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“Disappointing.”
Blinding lights blotted everything else out, hovering, moving in and out of sight. He tried to turn his head, to follow or look away, his stunned mind couldn’t decide, but the slightest movement sent pain radiating down his body. So he laid there, on his side, half-seeing the lights.
There were sounds. The humming of machinery, and the buzzing of the lights. And the grumbling. Mutterings of swears and long words, spoken by a gruff, exhausted voice. The distinct sound of a thick book page turning, and the scratch of pencil on paper.
He couldn’t feel anything. Or maybe he felt a lot. He couldn’t tell. But he didn’t like it.
He made a noise that hurt his throat, and two lights returned, staring down at him. “Good, you’re awake already. I’ve found this works best when my patients are conscious for it.”
He didn’t remember what happened after that, other than that it hurt.
He was shaped wrong.
Even then, he felt soft. Malleable, like one wrong move and his body would fall apart.
Something prodded where his heart was. It hammered away in his chest, and he hardly heard the voice speaking to him through it.
“Just die already.”
Something grasped his head and yanked him up, and his heart dropped. It felt like this thing might rip his head off, and he hardly felt himself hold in one piece. It hurt. It hurt, for every second he was manhandled, forced to look at those glittering eyes watching him.
“What will it take for your light to extinguish, cockroach? But given you fought your way all the way down here, alow, I shouldn’t be surprised you refuse to die. But I’ve had a very long time to come up with countless methods to snuff light like yours out, and we have time.”
The figure let him go, and he tried to curl up into himself. But he squished like sand and he still wasn’t shaped right, so he didn’t move right, either. His back curved oddly and his legs bent in the wrong places, but he couldn’t remember how he was meant to bend otherwise, either.
His insides burned.
“Useless, useless,” the voice hissed, terse. He couldn’t remember if the voice ever sounded any different.
They dug oddly-shaped hands into the surface they laid on. It was caked in a layer of ash. Their own? It didn’t feel right. Their ash wasn’t supposed to do that. To come off so easily. They shuddered at the sensation, and twisted. A hand forced them flat on their side and pressed the breath from their lungs. They had lungs, right? Humans had lungs.
“Open your eyes. Let me see your eyes.”
Something on his head was grabbed and yanked and a shrill noise tore free from his throat.
“Shut up.” A light shone in his now wide-open eyes. “There. Stupid.”
He was let go and his ringing head hit the surface hard. Breathing hard, he shuddered, and tried to twist away from the bad light.
“No. Sit still. If you’re strong enough to move, that’s too alive for my liking. I’m not done with you yet.” The voice leaned in close, too close. “Did you know, this is the longest the Upturned Inn has been without a guest? The storm has been raging for days upon days and the power goes out for longer and longer periods every day. I’m convinced you’ve brought it with you, and you are a terrible omen. Perhaps if I destroy you, it will go away.”
The words went in one ear and out the other. He shuddered as something stroked his side.
“Do you understand? I’m doing everyone a favor here. Yet none of them understand. Not even you. A shame.”
“I am very tempted to turn you into glass, if only to stop your crying.”
The lights flickered and it sparked a pounding headache behind their eyes. They couldn’t help the way their lips pulled back, exposing teeth that didn’t sit right in their mouth. There were too many and they were too thick, curving back like the maw of a predator. Something in their head wanted out, resting on the tip of their tongue. It refused to take coherent form. The attempt at speech turned into an ugly, angry noise.
“Did you hear me? I said, shut—”
He sank his teeth into the hand that strayed too close and stifled a cry of pain. The pressure the bite exerted reverberated back into his skull and he let go instantly, breathing hard open-mouthed until the pain went away. The pain never went away, though.
“You monster, you bite the hand that feeds like a lowly street dog,” the voice snapped, taking him by the back of the neck and yanking him up. He glared into his attacker’s eyes and began baring his not-right teeth again, because he didn’t have any other options. He was sharp and he could bite and make the hurt go away.
Everything hurt, especially moving, and his hands didn’t move right, especially. Too few fingers that weren’t quite the same shape as they once were. He twitched and raised a hand and barely comprehended how they ended in sharpened points. He could do the hurting, with those claws. So he raised them with stiff, uneven motions, but his body didn’t obey him and refused to move as fast as he wanted.
