Chapter Text
“Good morning, Misha!” He greeted him with a smile. He barely sees anyone take care of their teeth like that. His were kind of crooked in a way.
“’Morning, Ru.” He gave him a small smile back, waving with a hand that he had freed from under the stack of papers he was carrying.
Mikhail had organized with his boss and manager long ago about the distance of his house from the company, so they had generously allowed him to work from home. But with that, he didn’t see any of his co-workers that often or never at all, so he never knew their names, what they look like or what positions they held. Mix-ups were made, and now he takes time out of his day to try and remember. She was always there to help him memorize their names and faces, where their cubicle is and what roles they had.
But he sometimes comes into the office to delivery papers that couldn’t be sent as emails. He thought it was a tactic his boss used sometimes to get him to come in and talk face-to-face. And it happens that he always runs into Rurik whenever he does come. He was an intern from some department he either wasn’t aware of or could care less about, with a rather gentle face and a bright smile, though sometimes his eyes looked bloodshot. He was also really tall.
Quick seconds of greetings turned into a few short minutes of chit chat, and before he knew it, they quickly became close acquaintances with each other. Mikhail was never a social person, but he guessed something about Rurik made him want to be his friend, and soon, they were having beer nights together at his house. She was very happy that he found himself another friend that wasn’t their neighbor that had been a long-time friend with both of them.
It was December when he came in, a plastic bag with papers inside and layers of warm clothing on himself. Rurik had on a white sweater, black slacks and brown, worn boots. He had no scarf on himself, so he could only assume he had left it in his cubicle. In his hands was a black pen and a clipboard of some kind of schedule and something else he couldn’t properly see. Maybe about a project.
“Heading to the boss’s office, huh?” The taller man asked as he took a quick look over the papers, reading the bold letters on top and humming after he finished.
“Yeah. I don’t get why I couldn’t just use emails to get these through.” Mikhail huffed as he adjusted his hold on the papers. The plastic bag made it difficult to hold for long, but he couldn’t tie it together either. Too much paper inside, or the papers were too thick, and he didn’t want to risk bending them.
The office was loud and messy around them, the constant work being filed in kept them busy and on the clock. The walls sustained a good amount of the world outside’s temperature, so inside wasn’t any warmer than outside. He wondered why Rurik didn’t wear his scarf.
“I’ll take them to him for you.” Rurik offered and placed the clipboard under his arm and tucked the pen he was holding into the pocket of his pants. “I don’t think he’s in the office right now, but I don’t mind dropping it off.”
Mikhail looked up at this impossibly gentle yet violent giant, at this guy who he had seen sharing lunches with a female co-worker he didn’t know, at this guy who he had saw arguing with someone and then beating the shit out of each other in the parking lot before settling scores. He didn’t like confrontation; he didn’t like a lot of social interactions. The only reason he was friends with his neighbor was because she was more open with new people than he was.
Handing the plastic bag filled with papers inside, he thanked Rurik with a smile of his own. Awkward, crooked, showing some of his teeth that were kind of yellow from smoke. She had asked him to stop, and he was trying, but the yellow staining resisted against his hygienic efforts. Smokers like him would kill for teeth like Rurik.
“Thank you again.” He said as he turned around to leave, looking back twice to see if Rurik was waving goodbye to him as well and to see if he was actually going to bring the papers towards the direction of the boss’s office.
He did both. It was endearing.
He stopped talking to him. He stopped coming into the office all together, just sending emails over the computer and drinking what was left of his days away.
He never contacted him, never called to ask if he was doing alright or why he was now a missing face within the office. Only his neighbor came over when he heard of the news. He had brought whiskey instead of beer, brought his wife and daughter over for company, and they sat drinking and talking. He thinks he cried at some point, but he couldn’t remember.
Friends cared for each other, but he felt like their friendship was reduced back to square one, like they never knew each other at all and only took a few glances at one another when they walked by. He wanted to lift that stone off his chest, wanted to tell his neighbor about it, but when he thought of him, he thought of her, so he never even told his close friend who that man was, why he was upset with him and what he had meant to him.
“Better things will come your way, neighbor.” He said as he raised his glass, intending to click glass-to-bottle with him.
He looked up from the floor and towards his neighbor, then diverted his eyes to his daughter playing and drawing on the floor with his wife by her side, smiling and pointing at her drawings with a mother’s curiosity for her child. After what felt like minutes of dissociation that was actually only a few seconds long, he looked down at his own hands, one of which holding the bottle of whiskey. He was nearly middle-aged, no relatives to contact back to, no wife and no kids. He would’ve wanted kids, but they never discussed it. He would’ve liked to call back to his mother, but he never did.
