i'm so sorry, i walked marginally more than a mile in your shoes. my understanding of you has subsumed my own consciousness, i am you to a greater extent than you ever were, and you are merely a simulacrum to the true you, which is me.
i love writing uncomfortable conversationsssss i love shitty communication skills i love misunderstandings i love competing and contradictory needs and desires i love situations where nobody is happy and theyre just talking about it but its not fixing anything :)
you literally can’t even do something anymore because there’ll be a consequence. and you literally can’t even do nothing anymore because there’ll be a consequence
Contamination, and sexual lust, also come with a bloody mess, literally so because of the extensive injuries that Ginger's victims sustain. Whenever an infection takes place it comes with excessive loads of blood and guts, clutter, and rubble, as if to suggest that what is happening here cannot be contained and will spill over and contaminate all of normality, not just the individual under attack. (…)All this messiness pushes the trope of uncleanliness into that of contamination. It implies that whenever someone is infected it is not just that person who changes but all of their surroundings too. Even rooms whose very function it is to contain that process are incapable of preventing the spreading of the curse. And so the whole world gets contaminated, pushed into chaos and uncleanliness. Brigid Cherry notes that, throughout the film, each time "Brigitte has to clean up the mess. Cleanliness is something that recedes as Ginger becomes more monstrous, and by the time she is totally wolf-like, Brigitte gives up." By then, suggests Cherry, "the sexually mature, adult female body (fertile, menstruating, maternal, controlling, oppressive) is also coded as unclean and therefore abject."
CARA-CARNIS DEATHBODY: WHAT HAPPENED TO THEODORE CALDERA (CHAPTER 1)
The rooms were vast and white.
Arches leading to stairways, leading to inverted repetitions of what was behind them. Until they’d swerve to create new dips, walkways and open rooms. All indistinguishable in any meaningful way from the rest, but different enough to keep anyone in unfamiliar surroundings.
The rooms and corridors perfectly connected, smooth white surfaces coated the inside of these never ending structures.
No doors, no erosion, complete and open artificial infinity. The only way to know up from down was where you were walking, and that was subject to change. It would have been a boring sight if not for how it warped with such ease. It was offensive, thought Theodore, how it had the nerve to be so bold and pristine and openly wrong. It was mockery from the location itself, and there was nowhere he could go to get away from its smugness.
Theodore couldn’t remember how long he’d been there, not really. He assumed he did, but on the occasions he actually tried to think about it, he lost that confidence. He’s sure he could remember it better if there was somewhere less brightly exposed to gather his thoughts. He doesn’t know where the light is even coming from. It’s immersive, casting no shadows, seemingly coming from everywhere. He thinks it’s eating away at him, like a body dumped in an acid bath.
He’s been sitting on what he decided may as well be the floor, for an amount of time he decided probably isn’t that long. His legs ache, his hands crack when he flexes the joints from the now dried reddish brown on his hands.
The idea of a rest seemed appealing, but it was becoming clear that all he’d done is stop treading water. The image of chemical burns forms in his mind when he thinks about staying sitting here.
Another staircase that folds in on itself only to level out later, he follows it to its conclusion, and sees nothing but the same scenes of white open rooms. Another arch that shows off the entrance to yet another set of white open rooms. The drops are what he looks out for, dips randomly situated as if, at points, the surfaces swerved to avoid itself. Leaving deep pits.
Theodore wanted to get out, but he wasn’t sure he was ready to try escape by these. They were always nothingness for as far as he could see. Whether in the floor, wall or ceiling, they all displayed the same void-like pit. Of course, he didn’t have to worry about the ones in the wall or ceiling. At least he hoped he didn’t. So he just kept an eye out for when they were in the floor, he compared them to sinkholes, which made him worry if ones could be created from his weight. He worried about this to save himself from worrying about the alternative. The possibility that he could feel. That there was something on the other side that neither he or this place itself wanted any part in. That these were open wounds in the architecture.
So, they were something along the lines of sinkholes. Is was what Theodore was going with.