The gaze followed his own to his raised, hovering claws, and he was dropped unceremoniously onto the table, sending up a puff of ash.
“Don’t even think about defying me again,” the voice spat. “We’ll try again. I’ve had millions of attempts to refine my many methods. Don’t get your hopes up yet.”
“The power’s been out for over a day,” the voice whispered. It was dark, save for the light spilling from his eyes and every other gap in the aged body looming over them. His mouth, the cracks in his head, even his hands, faintly. “I cannot do much with only the emergency power, and even then, that will not last long.”
The pain was a constant, now, worse than ever, but he could process his surroundings now. Even if he couldn’t see much, given the darkness. Being so used to the pains while it only grew worse made for a strange feeling.
“I think this storm has reached its peak. And I, too, have reached the end of my rope.”
The lights vanished and he twisted his head to follow the figure. There was the terrific creak of rusted wheels, and then he was being yanked onto a smaller surface. Into something, a small, cramped container he didn’t want to be in. His odd legs twitched; either a spasm or an attempt at kicking, even he didn’t know.
“Disgusting.”
He hissed.
“Shut up,” the voice said tiredly. “You’ve won, cockroach. Does it feel good? Knowing you are likely the last guest to ever enter this place? I’d call you my last chance, but I suppose I could hunt the other guests who haven’t completely solidified against my newer methods. I’d call Ikabod down here, but…”
Ikabod. The name made him produce a terrible noise he didn’t understand the meaning of.
“Oh, quit it. I think he left. He stopped answering my calls after I shipped your hat up there, and that was, what, a fortnight ago? He’s long gone. You’ve even taken my assistant from me. Are you happy?”
Only a few of the words really stuck in his head. Like Ikabod, which made him think of a loud, chipper voice that filled the silence, and was maybe annoying, but he knew he missed it. And hat and gone and happy, but none of those words made anything clearer. Where were they? They wanted out. They’d been going somewhere. Gone? They wanted to be gone from this wretched place.
“Did you know this isn’t the bottom floor? There are a couple of floors below this one. Unfinished, but there, and filled with all the mistakes that I didn’t bother sending back up to their rooms. The emergency power should be enough to send you there.”
He shifted in place to quell the discomfort in their bones, but the cage was too small for them to stretch out in.
“Why do I even bother?” the voice mumbled. “I’ve personally destroyed your mind, and yet I speak as if you understand a word I’m saying. Perhaps the years have gotten to me.”
The cart he laid on jostled, and he squinted at the hall. Candles rested on tables lining either side, guiding the way down to a set of cold metal doors. Ash hung heavy in the air.
“I hope I never see you again, roach,” the voice said, lifting his cage up. The voice had a name, but he couldn’t remember it. He couldn’t focus, being jostled around like an animal, so he made more sounds to vocalize his discontent. The familiar doors slid open with a loud groan, and they went inside. An elevator. He recognized its interior, filling him with a sense of safety, even if something else told him what was happening at that moment couldn’t be good.
He was dropped onto the old elevator carpet unceremoniously, and the clattering of it knocked his head and it pounded in protest. But he thrashed against the bars, reaching thin hands through to swipe at his captor’s legs. He stepped back too fast to get hit.
“I’m tired of this song and dance, cockroach.” There was a distant click of something being pressed, and then the figure stepped away. “Goodbye. Alow, alow.”
The doors shut with a squeal. It was just him and the dim red emergency lights. Then the elevator shook, a vibration that rattled up the cage and irritated him. It moved, and some innate piece of knowledge in the muddy waters of his mind surfaced, telling him it descended.
Down was bad. He strained against the bars of the cage, pressing his head up against them, willing them to magically let him out.
The elevator didn’t move for very long. It never did. The way it shuddered before stopping was terribly familiar. The doors opened into darkness.
He reached back to his side for… something. He didn’t know what. It’d stave away the darkness. But too late, he realized it was useless, and after that, he realized he didn’t have it at all. The confusion of it made him grow still, if only for a moment.
