Work Text:
There is a man who calls himself “Frederic”.
He does everything that Frederic is supposed to do. He lives inside his apartment. He speaks to the friends he still has. He paints.
He is painting right now.
But his mind is not entirely there, in front of that canvas.
Instead, his mind swirls, with one thought having formed a circular groove inside his mind:
I am Frederic now.
I am Frederic. I am Frederic. I am Frederic.
He needs to remind himself. He needs to do exactly what Frederic would do. He needs to be sure he cannot ever forget.
He remembers the first time his mind fell silent. You politely came to him, your little group of friends by your side, splattered with paint but surprisingly no worse for wear, informing him you had taken care of it. That they were all gone.
He barely waited long enough for the door to his apartment to click shut behind you before he rushed to check.
He needed to be certain.
He found 8 paintings returned to their canvases and a lone body cooling in a back room.
(Frederic did not look at him for long. He relocked the door and resolved to never go back in.)
It had almost felt too easy.
Nothing ever came back to bite him.
Time passed. Life got as close back to normal as it could for people, now the beast in the sky that had dragged him kicking and screaming out of his painting was gone. You, who had given him the life he now owns, the last to bare witness to it.
Those paintings on the wall never moved again. Not a sound ever came from that locked room.
Frederic held them no ill-will, not really.
He’d hated hearing them in his heads, being reminded, over and over, that any of them could just as easily turn someone on him. Could out him as anything but the name he called himself. But he had not asked for their deaths out of malice.
It wasn’t anything personal. But it had to be done.
He would do it all again, if he had to. He’d do anything if he had to.
Whatever the cost.
(And if he ever dares to doubt that instinct, he goes and sits in front of their paintings, and can almost feel eight sets of long-dead gazes upon him. All of them ready to destroy him for what he has.
He cannot let them take it from him. It is mine now.)
(He never gives the ninth one the chance to judge him.)
His secret may have even died with them.
No one, since then, had ever questioned him.
Not that he let anyone close enough to. Very few of the people of his past were even still around, and those that were did not question his newfound distance.
Even on the rare occasions he did slip, when his composure cracked and the colours he never intended for anyone to see breached his carefully crafted facade…
… No one seemed to care.
Everyone seemed to almost understand. They found something to blame without him even needing to find an excuse.
His “transformation”. Supposed traumas from what the visitor did to the world.
Fabrice.
(They did not know that some part of Frederic is glad he was gone. Because Fabrice would have noticed.)
But still, no matter how hard he tries, he can never truly forget.
He does everything within his power to keep himself in check. Every room he steps into, he always has a plan for when the worst happens. He will come out on top, no matter what happens. No matter what he has to do.
But even he cannot unsee reality when it stares back at him in the mirror.
Frederic’s mind finally draws back to the present. To the canvas he has been absently painting upon for some time now.
He looks into the spiral of colours that make up his self-portrait.
Another broken canvas finds itself in a growing pile of them. A fresh one sits upon his easel.
The man who calls himself Frederic dons his stolen crown. Yet he slaves away endlessly, attempting to fit himself onto a canvas that was always too small for him.
I am Frederic, I am Frederic, I am Frederic...
When you asked him if he wanted to die, he was not afraid.
Well, that’s not quite true. He’s always afraid. Afraid of the future. His future. Afraid of being alive.
But death?
… It had been easier to say “yes” than he thought it would be.
But then you didn’t do it. You turned around and left.
He thought it would be quick. That it could be over now, and then he didn’t have to hurt anymore. Now he has to fear the wait. The anticipation on when it’ll happen, or if you even will follow through. Another future to be scared of.
But after it all, his fear came true:
He’s the only one left.
He was never meant to be the one that lived. That he is certain of. Of all of them, he never stood a chance.
And yet here he was. The one that got away.
… Is this your idea of a sick joke?
Oh, he’d laugh, if it didn’t hurt so much to do it.
He hadn’t even quite realized what was happening until the last minute. When one last flurry of panicked thoughts speared through his constant pain, and then it all went silent.
