Sir Thomas Sharpe (justametaphor) wrote in noexits, @ 2021-09-20 19:31:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | !log/thread/narrative, ₴ inactive: rocket, ₴ inactive: thomas sharpe, → week 019 (the monolith) |
The Monolith Week [Backdated]
Rocket is snooping around the third floor and gets a little scare.
CLANK CLANK CLUNK. Rocket scowled at the last sound. As was his way, he’d found the most boisterous way to ascend the stairs to his room on the fourth floor. Case in point: letting a screwdriver that he’d found hit the metal bars of the railing, one by one so that the stairwell filled with the tinny sound and echoed between surfaces. He was a master of cacophony. That last deadened noise was a break from ordered chaos. He skipped to the next bar. CLANK. CLANK. And then the railings ran out. The screwdriver slumped to his side in his hand, and he sighed the sigh of someone whose morning plans had come to a close. He looked up at the door on the landing and moved closer with the confidence of muscle memory telling him this was surely his floor. He stopped. There was a short moment of recounting the clanks in his mind, and the math didn’t add up at all. He peered at the door, head tilted as his eyes scanned the details of it. The knob was sooty, dusty -- covered in a layer of patina that suggested it hadn’t been touched in days, maybe years. The other door knobs around Butler were used enough that even though the campus reset, they were never quite the oxidized hue of green. Rocket stood there, recounting why it was that this third floor had been roped as off-limits. The door looked unthreatening. He could probably pick it open if it was locked with the screwdriver. Or a claw. He crossed his arms, debating if this was a moment for exploring the limits of rules. Normally the second and third floors of Butler Hall weren’t accessible. There was, of course, a very good reason for that. A very very good reason. But every once and a while someone in Derleth, usually a person with magical abilities or telepathic sensitivities, caught a glimpse of what was beyond the wards that barricaded the supposedly unused levels. A scent, a sound, a sensation. Some people hopped down the stairwells without even noticing the shift from the fourth floor to the first. Some simply forgot that there were other floors. And others felt a tingling, an instinctual fear that shivered down the spine. A warning to keep moving. But then, on occasion, someone noticed that the second and third floors existed. And the ghosts noticed in return. The monolith had quieted the spirits. Even the telepaths and the spiritualists and the boys with the shining found them hard to reach. Because the ghosts didn’t like the monolith. For much of the same reason as to why no one else liked the monolith. The ghosts didn’t appreciate being watched. Ghosts preferred to do the watching. And where there was paranoia in life, there was an exponentially increased abundance of it in death. As a result, they’d purposefully kept their distance. All but one. The ghost who’d spent a veritable lifetime behind those enchanted doors trying to prevent the dark, angry spirits from being released. Thomas heard the clanking on the stairs. He could hear most anything in Butler Hall if he listened carefully enough. And he had an attentive ear. CLANK. CLANK. CLANK. And then stop. A stop on the third floor. He made his way through a crowd of the disgruntled dead towards the door that separated them from the other residents of Derleth. Somewhere deep in the confines of the third floor, his sister was stirring up trouble trying to find him. But even she’d lessened her pursuit with the arrival of the monolith. It would have been like a breath of fresh air to Thomas, if he needed fresh air. Alas, he didn’t. He crouched down and brought his eye to the keyhole hoping to catch a glimpse of whoever was on the other side. He didn’t see much but a patch of fur. Of course. Quite frankly, Thomas was surprised it had taken the raccoon this long to come snooping. “Go away,” he whispered through the door. A few of the general presence-of-life noises made it to this part of Butler: the click of a door shutting, the SLAM of someone with less grace in conducting the same, voices and maybe a few piano notes. They were all dulled by walls and by each surface they had to bend around and weave between to reach this spot. Rocket was used to tuning a certain amount of Derleth’s pulse out, and he usually noticed it even less when he was orchestrating something louder. But in his stillness and contemplation, he heard a voice. His ears turned, trying to capture the faintness of it, and he moved up to the door. It sounded like a whisper. Someone with an accent, but a voice that somehow had a soothing timbre. It sounded like… “Loki?” Rocket asked. He leaned up against the door, bracing one ear to it and splaying his hands against the smooth plane. “Hey, someone in there?” He gave the door three raps with a fist. Why did people say to stay away from this floor again? Something about an infestation…? Thomas grumbled behind the door. The sound echoed a bit. Space was a little different on the other side of the warded rooms. Things were a little distorted. And disoriented. Part of it was Derleth, but part of it was the ghosts themselves. Some of them took up more space than others. Some of them were more malevolent than others. They twisted the fabric of their trapped reality. They couldn’t haunt the living so they haunted themselves. It made for an uncomfortable semi-disassociated atmosphere. Loki. Not again. There was a roll of those bloodshot eyes that Rocket couldn’t see while his furry ear was placed against the door. This wasn’t the first time someone had mistaken Thomas for that man. Nor did he suspect it would be the last. But that didn’t stop him from being irritated beyond belief. Yes, they shared a certain likeness in their faces and in the tone of their voices, but they were nothing alike. Not in any universe. Well, mostly