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Stanley won’t admit it.
There’s little point in saying it, his hesitance born out of spite, guilt, petulance, insurrection—any emotion he could use to signify his feelings towards the Narrator’s ceaseless presence. But, well, the room beyond the red door is nice. Peaceful, maybe, if he had some true, uninterrupted silence.
Stifling a laugh, Stanley recognises the inherent absurdity of the thought and sits down, splaying his hands against the cool metal of the floor. It’s grounding, he thinks begrudgingly and stares up into the abyss. Purples melt into warm reds and Stanley, for a brief moment, thinks that maybe he had been a little cruel before. Perhaps it was time for the Narrator to have it his way.
He had played the role of petulance well, he thinks, patting himself on the back a little. But that facade of freedom, so cruelly out of reach—he knows he’ll only ever graze his fingertips across its allure. No, he could wait a little longer, so taking a step back wasn’t giving in.
Distantly, Stanley is aware that the door had closed behind him, as they are prone to doing here. It doesn’t particularly bother him. Finding his way back here won’t be hard, and there has to be something after this, he thinks. There always is. It’s written.
Yes. It’s a nice room. Maybe one of the nicer rooms he has found himself in. It’s dark and warm, and the colour-changing lights dancing above him are mesmerising, hypnotic, and meditative.
It reminds him a little of the employee lounge, now that he thinks about it. Which, in turn, reminds him of the Narrator’s distaste for said lounge, and that gets him thinking: what really is the difference between the two? They’re both peaceful, calm and blue, somewhere to ‘stop’, as the Narrator had put it. And yet the Narrator blasphemes the former and venerates the latter—what contradiction! This gets Stanley sort of mad, wondering why he’s given the grace to relax here but is chastised for it in the (as he would argue, equally mesmerising and calming) employee lounge, pounded by incessant monologuing. It’s not fair.
But fairness is a fallacy, and Stanley is astutely aware of this fact. He hums, bothered, but lets the thought go.
It is at this moment that Stanley becomes aware of the silence, the very thing he had been lamenting on the lack of only mere moments earlier. He narrows his eyes at the ceiling, a habit he had picked up in an attempt to find some sort of corporeality to project his hate, annoyance, bitterness (et cetera, et cetera) towards. However, all he sees are the blinding lights. Not that he had really been expecting any differently. Yet, and this is also something he would never admit, the constant presence of the Narrator, albeit grating, has become a comfort in these winding halls. Never mind if he chooses correctly or not; the confirmation that he had been wrong serves as validation that his choices had meaning, even when they don’t.
Contorted and oxymoronic, but he’d rather know his decisions, ultimately, mean nothing than know nothing about them at all.
And so, it’s in this silence that Stanley decides to look around the room, past the spinning lights and towards—oh.
Oh?
Is that a door? The red door?
No, it had closed behind him, hadn’t it? But it’s open now, a dim light illuminating the hallway.
Stanley tries to remember the direction he had entered from but it’s to no avail; the geometry of this office is hardly euclidian at the best of times. This door may lead to a fire escape, another office corridor, or back to the same room he’s standing in right now.
He looks to the ceiling, thinking a simple hey, but it’s never very clear where the Narrator’s apparent telepathy starts and ends. Selective-telepathy, Stanley corrects himself, because it’s become very evident that the Narrator is more than comfortable picking and choosing what he plucks from Stanley’s mind.
Or, and Stanley only entertains this thought to retain some semblance of sanity, it truly is up to him to decide which thoughts do and do not penetrate.
No matter the answer as he is met with a cold silence.
Stanley shakes his head, a bit peeved. This room is boring now and he wants something more exciting. The more time he spends alone, the more he wants to rebel. Something about needing one another, the Curator had said, and if that wasn’t extremely infuriating…!
The open door becomes more and more enticing the longer the silence stretches, as open doors are prone to doing, and Stanley wonders if he has been too obedient. That the Narrator had never expected him to stand for this long staring into the illuminated darkness.
Stanley suddenly feels very stupid and he stands up clumsily, pacing towards that beautiful beacon of rebellion.
Inside it, a dingy hallway stretches out. The walls peel at the edges, unpainted and rough. The stench of mildew hits him, the colourless drywall a stark difference from the room before and Stanley’s pace slows the further in he gets. The hallway becomes more decrepit as he walks down it, the colour sapped from his surroundings. An industrial smell coats the walls, and then the hallway turns and opens into a tall, spacious room.
Finally, the silence is broken.
