Chapter Text
If the Spiral was the Web, and it planned things out meticulously instead of embracing the pure chaos of our indescribable universe, it would have chosen Michael Shelley all along.
His life was simply a maelstrom of confusion. Such a delightful thing. And the beautiful part was that nobody else knew he was so very afraid. Lies upon lies upon lies. He lied to himself, and he lied to everyone else, and they lied to him in return. A symbiotic relationship, except nothing like that at all.
People who met Michael Shelley, in his heyday, or what could pass for a ‘heyday’ when you hated your life and almost wanted to die, thought that he looked nonthreatening and far too kind. The type of fellow that has nothing under the surface. He was the type of person to ask others what their favorite shape was, and if you asked him what his was (though most didn’t), he’d say a heart or a circle, because those shapes were nice and peaceful and he wanted people to like him and people liked him when he was nice and peaceful and they didn’t like him when he talked about the parts of him that weren’t nice and peaceful, so he never said his favorite shape was a spiral. (Why would he? A ridiculous thing for a favorite shape to be, anyway.)
He didn’t look like a particularly confusing person. Lies upon lies upon lies.
:)
His friend was never schizophrenic. Or maybe he was. Isn’t the fun part the not being sure? In any case, his friend certainly wasn’t making up or hallucinating the yellow door that followed him around wherever he went.
(Was it yellow, back then? Or did that start with Michael?)
Ryan told his parents about the door, but they didn’t care. He told his teachers about the door, but they didn’t believe him. He told the other kids at school, and they called him a freak and told him to leave them alone.
Not Michael, though. Michael always believed him. Michael would believe anything.
Or maybe he wouldn’t, had he not seen the door too. They were playing in the schoolyard, far away from the other children, and they were playing together because who else did they have when Ryan was a *freak* and Michael was a *faggot*? (Fourth graders shouldn’t know that word, but sometimes they do, and it hurts just as bad and maybe even worse when you don’t totally get what it means.)
The door was in the brick wall of the school. Ryan yelled loud enough to wake the dead, and when Michael asked what happened, he pointed and sobbed ‘it’s following me!’
Michael may not have understood, but when they saw the same door again as they walked home from school, and replacing Ryan’s closet when they were playing in his room, he believed.
(Michael told his father about the door, but he didn’t listen. He told his teachers about the door, but they said that schizophrenic was rubbing off on him. He told the other kids at school, and they called him a fag and a loser, pretending to see things for his insane friend, and told him to leave them alone.)
Michael saw when the door took Ryan, and he heard Ryan’s screams, and he knew Ryan was real, even when everyone around him said that boy never existed.
And he didn’t understand a thing.
:)
Michael went to therapy every week for four years, but what therapist believes you saw the death of a freak who wasn’t real? If Michael was an outcast before, he was tormented now, the kid who never got over seeing his imaginary friend die. The only sixth grader who went to a psychiatrist.
He was the one called schizophrenic now. Doctors did tests on him, but they couldn’t see what he saw, what he had nightmares about every single night. They didn’t understand. His world was more real than any of theirs. He had seen something that no therapy or bullying could explain, so one day he told his father he wasn’t going to any more doctors.
But not talking about it didn’t make it any less real.
:)
His father worried for him. Michael knew that, but the two of them got their wires crossed. His father never worried in a way Michael could understand. He worried in Bible verses and platitudes and stiff pats on the shoulder. Michael worried in rough, twisting emotions, burning a hole in his heart.
His father didn’t know what to do when he cried. So Michael stopped crying in front of him. His father didn’t like it when he yelled, so he was always quiet. If Michael felt stressed or worried, he was supposed to pray. He knelt at the foot of his bed until his knees were sore, praying to a God he didn’t understand with words that were too cold for him.
They went to Church every Sunday, the quiet father and the quieter son. For a place free from judgement, there were a lot of prying eyes. Michael drank the wine, even though his father said never to drink, because apparently that was one of those rules that didn’t always apply. He ate the bread, too, although it was less bread and more a light cracker, but he didn’t feel any better. He hated the taste of the wine. He thought, ‘If God is the holiest being of all time, why doesn’t his blood taste better?’
The sermons didn’t make sense. The stained glass windows were pretty, though, and he would lose himself for hours in his head staring through the glass and to the brighter world beyond. He wished he could live within the bright glass of the church. The rest of the world gave him a headache, and he felt dizzy when he looked away.
:)
He heard voices in his head. He wasn’t sure if that was normal. There was no therapist to tell him anymore.
Well, he didn’t hear them. It’s not how you’re thinking. It’s not that bad. He just would think thoughts, and then he’d think responses to those thoughts, and then he’d have a whole argument entirely in his mind, just between him and himself.
It was practically fun! It wasn’t hurting anyone, anyway. It made life a little more confusing, sometimes. He tried to tell the difference between one voice and another, and that just left his head hurting. But headaches were nothing he couldn’t handle. So it was fine!
:)
No matter how many hours he prayed for, his father still didn’t hug him.
:)
He knew a few people from Church at school. Not his age, but younger, because the people his age didn’t follow their parents to Church anymore. They had a new religion, and they took their salvation in cigarettes and alcohol and sex behind the bleachers.
Michael asked the people that still went to Church if their knees hurt from praying by the bedside for love. If the sermons held no meaning but the stained glass windows were holier than bread and wine. If dizziness and headaches were the prices they paid for their own personal angels. They didn’t say ‘freak’, but he knew they thought it, and it stung all the same.
:)
People started to have boyfriends and girlfriends. Michael knew he’d never experience that, nobody was any friendlier to him in high school than they were in middle school, but he couldn’t even imagine being someone’s partner.
