The second day had came without a surprise: the announcement played out like it had been foretold and Gillian didn't want any of it. Gillian covered her ears and shut her eyes to avoid seeing Drea die again. Her face scrunched her, she hummed a song to herself, ignoring the noises that still managed to go through the digitalize flesh barrier she had raised. It didn't do anything to block it out - it seemed it went through them. Even if she pretended to not see or hear it, she could still see her friend's skull being penetrated with a spear, and Drea dying again but from another angle, and someone else she didn't remember from class until she saw her empty eyes after being nearly decapitated.
Fuck. She'd have to figure something out for the next cycle.
After a couple of minute, the non-hallucination-that-might-as-well-been-one stopped, and she reopened her eyes to find herself back into a world of thirst and hunger. This simulation of these common feelings she experienced after logging out of her CR weren't that surprising, but she had never felt them during it. It was strange, really. Because, on one hand, she knew that it wasn't real and she knew that it would all be over soon. On the other, she had taken up on chewing the hem of her shirt to feel something in her simulacra of a mouth.
God, she was so hungry.
The thirst was worst, though. The dizziness made her feel like she was spinning every time she stood. In between the fitful moment of sleep she managed to scrounge, the thirst still followed her there. Were her dreams real or simulated too? Would they see them? Would they see her desperate for water even in a moment where nobody would normally see her? Jill gulped on nothing, hugging her knees as she hid underneath the desk that had became her bed. Three sides of it were closed off with wooden panel which made her feel, admittedly, quite safe and hidden. There was a mirror hung on the side of the board which she used to spy on whoever passed by the hallway - which right now was nobody.
Her spying eyes withdrew from the mirror and, with a single thing in the back of her head, she went back to gnawing on her sleeve.
transform̷̩̉M̸̞͆alfunction
open (tw: self-mutilation)
Moderator: SOTF: Cyber Staff
The boy walking through the hallways had figured it out. He knew how to get out of here. They just had to find out what wasn't real, even for this place.
But as the various cuts across the outside of his arms could tell, that was going to have to be a lot of trial and error.
((Boston Sullivan continued from He's Leaving Home))
He'd added a little something extra to his routine now - before, he found a room, he spread his stuff out, he thought about things, he packed up, he left.
Now? He found a room, he spread his stuff out, he thought about just how unreal everything was, he made a cut somewhere, he packed up, he left.
The cuts didn't hurt in the long run, at least not as much as the one he'd given himself on his leg back then should have. He needed to check, see if everything felt the way it should in the moment. Every time, the pain felt real, but it quickly faded, as though trying to work on something else. Every time it happened, he could feel the process repeat, but he didn't know what it meant. But it was routine now, just like every other aspect of his life had become, so he kept doing it. Everything had become so monotonous, so regimented, that he was beginning to lose grasp on what his memory of actual pain felt like - that time he burned his hand while making pasta, a dislocated shoulder from football, thorns scraping his legs from his first proper adventure race; all of that didn't feel real anymore, replaced by his own routine in a unreal world.
But he just had to keep at it. He still knew what was real and what wasn't, so all he needed was to find something that wasn't real enough, and push. Push hard, push well, and he'd be able to...well, he didn't know what he'd be able to do with that. He wasn't a computer guy. Maybe he could find a computer guy, someone with real smarts on this stuff, and tell him what he knew, what he'd found out. Or tell her. She could be a computer girl. Boston was a feminist.
Maybe that's what that "Omega Squad" he'd always avoided could do. He could go to them once he found something. He had a thing with one of their sisters, maybe they could trust him from that. He still had to keep trying though. Even through the announcement, he remained sentinel to his idea. Even without the sleep he'd enjoyed in the real world, he knew it was a good plan. Maybe if he met someone else, he could tell them his good plan, and they could tell him about their good plan. Maybe they'd had the same plan. He could give them his notes.
But his routine demanded he stop again, so he found a familiar classroom. He hadn't been here yet, but he'd been here back in school, back when this was just an ordinary prison instead of a death trap. He'd seen changes to every classroom he'd been in, things that shouldn't be on the walls or the floor feeling like it was moving when it wasn't, but at first glance it looked relatively normal. The mirror on the side of the board reminded him of home, although he didn't keep his gaze on it long, since he didn't really want to see what his face looked like anymore.
