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I see you.
A scream crawls up her throat. More than anything, Sasha would like to be brave. She’d like to have Tim’s fight or Martin’s steady strength or one of the dozens of CO2 cannisters in Elias’ office. Anything to fight of this shadow in front of her with its echo of a voice. Even a pair of ear plugs would do it. But she has none of that, none of anything. All she has is herself. So, she screams.
Mouth stretched open, eyes wide, voice shrill to her ears. She’s loud enough that she barely notices that there’s a sudden pressure on her shoulder. And when she does, she doesn’t want to look. Tries to stop the scream, but it’s taken completely hold of her. This pressure, whatever it is, it can’t be worse than the creature with no-eyes and no-face grinning at her from across the desk. It can’t be worse than the terror in her own voice either.
She turns, whip-fast, and what’s in front of her is a set of bony white fingers. The elongated palm is flat, facing up. If she weren’t in mortal peril, she might think of Pride and Prejudice, of a hand offered up for a dance.
There’s a forking path in front of her. On one side, the faceless creature, its claws out to grab her by the throat. It’s salivating. For her, for her eyes, for her face. On the other, there’s the hand, familiar in its inhumanity, waiting patiently for her to slide her fingers into its grip.
It’s really not a choice at all, is it?
She pushes herself forward and slaps her hand into that rock-solid palm. It tugs her forward. Anything, anything to get her away from that table and its inhuman guardian. She lets the creature pull her forward, so fast and sudden that she forgets to breathe.
As she moves, something clips her head. She feels its nails on the back of her neck; she knows it draws blood, can feel it gushing down the back of her blouse. But it’s like she’s detached from her body, like it already belongs to something else. When she reaches out to touch the stinging wound, her fingers come away red and bloody.
The monster at her back laughs.
And Sasha goes down, down, down.
She knows how to wander halls.
It was the second semester of her first year at UCL. There was no definitive moment, no presiding incident that had her tucking herself under the covers for good. One morning, she simply could not get out of bed.
She spent fifty-two days like that. Laid out, drawn in, the world outside static to the twisting landscape of her mind. Everything grey, blunt, dull. Her insides were rubbed raw; she was numb and antiseptic. She existed and she didn’t. She was real and she wasn’t. Losing herself inside of herself, chasing herself down the corridors of whatever made her Sasha. Pursuing answers she’d never find to questions she didn’t know how to ask.
On day fifty-three, her legs cried out. She pushed open the door of her flat and walked outside. It was a way out. She breathed in the cool evening air and watched the traffic pass by. Cars crawled downhill. Deliveroo drivers popped in and out on their scooters. Across the street, her neighbour pushed his baby back and forth in a pram. The sound was shrill to her ears, teeming with misery and life.
For the first time in what felt like forever, she could look ahead and see outside of herself.
These halls are different, though. They aren’t inside of her head. She’s sure as that. As sure as she can be, anyways, given that she was just attacked by a monster – no, several monsters – in her place of work. She can see these walls from where she’s splayed out on her back. She can touch the carpet that she’s laid across. It’s soft and plush, and a little unlike anything she’s felt before.
And oh, her neck. It all comes rushing back to her. She scrambles up, head spinning as her back, lifts off the grown. There should be blood underneath her, a dark red she’s left behind, but here’s nothing. The carpet is bright-purple and spotless. When she brings up a hand to touch the back of her neck, all she feels are the rocky bumps of her spine. No gaping wound, no skin shredded to the bone.
“This is a dream.” Her voice cracks. It hasn’t been used in some time, she realizes, not since she spoke those words. I see you.
From the shadows, yellow string crawls across the wall. It’s – is it moving? Worms, is her immediate thought, but she knows she’s wrong. They’re not the bulbous white of Prentiss’ putrid horde. They don’t wriggle or dart. The strands curve and spin themselves into a shape she’d almost call elegant. It’s a spiral. As she watches, a long white shape (a finger unlike any other) grasps a golden piece and twists.
“Michael?”
She’s answered by a long, loud laugh. It has no right to echo the way it does, like it’s bouncing off of the hard stone walls of a cave when they’re in a corridor covered in wallpaper. It’s not possible. She shrinks into herself, hands burrowed into fists.
“Do you often dream of me, assistant?”
It’s not possible – but it feels like the voice is crawling up her spine, like every staccato consonant reaches out and brushes her skin. He laughs that hideous sound again. He hadn’t laughed like that before, back at the café. She doesn’t want to know how his mouth gapes to make that noise.
The wrongness of this place is overwhelming. Deep blue walls, bright purple carpet. A hall that stretches out so far ahead of her that she can’t see an end. Wherever she is, it certainly isn’t the Institute.
“Where am I?” When she speaks, her throat feels raw, and as soon as she notices that, she remembers her own screams. Sasha brings a hand up to gently rest on her neck.
Facts. She needs facts. She is somewhere. Somewhere with walls, and a floor, and carpet, and a roof. She is inside of something. She is not alone. She’s here with Michael. Michael said he wanted to help her, once. He also said some other rather-distressing things, about her untimely death and those of her colleagues, but he also said friend. He wants to be her friend. She brings her hand back down to the carpet. Real. This feels real.
“This isn’t a place.”
Fuck that, then. His voice does that creepy-crawly thing, snaking down her spine and whispering at the back of her neck. He’s wrong, of course, because it is. But she has more questions than answers, and there’s no use debating the monster who might’ve just saved her life.
“What is it, then?”
“A thing – or rather, a no-thing.”
Fuck that, again.
She can’t see him, and Sasha hates that. He’s lurking in the shadows and all that’s visible is yellow hair creeping across the wall. It’s uncanny. She’s never been one for that – give her sight any day.
“Michael,” she tries again. The name gives her something familiar to hold onto. An anchor.
“Assistant.”
“Don’t call me that.”
Her answer is kneejerk, what she’s wanted to say a thousand times to Elias calling out assistant in his oily voice.
He just laughs.
“What did you do – what happened to me?”
She’s never been one to cut herself off or to muffle any questions. She’s brimming full of them, forced into her by scratch-marks that are no longer there.
“I did nothing. Michael did nothing. No-thing.”
Her jaw feels tight. She’s gritting her teeth together, the way she hasn’t done since college, and there’s a familiar twang in her cheek.
“You know what I’m asking.”
