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The manor's rooms and corridors sit empty, undisturbed. Vincent passes through them in silence, thick dust puffing up at every step, his feet dragging, his head heavy. On every wall, a portrait of him, his blue eyes cruel, calculating, hungry. Merely glimpsing that stare sends lancing, phantom pain down Vincent's limbs, though he cannot remember why (bonesaw shrieking wet slice of scalpel hot-numb-cold tugging tearing on the inside).
A white figure moves in his periphery as he passes a door. He startles back, terror closing around his throat—but it's a white curtain near a bedroom window, rippling in the unmoving air. His steps take him into the room (no no you can't you mustn't) and he discovers a neatly made bed, likely rarely slept in, and a heavy desk scattered with dozens of papers and books, a thesis caught in the middle of writing, seeds of ideas that would never germinate. A white lab coat folded over the back of the desk's chair is waiting for its owner (will always wait for its owner).
Vincent draws a deep, desperate breath, and the old floral perfume on the air fills his lungs like poison.
ba-dum
The low thump makes him turn toward the door. He searches the grey air, the hanging dust motes, but sees nothing.
ba-dum
He's alone in the manor. What could be making that sound? A clock? A machine? (no no none of these you mustn't)
He returns to the corridor. It stretches before him, twisting, longer than it had been, hundreds of closed doors warning him away.
ba-dum
What is that sound?!
He crashes into the first door, finds an identical bedroom, then the next, and the next, and the next, each bedroom the same as the last, the sound getting louder, and louder, and louder, but there's nothing, nothing to make it, nothing he can do to stop it.
ba-dum
BA-DUM
BA-DUM
Jaw aching with a grimace, covering his ears, shaking with terror and nausea, he stumbles fully into one of the identical rooms, the perfume burning his throat. He's drawn to the bed, the neatly made bed, he can't stop himself (no no no), he rips the comforter away—
The crisp white sheets are stained with blood, so much blood, a pool spreading from the centre, bright crimson in a dead grey world. The stain is throbbing, swelling, it's alive with a terrible awareness, the sound is buried beneath it, thundering now, cracking his head apart with each tremendous, meaty thump.
He has to stop it, it's all he can hear, it's shaking him to pieces, it has to stop—
His desperate hands drive into the bloody stain and
sink
into
it
The stain yields under him like mud, soft and cold, devouring his fingers, creeping over his hands, slurping up his wrists, his forearms, over his elbows. He fights it, straining to get free, but it keeps sucking him in, dragging him down, inexorable. It covers his upper arms, and he's craning his neck to hold his head up and away from the stain, but it laps at his chin, his jaw, and then the stain is covering his mouth and he's pressing his lips together, breathing hard through his nose, his eyes watering at the reek of coppery blood, until that, too, is smothered and he's drowning, drowning in the stain, in blood, in terror, his entire body consumed—
The world inverts.
The bed flips.
He lands on his back on a metal examination table with a sharp clang and a wheeze as the air is knocked out of his lungs. He looks around wildly, struggling to breathe as he recognizes the rough stone walls, the tube of mako glowing in the corner, the long, skeletal arms of machines arching over him, stained drills and syringes poised to tear into him. With a shout, he throws himself to the side and falls off the table, knocking a tray of rusted scalpels to the floor. On his hands and knees, he pants and vomits, fingernails digging into the slimy concrete, trying to catch his breath when the air is sour and sharp with chemicals.
ba-dum
His head shoots up, eyes rolling.
ba-dum
There.
There!
A back-lit shelf of specimen jars, golden-yellow fluid holding fleshy nightmare forms.
ba-dum
In the centre, a large jar, a fetus, curled in pain, its bulbous eyes glowing green, tiny hands clasped in a prayer, its legs mangled and deformed into a mess of fleshy wings. Next to it, a smaller jar, a dark, fist-sized lump.
ba-dum
It twitches and Vincent flinches.
ba-dum ba-dum ba-dum ba-dum
It twitches faster, throbbing with fear.
Vincent staggers to his feet (nononononono). He stumbles to the shelf and the thumping organ, his steps dragging, but he can't fight the pull of the thing any more than he could fight the stain that had pulled him down. As he nears, he makes out faded black writing on the curling label and he tries not to read it, tries not to understand.
Specimen V
Shuddering, barely breathing, he raises his trembling hands to the thing and brings it down off the shelf. It sloshes in its jar, squeezing and jerking. Up close, Vincent sees that it's rotten, blotchy with shades of black and purple and green veins of corruptions, fuzzed with white mold, decaying and putrid despite the formaldehyde. And yet it keeps pumping, squeezing, striving to live, unaware of how evil it is, how foul, how worthless, how useless (I did this how could I do this I let this happen).
The jar slips from his numb hands and smashes on the floor. The organ bounces among shards of glass, squelching and splashing, still struggling to beat as it lies in a puddle, its rotten flesh glistening.
Vincent steps back, his hand going to his chest, and something moves under his palm; his own flesh is writhing. He tears open his jacket, revealing the white shirt beneath and another crimson stain, a horrid flower spreading in the centre of his chest. Shaking, breathing fast, the organ on the floor thumping with his panic, he hooks his fingers into his buttoned shirt and rips it open.
A gaping black hole seethes where his heart should be. No, not just a hole, it isn't empty, it squirms, there's something in there. As he watches, something stretches the skin of his stomach, a sharp lump slidind upward, slipping under his ribs. The darkness in the hole shifts and
a long, black finger emerges from the darkness
then another
another
another
finger after crooked finger
They reach out, prying at the edges of the hole, stretching it wider, tearing him open, replacing him with an utter, unstoppable darkness—
ba-dum
ba-dum
ba-dum…
…tap
tap-tap-tap
Vincent's eyes snap open to the sound of footsteps, muffled through his coffin. Someone has entered his crypt.
He releases a slow, shuddering breath and palms his chest, finding it solid. "… To wake me from the nightmare," he sighs, unsure whether he should be relieved or not. His life is already a nightmare; his subconscious can't do much worse.
It's what he deserves, anyway.