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Chapter Text

Micheal never left that doorway that was not there in Sannakovia.

that form, with all its dreadfully human memories, remained teetering on the edge of the Archivists betrayal and his own death.

but even as It sat rotting, it felt the terror coursing through every lairs veins, tasted the dread of those who took too much, and lost themselves in what removed them

it wasn’t as though Micheal itself had ever existed anyway, only that The Distortion welcomed something new into its hallways and gave it a spare key that warped and melted as that new soul held it,folding into his hands as if it had never not been there.

But Micheal does still stand at the edge of that ruined temple that never existed but somehow now makes sense, a place unmarked or seen….yet the geometry of it -were anyone unfortunate to cross its threshold- they would see how the lines of the temple made sense, even ruined and collapsed as they were, the ground is -was-would be when it shouldn’t be flat and solid beneath their feet

they would see the sagging form that used to hold Micheal Shelly, his rotted betrayed, human shell now fusing with the sensible concrete structures he died to create.

And instead Micheal walks the Corridors 

And Micheal, to itself thinks -or wanders through it’s mind enough to find a scrap of thought someone else left behind- that being mad at Robinson for what she did was far too reasonable, to feel anger at the betrayal or to regret what it had so greedily become,  when the outcome was so much more than they could have hoped

—-•

 there was a true joy -not joy, but something almost like it,  far away enough from the truth- in existing the way it didn’t and did…. in taking and taking and taking,

The sating of ravenous hunger that comes at the picking and pulling and slicing and unraveling the strings holding a precariously fragile sense of understanding,

to destroy what a person tried to call  comprehension, truth, until all that was left is the terror that comes from the formless lines and garbled words that long since lost their significance to the poor soul who did not open a door that was not supposed to and probably wasn’t there.

And yet there was something beyond the intelligible endless laughter…

something beyond all incomprehension, The Distortion felt guilt, the tiny grain of sand that sat at the centre of what called itself Micheal

 it seemed that even if the name was only for convenience -something for its victims had a collection of sounds to scream when they died in unraveling tragedy- the identity of Micheal had left it’s mark on The Spiral as much as it had left it’s mark on him.

 this guilt tugged them, invisibly but impossibly-like the silk of a not-enemy- back to the sensibly crumbling structures and that yellow painted door that was not-there, Sannakovia.

back to the shattered remains of Micheal Shelly, where that guilt blossomed on him with each mind taken, unraveled and rewoven into something even It could not conceive, tears would stream down that lifeless face and water that lifeless sensible concrete ground.

But it hurt to stay there too long, where gravity pulled you down while the northern lights pulled your eyes up and your feet would never leave the ground, and the ruined temple left no room for doubt,

so It played a game.

Going between the precipice of Its not-beginning and walking the warped and wandering halls as the not-body of  never-now

and each time It left, It felt the body of Micheal Shelly command a heart that It did not have to beat and a soul that It did not want to reach  for ,

it is a gross, desperate attempt to reconcile the body and lack-of-mind of Micheal Shelly.

But that is the where The Distortion drew a line,

against itself and it’s own  incomprehension, The Distortion drew a straight line, a boundary that not even it was to cross ,

the boundary led from the hallways to the place that was not Sannakovia.

But that did not stop the grain of sand from irritating, when The Distortion spread out amongst itself, nestled into every lie and deception, every half truth and omission, every too long hallway or too short night, it could feel something,

as though a body it did not have was falling into something, that distinctly human jolt that they cannot contain upon waking, their body’s own deception, thinking it stood on the border of death, lies to the mind in a desperate attempt of self preservation, and they wake up unified as though dropped from a  terrible height, stopped only inches from the bottom, It feels this terrible fear of death, feeling itself tremble as the door swims to close on him( it )( them )( us )( you )

But true to its nature that was not the truth.

Chapter Text

Shelley fought it of course, gripping close his-self, grappling madly at memories. Done with all the usual useless thrashing that Its victims attempted while being unravelled and eaten alive. A resistance that would not have lasted half so long had not an intruding Archivist thrown the rational, lucid, corrosive Micheal Shelley into the writhing epicenter of their unspeakable Twisting. But as it was(is)((will be)) the tattered remains of Shelley fought to reclaim his physical form. At first he tried to open eyes which had long melted away, next he forced breath into lungs which had - upon merging with the clay-slip-shard things that Were-Not-There -  expanded, punctured, flooded with blue-fear-blood and finally collapsed.

Worst of all he tried to pilot the body that now cast no shadow and touched no ground. A painful, unpleasant endeavour for all of It to be sure. Especially when that not-so-self-same Shelley failed to consider that the body he attempted to puppeteer was halfway to freezing solid and becoming killer-whale chow somewhere in the Caspian Sea following the collapse of the non-existent island. The act did pull a scratching echo of a laugh from the weakened throat of Delusion, but it really did no-one-who-could-not-be any good. 

Even so, every fight must come to an end. All it took was one flickering thread, bright red and tempting as any sin, to collapse what remained of Micheal Shelley. It was a lesson Delusion had learned at the moment of conception; before they feel fear, humans feel curious. It is that hardwired drive to know which has fuelled their slow, desperate crawl from dirt filled ignorance which unfailingly lead them into the gently smiling maw of Delirium.

So it was this thread, beckoning and bright that unwound the straggling,strung out remains of Shelley’s self and sanity. He would approach, and touch, so tentatively, thinking, in a distant tired way; “maybe this is the way out, what else can I do but hope that it is?”. Alike to the children lead through darkening woods by the crumbs left behind, each careful, hopeful tug pulled and pulled and pulled, wrapping itself around his fingers and between the webbing of his hands. Round and round it went until Shelley could scarcely tell -for by this time it was wound nearly up to his elbow- whether he was still the one tugging.

It wasn’t an unkind, the pull, it was gentle, suggesting, he laughed, burbling and high-in such a way he could not quite remember was his before- almost hear the words it said in his mind; “come this way, I’m sure it’s this way, the door, the door you came through, it will be right where you left it, all you must do is find it! That bright red-yellow-blue-“ wait…what colour was that door, Shelley was sure it had been- it had been green a bright terrible green, of course yes! So of course he smiled when the thread pulled him down stairs and up slopes and hallways, impossible -arching and claustrophobic- and followed where that bright red thread lead, he would be out in no time and go back to-

No, where he came from is not important, secondary, the only thing that truly matters is that he find that door-

He opened windows, fell through trapdoors and cracked mirror, after mirror, after mirror. It during was one unfortunate shattering that he began to notice his blood- no longer the way he remembered it dripping, thin and red-seems, darker, thicker, sticky like tar-oil slow dripping like molasses that catches the light like a fractured diamond