Boston walked towards the back corner of the classroom, a familiar place, and dropped his bag in the seat. Things were once again familiar, as though he could continue his second day of this. He pulled out one of his uneaten lunchboxes, as well as the pack of diet coke cans he'd been hauling around untouched. He looked at the unbroken cardboard, shrugged, and tore out the corner, turning around to face the board as he fumbled around for the metal tab. He caught another glimpse of the mirror once more, thankfully not at an angle where he could see himself, and saw Gillian sitting underneath a desk having been there the whole-
"Fff-t-"
The coke flew out of his hand as his fight-or-flight kicked in, having somehow not seen this girl beneath her desk the entire time he was there. It thudded off the roof before cluttering into the window and onto the floor, as Boston stumbled over and fell onto the desk right in front of his, both himself and the wooden pile falling to the ground in a heap. He felt his back bounce off the hardest side. He yelled out.
This was a new pain Boston was feeling, as he writhed around on the ground, and it seemed to trigger every cut and wound like an orchestra.
But as the various cuts across the outside of his arms could tell, that was going to have to be a lot of trial and error.
((Boston Sullivan continued from He's Leaving Home))
He'd added a little something extra to his routine now - before, he found a room, he spread his stuff out, he thought about things, he packed up, he left.
Now? He found a room, he spread his stuff out, he thought about just how unreal everything was, he made a cut somewhere, he packed up, he left.
The cuts didn't hurt in the long run, at least not as much as the one he'd given himself on his leg back then should have. He needed to check, see if everything felt the way it should in the moment. Every time, the pain felt real, but it quickly faded, as though trying to work on something else. Every time it happened, he could feel the process repeat, but he didn't know what it meant. But it was routine now, just like every other aspect of his life had become, so he kept doing it. Everything had become so monotonous, so regimented, that he was beginning to lose grasp on what his memory of actual pain felt like - that time he burned his hand while making pasta, a dislocated shoulder from football, thorns scraping his legs from his first proper adventure race; all of that didn't feel real anymore, replaced by his own routine in a unreal world.
But he just had to keep at it. He still knew what was real and what wasn't, so all he needed was to find something that wasn't real enough, and push. Push hard, push well, and he'd be able to...well, he didn't know what he'd be able to do with that. He wasn't a computer guy. Maybe he could find a computer guy, someone with real smarts on this stuff, and tell him what he knew, what he'd found out. Or tell her. She could be a computer girl. Boston was a feminist.
Maybe that's what that "Omega Squad" he'd always avoided could do. He could go to them once he found something. He had a thing with one of their sisters, maybe they could trust him from that. He still had to keep trying though. Even through the announcement, he remained sentinel to his idea. Even without the sleep he'd enjoyed in the real world, he knew it was a good plan. Maybe if he met someone else, he could tell them his good plan, and they could tell him about their good plan. Maybe they'd had the same plan. He could give them his notes.
But his routine demanded he stop again, so he found a familiar classroom. He hadn't been here yet, but he'd been here back in school, back when this was just an ordinary prison instead of a death trap. He'd seen changes to every classroom he'd been in, things that shouldn't be on the walls or the floor feeling like it was moving when it wasn't, but at first glance it looked relatively normal. The mirror on the side of the board reminded him of home, although he didn't keep his gaze on it long, since he didn't really want to see what his face looked like anymore.
Boston walked towards the back corner of the classroom, a familiar place, and dropped his bag in the seat. Things were once again familiar, as though he could continue his second day of this. He pulled out one of his uneaten lunchboxes, as well as the pack of diet coke cans he'd been hauling around untouched. He looked at the unbroken cardboard, shrugged, and tore out the corner, turning around to face the board as he fumbled around for the metal tab. He caught another glimpse of the mirror once more, thankfully not at an angle where he could see himself, and saw Gillian sitting underneath a desk having been there the whole-
"Fff-t-"
The coke flew out of his hand as his fight-or-flight kicked in, having somehow not seen this girl beneath her desk the entire time he was there. It thudded off the roof before cluttering into the window and onto the floor, as Boston stumbled over and fell onto the desk right in front of his, both himself and the wooden pile falling to the ground in a heap. He felt his back bounce off the hardest side. He yelled out.