He moves into the light and she can see him, can finally see the way his curls move with life of their own, how his eyes glow blue-purple-black, how wrong he is. It’s like through the window but worse, bones jutting through skin and teeth – so many teeth. Sasha’s throat is raw from screaming, and the pain brings her back to reality. She won’t scream for him.
“The one who dances, I Do Not Know You… It wanted to know you, Sasha James, and very badly. It fancied hollowing out your bones and setting up a cozy home inside, wrapping itself inside your guts for warmth and drinking your blood for sustenance. It does know you, now, but not as well as it’d like.” There’s another high-pitched giggle that sends a shiver through her body. “You gave it a taste. I took you away before dinner. It wants more. It wants to devour.”
Her eyes flicker from Michael to the walls of this place. None of this makes any sense – not this carpet, not these walls, not the creature in front of her, and certainly not his story. And somehow, through this no sense, realization creeps up on her.
“It wanted to eat me?”
“Such an ugly word for something so profane. So unnatural.” A glint of white teeth. “And you can do better than that.”
She thinks of the claws in her back. I see you. Not like a hunter. Something else.
“It wanted my life.”
“Clever, clever Sasha.” His voice is warm, suddenly, her name thick and caramel in his mouth. “It wanted to eat your life. Wants, really, since you’ve kept your fingers wrapped around it. It doesn’t like to be tricked, you know. Won’t be best pleased with me; isn’t polite to steal its prey.”
“Why me?”
“I do not know. I Do Not Know You. It’s in the name – a name can mean many things. I rather like it this way. Too much sense leaves no room for nonsense.”
“Right.” Not right, though, nothing is right, not here. She shouldn’t be here. She should be prey, roadkill, food of monsters. Not interrogating a monster for answers that he can’t give. Still, though:
“You saved me?”
Again. He saved her again. From worms and from life-eaters, from the things that want to eat her inside out. She waits for an answer; he just laughs.
“Why?”
“Why?”
The word echoes around them in his voice. His laugh gets louder, the smooth vibrato of his voice twisting around and around. It feels like the floor is shaking with it, like the walls might just cave in. Even as he laughs, he shifts back into shadow. His too-bright eyes never leave hers.
“Michael!”
But he’s gone, fading into the yellow of his walls, his hair climbing back into them. And Sasha is alone, with yellow and purple bright enough to hurt her eyes. Her legs ache with the urge to walk, to find a way out. She could, maybe, just try to find her way around.
No.
The feeling in her legs is alien, not-right. As if implanted in there by something else, something that wants to get her walking and walking and walking to find an escape. She bends her toes and flexes her feet. Hers, they’re still hers. She is still hers.
Sasha flops back onto her back. Until she has answers, she can wait.
She’s not sure how long it is. Hours, days, weeks. Closing her eyes and opening them, hearing the odd scream and hiss. She’s not sure why she isn’t afraid. It’s an interesting question, one she’s more than willing to interrogate (God, she sounds like John now).
She isn’t Michael’s food. That much is obvious. For all his sharp teeth and predator’s pupils, he’s saved her twice now. He fades into the walls; his voice seems to come in and out of them. This place is his. This is the hole he crawls out of to create chaos in her world. And he’s left her here – left her here alone, unharmed.
With nothing to do but contemplate her imprisonment – or is this a haven? Does it matter, either way, when she’s cut off entirely from the life that she knew?
She thinks about the holes in Prentiss’ head where her eyes should be, the crawling life that emerged from them. She thinks about the glint in Elias’ eyes the moment he’d volunteered to turn on the CO2 system (predator’s pupils, slitted and hungry, so much like Michael’s). She thinks about Tim’s brother, stripped of his skin, dancing across a stage that shouldn’t exist. Maybe, just maybe, the life that she knew never existed at all.
Her fingers ghost over the invisible scars on the back of her neck.
The next time his voice rings out, she’s tracing a picture on the wall. It’s another door. This one’s bright pink and bricked, unlike any she’s ever seen before. Too gaudy for home, too juvenile for London. It’s so sharp in its realism that, for one brief second, she feels her hand close around the cold metal of a door knob.
“Sasha.”
She should whirl around. Gasp, scream. Be afraid of the monster with sharp teeth and hungry eyes. But she turns slowly, her own gaze sharpening to look at him.
“Can I leave?”
Simple, to the point. No begging. He doesn’t deserve that.
“No.”
She waits, knowing that no answer of his is ever that simple.
“Or rather, you might, if you can find your way, only it won’t be you who leaves here, but something else. Your skin won’t be yours – where the rest of you goes, who’s to say?”
What so many people don’t know about Sasha (what they ignore, what they forget to ask) is that she’s well-versed in nonsense. Blame it on her schoolmates, on going steady with a serial liar or two. On working every day with Elias Bouchard and John Sims, who wear flashing signs of secrecy and assume she can’t read.
“If I leave, it will kill me.”
His mouth spreads into that too-sharp almost-grin.
“Yes.”
Over the minutes / weeks / hours / years she’s been in this corridor, she’s had a lot of time to deal with that possibility. It’s like a fairy ring. Step in, and you’ll never find your way back out of the domain of the fae.
Michael’s almost-grin sends a shiver down her spine.
“So what? I just stay here forever?” She rubs at her temple. “I’m sorry, but that’s just not realistic. Nothing can go on forever – or are you planning to eat me?”
She’s considered this too. A long digestion process in something’s stupid, fluorescent colour and twisting walls breaking her down to base nutrients. Jumping out of one hunter’s mouth and into the next. Surely, no one can cheat death twice.
“Eat,” he drawls, like he’s tasting the word on his tongue.
“Yes.”
He laughs. The sound rings round and round her head; she can almost see cartoon stars.
“Are you to my taste?”
“Am I?”
Better not to try and make sense of him. Better to speak his language, to morph herself into a box of his choosing. She’s done it all her life – what’s one more metamorphosis?
“We’re friends, aren’t we?”
She stares. Out of every answer she expected, she hadn’t thought of this one. His smile grows. Shit.
“Friends don’t eat friends,” she answers finally. She has to play his game. Nonsense with nonsense. Sense without sense. She thinks then of Martin. The warm, shy curve of his mouth. The welcoming movement of his hand when he beckoned her over for tea. Sasha tilts her head to the side and imitates him as best she can, taking one step forward.
The bright-eyed, many-boned monster in front of her laughs again.