“No, wait! Where are you going?” Says the Narrator, and if Stanley were naïve, he would attribute some tentativeness to his tone. Worry. But Stanley is not naïve and he knows the Narrator’s tricks. Does he really expect Stanley to stay in that room forever, not to explore the open door? How ridiculous.
Stanley’s footsteps echo behind him. He stops in the doorway, an acorn trapped in his oesophagus.
Nothing good can be extrapolated from those stairs. Stanley’s eyes follow the flights. One, two, three, until they reach the top, a ledge.
Stanley’s stomach churns, his gaze snapped towards the ceiling. The implications are intentional—everything in this office is, from the position of each mug, the tilt of each chair, the leaves on each plant. Elicit some sort of feeling. Confusion, anger, happiness. Determine certain thoughts, certain feelings, certain actions, and these stairs…
Stanley stops thinking very intentionally. He stands motionless in the threshold.
He walks back, turning away from that cloying feeling. The lights don’t look nearly as mesmerising with this sour taste in his mouth. Hangs his head. Sits down and crosses his legs. Takes a moment to reacquaint himself with the darkness.
Never before has he felt the intense urge to stop the story. Change, adapt, reject, sure. That was what Stanley liked doing most, but now, thinking of those stairs, he feels a tightness in his throat, doesn’t want to know the resolution to this ending, because he knows very well that whatever lies in there is the resolution. Staying in here for perpetuity can’t be.
Stanley thinks hard, very hard, as hard as he can. He stares into the ceiling, blinded by a vibrant blue, and attempts to tell the Narrator that he would like to stop, briefly remembering that was exactly what the Narrator had told him before he entered the room.
A diorama of green blinks back at him. Nothing. Wringing his hands in his lap, Stanley thinks that two forms of communication might be better at getting his point across.
‘What do you expect me to do?’ He signs, gesturing towards the door, already knowing the answer but wishing it weren’t true. Of course, he thinks, of course it couldn’t have been as simple as happiness. It never is.
This silence, too, is cruel. So, Stanley waits. Perhaps happiness will come to him if only he waits.
But he isn’t a patient man, never has been, so Stanley sits up again, straightening his back. Perhaps he had missed something. Yes, that must be it. There was a door at the top of those stairs, but his trepidation had caused him to miss it. And it would lead to somewhere new, a real ending. An ending in which Stanley could feel that devastating and relieving closure. Waiting here for all of eternity hardly wraps anything up. Where was the tension, the climax? It isn’t like the Narrator to end a story with no resolution.
With this renewed hope and invigoration, Stanley walks towards the door again. What, scared of a few flights of stairs? How ridiculous, he can hear the Narrator saying. Stanley was so pathetic that he turned around, tail between his legs, at the thought of cardio!
When the Narrator next speaks, the voice isn’t just inside Stanley’s head. “Stay away from those stairs!” He shouts.
Stanley stops, one hand on the bannister, the other swaying limp. He blinks.
What?
“If you hurt yourself—if you die—the game will reset! We’ll lose all of this!”
Stanley clenches his fist, tightening his jaw. It is, as Stanley had come to the premature conclusion, the only way out. Articulating it would make it real, thinking it would make it real, never mind actually following through with it. But he’s been here before, been faced with the depressing and sobering reality that death was the only way out. When he had wondered what would happen if he chose ON instead of OFF, when he’d missed the cargo lift and the Narrator had goaded him into jumping, promising him that the fall wouldn’t be that bad and his bones had splintered when he hit the floor. A phantom of suicide following him once he awoke once more.
It’s a crushing realisation to have, especially with this dissonance. Usually, the Narrator is all too pleased with Stanley’s ensured demise, laughing as he takes the leap. The tone in his voice now is almost pleading. Begging, as though this wasn’t all by his design.
Is this what he had meant by stopping? Because, no matter how pleasant and utopian the idea of sitting forever in friendly silence watching a light display is, Stanley knows that it isn’t possible. Time is kinder to the Narrator than it is to Stanley. Moreover, the game never ends, but it always has an ending. A way to tie everything up neatly, a conclusion and a lesson learned, then reset. Such is the essence of the parable—what use is an ending if there has been nothing to learn?
A way for Stanley to once again choose, to be given the illusion of freedom.
To be chastised. To bicker. To laugh. Stanley swallows thickly.
He walks up the stairs.
“Please, no, Stanley, let me stay here!” The Narrator’s voice echoes out in the barren room. “Don’t take this from me!”
