MK knew he wasn't imagining things. Someone was in his TV.
He heard them talking to him at night.
At first it wasn't to him, no. At first it was just general odd noises. The hiss of static after it turned itself on. A blip in the white noise. Maybe something that could have passed as some kind of signal coming through.
But MK knew someone was in his TV. They spoke to him last night.
He couldn't make out what they said, of course. It was too soft, too far away. But it was clear enough to him that it was a voice saying something. It had startled him enough that he had turned the TV off.
When he woke up the TV was on.
He didn't remember turning it back on.
It didn't turn back on before he headed down to work.
"Have you been sleeping?" Tang asked softly. "You look-"
"Exhausted, I know," MK said with a yawn. "I have, just. Not a lot."
MK frowned, making it a point not to look at the TV set up in the corner of the restaurant. It was off, no static in sight or to be heard. But he would SWEAR… he could swear he could hear the softest hint of a whisper.
This had been happening for at least a week now, the noise from the TV, only at night. But now he was wondering if it was starting to escalate. Did he really hear a whisper? Or was it his mind playing tricks on him, making him imagine voices where there were none because of what he had convinced himself he had heard the night before?
He almost managed to convince himself that he had imagined the entire thing before he woke up to his TV being on. In his confusion (and not fear, he was not afraid of noise from a TV) he had summoned his clones and asked them if he was forgetting something. If he had maybe slept walked (a first for him, as he had never done so before). Sometimes he could count on his clones to recall things that he was unable to consciously.
All of them agreed that he had not woken up and turned his TV back on in the night.
That left two options. SOMEONE had come into his room and turned the TV on, which... even if it was something like a prank? He couldn't see it being funny enough to anyone he would know for them to do something as simple as that. Or it had turned itself on.
He could have brushed it off as him maybe rolling over on the remote if he hadn't made sure to leave it on his kitchenette counter the night before... and it was still there when he awoke.
Delivery chiming in after a few seconds of silence to say he could have sworn the voice was saying MK's name did nothing to assuage his confusion and fears.
"I'll be fine, , " Mk said after a few moments of awkward silence, the other man's concern shining through his expression without anything else needing to be said. "I'll go to sleep early, ok?"
He could tell that Tang was weary of believing him before he nodded.
"OK, MK. Just. Take care of yourself, OK? The last time you looked this tired things went a little sideways."
MK stared at his TV.
It would eventually turn itself on. He knew it would.
There would eventually be some kind of sound. He knew there would be.
But tonight.
Tonight he would try to hear what that sound was.
What that VOICE was.
WHO that voice was.
He just had to wait.
In the dark.
With only the TV and the stars lighting his room.
He waited five minutes.
Ten.
Thirty.
By the sixty minute mark MK had made himself comfortable on the foot of his bed and was wondering if he actually made the whole thing up in his head due to getting slammed in the face during one too many fight with rogue demons. Or he had dreamed it up on the last night that he got a decent amount of sleep and mistook it for reality. Or, somehow, he was just losing it entirely. Maybe he was just genuinely hearing things that were not there and he needed to talk with the Monkey King about whether or not this was a side effect of his powers or ask Sandy for a referral to a therapist or-
"-K."
... If it was a hallucination... it was a very convincing one. Then again, they usually were.
But there it was. That same voice he heard last time, the whisper he could have sworn he heard coming from the TV earlier in the day. Low and almost soft enough that if he had something playing on his phone he may have entirely missed it in the static and the noise. But it was THERE.
It was at this moment MK thought that, maybe if this was actually real, it may be best to have one of his clones with him. Safety in numbers and all that, plus they had seemed to have heard the voice as well.
It took him less than a few seconds to summon Delivery, the most calm headed of his main trio who might have actually done something should the moment arise. And the clone said nothing as he was summoned, taking in the heavy atmosphere of MK's bedroom and his memories and knowing that now was not the time to try to crack a joke to lighten the mood.
He did open his mouth to say something, but it was cut short when the voice sounded again. It was louder through the static this time and while neither of them could quite make out who's voice it was they could make out what it was saying.
"MK."
Delivery had been right, that... that voice was calling out to him specifically.
The two shared a glance, neither wanting to make a sound or even move from their vantage point on the bed.
"L-... u-... t MK."
That was new.
That was more than one word.
That sent chills up MK and Delivery's spines.
The static seemed to grow more intense for a moment and then darken in that intensity, the noise almost growing louder than what MK thought that his TV speakers could have been physically capable of. There was no way it could have gotten that loud, his
TV wasn't BUILT to get that loud!
MK yelped as he covered his ears, but it hardly seemed to make a dent in the noise that was assaulting him. Couldn't his neighbors or the people outside hear it? He expected someone to be yelling at him to turn it down, Delivery was TRYING to turn the TV down, but no other noise came but the static and for a moment MK genuinely feared that his eardrums would rupture and-
Suddenly there was an icy stab of pain in his head.
And then it stopped.
MK would have thought he'd gone deaf had his and Delivery's breathing not been so loud in his ears, not if the static of the TV hadn't turned back to it's normal volume.
"... Do you think it-" "LET US OUT MK!"
Delivery never got to finish his sentence- the loudness of the static coming back in full force along with the new sound of screaming. So many screaming voices, screaming his name and demands and pleas and cursing his existence and suddenly they were THERE.
He couldn't even hear his clone's scream as he backpedaled off the bed, eyes locked onto the screen as his head throbbed in pain.
They were there, they were all there, slamming their hands one by one against the glass of his television screen as if trying to break out of it, the blue and white of their ghastly forms shining through in detail his cheap screen could never replicate.
Mayor and the spiders, they had never saved the spiders had they, never had the chance to and Lady Bone Demon absorbed them all and Mayor shouldn't he still be alive hadn't they set him free? Free, he was free right he had to be free but here he was in his TV face sunken and gaunt as if he had wasted away beside the spiders with their cracked chitin and sunken eyes screaming "NO, NO, DON'T LET HIM OUT HELP US PLEASE MK PLEASE" and SCREAMING screaming that he would get out and find MK and destiny DESTINY WOULD BE FULFILLED AND-
MK didn't realize that Delivery had grabbed him until the TV was smashed into pieces on the ground and he was carrying him out the door, blood dropping from his hands as they continued to cover his ears.
Sun Wukong found the Mayor a few days later.
They didn't know exactly what he had tried to do to regain his powers the Lady Bone Demon granted him, but the Monkey King assured him that it was dealt with.
MK decided not to get a new TV.
Just in case.
... but sometimes he could almost swear he heard something through the speakers on his phone, before he thought better of it.