Chapter Text
He couldn’t sleep.
Something scrabbled behind his head.
A maus looking for scraps.
Trapped.
Moving.
No matter.
He usually couldn’t sleep.
The stars were too bright.
He didn’t want to close the lid.
He didn’t want to be trapped. Again- all. Alone. In. The dark. Without air. Without light. Without-
And he-
He needed to see the stars.
And his back hurt.
There was something digging into it.
Something digging into his side too.
(Something digging into his 1s and 0s and twisting them and twisting them into strings to tie up his limbs and watch him get tangled and try to escape and laughing )
He didn’t want to move.
He didn’t want to close his eyes.
He stared at the sky and hoped that it made him feel nothing.
He glitched.
He didn’t want to close his eyes.
The dark was less dark when his code wouldn’t let him sleep- when it buzzed around him but didn’t make him think.
When it was too late and too early and it had been for a while.
For a long, long while.
He could hear a single car in the distance, walking a darkner to their stable, happy job, to make money, to become rich and happy and free .
He shoved his side into whatever was there.
He didn’t want to flinch.
But he felt friction when he moved- between his joints- between his torso and his hips and his thighs- between the him that he only thought was him and the balls that allowed him to move, the broken assembly points damp with mould now, and rough and grinding- between His strings- keeping him up, keeping him down, falling all around him, and still pulling, pulling him up, pulling him down and out and putting him back wrong, with spare parts and plaster and the barest, most entertaining, [[side-splitting]] tiniest parts of himself clinging desperately to an armature that was no longer his, bound by rope and the [scraps] of thread He had finished with, and finished with a dozen unsoiled, [squeaky clean] cross-bars, lined up perfectly [[neatly on the workshop table]], and twitching every so often to remind him they were there, that [they have him] they laughed, up there, that, if he ever dared to forget, he was [not your own], to remind him: you didn’t follow. This is what happens when you don’t. This is what I can do. What I will do. [[What I did]].
The static stayed for a long time.
After he’d opened his eyes.
And a long time after.
A long, long time after.
The stars were fading when he saw them again.
They were always fading.
The light wasn’t much better.
He didn’t want to close his eyes.
His shoulder joint screeched in his ears and itched at his torso as he lifted his arm. He’d long given up the impulse to do something about it.
Wood only dented when you scratched at it.
He looked at his fingers as they covered his glasses from the morning.
He raised his other arm arduously and brought it to his fingertips.
He’d learned, after he’d lost a couple toes, just how far he could stretch them before the elastic broke.
He glitched when they snapped back into place, but the jolt gave his code a little pleasing buzz.
Like it was remembering where it was supposed to be.
There were more cars now.
Running.
He judged 8am by the noise.
Customers coming and going.
He stayed still, tugging on his ring finger and watching it snap.
It hurt, he thought vaguely.
He pulled it tight and held it there for a second, just watching.
He flicked at the elastic.
Rolled the ball with his thumb.
Thought about snapping it off.
It was easy to reattach a toe.
His elastic was pinned inside.
He wondered if the elastic for his fingers was the same.
Or if this wound all the way through.
Pulled taught to keep him together.
Held around the chain of his soul- moving his fingers whenever it beat.
If it beat.
He couldn’t really remember.
He flicked at it again and felt it shiver inside him- the code static- telling him all his errors.
It felt like it was attached to his soul.
The maus was gone.
Had eaten its fill.
He shifted his back against the garbage beneath him to check if whatever had stuck into his back was still there.
It was.
He forced himself against it.
His finger snapped back into place.
He lowered his hands back down- didn’t trust himself to be near them.
He still buzzed.
The light was brighter now. There were more cars.
This box had been hard to get into, and it hurt to get out- his strings never would place him down gently.
He didn’t bother to smile.
He already was.
He scurried to the Trash Zone and stayed out of sight.