Boyfriend, said a voice.
That’s right, he’d be someone’s boyfriend. He wasn’t trying to be any less normal than he was already. Get over yourself, Michael. Being called a boy isn’t so bad.
:)
Once Michael Shelley got out of school, people started talking to him. He never told anyone about Ryan anymore, unless they asked, and who’s going to ask ‘hey did you have a childhood friend, best friend, only friend you’ll ever have, who got eaten by a sentient door and then had never existed at all?’
People were nice to him because he looked nonthreatening, with his messy hair and knitted scarves and glasses too big for his face.
And he was nice to them back.
It felt good, to be nice to people. He didn’t know how to be mean, really. Even when he was still called a *faggot* and a *loser*, he didn’t know what he could do but be kind. The voices didn’t know what to say, and neither did he.
Sometimes later, in his room, they’d tell him what he could have said.
Shhhhh, he replied. That’s not nice.
:)
Sometimes in his head he was she, or they, or it. Not consciously. Not on purpose.
The voices yelled at him when he wasn’t he. They told him that he was a guy, and if he didn’t actually want to be a girl then what’s the big problem with being a boy? He was just being overdramatic.
The funny part is that if someone around him wanted to be called they or it, he would have done so without question. He was nice like that, nice to everyone. So were the voices, mostly. They were only mean to him.
Which was strange, because they were a part of him, right?
:)
Sometimes he bit the skin of his arms, agitating the blood vessels. It hurt, but he didn’t care about pain if he was doing it to himself.
That’s probably not great, said a voice.
I know, he replied, but it’s not like I’m suicidal.
(The voice agreed that he had no reason to be suicidal and, if anything, he should be more happy with his life.)
His arms looked like they had hickeys on them, when he was done, and he imagined that the hickeys were on his neck and given to him by an imaginary paramour, and he relished the idea that someone would love him for who he was and that he could ever be in a relationship. (Until the voices reminded him that no one would want to go out with someone like this, you weirdo.)
He always wore long sleeves to work.
:)
Ms. Robinson knew things she shouldn’t, sometimes.
It was part of her charm.
The voices asked how or why she knew something.
Be nice, he replied. She’s just a little old lady.
:)
He read a statement from Jane Prentiss. The song of the Hive, she wrote, rotten and hollow and swarming.
Michael didn’t understand. (Which was nothing new.) How could a wasp’s nest sing to you?
He sometimes felt a little afraid when he read the statements. Not unusual, of course. They were basically campfire horror stories in academic files. There were the statements that were clearly fake, and the ones that may have been fake but that he didn’t want to take any chances with, and then the ones that Ms. Robinson would take from him and put on her little tape recorders. (He didn’t get why she did that, but maybe she was just reminiscent of a bygone era.)
He read some of those, after she was done recording. They were spookier, sure, but they typically didn’t sing to him. He didn’t know how Ms. Robinson categorized them, but he noticed that they were sometimes in distinct groups of files.
There were the violent ones, the fleshy ones, about war and hunting and sometimes cannibalism, which made him feel appropriately sick and nothing else. Heart and lungs and liver and bones, everyone had them, they were real, they weren’t something to be afraid of. (When your lungs are balloons and your heart pumps gatorade and sometimes nothing at all and when someone cuts you open stuffing comes out and your bones are made of rubber and your skin is full of rocks, then you should be afraid.)
The ones about burning, destruction, there was sometimes a cult involved, those didn’t sing to him either, though he wondered if the mean barista who always spelled his name wrong (how do you fuck up Michael?) and spilled too-hot coffee on him and ruined his favorite sweaters would hear the music in the flames. (Then he realized that was not a nice thought, and he pushed it to the back of his mind.)
He read statements about big open sky and crushing dirt, and he thought it must be nice to be tied so tightly to reality that your fears weren’t even supernatural. He read the cold statements, darkness and being alone. I’m alone, and I’m fine. I haven’t had a real friend in years (maybe ever), but I don’t talk about fog and empty beaches and cold ocean just to explain away the pain of loneliness. If you’re alone, that’s your own fault. (He wasn’t sure if that came from him or from the voices. He wasn’t sure when he’d started thinking of them as separate from him.)
Statements about mannequins and dolls and clowns with fake faces, they were a little closer to home. (Home?) Imagine if nobody you knew was real, everybody was fake, your world was a lie- But that wasn’t quite what these statements were conveying. It wasn’t about lying, more about the unknown. Uncanny valley and all that. He didn’t get it. If his best friend was a glorified crash-test dummy, at least he’d have a real best friend. Fake flesh was still solid plastic. Who would be scared of something so wonderful?
He didn’t feel very afraid of the statements about death. He didn’t fear death at all, that much, and he very pointedly didn’t think about how that should worry him.
There were more statements like Ms. Prentiss’. Sick and rotting. They did not sing to him, he heard no songs of Hive or Filth, and when he found ants in his flat he called an exterminator and did not wait to see if they’d play him a tune.
Emma liked reading statements about spiderwebs. The eight-legged creatures were apparently set apart from the other creepy-crawly things in the archive, though Michael couldn’t grasp why. He didn’t typically talk to Emma, she seemed to have her own things to take care of. But typically when Michael found her with a statement, it was about puppets and webs and the loss of control. He asked if they sang to her, and she looked at him like he was an idiot. (Which you are.)
Some statement givers felt like they were being watched. Michael always felt watched, here in the Archives. He thought they might be overreacting. Everyone feels on edge sometimes, like how whenever he walked past the portraits of Jonah Magnus he felt a tingle on the back of his neck. The portraits didn’t sing to him either, and he didn’t feel anything special when he looked into the oil paint eyes of the institute’s founder. Maybe disgust. The man had a truly ugly mustache. (Not a nice thought.)