But he still wanted out. So he started to squirm again, pressing out and back against the bars of the cage. Whatever it was made of, it creaked under the force, and so did his disagreeing body. He went limp to breathe, grimacing at the ache from tensing when he was already a moving corpse in terms of energy.
Something scuttled by the darkness beyond, which he didn’t like at all. There were things in the darkness. Little things, many in number, that sank their tiny teeth into him and had to be shaken off. The half-memory spurred him into moving again, and he tilted his head to the side to cram it through the bars. His body caught at the shoulders and he hissed, pulled back a bit, to fit an arm through. Maneuvering his body and thinking about his shape and how it moved made his head hurt.
Something in the darkness glittered white, and he bristled, hating this thing that glowed and watched him. It grew larger and opened its mouth, showing rows of teeth, and he knew he had to get out of the cage. He was a sitting duck.
It moved closer, this silent death. For a second it was familiar, being him-sized and bearing a maw of teeth. But then it deviated from those flickering memories of four-legged chomping things, for it walked on six, seven—many legs, and its teeth were needle-sharp. It made no sound as it moved into the dim light.
It reached out, and he twitched forward and bit the hand that came too close for his liking. It shrieked and jerked back, dragging them and their cage forward. It yowled and when it finally wrenched its hand out of their mouth, it turned and sprinted into the darkness. For some reason, watching it run from him made him worried.
He had to get out. But he couldn’t. And that silence was becoming dreadful. It had to have been his eyes playing tricks on him, making him see shadows dancing in the dark.
Something lashed out—another hand, but much larger—and dug into the top of the cage.
He tried to pull himself back into the cage, deciding that the further away he was from the dark, the better, but he couldn’t. And he couldn’t focus enough to turn his head and perform his earlier solution in reverse. Long, clawed fingers curled under the top of the cage, and he thrashed against his prison, trying to get it off. But it just pulled him into the dark. The arm cracked when its joints bent.
He twisted and dug his hand into its wrist. It shuddered, but held strong. Another hand reached out from the darkness, the scrape of metal against carpet then tile, and the darkness swallowed him.
There was the faint groan of the cage’s metal buckling, and then something white flickered to life inches from his face. Eyes. Lots and lots of eyes, clustered together, and he swiped at them and hit dead-on. The lights he struck went out.
The arms flinched back and it let out a high-pitched whine, before slamming back down around him. The cage caved inwards, pressing him down to its bottom. The bars bent outwards, and he took the chance to shove his other arm through. His hands met cold stone ground, rough with rubble and dust. And then he felt what must’ve been a part of the thing, because it twitched under his hand, so he dug in and clawed at it. He had to get out, to fight, to hit this thing until it stopped moving—
Something wrapped around his entire face and pulled. The sound he made was loud and thin and barely made it past the hand trying to rip his head off. He clawed at the thing, but it only gripped him tighter, pinning his jaw shut.
It pressed his face to the ground and whined, digging its nails into his side, and his vision went spotty with pain. He hardly felt himself writhe free from the cage, kicking at nothing as he was dragged across the rough floor. It seemed so very determined to rend his head from his body, but moved with clumsy, stiff motions, and so wasn’t doing a particularly good job at decapitating him.
It let go of his face for whatever reason, and the second it returned, he sank his teeth into the hand as hard as he could. It shuddered, and further recoiled when he thrashed enough to end up on his stomach and not his back, and—
The thing cried out, and then something was violently dragging it off him, and suddenly he was sitting in the dark, watching those pearly eyes twist their attention away from him.
Then came the violent snarling, which he returned tenfold. Openmouthed, teeth bared, bristling at anything that dared to look at him. Even if the thing with hands and the thing that attacked it were too busy biting each other to look at him, he had to make sure neither would dare bother him.
They backed up, only to knock into the mangled remains of the cage. It creaked against the floor. A dozen eyes turned to stare at him, this small, hurting thing that hated this situation he was in.
