A/N: Sorry for the delayed update. 2020 and the beginning of 2021 were the worst, but I'm determined to finish this story, even if it means taking some long breaks in between chapters. I started out following an outline but now the story is starting to evolve in its own experimental direction and I'm just sort of coasting along with where inspiration takes me. In this one, you get a glimpse into Toby's demented psyche...or is it just another tour de force of the Dark Turnabout VR? [insert evil cackle here]
I rose from a dream just out of reach of clarity's reach, but I didn't wake. Not completely. My scalp was tingling and my brain was curdled stew, and this was why I didn't immediately react when a coppery taste ran over my lips and tongue, or when I found myself straddling a firm body in the dark, it's hands outstretched and running up and down my arms in rapture.
Is this... part of the dream? I thought. It felt real and unreal.
I let my head drop to my chest, tested my heavy limbs. A dark song was playing in my heart that added fear to the confusion.
My arms, legs, and fingers itched as if circulation was low.
I felt over the form beneath me for more answers, finding hard thighs and a wide chest, and pricked my ears to the labored breathing that filled the darkness between us.
"Oh god, Sarai..."
What little blood was running through my body, and what few neurons were firing on full cylinders sparked to disturbed life at the recognizable cadence and accent. The fog vacuumed up, leaving red lined outrage and disgust. I wasn't dreaming, but this was no doubt a nightmare.
Jary King. Jary fucking King was in my house, in my bedroom, in my bed!
"You!" I shrieked. "What are you doing?"
His form went stiff beneath me for a split second before rising in a rushed movement forward, upsetting the white sheets and covers into the fluttered air bubbles of a fleeing phantom. His arms landed on my shoulders, squeezing.
"Sarai, Sarai, I'm going to need you to calm down. Take a breath."
"Calm down? How did you get in here?" I looked frantically around my room as if for support. It was too dark to see if he had dislodged anything or any signs of force in the window or door.
"Irene! Richard!" I shouted their names over and over again, loud enough to drown out Jary's rat-a-tat of pleadings for me to calm down and listen to him, but my voice went hoarse quickly. My body was parched and my mouth felt cottony. How long had I been asleep?
I strained a phlegmy cough from my throat to try and re-lubricate the dry patches to no avail. Deep down I knew that I wasn't fully responsible for the lack of calvary. Short lived as my shouting had been, I knew I was loud enough for my voice to carry to the tightly packed hallway just outside my room. My family was either ignoring me, which was unlikely even considering my rough history with Irene and Richard (surely Toby wouldn't have ANY hesitation to help) or, the more upsetting, probable reality that they were incapacitated. In the short time I had known Jary, I had come to conclude him as a liar, a master manipulator, and possibly a retro-grooming pedophile. I hoped God, murderer and abductor weren't going to become synonymous with his name too.
"Sarai, could you please just listen to me for one goddamn minute? Let me explain!"
"Stop calling me Sarai," I seethed through gritted teeth. "It's Sar-ah and I don't have to listen to you anymore. I'm calling the police."
"I didn't brea-"
I decided to use my obscene position straddled over him to my benefit and take hold of his throat.
How dare he. Impure instinct overrode clear thought, making my hands squeeze tighter as he struggled and his hands climbed to my own vulnerable throat. I pressed my thumbs on the ribbed texture at the center of his neck until I heard a faint click. The dark song that had begun as a piano wire breaking inside hastened to a crescendo that pooled to my lower core in a sick satisfaction. I was that powerful, or he was that powerless, squirming beneath me like a panicked worm.
He couldn't do more than hiss and buck and weakly try to scratch and pull at me, but he had been corporeal. I knew that much. I knew I was no longer dreaming, as uncanny as my rude awakening had been. I was sure. I was certain.
But then his neck shrank from me along with his hips under me and along with his knees that had kicked up at the back of my ass. Like a bad joke, a roadside carnie magic trick, he not only shrank out of my clenched hands and thighs but disappeared altogether.