:)
Michael hadn’t gone to Church in years, but sometimes he would pass one and hear the sermons, feel his knees hurting and his father’s stiff hand on his shoulder. He didn’t know how that made him feel.
Everyone said that his emotions would make more sense after he grew up, but they didn’t. He was just getting better at ignoring them.
He only missed the dizzy and confusing angels that called to him from the windows.
:)
Once he read part of a statement about a man who worked with clay. When asked to make a face,
(All faces were twisted on the inside, and all you had to do was reach into the deepest part of yourself and put that twisted on the outside of the clay and, as soon as you can scream, you’ll have your own face staring back at you.)
he made a door instead.
(I asked him if it was supposed to be a face, and he told me yes, it was a good friend of his. I asked him who, and he said they didn’t have a name. I told him everyone has a name, and he said his friend wasn’t like us, that having a name would only confuse them.)
As soon as you can scream, Michael read, and if he hadn’t been so engrossed in the statement he might well have screamed.
(-his limbs being worked and twisted into strange, spiralling shapes, and occasionally joined into new and impossible positions-)
He was nearly at the end when Ms. Robinson took the statement from him. She thanked him, said it was just what she’d been looking for, and told him he could go home now, as it was 5:17. Michael was confused, it had been half past two when he picked up the statement, but he shrugged it off and packed his things.
He couldn’t hear singing, per say, but he had nightmares of spiralling corridors and clay men that shifted and had no names.
:)
Sometimes there was another person in the archives.
Not an assistant, Michael thought, because assistants at least looked busy when Mr. Bouchard (Michael didn’t like calling authority figures by their first names) came by. This guy just sat with his feet up on the breakroom table and, on one occasion, painted his nails.
He was very handsome, and very goth, and looked like he slept six hours per week.
Michael wasn’t scared, not really, he just thought that this guy seemed like the type of person to get mad when someone tried to talk to him, and Michael hated when people were mad at him. Being nice was all he was good at, and if someone was mad at him, then he’d failed at the one thing he was good at. But if being nice was all he was good at, he should really say hello to the guy, or he wouldn’t have been nice, but-
This endless debating led him to only wave awkwardly at the man whenever he saw him, and walk away with a feeling of immense guilt.
:)
He had some acquaintances, now. From the upper floors of the institute, the floors that didn’t have as many portraits of Mr. Magnus.
They were not friends, and he did not ask if they saw doors and they did not tell him if they saw doors, and they did not ask if he felt okay and he did not tell them if he felt like cracking open his ribs and tearing with his teeth and claws into his own beating heart until blood coated his face and hands and kitchen floor and he would just stop feeling.
But he helped Lucy move a couch (too heavy) and he gave Noah a name for his new lizard (Jeremy Tim the Destroyer) and he comforted Abby after her boyfriend sent her nudes to all their mutual friends. (“He’s just a creep, they’ll understand it’s not your fault, they aren’t gonna judge you.”) So he wasn’t totally alone.
Who needs friends? They just bother you with seeing doors all the time, and then turn out to have never existed. Total waste. Friends aren’t real.
:)
-regarding the doors that took his brother.
Michael wasn’t in the habit of snooping. But Ms. Robinson asked for specific files, and when he went to get them, he looked inside one, and saw the subject line, and-
(-the structure beneath his face shifted, pushing it further and further from where his skull should have been, and behind his teeth, at the edges of his eyes, I saw the dull red of shifting clay-)
He dropped the box of files he’d been holding, a strangled cry escaping his throat, his eyes going blurry, he couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t-
(-regarding the doors-)
He could see Ryan’s terrified face and-
Calm down, get over it.
It was twisting into ever more incomprehensible patterns-
Ryan wasn’t even real, he was never real-
(-His smile kept getting wider, and bending in on itself at the edges-)
“Hey, you alright?”
A voice shocked him out of his- whatever that was. He looked up (up? When had he fallen to the ground?) and saw the goth guy, the not-assistant, holding out a hand to him. He only hesitated for a second before taking it, standing up and being a little surprised at realizing he was actually taller than this guy. He seemed so intimidating, Michael expected him to be, like, 7 feet tall, when he was actually 5 foot 6.
The guy coughed, and Michael realized he hadn’t said anything, instead choosing to stand there staring like an idiot. (Which you are.)
:)
Sometimes Michael saw Ryan. A little boy, waving at him from the platform while he was on the tube. Was Michael remembering him wrong? He didn’t think Ryan ever had such a wide smile.
All memories are false and all faces are twisted, though, so it was alright. He hoped Ryan was happy now.
:)
The goth guy’s name was Gerard, and he didn’t work at the Institute but Ms. Robinson let him hang out there, and he used the statements to research for his own job, which from what Michael could tell involved a lot of laying around the archives and looking pretty and using their coffee machine.
Gerard liked cats, and he didn’t like books(?), and he was on the lookout for any statements that referenced famed librarian-failure Jurgen Leitner. He didn’t like to talk about his childhood (Michael could relate), and he drank coffee instead of tea (Michael could not relate). He said he took it black, very aesthetically on-brand, but after Michael brought him a cup from the cafe down the street and he grimaced at the taste, Michael took to slipping in two sugar packets and a splash of milk.
They were acquaintances and they weren’t friends, because friends aren’t real and Gerard didn’t look like the type of person to have friends anyway.
:)
They met in a bar, once. Michael didn’t remember who saw who first.
