Chapter Text
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There was dirt underneath his chewed off fingernails, mud lined his face and clothes, he wore pants that were too big and sewed up in various places, his dusty brown hair was due for a cut, pink scars were drawn over his entire body, rashes of irritation splotched his neck and thighs, his bones ached from the constant cold, his torn up sweatshirt hung loosely from his collar bones, his eyes were sunken with the ghost of unseen emotions, his hands and face hidden behind the dried blood. He was so fucking over it.
The boy had spent the past five years in a world of slime and misery. He walked with the fading memories of his past life, his life before that day, the day it all changed.
He remembered the house, he remembered the excitement that burst from the basement as he and his friends gathered around a small table listening intently as the fate of their characters was read aloud by a boy who had changed the entire fate of his life. He loved his friends. He didn’t remember their faces, he didn’t remember how they looked when they cried or smiled or got angry, he didn’t remember the sounds of their laughter, he didn’t even remember how they had first met. He tried to remember their names but the truth is, he had forgotten their names first, then their faces, then their hair, then their eyes. Until there was nothing left but a haunting idea that kept him from going insane.
He walked quietly along a path, each step echoing for the whole nonexistent world to hear. He liked to imagine he was walking on green grass as the bright blue sky hung from above him and the sun shone down onto his pale skin while the birds sang, and the children played. But that was only a dream.
The dirt that leaves a dusty layer on your skin, the sun that makes your body turn red, the sweat that drips down your back and slicks down your hair, the buzzing of bugs by your ears, the splinters that stick in your fingertips, the sunburn that peels on your shoulder, the smell of nothing but dirt and sunscreen in your nose. These are all things that he missed the most. He missed the world he used to live in. He missed feeling human. He missed walking into a house and being greeted with noise, god he missed the noise.
He was sure he’d gone insane. There’s no other explanation as to why he had been forcefully taken into a dark far away world that felt like it didn’t even really exist.
He trudged along the path in the woods as he stepped over vines and large pools of slime mixed with blood and a pungent smell of burning trash. His bones and muscles longed for any source of heat and his blood fought to keep him alive.
Memories came to him in flashes, they were gone in seconds. FLASH! A boy sat in a swing set kicking his legs by himself. FLASH. It was over. He dropped to his knees -which were loosely covered by two layers of baggy pants that didn’t quite fit- and pulled off the backpack that caused his shoulders to swell. He took out his notebook and wrote down what he saw. Boy on swing set. Later he would draw it.
He needed food. His body ached at him with a need of nourishment and heat. He was so cold. His lips were blue, chapped and bloody in response to his own habit of chewing his lips and the cold that seeped around him everywhere. He slept a lot, it was his only way to escape from whatever the hell he would face when he opened his eyes again.
He may have slept a lot but he definitely didn’t sleep well. He tossed and turned and dreamt, he dreamt a lot. He hated it. He hated dreaming of the only things his mind could seem to make up, he dreamt of the slimy, depressing world he was living in, sometimes he dreamt of life before the hell, but those weren't dreams, they were nightmares. Nightmares because he was aware of how much his brain tried to remember the faces of the people he had once loved, the people who had once loved him back. He had dreams of being touched by someone, anyone, he dreamed of listening to people speak to one another, he dreamed of sleeping- really sleeping, he dreamed of wearing freshly washed clothes and eating freshly cooked food, he dreamed of being cold and knowing that he had the option to get warm, he dreamed of eating just to eat- not because he was starving and needed it to survive, he dreamed of having real dreams at night, crazy ones were he could fly. He dreamed oh he dreamed. They never came true.
The only thing that kept him alive when he’d first been taken was hope, but hope is dangerous. He'd lost all hope. Every night he prayed that when he woke up he’d find that there was nothing to wake up to, that he had peacefully died in his sleep and could finally decompose back into the earth as if he belonged to it.
He stepped on something that made a large crack underneath the toe of his oversized boots. He loved those boots so much. He loved that he had grown into the soles and that they specifically fit him perfectly. Thunder growled above his head, the red sky reflected onto his skin and everything else around him. The sky had a tricky habit of changing colors, primarily red and blue. He always thought the sky was beautiful, as much as he wanted to hate it.
He slowly moved his boot out of the way and crouched down to find a large piece of glass. He grabbed it. It was big enough so that he could see himself through it, but what he saw made him grimace as the ghost of tears prickled at his eyes.
He looked dirty, he looked tired, his eyes that were once bright green were now practically black and empty, he had large, multicolored small scars running over his face. His brown hair was outgrown and knotted. He threw it carefully into his bag before zipping it back up and continuing his journey.
The world that he was in seemed to mimic the world he had once known. He decided that he was in hell. His backpack was full of weapons and supplies but he started to run low on food, which was why he was on a mission down the lonely path to the heart of the town. The cookie cutter houses were once full of food and everything one could need, but now it was a struggle to find things that were safe to eat and weapons that weren’t eroding from its surroundings and unsafe environment.
Traveling on foot was safer than anything else. It was quieter, more reliable. He stopped riding on bikes when he realized that no matter what the monsters could find him, no matter what they would catch up to him and he wouldn’t be able to hide. He hid in trees while the monsters roamed, they had no business to do with the trees since they contained no value to the monsters.
