A rushed and pained gasped startled him awake as he jolted into a sitting position. His breathing was ragged and his lungs ached with a desperate stinging in his chest. He could feel the pounding of his heart as if it were trying to bust through his rib cage and escape him. His legs pulsed with fatigue as well and there was a definite stinging on his left arm.
Bringing his arms up to hug himself protectively he looked around for whatever threat might be there to have made him feel this way. That caused the cold sweat that clung to him and the terrified shivers that continued to rattle down his spine.
But there was nothing.
Around him was nothing.
He was in a room of some kind, open with no furniture of any sort in sight. The carpet on which he sat was an old grainy feeling thing, like one you might find in any old shoddy office building. Dulled with apparent age but without any foot markings to show it being run down at all. It was a generic brownish or…or orange sort of color. Something you see but don't record in memory for its shear blandness.
The walls were a washed yellow color, like it was meant to be cheerful but fell sideways into drab and headache inducing. Or perhaps that was just the pattern on the wallpaper. At first it looked like a floral pattern, but as he turned his head it looked more like some sort of arrow design. Straightening his head back caused it to appear as simply stripes, or were those zigzags?
He couldn't look at it for long and he found himself looking down at his hands just for the peace of it. These…these were his hands.
Were these his hands?
They had to be, he was looking at them from the body they were attached to. Of course they had to be his hands. Pale white and…shaking still. There were scrapes and cuts on them, some looking fresh and others a bit older. He had calluses on his fingers and as he wiggled them slowly he could almost remember why.
Looking down at himself further he found an old ratty set of pants that wrapped around a rather thin pair of legs. There was a gash in the knee of his jeans and his left knee it self was bleeding. It wasn't bad and…he didn't exactly know what to do about it anyway.
Tugging at his shirt he saw a dingy and stained sweater, torn in places with words he couldn't read upside down. It looked like it might once have been black, but now had faded into a mottled off color instead. The words themselves were peeling in places as the center image looked almost rubbed off from time and touch. By best guess it appeared to be a band shirt but he wasn't certain.
He had a jacket too, but it was in far worse condition. Far too large for him for starters and the warm inner lining was spilling out from various holes rendering it next to useless. The left sleeve was almost entirely detached even, but so far was still at least holding together enough to be part of the whole. Still, despite its condition he hugged it tight as a wash of sadness and longing swept over him.
He didn't know why had felt that way, about the jacket or the shirt. What's more he couldn't fathom why that alone seemed to fill his gut with a sickening guilt.
He curled over himself as his lungs stuttered a fresh painful breath. He was crying. He was crying and he didn't know why but he knew it was right. He knew it was what he should be doing, but also didn't have time for. He needed to pull himself together. He needed to, but every part of him also wanted to sob even harder. It wanted to burst out of him as if it had been caged for so long and was only now seeing its chance to escape him.
He couldn't.
He needed to stop.
A very sharp part of his mind warned and threatened that he needed to stop. He needed to gather himself before it was too late.
Nodding to words he never spoke and with a gasp still shuddering off his lips he pushed down the welling of feelings that swelled in his chest choked him. He was still curled around himself, his fists bunched in the worn sweater with his fingers running over familiar patterns he didn't know.
Breathe.
He could do this.
Whatever 'this' was, he was going to…he was going to be…okay.
After some time he began patting his pants pockets down for any sort of grounding information he might have on him. He found nothing but an old gum wrapper and a soggy pack of matches with only three left in it, and some scrap change. After that there was…nothing. His coats pockets were empty, most likely due from being so ripped up leaving him with…purely nothing.
There was nothing and he was in a place that was so empty.
He felt…empty.
He looked around him, at the walls, at the floors and he couldn't for the life of him recall how he got there. Where 'there' or 'here' was.
He…he didn't even know who he was in order to be anywhere any way.
That was a thing wasn't it?
You couldn't be in a place if you weren't a something that could be at a where.
He'd read that. He was sure he read that. He wasn't sure where but…if he had, then he was certainly a something at some point to have been there. So…he just needed to remember what or who he was.
