existence without interference. He should’ve gotten to die later, whether it be in the warm comfort of the delusion within old age, or by some other means that itself had no part in.
The distortion looked down at itself for the first time it could, feeling something akin to rage bubbling inside it's newly aquired form, making everything around it fractal and fuzz, it’s body growing long and disproportionate. It blinked, a door now in front of it once again.
It would teach the eye a lesson for its haughtiness. It did not deserve to think it could play lies itself for a fool.