Deciding to follow a straight path, that Theodore supposed you could call a hallway, he came to several options for stairways. This wasn’t new, many areas had what he could only compare to junctions of stairways, some leading in different directions, while some two stairways arrived at the same destination. That seemed pointless to him. He picked his choice without too much thought, it wasn’t like he could use reason here he thought, why waste time.
He clung on to the idea of being in a rush. He wasn’t sure why, but it helped him a little, he thought it did, anyway.
The stairs were perfectly angled as always, created out of material Theodore couldn’t hope to identify. At first glance it looked to have the shine of polished marble, but upon closer inspection, it looked matte and featureless. He’d tried to test to see if the edges were sharp, he wasn’t sure why he did that, but he was a scientist after all, what good was he if he couldn’t do some basic tests.
Well, he called himself a scientist. He knew his colleagues didn’t share that idea, he had just been on his first placement. He was barely qualified to use the title, but he’d worked so hard, he thought he’d earned it by now.
Still, the only result he could note was that it sliced through his finger with an ease he couldn’t assign to anything, no matter how much it was sharpened. It has cut more than it had touched, Theodore could’ve swore it pulled him in to cut deeper than it would’ve originally had access to. The step magnetically and precisely tugging at his hand to draw just a little more blood. It didn’t sever the finger, if it had pulled him in, Theodore didn’t understand why it hadn’t taken more from him. Surely it didn’t get much opportunity? This place can’t have many visitors to chose from, he thought.
The stairway had levelled out to another path, he noted another pit in the floor a few metres in front of him, and a little to the side (if metre was an appropriate form of measurement here, he considered). He moved to the other side and continued, keeping an eye on it. He’d never seen them move, and it’s not like he thought they would, but, to be on the safe side.
Past the drop in the floor, and following the path more still. Theodore came to yet another arch, the repetitious environment was a pestle to his brain.
Another break, another image of chemicals burning. Another set of open rooms, containing nothing. Another drop, in the wall this time. Perfectly positioned to stare into the middle of the dark rip in the material of this place, the darkness seemed to pulsate, he looked a little too long. He felt like any longer and something would crawl through, clambering through the ink he couldn’t see past and entering this openness, where everything would be clear, including him. He knew he had no chance against anything in here, he was visible no matter what he did.
He moved on, keeping an eye on the wall for as long he could. It was a pointless thing to worry about, he thought. He should focus on getting home. If he could remember why he wanted that. He knew it was what he wanted, he didn’t remember why, but he stuck to the conviction out of habit. Hopefully he’d remember once he got all the ideas his imagination had conjured up against his will while staring into the pit in the wall
More steps, more, breaks, attempts to rationalise, more steps, more steps, more steps, more time spent looking into a pit (in the ceiling this time, he imagined how he’d feel if he saw something move above him, he imagined once again how little he’d be able to do about it), more steps,
More steps, more steps. He passed a junction of stairways, all warped with the perspective out of focus. He felt the place burn into him, he imagined what the flesh of his brain would look like bubbling.
More steps, more steps. He passed another pit. Repeating his staring until he drove himself to out of his mind with make believe images of every thing he’d ever feared was in the dark, and backed away from it with fixed eye contact.
More steps, more steps. He passed another arch, he passed many. This one was no more notable. They managed to achieve sharp geometry at the same time as smoothed slopes.
Theodore didn’t know how long it had been now.
He didn’t before, of course, but he only didn’t know when he thought about it. Now, the lack of knowledge was burning. Every moment he was acutely aware he didn’t know how many moments it had been. He tried to count the minutes manually, so at least he’d have a track since he started counting, but he always lost count, and he could never remember what he’d already counted.
Time passed, or it felt like it did. That was all Theodore could be certain of. He was fairly sure he was moving too, but the hopeless possibility that these vast structures were leading him to loop back on himself, was not lost on him. Things looked so similar, and it was common to go many paces without seeing anything other than white. These formless sights stretched out as skin for a war-drum, until it faded into itself to form a simple glow. Theodore wasn’t sure there was a horizon. It just continued until he could no longer make out top from bottom.
