Ad Nauseam
Summary: Wonwoo desires to herald in a new age of technology, but summons a monstrous deity instead.
▸ Pairing: Wonwoo x gn!oc (but it doesn’t really matter tbh)
▸ Rating / Genre / AU: 18+ / horror, angst / 1900s au If you are a minor AND/OR if your account has no age in the bio, you will be blocked upon interacting (liking/reblogging) with this post.
▸ Warnings: violence (adults + children), light gore (not graphic, but descriptions related to meat processing), major character death
▸ Word Count: 3.6k
▸ A/N: This was inspired by Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs. It may not be the most popular entry, but it's the one that stuck with me the most so far in the series. I wrote the original version of this literally years ago, but did a slight rewrite so I could put it back out there. GIGANTIC thank yous to @onlymingyus and @wonwussy for beta reading and helping me clean the draft up after my eyes totally glazed over!! I apologize in advance for anyone that may be upset by this story. Know that some members' ages have been flipped and it's going to be rough for everybody involved. You've been warned. ︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵
Mid November, 1899
“The industry is changing you,” Minghao says, standing as he stacks a pile of papers and files them into a folder.
Wonwoo smiles tiredly and looks up at Minghao from the other side of the desk, where he sits. “That’s alright as long as we change the future.”
Late February, 1900
“No, Wonwoo, this is you,” Teddy spits, wringing their hands on their slacks.
The room smells like copper, and young Seungkwan weeps in the corner while even younger Chan sits next to him, stone face turned to the floor and bandaged hands balled.
Teddy and Wonwoo had lost plenty of people in the making, in the maintenance of The Machine. They’d both known the risks beforehand, and Teddy had reservations about bringing in children, but they needed the cheap labor, and Wonwoo had promised they’d never lose their children. Their boys. The only children the orphanage would let two odd industrialists near because it was considered a victory to just be rid of the adolescents by the time they’d become old enough to bully and fight.
“He…” Wonwoo can’t meet Teddy’s eyes. He fixes his gaze on the window behind his partner instead. “Hansol wasn’t ours or mine.” Hansol was simply the boy that would not go home, that chose to sleep in alcoves among the machinery. Wonwoo can barely swallow his sentence, and the saliva that gathers in his mouth tastes like soot.
Seungkwan wails so loudly that for once, Wonwoo can’t hear the drone of engines in the back of his mind. He hates it.
Teddy moves to pick their children up from the floor, motions too smooth and slow. They don’t speak until the boys are in their coats, bundled up for the winter cold with oversized scarves and mittens.
“The factory isn’t anyone’s either. It owns you. It’s changed you.”
Wonwoo knows his lover is right. He’s known for years, long before anyone had ever told him.
Mid August, 1899
The first time had been an accident. Wonwoo is certain that all the children had collected their payment and gone home for the evening. Teddy has a strict 7pm rule to ensure that they would not be wandering about at night and causing trouble.
Wonwoo is certain.
The Machine is deafening. Over 13,000 pieces of nearly autonomous metal spanning throughout 8 floors of basement work to process meat for the masses.
Wonwoo is absolutely positive that the children under their employ have retired for the evening, so, like clockwork, he cranks the furnace’s dial up and pulls the lever that opens the floodgates to clean the blood and marrow from the massive pipes of The Machine.
Hansol approaches him the next day in his office, smelling of oil and sweat. “Sir, may I have the day off?”
Wonwoo places his reservoir pen on the desk and stands to stretch. “What’s the matter, Hansol?”
“I couldn’t sleep last night,” the boy explains.
“It’s amazing you sleep any night, laying about in the factory.”
Hansol is the type to grin awkwardly and offer a weak excuse, but today he can only shift uncomfortably. “I don’t know; it just sounded like someone kept screaming.”
At this, Wonwoo frowns. Despite having a home life that drives him to remain within the bowels of machinery, Hansol is a rather easygoing child. He definitely isn’t one for night terrors or hallucinations. Perhaps he’d snuck into Chan and Seungkwan’s room to exchange ghost stories again.