Stanley’s stomach ties itself into coagulating knots. Take this from him? As if the Narrator hadn’t taken everything from Stanley! It was selfish, manipulative, horribly, unimaginably cruel. Worse still, it’s working. With each step Stanley takes, his stomach tightens. Guilt pooling inside it, washing away any sense of misplaced happiness he could have felt from the beautiful, calming room. Why put this at all, he thinks—why offer something as horrific as this as a choice? It doesn't make sense, and the absurdity of it all gives Stanley pause. For the first time in a while, he has absolutely no idea of what to do. He can’t go back, there’s no point now. He knows what his options are, and it’s starting to make him a little miserable.
Wants to drown it all out. Drown out the Narrator’s begging, his pleading, so that this doesn’t have to hurt. He’s nearly there, the ground further and further away from him, and it’s hurting him already.
Forget about the pain, that never lasts. But this guilt, this awful, cloying, synthetic feeling, that will last. It will carry over, cling to his chest as he wakes to the blinking of his computer, hunched down over the desk. It will carry over, and the Narrator will act as though nothing had happened at all.
Stanley feels sick when he realises he has reached the top, hand slipping from the bannister. Looking down, the ground sways beneath him.
He recognises this feeling. He’s scared.
I don’t want to, he thinks, and the thought makes his stomach curl. This fear, something he wasn’t so sure he could even feel anymore, not properly, it’s strangling him. He suppresses the guilt, deluding himself into thinking he has nothing to be guilty for. He hasn’t done anything yet, feet planted solidly on the dense concrete of the stairs. But he will. He has to. He knows he will, knows that he must jump to end this. To make it stop so it can start again.
Stanley focuses on the rising and falling of his chest. Willing, pleading, the room around him to morph, to change, to offer some sort of alternative. For the Narrator to suddenly decry what a big joke this has all been, to belittle him, to shout at him, make fun of him. Anything other than this—this pleading. It’s horrible. The emotion in his voice is almost too much to bear. Too human. Stanley never wants to hear it again, if only to never have to confer with the implication of the heaviness in his own chest, the shaking of his own hands that he knows isn’t only due to fear.
He needs to end this.
So, Stanley takes one step forward; his stomach turning in on itself and his chest hollowing.
Hits the ground. Closes his eyes. Just a few moments, then oblivion.
But oblivion doesn’t come.
Something is broken, a blinding sensation tugging at his skull.
It’s going to reset. He’ll open his eyes and he’ll be back in his office, and the Narrator won’t sound like that anymore, and he’ll make a promise never to open this door again. This is what he gets for playing along. This is what he gets for letting someone else take control.
Stanley opens his eyes. There’s blood in his hair.
He stands up, slowly, and his legs nearly give out from beneath him. His leg—that’s what’s broken.
A heavy sigh of relief shatters the stagnant air. “Oh, thank God. You lived.”
He shouldn’t have. It was a fifty foot drop.
“You had me worried there for a moment,” the Narrator continues. “Now, can we please get back to the other room?” A sense of urgency undercuts his tone, but something else is there too. Annoyance? Disappointment? As though his patience is getting low. It makes Stanley’s head swim, and he blinks, wiping hair from his forehead. When he looks down at his hand, it’s smothered in blood.
It hurts, he realises. For the first time—perhaps since he can ever remember—it hurts. His head aches and his legs feel numb.
Why?
It’s the only thought that Stanley can muster. Why did he survive? Why this? Why hide something so sinister under the pretence of happiness? Why, why, why?
His hands are shaking, and he grasps the left one with his right one. The Narrator doesn’t deserve dialogue. Doesn’t deserve retaliation. Doesn’t deserve explanation. Because it makes no damn sense. Stanley can’t think about it, can’t let himself feel it, because if he lets himself, he dreads to think how much worse this will be.
Because he knows there’s no other way out. Knows the answer before he asks the question. The only way out, the only way to an ending, is up there, not back in the other room. It’s no different to any other ending, except it’s hurting the both of them. Fucking endings and beginnings. Fuck the story! This is insane!
Stanley’s head pounds, constricts, thinking of how grief-stricken the Narrator had sounded when he had taken the fall. Can’t let himself debate over whether that grief was real or not.
All he can do is take the leap again.