nothing alike. Ego and narcissism, however, seemed to go hand-in-hand with that face. “Have you forgotten to heed the warnings about not interfering with the second and third floor? Surely that’s not too complicated for a creature capable of intelligible speech.” Thomas peered through the keyhole, trying to get a better glimpse of Rocket. He was curious to see if he looked the same as the one from his world. “These floors are locked for a reason. Make haste and depart before something devastating befalls you and your friends.” Thomas paused for a moment. “And take whatever that clanking device is with you.” “Probably,” Rocket replied, more to himself than the voice on the other side of the door. There was definitely a warning about not messing with these floors, right? He squinted and tried to job that part of his memory. It only made him do the next best thing when it came to figuring out why Derleth didn’t want anyone up here. He moved to the keyhole and peered in. It took a second, but finally something came into focus. An eye, but the colors seemed inverted from the usual human variety: dark on the outside, light around the irises. Reddish, if Rocket had to guess at a color. It looked reddish. It looked not Loki-ish. “Is that your eye? I guess maybe you could be from one of them dark elf type planets...” Leave it to the raccoon from beyond the stars to be nonplussed by the sight, but in his mind there was a reasonable explanation. He’d seen weird things. He’d seen gross things. A voice behind a door and an eye didn’t engage his self-preservation. What a brave, little creature Rocket was. Maybe he should be less of that sometimes. Thomas peered back at Rocket, unblinking. His eye was dry and cracked. After a few seconds a semi-transparent trickle of blood floated upward from his cheek and left a gory red haze in its place. The filmy substance floated closer to the keyhole but was stopped halfway by the barrier where it fizzled into nothingness. Somewhere behind him an agonizing guttural wheeze screeched out. Thomas turned away from the keyhole, allowing Rocket a quick glimpse into the world on the other side. It wobbled like water poured on a photograph. At first it looked like just another Butler corridor. It could have been the first floor or the fourth. But then it seemed to stretch on longer, further. Limitless space. A quick-moving creature skittered across from one doorway to the next. Something red and spidery that left a trail of greasy ooze in its path. That moaning death rattle gurgled, the sound growing louder and closer. And then a sickening splooch that wasn’t unlike stepping barefoot through mashed potatoes, followed by what might have been the crunching of bones. Then, without warning, Thomas’s eye appeared in the keyhole again. “My apologies. Had to deal with that.” Thomas cleared his throat. “These floors need to remain locked at all times. It’s best if you and the rest of your transient friends avoid them completely. If the things on this side get out, then there’s no guarantee that any of you will survive another reset. So be a good little experiment and shove off.” As Thomas’s eye vanished and the view into the floor was left unmarred, Rocket frowned. He reached a hand up to rub his eye, as if that would solve the problem of the reality distortion, but the scene remained unchanged. Then, the noise. His ears were always sensitive, but that was a fact of his physiology. Sharp eyesight, even in dimmer conditions, excellent hearing… He peered at the thing that dragged itself across the hall, and then he flinched when the sickly noise stopped. Not Dark Elves. Rocket didn’t imagine they moved like that or sounded like that. He was so distracted by the suggestion of what just happened that Thomas’s reappearance caught him unawares. He stumbled back, courage thoroughly dented for it. And, if he was honest, this floor didn’t smell right either. It smelled like… like a place where scientists put creatures on tables, pulled them apart, fit their pieces back together in new ways. Scent was always a more visceral thing for Rocket, and he found himself recalling memories he preferred to keep buried. That alone had him remaining at more of a distance now. The door remained fixed and unmoving, but Rocket eyed it as if it might burst off the hinges. His hand moved to a blaster at his side -- a small sense of security for a being that often resorted to violence and the offensive. “I ain’t scared.” Having to say it usually made the opposite case. “I just… gotta get going.” He took another step away from the landing and towards the next flight of steps. Thomas watched Rocket through the keyhole. If he felt bad for spooking him, he didn’t show it. And, in truth, he didn’t feel bad at all. Some people listened to reason. Others to threats. But most people needed intimidation to be convinced. And while Thomas didn’t like to be a figment of horror, he knew that there were worse things locked up on those floors. There were creatures that couldn’t compare to him. There were ghosts who would devour them all without a second thought. If Thomas had to take the brunt of the living’s fear in order to protect them, then so be it. It wasn’t like he was getting out any time soon anyway. His eye only blinked once as Rocket backed away from the door. It was a slow, unnatural movement. Halfway closed it seemed to catch on its own dryness. Eyelashes hitched before finally closing completely. Then the eye reopened, redder than before; the veins in his eye stretching through what had once been skin and tissue until they disappeared into the ether on the other side of the door. When Rocket mentioned not being scared, that eye fluttered. Something amused replaced the dead stare from before. Then Thomas brought his mouth to the keyhole, brimming in a wide crooked grin full of teeth that were packed too closely together. The gums were a tint of crimson that looked more like blood than flesh. “You should be,” Thomas said. “You should all be very scared.” |