Nonetheless, Hansol looks haggard, and his odor is starting Wonwoo on one of his many migraines. “It’s been...three? Four days by now? Go upstairs and bathe - do not talk back to me. Wash yourself and stay out of trouble today.”
That evening, Wonwoo reminds his children that their bedtime is not optional and that while Hansol may not carry their last name, he’s treated as if he does. When they’re tucked in, Teddy stops Wonwoo in the hallway to tell him that four of the boys who worked for them hadn’t shown up for work that day or returned to their families the evening before.
They are never found. Hansol does not complain about nightmares for months.
Wonwoo can hear cogs whining in the section where skeletal remains are crushed. Among the scraps are bones too big to be pigs', slowing down the humming that had become his lullaby some time ago.
Early October, 1899
Teddy does not care much for the engineer Wonwoo hired to oversee the construction of a new grinder. He is too well spoken, too charming, too close to Teddy’s most prized treasure. But Minghao is smarter and has smaller hands that can move nimbly between the complicated maze of wire and metal when The Machine aches.
Wonwoo had been unable to soothe The Machine when it cried for weeks. Nothing he did made it stop, and Teddy said he was hearing things. When Wonwoo reached out to old acquaintances for useful contacts, they referred him to a brilliant mind from China that had been to Britain to have a firsthand look at how humanity could marry machinery to ease everyday production.
The rumors about Minghao are more than true. Wonwoo wonders if the man can hear the pleas of The Machine as loudly as he does, if he can hear it singing to him in his sleep.
Hansol only hears pained howling. Like clockwork every other night.
Wonwoo gives him tea and sends him off to bathe. It doesn’t take long for him to notice that the nights Hansol loses sleep are the nights The Machine doesn’t make a sound.
It doesn’t take long for Minghao to notice, either.
Early December, 1899
Minghao breaches the subject when he’s accompanying Wonwoo on his rounds of the bottom four floors.
“Mr. Jeon, have you thought about other methods to power the factory?”
Wonwoo looks up from his clipboard. “Is what we have not sufficient?” Of course it isn’t. Every time a child went missing, Teddy would pace about their bedroom and fuss. After twelve disappearances, they insisted that the two of them switch their patrols: Teddy would oversee The Machine’s top floors, where most of the children worked, while Wonwoo oversaw the bottom. It didn’t placate Teddy’s worries by any means, but it was the best compromise that Wonwoo would concede to. At least they could finally do a proper attendance count.
Minghao presses on, apparently unswayed by a polite demeanor and easy posture. “I’m sure your profits are plenty by now, but if this factory were to switch completely to steam power--”
“I’m not so greedy as to put youth out of work. I… My family is doing fine. Everyone is fine. We don’t need more money.” Wonwoo pushes thick spectacles further up the bridge of his nose. The Machine is sniffling next to his eardrums.
Minghao can see a vein on Wonwoo’s forehead. His default, calm expression is falling into exhaustion. “This town looks like it could use plenty of farmhands. I’m sure kids’d make better use of crops than a few nickels.”
Wonwoo has to tell himself not to yell over The Machine. It’s gotten unbearably louder in seconds. Perhaps Minghao cannot hear it after all. “The people need this factory, Minghao.”
“No, it’s the factory that needs the people.”
The Machine screeches, and Wonwoo panics. Weren’t the grinders supposed to be floors above them? He doesn’t have time to question it or what’s making him rush the shorter man, not with his ears ringing from the agony of noise.
Wonwoo lets go of Minghao’s jacket just inches before his fingers touch the blades. He hopes Hansol doesn’t seek him out tomorrow, talking about shrieking. He’ll have enough to deal with trying to convince Teddy that the blood on his shirt is his own.
Teddy does not care much for Minghao, but they’re unsettled when they ask about the man’s whereabouts and Wonwoo shrugs absently.
“He had to leave suddenly.”
January 3, 1900
The Machine has stopped screeching in Wonwoo’s ears since it was last fed. Knowledge, it wanted. Blueprints.
Hansol falls asleep alone and wakes beneath pistons to the stench of foul water.