Clinging to the railings, Stanley starts to feel the weight of his actions. If the first fall hadn’t killed him, what makes him think that the second will? Is this the conclusion he’s hurtling towards—eternal happiness or eternal torture? A hyperreal facsimile, a simulacrum of a utopia made entirely from the Narrator’s disdain towards his petulance. Punish him with guilt, because the Narrator knows goading and bullying no longer work. Play on his humanity, his empathy, because as much as Stanley might like to pretend that this all means nothing, detach himself from the absurd horror of it all, he still feels. Feels immensely. Wishes he didn’t, but he does.
A lifetime alone with a room filled with synthetic stars, or a lifetime of pain in perpetuity.
He wishes it would stop. Perhaps if he had just listened in the first place, everything would be okay. Perhaps this is what he gets for being defiant—eternal punishment. That’s what you deserve, Stanley! This is exactly your comeuppance! He bites back a pained laugh. As if the whole parable wasn’t just that. He’d imagined it couldn’t get any worse, that being fated, created, to live out the same scenarios over and over again was bad enough. This was beyond bad. It was absurd. It was fucked up. Contradictory and devastating.
“No! What did we talk about?” Interrupts the Narrator, making everything worse. “You’re risking everything we achieved here!” He exclaims.
We? Stanley thinks. There is no we. He had done what he was supposed to, right? Done nothing beside plunging himself to his presumed death. Does the Narrator seriously think this is the preferable ending for the both of them?
Once he reaches the third flight of stairs, he belatedly realises how tired he feels and how much effort it’s taking him to drag himself up another step. He wishes that the Narrator would just shut up so he could kill himself properly, and the thought sours on his tongue. He doesn’t want to die, even though he knows he won’t die, not properly.
“You heard me before, didn’t you?” He’s pleading. “You. Will. Die.”
Stanley knows this. It’s what he’s trying to do!
“What about this isn’t getting through to you?”
It makes him want to cry. It’s so awful. It’s awful, because Stanley does know. Because Stanley had heard, because this is all so very clear to Stanley. He recognises that happiness does not exist here, but surely the Narrator must realise that it doesn’t exist elsewhere either. Does he seriously expect Stanley to give up his own happiness just so he can have his peaceful ending?
But that’s the way it goes, isn’t it? Stanley was happy—the Narrator was not. The Narrator was happy—Stanley was not.
An ouroboros of cataclysmic, paradoxical torment. Neither of them deserves it, happiness or pain. But Stanley deserves this. He drowns it all out, finding himself at the summit once again.
Please, he thinks, please let me die.
He closes his eyes and jumps.
A crack. Ringing in his ears.
Stanley opens his eyes. Blood clouds his vision.
Nothing. The Narrator is saying something, pleading for him to return to the other room, saying that Stanley must hate him, must hate this game, must want to hurt him, and fuck, fuck, fuck. Stanley wants it all to be over. He cannot fix this. He’s made a mistake.
So, he pushes himself to his feet again. Wonders how he’s still alive.
Little thought occurs when he starts to scale the stairs once more. Between the ringing in his ears and the determination to put this all to an end, Stanley hears nothing.
He falls again. A trickle of blood catches his nose. Doesn’t dare look down. Can hardly move. Something is wrong because this shouldn’t be possible. For a moment, molten panic sears throughout his battered body when he considers that perhaps he genuinely, seriously, cannot die, and he has smattered and marred his body for nothing.
He falls again. Searing pain.
This must be it. It has to be.
There’s blood in Stanley’s hair.
“Is it over? It’s going to restart, isn’t it? I’m going back.”
When Stanley opens his eyes, all of his coworkers are gone.
His computer blinks rhythmically at him.
Blink. Blink.
Letting go of a shaky breath, Stanley clutches his knees, doubling over. Not even a residue of pain lingers. He stares into the blank monitor, catching his face in the glass.
Blinks back tears. It’s over. The Narrator was right. It was over. Going back? What had he meant by that? Of course, they were going to go back. It was written, right? Stanley squeezes his eyes shut, hoping to blind himself with that darkness, but the phosphenes remind him of that damned room.
“Stanley, are you all right?” The noise startles him and his eyes snap open. It’s such a stark difference in tone that it feels violent. He’s torn between lowering his eyes to the carpet, this orange gaudy thing, or lashing out in insults at the Narrator.
He does neither, resolutely staring at his reflection.
The Narrator hums. “Yes, very egotistical of you Stanley, however might I remind you that all of your coworkers are gone?” He goads Stanley into conversation, but Stanley can still hear the echoes of his pleading cries from only mere moments earlier. It makes him feel sick, as though his torment was for nothing.
