Chapter Text
“I see you.”
Sasha tried to run, but her hip slammed into the optical-illusion table. Stumbling in pain, she fought towards a nearby shelf, bracing herself on its edge. Catching her breath, she turned around suddenly, knocking over a few books, her hands grasping for something – anything – that could be used as a weapon. Her hand found on an old snow globe, which she hurled at the creature without hesitation. “What are you!”
The glass shattered across its grey, shapeless face, the skin rippling like loose putty around the impact. It recoiled momentarily, then grinned without a mouth. With a theatrical tilt of the head, it resumed scuttling towards Sasha, the click of its feet loud on the parquet floor.
Sasha was brave. But cornered.
She whipped around the bookshelf, finding herself face to face with an old jukebox. She slammed the buttons randomly, letting the machine power on as she darted to the left. Oh god, the calliope. She kicked it aside as the jukebox powered up, the internal crank whirring. Humorously, the tinny, silly hum of an Abba song began –“Waterloo.” As Sasha’s eyes darted around in search of a weapon, the calliope wheeled away from her kick and crashed into a chest of drawers.
“Oh... I see you!” The creature tensed its shoulders, its unnaturally sharp arms propelling it over the landscape of assorted artifacts, nails digging into the antique leather of an ottoman.
Sasha snarled, lunging for a small statuette. As she held its brass heft in her hand, the jukebox cheerily recited its 1970’s Abba tune: “Oh yeah! And I have met my destiny in quite a similar way!” She chucked the statuette at the creature’s head, just missing and shattering a glass display of porcelain dolls. A low, throaty chuckled rose from the Thing’s nonexistent mouth, its spine rising from its back and its eyebrows distending.
Sasha turned around, trying to find another projectile. The jukebox kept playing, now lit with neon shifting lights. Jumping over a velvet rope, she leaped onto a table away from the Thing, losing a shoe in the process. Desperately, she reached down and threw off the other shoe at the Thing, hitting it in the leg with a wet smack.
All the while, the jukebox wailed: “Waterloo couldn't escape if I wanted to - Waterloo knowing my fate is to be with you - Waterloo, finally facing my Waterloo!”
Sasha fell back as the Thing placed its eight-fingered hand onto the lip of the table, the finger-pads wide and bulbous. She tried to kick them away, but it simply grabbed her ankle with its other hand, the index finger wrapping entirely around her ankle. As Sasha screamed, she could hear the Abba song continue coldly, the jukebox completely unperturbed: “And how could I ever refuse - I feel like I win when I lose!”
As the Thing yanked her down under its shifting grasp, Sasha could feel its multitudinous hands grip her head, touching every inch of her face, examining her expressions with a cold and terrible exactitude. She felt her blood turn to ice as it reached into her face sharply, the jukebox faintly humming the last verses of “Waterloo” with little sympathy. As Sasha died, her legs struggled to kick the Thing in its stomach. In the end, she screamed. And screamed. And screamed.
It was the last millisecond; her vision started to go dark quickly, her sight glitching between her own eyes and that of the Thing. Her last vision was of her own face, smiling down at her with a sadistic joy, too many jagged teeth and with a hideous perm. The Thing caressed her skinless face, clucking softly, it’s nails sharp and adorned with blood red polish.
As Sasha died on the table, she suffered through the endless, cheery last verses of “Waterloo:”
Waterloo couldn't escape if I wanted to
Waterloo knowing my fate is to be with you
Oh, oh Waterloo finally facing my Waterloo!
A millennium in darkness. Or, well, it certainly felt that way. Sasha had spent so long in the dark alone, without anything including herself. It wasn’t the true dark – that was different. No, this was the darkness of not existing. Of being without a form. As she stepped through the infinity of nothing, she wondered if she had ever had “a self.” Maybe this is life before birth? These philosophical questions kept her moving, kept her curious enough to exist. After all, Sasha knew that without self, she was prone to ceasing – and she could feel herself constantly wavering like a naked, flickering lightbulb. She wasn’t sure how she knew that. But it felt important to feel. To exist.