(He was having trouble these days, with remembering. He would lose entire hours to muddled brain-fog, and he’d often have to ask Gertrude the same question multiple times, to her endless annoyance.)
Gerard ordered a beer, ‘cheapest you got’, and Michael had a Shirley Temple. Once, he’d had a few too many margaritas and started ranting to the bartender about ‘fake friends’. He didn’t drink, anymore. He just went to bars and tried to pretend to all the people who didn’t care that he had a bright past and a brighter future, as bright as his sun-kissed hair and shining eyes. He was pristine, perfect, the happiest man alive.
Gerard drank the beer like it was his last, and then ordered another and drank that one like it was his last as well.
“You’re gonna drink yourself to death.”
He chuckled. “If only I was that lucky.”
Michael worried about Gerard, about his liver health and his mental state and how he must be so cold in those ripped jeans. (He was like a suburban mother trapped in the body of a lanky blond thirty-something.) He worried so much, about everything. He was afraid he might have a heart attack over it. He wanted to give his heart away for safekeeping. It would be much safer in someone else’s hands then with him, on his sleeve where anyone could see it.
(If someone asked, he’d give away all his other organs too. He wanted everyone to be happy. The love and admiration of others would keep him warm and safe, fill him up inside where his lungs and liver used to be.)
Ryan winked at him from the reflection on his glass.
:)
Michael walked Gerard home after he drank too much. It wasn’t death, but it was a stone’s throw away from the hospital. Gerard pointed at flowers and headbands with ears and stuffed toys in dark shop windows, and once a stray cat with about a million fleas, and loudly proclaimed ‘I’m Gonna Buy That For You’ before tripping on his own boots and nearly cracking his skull on the pavement. A fifteen-minute walk took them at least a half hour.
Whatever. At least he wasn’t a mean drunk, because Michael didn’t think his heart could take it.
When they got to Gerard’s apartment, the man proclaimed ‘I Can Take It From Here’ and promptly fell onto the stairs and started snoring. Michael felt bad, because Gerard looked so comfortable, but he nudged the younger man’s shoulder until he woke up. Gerard opened his eyes blearily with a yawn that should have belonged to a kitten, not a goth with three switchblades on hand.
“Hey gorgeous,” he mumbled, and then threw up on Michael’s shoes.
:)
He didn’t mean that.
:)
Gerard didn’t show up at the Archives until 3 PM. Not unusual for someone who didn’t actually work there, but he had clearly just rolled out of bed, and he had his toothbrush still in his mouth. He immediately sat down at the break room table, laid his head in his arms, and groaned.
“Gerard! How are you feeling?”
“Bad, Michael. I’m feeling bad. What the fuck is in my mouth-” He raised his head and stared in bewilderment at the toothbrush. “This isn’t even mine.”
Michael grimaced. “Ignoring that last comment, do you want some coffee?”
Gerard sighed, throwing the toothbrush across the room, presumably aiming for the trashcan, except it instead hit one of the portraits of Jonah Magnus (which was nowhere near the trashcan). “Sure.”
Michael made coffee with a little extra sugar and cream, and the minutes passed in silence, until-
“You can call me Gerry.”
Michael started. He’d been off in his own little world, and it took him a little longer than it used to before coming back to reality. Worrisome, but whatever, he could deal with that later. “Huh?”
“I always wanted a friend.” A beat. “To call me Gerry.”
“Oh- we’re friends?”
Friends aren’t real.
“I mean, yeah, right? You always give me more sugar than I ask for with my coffee, because you figured out I like it without me telling you. You bought me half my drinks yesterday even though I’ve watched you clip coupons for stores you’ve never gone to. You painted my nails instead of writing your reports. I threw up on your shoes last night and gave you about a million goodbye hugs, in which I drooled on your jacket and maybe threw up a little bit again, and you’re still talking to me. Plus, I’m pretty sure I tried to buy you a cat.”
A moment of awkward silence.
“You didn’t actually try to buy me the cat, you just said you would.”
Gerard Gerry scoffed. “Oh, yeah, sorry. Friendship offer rescinded.”
Friends aren’t real.
“Well, I didn’t say that.”
He laughed. “Yeah, makes sense. People are chomping at the bit to be friends with me, this is a very exciting offer.”
“Keep telling yourself that. Gerry.”
“I will, actually. I’m a unique specimen. You know I found that toothbrush on the floor of the bar bathroom?”
“Ew, why’d you take it?”
“I saw it, and keep in mind I was quite drunk, and I thought ‘Oh, free toothbrush!’ It tasted like gasoline. And sandalwood cologne.”
“That’s disgusting!”
“It’s just part of my charm. You love it.”
I do. I do, even though you aren’t real.
“I hope you at least washed it…”
“Eh, who’s to say?”
:)
Christmas came around, and Michael knit scarves for everyone he cared about. (Only three people made the list.)
He used green yarn for Gertrude, and when he delivered the gift, wrapped in paper that had little candy canes on it, with a bright red bow on top, she sighed and told him to leave it on the desk, and don’t forget to finish the follow-up on the Parker case before 5:00.
Black yarn for Gerry, obviously, and the man smiled when he saw the cartoon penguins on the paper. He unwrapped it right then, and he put it on despite the fact that it was almost 25° inside. He said thank you and even though the scarf went all the way up to his nose, Michael could tell he was smiling. (The voices were silent, for once.)
Purple yarn for Emma, even though she never showed up anymore and even if she did she wouldn’t want it anyway. But Michael really wanted to give it to her sooner rather than later. It seemed rude to give someone a gift too long after Christmas, like you forgot about them. Plus, he found wrapping paper with little smiling spiders on it.