‘Leave me alone.’ He messily signs out, hoping that wherever his omnipresence resides, the Narrator can see him.
Evidently, he does, as the Narrator scoffs. “Well, that’s not very kind, Stanley. If I have done something to upset you, I’d very much like to know so we can continue with the story.”
It gives Stanley pause, because, really, the Narrator hadn’t done anything. He’d had an appropriate reaction to the careless and destructive behaviour that Stanley had displayed. It was all Stanley’s fault, but the Narrator had made it his fault, given him the option and then acted as though Stanley were the cruel one for taking that option. He blinks again, searching, but the words won’t come, he cannot articulate this. Stanley wonders, optimistically, if maybe he should just forget the whole ordeal and make a bid to never return again.
Yes. It seems like the sane thing to go. He had seen what lay beyond the red door, done what he was supposed to, followed orders, got his comeuppance. With his desires sated and his curiosity quashed, there was no reason to return.
No exit. No room for further exploration.
A beautiful room with a terrifying exit. That was all.
But his hands shake in their grip on his trousers, a meagre response to his ramblings, and an indication that, however much he wants to exclaim that he is quite all right, the reality is that he’s not. This has shaken him.
He just needs a moment. One minute to collect himself, Stanley argues to himself. Just a few minutes and he’ll be fine.
Fuck. Who is he kidding—he’s rattled beyond belief.
He hears a shuffling of papers and the Narrator begins with a false start, humming indignantly and then sighing. “Forgive me for going off script here, Stanley, but if something truly is ailing you, it would be better if you said so.” It makes Stanley sort of mad, because he knows that the Narrator remembers, knows that he has the image of blood and constellations behind his eyes too. And so he knows that the Narrator is keeping up this facsimile of normalcy, and that’s it’s totally predictable for him to do so. What’s the point in ruminating on the past? The story is over. The page closed. Shelved. It doesn’t exist anymore, a figment of Stanley’s imagination, only relapsing once Stanley goes through the motions again.
But he wants to explain. Wants to scream and shout about how unfair it had been. Wants to say he’s sorry, but he doesn’t feel very sorry at all. He doesn’t know what he feels. Shattered and confused. Wants to share that pain once again, but he’s left stewing in it all alone. The fucking cherry on top. The afterimage of it burns, but he’s the only one left to feel the pain.
“No? Nothing?”
Go away, he wants to say. Knows he doesn’t mean it. That he craves the company as much as he resents it.
“I’m afraid that’s impossible,” the Narrator says. It’s not, Stanley knows that much. He’s been left alone, wandered off too far, escaped the boundaries of the story, if only for a moment, countless times before.
It still bothers him.
His eyes dart to the ceiling, eyebrows low and creased. ‘I didn’t mean it.’ His eyes start to water and he curses himself for it. It’s over. But it’s never over.
More frantic scattering of papers. “Stanley, are you—?” Stanley would revel in the discordancy of it all if he weren’t feeling so fucking awful. Something comes over him, something sticky and messy, and he realises how absurd this all is. Embarrassment, maybe; that desperate urge to always have the upper hand despite knowing he is always two steps behind. He frantically wipes at his eyes, sniffling and snapping his gaze back to the computer. Ridiculous. Utterly ridiculous.
‘I’m fine,’ he signs shakily, holding his breath.
The small office cubicle is silent for a few moments, and Stanley finds some strange comfort in it, the eeriness of isolation he has become accustomed to far better than the pain of concrete. What comfort could the Narrator even give him? He could tell Stanley that he was sorry, or that he wasn’t sorry at all, that it was a joke, or that he was dead serious and the image of Stanley plummeting into hard concrete really had shaken him. It wouldn’t change anything. The Narrator doesn’t care; all he wants is compliance, actions that serve the story, one step forward and not two steps back. Stanley exists as a conduit, an object of interpassivity. His pain is digital, ones and zeros, he knows this, but he still feels it, and so does it matter if his whole being exists in simulacra?
“Well,” the Narrator says thickly. “I’m not sure what to tell you Stanley.”
No, Stanley supposes that’s right, isn’t it? What is there to tell?
He hopes, stupidly, for a moment, that the Narrator might offer him some words of comfort. That he might tell Stanley that it was cruel of him, and that they needn't go inside that room again. That Stanley hadn’t been wrong, hadn’t been the manipulative one, that he had only done what was offered to him, and how was he supposed to do any different?
