He sat against the wall and sighed. He was tired, but too unhappy to sleep.
He had to get out of here.
The Room was sick, and he was, too. Its walls had turned black as mildew, its memories grown dim and inconsistent. It was recycling its own time to stay alive, eating its own temporal excrement over and over. He'd soon become too weak to fight off its affliction, and it wouldn't be much longer before it consumed him completely.
He was going to escape. In his favorite classroom, he'd been chewing a hole in the wall. Every time, it would get a little bigger, and he'd cover it with an old poster before creeping away for a while. He kept his strength up by catching and eating the spirits that haunted the hallways, and by licking up the ectoplasm they left on the floors. As long as he could lift his bat and gnash his teeth, he could get away someday.
Bare feet approached from nearby, and the Batter lifted his head. His shoulders tensed, and his will to live tied itself into a Chinese button knot. A tall figure drifted into the room, and she crossed her arms behind her back as she came towards him.
He didn't want to see her, didn't want to be touched. His body felt like a stiff sack filled with mush, and he just wanted to rest it in a cool glass jar on a nice shelf... No, he didn't... he wanted to get away, get away, get away.
He'd already told her 'no' more times than he could bear to count, all in vain, so now instead he hissed and curled his tail.
"What's the matter, my love?" the Queen said, stopping and raising her hands to the ceiling. Something fluttered against the Batter's ear when she spoke. He hated how she smelled like a store full of ancient fabric bolts and always left a toothpaste taste in his mouth. It had become impossible for him to feel anything but dread whenever he saw her pencil-gray skin or her long, dandelion-fluff hair. Her dress, once vibrant and elegant, was a worn, tattered thing with stains and streaks that made it look like it was full of veins.
It was already too late, for her.
He had no answer for his Queen. "There, there..." She lowered her hands and stepped forward again. The Batter shivered and tried to drag himself away. He couldn't stand, and told himself it might be alright this time if he managed to hide under the table.
But she knelt down beside him and cradled him in her arms. "Don't be worried, sweetheart," she cooed. "It's all fine." He wouldn't have it. He gurgled and pushed at her, attempting to reacquaint himself with the floor. She did not bend, and continued to shush him until he went quiet.
She smiled and kissed his cheeks for tears. He knew better than to believe that her lips were brushing him in affection, anymore. She was probably disappointed that he hadn't cried, recently. It was all fair, to her. She had fed him once, and now he would feed her. That's how it had been going, and he missed how it was before.
Long, mangled fingers stroked the top of his head. "Keep still, my love," she said, "It's just a pinch."
Her face darkened, its features melting and folding in on themselves. They twisted and twisted tighter until they were a spiral dominating its center; a coiled black tongue surrounded by black fur, and too many tiny, shimmering eyes to count.
She leaned over him, and that tongue uncurled and wrapped snug around his throat. Its tip pierced his neck, and the Batter kept still. He'd wept and whimpered the first few times, but it was a waste of energy, so he forced himself to stop. He did his best to keep his mind far away, somewhere safe, but seeing a flicker of red through her hollow tongue, being sucked away, sucked him back into where he was: trapped.
He could feel his warmth sitting in her stomach through her clothes, and lamented that every drop lost shrank his chances of pulling himself out of the darkness. He needed to keep as much of his blood in his body as possible- it had to be healthy to keep it from decaying any more than it already had. He'd already gotten so weak from constantly resisting the Room's disease, but she didn't care about that sort of thing.
What the Queen saw in him was yet another pale, damp thing that had crawled out of their father, and started to wither. She love, love, loved him, without a doubt, but there were some facts that she simply had to accept. He'd become tender, overripe, and what fresh fruits he still possessed needed to be harvested and used before they too expired and turned putrid.
He sighed, keeping his eyes open and desperately clinging to consciousness; it wasn't safe for him to faint. The Queen soon finished drinking from him and withdrew her tongue, satisfied.
She pressed the wound shut with her thumb, and her face filled back into one that could kiss him on the forehead. He looked into her dark eyes, and hated how she glowed with his stolen life. That light hurt him, and he longed to bask in the radiance of a real sun.
"There. Now, was that so bad?"
No answer.
She gently laid him down on his side, and stood. She turned around and left the way she came, not looking back and not saying another word.
The Batter felt cold and hungry and exhausted. He couldn't even afford to curl up into a ball, he needed to reserve what little he had left. The Queen was sated for now, and it could be days or years before she descended on him again, but any length of time between the now and when she next came to feed would be too soon.
He was going to rot, like this. She'd keep drinking from him until he was completely invalidated, and finally succumbed to the corruption scratching away at his body. His insides would turn all brown and congeal, and his mind would liquefy; he'd be saturated with its frightened remains, and perish as a miserable being completely unrecognizable from the luminous creature he'd been born as.
He was already too thin, too brittle. He wished he could cure them, purify their sickness, but too much of him they'd already eaten away. He knew that the world beyond the Room was sick, too, but clung tight to the hope that it would receive him mercifully.
Soon, he would let sleep take him away for a while, try and recover some of his energy. He didn't know how much longer it would be until he was on the other side of the classroom wall, but he was running out of time.
He had to get out of here.