This was a new pain Boston was feeling, as he writhed around on the ground, and it seemed to trigger every cut and wound like an orchestra.
Gillian had noticed the boy enter the room, and she had stayed hidden. She figured that, if she didn't move, she would disappear soon enough. Gillian had closed her eyes, keeping her mouth on her sleeve to pretend that she was nothing else than a shirt that she didn't own. Jill reopened her eyes, and, then, the eye contact seemed to have thrown him to the ground.
For a brief moment, she had wished the experience had gifted her telekinesis, but she had not.
Wriggling out of the desk on all four to avoid the spill of Diet Coke™, Gillian felt like a bug. Crawling and skittering away from the limelight, away from Boston and everybody else who was watching at home. She was tired of seeing people being killed and hurt and die. She was tired of it all.
"Please leave me alone, please leave me alone," she said, getting up one hand on the desk, and the other on the mirror. The world was spinning, and she wasn't sure if it was because of the dehydration this time. Something felt fuzzy.
For a brief moment, she had wished the experience had gifted her telekinesis, but she had not.
Wriggling out of the desk on all four to avoid the spill of Diet Coke™, Gillian felt like a bug. Crawling and skittering away from the limelight, away from Boston and everybody else who was watching at home. She was tired of seeing people being killed and hurt and die. She was tired of it all.
"Please leave me alone, please leave me alone," she said, getting up one hand on the desk, and the other on the mirror. The world was spinning, and she wasn't sure if it was because of the dehydration this time. Something felt fuzzy.
For a few seconds, Boston was mainly concerned with the pain shuddering up and down the side of his ribs that landed on the table. The stings on his arms were one thing, but this was everpresent - this was now.
Once it stopped becoming his world, he managed to look up, and registered it was Gillian Kruger he had seen under the table, now scrambling across the room. Jill wasn't exactly someone he was friends with, or even friendly with, or even on a Jill-name basis with, but he knew of her enough that he at least liked what he heard. God only knew it was hard being an anti-CR person in a pro-CR world, even if their actual personalities never aligned to the point they'd even had a conversation.
But like...she had to get it, right? She'd get it better than anyone. It, being the cuts all over him. They both knew it wasn't real, so maybe he could explain it to her, get her to understand, help him do what he was supposed to be doing. He was good at the whole people thing when he wasn't pretending to be boring and unmemorable.
"I'm not gonna hurt you, okay?" he said, arms outstretched. When it became clear to himself that he was just showing off his handiwork, and that it maybe wasn't the conversation starter of the year, he shrunk them back to himself.
"I've just been trying some things out. I don't want to kill anyone, I just want to get out of here, doesn't everyone?"
And despite his best instincts, he took a step forward.
Once it stopped becoming his world, he managed to look up, and registered it was Gillian Kruger he had seen under the table, now scrambling across the room. Jill wasn't exactly someone he was friends with, or even friendly with, or even on a Jill-name basis with, but he knew of her enough that he at least liked what he heard. God only knew it was hard being an anti-CR person in a pro-CR world, even if their actual personalities never aligned to the point they'd even had a conversation.
But like...she had to get it, right? She'd get it better than anyone. It, being the cuts all over him. They both knew it wasn't real, so maybe he could explain it to her, get her to understand, help him do what he was supposed to be doing. He was good at the whole people thing when he wasn't pretending to be boring and unmemorable.
"I'm not gonna hurt you, okay?" he said, arms outstretched. When it became clear to himself that he was just showing off his handiwork, and that it maybe wasn't the conversation starter of the year, he shrunk them back to himself.
"I've just been trying some things out. I don't want to kill anyone, I just want to get out of here, doesn't everyone?"
And despite his best instincts, he took a step forward.
There was something worrying about Boston.
The way he approached with his arms outstretched, and the way he looked at her with some sort of curiosity. It seemed familiar. It seemed like she had just seen something like that despite her best effort. Someone desperate for an escape.
