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“And then there’ss the buried, and WHEW BOY that one… that one’s bad. Cuz like, you can’t breathe- well you can breathe but only. Only like a little yknow. But like, enough to uh- to- to keep you alive. But not. What was I saying?”
Gerry trailed off and a dozen of his listeners took the opportunity to escape while he paused and thought. It was their loss, probably.
“Good luck getting eaten.” He said behind them, or maybe in front of them, the room was kinda spinning. “But no, that’s…. that’s the hunt. The hunt eatss you?? Mayybe?” He blinked, trying to remember because this was Important. He was pretty sure he had messed that one up. Instead of flinching he forced himself to take another swig of whatever cocktail this was. “The.. the flesh maybe? Mmeat..”
There were footsteps coming but behind him and he turned faster than the gathered group. The music pulsed through his head but by now he was used to the sound of danger played through death metal. He eyed the two security guards warily, taking a single step backwards and trying not to trip.
“You gotta get off the stage now, mate.” Said one of them in the tone you might use to talk to an injured animal, or in this case, a drunk emo.
“No, I haven’t, I HAVEN’T finished my- my list. This- This is important!” He turned back to the population of emo night and resumed yelling over the speakers. He needed to stop turning around so much. “And then- then the Eye- no, wait, the Vast, it- It, uh Robert Smirke-”
He felt two hands grabbing him by the shoulders and immediately froze, cursing himself for turning his back.
“My mum is dead.” He told the bouncer dragging him out.
“Mhm.”
“I didn’t kill her they said I did but I didn’t I didn’t and she killed herself.”
“I’m sorry.” Now he was on the curb, why was he on the curb?
“No it’s a good thing can you let me back in I need to warn everyone I need to-”
The door closed and Gerry, deciding standing on two legs was a bit too much right now, fell to his knees, scraping them against the curb and not even noticing. He mumbled something that sounded like “she’s dead.” A few more times, his knuckles scraping against the concrete as he tried to pick himself up and walk back in. The door. That was the problem, it was locked.
“FUCK.” He called into the street.
He crumpled back to his knees and pressed his forehead to the cold London streets, inhaling the scent of trash and cold blood and blood and there was blood running all over him, bathing his arms in red. He whimpered and scrambled back, fingers swishing through the thick blood as he pleaded for mercy because he just needed a few more minutes, this was important this was important.
Gerry covered his face with his blood soaked hands and let out a gasping sob.
“You look sad, my friend! Do you need a door?”
Gerry looked up, face raw and dripping with water. It was just water. It had started raining and his front was drenched with it now, but it wasn’t blood. Wasn’t anymore, anyway.
When he had managed to unfocus his gaze from his dripping hands and drag it up to refocus on the thing standing in front of him, he didn’t quite know what to say at first.
“You’re… fucking… TALL.”
Gerry stumbled to his feet, shaking like a leaf in the wind from the effort of it.
The figure paused, almost glitched. “Yes I am!”
“And your hands. They’re sso biiiiig.” Gerry made a motion with his hands that might have made sense in the context of some conversation, but made no sense with this one, like he had mistook a cue.
The thing let out a laugh, a rolling dancing sound that was as melodic as a keyboard being put through a hydraulic press. “I am the throat of delusion incarnate, book burner.”
“You.” Gerry leaned against a wall to support himself, head lolling before looking up once again. “Are SO hot.”
There was the sound of an old windows error message.
“I’m sorry, what?”
“You’re LIKE the HOTTEST monster I’ve met.” Gerry’s voice got higher, almost dreamy. “And ah once wrestled a flessh avatar that had biceps the ssize of my HEAD. And they had TEETH in them.” The wall was now fully supporting him as he made little chomping motions with his hands, enthralled in the memory before returning his attention once again to the throat of delusion incarnate. “Yyou look- like a sparkle cat threw up on a wigg. And then like.” He took an ill fated step forward before deciding that too difficult and slumping against the wall again. “those hands.”
“I-”
Gerry threw caution to the wind and took three steps forward, wobbling precariously before falling directly into the Throat of Delusion Incarnate’s arms, which he now noticed had several more joints than typical. “Whaas your name, beautiful sstranger?” he slurred, tilting his head up wildly to stare into the optical illusions that made up the thing’s eyes.
The thing’s expression had turned from a whimsical smile to a look of intense confusion, terror, and if Gerry was being hopeful (he was), a little flustered. “I. Um.” The thing didn’t look particularly familiar with drunk emos throwing themselves at it. Even more, the more it met Gerry’s eyes the less put together it seemed. “They used to call me Michael.”
Gerry leaned closer, whispering louder than he had been talking before and yet still rather seductively. “Can I call you fuckhands mcmike?”
“No!” The thing, Michael, pushed him off and Gerry stumbled over to another door. He tried the handle and this one wasn’t locked. Success! He flung it open.
“They gotta know cause it’s important.” He muttered to himself, “They gotta know they gotta.”
“Wait!” Michael squeaked.
“You can know too!! Sexy- twink- monster thing.” Gerry giggled and stumbled further into the hallways. Left with no particular choice, Michael followed.
Gerry lead his way confidently through the hallways, one hand on the right wall like he had always read about doing when going into mazes. Even now, even in this state, the rules for interacting with the Dread Powers were ingrained into his head, were second nature and twisted so far into his normal thoughts that he couldn’t tell the two apart half the time.
“You’re going the wrong way, Bookburner.” Fuckhands McMike trailed behind him like a lost puppy, rules similarly ingrained in its head. While Gerry’s rules for living were based in fact and logic, however, Michael’s were twisting half truths and full lies that made for a tortured existence beyond any comprehension.