“Sure.” He sighed and threw the bottle back, chugging half of it before raising towards his neighbor with a face that one would make after feeling the alcohol burned down their throat. “To better things coming my way.”
They clicked glass-to-bottle, laughed a little and went back to talking about something that had nothing to do with his wife who left him, the family that he had cut ties with and the friend that never came for him.
When the happy family left his home and he had watched them walked back to their house, he ran back into his living room, collapsed by the couch and sobbed uncontrollably. He couldn’t stop thinking, there were so many thoughts whispering to him that he felt like he was going insane.
His skin felt hot, but the tears streaming down his face felt too cold. His hands were shaking too much, his lips were quivering and his breath was coming out short. He tried calming himself down, tried hugging and patting himself to just stop everything, but it didn’t work.
So he just threw himself into bed, face shoved into his pillows while his hands gripped both sides of it. He was sure he was crying so hard that his pillow would be soaked by next morning, but he didn’t care. He only turned his face when he ran out of air, then curled up in a fetal position and hugged his blanket to sleep, biting it to not let out another sob, holding it close to his face to wipe away falling tears.
It was midnight when he woke up. His eyes were dry and sore, his limbs felt numb and buzzing and he couldn’t speak without his voice cracking. Crawling and dragging himself out of bed, he went and grabbed a glass of water before heading to the bathroom.
It was still as small as he remembered it. He wondered why it wasn’t built bigger like his bedroom or the living room. Maybe even the office.
He reached down into the cupboards under the mirror and rummaged around blindly before admitting to himself that he needed to turn the lights on. When he did all of that done, he pulled out an electric razor and stared at it for a while. He always kept his hair short so it wouldn’t interfere with his work, and he didn’t go out to a barber so as to not waste money.
“I don’t like my look anymore.” He told himself before turning it on.
He woke in a cold sweat, breathing like he had ran a marathon and gripping the sheets as if he had had a nightmare instead of a dream.
It was morning, with his curtains pulled shut tightly with no wind to rustle them. The sun was deadly now, he remembered, so he forgone his usual routine of getting up, cleaning himself up and heading to the porch for a smoke.
He pulled his sweater over himself and brushed some invisible dust off. Being cooped up in the house with nothing to do was normal, but now with this apocalypse looming down over him, it became almost unbearable. But he wasn’t going to do it, not right now. Not when he knows he could make things right for himself.
Stepping out of his room with his shotgun in his hands, he went into each room in his home to check on his guests. They were all well, albeit a little hungry from staying inside with limited food sources. He told one of them that he’ll work on that, find enough food for all of them if they just eat sacredly. They didn’t like the sound of that, but he had already left before they could complain.
Entering the bathroom, he looked around the small room before approaching the mirror. Even if this whole apocalypse wasn’t caused by some virus that had the ability to spread through any means, he still had to check himself.
Maybe some people will say that the government was brainwashing them, brainwashing everyone into believing this is something to be afraid off while killing off and taking people away to ‘quarantine’ zones to do something. Maybe to control the population, maybe to get rid of immigrants, but he wasn’t sure. He would’ve been one of those many people who believes that the government, his government, was making everyone obey through fear if he hadn’t been the personal witness to a group of wandering people melting and burning outside when sunset was arriving. They got hit with a few of the sun’s rays, and he was the witness for their last breaths.
He checked his teeth. Straight and white. He vaguely remembered wearing braces at some point and trying to give up smoking, so then why did his dream have him remember having slightly crooked and yellowed teeth? He wasn’t sure, but these weren’t good. He’ll have to find a way to make them yellow again.
He checked his eyes. They were clear, indicating no signs of being a visitor and that he had a goodnight sleep without nightmares, regrets and guilt haunting him.
He was tired now. Being cooped up inside the house with no other outlet to let that energy go made him tired. He wasn’t sure if it was midday or still the early hours of the morning, but he skipped coffee, skipped whatever measly breakfast he was going to have and head straight for bed.
He still had his gun, so without changing or taking off his socks or pulling the blanket over himself, he laid down in a fetal position, gun held close to him like a lover and closed his eyes, letting sleep take him once again. But it came slow, and it made him feel like he was slowly being pulled into a whirlpool. But he didn’t care. The water of the whirlpool was cool, unlike the heat of the sun during daytime.
“Smoking is baaaad for you.” A slender finger reached out towards his cigarette, which he slapped away without a thought.
There were a few people in his house at the moment, though much less than what others would recommend. He knows that some other people would like to have at least more than five people in their own houses for complete safety measures, but he hated people and interacting with them exhausts him greatly. So, at the current moment, after a few nights, there was a fortune teller in his kitchen, a very tall but normal guy and some ballerina lady in his living room, a woman who had cried for many nights and some stoned out hippie in his bathroom. They don’t bother him much and seem to get along with each other fine.