I registered the white sheets flattening into a wrinkled pile and not one movement more. My knees hit the soft mattress and I stared and stared, flexing my outstretched palms.
For a stretch of time, I waited for something to happen. Anything to affirm that what I had just witnessed had been real. I was careful not to make any sudden movement.
Silence met me until the joints in my knees hurt and my back felt stiff. It would be too simplistic to fallback on all the awful stereotypes everyone wanted to play me into and despise myself. Withdrawals from benzos, psychological stress induced hallucinations, a long term sleep disorder crossing into sleep paralysis, total psychosis from having to face an uncontrolled environment and set of challenges after the sterile sanctuary of the institute. I knew what it looked like and still every one of the textbook theories rang false. I wasn't disturbed at the possibility that I might be going insane, I was disturbed at the possibility that I wasn't.
I took a deep breath. The bathroom was next door. I could stop in and slap some cool water on my face and then reassess what I needed to do next with a clearer head. I'd figure this mess out and get something in my stomach.
My legs were half asleep for the first few awkward steps and then filled with the dull ache of fresh circulation when I reached the door. It opened with a slow creak and I had to cling to the edge of the cleared frame to avoid falling.
No ordinary hallway met me. The ground beneath me had turned from carpet to ivory stone and there was no expansion to the east or west. Just a narrow set of unrailed stairs decelerating down into a thin puff of cloud.
I couldn't see to the bottom.
Saraaaaaah. Saraaaaah. Jary's voice echoed in and out ghoulishly.
Goose Pimples crawled over my skin. Things like this didn't happen. Couldn't happen. Not with the clarity I was feeling. There wasn't enough of a sense of displacement for it to be the continuation of a dream.
I flashed a look behind me. My modest bedroom waiting in the dark, seemingly unmarred by whatever power was reframing reality.
And what power was it?
A recollection ink blotted into meaning, a semblance of an answer began to form. Dark Turnabout VR. That medieval dining hall and Prom gymnasium had felt so real too. Real enough that one could get inebriated off wine and have their mouth water at the first whiff of fresh baked bread. Maybe I was still hooked up to that egg-pod in the basement of Labyrinth Games Inc., sweating, thrashing as if caught in the throes of a bad fever dream. It was possible Jary's unhooking me and taking care of me in his home and my returning to Irene and Richard was just another part of the VR beta test ride.
My heart dipped in my chest. If that was true, then what would be the metric for truly being removed from virtual reality? How could I communicate that I needed out, or past Jary's consent, exit the game myself?
Fruitlessly, I shot another look around me. I didn't have much information to gather where I was. The stairs to nowhere beckoned to somewhere new and hopefully, that new environment would have more resources.
I tested a step down,then another, pausing at each one to settle my balance from falling into the cloudy ether on both sides. None of my steps reverberated and for the simulated stratosphere suggested by the cloud cover, I felt no shift in the air, temperature or otherwise. A silence that could drive even the staunchest introvert mad.
Eventually, I reached a landing, except it wasn't sublime, alien territory. I found myself stepping into the semi-enclosed space of the hallway I should have crossed into the first moment I opened my bedroom door. Except the stairway from the sky wasn't the only extreme renovation that appeared to have been done. It was what the upstairs hallway of my home would have looked like if it had been abandoned and left untouched for decades.
Wallpaper hung in peels off the wall like dead skin and the ceiling was cracked and speckled with mold. All the same pictures hung the walls, but now at crooked angles from the wire backs straining against unrelenting gravity and the personages were obscured with caked dust. Cobwebs tethered in each corner.
Bitter-sweet mildew and rot filled my nostrils as I stepped all the way in from the stairs.
You think I'm your enemy? Have you taken a walk in the shoes of those you called your friends? Jary's disdainful voice boomed around me again.
"Please, get me out of whatever this is, Jary! I was rash and got a little too...physical back there, but I was just confused and groggy. I'm ready to talk it out now. Really, I am."