Wonwoo allows Seungkwan to shadow him as he goes about tending to The Machine. Chan hasn’t much interest in going, preferring to follow Teddy on expeditions into town to procure more laborers.
Seungkwan asks many questions. “What does this machine do?”
“Didn’t so-and-so work on this floor once?”
“How do you turn this on?”
Wonwoo doesn’t notice the absence of small footsteps until The Machine sighs. When he turns around to address his son, no one is there. A door is shut behind him. He squints at Minghao’s copy of The Machine’s map. They should have been just beyond the grinders. What door is this?
Wonwoo sweats before he even breaks out into a run.
In his rush to find Seungkwan, Wonwoo nearly trips over the guardrails that separate him from an abysmal plunge into machinery. When he returns upstairs sobbing, Teddy is speechless only long enough to figure out the intercom console and plead for their son not to wander aimlessly but to follow the pipes up and out.
Teddy doesn’t talk to Wonwoo. Wonwoo does not eat. Four agonizing days pass before Seungkwan wanders into the study, covered with the same filth Hansol often wears. Teddy holds him tightly, and Wonwoo is frozen, having seen a peculiar flash in Seungkwan’s eyes that only the sickly dim lights in The Machine’s sewers can match.
Late January, 1900
Seungkwan has lost weight since the incident, but doctors can’t find any illness. He looks tired, more so than his overworked parents. He is on indefinite bedrest, and Hansol visits daily.
The young squatter is already there one evening when Wonwoo enters the children's room with snacks from the local bakery. “Ah, Hansol.”
Hansol rises and greets Wonwoo, but all that Wonwoo hears is The Machine. Spare them the world you have created, it says.
“Mr. Jeon?” Hansol looks worried. “Are you alright?”
Wonwoo blinks and remembers to breathe. “Yes, I’m-” The Machine is grumbling, “I’m alright.” He sets the bag of pastries on Seungkwan’s bedside table and kisses the child’s forehead, making a point not to brush Hansol, who is but a foot away. “Don’t forget your manners because you’re sick, Kwan. Share.”
“Of course, Father,” Seungkwan says as the man withdraws.
Wonwoo tries not to flinch. Spare them.
January 16, 1900
Teddy questions Wonwoo for days.
“Why won’t you look at Seungkwan? You’re hurting him.”
“What’s the matter?”
“Do you want to move?”
“Please tell me what’s wrong.”
“You won’t even look at me now?”
“What happened to us? To this family?”
Wonwoo can only hunch over and look away. The Machine speaks through nearly everyone to him. When others talk, they’re far away, while The Machine whispers on top of his eardrums. Chan is the only one he can hear without distraction.
Seungkwan’s voice pleads for the freedom of the masses. Teddy’s warns of disasters humanity will bring. Hansol’s is the worst of all. It bullies him, instructs him, twists his dreams into monstrous things, and in the same breath reminds him it is necessary. It is what they both want.
For weeks, Wonwoo has seen Hansol standing at the edge of catwalks. He’s seen the juvenile’s eyes among the bones of pigs and sacrifice. His young, growing arms help him swim through a sea that Hansol’s ghost says is made of the blood of swine. Some nights he dreams of Hansol’s hands pushing small bodies over railings and burying fractured skulls in the woods on the edge of town.
He does not see the boy, only the apparition of an atrocity.
January 30, 1900
When Wonwoo wakes on the study’s daybed, he nearly screams when he is faced with an apathetic Chan. The boy is kneeling next to the bed in his pajamas. It must be some time in the early hours of the morning.
“You’re loud, Father,” Chan says.
Wonwoo swallows and looks around the room. He does not see Hansol or hear anything speaking over his son. The usual, low hum of The Machine is nothing. “What?” is all the man can manage.
“You and Hansol,” Chan clarifies. “You speak through your night terrors. Loudly. I can hear you upstairs.”
“What? I… How?”
Chan rolls his eyes. Teddy has been aggravated by this recent addition to Chan’s repertoire of poor manners, but Wonwoo welcomes the humanity of it. “Father, with my ears. I use them to hear.” He scowls. “Even when I’m trying to sleep.”