There was one person he made an exception for, however, because he actually liked interacting with her. She was his neighbor’s daughter, young and quite cheerful. Now that spark from her eyes were gone. Her dad and mom weren’t here anymore, and he had taken it upon himself to look after her. After all, she kept calling him uncle despite not being related.
“I don’t care if it is. It keeps the Vigilante away.” He said as he took another drag, blowing smoke out of his nose and looking sideways towards the imposing pale figure hunched against the wall.
The pale visitor had one hand on the window sill while the other was kept limb by his side. His hair didn’t change; his skin still didn’t look like it was the right size for him, his eyes still bore that impossibly deep dread that was not his. Some days, he thought about reaching out and touching just below his rib, to see how that would feel like.
He looked like someone, but he hadn’t bothered to ask yet.
But, he made his own terms. He will not touch anyone in any way unless they were in his house. This one was yet to be allowed in. Though, it was quite hypocritical of him. He had followed that bald prophet’s request to let the lady with a cat inside, and now he could clearly see how much she resembled him. It was like they were siblings or knew each other very fondly before this.
Speaking of which, he looked down and saw the cat rubbing its head against his pants leg, purring and shutting its eyes with something like content. He smiled and took the cigarette out form between his lips and handed to the pale visitor. He looked at it with curiosity before holding it, but not smoking it.
Bending over and picking up the ginger cat, he held it in his arms like a baby and rocked back and forth slowly, humming a melody. He had a dog before, and other pets ever since he was a child. May they be lizards, cats, dogs or bugs, he still treated them with care and love. And although the owner of this one was still somewhat alive and in his living room, he still wanted to care for and love this one.
“Ooohh, it’s her little creature.” The pale visitor commented as he dropped the cigarette on purpose and stepped on it, approaching the window and looking at the cat. “Although, I’m more of a dog person.”
“You dropped my cigarette on purpose, asshole.” He glared at the visitor with something similar to playfulness but also spite, holding the cat closer to him in sudden protectiveness. The pale man only chuckled.
The cat purred in his arms as he resumed to hum the melody in the back of his throat. His mother often sang lullabies to him every time he goes to sleep, so he remembers them fondly. Soon, the cat squirmed, climbed out of his arms and back on the floor as it walked back towards the drawer at the front door.
He sighed and brushed cat hair off of himself before shoving one hand into his pocket, pulling out his cigarette pack and taking another stick out using his mouth. When he went to get his lighter, the visitor’s hand darted in and took him by the wrist, slowly pulling it out the window. His heart quickened with the sudden fight or flight instincts, but he didn’t pull away. He let himself be pulled closer to the window until his head was outside, cigarette loose between his lips.
The pale visitor smiled, lowering his wrist slowly like a warning before pulling a lighter out of his pants pocket, flicking it on and lighting the butt of the cigarette. He only stared back at him, feeling the way the smoke clawed at his lips, trying to get him to inhale so it could enter. He did just so, exhaling a large amount of smoke out of his nose and feeling the slight burn of it.
“Are you doing this so I could let you in?” He asked as he removed the cigarette, holding it between his hands with some questions swirling around his head, though he wasn’t even aware what those questions were. He was just confused.
“Maybe, but it’s up to you.” He replied with a smile, an index stretched out towards his face to leave a short but lingering touch on his nose.
Tall, white teeth, that big, bright smile and eyes kind of bloodshot. He reminded him of someone, but he couldn’t remember that person’s face clearly.
The dream from a few nights ago were no more than scattered bits and pieces in his mind, but he slowly pieced it back together while he had the smoke. The pale visitor was talking about something, he knew that because his mouth was moving, but no words were properly registered in his mind.
Then, when his cigarette had reached the near end of its life, he crushed the butt with his own fingers, feeling the slight burn of it before tossing what was left out the window. The visitor’s eyes followed it, but didn’t comment on it. He stood there, silently watching the remaining smoke disappear into the night sky, arms crossed on the window sill with this creature outside his house.
He reached a finger into his mouth, touched and felt at his teeth. None of them felt any weirder than he last saw them, but then he touched a canine on the far right. It was slightly crooked. he felt around more. A front tooth, tilted off to one side and another tooth in the front, much smaller than the rests for some reason. It was only a few, but it was enough to confirm his suspicions. His dreams were true, it’s just that paranoia got to him so bad that now he could only see what was considered wrong for him to have. Bloodshot eyes from sleep, white teeth from proper hygiene, dirty hands from gardening or simply scratching himself at night, hairless armpits because he shaves among other things.
What had the world really come to?
