Chapter 12: Physically Sound
Lewis was floating in the neverending darkness.
He was suspended by a clear string, held precariously by nothing more than a thing chance and a little bit of misplaced hope that somehow, he would get himself out of this mess. His darkness was more than turning off the lamp at night: it was a thick oil wrapped around him, sticking to his skin and seeping into his pores with the poison of the unknown creeping into his gaping jaw. He couldn't see anything through the denseness around him, couldn't breathe with the suffocating nothingness that held him so firmly, but for some reason he didn't need to. Lewis didn't need to breathe or see or know just where he was in order to know just what he was here to do.
He had to kill Arthur.
Something grabbed him, pulled him from the darkness gently and carefully, their hands soft and loving as they held tightly onto his wavering existence and lead him away. He tried to turn around, tried his hardest to catch a glimpse of the one whole held him so dearly, but still the blackness was too thick, and still he couldn't move save for the pathway they made for him. They were pulling him along as though he were floating on a lazy stream with the sluggishness and patience of not having to worry.
Who are you?
The voice that met his conscious was that of many, sung in such a sing-song voice that it could've been a melody carried through the oil thickness by a wayward breeze or ripple in the liquid around him. Each sang a harmony of the same song, each raising their voice into a different note and heading down a different harmonic path. They were asking him for an identity, questioning who he was as they pulled him along the river slowly, quizzing him on something he wasn't sure he truly knew himself. Even if he didn't know, he remembered the name assigned to him, the name he was known by. He tried to clear his throat but discovered he didn't have one.
"I am Lewis."
The disappointment of his carriers was nearly tangible, leaving flashes of color to stain the oil in front of Lewis. This answer was not something that satisfied them, and as they continued to pull him slowly along, their voices were raised once more into the world around him.
Who are you, truly? You are no longer just a name. You are much more.
The world in front of him was black once again, the splashes of color gone from his field of view and hidden as he tried to close his eyes, the eyes he no longer had. Nothing made sense, and he felt himself growing angrier and angrier as he began to miss his body, his physical form, his ability to understand what was happening to him. The darkness in front of him was begging to be painted, pleading to be stained and colored upon, and with the vividness of lividness his voice, though not spoken, was nearly a yell as he cried out into the darkness surrounding him.
"I am anger. I am hatred. I am the one who was betrayed. I am the one who would take a bullet yet was stabbed in the back. I am the one who seeks revenge."
The voices were silent, absorbing the icy blues and cold whites that splashed onto the blank canvas in front of them with focus and thought. Lewis could feel his soul rising with every word, lifting itself to meet the emotion that ruled him so completely in this world of darkness. Nothing else mattered to Lewis in these moments of non-existence, nothing but the fall of the one who let him fall into this nothingness, the demise of the one who killed him so coldheartedly. With every ounce of his being, he hated the one he had called his best friend, and in that instant he was only the burning cold hatred of the last moments of his life.
Is that who you truly are?
Before Lewis could answer back with what he believed to be the truth, a resounding and definite yes, he paused and pondered who he truly was inside this icy cold heart. Was he truly a being made only of hatred and revenge, or was there something more to him? His memories flashed further back to his siblings, the immense warmth he felt for them; he thought of his parents and how, despite their caging of his own dreams and aspirations, how he would do anything to please them and keep their own dream alive; and most of all, he thought of the girl in blue, the one he had loved enough to make her forget.
"No, I am more. I am compassion. I am love. I am the blanket that protects the ones I love in the dead of night. I am the one who sacrificed her memories for her comfort and sanity. I am in love."
Now the world in front of him inherited a new shade, overrun with so many hues of pink and red and orange that the beings who dragged him along were forced to stop in order to gaze fully at its brilliance, its luminescence. They reached out their tiny arms to grip the colors that made the sky so bright, humming lightly as they touched the paint upon the canvas. Lewis looked at their many arms, their white complexion, and he remembered in that instance the pale things that had lead him towards Vivi in the first place, the indents of their hearts filling with the colors that made him who he was.
Lewis restricted view widened, and he was now fully aware of them. It came back to him in a storm, the humming and singing voices raised in the gothic mansion with the harmonies that only the greatest of choirs could hope to replicate, the way they had grabbed and brushed against him so curiously. Here they were, caressing him and the colors he brought so beautifully into the darkness, caring for him loyally and dutifully as he floated in the nothingness. They had been waiting for him, they needed him in order to be whole.
All of them were turning pink now, absorbing his love over his hatred with the eagerness of children on Christmas day. With each swipe they grabbed the color that Lewis had stained the brightest, a color of love and gentleness, the one he wore so often and with such pride even in life. He felt a pulse fill the air, and with it their hearts filled with flames. He was no more than a husk, a shell, a glass locket lacking the colors of the world and emotion around him, and yet with that pulse he was filled with the hatred and love he felt so dearly to him. On the outside, the hatred of Arthur turned him orange; on the inside, Vivi's smile reminded him of his love.
