Work Text:
"Ryder, look. I've been having these dreams of all sorts of guys that look exactly like me, and there's a whole multiverse of them." Colt admits conspiratorially, stammering as his eyes were bloodshot, grabbing the lead actor by his shoulders. He can't even tell what has been going on in his mind as late, his reality had been warped into something like that hallucinogen that had been floating around lately. At least from the description of it as provided by Ryder when he's in his rambling spats. Colt is at a loss for words as he tries to process his reality. There's no talking unicorn, yet the world shimmered, like a blur of shapes and colours. "I've seen some guy in a red spacesuit, claiming he was stuck in Portland while elephants were actively rampaging through the street, and for some reason he had a goat with him using it as some sort of point for reference." He added, giving Ryder a small shake for emphasis before unhanding him. The actor looked at him like he was tripping mad balls, his face contorting in a dramatized manner, leaving Colt reeling backwards as his limbs felt like jell-o.
Ryder's response was jumbled and barely intelligible "Colt's taken another fall." was all he could make out out from it, possibly phasing out his insults. Yet he was still on his legs, running from him. He felt like could almost float with the way his mind wasn't so burdened, but it was overwhelming as everything was somehow stimulating his senses, leaving him dealing with a feeling sort of like whiplash and adrenaline flooding his veins. Alleviating, but with repercussions. Colt's movements were janky and uncoordinated as he still experienced the harsh glare from a garden of spotlights, while running like a track-star. The surrealism that followed in his footsteps were like a tear in the fabric of time as stars appeared in his wake. An empty diner parking lot had several silhouettes that all took form of him standing under a light in an organized ring was what was formed behind him.Colt continued to run, but his footfalls continued to tear away at the ground from his feet before levitating and ripping trough the space around him as if the very world he lived in was just a veil that he was ripping away at. It was inevitable that he would've approached the diner, having eventually entered, though reluctant and deciding to get a Shirley Temple from the kid's menu that he had been handed. Something was off as he's left feeling like he was ascending further, out of the diner ceiling while the silhouettes following after Colt began to morph into some various kinds of bastardizations of his image. Was one of them in a nurse costume with a wig…? Colt was still waiting for the unicorn to appear so he could at least be certain in his conscience, or maybe he could will for it to appear, he just needed the unicorn to talk… once he figured out how to stop floating. The copies of him all had some sort of variance, Colt could've sworn he's seen a murderous glint in some of their eyes, and then you have several of them that stand out like sore thumbs, namely some sort of nurse, a bakery owner, and an elf. God what was even happening? Why was there a life sized Ken doll, why did there have to be some teacher that seemed to have himself eerily put together?? Colt had so many questions and so little answers to what his world's become. Glitter lingered in the corner of his vision as he was brought over to some over-saturated meadow that made him wince, the sky swirling like it was straight out of some Van Gogh painting. A sort of rock, spider-crab-thing began to scuttle and hop from out of the tall grass, more following suit with all sorts of varying earthen colours, prancing together towards a central figure in the middle of a forked path. He appeared to be the most neutral looking variation of himself Colt had ever seen.
The neutral variation beckoned the other variations of Colt to come forward, wordlessly as they all together seemed to begin to pull at strings that suddenly appeared around his waist, before cutting them with some sort of similar expression that Ryder gave him. Malice? All Colt knew was that he was falling and some sort of sound escaped from his lungs that was some amalgamation of a man and a whale. Something had been severed and he screamed.
Colt found himself startling as what was probably airflow felt like a wave of chilled water hitting his face, causing the man to yelp and scramble into a seated position, arms flailing to catch himself. Nothing necessarily felt injured, though the back of his head ached with a dull throb. Ryder loomed in the background as a set medic and Jody crammed themselves in front of him, but somewhere there was a large white body looming behind the two people fussing over him. Colt felt dizzy from the sun glaring in his eyes, and the medic trying to determine if he was fit to stand. Frustratingly, nobody would move to allow him a clear look at the large body, until Ryder begrudgingly joined the medic's side as they took both his arms and dragged him into a shaded tent, pouring water along his head and popping his suit's zipper open to expose his collar. There he saw it, the unicorn, watching him. Before Colt could say even a word, a sort of illness fell over him as Jody worriedly stuck close to the medic's tent. He couldn't fight off the fog that loomed over his vision, experiencing a form of delirium all over again.