A small tug at her sleeve from the ether. She brought her hands to her face slowly, finding nothing but warm liquid and pulp. She already knew what it was. She knew the sticky substance on her fingertips was a black red, with a stench of iron. She dropped her hands, wiping them on her skirt.
She had cried and screamed for hours at first, salt and blood in equal measures. Now she was numb.
Another tug, she could not see exactly. But she could sense. There was something pulling her in some direction. It was warm, if certainly electrified. Her nose (whatever remained of that) was filled with the scent of coffee and lilies. She raised a skinned hand towards the sensation, focusing on the existence of Sasha James, willing herself to be palpable and real. A halting chuckle filled her senses from within, echoing into her lungs and out her own mouth.
Her hand found a doorknob, cold and brass.
Immediately, Sasha recoiled, her hand unaccustomed to reality. It burned and hurt her blood, offending her very half-existence. She gripped the doorknob all the same, gritting her teeth through the pain, letting it ripple through her in waves. With a heavy grunt, she turned the handle and stumbled forward.
“Sasha... James.”
She said nothing, her thoughts unfocused in pain. Existing in this form, as it turned out, was unbelievably awful.
“James... Sasha.”
She opened her lidless eyes. Above her head was a taupe ceiling, slightly textured. She groaned loudly, her voice gravelly and stretched. She reached around blindly with her hands.
“You are... not you.”
She dug her fingers into the carpet, gripping the plush fibers tightly, her bones aching and cracking as they constantly reshaped themselves.
“You are not you are not you are not you. And yet?”
A curl of blonde hair fell into Sasha’s frame of vision. It moved and twisted, the individual hairs braiding and unbraiding on their own accord. She really thought about screaming.
“Pain. I know. It hurts to become.”
She swallowed. “Please...” her voice came out tinny, as though through an old radio. “I can’t....”
“Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.” Michael’s face finally came into frame, shrouded in infinite spirals of straw-blonde hair. He looked as she remembered, though more, if that was possible. As though before she had simply seen some sterilized, palatable version of Michael. Here, his expressions wavered and spun, his eyes a disconcerting miasma of electric hues unlike any she had seen in her whole life. “You’re making a mess.”
Despite everything, anger flashed through Sasha’s form. “...Michael.”
“Something like that. Or maybe not.” He laughed eerily. “You might know, Stranger.”
Sasha didn’t respond, coughing as she pressed her palms against the carpet, attempting to sit up. She failed, of course. The effort was simply too painful. Michael tutted, his hair wagging. “You are trying too hard.”
“I-.” She made another attempt. “Please. Help.”
Michael smiled now, extending her a bony hand. Underneath her, she felt the carpet shift, pulling her weight upwards and rolling into some sort of chair. Shakily, she placed her hand into Michael’s palm and let him pull her up slowly.
Looking down at her legs, she saw her new body for the first time. And it wasn’t what she expected.
Instead of the skinless, horrific red that she expected, she saw that her legs were intact. But certainly not right. Her knees fell too high onto her thighs, one lower than the other. Raising her hands in front of her face, she realized they too were mottled plastic, the middle digits long and translucent grey. Her bare feet were warped as well, the arch of each foot adjacent to her toes. She finally gasped in horror and, as she did, Michael chuckled.
“Tell me, Stranger. Is this you?”
Sasha cleared her throat, her voice now taking on a deep, gravelly intonation. “This can’t. This isn’t. No, I should be dead. I am dead.”
Michael crouched beside her quietly, rolling his legs into a pretzel for sitting. “Dead dead dead.” He sniffed. “Maybe. Depends. Is that what you want, Stranger, to be dead?”
“No? I think?”
“Digested.”
“...Digested?”
“Yes, like a little shrimp.” He smiled faintly to himself. “With little legs and little problems and little dreams... struggling against the current.”
“I need help, Michael.” She reached for his hand again, panic rising in her chest. “Please.”
He ignored her, absently speaking to the air. “Did you know that females of the species have a part of their spine that grows over their mouths? And at the end of that spine there is bait? It glows at night, on the streets. Like you.”
