Disclaimer: Not mine.
Persecutory Delusions
Chapter 5: Nike Commercial
The sun stabs the earth with a flaming sword, almost causing the asphalt on the street to steam. It is the first really hot day of the year, and with it has come the lazy slowness and tired sweat that characterize the summer.
Tracking something that does not exist is even slower going in the heavy heat than usual.
Skittery is downtown again, for the third day this week. He is starting to think that the shadow-creatures are purposely avoiding him, but he can't think of any way that would make sense. They were the ones chasing him, after all.
The bright side to not seeing Them is that Skittery has also had no contact with the men-in-black. Out of this whole thing, they scare him the most.
Around him, the crowds are thicker than usual. Hot as it is, people want to take advantage of the sunlight that is so rare during the other seasons. The closeness of the fray pressing up against Skittery makes him lightheaded. It's the smell of sweat combined with the overwhelming size of the crowd; the sensory over-stimulation causes the scene to become surreal.
Maybe that's why he doesn't notice the familiar face at first.
Skittery's eyes have been dancing over the people in the street for all the hours he's been here, and the faces have blended into one long blur of anonymous humanity. The only thing Skittery has been looking for is a man-sized patch of darkness, but none has been apparent. When his gaze hits something familiar, he passes over at first. Then he retakes, and stares.
Skittery knows that face. He knows it all too well.
He stares and sees a person he's known most of his life. He sees a lifetime shared and shattered. He sees failings forgiven and strengths praised. He sees memories he has tried so hard to forget these past months.
He sees Snitch.
That's not possible.
Snitch is in a mental hospital, and for a very good reason at that. He cannot simply be standing in the middle of the street. It's just not possible. Skittery hopes it's like the thing with Thierry Quereux's name the other day, but the longer he stares the more obvious it is that it's really his friend.
Then Snitch turns his head, and their stares connect.
For Skittery, it is like the world is suddenly made of glass. The sounds around him grow dim, and the images seem crystalline and brittle. It seems to him that he and Snitch are attached with a strand of clear glass that refuses to bend or break.
"Skitts!" Snitch calls, and the glass explodes.
For the second time in a week, Skittery runs away from his best friend.
It is a cowardly thing to do, he knows. But he can't deal with it now, he doesn't know how, he's not strong enough. He's not ready. Running makes more sense this time than it did last time, at least.
After all, this time he's being pursued.
He can hear Snitch's rapid footfalls behind him, and it is clear that they are getting steadily closer.
Shit. He should have worked harder in gym class.
Skittery lets his unconscious guide him. He has no energy to devote to coming up with a destination; he's too busy trying not to collapse from exhaustion.
Skittery is not a powerful runner. In gym class, he's that scrawny, pale kid who hangs around in the corner trying to get everyone to ignore him.
Of course, he's like that in most of his classes, but that's beside the point.
In any case, he can feel himself growing slower and slower just as his breaths grow in speed. Then, suddenly, one of his feet catches on the other and he topples toward the ground.
It happens very fast: one second Skittery finds the tan cement sidewalk approaching his face very rapidly, and the next everything stops and he is being held up by two very familiar arms.
This is the point where he realizes who the boy in his dream was. How 'bout that.
Together, Skittery and Snitch are suspended in time. They stand pressed together, and Skittery can feel their breaths even out in unison. It feels so perfect, like the calm that came in his dream when he was in the same position there.
He does not turn around. That would spoil everything and he'd have to remember inconvenient stuff like insanity and bad-timing and what the innocent bystanders will think.
"Hey," says a voice near Skittery's ear, and he shivers a little as he feels the warm breath.
"Hey," he replies.
The arms around him shift, and the thing he has been avoiding at all costs occurs.
Skittery turns around, looks Snitch full in the eyes, and remembers.
Not a slight breeze disturbs the air around him, and not a cloud the sky. It is entirely inappropriate weather: there should be a hurricane, or a tornado, or at the very least a thunderstorm.
Skittery strides down the street with an urgency that is apparent in every line of his body. When he reaches his destination, he flings the door open, the violence of his action going totally unnoticed in his haste to get inside. He knows exactly where he is needed; they told him where Snitch was when they called him.
Skittery walks up the stairs. The faded mauve carpet muffles any sound that his footfalls otherwise would have made. It's so quiet that he can hear the dust.
As Skittery gets closer to the room at the end of the hall, the silence is broken by a strangled cry, and he jumps at the sudden sound.
It is worse than usual, then.
The door to Snitch's room opens much more gently than the front door did earlier, and Skittery closes it just as lightly. When he sees the figure hunched in the corner, his breath catches involuntarily in his throat.
It is definitely worse than usual. Snitch is bleeding from several cuts on his hands, and the blood has rubbed off on his clothes. His face is turned away, but his shoulders are tense and his body is shaking, and that tells Skittery all he needs to now.
Any effort to examine any damage that might have been done to the room would be futile, because Skittery cannot bring himself to look away from his friend. As he edges closer, Snitch suddenly whips around to look at him.
When their eyes connect, Skittery finally understands.
Something about Snitch has changed fundamentally. His face is wrong: the expression, the set of it, and the fact that red tracks, unmistakably caused by tears, trace its curves. He looks like he sees everything and nothing, like he has broken the world and built a new one. He looks like he is being hunted by his own mind.