“Friends don’t let friends get eaten.” It’s a correction. “But friends… friends feed friends. Michael fed Michael. I am not what I am.”
“Othello.” She frowns. So the monster in the parallel dimension (that’s got to be it) reads Shakespeare then?
“Othello.” For a brief moment, almost a second, she swears blue flashes in his pupils.
She wrote on Othello for her GCSEs. Advocacy and Emilia, she remembers, and female victimhood. She didn’t deal as much with Iago, only as far as his treatment of his wife. She closes her eyes, does her best to remember.
“I will wear my heart on my sleeve –“
“For the daws to peck at. I am not what I am.”
When she looks up again, he’s staring at her straight in the face.
“You are not what you are.”
He parrots back at her. “You are not what you are.”
“Not… Michael?”
“Not Sasha.”
Suddenly, it’s like she’s underwater. Her head’s swimming, bombarded by a kind of unease she’s never felt before. The unease that comes from perfect certainty. From knowing something is true – something that is beyond knowing, something that she should have no right to know.
“You’re doing my head in.”
His head tilts to the side, the angle so sharp that for a brief second, Sasha’s sure he’s about to do an Exorcist-style head-spin. But he doesn’t.
“You’re in my head, doing…” He trails off.
“Forget it.”
She’s becoming more and more certain that there’s no sense to be made here. She could research and look and find like John, or ask and badger like Martin, or cajole and charm like Tim, and she’d still wind up nowhere. There’s no guide for this kind of horror show. All that she has is a desperate hunger to please, please go home.
“You’re seriously not going to let me go?”
He’s still studying her. She could beg. Grovel. Demand. Command. None of it would work. All that Michael knows is nonsense, or at least that’s all that he talks about, and nonsense is incompatible with sense. And anyone with any sense would want to leave this place.
“Fine.” She flops down onto the carpet, hands supporting her weight as she stretches out her legs. “You don’t have somewhere more comfortable me to work, do you?”
“Work…” His voice wavers, or quivers, or shakes. Whatever it is, it sounds more human than anything else he’s said so far. “You want to work?”
“In here, yeah. If I can’t go home, I’m not just gonna sit on my arse all day. I’ve got business, things to do.” What those things are, she hasn’t puzzled out yet, but give her time. “Is there like a desk behind any of these doors? Maybe a coffee machine?”
Granted, she hasn’t wanted a drink or a bite to eat since he pulled her into this place, but she could go for a latte. She misses that – the feeling of a mug in her hand, something that isn’t plush carpet or peeling wallpaper or glass-covered “art.”
“You’re a strange person, Assistant.” His laugh is more like a howl this time.
“Sasha.”
“Not Sasha.”
“Whatever, Not Michael.”
His hair starts to crawl ahead of him again. He’s about to leave, she realizes, and then she’ll be alone again.
“Wait!”
The curls keep crawling, but Michael doesn’t turn away.
“I’m serious, yeah? If I’m going to be here for awhile, I’ll need something to do.”
Blue flashes through his eyes again – and then his teeth look sharper, somehow, and he bares an almost-grimace.
“Don’t worry about that, Sasha.”
There’s something following her.
She’s certain of it. For every turn she takes, there’s a flash of gold out of the corner of her eye. Every so often, she hears a kind of high-pitched growl, like no predator she’s ever heard before. Not that there are many inhuman predators back home – before the Institute, the most terrifying creature she’d seen was a bear behind the bars of a zoo.
This is no bear.
“If you want me, come and get me,” she tried, but it never moved any closer.
Once, she sat on the ground, and gave the best Tim Stoker come-hither wave she could. “I’m right here!”
It’s not that she’s got a death wish. She doesn’t want to die in here – but the thing is, she’d like to know if she could. It’s all just hypotheticals with Michael when he’s come round, and she’s getting nowhere on her own. Just opening door after door, trailing through corridor after corridor. The colours inside hurt her eyes, but they’re nothing especially frightening. Just nausea-inducing.
And if she were in danger of having her guts ripped out (again), she’d very much like to know.
The next time she sees it, she’s staring right at a picture of a house. Ramshackle and white, it looks old. Some of the white is mixed with brown, giving it a copper tone that reminds Sasha painfully of blood. She traces the back of her neck.
And there it is. She doesn’t need to turn to see it this time. It’s reflected in the glass that covers the picture. Jagged arms, too-long legs, limbs that spill out with no end. There’s a flash of red, and she realizes that’s its tongue, dangling loosely from its mouth.
Every inch of her wants to run – she should run, has to run – but Sasha knows that she’d be running towards nowhere. No thing. Just corridor after corridor, door after door. Logical, she needs to be logical about this. The chase is what it wants. It never attacked her before. Not when she beckoned it closer, not when she laid in wait.
No, she won’t run.
It’s getting closer. She can see its reflection clearer with every move it makes. Bones jutting out where there shouldn’t be any, gaping blackness behind its tongue. Whatever it is, it looks… yellow. Yellow and bent out of shape and curling all sorts of wrong ways, and that’s when she understands.
“Michael?”
She whirls around. Sasha knows she can’t move any faster than this thing, but maybe she catches it off-guard because it’s still there when she turns.
She gets a better view of it now. It’s got teeth everywhere. Like its mouth got ripped open into a smile and all of the teeth flew from inside to his cheeks. They stand out, stark and white, from his skin. That yellow hair isn’t so much hair now as a mane, trailing down to the floor and moving with a life of its own. Sasha’s got a feeling that if she ran her fingers through it, she’d find more teeth inside. His eyes are worst of all – there’s no trace of the colours that usually pass through them. They’re big and white all the way through, no pupil or movement. She wonders how he sees. Bones poke out of his skin, his enormous hands, his long fingers. At the tip of his head, it almost seems like there are bones there too, peeking out over the yellow carpet.
The Erlkonig. A half-remembered bedtime story, muttered in her Da’s soft lilt.
She’s not moving anymore, but neither is he. They’re both just staring – at least she thinks he is, but the longer she looks, the more nauseous she feels. Stomach roiling, head spinning. She realizes that, for all of her posturing and Tim Stokerisms, she’s terrified. Escape one monster and run straight into the jaws of another. Isn’t that just her luck?
“Michael… Not Michael.”
Is it just her, or does he stiffen? The tendrils of his hair move a little less, at least.