Sasha struggled to follow him, her eyebrows furrowing painfully. “Like.. me?”
“Yes, Stranger. Or maybe not.”
“Michael, I-I don’t understand.”
“Digested and devoured. Poor Sasha James.” His head tilted sharply. “Are you hungry?”
She winced in confusion, his magenta gaze burrowing into her. “I don’t know.”
“Dead-Sasha James does not eat. Live-Sasha James makes a snack. But then you might not be ‘Sasha James’ anymore.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
Michael laughed, the noise clipped and percussive. “Come, Sasha James. Perhaps the Stranger will look good on you.” He rose to his feet, his legs untangling as he stood. As he did, the carpet underneath Sasha rose and rolled, bringing her to her feet with a lurch. Michael gestured to a newly appeared door beside them, his fingers growing longer and longer as he pushed it open. Outside, Sasha could see a familiar London street, the pavement wet with recent rain. It was late at night and, across the road, Sasha could see a woman walking briskly, looking over her shoulder nervously every few moments.
Sasha understood then. She was hungry. In fact, she was hungrier than she had ever been in her life, experiencing a deep gnawing pain that radiated into her toes and crawled up her shoulder blades. She leaned forward suddenly, catching herself on the doorframe “I-I can’t.”
Michael sighed, his eyes swirling into a royal purple. “You are not them. You are not even you.”
“She’s a person, Michael. I can’t - won’t - make anyway else suffer like this.”
“But we are friends.”
Sasha grimaced with painful restraint. “Michael. That’s. That’s besides the point.”
“Is it, Stranger?” His hair sharply shifted into twisting fractals. “You were supposed to die.”
“I did. I think.”
“And yet... we chat.”
Sasha frowned, watching the woman on the street skittishly carry her bag close to her chest. “I’ve never hurt anyone like this.”
Michael sniffed, brushing his hair back with his impossibly long fingers. “Oh Stranger,” he began with his telltale, sing-song voice. “Just this once, I will pluck the Worm-of-Sasha from the Stranger-of-Sasha. As before.”
She was about to protest, to question, to argue. But he had already pushed her out the door and onto the street, face-to-face with her supposed prey. As the door shut behind her, Sasha could hear Michael’s halting laugh laced between her victim’s screams.
“Become, Stranger.”
Chapter Text
Another day in the lab – and another day of wearing Hannah. Sasha wasn’t particularly fond of this form; Hannah was itchy and small, causing Sasha to have stoop within herself. Plus, everyone at work hated her which, while not exactly one of Sasha’s biggest concerns, was still irritating on a day-to-day basis. All the same, “Hannah” was better than no form at all.
After unlocking the door to Hannah’s flat, Sasha dropped her bag, tossing her mail onto the kitchen table. With a sigh, she walked over the fridge and grabbed a beer, bringing a single nail under the crown top and popping the metal off into her hands. After taking a heavy swig, she sighed contentedly, her joints clicking with approving decompression.
Before, while still “Sasha-Sasha,” she had never been much of a beer drinker. She had certainly enjoyed going out for drinks with Tim and Martin. But she had never really bought beer to drink at home alone. However, as “Hannah,” Sasha found them much more drinkable and approaching a necessity. Leaning heavily against the kitchen island, lost in absent thought, she recalled reading an old pop-sci article about heart transplant patients that had adopted their donor’s tastes. Sasha sighed guiltily, trying not to think about how much of “Hannah” was still trapped within her encasement.
A creaky hinge. Sasha raised a single eyebrow, pride keeping her from visibly startling. Behind her, the sound of grating, rusty door pins entered her consciousness from within. She looked over her shoulder slowly to see the phantom door open, bathing the kitchen table in an orange-yellow light. “Michael.”
He crept out of his door slowly, his fingers twisting and swirling at his sides. When his foot stepped fully onto her flat’s hardwood flooring, she could see his form stabilize somewhat, his curly hair motionless and his eyes becoming a fixed yellow hue. “I Do Not Know You.”