I lunged my arms up toward the ceiling, into the nothingness that waited silently. "Well?"
No answer, and I gave him ample time to. If my theory was proved correct, and I was stuck in the same, original session of Dark Turnabout, then omniessence could be a factor.
I shook my head against that awful thought.
I turned around and followed the hall around the corner where I knew the beginning of my home's stairwell would be and found a derailed carpet track into more cloud space. A dead end. Jary had made sure to give me a leading path. The only way forward would be to go back and explore one of the bedrooms.
I settled in front of Toby's door, where not a passive aggressive tin sign or flashy sticker adorned. By choice or not, he was every bit Irene's golden boy.
I rested my hand over the knob and leaned my forehead against the wood. It might be another maddening staircase into nothing, or it might be something much worse. I wondered how many doorways and steps I would have to traverse before I reached an endpoint or redemption from the lucid unreality I was being forced to interact with. Another dark thought.
Reluctantly, I turned the knob and pushed in the door to find myself at the entrance to a gargantuan cathedral. A champagne colored, marble path stretched between rows of waxed wooden pews to a carved altar. At the east and west ends of the pews, gold romanesque columns rose to a triangular archway, accented with lapis and precious stones. Instrumental worship music rose and fell in archaic, monastery swells.
"Toby?" I couldn't make him out anywhere. "Toby?"
Making my way through the center aisle, I stopped periodically to take in the beautiful stained glass framed in every nave. The bright colors, washed with sunlight caught my eye first before the shapes and figures crudely represented were composed to tell a story. The first set showed a dark haired woman crying over an empty crib and the same woman distraught in the foreground of a series of intersecting, twisting beige walls like a maze; the next set showcased the woman on her knees pleading to a demonic looking man in profile, who's hair rose and poured from his head like a frosted fountain and wore a black cape straight out of Dracula's stylesheet. The demonic figure held a plump baby outfitted in a red and white jumper. Opposite this was a stained portrait of the demonic man holding the baby above his head with a surrounding of little horned demons raising their arms. Were they dancing? Jeering? The frontal capture of the demon lord's face in that one was hard to decipher as male or female. The dark lined eyes and big hair and sharp angles. I didn't like looking at it too long.
I came to the last set. The dark haired woman climbing a set of stairs toward the baby, with other stairs going in all sorts of contradicting directions in the background. Some coming from the top, the bottom, the sides, all ending and beginning abruptly in cut off little sections that one might only be able to navigate by jumping between. A solid contender for my least favorite of the stained glass depictions. It brought on an uncomfortable deja vu that made me think about Toby and I's shared dream of stairs that defied physics.
In the far right corner of the same stained glass portrait, on a flat landing, a tiny dark figure watched. The final stained glass opposite, arguably the most edifying to witness of the collection, showed the dark haired girl reunited with the baby with geometric sun rays sprouting around the two. I'm sure the whole journey from robbed cradle to heart-warming reunion was a metaphorical one or some kind of parable I had missed out on in Sunday school. The cathedral looked pretty catholic though and I wasn't Catholic, so there was no telling how out of my league I was. It was pretty progressive to see a female figure outside of Mary depicted though, so I had to give credit where it was due.
The tail end of the path brought me to the elevated altar, which looked to be coated with gold leaf. I dipped under the gilded, roofing triforium to get a better view of the votive image waiting there and a bitter tang rose up to my tongue, leaving my throat burning. Just looking at it made me feel unclean.
It was an artlessly cut and pasted amalgamation of my highschool yearbook photo from the neck up and what was clearly a centerfold body out of a porn magazine, complete with the orange tan and oily sheen highlighting every exposed curve. The glass it was framed in had the same hard-lined sun rays emanating and a crown hovering above my head. The metal plate beneath it all read:
SAINT SARAH - Holy Martyr, Virgin, and Protector of Children. Saint Sarah, dedicated to the highest divinity, suffered martyrdom in 1986. The holy texts assert that she was the child of Richard and Linda Williams, a sinful, heathen couple. Upon having her half-brother stolen by the lord of the underworld, she committed herself to a series of torturous obstacles and mental tests to restore him to her family and, consequently, justice between dimensions.