(Fred could never relate to that ones paranoia. Both of them fearful of the world in very different ways. He was scared to die, utterly and completely terrified of it, desperate to cling to life even if it meant doing nothing, ever again.
Fred wondered if that’s how living is meant to feel.)
And then you may as well have vanished. You never showed your face to him again. No visits, no hello’s, not even a check in to see if he’s still there.
I always get the short end of the stick. Funny how that happens.
He wished he could ask you. No, he wished he could demand an answer from you. He wished he could pry the reasoning from your mind and examine it from every angle, so he can finally understand.
He wants an explanation.
Why me?
Before, at least, Fred had not been alone with his thoughts. He spoke very little to his fellows, never wanting their ire to flow in his direction. But he listened.
It was like a soap opera to him, something to amuse and distract himself, listening to them squabble and argue over petty nothings. It was so easy to forget that he was, technically, a part of this massive blood-feud between them.
No one really bothered with thinking about him. Occasionally they would talk to him; especially his neighbour, or the angel. But no one worried about him in their plans to ensure they were the last.
Joke’s on them. Ha ha ha.
Now he’s all alone.
He’s had time to think about it, through the pain. To start finding it almost funny, in a twisted kind of way.
No one was ever going to find him, were they?
Fred had no idea what the state of the world was any more. Would anyone even look for him?
His friends probably think he died.
Are any of them even alive?
Is anyone even alive?
Maybe Fred is completely alone. Maybe he’s the last person left on earth.
Wouldn’t that be funny? He’s not even human.
The last stand of humanity, A twisted mound of flesh and suffering, barely able to move. A lone splotch of paint on a blank canvas.
It’s hilarious to imagine. So funny that it hurts. Maybe he will laugh this time.
Ha ha ha…
He wonders.
If you came back, and asked him again,
“Do you want to die?”
Would he still say yes?
… He’s not sure.
He’s had so long to think about it. Had long enough to almost… Imagine a world with him in it.
One that maybe, just maybe, he’d be okay with.
Maybe if the circumstances were different, if someone was here to help, to just talk to him, distract him from the unending pain that lights up his strange, painted nerves…
Fred does not need saving. He just wants someone to be here.
Fred listens.
…
He is still alone.
Oh, joy! Oh, delight!
It is over!
He twists and turns in a strange dance, over and around himself, as the last voice in his head fades away, spitting and cursing as it goes.
All goes quiet. Fred cannot remember the last time he was able to think so clearly.
And with that clarity, he thinks:
Fred is free!
And for a long time, it had really felt so simple.
Fred moved on, took up residence with his new best friend, murderer and brand-new honorary Fred, and settled in amongst the colourful characters that lived in his apartment.
It may have been busy, but it was far nicer than the headaches and arguing had ever been!
Okay, well, it wasn’t always so nice.
Like how that bug man (Morgan? Myrtle?) was always on his case about something or other! And that big beard-guy (Papa-knew???) who practically follows him around the kitchen with a mop when he cooks.
Its patronizing! Fred knows how to clean! He only forgot ONE TIME!
But mostly, it was fantastic, and Fred was sooo busy all day, talking and helping and being an oh-so very great roommate to his BEST FRIEND!
But sometimes…
Late into the night, when Fred has curled around itself, pretending to be asleep in its cold, frigid home...
Fred’s head feels too quiet.
Long after they are gone, he catches himself still talking to them like they’re right there.
He plans pranks to pull on Facetaker. He throws a teasing jab at Toxic’s direction. He asks Godhead what he thinks about something.
And then he has to remember they’re not there. Not anymore.
Even after you, his favourite murderer, came back different, Fred cannot seem to forget.
Apartment 33 starts becoming quiet, too. People come and go, the same people Fred has gotten to know, but few stick around into the night, once you cannot stay there any longer.
Yet Fred stays, right where he is.
(He tries to go home, once. To move back into his own apartment, maybe start a new life for himself.
The whole place feels like it’s haunted.
Their memories are here. He used to spend all his time bothering Facetaker, right here, in this front room.
He closes the door without stepping inside.)