Sasha chuckled. “I get that a lot.”
He smiled despite himself then, turning to close the door behind him. “Nobody within a body. You are doing well, Stranger.”
A shrug, then another swig of her beer. “Who knows. Who cares.”
“Caring. It is an odd thing, is it not?” He paused. “Ah. May... we?”
Sasha’s eyes narrowed in confusion, then followed his unblinking gaze. “Huh. Sure.” She opened the fridge, popping open a beer and offering it to him. Michael took the glass in his bony hand, the digits wrapping around the entire circumference of the bottle. He took a small sip then shuddered, causing Sasha to laugh. “So, is this what we do? After-work drinks for freaks?”
“Work.” The word seemed odd on his tongue. “Work or existence or is existence work?”
“I take it that there isn’t precedent for this then.”
“Michael has never been fond of the Circus.”
Sasha sighed. “The Circus,” she repeated. “That’s not exactly my aesthetic.”
Michael took another tepid sip of his beer. “No, but you are still the Circus.”
“Oh?” Sasha mulled the idea over in her head, not unconvinced. “So, what’s wrong with the Circus?”
“Something that is Wrong can still be True. And there are too many of you.”
“Sounds like you’re afraid I might step on your toes, Michael.”
He almost huffed. “Lies and concealment share but do not overlap.”
“If you say so, Spiral.”
A frown, Michael’s eyes turning to liquid topaz. “Michael did not like the Circus. Before.”
“...Before?”
“Yes." He continued, unperturbed by her quizzical look. "Michael thought it was scary.”
“Isn’t that the point?”
“For you, perhaps. But not for everyone.”
“Hm.” Sasha took a sip of her beer. "Well, thanks for checking up on me?”
Michael grinned. “Of course.”
She tugged at her sleeve, Sasha’s eyes awkwardly drawn to Hannah’s unread mail on the kitchen table. As Michael’s fingers began to wrap around the doorframe, a coldness settled into her chest. She took a deep breath, speaking slightly too quickly. “Michael - what’s next? For me, I mean.”
A high, uncanny chuckle. “Oh, so many choices, Stranger.”
Sasha thought about rolling her eyes and chastising him for his gleeful obstinance. All the same, she bit her tongue. “But you’re not lying to me. Right?”
“That would be.... silly. Are you not Michael’s friend?”
“I thou-think so?”
“You are lost enough, I think, little Stranger." He sniffed. "After all, Michael had his own corridors too. Even before he became Michael.”
“Hm.” Sasha nodded, feigning polite comprehension. Michael simply laughed, the noise halting and staticky. He took another sip of his beer, though she somehow doubted he tasted it. “Just call me Sasha though. No more of this ‘Stranger’ business, alright?”
“But that is... a lie.”
“A lie or not,” she sighed, “it’s what I prefer.’”
Michael unwrapped his hands from the door slowly. “Tell me... Sasha? Do you still cling to you?”
She paused thoughtfully, her gaze falling to her plasticized fingernails. “And if so?”
“You will disappear. Eventually.”
“There are worse things.”
Michael’s curly hair glitched, then reformed. “Michael would disagree.”
Sasha frowned, unsure what to make of his musings. As always, and befitting of the Spiral, Michael spoke a familiar language that was utterly incomprehensible. She finally sighed. “Do you want to watch TV or something?”
“TV?”
“Yeah, you know...” she shrugged, tipping her bottle towards the television. “Pass the time.”
“Hmm?” Michael replied, “I am ..not.. disinterested.”
Sasha walked over to the sofa and grabbed the remote. With practiced ease, she switched the TV’s input to Hannah’s Fire Stick and opened Netflix. Michael watched her with large, golden eyes, settling into the adjacent armchair with unease. He gingerly placed his half-drunk beer onto a nearby TV tray. “So. You do this often.”
“Yeah, I have to do something in the evenings. It’s not like I have friends anymore.” She bit her lip. “Ah... sorry, that sounded bitter.”
“Michael understands.”
