Chapter Text
There was fire, the metaphorical and the literal kind, in every visible and invisible empty space that it could fill. The tongues of a thousand red flames clambered up the walls, through vents, through people, through souls. The air was filled with crackles and shrieks, both from the heat, and from its unwilling victims.
One in particular was especially resistant. The rabbit, with its molded fur and casing just barely shielding the grotesque remains of a massacre twisted around machinery within, kicked and clawed to the very last beat of its rotting heart, so futile, so pointless, but so sickly determined to return to the world no matter what.
And so, it returned.
-
A pair of silver eyes, void of life from the moment it was breathed into the body they belong to, tentatively blink open to reveal golden stripes that decorate a plane of off-white plasterboard ceiling. Said concentrated streaks of light filter through window blinds, slightly obscured by the mahogany wood of a headboard. The information the pair of eyes that feel entirely disconnected from the body receive conflicts the setting they were in moments before, of fire, of swirling darkness, of death that they fought off the sight of for so long, but it is indeed a bedroom, and, looking down, there is, indeed, a human body in the bed.
The body is a man’s, and the brain to which the eyes connect had long forgotten what it looked like. It is not coated in fur or mold or blood, it is not mangled and tattered, it is simply a human body, skin and fat and flesh and bone and all. And it’s able to move.
Courtesy of the effort of the spine and the muscle around it, the body of the man sits up. Its hands reach for the spine, for it aches. But the movement is instinctual, for the pain is so miniscule it barely registers. The silver eyes shift in their sockets, landing on the nightstand, the glasses, the ceiling fan, the closet, the glasses, the other body in the bed next to the man’s, that pair of fucking glasses again, settling on the other body, a woman’s, a familiar woman’s, another body the brain could not recall the details of.
The woman stirs, a woman, not the body of a woman, an entire unit of a person that is not in pieces like what is conscious of the man’s body. She rolls to the side to face it, and she reaches for its much larger hands. And they take hers, because that’s what they’re meant for.
“Good morning, my love.” She whispers. The ears ring with sound that, until she spoke, was incomprehensible. The whir of the fan, the rustle of sheets, the chirping of birds. No fire. No metal. No monsters.
The brain forgets how the mouth is meant to move, for it has been forced open for so long that the muscles have lost their memory. The lips quiver in anticipation of speech that does not arrive. The woman’s brow furrows.
“Have you lost your voice?” She sighs, a delicate, exasperated exhalation. “You’re not sick, are you? You’d better not call into work today if you are, mister.” She too rises, edging off the side of the bed on which she is perched. “Stay up here, I can bring you breakfast.” She wears a sweater that does not seem suited to her body, for it is much too large in all dimensions. It hangs almost to her knees when she stands, swaying loosely when she turns the brassy doorknob to leave the room.
The body’s left arm darts upward instinctively, though the brain is not sure why. The woman takes notice, and accepts its hand, helping the man’s body to rise to its feeble legs. They shake beneath the weight of a body to which they are not accustomed, but despite dwarfing the woman, she assists and supports it. Concern laces her saccharine voice when she speaks again.
“You alright? I don’t need to take you to the doctor, do I?” The only form of nonverbal communication the brain can muster is a simple shake of the head side-to-side, and even so the motion is slow and awkward, almost automaton. The steely pair of eyes lock with her murky green ones for only a moment before she shakes her head with another discontented sigh. “You’re going to be the death of me, you know that, Will?”
The brain lingers in the misty haze that her words leave behind. Will.
She leads the hand and the body behind it stumbling down a hallway with lavender walls, that spark ease in the brain and perhaps an underlying pang of melancholy that it cannot quite place. At the end of the hall lies a staircase whose jagged descent the feet must rapidly adapt to, and such would be cause for injury were the woman not there to steady them.
The bottom of the stairs leads to an open living room, through which the body is led before the eyes can comprehend it all. The woman stops in a different room at one end of a dining table, motioning for the man’s body to seat itself, which it does. Its fingers lose grip on hers, and the loss of the sensation of touch sends the brain into momentary panic, but she does not stray far; only to the other half of the room that is differentiated by a shift in the floor from linoleum to ceramic tiling.
The brain begins to fill with static, its senses only stimulated by the sound of something sizzling, the texture of wood grain, and the cream color of the wall, until a sweet aroma surprises the nose that had not yet spurred to life. The scent of something that isn’t a corpse is foreign and tantalizing, and it causes the mouth to pool with saliva. The body’s head turns to the side, where the eyes process a plate of pan-fried discs of cakey batter that the woman has set aside on the counter. Pancakes.
“I’ll wake up the kids, you help yourself.” The woman disappears back into the living room, and moments later her thudding footsteps against the stairs echo through the house.
This time, the body slowly rises on its own, with one of the arms braced on the table for support, which is fleeting, for to traverse the room it cannot rely on structures other than the bones within itself. Slowly, the man’s body is shuffled forth towards the steaming plate of food, and once there, supports itself once more on the counter with one stiff arm. The other reaches tentatively for a pancake, drawing it to the mouth, and the signals travel from the brain to the stomach that has gone empty for so long. Pain wracks the body, and to quell it, the mouth takes desperate bites of the first meal it’s seen in decades. The sweetness on its tongue and the feeling of warm bits of food sliding down its throat almost brings the body to unity. Almost.
At the very least, the world around the eyes and the brain becomes easier to digest. There’s a calendar on the fridge beside the counter. A single date is circled and annotated in red ink. Allison’s birthday.
Why was that name important, again?
A sudden, musical tone strikes the air, and the brain recalls from where it originates. Slowly, steadily, the legs take one wide step after another towards a white door, just between the living room and the stairs. The hand extends and flexes the fingers around a brass knob, turning it first the incorrect way, then the correct way, and pulls it open.
And everything, all at once, snaps back in place when he sees her. Outside stands a young girl in a faded yellow sweater, dark overalls strapped over her shoulders, with long black hair tied back in pigtails. His knuckles whiten around the door frame and nearly crack the wood as she grins up at him, eyes gleaming. The last piece to return him to unity is an overwhelming flood of white-hot rage.
“Hey, Mr. A! Is Mike up yet?”
Cassidy Brooks.