Of course, he stays the cheerful, silly little Fred he’s always been!
But something different lingers behind his eyes. Something more aware. Something more… regretful.
People pay attention.
Leigh asks him once:
“Since when do you care about who kills what?”
She laughs when he can’t give her a straight answer.
(He remembers seeing her emerge right behind you the day it all ended, splattered with a rainbow of colours, almost akin to a palette after a long day of painting.
Fred thought it was funny, at the time.)
Fred looks back upon how nice it had been, among all the people in apartment 33, and wonders.
Could it have worked out for them? If they had all just tried?
Maybe they could have figured out a solution to the headaches. Maybe they could’ve gotten along.
Maybe he’s just missing them too fiercely.
He thinks about when the last one died. Toxic had gone out spitting the same venom he always did.
…
Fred feels silly, unable to move on like this. What made him so attached?
Maybe it was the nicknames. Maybe he spent too much time talking to them.
Or maybe, it was because…
Because he… Enjoyed it?
Liked having them around?
No.
No, that can’t be right. They had wanted to kill him. HE wanted to KILL them!
And he did. You did all the heavy lifting, but he was at the centre of it. He killed them, in a confusing, roundabout way. Just like how he does everything in life.
It was the right thing to do! It had to be!
(Fred remembers that Toxic hadn’t just been angry. He’d sounded afraid, too, when he died.)
Fred, despite all his charms and strange way of words, stayed right there, in apartment 33.
Never looking back. Never going home. Let the ghosts of his past keep it!
It wouldn’t be conductive to keep looking back, he decides.
Instead, he turns and marches forward.
Fred tells himself he does not miss them.
Monster.
That’s the word he’d use, if you asked him to describe himself.
Because that’s what he is.
Vile. Disgusting. Reprehensible.
Monster.
His head is so quiet. Too quiet. It feels like it is judging him and he hates it.
No one is left in the apartment but him. He closes his eyes and sees a hundred more staring back at him.
You did this. For him. You took them all away.
Why? Why would you ever fucking do that?
Why did he let you?
He’d hated it. Listening to all of them die. One-by-one, they dropped like flies in front of you and your friends and he had to hear all of it.
It was terrifying. To be aware of each consciousness winking out of each corner of his mind. To hear to their last thoughts.
He remembers those voices once scared him beyond measure. Now he can’t remember what any of them sounded like.
Now he had something else to be afraid of.
When it was just him left, he thought you would come for him, too.
You didn’t.
He could have tried to stop you.
He should have tried to stop you.
Why didn’t he?
You’d seen him, once. When you first walked into that dark back room.
(don’t think about it don’t think about his eyes on you don’t look don’t look don’t l)
You ran from him. Fled when you screamed in his face.
Your eyes stayed off him when you passed through next. He had cringed away from your intrusion either way.
(why didn’t i do anything why didn’t i stop you at least if i tried it might have made a difference what if what if what if)
And then you came back from that room in the back, where his painter had been sealed.
You did not look at him. Your eyes slid straight past him, like he wasn’t even there.
(maybe i wasn’t)
He thought the cacophony of their voices in his head had been bad. This was worse.
Why did you let him live?
He must be that horrible to look at. So bad that you could not bare to see him again.
Enough that you were too scared to come close.
Or maybe you just forgot he was there.
… Maybe you hate him. Yes, that must be it.
That’s the only reason you’d make him endure something like this.
You know what he is. Only needed to look at him once to know. Averted your eyes, so you did not have to see him again.
Monster. Monster. Monster.
I deserve this.
Everything was judging him. He tried to hide, tried to keep eyes off of him, but what good did it ever do him?
You still killed all of them. He still let you.
The story never changes.
Once, he considers stepping outside of that workshop.
He thinks of their paintings, with just a door between him and them. He imagines their empty eyes. Wonders what they’d say to him.
It is never anything good.
(He stays in the dark. It is better this way.)
He is worthless.
Less than worthless, even. So cowardly he stood by and let people get killed, over and over again.
This is what happens, when he lets people see. He gets hurt. Other people get hurt.