What do you look like?
The ghosts surrounding him were fully pink now with the same orange heart he had become, their eyes opening as they swirled around him as they had the first time they had seen him, their hands touching him without ever breaking contact. He knew exactly what he had become, more than just a ball of energy neatly shaped into a meaningful symbol: he was the locket that he had rested above his chest, his soul running towards this tether before it could be forced into whatever afterlife waited for him, connecting and becoming the glass necklace and tying itself to the picture inside. But what was he truly? What fully represented him, what was his true form in this new life.
"I am the skeleton of my former self, a phantom in the face of my living form. My joints are filled with the profound darkness that once surrounded me, and my ribs still surrounding the only thing I have now. I am no more than a heart protected by the bones of my past."
With every word leaving his mouth, with each picture he formed in his head, Lewis felt himself changing into something new, something he could never fully imagine. He was whatever his imagination could create, and yet the ones who lead him from the darkness made him even better, gave him another kind of life. His hands were black and plated with bone, his body similar to what he had once been but wrapped in suit with highlights of magenta, his chest wrapped in ribs to protect his center of being, his heart. He lifted a hand to feel his head, no more than a skull. This was who he had become, who he felt he truly was now.
Now, finally, where are you?
Lewis didn't know where to start. He thought of all the places he had ever been in his relatively short life, every adventure and every home, even back to the little house his family owned in Mexico. Every moment of his life played before him in a slideshow of possibilities, and for awhile he searched for what had made him the happiest, where he had been during the height of his life. It came to him with a burst of utmost certainty.
"I am in the mansion with Vivi."
The world around him morphed, the oil banishing itself to become the house he saw so vividly in front of his glowing pink eyes. Beneath his feet appeared the hard wooden floors, scuffed and scratched after years of neglect, the wallpaper ripped and peeling with the faded stripes turning dusty and bleached in places where the sun met the dark. Down the hallway, he gazed with melancholy, were the candles she had so adored, she had become so immersed in...he looked away, not able to look at them without feeling the heart he held his hand over become frozen with pain and longing. The ghosts whirled around him still, waiting for something.
"Is this it, where I'll be staying for the rest of my undeath?"
Only if you want it to be.
He thought deeply to himself, contemplating how he should set up the rest of the mansion, not quite wanting to live in one room for the rest of eternity. He had seen from the entryway the chandelier so long ago, and as he remembered the moment fondly where her eyes had lit up with such love and adoration, the candles along the wall burst into pink fire. As he pictured each and every little thing in his mind, it became a reality, and it didn't take long before he was surrounded by the fully formed mansion just as he thought it had been.
He focused again on his new friends, feeling so indebted to the no longer pale things that waited so diligently on him, the ones who had brought him out of the darkness. With just a little bit of uncertainty entering his tired voice, he looked back upon his work with only her in his mind, only the shining of her curious eyes and the smile so cutely shaped upon her mumbling lips.
"Do you...do you think she would like it?"
And his new friends looked upon him with their orange eyes opened wide and full of the flames of his past, never straying from their loyalty to their new master as they continued their song.
She would love it.
"Hey, Viv, can you pull over for moment?"
It was the dead of the night, the freeway beneath the van humming a continuous note into the starry sky above them, clear of clouds and opening up before them as they traversed the Midwest. Vivi hated driving the car in any situation as she was painfully aware of how easy it was for her to get distracted by anything she found mysterious, including but not limited to broken down houses, spooky forests, and giant ominous caves billowing green smoke. Arthur had never let her drive his beloved van with this in mind, knowing they'd never get to their destination, but she had been strangely focused on getting to where they were going-nowhere, to be exact. He couldn't drive with only one arm, and she was doing a very good job at staying on track as though she knew her last curious exploration had lead to something absolutely dreadful.
She pulled over, the road empty save for a few stray cars heading somewhere or other. Arthur had been working day and night on his robotic arm, chugging energy drinks and iced coffee as though he breathed caffeine. In the past few weeks he had probably read more books than in his entire life on the nervous system and prosthetics, using his prior knowledge on metal working and mechanics to create something he had hoped would work. After many painful connections and even more failures, it was clear that Arthur wasn't going to give up on his new limb.
"Same as always, can you help me connect some of the wires? I can't reach all of them with only my right hand." He asked, offering up the metal limb as she leaned forward. She hadn't noticed with her focus on the road, but already half of the wires sticking from his arm were connected to their partners in the metal, "If this works I'll solder them, but this'll have to do until I can get to my tool kit."
She reached her hands over the metal, her clumsy fingers growing accustomed to the task, "How did you get all those wires in your shoulder anyway? I know you know metal, but I didn't think you were a surgeon or anything."
