Johnny Truant (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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bigapplesauce2014-04-13 06:35 pm
johnny_truant) wrote in bigapplesauce2014-04-13 06:35 pm
Entry tags:
Muss es sein? [closed]
[[OOC: content warning for post-traumatic stress disorder and its side effects]]
Johnny dear, don't be afraid,
I will keep your secret safe.
Bring me to the blind man who
Lost you in his house of blue.
Johnny wakes up bodysoaked in sweat. Typical. If he had a nickel for every time this happened. He'd have quite a few nickels. Maybe enough to actually pay his rent. That'd be the day.
This time however he's got a real bad feeling on top of the sweat. No under it. Under his skin. Bad feelings are typical too, in fact they're a fucking way of life, but this one's different. This feels specific. This has a linear, tangible cause. Directly connected to something that happened in the night, in his head, in the room. Here. With him.
He sits up and then he knows, knows like a punch in the gut, it's nothing in the room at all. It's the room itself.
Everything is wrong. Misshapen. Walls that are not where they were before. Floor tipped and angled. Ceiling much, much too high. Doors. Everywhere. So many fucking doors.
Johnny grabs his head, hands like claws, hard enough to hurt, to bruise. Ducks down into an aborted fetal position like from out of an airplane safety pamphlet and screams and screams and screams. Harsh animal sounds that cut into his throat. Raw, guttural fear, fear he hasn't felt in so long, not like this, not so acutely. Screams like he's dying. Screams to make his ears bleed.
Not even words at first, then words, misshapen just like the room, but words all the same.
“No,” mostly. “No no no no no no stop it stop it go away!”
It chased him here. Found him out. Stupid to think he could have ever escaped. It'll follow him forever. Place to place, city to city, universe to fucking universe. It's in him. Part of him. There's nothing to distinguish him from his curse.
And then, quite all of a sudden and for no reason that makes itself readily known to him, he shuts up. Goes silent. His throat burns. He can taste blood.
He opens his eyes and goes totally, inhumanly still.
The room is back. Snapped into place like a goddamn rubber band. Nothing stretched or compressed, nothing unearthly. The right number of doors. Like nothing even happened.
He sits there and breathes. It was wrong, he knows it was wrong. Not just in his head but really. It was not some leftover inch of a dream. It was real. He is wide awake.
Slowly, trembling and shaky like a baby deer, he climbs to his feet. Some instinct maneuvers him to the closet door. His hand hovers over the doorknob, not quite touching but close enough to feel the electromagnetic field tugging at his skin. He doesn't want to. He has to. He has to.
All at once, like ripping off a band-aid. He seizes the doorknob and turns it and opens the door. Nothing. His one change of clothes. The floor. The walls.
He shuts the door again and gives himself another moment to breathe. Thinks, inchingly, uneasily, only because he feels like he has to—what a stupid phrase, doesn't exist in German, German's too sensible and too efficient. In German he must. Muss er. Es muss sein.—thinks, what if, this time, not a wall but a hallway. Long, long, black.
Exhales in a gust and opens the door again, his gut drops and his vision goes out for an instant. Only to be replaced with what's before him, length and depth and darkness. His hallway. Physically impossible but it's there.
He did this. He did this.
He's going to be sick. For a horrible moment he thinks he is sick, but it's just adrenaline, just wildfire in his blood threatning to crack his skin and burn him from the inside out. He realizes he's just standing there; he hasn't made his dark creation disappear. Instead he stares into it, like he wants the darkness to swallow him. For a moment he does. He wants it to take him and he wants to never come back.
No. He slams the door hard enough to break the hinges. Go the fuck away. What use does he have for his own however-many-minute hallway? He needs escape. He needs to be somewhere else.
He throws the door back open and for a dizzying instant he's looking back into his own apartment, a sickening mirror image, and his foot stutters over the threshold before he trips through it and collapses onto the floor. It's not his apartment at all. He hasn't escaped, he's still within the confines of this same building, just taken a shortcut as it were, trespassed impossibly past walls and corridors, right into Gabriel's apartment.