His fault.
So he’ll never let anyone see him again. No one home left to see him, no one around wanting to look.
Everyone will be safer this way. He’s certain of it.
He remembers Fabrice.
He looked, and now he’s gone, too.
All of it is my fault.
To most, the long-gone painter’s apartment would appear abandoned. Unused. Perhaps even artistically serene in its quiet.
Frederic, just another soul lost to the visitor.
But if you dared to look, to seek out what does not wish to be found, and venture into the darkest corner of the apartment...
You can find a portrait of a ghost.
The gatekeeper of his own corpse.
Frederic is dead, and he won’t let himself forget.
It was so easy.
So easy it was hard to believe
But it worked. They were gone.
The first very sucker to walk into his trap was perhaps the stupidest man alive. The perfect opportunity just dropped straight into his lap.
Clearly you’d needed his help, too, given how often he had to intervene from up there.
Heh.
He almost felt bad letting you go. He wanted to keep having fun toying with you.
But oh, a deal’s a deal, yeah? He killed the hat, not his fault it stayed stuck on your stupid head.
Now he’s free to do anything he wants. No pesky other “Freds” to get in the way.
They all played the game and lost. He was smart enough to get the grand prize.
He’s Frederic now, and no one can tell him otherwise.
Fred claims ownership of his identity, and opens a new chapter on his life.
One where he can…
He can...
…
He… did not plan this far.
Well, so what?! He didn’t exactly get much time to plan before you showed up!
He’ll figure it out! Its fine!
So he does what he always does when he doesn’t know what to do.
He paints.
… Or he tries to, anyway. Because everything he paints just feels off.
And its not just the accidental splatters of green that are pissing him off. The colours clash. Or they blend in too much. He tries to imagine a person and it comes out looking all wrong, like he’s forgotten what one looks like.
Goes back to basics, paints some fruits from life, like some sort of goddamn movie character. It still manages to look wrong on the canvas.
He paints. And paints. And paints. It ends when he throws a canvas off his easel in frustration.
What the fuck? Is something wrong with him?
Sure, fine, his body comes with its… Limits. But he still knows how to paint. It still comes naturally as breathing.
So why does it all look so fucked up?!
Fred gives up, pours himself some wine, and, god, at least that tastes like it always does. It makes him feel a little better.
He raises his glass as if to toast his victory. No one is around to care or congratulate him.
When was the last time he drank alone?
… When was the last time he was alone, period?
(Don’t think about Fabrice. He is the one who ran away, who left you.
Traitor.)
Reality sets in.
Within days, it has stopped feeling like victory and started feeling like a burden.
His stupid, vomit-coloured blob of a body is suited to nothing. Absolutely fucking useless.
He can’t do anything like he used to. Can’t reach onto high shelves without splitting. None of his old clothes fit him. Can barely paint without turning half the canvas green.
He can’t even take a fucking shower! Is there no dignity left for him?!
(He looks in the mirror, just once, and punches it so hard he’s still finding glass floating around his blobby body days later.)
Its fine.
Its. Fine.
He has all the time in the damn world to figure it out. Why wouldn’t it be fine?
Fred suddenly regrets letting you go for real. That could have at least been interesting.
He’s not going out there like this alone. He doesn’t have a fucking death wish.
Fred finishes another drink, and flings the glass at the wall, just to feel something.
This isn’t right. He’d made it.
He fucking won. He was free. He was supposed to enjoy it. All he can think about is how angry he is that he isn’t enjoying it.
Did he make a mistake somewhere?
It was fun. Making a plan, executing it nigh flawlessly. He enjoyed that part.
Now he had nothing to plan for, he did not know what to do. His enemies were dead. He took ‘til there was nothing left, and now the dragon grows restless upon his hoard.
Treachery has no one left to betray but himself.
He hated having them around, so he tells himself. But now he is stagnating.
He looks at their paintings, and wonders…
What if...
...
Am I fucking brain dead?
He discards that train of thought before it even begins.
Fred sinks deeper into his hollow victory.
The urge is non-stop.