“Have you seen Emma?”
Gerry looked up from the statement he was reading, pulling down the front of the scarf to ask, “Who?”
Michael blinked in confusion. Gerry must have met Emma, he was down here so often! “You know, Emma! Brown hair, glasses… she’s the other assistant! She likes spiders and um… well, I don’t really know what else she likes. Gertrude must have mentioned her… Oh!- She also likes avoiding me! Spiders and avoiding me, those are her interests.”
Gerry was staring like Michael had grown a second head. “Michael, Gertrude never mentioned anyone named Emma. And I’ve only ever seen you, the boss lady, and Elias Bitchard down here.”
Michael laughed. “If this is a joke, I might not be your best audience for this one.” (Understatement of the year.) “She’s down here, like, all the time. It’s her job. I mean, not all the time, and sometimes she’s hiding, because I don’t think she likes me, although I don’t know why because I don’t think I did anything wrong when we met but she used to show up more so maybe I did something more recently and that’s why she’s not here-”
“Hey, Michael, you’re rambling.”
“Oh, sorry.” He was sorry. He didn’t mean to talk so much, but he wanted other people to understand and the more he said the more they would. He wanted other people to know him, utterly and completely, so that when he didn’t understand his own feelings, he could go ask them and they would explain his sadness and pain until all the twisted emotions melted into safe and calm facts.
“No, it’s fine, but I think you might be making this a bigger deal than it needs to be? I mean, I’ll just ask Gertrude.” Gerry leaned out into the hall. “Hey Gertie!”
“What do you want, Gerard?” Came the response.
“Where’s your other assistant?”
“I only have one assistant, and as far as I know, he’s wasting time giving everyone useless gifts instead of doing his work.”
That stung a little. But only one assistant? Emma was real. She existed. Michael felt sick. Gerry met his eyes, and he must have seen something that scared him, because he called out again;
“Are you, uh… sure you only have one assistant?”
A pause.
“Yes, I’m quite certain I know how many people I employ. Michael is all the help I have, although help may be too strong a word to describe the manner in which he wastes his days.”
“What a bitch,” Gerry muttered, before looking back at Michael. “Hey, you okay?”
He couldn’t breathe. Michael couldn’t breathe. (God, imagining one person was bad enough. Nobody has imaginary friends over the age of 10! And he barely knew anything about Emma, how could he have made up an entire person who existed only to avoid him, and not given her any personality beyond ‘liking spiders’.)
You’re ridiculous. Get a grip. Why can’t you stop? What’s wrong with you?
Was anyone he saw even real? Was anything real anymore?
Schizophrenic.
He had to reply to Gerry, he’d left him hanging. He looked up. Up. Apparently he’d slid down to the floor from where he was leaning on the counter. This was ridiculous, he’d played the damsel in distress enough. He was useless.
(Useless Michael, can’t do anything but dream, dream of a friend who really cares and dream of people who he’d knit scarves for and dream of a guy that-)
“Michael?”
Gerry was worried. Michael knew that, even from his distressed-damsel placement on the floor and through his teary eyes. (He hadn’t noticed he’d been crying.)
What could he say? What could he say to make Gerry think that-
“I’m not crazy!”
“Hey, no one said you are. Do you want to get up off the floor, or are you good there?”
Michael was confused. What should he do with this information? Why wouldn’t Gerry think he was crazy? He’d said all the wrong things, all the things that the therapists and doctors want to hear and your friends and family don’t.
Gerry sat down on the floor next to him. “Can I give you a hug?”
Michael nodded, unable to form words. For wearing so much spiky clothing, Gerry was a pretty good hugger.
“Do you think I’m crazy?” He said it more to Gerry's shoulder than to the man himself, but he was heard anyway.
“No. I don’t think you’re crazy. Do you want to talk about it?”
Michael shook his head. “Later.”
“Ok.”
:)
Michael got up the courage, a couple sleepless nights later, to ask Gertrude where Emma went. Apparently, she was fired. Michael didn’t have it in him to ask follow-up questions, he was too relieved. He didn’t make this one up. She was real. She was real.
There was lighter fluid in Gertrude’s trash can.
:)
He looked up Emma Harvey. She was dead. She’d died a month ago, in a horrible and unexplained house fire. Michael was sure that couldn’t be true, however, because he’d seen her laughing in the dentist’s office just the other day.
:)
He only drank water when he went drinking again. His Shirley Temples had started to taste a little too much like wine.
:)
Michael didn’t want to tell Gerry about his issues. Issues were dangerous territory, issues made him seem abnormal. Abnormal people didn’t get to be happy. He was starting to think maybe Gerry would forget about the incident and they could move on with their normal lives where they never hallucinated or saw dead people.
Liar liar liar, said the voices, and Michael drowned them with too-hot tea.
Except- this wasn’t tea. It was cold, and tasted like rotting trees and hand sanitizer and over-boiled metallic carrots. He didn’t understand, he didn’t, and he coughed all over the break room table.
On the other side of the aforementioned table, Gerry jumped up from his seat. It dripped down the statement he’d been reading. Petroleum, black and shining and slick, in Michael’s teacup as well. Flickering, snapshot, tea again. His mouth burned from the heat. It smelled like lavender.
“That’s not oil.”
Gerry seemed confused. Understandable, of course. “Yeah? That’s tea, I just watched you make it?”
Michael sighed. “I thought it was oil.”
“But how-?”
“I tasted it. The oil. It tasted like decay. And I saw it, I saw it all over the statement, but now… it’s just tea.”
He sat down, his legs collapsing into useless rubber.