Johnny dear, don't be afraid,
I will keep your secret safe.
Bring me to the blind man who
Lost you in his house of blue.
Johnny wakes up bodysoaked in sweat. Typical. If he had a nickel for every time this happened. He'd have quite a few nickels. Maybe enough to actually pay his rent. That'd be the day.
This time however he's got a real bad feeling on top of the sweat. No under it. Under his skin. Bad feelings are typical too, in fact they're a fucking way of life, but this one's different. This feels specific. This has a linear, tangible cause. Directly connected to something that happened in the night, in his head, in the room. Here. With him.
He sits up and then he knows, knows like a punch in the gut, it's nothing in the room at all. It's the room itself.
Everything is wrong. Misshapen. Walls that are not where they were before. Floor tipped and angled. Ceiling much, much too high. Doors. Everywhere. So many fucking doors.
Johnny grabs his head, hands like claws, hard enough to hurt, to bruise. Ducks down into an aborted fetal position like from out of an airplane safety pamphlet and screams and screams and screams. Harsh animal sounds that cut into his throat. Raw, guttural fear, fear he hasn't felt in so long, not like this, not so acutely. Screams like he's dying. Screams to make his ears bleed.
Not even words at first, then words, misshapen just like the room, but words all the same.
“No,” mostly. “No no no no no no stop it stop it go away!”
It chased him here. Found him out. Stupid to think he could have ever escaped. It'll follow him forever. Place to place, city to city, universe to fucking universe. It's in him. Part of him. There's nothing to distinguish him from his curse.
And then, quite all of a sudden and for no reason that makes itself readily known to him, he shuts up. Goes silent. His throat burns. He can taste blood.
He opens his eyes and goes totally, inhumanly still.
The room is back. Snapped into place like a goddamn rubber band. Nothing stretched or compressed, nothing unearthly. The right number of doors. Like nothing even happened.
He sits there and breathes. It was wrong, he knows it was wrong. Not just in his head but really. It was not some leftover inch of a dream. It was real. He is wide awake.
Slowly, trembling and shaky like a baby deer, he climbs to his feet. Some instinct maneuvers him to the closet door. His hand hovers over the doorknob, not quite touching but close enough to feel the electromagnetic field tugging at his skin. He doesn't want to. He has to. He has to.
All at once, like ripping off a band-aid. He seizes the doorknob and turns it and opens the door. Nothing. His one change of clothes. The floor. The walls.
He shuts the door again and gives himself another moment to breathe. Thinks, inchingly, uneasily, only because he feels like he has to—what a stupid phrase, doesn't exist in German, German's too sensible and too efficient. In German he must. Muss er. Es muss sein.—thinks, what if, this time, not a wall but a hallway. Long, long, black.
Exhales in a gust and opens the door again, his gut drops and his vision goes out for an instant. Only to be replaced with what's before him, length and depth and darkness. His hallway. Physically impossible but it's there.
He did this. He did this.
He's going to be sick. For a horrible moment he thinks he is sick, but it's just adrenaline, just wildfire in his blood threatning to crack his skin and burn him from the inside out. He realizes he's just standing there; he hasn't made his dark creation disappear. Instead he stares into it, like he wants the darkness to swallow him. For a moment he does. He wants it to take him and he wants to never come back.
No. He slams the door hard enough to break the hinges. Go the fuck away. What use does he have for his own however-many-minute hallway? He needs escape. He needs to be somewhere else.
He throws the door back open and for a dizzying instant he's looking back into his own apartment, a sickening mirror image, and his foot stutters over the threshold before he trips through it and collapses onto the floor. It's not his apartment at all. He hasn't escaped, he's still within the confines of this same building, just taken a shortcut as it were, trespassed impossibly past walls and corridors, right into Gabriel's apartment.