“Not Michael…” She summons up what little bravado she has left. She laughs. It’s in imitation of him, the boy-man-beast-monster in front of her, only the sound isn’t quite right. It doesn’t linger. “If this is what you meant, well, I’m certainly not bored —”
She cuts herself off with a squeak, because suddenly he’s there, right in front of her. Moving like she’s never seen anything move before, half float and half like his hair was doing the walking for him. Her stomach twists. The whites of his eyes, the spit of his hollow mouth. She swears she can feel teeth where his hair brushes her.
Da’s voice: Death itself.
A book from the library: Angela Carter, a story about the Erlkonig. What’s that she said?
Your green eye is a reducing chamber. If I look into it long enough, I will become as small as my own reflection, I will diminish to a point and vanish. I will be drawn down into that black whirlpool and be consumed by you. I shall become so small you can keep me in one of your osier cages and mock my loss of liberty.
His eyes aren’t green. They’re white. And Sasha’s not – Sasha won’t – just vanish.
She’s not so easy to kill.
With one trembling finger, she twists a lock of hair around her finger. Swears she feels a pearly tooth crown try for a bite, but she ignores it and twists.
“Not Michael,” she repeats, quieter this time. “I’m not afraid of you.”
“Oh,” he gasps, and that’s his voice, coming out of the rounded mouth and echoing around her. “Oh, oh, oh, but you should be.”
She closes her eyes.
It’s an action and a reaction, a defense and an offense. When she was small, she’d wrap herself in her comforter as tightly as possible to keep out the world. She doesn’t have that option now – all she can do is close her eyes, and wrap the toothy hair even tighter against her finger.
“If you’re going to kill me – eat me, digest me, whatever – just do it.”
Silence.
More silence.
Finally, she feels a light tug at her finger. His hair coming loose and free, leaving her finger red and throbbing from how tightly it had wound.
“What are friends for?”
He’s taunting her, and that’s it: Sasha hates to be taunted. Reminds her of boss after boss in starch-white collars with Cheshire grins, looking down at her like a speck of dust.
“I dunno. What’d you say, before?” She opens her eyes now and he’s taken two steps back. His eyes are still white, implacable, but the mouth twists. He looks surprised.
“Friends are for —”
“Supper?” She barks out a laugh and immediately brings a hand to her throat, caught off-guard. He seems surprised too, mouth closing in a twist.
“Very good.”
As if on some kind of clock, his hair’s crawls further away. Now, Michael he starts to move after it (or with it), a slide that hurts to watch.
“Wait!”
He doesn’t stop and so Sasha takes a step forward. One, and then another, and another, until she’s doing that silly speed-walk that Martin does when he’s carrying tea. Only, she doesn’t seem to be getting any closer.
“My desk!”
His hair pulls him further away, past a corner she swears wasn’t there a minute ago. Sasha thinks she hears a laugh.
“Michael-Not-Michael, I’m serious!”
By the time he’s gone, she’s halfway to getting her breath back. She lets her shaky legs take over, pressing back against the wall and sliding onto the too-familiar carpet. When she closes her eyes, all she sees are spirals and teeth, and that mouth gaping open. Waiting.
There’s no rhyme or reason to his appearances. Not that Sasha would know if there were. She’s got no concept of time or space in here. What she knows is: she’s never hungry or thirty. Doesn’t need sleep. Her curls aren’t collecting grease or growing any longer. She’s trapped in a state of stasis, surrounded by constantly-changing walls and doors. It doesn’t make sense – but isn’t the point of this place no sense?
The next time a door opens, he’s Michael again. Long hair, eyes a dark indigo, dressed in a tacky purple dress shirt. He looks, for all intents and purposes, like the creature she met in the café.
“If you’re not going to eat me, I don’t see the point in leaving me here. You can hardly be lonely – the entire world’s your oyster and honestly, there are way worse creeps out there than you. You stand a decent chance at making some friends.”
His eyebrows move up, making a little wave that sends Sasha giggling.
“Oh come on! You’ve got to let me out sometime. I’ve got people out there, Michael. They’ve got to be worried sick about me.”
He frowns again.
“Not Sasha.”
“Not Michael.”
“No, it’s that you’re not Sasha. Not anymore.”
Her next laugh is too high; it sounds hysterical which, given the circumstances, actually makes sense.
“Course I am. Unless you erased me from existence…?”
“Not me.” Is it just her, or does he look sad, now? His eyes a little more blue? “Not me, not Sasha. I am not what I am. Think about it. Think about what it took. What it ate. You’re a bright girl, aren’t you?” For a moment, he sounds so much like Elias that she cringes.
She grabs the back of her neck. Everything’s in order – the knotted curls, the smooth skin, even the little hairs. If she looked in a mirror, she’s sure she’d look just fine. But he’s right – there’s something undeniably missing. Like she’s turned on the telly and the programme’s dubbed. She can understand everything that’s going on, but there’s something lost in translation.
“What’s happening to me?”
“You’ve been digested. Being digested.” He pauses, but not for long enough. Not for Sasha to make sense of what he’s saying. “I don’t know exactly how that one works.”
“Well, I don’t either!” She forces a deep breath (one, two, three, four) and then in (one, two, three, four). She’s taken it all in stride so far. The monsters, the predators, the hunger, the evil. She can cope with this too.
“It’s not me, Sasha. I’m not the one doing this to you.” He sounds oddly soft, almost like he’s trying to be kind, and she’s not sure what to do with that.
“My friends wouldn’t let this happen. They’d do something – Tim would do —”
“They don’t know, Sasha. Well, some suspect…”
“Elias?”
“Of course, the Beholding sees. John too, though he won’t do anything about it. Just sits and watches and lets it all happen, just like she did. Lets everything go to hell and waits for answers and doesn’t try, won’t stop the hurt from coming.”
She doesn’t know what to say to that. Has she really vanished off the face of the earth and no one’s seen?
“I need you to explain it to me in a way that I can understand. No no sense. Tell me.”
There’s another long stretch of quiet between them, but this time, she doesn’t try to fill it. She glares at Michael, at those dark indigo eyes, willing him to listen.
“I can show you.”
“Please,” she asks softly, like he’ll be doing her favour. Which – he has, two times over, but she’s also fairly certain that he’s kidnapped her and potentially tried to eat her in the literal meaning of the word. So that negates the favours and the helping aspects, in her opinions.