Less breaks, more breaks, staring into the pits, not staring into the pits, more time, more steps. Theodore intrusively pictured his brain blackened and burnt, as If the ceilings had been slowly dripping potassium hydroxide through his skull, and had left to work away.
The monotony was festering, it beat down on him. It was gamma radiation beamed directly inside his skull and filling up around every intricacy of his brain tissue. It was becoming something he couldn’t see himself surviving. Even if he got out, which he wasn’t capable of thinking about in any meaningful way anymore thanks to sheer constant pressure inside he felt inside head. Even then, Theodore knew he couldn’t go back home after this. He knew he’d see the geometric arches and the organic pulsating insides of the drops that littered the surfaces, everywhere he went from now on.
It had got him now.
Theodore understood that before he was ready to.
He hoped that meant he could be put out of his misery. If this place was at all as alive as it seemed, surely it was capable of mercy.
Another stairway followed, and in following that to it’s never ending conclusion, he reached a new sight.
Now Theodore was standing at the top of the stairs, and he looked out to see the floor had given way. The ground underneath had followed suit. Directly ahead of him was a straight, simple, white plank across the nothingness where the white and featureless floor should have been. He knew already, on some level, he would decide to go across this. Maybe he already had chosen.
He was staring into a continuous pool of black that seemed to scape at the sides of the walls, begging to be let up further, begging to take the whole room with it. It had been begging a long time. If it wasn’t silent, which it was, and if Theodore didn’t know better, which he did, he would have thought he could hear it offering him, pressuring him, giving him promises of everything he wanted, needed.
It didn’t, of course. It could not make sound.
Yet it pleaded for the lone scientist to fall into it. It would give him home, respect, family who didn’t regard him as a her, the academic approval he’d worked so hard for and barely seen any signs of.
It removed the the singed black from his the flesh and fat of his brain, a peace treaty, was the conclusion Theodore came to.
He felt the grinding sensation start to lighten, as the images of chemical baths and damaged burnt corpses faded. The relief his him like a wave of vertigo, it was a unparalleled shock. He felt his balance wane from the changes, and tried to move backwards, closer to the stairs than the nothingness below.
Now he was faced with a decision. It was an unfair one. Across the nothingness below the ledge, on a narrow plank, with no clear signs of how it was being help up. It wasn’t support beams, and the length it had to sustain to cross the full void made Theodore wary how much weight it could support. Or, he backs down he now, he turns around and follows the angular stairway back to where he came, and he continues the mundane process that seemingly had no end in sight.
It was clear to him, despite how he resented himself for making this decision so quickly, that he would head across the plank. He would find what was waiting on the other side.
If it was more of what he’d been exposed to, at least he tried. If he turned back now he’d never know.
He couldn’t live with that regret.
Underneath his shoes Theodore could limitedly tell the texture, but what had become obvious when he took his first step, is that it had the texture of something polished to shine. His shoes tried to grip to the smooth surface, but he couldn’t help thinking that the plank did not want him on it. It treated him like an invasion, a parasite. He had come uninvited and started treading all over the organs of this structure, and it did not welcome him.
The pit underneath the plank though, that welcomed him. The ideas it conjured had become stronger since he set to walking above it. It wasn’t tempting, Theodore had no desire to fall, despite the pressure it was lacing into him to do just that.
What he did feel, was guilty. The kind of guilt you get when you know you didn’t do anything actually wrong, but someone is still hurt.
A few more dread filled steps, and Theodore opted to sit on the walkway instead. He’d scuffle across. It was slower, and he felt a constant urgency to rip his feet and legs away from hanging so vulnerably below him. The nothing was eager to bring him down to it, and he knew he would not stand a chance if it chose to do so by force. He hoped it had not become bored of its whispering (which of course, it could not do).