“Right. Of course he does.” She took a deep breath, surprised by the bubbling of own her latent frustration. With some embarrassment, Sasha realized Michael was silently studying her reaction, a few strands of his blonde hair raveling and unraveling. Almost imperceptibly, as a reflex, she too settled into her own strangeness, the features of her face decompressing ever so slightly. She looked back at Michael quickly with a plastic smile. “What do you think? Comedy or drama?”
“What is a comedy if not a drama that must be a comedy or else it would be a drama?”
A heavy sigh. “Alright let’s just watch a sit-com.”
Chapter Text
Another Friday evening.
They were sat on the floor of one of Michael’s corridors, the wallpaper a garish floral print rendered in the most offensive and overwhelming burnt orange. Sasha leaned her back against one of the walls next to Michael, giggling despite herself. “And you said what, again?”
Michael leaned towards her conspiratorially, his eyes spiraling yellow. “I said... ‘Wait, you never saw Firefly season 2?’” He laughed, the sound grating, like glass rubbing against glass.
Sasha groaned playfully. “That’s got to be low hanging fruit for you. And also really dated.”
An indignant hand flew to his throat. “There is no reason behind time and the time spent. Or the what or why.”
“You’re just huffy because you finally watched Firefly literally yesterday.”
“And... ...?”
She laughed, regarding his pouty face. With a sulky sniff, Michael sunk deeper into his seat on the floor, his back becoming a sharp ninety-degree angle as it folded against the ground. Down the hall, Sasha could hear the faint, exhausted panting of one of Michael’s numerous “residents,” their footsteps heavy and desperate. Though Sasha hardly cared at this point, Michael blinked, politely shunting his wandering prey off towards another corner of the labyrinth. “My apologies. It is ...rude to eat with guests over.”
She shrugged indifferently. “Good week then?”
“I suppose so. I have enjoyed the sport of it.”
"Right.” Sasha replied after a pause. She began fumbling around in her coat pockets and, after a moment of searching, she produced a worn tennis ball, her fifteen-fingered hand gripping it loosely. She lobbed it gently against the opposite wall, the floral wallpaper rippling where it bounced. “Catch.”
Michael raised a timid hand, mostly shielding his face. He barely caught it, the ends of his fingernails snagging the ball’s fibers. “You... threw this at me.”
“No,” Sasha chuckled. “Just throw it back against the wall and I’ll catch it.”
“But why.”
“Why not. Haven’t you ever played catch?”
“It’s been a long time. Michael’s memories can be. Interesting.”
“Huh. Of course.”
Michael tossed the ball, bouncing it off the wall and back to Sasha beside him. He watched her catch it deftly, her eyes huge and unblinking. For a moment, he considered asking if Sasha was always so competitive, so focused. But the branching maze of questions/observations/concerns in his mind brought him to another thought. “You are always enjoying... doing things. Watching TV. Going out. Shifting. Eating. Working. You do not sit.”
“Why would I just sit?”
“Why not?”
She rolled her eyes. “Maybe I just like something to fill the awkward silences.”
“...Awkward?”
She tossed the ball back to him. “Yeah, Michael, we’re both a bit awkward.”
“Oh.”
“Oh indeed.”
He tossed the ball back. “Michael was awkward. He still is. Different now.”
She tossed it back. “I’ll bet.”
“Michael was an Assistant.” He held the ball for second longer, then bounced it off the wall. “A long time ago.”
“I was an Assistant too, remember?”
“As much as ...anything... can and should be remembered.”
“Do you.. want to talk about it? I mean. About Michael?”
“Hmmmm.” He paused thoughtfully. For a moment, his hair glitched, the spiraled curls clipping through the walls and into floor. Then, just as quickly, his image settled. “Michael didn’t like attention. He liked to do his job. He liked being useful.”
“Honestly? Same. I actually sort of liked my work at the, the...” The words suddenly seemed thick in her throat. “The Magnus Institute.”
“Is that why you stand across the street and watch the doors. For hours.” His tone was playful, but the question was still pointed.