He had to…with exactly nothing to go on.
He could feel the swelling of grief welling up in him again. Of loss and dread and a nipping despair that seemed to seep into every part of his emotions.
It was short lived as a sudden sound in the silence caught his attention and put his nerves on edge.
Or…no it….
It wasn't a noise it was…the opposite of a noise.
He hadn't been sitting in silence because…because he swore he had been hearing something. He wasn't sure what, but it wasn't there anymore.
It wasn't there and that terrified him.
Standing shakily to his feet he looked around himself once more. The room he was in was open on all four sides. It was like, instead of a room it was…a hallway. Long and stretching on in all directions.
One way looked to have various openings in it all the way down, potentially being even more open and empty halls. Another looked to just be a very very long hall with only a gap or two before ending at distance with a forking path. Another was pattered with gaps with a singular door at some distance down. The last looked similar to the first, but with a door at the end and what barely looked to be a scratched mark in the wall paper.
Nothing of a threat could be seen, but the suffocating silence and stillness around him told him otherwise. It told him he needed to run. He needed to hide. He needed to be anyplace that wasn't here.
A prickle on his skin had him facing the hallway with the dozen or so openings. He still couldn't see anything. He couldn't hear anything. That didn't stop the hairs on his arms from rising or his mouth going dry. He stared intently waiting to see even the slightest shift of…of anything.
He stood still from one agonizing second to the next until his body seemed to thrum with an unease. As if it could feel this unknown…thing, closing in around him. Against his better judgement he opened his mouth, lips cracked and throat unbearably dry.
"h-hello?"
The sound of his voice startled him despite the low volume he spoke at. It was graveled and sounded so disused that, even if he remembered what his voice was like he doubted what met his ears would be welcomed.
He didn't have time to dwell on it though.
He had barely spoken loud enough to break the silence, but he could feel it in the air. The subtle shift of something…looking towards him. The dreadful feeling of gaining somethings attention.
His breath caught in his throat and before he could register the severity of that feeling he was running. He didn't know where, but that didn't matter when no part of 'where' was known to him. He just knew he couldn't be 'there' a second longer.
Somewhere else.
Anywhere else.
Away.
He had to get away-
It was so close to him now he could almost feel it at the back of his neck.
It was getting closer no matter how far or how fast he ran.
His lungs burned and his legs ached.
The smell of the alley with its trash and smoke did nothing to help his ragged breaths. It would have made him gag but the fear of the thing at his back was already choking him up with a desperate sob.
The light.
If he could reach the street light maybe-
With a broken cry he found himself sprawling onto the ground, landing hard and skidding on his hands in an attempt to catch himself. He lay as still as his heaving body would allow, gasping breaths wafting into the air as his pulse thundered in his ear.
He wasn't sure how long he lay there, but the thing, whatever it was, hadn't seemed to follow him. Or, at least it hadn't caught up yet.
He needed to keep moving.
Pushing himself onto his knees he winced, staring down at the slightly torn skin of his palms where he'd landed on the carpet. His knee was bleeding fresh again as well, a stain growing where he was knelt. However, neither of those things seemed nearly as interesting or as important at lay at his feet.
He'd tripped over a bag.
It looked like it had been chewed on and then tossed away, but still, it was pulling at the familiar little knot in his mind. Something that told him it was his.
Carefully pulling the bag from his feet to rest in front of him he turned it over a few times in his hands. It was a backpack, but as with everything else about his person it looked beaten up, not just by whatever 'chewed' it, but by time. Like his clothing it smelt of dirt and grime and old smoke with a lingering smell of car exhaust.
Not well loved perhaps, but well used.
Opening up the main body of the bag he chanced to take a quick inventory. Inside is a partial bottle of water, scraps of paper, an even rattier looking set of clothing and what looks to be a leather bound journal. There were gauge marks in it and even as he carefully pulled it closer he could feel how light it was. Flipping the book open he felt his heart sink as the pages were jaggedly torn out with a bare few remaining.