Further across the plank, and he could feel his legs wrapped in something old. Something that dissolved and broke apart when he made his next movement. It would wrap itself around at every pause, only to break down like fragile tissue in acid when Theodore moved next. It was unable to hold on past that, but he took no comfort in that fact.
Further, and he was starting to think back to all the images he created of what could be behind the pulsating centre of the drops.
Further, and he was starting to wonder if this was the same darkness or something all together unfamiliar,
Further, and he looked behind him, pushing the tendons in his neck to their limits to see the now tiny trace of the staircase ledge behind him.
Further, and he realised he could no longer see the ledge. He was caught between a lack of start or finish, all he could see were the walls to either side of him and the pristine ceiling which showed no mark of what was underneath.
Theodore now stood opposite to where he had started his monotonous attempt to cross over the writhing chasm still below him. Now, he stood on a ledge. Equally as white and pristine as the rest of the surfaces. Behind him, the ledge gave way to yet another large open room. It was a single room, with no stairways or arches in sight. Theodore had taken bitter note of this as soon as it came into vision, he resented yet another white room.
He had hopelessly wished for something different, something to break up the constant, depthless, bright white. Despite no such luck, his brain was still feeling the relief that pit had given him. The grinding burns that the previous rooms inflicted, were not attempting to drip back into the curves of brain matter. A mercy, he hoped.
Having decided his options were limited, Theodore had head into the room the ledge had invited him to. He had no other choices, it was this or back the way he came, and putting all thoughts of eternity to the side, Theodore didn’t think whatever was at the bottom of the void he’d just crossed, would let him go back across the plank. It had seemed so desperate, so clawing, to drag him in the first time. He considered that his chances were even worse if he were to mock it by changing his mind.
This room, like many of the others before it, was so vast and featureless, that the walls would blur with the floor, and the walls with each other. Each surface seemed to get tangled into each other in the distance, inseparable. Theodore had the looming feeling that if he ever reached that distance, he would get trapped in the mess of flat surfaces, like a fly in a spiders web.
What’s more, when the walls and floor and ceiling would do this before, it felt like solid, secure. They merged and they were content to do so. Here was different. While previous rooms had felt like the drops were the injury to the body of the location, here it felt like the location itself was a contorted mass of self injury. His mind, now free to think whatever thoughts of home he wanted, thanks to the newfound freedom from acid, thought back to his manager, and the scars across her face.
She was a reliable woman, steady and qualified beyond her position. She however often didn’t have a chance to show people that side of her. The first thing Theodore himself noticed about her, was a conjoined mass of deep scars, buried deep into her cheek.
Months into the job, they had sat close at lunch. She took the opportunity to clear the air. She’d told him, with an air of humour that Theodore couldn’t find fitting for the following words, that when she had been quite a disturbed young girl, unable to find comfort in anything. She had taken a blade to her face. She had told him she had no intent to die, it was simply what she felt it would help her.
Theodore had nodded, offered some awkward words of courtesy, and finished eating as soon as possible. In retrospect, he thought, he should have sat with the mild discomfort longer in order to make it clear he was not deterred. He wasn’t put off by her cheek or the story, he simply always lacked the ability to say the right thing.
The act of self mutilation though, for no goal except an attempt to soothe, reminded him with pity of the inseparable surfaces he saw in the distance now. He did not pity May, she was as capable as it got. However he couldn’t stop himself feeling a painful sympathy for the surfaces of this place. They couldn’t move on, not like May did.
They were stuck like this, maybe forever, maybe it had already been forever for them.
He felt nauseous, could they even stop if they wanted to? Or were they too messed together, too fused now with previous mistakes. He wondered if it was their choice to tangle in the first place. Theodore supposed he had no choice but to walk straight into this places self woven web in the distance, there was only one direction to head.
All the same white, shiny, pristine walls. All the same white, shiny, pristine floor. All the same white, shiny, pristine ceiling.
No more drops, he thought to himself.