She chuckled, lobbing the ball a little harder. “No, I just. I’m frustrated.”
“Because of Not-Them.”
She tilted her head back, letting it fall against the wall. “I guess you could say that.”
“Hm. Tell me Sasha; why are you... afraid?”
“I’m not afraid.” The ball hit hard against the wall. “I just don’t see the point in complicating everything.”
Michael tutted. “A lie uncovered is a lie exposed. And exposed hurts.”
“For someone who supposedly hates the Stranger, you seem to think you know a lot.”
“Michael doesn’t know the Stranger. He just knows you.”
She laughed then, almost hysterically, the ball falling from her hands and rolling along the blue carpeting. “It’s all just so arbitrary, isn’t it? You’re right, I guess. I can’t do anything about her, after all. She’s burrowed in deep now.”
“Arbitrary in the process but not the substance. Or maybe in the depth but not the width. The action but not the intention.” He shook his head, the corners of his lips twitching. “You glowed... before. Even when there were too many eyes.”
“No rest for the wicked, right? I get it.”
“Do you ...?” He shifted his weight, his torso twisting and twisting until his form had wound its way in front of Sasha. Sitting cross-legged across from her, he sniffed, the wallpaper shifting to a forest green. “I have enjoyed watching you become so many contradictions.”
“Yeah, I bet.” she rolled her eyes, a weary smile undermining her dismissive tone. “You know, you can be a bit sadistic, Michael.”
“Ah, a compliment? Thank you.” His tinny laugh reverberated along the hallways, eyes glittering. “This is why we are friends, Sasha. You have so many delusions. And are ...becoming even more.”
“Was Michael always like this? Or just you.” She leaned forward now, ignoring his unnecessarily cryptic musings with practiced ease.
“Michael would have liked you. You would have been friends.”
“So, the answer is no.”
“Maybe.”
“Tell me about him.” She rested her chin in her hands, her slivered pupils sharpening to pinpricks as she met Michael’s gaze. “You don’t talk much about Michael.”
“Why should I? He is a nuisance. A pit lodged in the mirage of a stomach.”
“For my benefit. Please.”
A sigh, even as his eyes swirled into a curious purple, blonde eyelashes growing longer and longer. He finally tutted, gaze dropping. “A long story. Perhaps even for your Archivist. But it is simple, I suppose. Michael cared too much. Then he was eaten – by me. Bones and hopes and cares and all. Again and again and again. Even now, he is eaten – or does he eat me? He is like you, I suppose, in that way.” He rested his hands on the floor, suddenly uncomfortable. “Except, Michael’s who hardly matters now. Just the what.”
“I think it matters to me.”
“It... shouldn’t.”
Sasha tilted her head, her lips pursed with an obvious thought. “We have a lot of common I think. From the ground up, you know. From before. Some connections are obvious – like working at the Institute. But others seem...” Her voice trailed off with thought. “It’s hard to put it into words. It just feels so cyclical.”
“A spiral?” Michael raised an wry eyebrow.
“Hm. And a downward one.”
A long silence. Sasha picked at her shirt sleeve as Michael buried a long nail into the plush fibers of the carpet. The sudden stillness highlighted the distant sounds of rattling, as though someone nearby was repeatedly turning a locked doorknob. Michael kept playing with the carpet, his mind far away. “I don’t want to be Michael anymore.”
“I know.” Sasha replied simply, sympathetically. “I don’t want to be Sasha anymore either. It’s. It’s too hard.”
“I wish we could stop.”
“Me too,” Sasha sighed, swallowing guiltily, too comfortable in her own conviction. “Me too.”
Michael suddenly looked up, his long hair shifting to shroud much of his face. All the same, Sasha could see his bright eyes peering at her through the haze, the colors swirling into a sharp emerald. His voice seemed distant again, as though it echoed from another corridor. “Can we go outside? I want to watch TV... Or see a movie.”
Sasha smiled sadly then, rising to her feet stiffly. She reached down to Michael, their equally weird hands meeting as she helped pull him to his feet. “Yeah, let’s get some air, alright?”