“I’m sorry, son,” Wonwoo laughs, ruffling the boy’s hair for the first time in years. “Go back to bed.”
“What about Hansol?”
At this, Wonwoo’s heart beats twice in a second. In his tiredness, he’d overlooked part of Chan’s complaint. Or perhaps it was selective hearing. Perhaps he hears only what The Machine wills him to.
“Where does Hansol sleep?”
If Chan picks up on Wonwoo’s panic, he does not show it. “With me or Kwannie, of course. Every night since December. He said the factory isn’t comfortable anymore - whatever that means. How can he sleep with all the racket in there?”
Wonwoo hears Hansol, hears The Machine. He does not sleep.
February 6, 1900
Wonwoo wishes The Machine would go back to simply calling to him so he could baby it. Now it’s grown and learned to speak more than he can handle. It’s maddening.
“Go upstairs and rest your nerves,” Teddy instructs him. “I’ll check everything tonight.”
The Machine chuckles and cries simultaneously. “N-No. I’ve got it. Let’s patrol like normal.”
Teddy doesn’t miss the recoil in Wonwoo’s shoulders. “Don’t worry, we can...work something out. You can even stay in the bedroom tonight, ok? Just go.”
Hansol and The Machine call Wonwoo from the bowels. “I can’t leave you here,” Wonwoo insists. I will change the walls, It/He warns. We will rewrite this place and then the streets.
“Wonwoo.” Teddy places hands on their love’s shoulders, desperation seeping through their fingertips. “Please.”
It is too late. I live. “No!” Wonwoo snaps.
Teddy lets their hands fall and looks Wonwoo over. “Your mind is fevered.” Wonwoo has retreated within himself as always and won’t answer. He can’t. “Fine. Check your precious machine.”
I am this city. I am– He/It starts. Wonwoo can feel Teddy’s warmth leaving and quickly grabs at the tail of their jacket. “No, Teddy, I’m sorry. I don’t want to fight, really.” I will fix the world with or without you. Make the right choice. “Let me run a bath for when you’ve finished...”
Ignore me all you want, but you cannot ignore what’s coming. Teddy turns and grins, pleased. There’s an ember of hope for their love left within them that Wonwoo feared had long since disappeared. Even if Teddy’s voice is barely there, their perseverance is enough.
You did this.
February 16, 1900
Listen to your heart. I am your heart. You know you are with me. You created me to save this world. I am your friend.
February 22, 1900
Can’t you see it? We must save this world with blood now to avoid a far greater slaughter in the future.
February 25, 1900
Round up the orphans, and the world will thank you for it. You started this. We can finish it together.
February 28, 1900
Wonwoo awakes to the shrill cries of a pig.
Teddy’s arm is slung around his waist, and they snore lazily, undisturbed.
The Machine hyperventilates all around him, and the pig squeals pound on him like gunfire. Kill him!
Wonwoo jumps from his bed, knocked from his daze, and barely pulls on a robe as he flees to the basement. The door has changed from wood to steel, but when he rams his body against it, it opens all the same. You are too late!
Down. Even with The Machine’s innards changing around him, Wonwoo knows to go down. The noise gets impossibly louder, and the mocking does not cease as he descends, but fear propels him.
Let me save them.
“Don’t kill him! Please!” Wonwoo has to stop and grab his chest. It’s tight and on fire. The pig sounds a lot like Seungkwan now. The Machine sounds like the self-made orphan, yet it feels to Wonwoo as if the voices have been one and the same from the beginning of his nightmare.
He blinks and he is on a single catwalk above the tenderizers. A sea of bodies are crushed beneath them and the bones don’t stop breaking. The crackling sounds like fireworks. Hansol is trying to push a struggling Seungkwan over the railing.
Wonwoo is frozen.
“I will set them free,” The Machine/Hansol says. His/Its voice is clawing at Wonwoo’s insides. “This is what you planned.”
“I never wanted this.” Wonwoo’s throat makes him feel tiny. His eyes water, and his legs want to buckle. All he can see is bodies.