There was no sense of loss in him as he noted that. He didn’t miss their pulsating centre, but he hoped the lack of these gashed wounds were not compensated by something else. He had a feeling they were, he knew this area felt different. It felt like loathing, gone was the plain uncanny with dots of carved gaps.
Now, it simply felt like hate.
Theodore wasn’t sure what the hate was directed at.
There was hope the hate was not at him, at his invasion of this place. It seemed to understand things, to some level, surely it could see he didn’t want to be there either. After all, the pit had spared him his mind, and this room had not yet taken it again, maybe it could see that. Maybe he was being shown mercy.
The walking continued, and it continued, and it continued. The taunting threat of eternity flickering above his head, Theodore refused to let it settle on him. He’d thought he was doomed already, he’d made peace with that, but then he had been given his head back. He took back that nihilistic surrender.
It was as he was trying to beat off the idea of spending forever here, that he saw a different colour in the far far distance. On the horizon, nested between the tangled walls and ceiling and floor. There was a hint of brown, a hint of grey, and a more pronounced hint of red. Both were in such stark contrast to the white around him, and neither were the black of the pits or the chasm either. It was a new colour for this environment.
A new colour seemed like hope. Maybe running to it was a bad idea, but maybe crossing the plank to get here was too. He’d already taken so many risks. If he got trapped within the masses of self flagellating walls, at least he was not wandering forever. Though he really hoped to end up in neither situation.
Fighting with the sheer space of the room, trying to get there as soon possible, as if the colour would disappear into itself or merge with the walls, he ran with determination for the first since being here. Any running before was purely performative, this had a real goal to it. He actually knew what he was trying to achieve.
As it gradually became more clear, the colours formed vague shapes. Theodore was glad he’d managed to keep his glasses in good condition. The grey was some kind of structure, small, he thought, and uniformly missing parts. The red was everywhere, shapes of it near the ground, and a thin tube of it leaning against the grey. The brown, however. Resting on top of the red against the grey. It had no solid shape, it fell like hair.
As the colours became clearer, Theodore felt his blood run cold.
There was light peach now, too pale to be visible at his previous distances, but now he saw it. His running speed only increased with a need to confirm if his suspicions were correct.
The brown was in fact hair, long and straight.
The grey was now clearly bars, they belonged to a cage. With now unsubtle patches of rust, with certain bars broken or splintered and patched up. It was secure enough, for now, but it looked weathered and somewhat fragile. The inside was full of jagged metal from breakages in the bars.
The light peach was now clearly skin, perfectly unblemished save for the shades of red spattered and dripping across every part of it.
The red was now clearly multiple things. First was blood, it pooled at the ground and spread as a blood across the space. It was everywhere on the skin, small splatters and large areas of revealed flesh alike. Where skin, flesh and bone had been cut, the red leaked out with little enthusiasm, most of the blood seemed to be on the ground already. Second was a dress. A simple ruby red sundress, with thin shoulder straps and no decoration. It was soaked in other shades of red, and looked wet to the touch.
A young woman was slumped, face forward, against the inside of a cage. Her arms wrapped around metal that stuck out on the inside, it kept her upright. Her eyes were open, a deep brown which failed to glaze over. Theodore would reach between the bars to close them if he wasn’t rooted in position by sickness.
The girl’s legs were at the other end of the cage, severed. They were cut off at the thigh, with somehow clinical precision and neatness. The detached legs showed her feet were barefoot, but showed no signs of wear. Her legs were bare but for blood that coated the skin like a polish.
Her upper body supported by her arms hooked around invasive metal, her legs severed and bleeding isolated to the rest of her. Theodore was almost sure he’d throw up, but somehow he didn’t, something wouldn’t let him. Something that wanted to keep this place hospital levels of spotless. Clearly the blood didn’t count.
The cage was surrounded by the masses of surfaces, but here the hatred they leaked became quite clear to him. It wasn’t at him.
It was for the girl he’d found, mutilated, left to hang onto the inside of a cage with her eyes wide open. This place did not want her here either, not like this. It hated itself for letting her bleed here, but it was just a location, it had no power to move her, to close her eyes, to hold her hand. This room had contorted itself into a cannibalistic web, that only served to hurt itself, because it could not do anything.