"Skitts," he says urgently, voice a perfect match for his face, "Skitts, you shouldn't have come."
"No," Skittery says, "I had to. I had to, you—"
"You don't understand! They'll see you! You can't be here!"
"Snitch, I'll be fine—"
"They can't get you too! They already… But I'm going to get them first, so it doesn't matter anymore."
He is no longer talking to Skittery.
"No. No, you bastards won't get him. I can see you, I know where you are and I'm coming."
He reaches for something on the desk and at last Skittery can pull his eyes away. When he sees the glint of lamplight on metal, he cries out.
"Snitch, no!"
Skittery grabs Snitch's arm, and there is a brief struggle that Skittery can barely follow even though he's a part of it. He knows the end result, though: he has a knife in his hand and Snitch is staring at him like he thinks he's about to die.
Skittery knows that this is the end, and that they can't delay any longer. He goes for the phone as Snitch continues to stare like a game animal watching a hunter.
Skittery stays with him until he hears the car pull up in the driveway and the door open. Then, he gets the hell out of the way.
Looking up at Snitch, Skittery does not see someone who has been broken. He sees the same wide smile and open eyes that he's known for years. And he sees the person whose identity he's been trying to figure out ever since he first had the dream.
The feeling of Snitch's arms around him is the same in real life as it was in the dream, so much so that Skittery wonders about the realism of his REM cycles. He almost leans into the embrace like he did in the dream. Snitch does seem to be holding on to him longer than is really necessary… But no, he's letting go now, and Skittery steps back slightly as he does so.
The two of them stand silently for a second, Snitch staring at Skittery and Skittery staring at the ground.
"So," Snitch finally says, "Long time no see."
"No shit."
"How's life?"
Good question. "It's fine."
"That's good." Snitch looks away for a second. "Do you trust me?"
"…Not really."
Snitch sighs and Skittery shrugs.
"Look, just come with me, all right?" Snitch says. Skittery shrugs again, and follows him. He doesn't have much to lose anymore.
A few minutes later, Skittery resolves to never trust anyone who tells him to come somewhere again. It can never have good results. Just look at what has happened to Skittery in the past month. First, he followed his friends and ended up at a mental institution. Now, he followed Snitch and ended up here.
The factory, Skittery thinks, has a way of screwing with your mind.
Up until recently, every time he came here he saw at least one of Them, and he sincerely doubts that They're real. Shadows don't come to life.
Not only that, but his psychotic best friend seems to have an affinity for this place as well, which cannot be a good sign.
"You've been here before," Snitch says.
"Yeah," Skittery replies, "So?"
"Have you ever looked inside?"
"Who cares?"
"Do it."
"Why?"
"Just do it!"
"You're sounding like a Nike commercial, Andy."
"Stop dodging the question, Alex."
"Shut up. Also, it wasn't a question."
"Skitts."
"Fine!"
Skittery glares at Snitch and trudges across the lot toward the factory building itself.
The gravel makes a faint crunching noise beneath his feet and turns his black shoes gray. The huge windows on the side of the factory are caked with the same dust. Skittery has to wipe off a layer of it that's almost an inch thick before he sees glass. It takes him several seconds to clear a space large enough to see through. When he finishes, he leans his forehead against the window and looks in.
At first, he thinks that the darkness inside is just due to the fact that there are no lights on. Then he realizes that even though the windows are incredibly dirty, there should be at least a little illumination.
This is when he starts worrying.
Skittery has never exactly been calm under pressure. Still, he does not panic at first. He is reasonably sure that there is an explanation for the pitch black factory. Maybe the windows are just at a bad angle or something.
He doesn't even panic when he realizes that the darkness is moving.
Dark forms swirl throughout the factory in a turbulent flow. Their movements are strange and chaotic, and they seem across between an extremely wild river and an extremely wild modern dance company. It is Them, he knows, but at least he is separated from Them by a pane of glass almost an inch thick.
Skittery only panics when one of the ever-moving forms swoops out of the crowd and speeds directly toward him.
He can barely make out its form against the warped black background, but it's obviously one of the shadow-creatures that have been chasing him. Finally, he realizes where they all have gone.
The creature is moving swiftly, its arms outstretched before it. It nears the window like a black locomotive and passes through it just as easily as a locomotive would.
Skittery hears the sound of breaking glass as he throws himself backward. He cries out with the combined pain of shock and glass shards and hitting the ground. As hot as it was earlier, Skittery is now chilled to the bone.
Skittery wonders dimly if Snitch knew this would happen when he sent him to the factory.
He really, really hopes not.
A/N: My computer sucks.
volatile.virgin: Making words up is always a good use of one's time.
Charlie: The mental hospital? Is based on a real one. And it really is that creepy. Thanks for the compliment. And, of course, the falling off chairs.
Brunette: Um. Thanks? I love 1984.
ellaeternity: It made perfect sense, and bass does rock. Without it, music would be… baseless. cough
lainie-d: Writed. Er, written. Whatever. You know what I mean.
madmbutterfly: Yeah, he does kind of freak out about random stuff. But real people are like that too, so I figure it's all good.
Kid Blink's Dreamer: Now. Well, not quite. But the undertones are there. If you look really, really hard.
skittery's bad mood: Thank you for reviewing.
Thumbsucker Snitch: Thanks! I actually wasn't that into Snittery before, but now I'm starting to really like it.