No Cake for You
It's one of those moments when the world crumbles around your feet – the place falls apart and so do the lights, leaving her in the red-blood shadows of that corner of truth.
She is frozen while her breath is frantic – she should have known all of this before the start. But here, in places when time stops and runs to the past, seeing and touching for yourself is a completely different matter. And who could say what her fingers feel as they trace the wounded tiles, with the coal words carved in so deep that it is almost possible to hear the echo of their screams.
This is the proof, right in front of her; it the rusting, molten face of the medal, painted in red and black, smelling of the smell old dying things have. The illusion is broken, and it all breaks through the ice of her eyes – the pipes and vents, the shrouds of neon lights, the things she was not supposed to see from the very beginning.
She used to listen for her life; but what the voice does or thinks is matter of no importance in this forgotten cell. Everything is ruin, and everything makes sense in reversal. The yells of desperation, the empty rotten tins, and who knows what tears of blood and water have been shed in a tomb like this.
This, death, this, pain and lack of help, this is why, why it all seemed to be so empty, why the only trace of humans was their terrible absence. It starts to make sense right now, in the worst sense.
And all she can think, as the aftertaste of blood comes to her from the mouths of her ghostly companions, is not that she is going to die – it's that they are all dead already, and caught in a nightmare of living.
A/N
Inspired by the freakin' terrifying piece of OST which starts playing when you enter (No Cake for You). I merely described my own emotions as Chell's.
I will never, ever forget the experience of chamber 16. It was, for me, the moment when I uunderstood everything - not that I hadn't suspected something was wrong, but, as I wrote here, it is the proof. And you find yourself there, desperately alone.
The cake is a lie.