Ever present, nagging underneath his skin, like an itch he can never scratch.
His body does not listen to his brain, like it was wired wrong. His own wants swept away by the string of intrusive thoughts that clamp down on him, like a thought with teeth of its own.
He wants to bite. He needs to bite. To sink his teeth into everything around him, to tear apart every object or thing he comes across. To find something with flesh and rip it apart until it is too small to bite down on any longer.
To destroy.
Fred is tired of feeling these things.
He thinks about you, instead, and several sets of teeth begin to grind in frustration.
He had tried so hard to remain optimistic. He was so sure he could find a way to get through to them, in a way that did not involve teeth slicing through paint.
And you ripped it all away.
He asked you not to. You didn’t listen.
No one listens to me.
He asks the others to stop fighting, and they just argue louder.
He asks himself to stop biting, and his body bites down harder.
He asks you to stop killing.
Everything goes quiet.
No one cares about him. This whole world has it out for him, and he can do nothing about it.
Unless he gives in and bites.
Fred does not want to bite. He does not want to bite so badly, despite every nerve screaming at him to do so.
It is not fair.
He just wants to feel in control. Just once. To feel like his life really belongs to him, instead of the whims of his instincts.
Every chance, every opportunity, to do something that was his own choice has been forcibly taken away. And he must sit here and endure it.
He misses them.
It wasn’t nice, the headaches, the yelling, the fighting. But in the rare moments of peace…
It could have worked. They all understood each other. He liked them.
He could see the future where they all got along, and no one had to die.
He had so much hope. You took it.
What about them convinced you to leave him like this, against his wishes?
He tries, comes up with explanation after explanation, but cannot find an answer that isn’t complete nonsense.
He wants to be angry, but despite it all, he still cannot live up to his birthright.
He wanders around the now-empty apartment, trying to occupy himself, tries so, so hard to be normal. The task feels insurmountable.
Paintbrushes may as well be chew toys.
Everything he tries fails.
Fred does not know what to do.
He still feels stuck in place, hoping for something to go right, hoping that words will save him, since his actions feel beyond his control.
No one is around to hear him. Nothing but those instincts.
Instincts that become more and more tempting to give into, as each day alone passes.
He wonders if it’d be bad of him to.
He hasn’t got anything left, now they’re gone. He does not feel ready to face the world outside his apartment like this. Not when he can’t trust himself.
Someone would get hurt, or worse, whether that’s him or someone else.
He feels so… alone.
Fred wants to bite.
He keeps fighting it, at first. He keeps trying. Makes the effort to accommodate himself.
But for all his artistic ingenuity, he cannot make it work.
A bear trap shuts around his mind.
He goes to his old studio and, for the first time, he lets it all loose.
Several jaws clamp down on a painting.
He rips. Canvas and wood splinter like they’re made of nothing. Something in him breaks. For the first time he feels something dangerously close to real anger.
The paint tastes bitter.
Fred tears the studio apart. Memories from his previous life, gone.
He wakes up hours later, unable to remember what he did, but he sees the evidence everywhere.
The urge feels quieter. The relief is palpable. It hurts like he ripped himself apart.
It hurts like how losing them hurt.
The worst part?
It had been so easy.
Huh.
That went better than I imagined.
That had been his first thought, upon becoming alone.
He’s the lucky one of them, he supposes.
He is, inarguably, a freakshow. But at least a freakshow he can work with. That’s better than what could have been.
He’s pretty damn proud that he was able to pull it off, and make it out unscathed.
(Well, the $400 he had stashed away helped, too. You take it eagerly, and leave murmuring something about rent.
Fred is in no position to judge, but… Who the hell is worrying about rent right now?)
And that’s that! No more voices, no more worrying about death…
No more headaches.
Headaches are so much worse when you have this many heads.
Fred thinks he’ll try something new with the time. As much as he still likes painting, this whole fiasco — Painting something deeply cursed, being reborn from his own painting, and nearly getting killed by his…
The others.
Well, its put a bad taste in his mouth. Mouths?
Seems like a good time to try new things. Take a break from being an artist for a bit.