Nothing comes. The Narrator sighs impatiently and Stanley feels himself deflate.
So, Stanley pulls himself together, rips his eyes from the blinking computer screen. If the Narrator wants to pretend it didn’t happen, maybe that’s for the best.
The feeling doesn’t leave him.
The phantom pain of a broken leg.
He thinks that maybe, at some point, this will all explode. That they’re both keeping it inside, wants to be charitable and believe the Narrator does have some humanity. He plays along, presses the OFF button and stands, legs unsteady as the sliver of freedom comes closer, closer, and listens to how happy the Narrator sounds.
And Stanley was happy.
He doesn’t feel particularly happy when he steps out into the synthetic field, only to be snapped into darkness once again.
But Stanley was happy, the Narrator says.
Could he be happy? The Narrator had wanted them both to be happy when he had opened the red door, promising Stanley something beautiful. And, God, it was beautiful. Stanley can see that now. But it had meant nothing.
It doesn’t really matter. He plays this game the only way he knows how. Rejects continuity and plays the role of petulance perfectly. He jumps from the cargo lift, feeling his bones crush under the velocity of his fall, listens to the Narrator tell him how powerful he is, dripping condescension in his tone.
He presses the ON button and watches, motionless, as the Narrator monologues about his ensured demise, wishes he could feel the heat of the explosion, clings to the vibrations of the building. Hopes that this time he won’t reset before it all goes up in flames. Wants something to hurt again, wants the Narrator to care about him instead of himself. He misses it, the sound of panic, the realisation that, however polysemic, the Narrator cared. Starts to associate that care with that pain. Starts to wonder if it hadn’t really been about the dilemma of eternity or entropy. That false choice had been a conduit for something human, something intangible, but so much more palpable than anything else Stanley had ever felt. Desperation. Anger. Resignation.
But it’s pointless because Stanley knows how this story goes. Nothing here is real, in the typical sense, Stanley is acutely aware of this fact. Knows his life begins and ends here, in this hyperreal, but it’s the only life he has. It’s human nature to want to make sense of it. He can ruminate over the dialetheia of the Narrator’s words ad infimum but, he realises, he doesn’t want to.
Wants to believe what he wants to believe. Truth as fiction, and vice versa. Some fucked up doublethink, except he doesn’t understand either belief.
What is he searching for? Because he must be looking for something, right? To feel this way?
Stanley locks himself in his office cubicle and thinks, thinks, thinks. It’s fruitless. But it begins to gnaw at him, the more he thinks. Wonders if anything he does makes any difference. Of course it doesn’t, part of him argues. You know this, Stanley. You know how little any of this matters. Have to pretend that it matters or else he’ll go insane. But he wants the Narrator to care. Wants that pain in his voice to mean something.
It consumes him, and he thinks maybe that he finally has gone insane, revealed too much about the procedural nature of everything. Play it again, Stanley, play it again, don’t stop, because he cannot stop.
He jumps again, hoping for something different. It never comes. Trying to make sense of the parable had never truly occurred to him before, but now the idea has penetrated him, a bullet in his chest, no exit wound, he cannot let it go. Wants to believe that the Narrator has it in him to care, cannot confer with what it means if everything here is synthetic. It’s what bothers him the most, really, the fact that attempting to deconstruct it makes utterly no sense. Before, Stanley could look back at an ending, a narrative resolution, and, even if it had bothered him, could understand the point, the lesson learned. Freedom was not freedom, and exits were not exits. Bombs exploded because he gave up at the last mile. Adventure lines spiralled and coiled in some post-modern meta absurdity, all in aid of saying something. Unravelling a different thread. Closing a door to open a window.
But those stairs! They had to mean something, and Stanley muses and muses and muses. Conducts these violent experiments in search of something concrete to put a pin in. But it’s not about the violence, not about suicide or pain. It’s something else, so devastatingly out of reach.
The Narrator stops him before he can jump again, this time clearing his throat after the cargo lift has left without Stanley. “Stanley, I think perhaps we should pause for a moment, don’t you think?”
Stanley looks up, confused. What does the Narrator care if he jumps? That was the script, wasn’t it? He peers over the edge, stepping forward.
“Yes, yes, you can jump if you so desire.” The Narrator sighs. “But Stanley—just, listen for a moment, if you would.”
Stanley taps his foot, impatient. He was sort of looking forward to jumping this time. He’s got rather good at it.
“I’m starting to think that there might be something troubling you,” the Narrator says plainly.
