Chapter Text
Twixxel is dead.
Left as nothing more than pixelated blood plastered all over blocky wooden planks. Somehow, someway, a strong stench begins to waft from the screen straight into Mob’s nose. He begins to lurch, covering his nose with his hand as he lets go of his mouse.
“No.” He repeats, over and over and over again until his ears filter it out like white noise.
He stares at the screen. This is just a minecraft mod, he thinks to himself as he reaches out for his phone stationed at the side of his monitor. This is just a minecraft mod. he clicks on discord first. Five minutes, ten, fifteen. He switches to Twixxel’s phone number. The ringing ends and he perks up from his desk.
“Twixxel—” Abruptly, a cold robotic voice comes out of the phone speakers; “The person you are calling is unavailable. Please leave a message right after the tone.” the phone beeps. “Dude, wherever the hell you are right now, call me or leave a message—I don’t care—just prove to me that you’re alive.” His voice is nearly shouting into his phone.
He puts down his phone on the desk, and quickly slams his finger into his computer’s power button. To hell with breaking the power supply, he begins to rapidly click on it in hopes that it would somehow turn off faster. The whine from the computer GPU and the fan whirring goes to stop, and he stares at the black screen, at his reflected, sweaty, panicked expression.
Hands on his face he sighs, deeply. Throwing himself onto the bed with a small ‘umph’ as his body lays on the mattress, he tries to forget about everything; the blood, the stench emitted from the monitor, the way that he knows for sure that Verity was behind everything. He grasps his blanket and throws it over himself, I’ll deal with all of this tomorrow. He thinks to himself.
The monitor stares, and stares, and stares, and stares until it could perfectly imprint the figure of Mob’s sleeping figure on its face. It reaches out, almost as if he could feel the real warmth, not the warmth from this useless piece of technology it’s trapped in—Mob sits up and stares at the monitor, the hairs at the back of his neck up and alert.
He stares at the abyss, and the abyss will stare at him back. But not if he does something about it. He throws the blanket across the wood until it covers the entirety of his monitor, uselessly draping over his desk. There is no extra blanket for him to sleep with, and that’s a compromise he’s willing to have.
The early signs of dawn begins to make its way into his small studio apartment; the opaqueness of the curtains letting tiny yellow dots of light seep its way through, the sheer cold of the night slowly losing its strength to the warmth of the bright yellow sun, Mob’s visible lack of sleep as he begins to claw his way out of his bed for work, it was a very normal occurrence—save for the blanket currently shielding him away from his personal computer set up.
A yawn, a shower, a soon to be haphazard breakfast crudely thrown together in his barren kitchen. He abruptly stops dead in his tracks. A bright yellow sticky note is stuck on the top cupboard of one of his kitchen cabinets, a familiar yellow that quickly throws him back into the events of the night prior.
“Don’t forget to buy food.”
His mouth feels like cotton, the towel in his hand drying his hair falls onto the floor as he stares at the sticky note. He immediately runs over to his monitor, it’s off, but his focus remains on one thing. His phone.
He calls Twixxel, once, twice, thrice, repeat, a two way path that only ever leads to a female robot or Twixxel’s voice coming out of the phone speakers. As of the second day, it has not been the latter. He sighs in frustration, a hand running through his hair as he pinches the bridge of his nose.
The yellow clock ticks, showing the passing time with a small click for every second that passes. He ends up near the kitchen counter again, staring at the sticky note with much determination, hoping that it would suddenly fold into the much needed answer he wants, like a self-folding origami piece. He thinks of a yellow ball, “I know everything!” its words echo through his brain.
Alright, this has to be something I’ve written, He takes the paper off the cupboard, crushes it in his palm and promptly throws it away into a bin. It hits the edge with a ‘tink’ and falls on the floor. Oh. My. God. He grits his teeth and proceeds to try and make his breakfast.
A sandwich, toasted with a multitude of plain processed cheese pressed in between the slices of bread, and a bright yellow cup full of coffee. He does not think about how much last night has disturbed him, how the hairs at the back of his neck stand up, how the warmth of a morning has been replaced with the sheer cold of the dead of night.
Time passes with another tick, it is now six o’clock in the night. His work uniform is draped all over his coach, and ever since morning he’s been trying to get in contact with Twixxel, to the point of spending most of his work lunch trying to get even a message from him. He stares at his phone, the numerous missed calls piled up, Twenty three calls, and probably more soon to come. All of them—God, He hopes not all of them—missed calls. He stands in front of his computer, his finger hovering in front of the power button.
He withdraws it and slaps himself lightly in the face with both of his hands. Come on Mob, it’s just minecraft. Twixxel’s probably just busy—Just open the game he thinks, yet every single missed call has been chipping away at his hope piece by piece. The familiar sound of the computer whirring into life fills his ears, snapping him away from his special land of thoughts and only thoughts. The monitor comes to life, and he is met with his lock screen. He does not know, or rather tries not to, but his hands are shaking.
His cursor hesitantly hovers over the minecraft launcher before he finally clicks on it much to his own chagrin. He boots up his world, and the heaviness in his heart, in his lungs, and all over his body, begins to grow denser by the minute. There, it loads;
The scent of rot wafts up into the air, a post-mortem body unseen in the pixelated world, except for browning blood that mocks him, that mocks his twenty three calls, that mocks every bit of his desperation and hope for wanting to see his friend alive and well. It is still night in the world, the only source of light being the torches set up all around the place.
“God…Twix, why did I have to invite you?” he shudders, his breath growing heavy by the second as he nearly pukes like last time.
He turns his camera towards the exit, slowly making his way back to his and Verity’s base. Every footstep feels like a brutal downhill slope, every step threatening to make him slump in his chair from sheer mental exhaustion.
In front of him now is the singular oak door, the entrance that leads to the cause for all of his problems thus far. He contemplates, his finger rubbing the right mouse button, wondering to himself whether or not he should open the oak door.
“Mob,” Verity’s eerily calm monotonous voice comes from behind the oak door. The door opens for him, and he peers down into the dreadful void somehow never illuminated by the surrounding torches. He takes a step forward into the house, Verity stares at him, a flat smile plastered on its plastic-like ball of a body. “It’s just us again,” there is not a single emotion in that voice, except perhaps a glint of glee at the thought of the two of them being isolated once more.
“Isn’t that better?” It says, its smile widening by a slight bit—almost as if the ghost of its original cheery face hovered over. A flicker of rage flows through him, almost wanting to throw Verity somewhere so far away that he would never have to see that stupid yellow face ever again. To never even be reminded of it every time he sees the colour yellow.
Instead he sleeps, he sleeps through the night. There is not a single pop up message to stop him from sleeping and to warn him of the danger of Verity being so nearby, instead Verity lets him sleep. Maybe, it is to give him one last mercy, a last blessing to give unto him in preparation of what is soon to come. Like a fool, he accepts it, because it’s all he has ever learned to do when it comes to Verity.