“Can I tell you about what happened on Christmas?”
Gerry sat down as well, ignoring the tea dripping onto the floor around him. He nodded silently.
“I see things that aren’t there. Sometimes. It happened a lot when I was a kid. I saw a boy, and he was my best friend.” Only friend, ever, until you. “And then I saw him die. And nobody knew who he was. I’d made him up all along.”
A deep breath.
“Obviously I went to therapists and doctors, but nothing made it make sense. I saw him, touched him, heard him. He was real, but then he wasn’t. So I stopped going, and I never saw him again, so I thought it was maybe just an imaginary friend or something. But recently I’ve started seeing him again. Around corners and in reflections, stuff like that. The tea, just now? I really tasted oil. The other day, I bit into an onion because I thought it was an apple, I saw an apple. On Christmas, I just… I was worried I’d imagined her too. That I’m really getting worse.”
Gerry stood up, without speaking, and gave him a hug. Even though they were both covered in tea, and Michael was shaking, he thought, I could get used to this.
Gerry was silent, and so was Michael, and they were silent together for a long time.
:)
He remembered his father. Dead five years ago, so why did he still see him for afternoon tea on Saturdays? He didn’t think he missed him much, and wasn’t that a cruel thought?
(He had sworn at me as he tried to climb the stairs to the top, telling me I was no son of his, and I was trying to agree with him, but if I could have done so, then he would have been wrong.)
:)
“You shouldn’t trust Gertrude.”
“What’s so untrustworthy about her?”
“Everything.”
“Isn’t that true for most people?”
That’s not nice.
“...You can trust me.”
I believe you.
:)
He saw Emma when he took the tube to work. He saw her behind the register of his local pharmacy. He saw her in the mirror sometimes, when he brushed his teeth.
She said, They’re lying. They’re lying. They’re lying.
Michael thought she sounded exactly like his voices, and wasn’t that funny?
:)
“I think you should go to a doctor.”
“I’ve been to doctors. They can’t help. They just ask me questions and then tell me I have a very active imagination, like that explains imagining a boy who- nevermind. Anyway, they don’t do much.”
Gerry hummed. “Yeah, but you were a kid then, right? Doctors don’t believe anything kids say. You don’t have to go into detail, just tell them you’re hallucinating. If they really need to know, you can always just say ‘dead people’. It’s a huge mood-killer, trust me. Then they might prescribe you something to help.”
Michael sighed. “...I’ll consider it.”
“I can go with you, if you want.”
“Yeah. Maybe.”
:)
Turns out Gerry couldn’t go with him. Work trip. Michael tried not to feel lonely, in the cold waiting room with only the ticking clock for company. There were no colors, and he felt nauseous.
:)
“Do you ever hear statements sing?”
“What does that mean?”
“Nevermind.”
:)
Gerry was right, saying you saw dead people would kill any conversation. The doctor’s follow-up questions committed suicide on his tongue, and Michael walked out of the appointment with a prescription for an antipsychotic.
:)
He tried to write a resignation letter once. Well, not once. He tried so many times, but he couldn’t do it. It hurt. The writing hurt his hands. The words on the paper seared into his brain. Every page he crumpled up and threw into the trash felt like a breath of fresh air. He swore he saw the portrait of Jonah Magnus wink.
He popped another pill and tried again.
:)
Gerry was sick. He tried to hide it, but the migraines and hacking coughs and random forgetfulness seeped through the cracks of his mind and into the lulls of conversation. You can tell a lot from things people don’t talk about. They were like two stars of broken glass, orbiting each other. Space was cold, and the fractured light they each gave off felt so, so warm.
Gerry was scared too. It was visible in the running mascara when he left the bathroom, the shaking of his hands, the edge in his voice. But he wouldn’t go to a doctor. And what could Michael do? What could he say? Thank God I’m not the only broken one. (That’s not nice.)
:)
The paper of statements tasted like apple skins.
Wait- what was he doing again?
:)
Gerry was forgetful. He’d lose pieces of his life to the cold black of his deep subconscious. Michael started recognizing the signs and would hold his hand through it, tell him how long it had been once he came to.
Michael lost time too. It was more gradual, his memories and focus flowing washing away like the tide, sometimes coming back different. (Not wrong. Never wrong.) The ocean of his brain was beautiful and serene and strange. Not there-and-then-gone, but changing, like a caterpillar melting away in its cocoon.
:)
If he could be anything, he’d be an angel from the stained-glass windows. He saw them every Tuesday. He guessed they weren’t confined to the Church anymore.
:)
I think I love him.
“Six Hail Marys, to be free from sin,” said his father, standing menacingly over his bed.
:)
Gerry invited him to track down a cursed book. The archives felt like copper and laundry detergent that day, so he said yes.
(He doesn’t really like you.)
(But it’s something to do.)
The book burned like a marshmallow, curling around the edges and smelling sickly-sweet. Michael was busy scoping out a door down the street that looked suspicious. (He could have sworn he’d seen that one before.)
Followed by doors twice, shame on you.
“It’s sort of a family business. Although my mom thought collecting the evil books was better.”
A family business? A family business. His mother. That door was looking at him.
“You okay?”
Oh, yeah, I’m fine.
“Just the door’s following me again.”
Gerry looked worried. Why would he be worried?
“Oh, I uh… didn’t mean to say that part. Sorry, just a bit distracted. What were you saying?”
For some reason Gerry didn’t look convinced. Why wasn’t he convincing? Did he not seem normal anymore? Normal people are happy people. Why couldn’t he be happy? He was trying, wasn’t he? It wasn’t his fault he still didn’t know all the rules, and those doors certainly weren’t helping, and-
“I promise, I’m fine. Family business?”
