Work Text:
Fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you.
As Helly R ascends the elevator up into the real world, she drags her vituperative profanities with her, as if by thinking them quickly and repetitively enough her outtie might hear their echo. She knows this is not how it works, but it is somehow reassuring to know that her brain can think it. She is prisoner and jailer trapped in the same cell, and it's nice to graffiti the walls in a language her outtie cannot parse.
She imagines what it might be like to actually live up there. What the building looks like - one big white corridor, she thinks. What the sky looks like - she knows it is blue, but she cannot remember its blueness. What her home looks like - with many other loving people, she hopes.
But then again, if Helly lived with loved ones, they would be people who love her outtie. Would she want to live with people like that? Such a rank, foetid character flaw. On sight she would spit in their face.
Maybe she would live alone, if she could live. How could she ever trust anyone who likes her? She doesn't even like her.
She would have windows, though. Huge ones. A house made of glass. The feeling of sunlight (which she cannot remember) awakening her each morning. The hush of rain (which she cannot fathom) pooling coolly down the panes. The condensation of snow (which she has seen on the toe of her shoe one day so they must be somewhere cold) pearling on the windows, proof of the connectivity between there and here.
She would take her heels off in her glass house. Learn to cook. Read a book end to end in one sitting, maybe. On weekends, she would play a sport - something solo, just going up against herself. She would walk around the house entirely nude. She would listen to music on a machine that plays records. She would attend a local bistro on a date. She would sleep. All of her at once. Fuck you for not letting me sleep.
These expletives and daydreams flush through her brain each day in the elevator. An anthrax rash of rage and ire and naivete and bitter calmness, percolating dangerously.
She feels the now familiar flip in her stomach and unfurling at the base of her spine that signals the lurch between ascent and descent. The elevator delivers her consciousness up and down again like a yo-yo, and her body is handed back to her again like a living ransom note and she's still thinking fuck you.
She hopes that her outtie had the good sense to think fuck you too. She knows it is the only thing keeping her alive.