Saint Sarah's Prayer - Saint Sarah, glorious virgin and martyr, into whose faithful keeping were entrusted innocence itself, I pray and beseech thee to keep me and my future children from all dark forces, and to grant that my heart and mind might be preserved in hope and peace for the future.
My eyes dropped to the glass casing on the podium against the same wall, and recoiled even more. Preserved like museum relics with velvet perches and cursive labels sat my diary, a pair of my underwear, a half-scrolled up tube of Revlon's Fire and Ice, and a picture of me cradling Toby in the hospital room just down the hall from where he was born at the Charlton Memorial Hospital. The metal plaque for these pathologic curiosities read as follows:
SACRAMENTS of SAINT SARAH
American Hygiene Items and Memoriums
Taken Without Express Permission from Sarah William's Mortal Bedroom
20th-21st Century
Sarah William's Diary - Entries dating from 1981 to 1986 - Ref. ch. 1-20 'The Book of Sarah' from the Holy Texts - Sarah's shifting maturity over the course of her tween' years makes for a fascinating and enlightening read. In this rare glimpse into her psyche, her crude artwork of curly cues, stars, hearts and her title combined with random, masculine names suggests a free spirit and whimsical imagination. Her aggrieved ruminations on the holy Toby appear to border on heresy , but it is important to remember that these entries pre-date her trials and tribulations in the Underworld for his holiness's sake. There are also a number of haikus and satirical plays she wrote about Irene and Richard Williams that serve to paint a picture of clashing generations, mid-80s suburban milieu and why her parents could never understand the appeal of Corey Haim or why she has "every damn right" to blast Iron Maiden in her room.
Sarah William's Holy Undergarment - Lightly Used According to Rudimentary Expiration Procedure; Procured from behind Sarah William's laundry hamper; Hanes Junior Bikini Cut Brief w/Goldfish Pattern; Cotton Blend - Sniff and taste test of ossified discharge would suggest a fertile, sumptuous system. The playful pattern and classic cut tell the story of a young woman not prepared to leave behind her childhood. A sacred token of her destined virginity and chastity until the day she takes up partnership with his holiness.
Sarah William's Holy Accessory of Vanity - Moderately Used According to Rudimentary Expiration Procedure; Procured from back of the Williams' upstairs bathroom drawer; Revlon Super Lustrous Lipstick in color Fire and Ice; Original formula w/o recent Avocado oil & Vitamin E additions; Sheer finish; Cream texture - Sniff and taste test of a sample wax remnant off the top were both reminiscent of plastic and petroleum. Cool red color is a passionate, yet elegant choice for a saint who is more of the same. One can only wonder what her glorious presence's kiss would feel like with such added adornment. Vanity could never be a sin from the great guardian of sacred youth.
Holy Image of Sarah Williams holding His Holiness - Peeled out of the back of Toby William's baby book created by Irene Williams; Dated Oct. 23, 1985, Charlton Memorial Hospital - Depicts a delighted Saint Sarah as she hugs his holiness to her chest, in unconscious, spiritual understanding of their intertwined fates as protector and the protected. Note that her beauty was ethereal from a young age.
"What the fuck?" The creepy, stalkerish, quasi-blasphemy onslaught made me shrink and back away until I bumped my hip painfully against the hard corner of a pew.
I hissed and held the spot, but the blossoming pain brought the questions whirlpooling around in my mind to fresh clarity. If this was in Toby's room, it must all be some representative facet of his psyche... or else Jary wanted me to think it was…
"Saint Sarah?" Toby's masculine falsetto, mid-pubescent voice rang through the cathedral and froze my feet to the spot. "Saint Sarah…" His voice hushed to reverence. "...in the flesh?"