But he could.
His hand moved without thinking. Her face was right up against the bars, so he didn’t need to reach too far through to gently press the pads of his fingers to her eyelids.
Her eyes were now closed. Theodore felt some sense of relief hit him.
Theodore sat by the side of the cage, unmoving. He was unsure what to do next. While he was afraid, he was mostly confused. He was desperate to force together these scrambled rags of information into something he could understand, but he couldn’t. Not only because he was in far deeper than he could realise, but because he couldn’t form much in the way of helpful thoughts. He was almost shut down.
It was a fog like state, one which allowed him to be vaguely aware of the events (or lack thereof) surrounding him, but didn’t allow him to process it or move.
Because of this, it took Theodore a moment to realise the girls dismembered legs had started to liquify.
It started slowly. The skin starting to melt into fat, it went seamlessly. As if it was supposed to. Then the fat and skin, now mixing together in a bloody, yellow tinged, mess, would start to slide off the legs in globs of malleable skin and liquid that dripped onto the shiny, already blood covered, floor.
Then came the flesh and muscle, merging, mixing, falling off the bone as one. Sometimes with chunks of viscera that fell before they could dissolve into the concoction.
The bones were next, and it turned into a white, lumpy, mixture, that quickly mixed with the remains of the legs, to create a marble effect of red and white.
When remaining flesh, muscle, fat, and skin, gave way, there was nothing of the girls legs left besides two puddles, that were quickly becoming one, that contained all the meat and gore and bone that her legs and feet previously contained.
Theodore stared, his gaze was locked at the oddly serene process.
Theodore stared with increasing horror, and to his disgust, wonder, as the next step occurred.
The bloody remains of the girls limbs remained pooled on the surface. The girl also had legs.
Attached, uninjured and unscarred.
Her eyes bolted open. She was staring into Theodore’s equally shocked eyes. Theodore tried to back away, but found himself unable. The dread was paralysing him, like something warped around his frame, keeping him cruelly anchored in place, as the girl moved with practiced ease. She freed her arms from in between the metal bars to allow her to move backwards and then fall casually to her knees.
She sat, partially in the still standing pool of viscera and melted bone, looking across at Theodore with wide eyed and steady eye contact. Her eyes were large and brown, and they dug into Theodore, dull and bruise like.
After a long and scared silence, Theodore decided to try his luck.
“Hello.” He spoke slowly and as clearly as he could. He couldn’t help but maintain eye contact with her as he spoke, despite how he wished he could look away and break it.
There came no reply, but the girl was taken aback. She shuffled closer to the bars of the cage and pressed her forehead against them. Theodore now found it in himself to move backwards. It was a jolting movement, and he immediately regretted it. He felt like he’d somehow offended her, and she scared him.
She however, matched his movement, hurriedly shuffling backwards as soon as he did.
Theodore assumed he’d scared her. The guilt was setting in, she must be scared already, he thought. So he tried moving closer again. He moved slowly, and with his hands slightly raised and open, to demonstrate his lack of weapons.
The girl followed this too, and moved once again closer to the bars, with her hands slightly raised.
Theodore raised a hand slightly higher, the girl raised her hand slightly higher.
Theodore moved backwards again, so did she.
He moved forwards again, and the girl copied.
Theodore realised with fascination that she was deliberately mimicking him.
He placed a hand on the bars of the cage. She matched it.
They both held their positions, both of them staring at each other with their hands almost against each others, if it wasn’t for the jagged metal bars in the way.
Theodore gently moved his fingers in between the bars, and the girl did the same from the opposite side.
One thing Theodore noticed almost immediately, was that the girl was a perfectly normal temperature. He didn’t know exactly what he’d expected, but he had assumed she would feel strange to the touch. Too cold, too hot, maybe she’d be painful to touch, maybe she’d injure him just like the edges of this place had cut him. But she felt normal.