“You won’t like what you see.”
“I don’t care.”
If she can get him to show her, to open a door to the real world, maybe she can jump out. There may be an escape, if she can push past. Maybe she’ll wake up, and all of this will have been a nightmare.
She follows Michael to a door. This one is a deep grey. The lack of colour is unnerving in this place of neon walls and fluorescent doors. It looks formal, mandated. Like the security doors at the back of the Institute. Open only in case of emergency.
He turns back to face her.
“I’ll open this door for you. I can do that. But if you jump out – if you leave – that’s it. You’re gone.” The softness in his voice is cut off by a high-pitched laugh. “All gobbled up.”
“Right.”
“Promise you’ll stay.”
That surprises her enough to wrench her gaze from the door to Michael. There’s that light blue in his eyes, and he looks almost like a person. Like a guy she might’ve just met in a café. Her tongue feels heavy in her mouth.
“I can’t.”
Suddenly, his eyes are dark again.
“You can. You’re not hers to have.”
“I’m not anyone’s to have.”
He nods, the motion almost imperceptible, and turns back towards the door. Sasha holds her breath as it swings open. Fresh air rushes through the opening and she feels herself start to cry.
It’s home.
Not home, not real home, but it’s the life that she knew. She can see the desks pushed together in the center of the office. John’s door is open and, if she tilts her head enough, she can just make out his greasy dark hair. Martin’s bent over a sheet of paper, scribbling so diligently that she knows there’s ink smudged all across his fingers. Then there’s Tim, his ankles crossed and legs over the desk, chatting away on the phone like he’s talking to an old friend.
And there’s a girl.
She’s got pin-straight hair and a snub little nose and she’s at Sasha’s desk. Using Sasha’s things. That’s her sweater draped over the back of the chair, and her computer turned off ahead. She sees her mug from the Tower, overpriced but precious, with Henry VIII’s ugly face coating the side. An ugly mug for an ugly mug! It’d been a Christmas gift from Martin, cheesy and exactly the sort of terrible pun that sent her into a fifteen-minute long fit of giggles.
They all look normal. Chipper, cheery. Like nothing’s happened at all.
Her stomach turns in an ugly wash of bitterness and heat. Sasha’s throat clamps shut. Nausea overwhelms her and pulsates around two thoughts, one uglier than the other.
First, that this girl is in danger now, just like she’d been, and that nobody’s warned her. This stranger’s sat there in blissful ignorance, in the life that Sasha was ripped from. That thing might come after her too, and nobody seems to care.
Second, Sasha understands that they’ve replaced her without a second thought. Same desk, same furrowed brow. Doesn’t matter that the hair’s all wrong, sleek and short and bright. Doesn’t matter that there was a job opening, a desk that needed filling. They have her in Sasha’s seat. And is that a photo of her with the others to the side?
Just how long has it been, exactly?
“Is this real? Is this really them?”
His mouth opens. Rows and rows of white teeth, too-bright and gleaming. She thinks of sharks. When one loses a tooth, there’s a whole other row at the ready to replace it.
“What is real?”
“Michael.”
“This is the Institute, yes. This is your life, yes. That isn’t you.”
“They replaced me?”
“She replaced you.”
Sasha takes a step forward. She doesn’t think – just does. She’s got to do something. Call out to the others, step back onto solid ground. They need to know that she’s alright. That she’s alive. And her, she needs somebody to hold her and tell her it’ll all be alright.
But then, Michael’s words replay in her head.
“She replaced me?”
“She’s not you. Not Sasha. You do not know her. And yet, to them… she’s Sasha.”
If she could just look away from them for a second, she could understand what Michael meant. She could read the colour of his eyes and understand if he was being soft. If he was being true.
“She’s Sasha?”
“She ate Sasha.”
“What?”
And what shouldn’t make any sense suddenly does. The absence, the dubbing, the fact that she is Not Sasha. I am not what I am, I do not know you.
“She attacked me?” Sasha is screeching now, she knows it, and nobody seems to hear. “That’s her? She’s a monster, she’s – Tim, Martin, get out of there! Run!”
No one moves. Behind her, she hears Michael tut.
Slowly, she asks, “Why can’t they hear me?”
“We’re not here, Sasha. We are but we aren’t. You have to look to be able to see.”
“Enough of that!”
She makes herself take another deep breath. She hasn’t been replaced, then, but stolen. Lost. Eaten, like he said. She doesn’t know what to make of that.
“None of them noticed?”
“I Do Not Know You is very good at hiding.”
“But none of them noticed?”
“Even if you step out there, they still wouldn’t know.”
He sees her inching towards the door frame then. Good. She can’t not try.
“You can’t go out there. Once you’re there, sharing her space, it’ll rip you down to the bone.”
“I have to tell them! To warn them.”
“Sasha.” Her name sounds ice cold now, all of the earlier softness long gone. “You need to listen to me.”
“Why? Why should I trust you?”
He doesn’t seem to have an answer for that, and she takes the opportunity to wrap her fingers around the door frame. All that she needs to do is jump.
“The Archivist knows. He chooses not to look, but he knows.”
Something about that makes her blood run cold. Sasha stops and pivots slightly to look over at Michael.
“What do you mean?”
“You’re just a footnote in his story. They know it, and you don’t know it, and he doesn’t either but he does too. You were always meant to die like this.”
“No.”
She’s barely aware of herself speaking, but she’s not trying to argue. It rings true – because hasn’t that been the case since she transferred over from Artefact Storage? A footnote in the story of the great Jonathan Sims. An sidekick, a cleaner to mop up the mess. And now, a girl to mourn. Oh, if only Sasha hadn’t been so easy to kill. If she’d fought a little harder, known a little more. Oh well…
Her life reduced to a full stop. The end of a prologue.
That Sasha James, a tragic story.
She drives her nails deep into the palm of her hand. Deep enough to hurt. The part of her that wants to blame John for this – for everything, for taking her job and her office and now her life – is hot and ugly, and it’s wrong. She knows John. Knows who and what he is. He’s not a monster.
When she looks back out the doorway, she sees his head bent over a sheet of paper, as if determined not to look up.
“He really knows?”
Michael sighs. She thinks he does, at least. She’s never actually seen him breathe.
“They always know. They try to protect themselves from it, to tell themselves that there’s no way they could’ve possibly seen… but they know. Does knowing make fault? Who’s to say?”