“You used to be human, right?” He asked as he turned to make eye contact with the visitor. His eyes were almost pitch-black. “I heard on the news that it’s kind of like an infection.”
The pale man smiled, folded his hands in front of himself, but he didn’t say anything. It was almost like he was considering it. “Yes, I suppose I was once.” He answered with a tone of whimsicalness in his voice, like remembering a distant memory. “But why would I need that now? Being human is sooo boring sometimes, now I can have everything I want if I just follow orders. Simple, straightforward ones.”
“They’re still orders, like how I would take orders from my boss.”
“Yes, but your boss is probably an idiot unlike Her.”
“Stop talking about Her.”
He never snaps often, but when he does, no one wants to be near him then. This man, this creature, however, only looked at him with a gleam of amusement. He likes watching people suffer, so maybe him snapping was a form of suffering too. He turned away for a moment, eyes shut to recompose himself.
He’s slowly breaking apart here. Day by day.
He’s slowly going insane here. Day by day.
Day by day in this god forsaken world.
Day by day because of this government.
Day by day because FEMA would not fucking leave him alone.
Day by fucking day in this house that was more of a prison to him than a place to rest and be at peace at.
He opened his eyes. Everything was blurry. He looked down at his hands and saw that they were wet. He blinked a few times, and more wetness came, sliding down his cheeks and dripping down towards the burnt grass. He looked over and saw that the pale man was no longer smiling. Instead, he wore a face of concern, his brows slightly furrowed and a half frown on his face. He didn’t even know visitors could do that.
“Am I crying?” He asked, voice cracking and confirming his suspicion. But he still wanted to hear the answer from the visitor.
He looked at him, his black eyes staring back at his green ones. It was a deep stare, the type that psychiatrists do when they need to examine your mental health after you spilled everything to them. He waited for a while, then he saw his mouth twitched.
“A lot, yes, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone cry like you do.” The pale man commented, a finger under his chin in fake curiosity.
The answer was straightforward, yes, there was nothing to really think about after hearing it, but he couldn’t help but smile. No, he didn’t think the visitor cared about him. If he had let him in nights ago, he would’ve been dead. But it was something similar to that feeling, of someone caring for you just enough that they would ask if you’ve been doing alright. In this case, telling him that he cried like no other he’d seen before.
“Come in.” He moved away from the window and positioned himself against the wall, hands already searching for another cigarette and placing it between his lips.
The pale man stared at him with confusion, cocking his head like a curious child, approaching closer but not sticking any of his freakishly long limbs through the window. They stared at each other like that for a few tensed but quiet seconds. None moved or talked, none attempted anything and they even tried to blink less than usual. He knew that the visitor didn’t blink much, not a lot at least, so his eyes were starting to burn from staring too long.
Finally, the pale man spoke up. He sighed internally and blinked his dry and semi-exhausted eyes rapidly.
“Are you allowing me in?” He smiled. That same one he always used. He wondered if he could smile any different.
“Yes.” He answered. “I know you won’t kill me, and I need someone to light my cig.” It was a poor, terrible excuse, he knew that, but the two magical words had already been uttered so he knows that the pale visitor will just enter without another moment of hesitation.
And that was what he did. He placed one hand above himself, holding onto the window frame and sticking a bare foot it, making sure it was firmly planted on the ground before he climbed in. He looked terrifying like this; he could recall all the nightmares he had about this creature climbing in and strangling him to death. But here he was, a waiting cigarette between his lips and the creature that had a lighter for him inside his house.
Their height differences were made even more apparent, as the visitor loomed over him completely, blocking any light from the window from shining onto him. And yet, he waited, staring up at him expectedly.
He was the one who made the first move, removing the cigarette from between his lips and raising to towards the visitor. He looked down at the nicotine stick, looked back up at the man always dressed in a blue sweater whenever he saw him and pulled out the lighter, letting the flame hang between them for a while before he hovered it over and light the cigarette.
“Thank you, Ru.” He muttered, hoping the pale man didn’t hear the nickname and took a drag.
His heart hammered in his chest from the close proximity, his hands suddenly felt clammy, and his feet had the urge to shuffle. But he did none of that, instead, he acted nonchalant so the visitor wouldn’t pick up on his nervousness.
When he directed his eyes back at the man – or creature – in front of him, he saw him smiling. But not the usual smile he was used to seeing. It looked like the one when he saw him outside the window for the first time. No lips assumingly, no nose and no eyes. What was left in their stead was two hollow sockets, a hole where the nose was supposed to be and a line of pearly white teeth.
“You’re welcome, Misha.” He drawled out as his face resumed back to the one he often sees, all his features suddenly popping back in place.
So he does remember.