Too normal, Theodore thought. Normality itself was a contradiction of the nature of this place, and made it just as unsettling as the environment itself.
It was now he started to decide that he had to get her out of that cage. He’d been so caught up in the visceral display before this that he hadn’t even considered breaking her out. Until recently he hadn’t thought her alive for that to be a possibility.
The thought had been slowly dawning on him though, that she was alive, that she was clearly aware of her surroundings, that she really there.
It was a sickening idea, that she’d been kept here in these conditions for however long. The twisted and rusty metal bars dug into her knees as she knelt, Theodore had been watching as blood slowly bloomed from her skin and dripped.
Theodore stood up.
“I’m going to get you out. Just hold on, yeah?”
He realised she likely wasn’t comprehending a word he said, but he just felt wrong not even trying. He gestured for her to move back, the girl stayed put, but her wide eyes seemed to widen further, and if Theodore wasn’t mistaken he’d say they were tinged with panic.
Theodore ran his hands down his face. He was going to try to kick the cage in, and he’d really prefer her at the other end of it for that.
After a pause, he gestured for her to move to the other side of the cage. His first few attempts were unsuccessful. He managed to get her to move by walking over to the other side and she would painfully shuffle to follow him, her wide eyes would always reflect a panic when he moved, like she was scared of him leaving, almost. That’s what Theodore assumed anyway, and it made sense to him.
Eventually she stayed still when he moved back, leaving them at opposite ends. Theodore braced himself, and kicked.
The cage shook violently, and the girl stayed deathly still, and surprisingly, silent. She made no movements, no sound. She just watched intently as Theodore kicked again, and again, until the rusted, perhaps already weakened by the passage of time, metal bars, started to cave in.
Theodore saw the bars start to part from each other, and too that as encouragement.
It took a long time. Theodore had little concept of time after being trapped in this landscape, but he felt like it had been at least an hour, which in comparison to how long he felt like he’d spent here already (weeks? Months?) shouldn’t feel so long, but the physical exertion made the time drag. Of course, he couldn’t maintain his kicking for that long with no pause. He took breaks, in which he attempted to talk to the girl, to reassure her that it was working and he’d get her out soon, but she barely seemed to register that she was being spoken to.
The cage had been kicked open. Theodore sat on the floor, recovering.
After some time had passed, the girl remained sat in the cage. There was enough of the bars broken for her to crawl out, but she made no move to do so. She continued to watch Theodore. He wasn’t confused. He understood perfectly the phenomena he was witnessing. So, he reached out his hand towards the girl, accidentally lightly scraping his arm on the jagged broken bars as he did so.
She took his hand, once again he was greeted with her perfect temperature and soft hands, her nails, he noticed, were short but neat, no signs of blood caked under them or between the nail and skin.
Theodore pulled her towards him, slowly but firmly, and she started to shuffle forwards. It took a few tugs, which Theodore felt quite guilty about, to get her to crawl out of the hole he’d made in the cage, but she did do it, and now Theodore was sat on the floor with the girl sat in front of him. Just outside of the cage. Theodore stood up, and the girl watched, and then she copied.
She was neither tall nor short, she seemed perfectly normal in appearance in every conceivable way, except for her eyes. Something about them put Theodore on edge. She made intense and uninterrupted eye contact, but her lack of blinking wasn’t what put him on edge. The problem was not hollowness, either. Her eyes were far from empty. They were full of something. Theodore couldn’t be sure what that was exactly.
The girl made no move away from next to the cage, but Theodore decided they should move. He didn’t like the coiling, cannibalising, feeling to the room. Other areas, he remembered, were less intense to be in. So for his own sake, and possibly the girls, he gave her hand a gentle tug and and led her away from the cage, walking the direction he (thinks?) he came initially. The girl followed immediately, she put up no resistance towards his movements. Theodore found it a little guilt inducing, how she moved to his every whim despite clearly not understanding what he was trying to achieve. He felt like he was doing something wrong. He tried not to think about her complacency. It made things easier for him, he supposed.