She’s not crying anymore, she realizes. Her breath is coming out steady again, almost like she’s coming back into herself the longer that she looks away from the scene ahead. From the people she loves. They’re her friends, and they can’t even see her.
“Does my family know?” She knows the answer but needs to hear it all the same.
“No. Your sister might – the wrong affect, expressions she knows you don’t use, forgetting old recipes. But no. And it’s better that way, assis – Sasha – it’s better that they don’t know, because I Do not Know You does not like those who know. They make it hungry.”
She watches Michael for a long moment, remembering the teeth that protruded from the side of his face. Is it really any safer in his halls, forgotten by the world? But what’s the alternative? Dying in earnest? Giving up any chance of being remembered?
Michael, she realizes, might just be the only one who remembers who she is.
And that’s entirely nonsensical, completely devoid of reason. The monster that’s threatened to eat her, that’s drooled and bared her teeth in her face, might just be the only one who knows Sasha James. Out of everyone – friends, families, fucking exes – the only memory she can rely on belongs to this No-thing. That’s just –
“Fucking ridiculous.”
She doesn’t wait for him. She reaches forward to close the door for herself. She imagines that John looks up at the last second, watching her go. If he saw her, what would he do? Would he call out? Would he recognize her? Would he say her name? Would he sit back and let the rest of his story play out?
Does it matter?
With the finality of closing a book, Sasha shuts the door in front of her.
He starts coming by more often now. Sometimes, she’s only turned a couple corners and he’s back again, hair trailing behind him like out of a fairytale. It’s still unnerving, this lack of time. Not knowing if she talks to Michael every day, or if it’s once a week, or if they’re spending years together.
She tells him everything. It takes hours, days, weeks. Every sensible thing she’s ever done, and the one mad decision that led her to this hall. About the scar on her hairline and her freckles that go dark in the sun. She sings Elton John and Ellie Goulding. Narrates the royal wedding that her Bubbe made her watch. Yanks her leg over her head to show that she could probably still do the splits, if only she wasn’t trapped in these fucking jeans.
Eternity spent in denim. This place is really a nightmare.
“It was a bad decision, to turn down York and choose to the Institute. That’s what my folks thought, anyways. Maddest thought I ever had. Thought it’d be less of an old boys club.”
Michael’s giggle cuts through the air.
“Mad as a hatter, but sharp too. Sharper than you know, and older too.”
“You’re speaking in riddles again. Difficult to learn social etiquette in a hellscape, is it?”
His eyes shine. He doesn’t laugh this time, but his mouth shifts into a toothless smile. It’s the closest to happy he’s looked.
“Difficult to learn a great many things, Sasha.”
“Right. Well, this usually, when someone’s telling you about their heinous life choices, you’re meant to be sympathetic. Like, here,” she explains and takes a moment to scoot closer to him. “If you were to tell me a story about your shitty boss, I’d go, ‘Not Michael, that’s a load of shit! If I were you, I’d march over there and stick my foot in his ass, just to teach him a lesson’!”
She puts her hand on his shoulder. All she can feel through the thin fabric of his jacket is bone.
“And then I’d take you to the pub instead, and we’d forget all about him and Elias and our shitty workplaces and watch whatever’s on the screen, and get positively hammered.”
Michael’s eyes are a middling shade of blue right now. That’s a good thing, she’s come to understand. It’s when he’s least likely to go on about monsters and food.
“I liked football.”
“Liked? The way my sister goes on, once you’re a fan it’s a forever thing.”
“Like.”
It sounds like he’s trying out the word. Sasha tries to give him another supportive pat on the shoulder and tries not to wince at the discomfort of touching down on bone.
“What else d’you like?”
A strange question for the monster that may or may not be holding her hostage, but Sasha’s life has been nothing but strange lately. Michael’s gaze drifts over to the wall, like he’s seeing something that she isn’t.
He does that a lot.
“Chocolate.”
“Chocolate?”
“Yes, chocolate.” He pronounces the word slowly, lingering on each syllable. Sasha can’t help but smile.
“Then why’s there no chocolate here? You should have some in the entry way – no, in every entry way – for all of your company.”
It’s like a shadow passes over, then, because when he looks at her his eyes are darker. Rounder, too.
“I don’t eat chocolate anymore.”
Right-o. Sore subject.
She tries not to think of the sounds she hears, when she’s all alone. Fails.
“You eat people, then?”
“Not exactly. Or, not strictly.” The answer sends something sharp through her – she’s not smiling anymore.
“Why haven’t you eaten me?”
It’s a question she realizes that she’s asked before, over and over again since he saved her the first time. Ever since she recognized him as predator. Sasha, for all that she is and isn’t, is no hunter. She’s under no illusions that she’s any different than the other folk who’d been here. In a matter of seconds, she could be nothing but a blood stain on this horrible carpet.
The Erl-King will do you grievous harm.
But she isn’t. She’s still here, sat cross-legged on the floor and chatting with a man-eating monster. She should hate him. If she were a hero (if she were John), she would. She’d take him to task for the screams she hears and the doors she knows open while she’s not looking. What she feels instead is a sort of interest, but not of the detached academic type. She’s curious. She wants to know him.
In all her pondering, Michael’s grown so quiet that she’s caught completely off-guard when she hears him speak again.
“You understand me.”
She doesn’t know what to do with that. His eyes are still blue.
“No, I don’t.”
“You do, Sasha. Assistant. More than you know.”
“What does that mean?”
He looks back towards the wall, in his own little world.
“Scarves. I like scarves too.”
She’s frowning now, trying to solve this new riddle. Because she’s certain he’s wrong and he’s got no way inside her head, so how could he possibly know what she does and doesn’t understand? And how could she possibly understand him, of all things? Of course, she can’t say any of that, and risk this newfound warmth between the two of them.
“Scarves?”
“I used to have one that was long and ice blue. Knitted from scratch. I’d wear it over my nose when it got cold – it smelled of mothballs.”
The thought is entirely alien. Michael wearing a scarf like any other lad. Pulling it up over his face as his cheeks grew red from the cold, snowflakes dotting his collar.
“My mum used to knit some from scratch. They were always hideous, with these bright patterns. Yellow like your hair, sometimes, with tassels and pompoms and embroidered flowers. I used to hide them in my rucksack at school.”
