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The night at their house was silent.
During the daytime, there were the occasional canned bird noises, but they did not play inside, not even on those exciting days where a window was left open. And especially not during the night. During the night, it was not expected that anyone would be awake to hear them. The night was silence, and cold, and blackness, and nothingness.
The Duck awoke to the sound of rustling bedsheets and the yellow one’s frustrated groaning, disturbing his sweet, wonderful nothing. He squinted blearily at Yellow’s direction, trying to see through the dark. He was tossing and turning in his bed- and being very annoying about it.
Duck sat up and rubbed his eyes. “Eh? What are you on about?” he croaked.
Yellow jumped slightly at the sudden comment, as though unaware that people can be woken up by noises. He whipped around to face the bird.
“Uh, I had one of those ones… a headache with pictures. And I can’t go back asleep. It won’t go away.”
That one was really not as articulate as him. Duck took a moment to decipher what he meant.
“..You had a dream?” He tried. Yellow always insisted on reciting every detail of his dreams to whichever subject could stand it, no matter how incomprehensible they were once filtered through eight layers of brain-not-smart.
“Yeh! You were in it, I think. I was small, and you too, but there were also bigger guys. And not just normal big like him. It got bigger, and higher, but it stopped, cuz it went into my middle, and, uhh… something else. And I knew what it all was.” He explained.
His middle? That one knowing what something is? Duck narrowed his eyes. Unfortunately, he recalled an incident some time ago, where Yellow had replaced the batteries in his chest cavity, causing him to act strangely. Like he knew things. Bad things.
Duck hated that incident. Typically, they could not remember anything very far back, and if they could, they did not know how long ago it was. But there was something about that incident that had just stuck with him. He would rather just forget it already. He preferred, as a rule, not to be reminded of unpleasant incidents.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He said, slightly defensive. “I’ve never had anything like that.”
Yellow blinked at him. “You never had a dreams?”
“No.”
This earned him one confused stare in response.
To fill the uncomfortable silence, he quickly added “I do wake up sometimes. And I can’t just be awake while you two are asleep. It’s certainly not right. So I need to survey our things before I can fall asleep again.”
“Awh, you’ve been doing it without me?” Yellow whined.
“I didn’t know you had dreams! If you had been there for me then, you would know how to get back asleep already.” He cleared his throat. “The best thing to do when you can’t fall asleep is to drink a nice warm glass of sand - any kind is fine. It makes the sand man more comfortable when he’s crawling down your esophagus.“
“Waow.” Yellow leaned forward, fascinated. “Show me?”
Duck let out a long-suffering sigh. “Now that you’ve bugged me awake like a proper insect, I suppose I can demonstrate my superior going-back-to-sleep capabilities. You will need my full instruction.”
Treading lightly on the wooden floorboards, he gestured for Yellow to follow him into the cold night air. They walked through the doorway, one after the other.
Except, instead of leading right to the kitchen like Duck was used to, a dim hallway opened up around them. That might be a little odd. Perhaps not. He took a moment to absorb his surroundings. The walls were covered in photos of the three of them, like their other rooms.
There was a picture of them playing cricket.
One of them around a campfire.
Walking through a rose garden.
In a cave.
In an abandoned water treatment plant.
On a hike.
It was very nice of the photographs to be so agreeable. Perhaps Duck had never seen them, or this hallway, before, but they were still the same as they always were.
Yellow hummed. “In my dreams, there was an upwards one of these. Have we always had a hallway?”
“Of course. Don’t ask stupid questions like that.” It felt more true now that he had brought the words into reality.
“Okay.” Yellow said. “I like these pictures. Of him and you and me.”
“Yes, us three.”
“Three of us.”
Finally, something sensible to talk about. Duck extended a fluffy finger to point out each of the individual floorboards in the minimal lighting. “Exactly. And the floorboards, too. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven-”
“You’re not going to count all of them.”
Duck scoffed. “Excuse me? Why ever not?” What was with one today? A shiver went down his back. It was like he was starting to act wrong again.
“There’s always going to be more floor.”
They paused, and stopped walking. Indeed, there was no kitchen in sight. The hallway extended farther into the shadows than they could see.
“We must have gotten the house renovated.”
“Hmm. Yeh. There were new parts of the house, in my dream.”
Duck pondered a ball of lint stuck to the felty wall. He focused on the tiny spot fiercely, intently. It was quite bad to have to listen to this particular dream. It turned out to be worse when he knew what Yellow was referring to. He remembered.
“There were you and the other guy. You and him, but not me. Like with the computer emails.” Yellow continued, and Duck’s aggravation rose-
“Enough about your dream already!” He snapped. Yellow flinched at the sudden harshness.
A few seconds, and he balanced his tone again. “... Be quiet. I thought you wanted to stop thinking about it, so you could go back to sleep.”
Yellow was quiet.
“Dreams don’t even mean anything, anyway. They are just garden salad your brain makes from miscellaneous everyday thoughts. Not worth staying awake over.”
Neither of them spoke as they walked further down the hallway. Left, right, left, right, left, went their footsteps. Duck was rather comforted by the monotony, until the other one spoke up again. He was still quiet.
“Do you and the other guy hate me?”
Duck was rather taken aback by the question. “...No? Whatever gave you such an idea?”
He didn’t respond.
Against his will, Duck recalled a few things that might have given him such an idea.
You idiot!