The scenery continued to be sickeningly repetitive. Theodore was grateful for the girls’ bright red sundress, it reminded him that colour still existed.
He wasn’t sure what he was hoping to find, beyond an exit. He didn’t know what that would look like here, he wished he could communicate with the girl better, she might know something. Then again, he thought, she might not. How long had she been in that cage?
He tried to speak to the girl, again. He asked her basic questions, what’s your name? Where are you from? But she answered none, Theodore had long since concluded she was unable to speak but had was trying anyway to both quell the boredom and give himself the illusion that she was autonomous in this situation.
“Do you like the name Maria?” Theodore asked her. She gave no answer, but looked at him with a slight glimmer in her eyes.
“It’s just, it’s kind of weird for me not having anything to call you. So how about Maria? I’ve always liked the name, is all.” He gave her a smile. She copied the facial expression, it looked uncanny, but Theodore thought it was sweet. He was aware she was just copying him, but it was all he had to work with, so, in his head, he called her Maria.
They traversed up horribly geometrical staircases and across more vast white rooms. All while Theodore kept a grip on the girls hand.
Theodore found himself needing a break. When he sat down he didn’t loosen his grasp on her hand, and so she quickly copied him and sat down on the hard floor.
Maria was staring into space horribly vacantly when Theodore saw it. In the corner of his eye he saw a sudden movement, he snapped his head around in panic or perhaps hope. What he saw was a a small gap in the otherwise pristine wall. It was slightly parted to reveal a human face. Theodore didn’t have time to process the idea of screaming before he found himself running for it, his hand quickly releasing the Maria’s as he got up and bolted for the gap in the wall. He lunged his arm through the parting, face moved back to avoid his hand.
The parting closed.
The wall snapped closed around Theodore’s arm.
Theodore’s eyes went wide and he let out a violently horrible scream that would the girl for the rest of her life.
He was not aware of Maria running towards him.
Without thinking, he pulled his arm from the wall. The adrenaline giving him the strength to do so.
Maria screamed. The first sound Theodore had heard her make, he was dully aware of it, and he felt a vague sense of horror for causing it.
Flesh and fat and muscle scraped off bone and fell to the white floor in chunks, the blood quickly cascaded down to join the collection forming.
Theodore continued to scream.
Maria caught him as he fell to the ground. She held him while he writhed and bled. The blood was easily pooling around them both. Maria, mind shut down in horror, gently rocked Theodore to side to side. She held him until he stopped screaming, until the blood was only lazily oozing out, until his eyes were glazing over. She cried, horrible and ugly, and her tears fell onto Theodore.
They stayed like that, for an amount of time Maria was unsure of. Until the wall opened again, larger this time, parting like a bricks slotting apart, and in the newfound gap stood a woman.
The woman had ivory skin and a grey buzzcut, she wore all white with a harness which held pockets and small bags clipped onto it. She sported several other straps which secured various knives and syringes to her body.
Maria looked at her like she was expecting this, but kept her hands firmly around Theodore.
The woman grabbed Theodore arms with gloved hands, and violently yanked his malleable body away from Maria’s desperate grasp. She cried out. The woman knelt down to reach her, and struck Maria around the face. Maria quietened, but did not loosen her grip. The woman pulled out a leaf shape knife from a strap on her leg, and in a swift movement she jammed the knife in Maria’s cheek. The woman dragged the knife slowly down to Maria’s jaw, and then took it out and stuck the blade in Maria’s eye on the opposite side. Maria reached her hands up to cover her injuries, a reflex, and as blood spilled between her fingers, the woman took the opportunity to drag a now unprotected Theodore away from the mutilated Maria. Maria sobbed violently, screaming between hiccups, as she realised she couldn’t reach Theodore.
The woman got Theodore across the threshold of the opening in the wall, and the wall closed up behind them. Leaving Maria sitting hunched over in a pool of her and Theodore’s blood and flesh.
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