“Someone knit mine too.” He looks puzzled at that, like the wall’s done something wrong.
“Sure it wasn’t a machine? They do that now. Honestly, sometimes better than people.”
“No,” he emphasizes like he’s working on a puzzle. “It was someone.”
“Right. Well. Mum taught me how, but it’s been years since I tried. Always figured that one summer, I’d go home on holiday and she’d tell me all the tricks in the garden.”
Sasha understands now that there might not be any other summers. Imposter Sasha, Not Sasha, will be sat in her garden with her family, and she’ll be here. Or dead. Or maybe even somewhere else, in another parallel universe, where another alien creature will listen to her talk about her life. She could become a real Scheherazade.
There’s a disturbing thought.
“You liked knitting?”
His question breaks through the newfound nausea and Sasha seizes on it. Anything to forget that her life isn’t her own anymore.
“In a way. It was frustrating, and I’m not sure I have the patience for it – but it’s satisfying when you get each little stitch right.”
“Hm.”
She hasn’t heard him make that noise before. It’s thoughtful, like for once, she’s thrown him for a loop. But she doesn’t have the brain space to interrogate it. She’s stuck on the image of her mother sat next to a stranger in the garden. Sasha, Not Sasha, strangers in the garden. It’s all making her head spin.
“Michael, I think I’d like to rest now.”
When she opens her eyes, there’s a looped set of wooden needles next to her and loads of yarn. All colours, bright and dark and everything in between. She counts twenty bundles, more than she could ever use (that is, unless she really is stuck in this corridor forever).
She takes one into her hand. It’s real, not like some of these doors. Not a trick. She raises it up and rubs the red bundle against her cheek. The wool’s soft, so soft that Sasha starts to cry. She’s not sure when the last time was that she touched anything this soft. No, the carpet doesn’t count.
The carpet. Michael.
She spends the next however-long banging on doors. She pulls them open, pushes as hard as she can. Once, she even does her best Tim, and tries to kick it open. It probably shouldn’t have worked, but somehow, the door swings open all the same. All the while, she’s calling out, “Michael! Not Michael!” Finally, she comes to one the shade of periwinkle blue, and yanks it open.
Inside, there’s a guy.
“Michael?”
His hair is blonde, a shade lighter than regular. A little shorter too, and his curls are still. Around his neck, he’s got a blue scarf the same shade of the door. There are no jutting bones or freaky fingers.
Quite frankly, it’s disturbing.
“Are you alright?”
He could be sick. He looks blanched and muted compared to the regular barrage of colour he subjects her too. And… what would happen if he was sick? If he died? Would Sasha be kicked out? Left to the mercy of her not-self?
“Michael?” She tries again, with a little more force in her voice.
“Sasha.”
“What’s wrong?”
When he turns to face her, it’s like a switch’s flipped on. His hair glows back to its regular gold and starts to move into fractals, but his eyes stay a pale blue that matches the scarf.
“It was my mum who knit it. His mum. Our mum. No one’s mum.”
“Alright.”
It’s not really alright, but Sasha takes a step forward all the same.
“I hate him.”
There’s enough force in his voice to leave her cold. It’s so… human. Like he cares. And before she can stop herself:
“Michael, who did you used to be?”
“Michael. I was Michael, and also, not Michael. But Michael couldn’t survive, the idiot, not all on his own, and he swallowed me whole, and I spit him back out.”
“You’re not making any sense.”
“You’re not listening. You understand, Assistant.”
Assistant. Now, her blood really does run cold.
“Did you work at the Institute?”
“Uh-uh. Michael worked at the Institute. Michael was Assistant. Michael fetched coffees and listened to stories and heard.”
“And you, what? You ate him?”
“And he ate me.”
Her head is cloudy. From the pieces she’s put together, he was an assistant. Like her. Eaten by a predator looking for food. Like her. The same predator who saved her… another assistant. From being eaten. By another predator.
Round and round it goes, till sense becomes nonsense, and for fuck’s sake, Sasha really hates riddles.
“So you’re… Not Michael?”
“Not Michael and Michael too. I don’t want to be Michael, but I am. Michael doesn’t want to be not, but he is. I am not what I am.”
“You’re… I Do Not Know You?”
“No, you are. Not Sasha is. I am – this is – It Is Not What It Is.”
“It Is Not What It Is,” she repeats. “You Are Not What You Are.” She points at him. He nods back. “I Am Not What I Am,” she points at herself, jabbing an index finger into her chest.
“No.”
“No?”
“You don’t belong here – you aren’t a part of it. Us. You’re… Sasha.”
“I am what I am.” A wave of relief washes over her. She repeats it back to herself. You are Sasha. Not Sasha is not Sasha. This is not the end of her story. She is not easy to kill. She’s Sasha James, and she survived, and she’ll survive this too.
He still looks small, even as his hair starts to curl in fractals around him, and Sasha’s not afraid anymore. Because she is what she is. She is Sasha James.
She strides forward now, long steps that take her right to his feet. Kneeling down in front of him, she sits on the ground and gets comfortable. It takes a moment, but she hooks that bright red wool onto her needles, and wraps her fingers around the wood.
“Will you tell me your story?”
She might not speak Michael’s language, and she certainly can’t read his lines, but she’s quite sure that she’s taken him by surprise. His eyes stay that same silvery blue.
“You’re asking?”
“Yes, please.” Another loop around the needle. It’s a difficult start, but she understands. She’s done it before. “I’d like to hear it all. Beginning to end. Or, end to now. However you’d like.”
They’re both quiet after that, save for the sound of her needles catching the wool. It’s a long moment (minutes? hours?) before he answers.
“Alright.”
There’s no currency here in this world of wrong and right, where everything is topsy turvy upside down but if there were, it’d be stories.
The first one he tells her is sad. A boy named Michael Shelley, eaten up by fear over and over again. A slimy-voiced boss calling him assistant. Gertrude Robinson, sharp and special, another footnote in John’s story (oh, and Sasha remembers her mentioning a Michael once). It’s like a fairy tale. A world made of ice, Sannikovland, and a boy who falls down, down, down.
“Like Alice through the Looking Glass!” She interrupts, and she swears that a smile ghosts across his face.
A boy made into an offering. An assistant rendered into dust to feed the ego, the magnificent destiny of an archivist.
