Work Text:
[Tape recorder clicks]
The Archivist:
Statement of Sanji Black, regarding an incident in his father’s laboratory.
Recorded direct from subject, 7th of June, 20XX.
Statement begins.
Sanji:
I tried not to come back here. I really, really did. But I can still feel them all salivating over me, and your master’s nightmares are so much better than the clinging fear that sticks to my bones.
My partner thinks I’m at a doctor’s appointment. I should stop using that lie, but it’s the best way to get him to leave me alone and be ready to support me when I get back. I hate doctors. I go by myself, I have flashbacks to my childhood the whole time, and I come back exhausted and miserable. He’s making me a loaf of bread that’ll be warm when I get home. Overall he’s shit at cooking, but he’s figured out a decent sourdough. It’s nice to have other people cook for me sometimes. I haven’t had that since my mother, unless you count the old geezer, but that’s not so much being cooked for as being force fed.
Sometimes I wonder what my partner thought the last time I said I was at the doctor’s. When I came home with that haunted look on my face did he think it was just the usual, or could he tell something beyond horrible had happened?
Honestly, I wanted to tell him everything, but I wasn’t about to let him near the vestiges of that experience. I wish it had been a traumatic doctor’s visit and nothing else. Then I could have stayed in his arms until the numb fear drained away. But I’ll be damned if I let those things set their sights on my partner, and that fear is a hunger that only grows stronger with time.
When did you first look fear in the eyes and see it looking back at you, Archivist? When did the first of Them stroke a bony palm across your cheek?
My first memory is of my biological father holding me by my chin, examining my face like I was a livestock specimen. He smelled like blood and salt.
From that moment on, my life was nothing that didn’t revolve around Them. I bled fear like sweat dripping off of my fingers. I stared into the darkness and it leered back. There was a room of the house that grew so thick with fungus I could barely see the shape of the furnishings, the skeletal outline of where someone had died laying on that mildewed bed. I used to seek that room out. It felt peaceful, inhaling full breaths of mold.
Part of the reason I started smoking after I got out of that house was the hope that, even if it killed me, it would at least kill the remnants of that room first, the spores that I knew were colonizing my lungs.
That was the most pleasant part of my childhood, I think. That room was dripping with slime and decay, but it waited for me to come to it. The rest of Them pursued me. I don’t want to talk about Them. They still haunt my every waking moment.
My father was a faithful servant of the Slaughter, and he wanted his children to grow up to be avatars themselves so they could form alliances with his master. He wanted it for his wife, too.
I can’t decide if I’m glad or not that my mother didn’t survive the process. I would have hated to see her as an avatar, but watching her waste away when I was only a child…
I never went back to the room full of rot after I watched the Corruption take my mother. Her hair fell out first, in ragged clumps around the house. Her lower eyelids sagged, mucus membranes a soft yellow-white. Mottled purple and blue wounds like bruises with an oozing opening in the center spread over her body. Dark blood dripped down from each one as she walked from room to room, a wraith of a fading woman.
My mother died in terror, and my father left her body for the worms.
One by one, my siblings became avatars. My sister never moved against me directly – the Web is too subtle for that – but my brothers used me as a test subject for their new powers. It was hell.
I’ll never tell your master how I escaped that house, but just know that I have the scars to remember it for the rest of my life.
When I got out, I swore I’d rather die than go back. I wish I had been able to keep that promise. You need to understand what it was like for me – a child, alone and terrified, never having had a safe place to rest. When I met the old geezer… he was gruff and kind and protective. It took me months to even begin to trust him, but he earned every bit of my loyalty and love. Don’t tell him that, though. My friends… they’re good people. It took us time to find each other, but once we did we were inseparable, and they saved me from myself. My partner in particular... he means a lot to me. I can’t tell you how much I love those people. They’re my family.
My sister came to me a few months ago. I stopped by the apartment I share with my partner after work to get a change of clothes and meet him for a gym date. Reiju – my sister – was sitting on our couch. She had my partner’s sword in her lap. Oh, that’s not a euphemism. He owns a literal sword. I won’t get into his story, but it’s his most prized possession. He didn’t let me touch it until we’d been dating for ages – long after I’d touched his… other sword. Seeing my sister holding it felt like a violation. I wasn’t surprised that she’d gotten in despite the locked door, but to be touching that holy item…
I felt sick with rage.