As he walked as quietly through the forest as he could, the wind whispered in his ears. Crack! A branch from behind him had been broken. His heart jumped quickly. The noise startled him but he didn’t falter and didn’t waste any time, he climbed up the nearest tree with his blistered hands and tired arms. His boots scraped the bark loudly as he scampered upward. He yanked himself into a suitable position. He sat quietly with his back against the trunk of the tree as he sat on a flimsy branch. Waiting with a hand over his mouth, eyes closed shut. He could hear his own muffled and staggered breathing as if it was the loudest thing in the world. His chest heaved. These monsters could hear very well, but they couldn’t see. He didn’t need to be hidden, just quiet. A familiar clicking noise sliced through the air and echoed off of everything in its path. He just needed to be quiet. The branch underneath him trembled. Fuck.
Before he could process what was going on, he was suddenly gripping onto the stump of a nearby branch, dangling as he watched the branch he had been securely sitting on now fall right down to the ground with a small thump. There was a moment of complete silence, nothing moved, nothing breathed, almost as if the earth could understand the intensity of the situation he had found himself in. He didn’t look down as he listened to the loud growling and the sound of the monster yelling loudly, searching for its victim. Its prey. His fingers started to slip as he gripped as tightly to the branch as possible, his legs kicked helplessly. The monster noticed the now fallen branch, he couldn’t watch as the thing slowly crouched into a hunting position before letting out an ear piercing howl and attacking the branch which was now securely on the ground. He held on from only a couple feet above its head. He didn’t dare to breathe. He wouldn’t risk adjusting his hands and making irrational noise so he let himself slowly slip.
It felt like hours, he waited, waited to fall to his death, hoping that the ground could kill him before the monster could, even though he knew it wouldn’t. A noise from in the distance sounded loudly, it was a call. The monster perked up and ran away just before his fingers finally gave up, he could feel the splinters force their way into the pads of his finger tips as he clawed into the bark in an attempt to climb back up. He pelted toward the ground, he could hear the air against his ears as he fell. A flash of hot pain spiked from his ankle as it screamed at him when he landed with a thump. He didn’t make any noise, he simply closed his eyes and bit down into his forearm to keep from screaming. He limped around into the forest until he felt securely hidden by the shrub. He grunted in pain as he lifted up the leg of his pants to examine the damage. He had fucked up his ankle that’s for sure, it was bloody and swollen while both of his legs exhibited small straying cuts that portrayed the familiar color red.
This is what you get
You did this to yourself
This is why you were put here
Maybe if you’d been a better person
Maybe you wouldn’t be here. In hell
He just wanted to die. A noise sparked somewhere from the path he’d just been walking on. His head shot up and he stained his ears to listen closely. Something was laughing, something was speaking in a happy voice. Speaking? He closed his eyes and shook his head in between his sore hands. It was fake. He was imagining it. He did that a lot.
Sometimes ghosts would visit him. They were quiet and quick, he only saw flashes of them, they looked human but they disappeared in thin air. They left behind muddy footprints and sometimes even food. The ghosts were back, their voices coming in waves of volume. The noises were gone just as fast as they came. The ghosts had left. He slowly dragged himself through the slimy surface. He pushed a couple of branches out of his face and peered to look at the path where he had heard the ghosts. A singular green apple was sitting quietly on the ground as if it had been placed there by a god. The ghosts left behind food again. He was skeptical of the whole thing but his growingly hungry stomach didn’t seem to care. He snatched up the apple, sticking it in between his teeth before running (as best as he could) back to the town.
As he got closer to the empty and stricken town, he heard voices, they were so quiet and would be barely noticeable to someone who didn’t live in constant silence. He threw the apple core on the ground. He heard voices a lot, they echoed around him as if they were just an idea, something alive but invisible. In town the voices were more common and frequent. He miserably dragged himself up the driveway of his childhood home. The windows were boarded up and the front door was guarded by multiple padlocks. He entered his home, he looked at the picture frames covered underneath layers of mold and slime which blocked out every trace of the faces of people he once loved. He remembered his mom though he tried not to think about her. He couldn’t stand the fact that the face he imagined when he thought of his mom wasn’t actually his mother. It was a face he had made up in his head that struggled to look like the person he once knew so well. It hurt him so much.
He breathed in expecting to smell the familiar scent of his mothers perfume and laundry soap that swept through the house, instead he smelt the more familiar scent of mold and rotten flesh. Voices echoed silently in the house, it was a voice he heard frequently when he came home. He didn’t recognize it. It was too quiet. His heart hurt so much, it hurt so much knowing that he should recognize the voices, he should know the memories, he should remember. But he doesn’t. He made his way to his room. It was small and untouched. He bowed his head down in defeat as he tiredly walked towards his tiny twin bed. His outgrown limbs no longer fit comfortably on the bed but he didn’t mind. He didn’t mind the fact that the bed was supposed to be soft and warm.
He didn’t live in his house anymore, his heart couldn’t take the absence of nostalgia, the absence of “home”. He lived in a small cabin outside of town, there weren't any voices there. Sometimes there was music, music that lulled him to sleep.
He whispered to himself, he kept himself company since no one else could. Though he spent most of his time fighting for his life, in the very rare moments when he had nothing to do he would draw in his notebook. He drew his dreams, he drew his flashes of memories. The notebook was full of unexplainable puzzle pieces that didn’t make any sense to him.
That night, he had a dream. He dreamt of sitting in a homely kitchen while the sun set and the moon rose as the dim lights helped illuminate the growingly dark room, he dreamt of hearing the voices of his loved ones floating through the air from the other room, he dreamt of his idea of peace. He didn’t really sleep. He hadn’t slept in years.