Thirteenth Floor
The elevator bell was a hum in his ears. It made his head ache and his mind spin. It seemed to hum with the vibration, lingering long after silence had fallen. It lived in the walls of the building, an undercurrent built up after years of dirty fingers pressing the button. It was the lonely ghost which remained after it had been violated and used time and time again, by countless strangers. Used by him. Only the humming remained, haunting the corridors when everything was dark.
In the blackness of the thirteenth floor, Bishop could almost see it taking form. It walked beside him, a shadow built of dust and hope, watching him out of the hollows if its eyes. When Bishop turned his head, it was gone.
Up here, the sterile smell of sickness couldn't reach him. Up here, only fragmented memories remained behind locked cabinet doors. Only ghosts worked the night shift, chained to their secrets. Bishop could feel their eyes as he padded through the halls, his feet never making a sound. Naked without his shades, Bishop stared straight ahead. The dust figure ambled beside him, and the eyes of his secrets glinted in the darkness, accusing.
John Bishop stared ahead.
The smell of rotting paper-work filled his nose, growing the closer he got to the door. Bishop tightened his jaw. Beneath the door, a light glowed, yellow and sickly. For a moment, he was sure it had glowed red. But then it was gone, and Bishop couldn't trust his memory.
As Bishop grew closer, the ambling figure stopped, the humming fading from his ears. Behind him, his secrets gathered, a group with eyes on his back. Even the lonely ghosts would go no further and Bishop hated them for it. The door was one to be braved alone.
The doorknob burned under Bishop's hand, rusty brass digging into his palm. He barely felt a thing. Bishop was used to pain, but he wasn't used to this.
"Don't you know how to knock anymore, John?"
The voice was as rusty as ever, a battered nail rammed into cheap wood. It caused Bishop's skin to crawl, his feet stuck to the dusty floor, unwilling to take another step.
"Come inside."
Bishop felt the whisper on the back of his neck, a breath of cold air. He jolted, muscles growing tight as he turned the doorknob. He could feel the figures behind him slinking back further into the darkness, leaving him alone.
Bishop tried to focus, the calculation of his mind falling into the kind of chaos and idiocy he'd come to despise. He turned the handle, pushing his way inside. He was met with the stench of sterilization and decay, assaulting his senses. He could taste the sterilized metal on his tongue, feeling it crawl down his throat. Bishop's eyes began to water. He usually did not notice this; it passed over him without a second thought. Now it pounded at his lungs, tearing down the door, demanding to be let in. It was the smell of death and pain.
John coughed, choking, eyes blinded by the low glow that filled the room. Had the darkness before truly been that absolute?
"Not used to it, huh, John? Gettin' soft? "
Regret was burnt into his lungs, stinging him with each breath. Ice melted in his veins, leaving him washed out, dripping and chilled to the bone.
"You used to love that smell, 'fore you stopped noticing it."
Cold sweat trickled down his skin, and through the sliver of black, Bishop could feel the eyes on his skin, coming closer. He slammed the door with a flick of his wrist, muscles bunching, refusing to turn his back on the man at the desk.
"Never could trust anyone, could you, John?"
Bishop shivered, cursing his weakness. Strength meant nothing here, and Bishop was no longer certain he had it. Stripped down. Worn to the barest bone until the fight had been beaten out of him. He was filled with bitter resentment, and he could feel it sliding down his throat. He opened his mouth to speak, but the words caught, snagging on his tongue. He let out a silent snarl.
His eyes blurred, and he began to wish he had worn his shades. Through the haze of light, a man at an oak wood desk swam into view. His skin was gaunt, his eyes hollow, his hair greasy and close-cropped. It was the face of a dead man, and when he smiled, Bishop felt the flesh on his arms crawl beneath his suit. The face of a corpse.
But he had always been that way, even when he'd been alive.
"Never had reason to trust." Bishop's voice sounded bitter and weak, even to his own ears, and he drew up his shoulders, stiff and proud.
"Why are you here, John?" Bishop could see the structure of bones beneath his face.
Bishop was silent. Why was he here, in a place of regret and bad choices and a foolish young man who believed that the pain of the few would save the earth? He'd played god, a cruel and merciless god. He'd been a god on a pedestal, orchestrating death and disease, mutating, healing and helping. He had been untouchable, unshakable.
But that was a long time ago.
He'd broken every bone when he fell from grace, and Bishop was no longer sure they would all mend. Some had healed wrong, twisted and skew. But John hardly noticed anymore.
The room swam in his vision, yellow and faded, like a dusty old photograph. Why had he come here? What had possessed him to emerge from the sleek world of the new and the innovative, into this godforsaken world?
The remaining files that were buried deep in the headquarters of their new labs, the stamped out files that spoke of undocumented work. The icy secrets that revealed nothing. They spoke of tests and the search for a higher gene. They spoke of innovation and improvement and salvation. Never did they mention the cruelty, the lives lost, the chemicals and the blood staining the linoleum.
For a moment, Bishop had begun to doubt what had happened there so many years ago. Good intentions were etched into the paper, which wore thin and yellowed with age. Good intentions hid the truth.
"When you live….for so long…" Bishop paused, the words acidic on his tongue, "You forget."
"Was remembering worth it, John?" The face was twisted into amusement, but it was hard to tell now. The man laughed, but it was perverted, distorted through a layer of water and guilt. Or maybe it was blood, but Bishop could no longer tell.
Layers of the room fell away before his eyes, stripped to the bone like a layered photograph destroyed in a darkroom, like a sick, cruel book of anatomy. Before his eyes the colours began to fall away, giving way to a dream world, to a nightmare. Somewhere through the layers and layers of chemicals that dissolved his world, he heard a voice.
"Was it worth it?"
Turning from the world that crumbled around him, Bishop pushed through the fog of memories, into the darkness. Around him, figures crowded and pushed, no longer content to wait and stare at him from a distance, no longer content to brush against his coat. John slammed the door with trembling fingers, the past leaking from beneath the door, pooling on the floor, smelling of sickness and bleach. And as he turned his head, the ambling figure of the elevator bell opened its lips into a smile of toothy darkness and a low rumble of a laugh.
Bishop turned and fled down the corridors, fleeing down the stairs, hands gripping the splintering rails.
Nipping at his heels, only seconds behind him, his secrets watched a man desperate to escape his past.
And in the darkness, they laughed.
Done for my 10 Days 5 Stories challenge. Anyone interested in joining, feel free, we would love to have you.
www .fanfiction (add the rest of the fanfiction address here+ a '/') forum/10-Days-5-Stories/124500/
My first story, done to the prompt, "File"