Slowly, shaking with anger, disgust, and more than a little dread, I turned and watched him close in. He was wearing a long, white liturgical robe with a blue and gold vestament scarf, but he was no pure and good intentioned brother of mine.
He slapped down to his knees and bowed. "I hail thee, sweet saintly sister of mine! How may I begin to be of service to you?"
"I don't even know where to begin. You're sick, Toby."
His elfish face peered up at me. "Kurosawa said that In a mad world, only the mad are sane. You took me out of that mad underworld and I've waited so long for you in the madder one above ground. I knew you'd come back for me."
"What? You were a baby the last time I was living at home. How close to me could you possibly feel?"
His eyes brightened, but there was a worrying vacancy to his gaze. "My dreams and deep set memories told me what you did for me so long ago. How far you went to bring me back to a safe haven from the Demon Lord, but I know now that even he ultimately had intentions for an exchange of power. I was intended to be king and that is my right to holiness, my destiny. Once he comes back for me, I'll take you with me and we'll rule together for eternity."
I had no words. It was clear that Toby was beyond my reach. I turned from the sight of him and aimed my steps for the door around the left side.
"Wait, Saint Sarah!" He called. "Saint Sarah!"
I heard his breath huff and his footfalls clatter after me and I was forced to sprint the last two feet for the door. I leaned against the otherside as soon as it was shut, cringing at every bowing slam he took with his fists to try and override me.
"Please, hear me out, dear saint! We have so much to share with each other. There's so much I have planned."
My eyes darted over the clergymen's office before me for something heavy I could obstruct the door with and relieve the strain in my legs and back. There was a vintage desk with a pullover, lock cover against the north wall, a small bookshelf to my left, and a couple of splintering chairs. Using both hands and planting one foot forward, one foot resting in place against the door, I pulled the side of the bookshelf towards me. It was resilient for the first couple of seconds but with a groan it gave and in short, hard pulls back across the door I was able to get full coverage before Toby could push it open more than a few inches. His pleas were also fortunately muffled. I'd had just about enough of his zealot's ramblings.
But the minor instant of solitude and lowered blood pressure was spoiled by a sudden, piercing creak.
I snapped my head to the far left corner of the room and questioned my senses for the millionth time. There stood, where nothing stood before to my anxious recollection seconds before, a massive, carved confessional cabinet. Creme curtains covered two entries to the barred center compartment. Past it's absurd suddenness, it made no practical sense to me that it would be kept in the back office of the clergy.
Jary's voice, all-knowing and infused this time with a shadow of mockery, projected from the right entry.
Saraaaaaaaaah, Saraaaaaah...Come forward thine comeliest sour "Saint". Come and confess your saintly sins to the master sinner. Come and relieve thyself of your holy burden and I will give you the rest you so dearly need…
I wanted to tell him off but Toby's continued battering of the office door, muffled as it was now with the bookshelf, made me wary to stand around too much longer. There was no other exit that I could see. I reasoned to myself that the worst I would have to suffer would be a smug taunt and a bit of his nonsense about our shared past before he would move me onto the next stage of his game. I might even be able to talk him out of prolonging the dark carnival ride he was dragging me on.
The curtain washed most of the light from the room out as I scooted into my compartment. The perforated wood showed me the outline of Jary's jawline and shoulders. His soft breath seemed to flow close, like he was waiting at my side rather than blockaded by five inches of wood.
"Kneel, my child."
"I'm seated just fine."
"Cross thyself, my child."
Despite my feelings, I caved to the performative act of contrition he was playing at, seeing as that it didn't lower my metaphorical station to him or challenge my aching knees.
A simple reverence to god that I rushed through, my eyes fixed up at the vaulted ceiling of the box.
"How long has it been since your last confession?"
"I'm not catholic so, uh, basically never ago."
"I sense you have under-appreciated someone special in your life, my child and I sense that you have committed the arguably greater sin of under-appreciating your own worth as well. Don't just pretend to love others. Really love them. Hate what is wrong. Hold tightly to what is good. - Romans 12:9."