Acting sounds appealing, he’s damn sure he’d be good at it too. But it’s pretty rough out there, so he’s heard, so maybe that idea could wait.
Maybe he can learn how like… Mix drinks, or bake, or something.
He can’t remember what’s in the fridge. He goes to ask…
… Right.
Guess he’s checking himself.
(He stares in the fridge and decides that baking was a stupid idea, anyway.)
It becomes a running theme, over the next few days. He keeps forgetting they’re gone.
He tries to logic his way through it. Pretty much his entire existence in this body, they were there too.
Of course it’d be hard to forget.
But then time keeps passing, and he still can’t forget. Day after day, his mind drifts back to them, like second nature.
Almost like they’re supposed to still be there.
Fred can’t understand why this keeps happening.
It’s not like he is wallowing in grief. He doesn’t feel anything about it. He just… keeps thinking about them.
Fred wants to live. Wants to be someone.
He will not let himself be haunted.
After the world becomes safer to go out into, he goes out there to find himself. Begins a new life where he can really enjoy himself.
He hasn’t had this much fun since he was in his damned twenties.
But at the end of the day, no matter what he does…
… The apartment still feels dangerously quiet.
Icarus spreads his wings, but cannot help but hesitate when he looks down.
He tries to figure out where it started. Trace this haunting back to its source.
Was it towards the end, when Fear had begged him to let him live? When he had felt a stab of guilt, but turned his back anyway?
No. Earlier than that.
Was it because he let his guard down around some of his more personable fellows? To have the occasional… No, the frequent friendly conversations?
Not there either.
… Was it …
Since the day his head went quiet, Fred hasn’t exactly tried to live up to the idea of the original. Of Frederic.
He’s always been more interested in carving his own path.
Fred wanted to live for himself, not for the idea he was created from. But his stalemate situation with the others had not been conductive to that.
Had it?
Was it because this whole thing didn’t have to happen?
That can’t be true.
It didn’t matter. They were all just paintings.
(paintings don’t have feelings.)
Not people. Not really. Just ones that looked like bit like funny people, sometimes.
(paintings can’t talk.)
It was for the better. He had been given the want to live for a reason.
(i am still a painting, too.)
And then one day, he accidentally stumbles into the heart of it, the question he’d been avoiding this whole time;
Why did he kill them?
For what?
He wasn’t trying to be the original Fred. And all he’d done since then was dwell on it.
Why then? It was so he didn’t have to die, right?
It was so he didn’t have to worry about his future, right?
He had a reason for it.
… Right?
The angel flies too close to the sun.
He looks down, and gazes into the pit of guilt deep within his mind.
Oh, god… Why did I kill them?
Fred smiles when he first sees you, despite how you raise your weapon in alarm.
I can help. I can help. Please, let me help.
Please don’t hurt me.
You let him in. He could weep tears of joy when you take a tendril in hand and thank him for healing you.
Fred pledges to keep helping you. If that’s what it takes, then he’ll keep doing it.
He does not let himself crack. He will be happy. He won’t let you know.
Even as the voices start to quiet in his mind. Even as he has to listen to them fade away.
Even as you come to him with injuries he recognises.
Acid burns. Injuries wrought by your companions’ weapons. So many bite marks he loses count.
The most unsettling was when you came back from the last one without a mark on you.
Fred feigns ignorance. And you buy it.
He rips off a part of himself for you, because of course, now he has to love you, reward you.
He had to. It was only right. You did a good thing for him.
You deserve it.
Now he can be helpful all of the time.
(Fred remembers making a promise. To his endlessly suffering neighbour.
That he’d find a way to help him, one day.
He’d laughed at him, told him that he was funny. Said to him: “Save your pity. Your tricks cannot help something like me.”)
He ends up abandoned and forgotten at the bottom of a bag.
No, not… not that serious, Fred tells himself.
He gets asked for help sometimes. Occasionally he’ll even get taken out, the jar that part of him calls home placed on a counter for a while. Those moments are nice. Fred likes those.