He didn't look away from her hands as he answered back, watching her carefully for any slight misstep, "They connected them to my shoulder while I was still in the hospital. Prosthetics have come a lot further than I thought they had, but none of them are as good as this arm will be once I totally finish it. I won't be able to truly feel anything other than the metal against my shoulder, but I should be able to move it just like my old one." He was lost in thought, a genuine smile gracing his usually frowning lips, :Maybe one day, I'll be able to upgrade it to feel pressured at least, maybe even the complexities of my right arm, but I just don't know enough about anatomy to do that now."
This was exactly what Vivi had been waiting for, and as Arthur was lost in lala-land, she shoved his arm into its socket. With a high-pitched yelp and an overdramatic flinch backwards, he gripped his newly connected shoulder tenderly with his eyes staring at his friend in both surprise and distrust. She wiped her hands on her skirt dutifully.
"What the hell was that?"
"I've seen you put it in enough times to know how to connect your arm, Cheeto. It's better when you can't mull over how much it'll hurt, when you don't know when its coming-I watched you last time, you took an entire day to connect the last arm. Now we have quick results. How does it feel?" Vivi smiled. Arthur was still running a hand over his flesh gingerly, not quite ready to try it out. The first few moments of connection were always the most painful, and he wasn't looking forward to the next few exercises.
He lifted his hand forward, smacking his face comically as he overestimated the force necessary to perform the simple action.
Vivi was trying her hardest not to break out laughing as she merged back onto the freeway, but Arthur, who would usually show an amazing amount of embarrassment at his miscalculation, was ecstatic. After at least twenty attempts, he had finally gotten the arm to move more than a few inches-this was a moment to be celebrated, a point at which his life would turn around, a day to rejoice.
"Holy shit, Viv, did you see that? I think...I think this is it! I made my arm, a made a working robotic arm!" He fell into a sort of maniacal laughter, tipping his head back as his eyes burned bright as flames. He lifted his arm into the air triumphantly, "I am unstoppable!"
Now Vivi was giggling at her friends clear enthusiasm, absolutely ecstatic herself at the thought that he was truly smiling, truly laughing at something other than her. There had been times where she thought he would never truly smile again, never crack his little puns and snide comments, never again would he truly be happy; but here and now, Arthur was smiling a pure and genuine smile, his laugh more than just a show he put on for his friend. He was filled with accomplishment, brimming with pride, finally showing the signs of healing into what Vivi remembered. Even if her memory was limited, she remembered that much.
He was looking a little calmer now, his face bittersweet with a smile that wasn't quite happy, but still genuine, "You know I didn't think I was gonna make it at times. I didn't want to make it." he looked over at her, rolling his metal wrist as he continued testing out the movement, "Maybe losing this arm was a blessing, so I could immerse myself so much in creating a new one...I'm still sad, but I think I can be happy again. I think I can live with myself."
Vivi's clear happiness faded to confusion, a new sense of worry infiltrating deeply into the sense of safety and new joy she was only now experiencing, "I thought the reason you were sad was because of your arm. If you hadn't lost it, you wouldn't have been sad, right?"
Arthur's eyes flashed quickly with a little bit of understanding, dulling once again as she felt the lie leaving his lips, if only to protect her from the memory he knew would surface at the moment of him admitting his fault, "Yeah, that's it. I guess you're right, I wouldn't have...I wouldn't have felt so sad without losing the arm, huh." He searched around the van, hoping to find a means of escaping the awkward situation without pulling any more attention to his little slip up. He decided to change the subject, his eyes meeting the fading stripes of Mystery's head and jumping on the opportunity, "You know, we really need to re-dye him. He's getting a little pink, don't you think?"
She shifted just a little bit in the driver's seat, knowing that he wasn't telling her something, wishing that she had listened to him completely when he had nearly explained to her what had happened the night they came to the hospital, "Arthur, you know that if you ever need to talk, I'm here. I'll understand." He was looking into his lap to avoid catching her eye, his own downcast and hands still as he stopped testing his arm, "I don't care what you did or how it happened, I'm here for you. Forever. You're never getting rid of me, not now or ever."
She could see him smirk just the slightest out of the corner of her reaching eyes, "Yeah, I know, I know. How about we grab a motel? I'm getting really tired, and I think my back is a little too sore for the van tonight. Are we near any towns?"
Vivi continued driving, a little sad that he wouldn't share it with her tonight. She knew he would in due time and that whatever Arthur was hiding from her was for the best of both of them in any situation, "Just this next exit." He'd never put his friends in danger, not in a million years.
She caught herself thinking this, surprise knitting her eyebrows as she pondered her own thinking, wondering if a memory was about to surface for the first time in a few months. Something flashed in her mind, trying to surface, but the only thing that she accomplished was to correct herself. Arthur had only one friend, her. What had she been thinking about that had been so forcefully pushed to the back of her brain? Who had she been thinking about that she didn't want to remember?