A crackling noise gains his attention and he snaps his head up towards the ceiling. It was now that he notices it. What had gone missing before, when the thing had gotten closer.
There was a humming in the air. A pitched and constant hum that seemed to be emanating from the far too bright fluorescent lights above. Perfect squares that lined the ceiling in any given direction. They were oh so perfectly spaced that it almost brought attention that the walls….weren't.
One of the bulbs crackled again, but this time from behind him. Snapping around to look he tried to find any source or reason. Again his nerves were rising, though not nearly as sharply as they had at the silence.
It was as he was turning his head that he thought he saw something.
There, against the wall.
Something was in front of it, but…also not in front of it. It bled into the ever shifting pattern of the wall paper and the longer he looked at it the more his head hurt. He dare not look away.
The bulb above him hissed and grew louder as he stared. Steadily it grew and grew until finally there was an ever so small 'pop' followed instantly by an echoing shatter and a shower of glass over his shoulders.
He let out a startled cry and stumbled back a few steps trying to brush the dangerous debris off himself. The dimness the single outage caused was negligible…at first. But then there was another bursting of glass to his left, and then his right, and above him again.
He was crying again now, holding the bag tightly to his front as he tried to escape the cascading of shards. The hall he was in grew darker and darker and before he knew it he was stuck with his back against the wall in a pool of shadows.
He shook and shivered and looked around himself, trying to find the thing that had been staring back. When he found it his heart fluttered as a heavy weight of dread and fear locked his legs in place.
There, on the wall, now visible in the dimmed lighting…was a smile.
It was impossibly wide and seemed to hover in the darkness as if it were the shadows that were smiling at him. Its eyes didn't blink and its grin never faltered and his brain could do nothing but stammer at him to escape.
He blinked and the face was closer.
He couldn't back any further into the wall, but he tried. He pushed and pressed and hoped for any inch to give. To provide an out.
He blinked and it was closer.
He felt his mouth open to let out a whimper of terror, but nothing seemed to fall passed his lips. He could feel his heart climbing up his throat and the idea of puking it out seemed to be growing very real.
He tried to keep his eyes open.
Tried to keep from blinking.
He didn't want to know how many it would take before the freakish grin reached him.
That's how he noticed it. With a fresh icing of dread in his veins he saw another light burst from behind the smile.
He saw it, but he didn't hear it.
He couldn't hear anything.
His throat constricted into another whimper, inaudible in the unnatural silence.
His eyes watered, his breath caught and then…the smile before him flickered.
He didn't wait to see what was going to happen. His body thrummed with with a living terror as he hurled himself to the left, towards the nearest light source. He didn't slow once reaching it, careening down the nearest hallway and pressing on as hard as he could.
There was a pulsing and snapping of…of something behind him but he spared no glance or thought to it. His only focus was getting as far away from 'it', 'them', as possible. He had to get somewhere else.
Anywhere else.
Not here.
But…in order to get to a where…he had to become a thing. He to 'be' again.
Just like he'd read.
As his legs were about to give out he tucked himself beside a wall. It had some sort of jutting edge to it that didn't make sense, but he sat beside it anyway. Sat within the safety of the small space that didn't make sense but was there.
He tore into the bag once more, flipping the pages of the journal open and scanning it. He didn't read any of the words as he searched for something that screamed at him that it was him. The words in the book were not his own and there was no name scrawled in the left over mess for him to recall nor latch to. A part of him wanted to say he knew the writing, but even then it wasn't his.
A shallow weeping of despair left him, causing him to jump at the noise. It turned into a gargled sob as he shook himself within a self hug. He stared at the bag with a dwindling sense of hope before something seemed to catch his eye.
A familiar scrawl, but not his along the strap of the bag.
Black ink long since leeched into the old fabric and faded in parts, but not enough to erase.
The letters curved and drew together, as if whoever had been the one to write it had taken special time to make it look…so nice.
So much care to form this part of….him.
Tommy.
His name was Tommy.