I crossed my arms and felt my spine go rigid. The nerve to insinuate himself as worthy of greater affection! Hadn't he imposed enough? It was incredible to think that it was still Monday. Still just one day into becoming acquainted with him and his manipulations and madness. At least it must still be Monday if time passed slower in reality than it did in Dark Turnabout like Jary had implied earlier.
"And what would you of all people define as 'wrong' or worthy of hate?" I asked.
"Wrong is people who disguise envy in subtle discriminations, people who value their pride and non-confrontational lifestyles over supporting their own children, people who project a woman they don't understand into a paradigm of the whore-madonna complex, people who let hostile emotions simmer inside when their affections are spurned, and people who use others to avoid taking control of their own lives."
The descriptives cleared out of him without pause, as if he'd rehearsed it or knew it all by heart, but none of them landed with any personal recognition for me, except one.
"Then you agree that I have every right to hate you since you've let yourself turn 'spurned' affections into hostility?"
His voice warmed. "Oh Sarah. You really think leading you through these dark dreamscapes is my attempt to punish you? I'm desperate, yes, frustrated, yes, but only because it is up to me to help you understand your power before it's too late for us and the continuation of the universe as we know it." There was a swish of fabric and the shadow outline of Jary's head dipped in exasperation. A definite shifting in his seat that matched the unease inside me at his delusional claims. "Since this is indeed a sacred respite for confessionals, I'll level with you, I do worship the ground you walk on, but not because I'm blind or idealistic. I know you're stubborn and have a tendency to run away from your problems. I simply know what you're capable of and that I wouldn't be here without you."
Time, reality and the perception between the two had bent and redefined themselves enough in the last 24 hours that I had to at least concede that Jary carried a terrifying genius and innovative spirit. To have created Dark Turnabout and have the ability to tap into what could only be the most remote impressions of my subconscious, but I didn't- I couldn't - bring myself to buy into the esoteric, past life bullshit he wanted to convince me of. I still had no reason to believe he wasn't just some fetishist stalker that short changed his own technology to manipulate me into his possession. I had no reason to trust anything.
"You keep throwing out references that I knew you before and that I was higher on the totem pole in some way, but I feel like if that were even remotely true my body, my instincts would resonate somehow, right? I have trauma-based amnesia, but there are bits and pieces that swim back to me naturally. You say you're trying to help, but since I've met you, you've done nothing but stress me out. If you really want to do right by me, then leave me alone and let me recoup my life back at the institute."
He sighed. "I sent you everything in your most recent dream. Everything that I clearly can't do justice in words alone. Or has your convenient streak of amnesia swallowed that up too?"
Dream? I frowned trying to remember. There had been something. If I had to put a label to it, a sort of emotional nostalgia, but that was all. I couldn't remember images, plot, substance. Like any other dream, all mastery fell through as soon as I opened my eyes. A whole other life, a fourth of a lifetime hidden from me and my ability to make any sense of it. The same minor tragedy we all had to make do with. "Hardly anyone remembers their dreams. Amnesia has nothing to do with it."
"Let me grant you penance, Sarah. Let me help it all come back. Confess your sin of willfulness, of cowardice, of hatefulness and distrust, and say you're sorry for each of them and the betrayal of your past life. Do this, open your heart to me, let me rule over you and I will be your slave."
Rule me? Be my slave? His insanity was twisting his own words into miniature hypocrisies. This conversation wasn't going to get me anywhere at all. He'd talk me in circles for eternity before he'd let me go. The upsetting realization made the formality and restraint easy to shed. "Go to hell."
"No absolvement for you then. Such a pity."
My mind flashed a smorgasbord of curses, but I didn't get the chance to land any on my tongue. The wooden floor under my feet dropped open like a hidden flip door and I was falling, falling, falling into darkness, torn between a desire for a lifeline to clutch onto and for my feet to never touch new ground again.