She told me my father wanted me to come home. Not forever, just for a test. He was developing something new and wanted to see its effects on someone who had been touched but had not become an avatar. I just needed to come by for an afternoon. My father wouldn’t even be there. If I didn’t, he would send my brothers after my new family. He knew where my partner worked. He knew that Zeff slept with his window open, and a second story window was within easy reach for an avatar. He knew that my friends were the sort who would gladly run to help someone screaming for assistance. He knew that they were easy for people like my brothers to kill.
Reiju told me that she was sorry, but she knew it was all true. I didn’t have a choice.
That was the day I told my partner I had a doctor’s appointment, and two weeks later I found myself walking up the ghastly driveway, between two iron gates smelted from the blood of soldiers and civilians in another land.
The lab had been renovated. Despite that, it looked even more grimy and sickly than it had when I was a child. As I fought to breathe steadily, I could have sworn the decorative red streaks on the floor were twisting and moving.
I didn’t recognize either of the doctors that were present or any of the three lab techs, which was good. I’ve never stopped having nightmares of Dr. Caesar’s laugh echoing around me. The room was dominated by a huge metal tank, lid open to show calm, dark water.
I flinched when one of the doctors extended a hand to shake mine.
“Sorry,” she said with a smile. “I know this won’t be easy for you. Mr. Vinsmoke said you’re severely claustrophobic. I’m glad you agreed to participate, it’ll be helpful to have data points to track how it affects someone who gets nervous in tight spaces but let me know if I can make you more comfortable somehow.”
I could have laughed. Sure, I was claustrophobic, but not inherently. It had more to do with the time I’d gotten trapped between a mattress and a wall as a child. It hadn’t even been a murphy bed, it had just been a standard four-poster that decided to leap up and pin me to the wall for days on end. I’d been running from my brother Niji, who had just become an avatar of the Hunt. It had been days upon days of torment, trapped between heavy mattress and brick wall, suspended unmoving in my own filth, unable to draw a full breath.
It ended when my brothers were tired of not having their favorite plaything and their complaints drove my father through those endless cramped halls to find the guest room I was trapped in. He dragged me out by the collar of my shirt and left me in Dr. Caesar’s “care.” After I had enough fluids in me to be functional again, I was back to fleeing from the terror of my brothers.
Lost in the memories, I was barely present as they ran me through some preliminary tests and prepared me for the sensory deprivation tank. Apparently, it was being explored as a way to process trauma, although that doesn’t make any fucking sense. The last thing you need when facing what you’ve been through is a total lack of distractions.
The main doctor – I’ve forgotten her name, I’ve afraid, I wasn’t entirely tracking with the conversations – taped a button to my hand. It was a panic device that could signal a need for emergency retrieval. She made sure I knew I could use it whenever I needed to, even if I’d only just been put into the tank. After I undressed they fitted a breathing mask to my face, connected to fresh air through a tube that would remain out of the tank.
Total submersion. I’m not a bad swimmer, I’ve actually really enjoyed learning to cut through water fluidly, but I’ve not spent much time diving. When I’m underwater everything is so muffled and quiet I feel like I’m drowning even when I’m not.
I took deep breaths through the tube as I climbed the steps to the top of the tank. It was going to be okay. I sat on the edge, calves dangling in water only slightly cooler than the temperature of my skin. It felt like touching nothing. I couldn’t tell where my limbs ended and the water began. It was just saline enough to lift against me, enough to suspend me slightly.
I slowly lowered myself into the water, mask fogging up as I sank to the middle of the tank, water above my head and below my feet and surrounding me on all sides. The lid slowly closed above me, the fog in my goggles disappearing into darkness. I hated darkness. I clenched my teeth as I inhaled and exhaled stubbornly, trying to center myself. I used my arms to push me down until my feet hit the bottom of the tank. There was a bottom. It gave me so much relief I exhaled, jaw relaxing. Similar movements led me to each of the walls and the top of the tank. Then I relaxed, floating.
I waited. How long was I going to be inside? I was pretty sure they hadn’t told me.
I waited. I couldn’t feel my own body, sensation was blurry and vague and not mine to experience.
I waited. Was I going to remain there in nothingness until I hit the panic button? I didn’t want to feel like I was surrendering, but I kept looking into the darkness, waiting to see something looking back.
I waited.
I waited.
I waited.
I waited.
My feet bumped against the bottom of the tank.
I waited.
The tank pressed against my feet more insistently.
I waited.