But mostly, the piece of himself that he graciously gifted to you… gets left in the dark.
Its okay, he tells himself.
He came along to help, not to be your companion.
Its fine. Just dandy.
The rest of him is still back at home. So its all right. Its only one little part of his body, he can handle it. He is happy with this.
It is just… So quiet, at home.
Fred can’t move. Cursed to be stuck in place. His painted body allows him to reach quite a distance, but its still a struggle to find anything to do.
And so he sits alone, with his thoughts. And he dwells on it.
To think about them feels… Awful.
He never wanted anyone to get hurt. He was supposed to help. Created to help. He wasn’t supposed to cause harm.
Maybe he had wanted it to stop. But he was going to handle it, even if he could never convince the others to try peace.
He never asked you to...
…
It was a fair exchange, surely. His life for theirs. You got a friendly face who will always help, in exchange for sparing him.
It was terrible to experience, but he held on. He can hold on through anything if he tries.
He has to remember the positives. His head doesn’t hurt anymore, he can focus, he…
He has you now. Someone loves him. Cares enough to keep him around.
That has to be worth something.
Fred has not seen your face in a long time.
Did he do something wrong?
Please, let me be worth something.
(He had been right. He couldn’t help him.)
He just wishes he knew a little more, about what happened after the day he was painted.
He’d glimpsed things, when you had asked him for help from that jar, overheard muffled conversations from within.
But nothing that made him understand.
Its a little frustrating, honestly. He just wants to know a little bit more. See a little bit more. Do more than just…
Don’t think that. It’s selfish.
It doesn’t matter what he wants. It doesn’t matter that he wants to take it back. It doesn’t matter.
He can survive anything.
As long as you are happy, then he is, too.
Fred keeps smiling, because he has to.
I just want to help.
It had been so nice, at first. You seemed so kind.
Offering your time, your house. When you heard his request you had left immediately to go fulfil it, despite the money you were wasting and the risk of being out there.
All of this, for him?
Fred actually, genuinely, trusted you. For just a moment.
Then he’d heard the first voice in his head go silent, and he knew it was you who did it.
He had to hear their last thoughts.
The slaughter didn’t stop there.
You came to him when they were all gone, your kind smile unchanged.
But Fred sees something different now. Something he didn’t notice before, in your eyes. Something that scared him almost as much as that painting did.
You killed all of them. Like it was nothing to you, like it was easy.
(He can see the paint on your clothes.)
He slams the closet doors shut and prays you don’t turn your weapon on him.
Your confusion makes him feel so guilty, but he cannot stand to look into your cold, empty eyes any longer.
He doesn’t dare to peer back out until long after he hears you walk away.
The apartment is empty now. Nothing that could scare him remains.
He stays rooted where he is.
The silence does not make him feel any better. He still feels unsafe inside his own home.
He didn’t want to die. Willing to sacrifice comfort for his safety.
But hearing them die, knowing that you, the man with the kind face, had done it, was capable of such things…
And he really had considered coming with you.
Fred finds himself fixated on your intentions.
Did you think it would make him safer?
To leave him all alone in this apartment? To put him through this ordeal of death? Or did you have something more sinister in mind?
It gave him no comfort, kept him awake all through the night.
You don’t come back.
Sometimes, despite all his attempts to avoid it, that painting comes to his mind. The blue sky. It feels like it is pressing in at all sides, when he dares to imagine it.
Like the sky is collapsing in on him.
He thinks about them. He doesn’t want to, but he does, anyway.
Of the many-faced one, who was always scarily nice to him, despite how Fred could hear his intentions. He had been confident until the last second, his fear brief and fleeting, before he was gone with it.
Of the dark one, desperate to make himself so small he could not be seen ever again, who had screamed and screamed across their shared mindscape until he fell.
Of the faceless one, who had terrified him more than anything, his thoughts had felt so familiar in the end. A terror rawer and more potent than even his own.
Fred had been forged from the fear they all shared, in that moment.
If death could cause that to happen, then certainly, it must be as scary as he imagines it to be.
