Work Text:
He can’t keep you forever
Not a single event since the first day has convinced you of this, but it’s the only thing you can stubbornly cling to, repeat over and over again, as though the repetition would cause it to come true.
There’s not much else to do anyway, in this box that’s so tiny you’re folded in on yourself in order to fit, knees to chin and elbows at your sides… so you repeat words to yourself.
Usually it’s the mantra “you can’t keep me forever,” but sometimes you spot a yummy word working that day and repeat it over and over, just to memorize how it feels, how the syllables vibrate back and forth in the tiny box, how much of a distraction they provide from the pains scattered over your body.
There are words everywhere. You usually read the advertisements out loud to yourself, but that got boring after a while because they all say the same thing: free stuff! 20% off! you won a thing! click this extremely suspicious link to win a prize! The words are also really hard to read because they are all obnoxious colors and weird fonts, so it’s easier to learn words when he explores the internet or does homework. You write the words with your fingers, tap the syllables, but mostly you say them out loud because your hands are constantly busy incinerating ads.
Luckily, he doesn’t seem to care when you talk, probably can’t hear you say “calculator” over and over to learn the feeling of the click-clack sounds, or ponder out loud why the word “bound” has four completely different definitions.
(he can’t hear your screams either)
You don’t only say things to keep you distracted (because without words all you can hear is the incessant click of the little triangle or the repetitive tapping of keys or the ridiculously loud jangles of the iron links in the chain whenever you move the tiniest bit, and you don’t want to go through your whole life only hearing computer noise in addition to the monotony of your routine.)
You can control what you say,
perhaps the only thing you actually have control over…
So much of your existence revolves around someone else’s whims… someone else decides when you get to eat and when you get to sleep or breathe slightly less stale air or walk or use the gifts he had so graciously given you.
(When you had woken up for the first time, with fire running through your veins and flames licking your fingers, you thought you had a purpose, a destiny, that your name was more than a shiny trophy item.
He disagreed,
surely, because even though he created you, made you the literal Chosen One, he still relegated you to trivial, mindless automation because he didn’t want to spend two dollars for a real ad blocker.)
So in a way, repeating words or reading sentences or narrating your entire day to yourself is how you prove that you still have power, that you refuse to accept the five letters that he tacked on to the end of your name, that you are still alive and autonomous and haven’t become a mindless paper shell yet.
Most of the words he writes are really boring, strung together in long, complicated sentences that barely make any sense, but sometimes one of the words looks really interesting and delicious, so you say it over and over to memorize it and then sneak up when he isn’t looking so you can eat it.
The words are not actually delicious, sadly, mostly tasting of dust or cardboard boxes. It’s rather disappointing, that words like “prodigious”, so crisp and round when you say it out loud, taste just like every mundane word that ever existed, but they are filling, sort of.
You also discovered that… uh… you’re not supposed to eat the words because when you try he picks up the ball attached to your foot and throws you into a wall.
(You’re not sure that you could walk right at all anymore even without the ball and chain, because your ankle is not meant to ache and throb and swell quite as much as it does.)
However, you still need to eat, even if he still believes you’re nothing but random pixels on a screen, so you wait until he leaves to sneak up to the nearest text and take a couple of letters.
The nutritional quality is probably miniscule, but it’s been around three months and you haven’t died yet so they are nutritious enough, anyway.
Most of the time, though, after you’re summoned and do the daily plummet-thud-crash, he tosses you into the farthest corner of the computer, chained far away from any words. you resign yourself to not eating for a while.
(You remember the time he’d been doodling food in the drawing app, sandwiches and apples and miniature cakes, and thought it had been an apology for locking you in the chest while he went on vacation, where your body had consumed every gram of fat, leaving you frail and emaciated and weak.
He had been so confused why you had snatched up his artwork, why you kept reaching for it even when he sent you flying into the walls over and over and over–
he must have felt sorry after, because he “forgot” to put you away that night, allowing you to crawl over to the browser and devour every letter one at a time, just to make sure they were real and not some fevered hallucination.)
You’re fairly sure his cruelty is mindless, like he doesn’t even know he’s being cruel, like treating you as an object or a plaything is common practice.
You think if he knew you were alive, he wouldn’t make you sleep in a box that’s too small for you, or smash you into the walls until near every part of your body is bleeding, or test out some of his animations on you, studying your reactions like a specimen in a petri dish.
(you’d take apathy over sadism, at least)
But you are alive, in fact, and sometimes even words or the sound of your own voice is not enough to convince yourself of that, so the chest stays quiet except for the sound of your shallow breathing and you allow your mind to wander.
Every now and then, a small part of you wonders… maybe, that if he paid a little more attention,
he’d see a person, who plays quirky little tapping games during breaks, who reads every advertisement out loud and declares that each one is a complete scam, who says “velvet” over and over and narrates his mundane life out loud to not go insane and has learnt all the rules to Solitaire and Minesweeper just by watching–
(a person who is injured and starving and exhausted and desperate and perhaps doesn’t deserve mindless cruelty or lifelong imprisonment… someone who is new, and scared, and needs someone to care.)
and maybe…
he would let you free?
Decide you’ve paid your penance for the chaos you’d made your first day and send you out into the world?
There has to be another place out there, you think, as your dreams constantly show you images of grass and sky and mountains, green and warm and safe, so different from the white artificiality of the computer and the dark, cramped space of the chest.
(Every time you wonder, a voice in your mind disagrees. Why would he send you away when you serve him more here? After all, keeping you around saves him a measly two dollars.)
(you wish that it wasn’t so correct)
No, he will not let you go, but you still resolve to see that outside world. Eventually. You’re not quite sure how, or when, or if that’s even possible, but it will happen someday, and the words and the bright sunny images in your mind fuel you through all the hard days.
He can’t keep you here forever
But this time, it’s more than just something said out of boredom, to distract you from being crammed in a tiny box or the ache of your palms or the pain of your stomach.
It’s a promise
and it gives you a small sliver of hope.