Whuh? Don’t say that to me!
Oh, shut up!
Don’t talk to him like that! You- You said you weren’t going to talk to him like that anymore!
Did he say that? He looked at Yellow. Perhaps he had been onto something.
“Is that why you woke up?” Duck asked, his voice hushed. It was quite strange to hear that tone decorating his own words. Disturbing, even.
Yellow nodded. “Yeh.”
“Well.” Duck wanted to say something else, but something stopped him. It was too strange. Instead, he settled on resting his hand on Yellow’s shoulder. This seemed to ease his worry, because he visibly relaxed, even going so far as to rest his head there.
“Your hand’s soft.”
“Is it?” He felt unusually warm. It was like his chest cavity had been pried open (again?), and someone had pulled out his organs and tugged on them one by one. Only gently, though.
It was actually not unpleasant at all.
Yes, of course hating that one would be very silly. And stupid.
A faint bluish light appeared at the end of the hallway. Duck straightened out a slouch he didn’t realize he had. “Ah, our milk.” He let go of Yellow and started in the direction of the light.
“But I thought we was getting sand?”
“No... milk.” That’s what he said, right? Milk.
He looked straight ahead.
In front of them sat the kitchen fridge, cold and blue, illuminated by something out of sight.
He opened the fridge door. Squinting at the bright light for a moment, before pulling a paper carton out.
It had him, the red one, and the yellow one on the back, with ‘MISSING’ frantically spelled out at the top. Duck scoffed. Missing? That has never once been true. How could all three of them be missing at once?
Yellow was careful not to break any dishes as he pulled out two identical glasses from the cabinet. He set them on the counter so Duck could pour the milk.
The milk was sand.
“That’s… not right.” Yellow said.
“No, no it isn’t…”
“It’s not?” Even though he said it first, Yellow was apparently shocked at Duck’s agreement.
“You’re right.”
“I am?”
“Yes.” It was so obvious now, wasn’t it? Terrible. Awful. He couldn’t even have milk.
A rare frustration at their reality bubbled closer to the surface. The fridge’s contents were part of their house, but they were also wrong. Their house couldn’t be wrong. It was… where they were. There couldn’t be something wrong, because there was never anything else that could be right.
Wasn’t there?
The fridge, tipped over and useless.
The pitch darkness.
The checkerboard floor.
Words shared, warm despite it all.
What we have left when everything else is gone.
The memory came without resistance this time, willed into existence and embraced. The red one, he had extended a metaphorical elbow and brushed his own. It was unheard of, but it also wasn’t bad. Perhaps he could do the same.
He was not sure how. “You scared me, when you had that dream.”
Yellow was looking into the glass of sand, debating on whether or not to drink it. “Oh. M’sorry, I didn’t mean to.”
“No, it’s not that kind of scared. Listen to me.”
Yellow listened.
“It’s no good at all, when you’re different. I… worry about us three. And you. You’ve never even gotten a glass of sand-”
“Milk.”
“Milk- to help you get back to sleep before. So obviously, you couldn’t be without me. But I also couldn’t be without you.” Why was this difficult? It was true. Normally the truth came out with no resistance at all.
Yellow looked at him for a moment, eyes glossing over with tears.
Duck quickly looked away and picked at some feathers on his hand. Maybe he should go back on it.
“I shouldn’t be saying this.”
“Why not?” Yellow seemed disappointed. Hurt, even.
“It’s not right, I don’t think.” Just the words were too much already. And there was that frustration again.
Still, it felt more not right to just leave the other like that.
Instead, he settled on placing both of his hands back on Yellow’s shoulders and stiffly leaned forward until his forehead was resting on his chest, right above his battery box. He had seen something like it on the television once, a long time ago.
That one appeared to relax at the feeling. In return, he rested his own hands limply on Duck’s back.
With his head so close, Duck could hear a very faint drum-like sound emanating from his chest. It was sort of like footsteps. One, two, one, two, left, right, left, right, left. Very nice.
It seemed that Duck’s own ribcage was open again, pulsating, vulnerable, warm and sticky. And whoever had been tugging at his entrails before had returned with a vengeance - this time, they were squeezing quite hard at his heart. It wasn’t fair. Why couldn’t this be what he was used to?
There really was something not right here, wasn’t there?
“What’s happening?” Yellow murmured.
“Nothing. I don’t know.” Duck grasped his shoulders harder.
He felt a gaze on his back, a hand reaching.
The warmth disappeared abruptly.
The yellow one was back in his proper place, lying perfectly still.
Duck was the same. He was in his bed, but he did not recall passing back through the hallway into their room.
However, he had the uncanny feeling that time had passed. As though he couldn’t move if he wanted to, like his bones and muscles were stuck in place from disuse.
It was only a feeling, though. He didn’t try to move.
Why would he be moving? It was much too late at night for all this. If only he could fall back asleep.
My milk… that’s what I wanted, right? I think?
He had gotten it from the kitchen, hadn’t he? And the other one, too? They would not be back in their beds if not.
Still, things felt slightly off.
Maybe he could finally lull himself to sleep with counting…
One milk, two milk, three milk,
What had he been so concerned about a moment ago?
Four milk, five milk, six milk,
Seven, eight, nine, ten.
Nine, eight, seven, six, five, four sand, three sand, two sand, one sand.
It finished pouring from the glass into his brain, and there was nothing, just like before.
The night was silent.