:)
Gerry got a lot of headaches. Or was it Michael who got the headaches? Which one was he? They were two sides of the same coin, weren’t they? Mind and body. (Failing) in unison. One, two, two three, four five, seven sides of a spiral. Or, no, wait…
“Hey, do you have any painkillers? My head is actually gonna kill me.”
Who am I and who are you and why are we the same? Why does my name hurt and how many sides does a coin have? I broke my bathroom mirror last night because it had someone else inside, can I look at your face instead of mine? My heart is yours and my mind is shattered, so what does that leave me with? You, can it be you you you?
“Sure, here you go.”
“Are those your hallucination pills? Why is the bottle empty? I thought they were helping?”
Keen eyes, keen eyes. Marked all over his body in ink and intelligence. Michael used the last of his pills a week ago to bring back the door of his room so he could get to work. Although he remembered taking some yesterday… maybe those were tictacs. What’s the difference?
“Oh, yeah, I -uh, I have to get a refill later today. Well, I’m busy today. Tomorrow. Probably.”
“Do you want me to remind you?”
“Uh… no, it’s fine.”
“You should really take this more seriously.”
Serious, it’s so serious, so serious the pills couldn’t cut it. I need to rip my skull open and take out the problem. Will you help me, help me, help me- I think you’d be good at brain surgery. You work well under pressure. Pressure, pressure, my head hurts, but you can take all my pills and I’ll survive on your love alone. Love, love, they should make that into pills. But enough talking, let’s get down to it. Cut into the skin of my head, the skull will melt for you like strawberry ice cream. I don’t need anaesthetic, I don’t need anything messing with my brain. What I see is real real real, they told me themselves.
“Go to the doctor, Gerry.”
“Touche.”
:)
I think you’re dying, I think we’re both dying together, and isn’t that a nice thought? Would you visit me in my grave? I’d always put out tea and biscuits for you, if you’d just stay awhile.
:)
His father had never let him do much. He didn’t realize that at the time, but he did now.
Don’t make noise after seven. Don’t speak so loud. Don’t talk to girls. Don’t smile so wide. Don’t bring home friends.
Well, the last one never really changed anything.
:)
They tasted like soap and cupcake frosting.
What did?
His pills.
That can’t be right.
You’re not supposed to chew them.
Yes you are. Why else would they taste like cinnamon and pineapples?
What tastes like pineapples?
The pills.
That can’t be right.
:)
Michael was a horrible person. He’d get angry with Gertrude for no reason. (If he had no reason, why would he be doing it?) She was just doing her job, of course she was snippy with him. And he’d misplace statements, and forget what he was doing- it was a miracle he hadn’t been fired yet!
(He would love to be fired. He only really came to work so he could see Gerry.)
There were more and more of the bad statements. The ones with clay men and doors and sentences that twisted and turned like the tails of snakes. Gertrude read them all and asked for more, and Michael tried not to look at the descriptions when he gave them to her.
(-where his fingers touched the back of my trembling hand, I could feel his spiraling fingerprints start to turn. Round and around.)
Michael drew spirals everywhere he went. Round and around.
:)
He cried at everything. All the time. Too-cute dogs, someone snapping at him at the coffee shop, the dust behind his dresser. His father told him to get over it.
Get over it, get better, get better, too many doctor’s bills. You go to that therapist every week and you still aren’t normal, no wonder Gerry hates you. I got a call from school today, I heard you had a panic attack in art class. Can’t you be normal, can’t you be okay? I didn’t raise you like this. You’re such a disappointment, it’s a shock you’re not fired yet. No wonder your mother left, I don’t want to handle your little tantrums either. You’re a pathetic excuse for a son.
:)
One day Gerry came in with a Leitner titled ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’. It was only about 12 pages, the color of jaundice, and he wouldn’t let Michael read it. They watched it burn together, though, holding hands in the frigid air outside, and the smoke looked like laughing and crying figures with long dark hair.
Michael looked up the story on the institute computer. It confused him. There was a woman, sick with something, and she slept in a room with too-bright wallpaper. And she started to hallucinate another woman behind it? Or- not behind it, but outside the house? Or both?
(Sometimes I think there are a great many women behind, and sometimes only one, and she crawls around fast, and her crawling shakes it all over.)
Gerry came up behind him and he powered down his computer quickly. For some reason, this felt like something he shouldn’t be reading.
(And she is all the time trying to climb through. But nobody could climb through that pattern - it strangles so; I think that is why it has so many heads. They get through, and then the pattern strangles them off and turns them upside down, and makes their eyes white!)
:)
He was getting worse. He could taste it, in the metallic edge of blood in his drinking water. Like a shark, he cackled, from where he lay with his head in the kitchen sink.
:)
Hail, Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen.
Michael didn’t feel any less sinful.
Hail, Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen.
His knees hurt just like they used to.
Hail, Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb- Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for our sanity, now and at the hour of our unbecoming. Amen.
Was he doing it right?
Hail, Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit of… Holy Mary, Mother of All, please pray for me, now and at the hour of my death. Amen.
Again, said his father’s voice in his ear, and he obliged.
:)
His reflection wasn’t right. It waved its too-long fingers at him and smiled with too many teeth. It’s hair twisted out of the glass and around the bathroom sink. It scratched with its nails until its hands bled, but it never broke the glass. Trapped, trapped, it cackled at him, and Michael wondered if he was on the right side.