My elbow knocked into the wall.
I waited.
My neck hurt from where it was bent to fit the top of the tank pressing against it.
I waited.
I bent my knees to relieve the pressure and they hit the front of the tank.
I panicked. I couldn’t flail, penned in by squeezing walls. I couldn’t feel them moving but every moment they were tighter around me. I tried to squeeze my hand into a fist to hit the button that would free me, but my fingers were caught in a corner. With a cry I wrenched my hand out of the position it had been trapped in and hit the button, arm aching.
I waited.
It would take a minute for them to get me out, right?
I hit the button again.
I waited.
My breathing was panicked and fast. I squeezed the button over and over, fast pulses, holding it for long moments in a death-grip, pressing it lightly and tightly and any way that it might save me. My limbs curled as the walls squeezed me like I squeezed the panic button.
Then the breath I tried to draw in didn’t come. When I inhaled almost nothing entered my lungs.
There was no way for me to tell what was happening, but as if by a vision I knew that there was something in the tube. It was a heavy back sludge dripping inexorably towards my mouth.
Each breath I took was shallow. There simply wasn’t air to inhale. I froze up, the tank pressing in around me, the tar-like substance sinking down towards my mouth. It tasted like dirt when it pressed against my sealed lips. I fought to keep my mouth closed, but it was heavy and strong, and it quickly started to push into my nostrils. My body was thudding with each heartbeat, hungry for air. I gritted my teeth as I tried to deny the need for that most precious resource. It was a mistake. My lips pulled back slightly, and that was all the opening the sludge needed. My teeth have never been perfectly straight, but especially with the cigarettes there are enough gaps that the foul stuff was able to force itself into my mouth, thick on my tongue. I choked and gasped and fought to clear my mouth and nose and throat.
Drowning hurts. I don’t need to explain to you what it’s like, there are plenty of accounts you can read up on. It was agonizing.
I knew I was dead for real, killed by my stupid fucking dad.
[pause]
Sorry. It’s just… it wasn’t the worst thing I’ve been through, probably, but it was the worst thing I’ve had since leaving that house, even including what I spoke about last time. I just kept imagining how much my partner would worry when I didn’t come home. I started crying as my head swam. My limbs hurt from how much the tank was compressing me.
I thought for a moment that it was death when my world became blinding light. Sometimes I still think I died and just ended up in some sort of parallel universe. I was gasping and hacking and shaking, and I was back in that lab.
The head doctor was beside me, asking what was wrong. The tank was the right size again. I was breathing clearly. They’d pulled me out and stripped the breathing mask off of my face. There was no sign of any suffocating sludge. My mouth tasted like grit, but… nothing looked wrong.
It took about half an hour to get me stable I was in such a bad state. They ran whatever tests they needed, but I knew the real purpose had been achieved. My father had given one last ditch effort to push me into becoming an avatar. I’m not sure why it didn’t work. Maybe one of Them has laid a claim on me and just not cashed in on it yet. I hope not.
According to the doctors and researchers, I was only in the tank for a minute and a half. That’s obviously bullshit, but they showed me the recording of the camera they’d had tracking my heat signal. According to that video, I had remained motionless for one minute and twenty seconds, before thrashing around and hitting the panic button once.
They let me go once I was relatively calmed down, and I made my way back to my apartment. It was a long way, but I couldn’t bear public transport. As I walked I tried to forget the crushing, suffocating sensation that stayed pressing in on my heart.
Passing a park, I stumbled and vomited black goo into a trash can. It tasted like earth and death and suffocation.
My partner took one look at me and called the old geezer – my actual father in every way that counts. He came over and they both spent about a day doing their gruff versions of coddling and comforting me. The memories faded bit by bit, but I couldn’t shake a lingering fear. I don’t know what my biological father is doing, but I know it’s bad.
Just… don’t let him get away with it, Archivist. Not if you have any say in the matter.
[Tape recorder clicks]
The Archivist:
Statement ends. Judge Vinsmoke remains a… concerning avatar. The Slaughter has been getting far too powerful as of late. I’m not sure what we can do, but perhaps-
…There’s a letter on my desk addressed to me.
[Paper crinkles]
Dear Archivist,
How would you feel about a deal? Imagine using our combined strength to pull down my disgusting father and let the worms he fears feed on his guts. I’d do it myself, but there are easier ways to achieve what we both want.
Consider it carefully,
Reiju Vinsmoke