He thinks of these things, still curled deep within that closet, the one he dares not venture out of. His tiny safe haven in this dangerous world.
He is beginning to forget what it’s like outside it.
Fred wants to paint again. He misses it. So much.
He wants this to stop. He wants his life back. He wants to be Fred again, a name that has felt wrong on his tongue since he became like this.
He is so tired. He can’t remember what food tastes like. What his favourite toy was as a child. What Fabrice’s laugh sounded like.
Fred is forgetting who he is, beneath the terror.
He wants to go home.
The door is slowly pulled open, and he dares to take a step out. How long has it been? He has no idea.
He feels so vulnerable out there. Exposed. Unsafe. The silence in the air feels oppressive.
He stares at the door. It’s practically within arms reach. He can do it.
He can leave. Anytime he wants.
… He can...
That is the last time he tries to.
“I’m sorry.”
Frederic sits in his living room, perched upon a seat he normally reserved for when he was painting, watched carefully by 9 sets of eyes.
He has a glass of wine in one hand. He is facing those paintings.
Fred was never a superstitious man, before this. But now he thinks he believes in ghosts.
They are long dead, but he can still feel them there, in the room with him.
“I’m sorry.”
He didn’t mean for this to happen.
Half of them were already dead by the time you got to him. That, he could not help.
But he wishes he had not asked you to take care of the rest.
He feels wrong, without them. Empty. Incomplete.
He poured everything into those paintings, and now he is trapped within them, unable to escape.
Fred does not know what else to do but apologize. To say he’s sorry ‘til his voice fails him.
He hopes they can hear him.
Fred feels like he’s lost in the ocean. His emotions, scattered and lost beneath the water.
Too far down to reach.
He downs the rest of his wine in one go, his third glass of the night. One of the vices he got to keep.
Gods, he misses Fabrice.
He would have known what to do.
(He’d heard his voice, once, shortly after the others were gone. He thought the mumbling by his door was him coming home.
What had happened to him was far worse than anything Fred had imagined.
Another thing he wishes he could take back.)
Everything feels like its been turned upside-down.
This visitor… Thing. It has taken everything from him, hasn’t it?
Fred is half the man he used to be. Fabrice is gone.
He has to be so careful when he paints now.
And who is he, if he cannot paint?
God, Fred. The world almost ended, and still you’re worrying about yourself.
He’s heard that things are starting to get better out there, that the world is beginning to recover.
He just cannot bring himself to feel happy about that.
Fred made it out of the storm, got out the other side. In the grand scheme of things, he did not get dealt the worst hand by this cosmic disaster.
But how much of this is really living? How much of him is even alive?
Every day he finds something new he’s lost. Emotions he struggles to recognize, Sensations he no longer feels.
He realizes one day he hasn’t felt the urge to touch a cigarette in weeks.
Maybe that’s a good thing.
He cannot even bring himself to try to move on. Those paintings sit, exactly where he put them just before they sprang to life on him.
The idea of moving them makes him feel sick.
Like he is betraying them. Betraying himself.
Fred is drowning.
There is just so much for him to grieve.
Fred longs to feel something again. So he gets another glass of wine.
It is better than nothing.
He’d never even really got to know them, not really.
They were all parts of him, of course. But as individual people, he never got the chance to learn anything about them, before he was locked in that back room.
The yelling and arguments in his head could only tell him so much.
(Really, out of all of them, it was Faceless he understood best. Especially now.)
He just wanted a second chance. At everything. To not make these mistakes, to not fuck everything up like he always does.
Fred is tired. And lost.
And completely, utterly alone.
The presences in the room he felt dissipate.
Maybe he was just imagining them. The small comfort it gave him, gone, just like everything else.
They’re just paintings now. They’ll never be anything else.
He cannot bring them back.
Fred stumbles to the bathroom, drunk and sick and barely able to stand.
He clutches both sides of the sink with all four hands.
His eyes turn to the mirror. To a face that feels like it does not belong to him.
There is a man called Frederic. He wants nothing more than to be himself.
Yet, he stares at this imitation staring back at him and asks...
“Who am I?”