“I am NOT.”
“Yes you are.”
Gerry sighed loudly and stopped. Michael nearly ran into him as he stumbled back a few steps, then regained his bearings. “LOOK, I’m going to let this slide. Because you’re cute.” He pointed at Michael, as if there was some confusion about who he was talking about. There was, he was currently looking at three Michaels all blurred together in his vision. “BUT you don’t undersstand, ssee like! This placee is not from this world.”
He stage whispered the last part, with both hands covering his mouth like a microphone.
Michael, for its part, could only blink and watch this scrappy little drunk emo explain its existence.
“Like, there are these powers and they eat our fear. So, like, we gotta control them!” He threw a few air punches and nearly threw up, having to lean against a wall for support once again. “And you… I think you’re… what, stranger? You’ve got. Vibes.” He motioned again to those fuckin’ hands.
Michael stepped back and squared his shoulders. “I resist a name, Bookburner. I’ve had them before and they slip off me like a misshapen skin. I am a vessel built on untruths, I am a thing made of panicked breaths and fingernails clawing at yellow carpet. I cannot be understood because the only ones who truly understand me are living corpses shuffling to their graves.”
“OHHHHhhhhhh.” Gerry nodded, sprawled against the wall doing his best impersonation of a tapestry. “So you’re a theatre kid.”
The Throat of Delusion paused, crossed his arms, and huffed. “You’re rather irritating.”
Gerry was now fully slumped against the angle between the wall and the floor like a spare jacket thrown into the corner of a room. The more he sat the more his heart started to hurt. A deep, stabbing pain that started at his head and travelled down his veins into the pumping mass of muscle that he could feel every beat of.
“I know.” He said in his inside voice, which was sounding pretty similar to his outside voice by now.
Michael folded himself down into something that might have been a crouch but had a few more bends than usual. Gerry found himself a little mesmerized by his eyes as they bored into Gerry’s like he was being studied. It took great difficulty to focus but somehow Gerry managed.
“My mum’s dead.” He said, grabbing his knees and pulling them close.
The monster across from him said nothing. Gerry felt like an animal on display at a zoo, or maybe a dissection room. It was almost comforting.
“I came home… it was all blood. There’s- you ever seen a lotta blood?” Michael nodded once, not breaking eye contact. “All over the floor. And it’s- it’s crazy hey? Here’s my mum bleeding out all over her room and all I can think of is, this isn’t ever gonna come out. ” He covered his face with his hands, bit down on the base of his thumb because he thought he might crack a tooth with how hard he was clenching his jaws.
“You’ve seen a lot, Bookburner.” Michael said. His voice was different, from the rest of the times, maybe, maybe Gerry was hearing things wrong but it almost sounded human.
“Yeah, Fuckhands. You could say that.”
“Do you ever feel helpless?”
Gerry didn’t know where he was, who was in front of him. This was normal. It was all comforting. Funny how he felt safer here than he ever did trying to blend into the rest of the world. He could die anytime now. The thought made him smile.
“Every single goddamn day.”
Michael leaned back, contorting his body, moving in ways that made Gerry want to blink a lot to make sure he wasn’t seeing things, but he resisted because any more blinks than usual and he’d be sick.
Michael seemed to be considering. It might take him a while. Gerry slumped to the side and kept his knees curled up to his chin. His hand had left the wall at some point and now he didn’t know where he was. Fair enough. At least he outlived Mary.
“Come here.”
Gerry really thought he had more self preservation instincts than this. Maybe he was just accepting his death. Maybe he was just too drunk to comprehend his circumstances. Either way, he didn’t resist when Michael picked him up, rather awkwardly because of the hands and because Gerry was a good deal heavier than his oversized coat made him look.
“Mmmmph. Cozy.” Instead of struggling or fleeing or doing anything he typically would do, Gerry hugged around Michael’s neck and rested a cheek against his shoulder. Was that a shoulder? It had like, a few more joints than usual. Made for a nice resting spot.
Michael straightened out and started walking. Gerry could feel the gentle thump of his footsteps through the tunnels, shoes making a slightly different click every step. Rocked side to side, Gerry couldn’t help but yawn, close his eyes, let his arms fall.
“My mum’s dead.” He mumbled.
“Really? You didn’t say.” Michael hummed, not dismissively, a chuckle in his voice.
Gerry yawned, the world getting a bit spinny. Was that a door? “They said I killed her but I didn’t.”
Michael opened a door with those hands and Gerry saw his room. Not the barren bedroom with splashes of blood on the corners of the mattress and burn marks on the walls from years of cigarettes, but the pristine hotel room he had been lying awake in for the last few days since the trial.
“You killed her.” Michael said, the untruth coming so quickly.
Gerry chuckled. “I wish I did.”
Michael laid him on the bed, not particularly chivalrously. Really dropped him from at least a foot, Gerry felt his body bounce on the soft springy mattress. He shivered from the cold and drew the blankets over himself.
“We’ll meet again, Bookburner.” Michael said. “Someday when you’re less…” he motioned with his hands.
“Mmph.” Gerry sighed. “God I hope so. Gotta get myself a piece of that.”
Michael smiled with no soul behind it. “Goodnight, Gerard Keay. You’re safe now. Your mother can’t hurt you anymore.”
Everything Gerry had ever been taught told him not to trust a spiral avatar. They speak in deception, the twisting throat of delusion and on and on and on. He closed his eyes and held the words like a lifeline. It wasn’t a lie, he knew it, he relished it. He could do whatever he wanted, skip town, leave the fears behind finally.
He was free.