The smaller thing bounded on and over the larger. And this thing did have four legs, but snapped at him with a beaked face. They twisted around and ran. Jumped? They hardly felt their body move, how they flung themself back into the unfeeling glow of the elevator. One of the ceiling panels was gone, and the space beyond was dark, which was bad, but he didn’t think there was anything bad above the elevator. And he was being chased, so he didn’t have any other options.
The small, bounding thing slammed him against the wall—
—and then he was back in the dark, dizzy, as his head pounded. Something gnawed on his leg as it dragged him across the floor. He groaned, as the situation settled into his mind, and with it came the rush of adrenaline. That hurt. It hurt and he refused to let it go on any longer.
So he twisted, driven by the will to escape and continue, and kicked at the bird-dog-thing. He struck home on the thing’s face, and it recoiled soundlessly. He got on his legs and tried to run, driven by muscle memory, but his legs skipped weirdly over themselves and he had to catch himself on his hands, lest he fall completely.
He jumped, and he reminded himself of some sort of animal he couldn’t remember the name of. And he moved faster that way, back in the elevator, but it wasn’t a safe bastion anymore, because that beaked thing was right on his heels.
He turned at the last second and flung himself to the side. The beaked thing hit the wall hard, and went still with a violent shudder.
He had to move up to exit the elevator. The first idea to jump to mind was stupid and ran against basic logic, but logic was threatening to fall off the table and he didn’t have any other options. The thing shrieked when they clamored onto it, weight forcing its back down, and its head and neck twisted awkwardly against the wall before it could register the need to pull away.
Their claws flanked against the smooth plating over the back of the elevator, before they caught its top edge and scrambled for purchase. Their bitten leg throbbed in pain, and it slipped over its own ash as it coated the ground and wall. With a low, pained noise, he reached up and hooked a hand over the edge, and pulled himself up. His arms gave out when he was halfway up, and something snapped against his leg.
Wires running along the top of the elevator ripped when he scratched for grip. Eventually, he found a support beam, which he used as a brace to pull himself out. Breathing hard, he went limp atop the elevator. His eyes closed against his better judgment. Just for a moment, he would catch his breath. His senses went fuzzy and dull and his breathing leveled out.
Something clattered through the open panel and dug its claws into his tail, which he didn’t even know he had until about two seconds ago, and he screamed, reminding him of a voice he used to have. Will shot through him like lightning and he leapt to his feet, ripping himself free of the claws.
Large, toothy jaws snapped at him from the elevator, and the rest of the beast rapidly pulled itself up. He threw himself at the wall, felt his heart drop when he saw the gap between the elevator and its shaft, but held on. The walls were bare stone, old and crumbling, easy for him to grip. But he didn’t trust staying in one place for too long. Besides, this new horrible-nightmare-monster was large and fast, and not keen on leaving him be.
They clawed up a foot, then another. Something grazed his injured hind leg, which threatened to falter. He willed himself to be still, and pulled himself up onto a support beam. Something snapped the air below. The walls shook when it threw itself up, missing again by inches.
So he climbed.
The metal under his claws creaked when he scrambled for purchase. He couldn’t feel his arms, just his hands, and how their ash felt against cold steel. He felt a draft coming in from above.
Something behind him made an unholy noise, and he twisted despite how it all hurt, to see a gap in the elevator shaft, where it seemed like the doors to the floor were stuck halfway open. Something sprinted toward him on all-fours. Teeth glinted in the light from its pinprick eyes.
It threw itself towards him, snarling and snapping, and its shriek faded into the abyss below.
Well.
He climbed, and maybe it was the blind delirium getting to him, but he thought he saw a light up above, but his whole vision swam, so it was hard to tell whether it was real or his mind playing cruel tricks on him. He pretended it was something good. It had to be good. It reminded him of the sun. Maybe it was quiet up there, far away from the danger he knew surrounded him. Going up had to be good, because going down meant nothing but danger.
Besides, if he concentrated really hard, something familiar flickered at the corners of his mind. A place with a door to an outside. He missed the outside terribly, so that’s where he’d go. He would continue, and he would live. It was all he’d ever done.
It rained. A soft sprinkle that made him shudder, for it clung to his loose ash and chipped away at it when it rolled off him.