Did he mean he would kill her for his own survival or did he mean he would kill her to free her from this simulated Hell?
Both of them were terrifying to Gillian, and both them reminded her that this body that wasn't hers was so, so small compared to her real one. Her right hand that had laid flat on the mirror now laid on the metal frame on its side. Her fingers hooked underneath while she took a step back. She didn't want to be the next thing he tried out. She didn't want to be anything at all to him. She wanted to hide.
In her own desperate and also dehydrated mind, she viewed Boston as a threat - and she knew her unaffected mind would believe the same thing.
"Back off. I'm serious. Don't- don't hurt me."
She felt her swollen eye twitch. She didn't want to be hurt again.
The way he approached with his arms outstretched, and the way he looked at her with some sort of curiosity. It seemed familiar. It seemed like she had just seen something like that despite her best effort. Someone desperate for an escape.
Did he mean he would kill her for his own survival or did he mean he would kill her to free her from this simulated Hell?
Both of them were terrifying to Gillian, and both them reminded her that this body that wasn't hers was so, so small compared to her real one. Her right hand that had laid flat on the mirror now laid on the metal frame on its side. Her fingers hooked underneath while she took a step back. She didn't want to be the next thing he tried out. She didn't want to be anything at all to him. She wanted to hide.
In her own desperate and also dehydrated mind, she viewed Boston as a threat - and she knew her unaffected mind would believe the same thing.
"Back off. I'm serious. Don't- don't hurt me."
She felt her swollen eye twitch. She didn't want to be hurt again.
Boston really didn't know what to do here. He was so used to not having to engage with people, especially in this body, that the normal confidence that ran through his veins in the real world had become thrombosis. In any other time, he would have tried to figure out what it meant, why he could talk with people so easily when he wanted to in his football body but everyone here just seemed to be scared and annoyed with him, but it's not like he had the time to compare.
He was planning on taking another step forward, but he decided against it, so his foot just hung in the air for a bit before landing back by his side.
"Okay, look, not moving."
What was next? He could disarm himself to show he wasn't a threat at all, but that would mean Gillian probably had something that he didn't. He wasn't a fan of that idea. Even if things turned sour, he could probably defend himself, but he didn't want to have to. He just wanted people to understand what he was talking about, and every minute it couldn't happen he felt more and more frustrated.
"Look, I'm just gonna-" he said, reaching for the holster with the knife in it clipped around his belt loop. If he just sat this thing on the table, away from his body, then maybe things could calm down. For her, at least, he was perfectly calm.
However, in that moment, he forgot how it had been clipped. When he went for the handle, he accidentally unsheathed.
He was planning on taking another step forward, but he decided against it, so his foot just hung in the air for a bit before landing back by his side.
"Okay, look, not moving."
What was next? He could disarm himself to show he wasn't a threat at all, but that would mean Gillian probably had something that he didn't. He wasn't a fan of that idea. Even if things turned sour, he could probably defend himself, but he didn't want to have to. He just wanted people to understand what he was talking about, and every minute it couldn't happen he felt more and more frustrated.
"Look, I'm just gonna-" he said, reaching for the holster with the knife in it clipped around his belt loop. If he just sat this thing on the table, away from his body, then maybe things could calm down. For her, at least, he was perfectly calm.
However, in that moment, he forgot how it had been clipped. When he went for the handle, he accidentally unsheathed.
Her eyes widened at the knife disappearing from the holster. It was gone. Disappeared in an instinct. She knew the arena had glitches, and she knew that a clever person could, if they were sinister enough, use it for their own greed. Her eyes widened further.
He still had the knife, didn't he? He was going to get close to her and jam in one of the soft part of her body that she never wanted in the first place.
And, even if she wasn't sure if whatever she thought was the truth or not, she knew one thing for certain: she didn't want to be hurt again.
"I said: stay back!" Her fingers clustered behind mirror's frame, unhinging it. With her other hand, she raised it above her head, and brought it against the boy's face.
He still had the knife, didn't he? He was going to get close to her and jam in one of the soft part of her body that she never wanted in the first place.
And, even if she wasn't sure if whatever she thought was the truth or not, she knew one thing for certain: she didn't want to be hurt again.