“It’s not a competition, I know, but I’m just saying that you got the better ending. People remember your name, I’m sure of it. And, sure, you had to die horribly and all that, but so did I. At least you can still step out into the real world!”
“You’re not dead, Sasha.”
“Might as well be.”
He doesn’t have an answer for that, and so he carries on. He tells her other stories, too. Souls he’s met, consumed, taken on. He’s right, in many ways. He is not Michael. He’s Michael and he’s not, he’s so many people and places and things that lie beyond her comprehension.
“See? You get your own story. Me, I bet they’re all forgetting about me now. Aggressively normal Sasha. Gosh, it was so tragic when our aggressively normal mate disappeared off the face of the planet. If only she weren’t so damn easy to kill!”
Michael stops at that.
“Nobody’s forgotten you, Sasha.” She thinks he must like the sound of her name, for how often he says it. His voice drawls over the vowels. Saaashaaa.
“Yeah, right.”
“You want proof?”
This time, he shows her a world that knows she’s gone. A monster trapped underground, ugly and deformed, unrecognizable from the girl at her desk. Unrecognizable from Not Sasha, and Sasha too. He shows her family, cuddled cozy by the fireplace. Melanie, another moth sucked into the light, sat at a desk clear across the room. Martin, gnawing at his thumb nail as he waits for the kettle to boil. Tim, burning red hot with anger, slamming doors in his wake. And John, entirely consumed by his own story, chasing down leads to build himself into something else. They’re all doing that, adding on new parts.
It might’ve been nice for Sasha to get that chance, but that’s nobody’s fault. Neither here nor there.
“Can I go back now?”
“I do not know.”
“You do not know…?”
The monster’s tied to the underground. Gone, but alive. There’s no guarantee that Sasha won’t just turn to dust as soon as her foot touches the earth, like some kind of weird vampire. What it took from her wasn’t just her life. It was her ability to live. To have anything, any chance, while it’s in the world.
She could cry about it (she did). She could rage about it (the holes in the corridor don’t count). But the fact of the matter is: it ate her life. And so she needs a new one.
She knits, to start. She starts hanging scarves like garlands in the hall, trailing over paintings and across doorways. All basic patterns, garishly bright to fit in. Somehow, she figures out a hat, and when she fits it into Michael’s head, his spiralling hair curls into it like snakes.
“You’ve got kind of a Medusa thing going on, you know. I guess that makes me Perseus.”
“Are you going to cut my head off, then?”
“Nah. I need a model for sizing.”
One day, she goes for a run (corridor after corridor after corridor) and swings open a door into a study. It’s nice – far nicer than anywhere she’s worked before. A deep chestnut desk and an office chair surrounded by walls painted a muted white. There are no pictures hanging anywhere, but a bookshelf carved into the wall and windows showing clear blue sky. Course, she’s not entirely sure the outside is real, but the books sure are. Mystery novels and biographies and research tombs on occult and folklore, all pulled from her rambling stories.
When she’s half-set up, bundles of yarn organized by colour spilling out of her drawers, there’s a knock on the door.
“Yes? Come in!”
She relishes that. A place of her own, somewhere Michael can’t just appear. Can’t or won’t, anyways.
His curls are nestled into his hat, the gold contrasted against its deep purple, and the sight is enough to put a smile on her lips. At the sheepish look on his face, it grows into a grin.
“You made me a study!”
“Found,” he corrects, but that doesn’t matter, because she’s launching herself at him. When she hits his chest, she hugs him round the neck. Doesn’t even mind the bones that poke her.
“You deserve a sweater for that! How’d you like blue? Or green? Something to match your eyes, yeah?”
“Yeah, alright.” Sometimes, he sounds almost human now. Almost like how she’d imagined Michael Shelley to sound, voice ringing out around the Institute.
“I’m serious! I need to do something to thank you! Even though, technically I am still trapped here, and really, a room was the least you could do.”
“It’s yours.” She detangles herself from him and watches him gesture ahead. “This door is yours, too.”
“Really? Well, it’s a mighty fine door.”
“No – the door is yours. Open it and see.”
She does as he says and steps across the room to lay her hand on the doorknob. After a brief moment, she pulls it open.
It’s her garden. Mum working on the flowers, Dad reading to her from a chair. Lucy’s not there, but it looks like a lovely day, which probably means she’s at work. Her eyes fill with tears as her breath starts to come out in little gasps. That’s her family. Her life. Sasha wonders if they know yet – if they’ve realized that something very wrong’s happened to her.
And then she sees the way her dad’s looking up at her mum every three words or so, features soft, and she understands.
“They know.”
“Everyone does, but no one really knows.” Michael’s trying not to say another riddle. She can hear the hesitance in his voice. “You could try, if you like. You could… leave.”
“Would I be safe?” She looks back at him and he shakes his head.
“I can’t guarantee that. Sasha, Not Sasha, I Do Not Know You… she has your life stuck ‘tween her teeth. But if you want to go, you can. I take a lot – so many things – but I won’t take you. We’re friends, aren’t we?”
She tears her eyes away from her family. There’s the ground right in front of her, green and alive and so tempting that she’d be willing to die for it. But there are her parents, and there’s her sister, and Tim and Martin, and even John –
And she won’t die for them.
“I want to stay. Long enough to figure this out, even if it takes years.”
“You’ll stay?”
She turns back to look at him.
“I’ll stay with you. So long as you’ll have me.”
His mouth stretches into a close-lipped smile. She likes this one, without the hungry teeth. And even as she’s crying, she finds herself smiling back.
“I’ll have you, Sasha James. We’ll have you.”
As soon as he says that, she swears she can feel her hair twitch. Like maybe, one of her curls is coming to life in here too, finally waking up.
“Until we find a way out. For me and for you.”
He looks like he might argue with that, but she won’t let him. She reaches out a hand and curls her fingers, welcoming him to take it.
It’s one long moment of silence before he moves, but it only takes a few steps for him to fill the doorway with her. His sharp fingers barely fit into her hand. It’s uncomfortable, and she curls her palm around them anyways.
“Together.”
“Together?”
She looks at him and smiles as she reaches out for the doorknob.
“Together. I deserve a story too, don’t I? And I’m going to make damned sure that I’m the one writing it.”
As the door closes, Michael’s laugh rings around them.
“You are what you are, Sasha James.”
She finds herself laughing too.
“That’s right. I am what I am.”