(*carefully comes out of hiding place*)
...I suck.
It's been, what, over 3 months?
I wish I had any sort of explanation for that. Or a half-decent excuse. But I don't. The fact is, I am a useless piece of lazy garbage on every level and I'm sorry.
If anyone out there is still reading, I hope you enjoy this terribly late chapter.
Review Replies:
TheAmberShadow: You too! I really have missed posting here. (*points*) Bingo. Fun(-ish) fact: that ending part was one of the very first parts that I wrote for that chapter and I was actually somewhat pleased with it, so I'm glad you liked it :3 Well, in that case, here's a bit more (...finally). And thank you; it can be difficult and straining sometimes, but my internet friends are there for me, just like I am for them :)
Toni42: Yay for Little Nightmares. That opening part was actually borrowed from one of the DLCs for the main game (where you play as the boy, rather than as Six), but I liked it too much to not use it, heh. I'm...still uncertain as to how it turned out, but as long as you readers like it, that's what matters to me :) And thank you again for the art piece; I loved it.
Savannah-the-Caracal: (*offers friend a blanket*) Well...considering how sickly and malnourished Jesse is (and how long they've been like that), forcing food down their throat would do more harm than good, but I understand; I wish I could protect the poor smol too. Thank you! And...yeeeaaah, that's certainly a way of putting it.
MidnightStarHunter: Welcome to the story! I really hope I don't disappoint :)
Warning: this chapter touches upon dark and sensitive subject matter at one point, so if you think you may be upset by that, please proceed with caution.
I gotta say, it's hard to be brave when you're alone in the dark.
- All Time Low, 'Nightmares'.
Dead. The entire labyrinth was dead.
Blackness pressed narrowly all around Jesse, seeping into their benumbed skin and stripping away their senses. All that held it at bay, kept it from constricting still further until they were smothered under its confines, was a feeble blueish light, faint yet unwavering.
How such a thing as the glowing flint and steel had come to find itself resting in Jesse's pocket, they had no idea. There had been times when they'd thought they'd remembered a very old chest deep underground...a jumble of eager voices...and, just once, when the fringes of consciousness had frayed to their very thinnest, the crooked outline of a decayed half-ruin.
Other times, they'd convinced themselves that it was nothing. Nothing but delusions, borne of all the endless times during that endless cycle that they'd lain curled up in that rotting chest twice their size, wasted hands turning the flint and steel over and over as they stared into infinity, their mind having taken refuge somewhere soft and warm and beyond time or space or all those voices trapped in the walls.
Nothing.
Almost on cue, the thick, heavy silence, a silence that Jesse had been starting to suffocate under, was almost visibly shattered, its shards falling to the ground and Jesse to their knees as cough after cough tore from their throat, rattling deep in their chest and reverberating through the emptiness to taunt them.
Look how alone you really are. Look how small, how weak.
Somehow or other, through blurry eyes and a haze of pain, Jesse forced themselves back to their feet, slipping a little on the semi-liquid greyish-black patches that glistened on the ground as well as crawling their way up the walls. Some of it had now wound itself tightly around Jesse's legs and ankles, clinging wet and cold to their skin.
It could've been some sort of mouldy growth, or some fungus that (unlike just about everything else in the world) could flourish under these conditions. Or something worse.
They ignored it.
What they couldn't quite ignore, however, were the little dried-up splashes of colour snaking into a trail beneath their feet. In spite of the light cast by the flint and steel, and the purple glow enamating from everywhere around, each one was the same: a dark, rusty red that spoke for itself.
The featureless yet hauntingly familiar shape, suspended from an rocky protrusion high above, at the end of the trail, its clothes so filthy and tattered that it was impossible to tell what they'd been even if anyone had cared.
And the thin rope from which it was still swinging slightly, speckled with spot after spot of that deep, deep red.
The flint and steel came perilously close to slipping from Jesse's hand.
Perhaps it was just the sight of flesh and bone and veins that had once had a beating heart pumping blood beneath and around them just the same as their own. The sheer humanity of the lifeless form dangling in front of them. Either way, Jesse really shouldn't have found themselves as utterly transfixed by it as they did.
Who knew how many others had grown tired of simply lying around waiting for the end? How many had decided that it was better to die as themselves before the darkness could corrupt them beyond repair?
Maybe...maybe none of them had ever thought to try finding a way out.
Or maybe they just hadn't dared to hope.
It was nearly always so much easier to fall than to rise.
Of course, the decision to live was never treated like anywhere near as much of a leap as the decision not to. But, Jesse wondered, wasn't that essentially what it was - albeit in its own way?
Every day of their lives, people walked to the cliff's edge. Every day of their lives, people leapt. And every day of their lives, people trusted that someone or something would catch them.
And if nothing and nobody did…well. Jesse and whoever else was still here were a testament to what happened then, weren't they?
A tear slipped unbidden through the grime coating their cheek. Almost instantly, they brushed it away as absently as if it were a speck of dust. Really, they were amongst the luckier ones.
(Were they, though? What was more merciful, in the end?)
It wasn't as if Jesse had never thought of it, never let the idea cross their mind often enough to begin to establish roots in there: finding a way to make the pain in their chest and the prickling beneath their greying skin more real, slipping away into eternal sweet nothingness, their last breath lost to senseless walls. But they couldn't. They'd never had the right. And even if they had...there'd have been no going back.
No hope.
No escape.
"No."
The garbled word that clawed its way out of their throat went unnoticed and unregistered as images came back with force, painted with darkness and drenched in fog, weak and distorted as they were. Not allowed to remember, not allowed to leave, not allowed to rest, not-
No.
No, no, no, no.
Fine, they told themselves, they were fine. Fine. Fine.
The hand that was wrapped tightly around the flint and steel thrust itself forward into what passed for the air in a place like this, as though hoping that their little blue light could throttle the shadows before any monsters lurking amongst them had time to so much as blink.
(All along that long, endless way, something at the back of their mind wondered vaguely whether the soul that once inhabited that body had managed to find peace.
They hoped so.)
Looming before them around the next corner was a tower of rock, most of it riddled with holes where massive chunks had been torn out but still forming itself somewhat into a shape roughly like that of a sloping staircase.
A staircase...
Where do these stairs go?
They go up.
Jesse shook their head as hard as their strength could muster. No. Not allowed to remember. Couldn't remember anyway.
That didn't stop them from thinking that they could see a pair of eyes above them - seemingly floating, disembodied, in a sea of nearly impenetrable black. And then, as Jesse squinted heavily into the sea, attempting to part it, more pairs emerged. Big eyes, dark eyes.
Living, shining eyes, staring directly into their own, brown into dull greyish-red.
The mutual staring contest stretched on, both parties frozen at their respective ends of the rocky steps. Nothing moved. Nothing breathed.
At least, that was how it seemed to Jesse.
But while they were hovering, useless as ever, near the foot of the steps, the cluster of eyes turned towards one another, trying to decide between themselves whether or not to trust this strange skeletal creature in front of them, probably not even recognisably human - then, turning back to Jesse, examined them with twitching noses.
Pink noses.
Pigs.
And quite suddenly, Jesse did something they'd never thought they'd ever do again, if only because they'd forgotten how.
They smiled.
I'm sorry again about the long, long wait and that this short chapter is all I have to show for it. Really, I am. I'll try and be better from now on. Thank you all for your patience with me and for reading, though.
Stay safe and stay awesome.
(*awkwardly tips hat*)
~ Rainy
(Confused? You're not the only one. Seriously, there are no words in the world to describe how much I'm winging it here.)