Stanley looks up again, raising an eyebrow. Were they finally going to talk about it? “This—this fascination you have with killing yourself is a little concerning, Stanley,” the Narrator continues. Stanley waits for the other shoe to drop, standing dangerously close to the ledge now. He taps his foot on the zigzagging warning lines.
“Have I done something wrong, Stanley? Is this you trying to prove something to me? It’s incredibly stupid, I might add. You are aware of the fact that you cannot die, right?”
Very aware, Stanley thinks. That’s sort of the point of this all. A litmus test. He shifts himself closer, staring down at the warehouse floor below.
The Narrator heaves out a heavy sigh. “Fine, have it your way. You never listen to me anyway. Go on, do it.”
Stanley does. He jumps and his bones crack on the impact.
Stanley finds himself standing on the threshold of the red door once again. He could step back, walk through the blue door and escape the devastation he knows is waiting for him.
He doesn’t. Can’t. Has to see this through. The choice is here, is it not? This is something he can do. Is permitted to do, even if the Narrator says otherwise. The Narrator wants Stanley to go through this door. Wants him to see true happiness. It’s what’s bothering him so desperately, this contradiction of volition, the space between right and wrong, true and false. What the Narrator wants and what Stanley wants. Incompatible and interdependent. A logical fallacy. Can’t work. Can’t exist. He wants to work it out.
The Narrator wants them to stop.
Stanley doesn’t think he has it in him to stop. But he closes his eyes, walks through the illuminated passageway when the non-euclidian walls morph and change. It isn’t petulance that drives him this time, he doesn’t think, despite how desperately he wants to rebel. He sits, stares and attempts to empty his mind. Maybe he had been wrong, and maybe it was all his fault. Maybe he was a terrible person, born out of the Narrator’s fears of isolation, created for the purpose of company, and he was trying to rip that away from the Narrator, go against his programming.
That was bad, and Stanley doesn’t want to be bad.
He won’t admit it, but he needs the Narrator, needs him to guide him, tell him what’s right, what’s wrong.
Give him emotion. Humanity. Give him something he can know for certain isn’t a fallacy. Isn’t made up of contradiction and coexistence. Needs something steady, something real. Something he can grasp onto and define as real, forge his own reality. He could do it, knows that when nothing matters everything can matter. He just needs the Narrator to give it to him, hold out a hand for Stanley to take, for them to craft that reality together.
Stanley lies down, spreads his arms out against the cool metal, and stares into the black ceiling, watches the synthetic stars twinkle.
Fuck, maybe this was happiness. Stanley could have been wrong about it all. Was happiness silence? Should he find comfort in that silence? Did the Narrator think that Stanley hated him that much, gave him an out in this isolation? It makes Stanley feel sick again and he squeezes his eyes shut, doesn’t think about the open door only a few feet away, knows that he’s trapped himself in this ending, knows what will happen if he decides he’s had enough of happiness. Curiosity had gotten the better of him.
He stops.
Waits.
Counts the seconds before the numbers in his head melt.
Waits some more.
It’s ridiculous, because he knows that nothing will come.
But, he thinks listlessly, it was what the Narrator had wanted, wasn’t it? Happiness.
And Stanley was happy. He repeats this to himself, thinking that maybe he could pavlov himself into feeling it if only he thinks hard enough.
He waits. Self-serving, and it’s what Stanley had feared the most. That the concern was laden with malice. That the Narrator hadn’t a clue how awful it had all made Stanley feel.
He waits. He has to. Can tell himself it’s another test, that he wants to see how long the Narrator can wait, as though he’s forgotten that the Narrator isn’t human, doesn’t concern himself with frivolous humanities and emotions. A waiting game is immature, but Stanley’s stuck. This time, it is his fault.
He waits. Watches the door instead of the ceiling. Wonders if there’s any chance of respite if he strangles himself to death here in this room. But he craves that emotion, twisted, absurd, immoral. He knows. He wants the Narrator to scoff, he wants him to cry out. Wants him to fuck up, say something he wasn’t supposed to. Anything.
Stanley stops thinking. Was he so deluded into thinking he could figure this all out? It’s ineffable, as everything is. His being is both a miracle and an inevitability. Stanley was happy, Stanley was happy, Stanley was happy.
“It was supposed to make you happy, Stanley.”
It takes a moment for Stanley to realise the words aren't inside his head. He snaps his gaze up to the ceiling, eyebrows furrowed. This wasn’t supposed to happen, was it? He’d said it himself, eternity means nothing to the Narrator. Stanley isn’t sure how long he had waited, though he’s sure it couldn’t have been that long.