:)
On good days, Michael could have his morning cereal without tasting stale bread and cheap wine. On good days, Ryan and Emma would stay far away from him on the subway, and the voices were only a backdrop to the rest of the world. Doors would stay where they were put, the prayers were just words, and he could nearly tell real from imaginary.
On bad days, he really missed when the pills hadn’t run out. He couldn’t go back to the doctor to get more, though, because the voices told him not to.
:)
“What’s wrong?”
“The doors, the doors, the doors-”
“Hey, breathe, breathe, okay? In for 3, out for 3. Can you do that for me?”
The air tasted like stale cigarettes. Gerry should quit smoking.
“What are the doors doing?”
They were sitting together. Where? The floor. What floor? Archives bathroom floor.
How’d they get there?
The doors were back. They were. No mistaking it. He ran from them, into the bathroom, but he forgot that the bathroom also had a door. Someone drew spirals all over the walls and floor and sink in bright yellow crayon and sharpie. The ceiling fan sounded like the dying breath of an old man. Gerry’s fingers rested limp on Michael’s palm. His hands were still oozing blood from clawing at the mirror. I want to get out, out into the real world. You can’t keep me trapped here anymore, no matter how long and sharp your hands are.
He’d been there for nearly an hour before Gerry found him, but what was time, really? Michael was content to just watch the fan spin.
(Round and round and round - round and round and round - it makes me dizzy!)
Just a whisper.
“I think ‘m getting worse, Gerry.”
:)
If he could just explain, he’d be okay. But he was too tired to explain. He couldn’t think straight, because every night, instead of sleeping, he watched the spirals spin pretty circles over his ceiling.
:)
Gerry, the champion of staying in his room and doing nothing, said Michael needed to get more fresh air. “The musty old archives aren’t doing you any favors. You need to be out in the sun, sunshine! C’mon, let’s go for a walk! The flowers are blooming! They’re almost as pretty as you…”
Hypocrite.
(I don't want to go outside. I won't, even if she asks me to. For outside you have to creep on the ground, and everything is green instead of yellow.)
:)
“Good morning Gerry!”
“What’s so good about it?”
Gerry was hunched over the sink, clutching his head. Clearly a bad pain day, but Michael still had news!
“Well, Gertrude’s bringing me on a trip to Russia. We’re investigating a statement, but I think there might be some downtime for me. You know, ‘cause she hates me and doesn’t want me around. And then, I thought maybe a change of scenery would really help with my… y’know. So I thought, when I get back, I’m gonna get a new apartment. And I know you have mixed feelings about living above the bookshop, so I thought… we could be roommates?”
Michael was so scared of everything, all the time, but this was a new level. Exuberant confidence faded as Gerry sighed, collapsing into a chair as though he was Atlas just freed of the weight of the planet.
(Why would he want to live with you? He deals with your insanity enough. If he had the chance, he’d never talk to you again. He wants you to leave him alone, leave everyone alone-)
Black-painted lips curled into a slight smile.
“Of course I want to live with you. Is that even a question?”
:)
Michael was on Cloud Nine. Gerry had come over to help him pack for the trip, although he was reluctant to let Gerry see his less-than-perfect home.
(“It’s fine, Michael. My place looks like a cursed artifact warzone anyway.”)
They excitedly planned out the decoration for their new apartment as Michael tried to find where he had stored his winter gear.
“Come back soon,” said Gerry, giving Michael a faint kiss on the cheek that ignited fireworks in his heart and left a dark lipstick print behind. “We need to find a place soon so that we can watch Doctor Who together.”
Things were finally looking up for ol’ Mikey.
:)
The flight to Russia was quiet. Gertrude reviewed documents and ignored Michael’s attempts at small talk. The atmosphere was freezing cold before they even touched down.
:)
They landed in Minsk and rented a car. Michael wanted to stop in a tourist shop and buy something for Gerry, but Gertrude told him there wasn’t time for that nonsense. Well, Michael could just get something on his way back! Even Gertrude’s sour mood couldn’t dim his excitement, and the change of scenery was working wonders! His mind was clearer and he hadn't even bat an eye at the man with the clay face on the plane!
As soon as he got back home, he was going to renew his prescription, give Gerry a big hug (and a tourist shop gift and perhaps a declaration of love), and start looking for apartments.
Life was good.
:)
Gertrude led them to the marina. The ship stood tall and imposing, the last of a long line of vessels and the only one that seemed to seep fear and discontent from every angle. Bathed in fog which wrapped its curling icy hands around Michael, trying to take his soul and replace him with something lonely and frozen.
Gertrude introduced him to Peter Lukas, captain of the Tundra, who seemed barely tangible, merely a wisp of the same fog that enshrouded him on the solitary ship’s deck. The man had a grey beard dusted with drops of water that had frozen into ice, a blue knit cap, and he did not seem enthused when Michael held out his hand to shake. Instead, he turned and beckoned them onto the ship, refusing to look them in the eye.
Michael tried to profess to Gertrude that he wasn’t really sure about this, he got seasick so easily, he didn’t really pack for a boat trip, not that it was her fault, of course not, he’d never accuse her of being deceptive, it was just that he was a little nervous, and Mr. Lukas seemed scary, he thought boat captains were meant to make you feel excited about the ocean and this man really didn’t, and he felt very very alone-
But Gertrude snapped at him that there was ‘no reason for the histrionics’ and ‘really, Michael, can’t you do one thing right? Gerry wouldn’t hesitate- he’d be disappointed in your immature cowardice, Michael.’ And Michael didn’t want to disappoint Gerry, and it was only a boat ride out to an island and back, and it wasn’t even really that cold, not really that scary, so he supposed he could handle it.
He stepped onto the ship and he didn’t look back.
:)