“You wanted to change the future,” Hansol/The Machine reminds him smugly. “It is dirty. You’re all dirty.” It grabs Seungkwan by the neck to still him. “We have to start over. I can purify you all.”
Wonwoo hears war rattling in his skull and feels his body being painted with mustard gas. He wants to vomit, but when he opens his mouth, all he tastes is fetid flesh and maggots on the back of his tongue.
“This is your sacrifice, Wonwoo. I’m just the shepherd to lead you and your world to salvation.”
Seungkwan barely breaks free, wriggling from beneath Hansol’s body, and stumbles toward his father. Finally, Wonwoo can move and reaches with outstretched arms to hug the boy.
But Seungkwan, frightened by something Wonwoo can’t see, stops short of his father’s fingertips. Hansol takes the opportunity to grab the child by the wrist and slam him into the railing. A crunch louder than the tenderizer below rings out alongside Seungkwan’s pained yowl.
“You are misguided, Wonwoo!” The Machine/Hansol exclaims as It pulls Seungkwan back and hurls him into the railing once again, this time face-first. His body slumps in Its arms. Wonwoo hollers, but the sound is lost among the racket.
“I am no more evil than you! I am you! Of all the blood we’ve spilt together, the first drops were from your hands alone. But when you steeped me in blood, I understood what you wanted. You want what the world needs. You birthed me to help. But to start the world anew, we must first cleanse it of all the filth.”
Hansol shakily hoists Seungkwan up by his chest and manages the unconscious boy halfway over the edge of the catwalk. “This is the vision we shared. We need to make them free.”
Hansol pushes a final time, and The Machine grunts. Wonwoo scrambles on his hands and knees to close the distance just fast enough to catch a still-limp Seungkwan by his calves, dangling him precariously above peril.
The Machine laughs, and Hansol kicks Wonwoo. Hansol, on his own, is weak. He seems to have become weaker since the man last laid eyes on him. Wonwoo is able to pull Seungkwan up and lay him gently on the ground, ignoring the feather punches to his side and the grating in his mind.
Hansol/The Machine huffs,, and steam engulfs the area below them. The pulverizers turn into grinders, and the air reeks of salt and congealed blood. Chan’s voice pierces Wonwoo’s consciousness, and he can feel steam burning his son’s hands as if they were his own.
“I am already everywhere. Don’t fight what you created.”
It doesn’t try to fight as Wonwoo yanks Hansol’s small body up by his tattered collar and shakes him, asking how he could possibly be this cruel.
“This small thing means nothing to what you’ve built. Be it now or tomorrow, the boy will have to be cleansed as well.” Hansol’s mouth moves as The Machine, but his face is red and blotchy with tears and snot.
Chan is in agony floors above him.
“My greatest work has already begun, Wonwoo. I will make pigs of you all if I must.”
A door that wasn’t there before bursts open, and Teddy steamrolls in, panicked. Another pig squeals before blood sprays on their robe.
March 3, 1900
Wonwoo hears screaming day and night. Orphans, whores, thieves, It says. No one will miss them.
Teddy has taken their remaining children across the ocean to a young country that dreams of crafting buildings to the sky.
Even without workers and without Wonwoo’s family, The Machine operates. It prepares cattle for slaughter, as Wonwoo had hoped. Whether it is for people or of people is beyond importance.
It offers no resistance as Wonwoo enters the lower floors, almost mindless for the first time in two days, not even bothering to shift the walls around him.
He stops when he reaches the meat grinders and looks down to see the faces of many. He looks up and sees bodies sizzling in the pipes above.
Only through our work can you ascend to the skies and claim the future as your kingdom.
Wonwoo feels only heat as he climbs over the railing and sets his feet between the massive blades of machinery.
Bones and ashes sow the seeds of a new future.
Wonwoo does not know of the coming age, he decides. He does not know prophecy from fiction, from nightmares. He is only certain, now, that The Machine is him. Hansol’s body may have had little weight, but surely his own must be invaluable as the Creator.
Be proud, for this is your design. His skin rips like tired leather, and his teeth scatter like mice as he is finally crushed. Everything is finally quiet. It is finally sated. He has found an existence so much more peaceful than this.