He says nothing.
“Are you… unhappy, Stanley?”
It’s almost enough to make him laugh, but the question gives Stanley pause. Is he unhappy? What does he want? His hands twitch in his lap, and he brings them together hesitantly. That niggling thought, the one that had been gnawing at him, rears it’s head. He’s acquainted with the petulance, the push and pull, immovable objects and unstoppable forces. That makes sense. When Stanley pushes, the Narrator pulls. An oscillation between sincerity and indignation. He wants them to coalesce. His actions are without consequence, but is that truly the case? Isn’t this the consequence?
He stops, eyes lighting up. Oh.
That would be it. The one constant. The one thing that stops him from devolving into madness. The one thing that keeps this just on the edge of bearable.
His presence.
Stanley swallows.
It should have been clear from the start, clear when Stanley’s stomach had twisted in on itself, formed a fleshy singularity, when he had first heard the Narrator’s panicked cries, when he had started to miss the conversation, uncomfortable in silence. It should have been clear when he waited, just a few seconds, for the Narrator to say something different, hoping their relationship wasn’t just a conduit for the narrative, that he meant something to the Narrator, just as the Narrator means something to him.
Wants to be needed by the Narrator just as much as Stanley needs him.
Tell me what to do, he thinks.
“Stanley…” the Narrator starts. Something in his tone makes Stanley anxious. “Let’s just stay here, okay?”
Stay here. Here. In this room. Under the lights. For eternity. Stanley puts his head in his hands. His fault.
We can’t, he thinks. Loudly. As loud as he can. Wants the Narrator to understand. But Stanley knows that this is the one contradiction that cannot be solved. He cannot get his way without the Narrator getting hurt, and in turn, Stanley is hurt once more.
“I… I do need you, Stanley.”
It chokes something bitter out of him. Stanley knows he cannot get what he wants. It clicks and it’s sour. This epiphany isn’t welcome, and he wishes it would scurry away, back to where it came from. That was the point of it all, to elucidate how desperately Stanley needed the Narrator, but to never give him the bite into that satisfaction. A display of how codependent he knows, deep down, he truly is. To paint a great big yellow circle around how incompatible their desires are. But what he cannot rationalise, the great big red spot in this all, is why on earth the Narrator would permit something as cruel and ridiculous as this.
Congratulations, Stanley. You figured it all out. How very smart of you. What now? What now, now that you know how this will end, know why it ends? It doesn’t make him feel very smart, but nothing ever does. That is also the point of it all. Stupid, stupid Stanley, always so far behind. He was created for this. Created for ignorance and rebellion. Physically cannot abide by conformity and compliance.
‘But this…’ he starts, but the words don’t come. This isn’t fair? This isn’t nice? Isn’t the way it should go? When did he start thinking he had any say in how things go? Of course, this is how it should go. The Narrator gave him an out because he knows that Stanley, poor, stupid, petulant Stanley, will always need an out. A way to give a giant middle finger to the story. But the Narrator, Stanley realises, truly is happy here… isn’t he?
‘I didn’t ask for this,’ he says childishly. It won’t make much difference. He didn’t ask for any of this.
But the Narrator had said he did need Stanley. He does, he truly does. And Stanley needs him even more. It’s the perfect deception, the perfect display of how much Stanley needs him. That he’ll fall to his own death time and time again because he needs the Narrator so terribly.
So he does. He falls. Stanley knows he cannot reconcile something he was never supposed to reconcile. He’s stupid, but he isn’t naïve. This is how it goes:
Stanley was happy.
Stanley was happy.
Stanley was happy.
Stanley falls and the Narrator pleads and cries and begs Stanley to stop, but Stanley can’t stop, and they both know this. That was what had started it all after all, wasn’t it? The Narrator wanted to stop. Stanley doesn’t have it in him to stop. It’s actually very simple, Stanley realises. Ah, great satisfaction! The lesson was learned after all!
It is right. It isn’t cruel. How could it be cruel when it’s so obviously true? Push and pull, Sisyphus and his rock. Light piercing the accretion disk of a gaping black hole. Stanley needs the Narrator and the Narrator needs him. It’s black and white, foretold. In the game’s DNA, pink spiralling double helix of irreconcilable disagreement.
Stanley falls, and when he opens his eyes, all of his coworkers are gone.
And everything is in its right place, Stanley decides.