Rain. Water. Water from the sky. It’d been a while since he last saw such a thing in any quantity. He let go of the tension in his jaw and opened his mouth. Actual water. He hardly tasted it, but it felt nice.
He blinked against the droplets that fell into his eyes and continued at the same pace as always. Even when the world above rumbled like a growling monster, he didn’t dare slow down. He couldn’t afford to rest, because he knew that the moment he slowed and clung suspended to the aged, rough metal, he wouldn’t be able to muster the energy to start climbing again. It’d have to wait.
It always did. He was never allowed such a simple luxury as rest. That was the thing, how it never ended. He’d been trying, and trying, and moving for so long, and it never got any easier, only lulling him into a false sense of safety. So he staved off respite, because lowering his guard only ever got him hurt.
Now there was a nice breeze running through his fur (which didn’t feel normal, but it was there, so there wasn’t much he could do about it) and soothing his weary joints. Not too far above him was a dim purple that looked sort of familiar. Had he been up here before? He must’ve. Trying to remember what could possibly be up there left him with splotchy memories of warm lights and someone else.
He pulled himself up onto a support beam, took hardly a second to breathe in the new crisp fresh air, and dug his claws into a pipe so hard they punctured through into nothing. But they got a better grip like that, so they continued.
A change, up ahead. A square window of purple-white light, with a clearly-visible edge. Their heart leapt, but their limbs refused to move any faster. He strained anyways, moving closer, closer to this new thing, to a freedom from the hellhole.
The rain stopped. He didn’t remember when it did. He scrambled toward the light, and with it, he noticed details around the elevator shaft. Rebar and scrap jutted out near its edges, like something had been torn violently off it.
There was none of the warm light he half-remembered. With a low, dry sound, he heaved himself up onto the edge. It took the remainder of his energy to haul his exhausted body away from the elevator shaft and out onto the floor.
It was dark, save for the howling wind. He went limp on the rain-slicked tile. There was once a ceiling, providing shelter, but it was long gone. The webbed remains of the building’s walls stretched up into eternity. The windows, broken, and the once-revolving door, blown clean off its hinges and laid halfway across the room, pushed up against an upturned table. Leaves rustled around him, blown about by the softening wind.
And he was alone.
It was only when he laid his head down did he realize the storm had gone quiet. So deathly quiet. Wearily, he looked up at the exposed sky, at how the building had been ripped apart to allow for such a perfect view of the milky white light that shone down on him. That couldn’t have been the sun. Was it?
The wind had stopped, and he didn’t like that, because now he was stuck with the sound of his own desperate, erratic breaths. They had to move. Why was it quiet? It was bad. It had to be. The peaceful silence had to be a trap.
He tried to prop himself up, but his arms shook like leaves in the wind. He should never have stopped. Should’ve kept moving, running away from this silence. And now their body was shutting down, giving up, taking the rest it so desperately demanded the second the opportunity presented itself.
A golden light flickered outside.
Golden light. It reminded him of something. Someone who’d never tried to rip him apart limb from limb. They wanted to see him again. The light, blindly bright, flickered through the trees, and there was a terrific cracking of bark splitting as they bowed.
Their body screamed in protest when they got up. As fast as they could move, which wasn’t particularly fast at all, they scrambled away from the elevator shaft and toward the remains of a desk. A warmth washed over him as light poured in through the empty window frames and doorway. The cozy, safe light that brought with it a sudden galeforce wind that clashed with the long-awaiting rest the light promised.
He twisted around, cornered against the desk, and faced it. He showed his teeth, as if that’d intimidate this impossible force. Something took shape, blindly bright, and they refused to shut their eyes or flinch. Their exhausted mind refused to make it out as anything other than a shape that ducked its head to step through the doorway, walking on several legs into the inn.
He bristled at this light, shoving down that primal dread bubbling up in his heart. He wouldn’t falter. He’d survive. He wouldn’t bend to that blinding light, shining like a sun he thought he’d never see again.
It was very, very bright, and just as warm as that almost-forgotten star, and he dug his claws into the cracked tile below, refusing to let go or look away, no matter how the light enveloped him. He wouldn’t—