"I said: stay back!" Her fingers clustered behind mirror's frame, unhinging it. With her other hand, she raised it above her head, and brought it against the boy's face.
Briefly, a light appeared.
Boston quickly realized his mistake, and quickly tried to re-sheathe his knife.
"No, no-look I'm-"
And then, Gillian was in front of him, and the mirror met his head. For a split second, he felt the concussive pressure of the mirror hitting his face, but within nanoseconds, it disappeared. In fact, a lot of things disappeared in the moment. He had still been hit, because he could feel himself pummeled backwards, but as he fell through the air, something changed.
Every colour filled the air, digging its fingernails into his eyeballs. He was blind, for that moment and forever. He heard a shattering echo throughout the universe, tinkling and snapping. He felt his arms snap outwards, like he was being pulled into the air like Vecna. And in every pore was a scream, his own and another's, as he was smothered by its malleable glass.
And then, within moments, he was back in the classroom, surrounded by shards. Gillian was nowhere. Boston blinked. What? He just got hit in the head, didn't he? Like, Gillian was right there? What just happened? He saw the light, he felt everything happen at once. And now, nothing? He lifted a heavy arm to scratch the side of his head, where once a mirror hit but now felt soft and cold.
He took a step backwards, and underneath his feet he felt five toes snap.
"FUC-"
The sudden shots of pain running up his right legs buckled him, and he started falling to the ground. He was falling to his side, where he expected to land on his ribs, but before the ground came, he felt another snap as a sharp corner on his side cracked, and with even more pain rocketing around his unfamiliar bones he fell on his chest. Broken toes, broken...arm...?
And then he was on the ground, heavy and sluggish, where he was supposed to be prone, laying flat, but instead he felt a round lump in his chest, one that wasn't there before. It moved as he breathed, heavily rising and falling.
What the FUCK WAS GOING ON!?
He tried moving his other arm, only to feel like it was snapped to his side, range of motion limited. Was he caught on his shirt? He looked over to try and pull it away, and it was only for trying to manage his other pain that he didn't immediately scream, already fighting the urge to vomit.
Boston was born with two arms. A third was now shooting out of the left side of his ribs, aiming for the air but catching his left forearm, shooting through the bones. Its fingers made it through, giving him two small lumps surrounding three unmistakable fingers, motionless. With the full knowledge of what he'd seen, he stopped moving, even though he was buckled by the urge to try and fix his broken toes and...broken...?
Filled with the utmost future regret, he looked at his other side, and his throat crackled in pain as he saw what could only be another arm, protruding from his initial armpit before jutting back at the elbow back into his ribs again. He saw the now blackening bruise from where he'd landed on it, doing untold damage to his fourth elbow. He had lost the fight against his urge, and the floor in front of his face was now puddled with vomit, as his throat rattled around the scream that was stuck there from before.
Boston could still move his right arm, so he shot it to a desk. He pulled himself up, a remarkably hard feat considering how heavy everything felt, and turned himself around, trying to lay on his back, avoiding his vomit as he fought every urge to scream and cry. As his back met the ground, he felt another snap as something else broke, and he contorted and lost the fight against his screams. Even with all of that, he still managed to pull his shirt down to find out what was on his chest.
The back of a head of brown hair, twin braids, curled down his chest. That was Gillian's hair.
Boston felt his arms shake, even the new ones lodged, as he stared further down at the malformed lump of flesh that had become his body, ridges of bone and flesh protruding from his belly that had never belonged to him. His screams turned from fear to cataclysm, because what was once his body had now even further been taken.
Gillian's body was now lodged inside of him.
"No, no-look I'm-"
And then, Gillian was in front of him, and the mirror met his head. For a split second, he felt the concussive pressure of the mirror hitting his face, but within nanoseconds, it disappeared. In fact, a lot of things disappeared in the moment. He had still been hit, because he could feel himself pummeled backwards, but as he fell through the air, something changed.
Every colour filled the air, digging its fingernails into his eyeballs. He was blind, for that moment and forever. He heard a shattering echo throughout the universe, tinkling and snapping. He felt his arms snap outwards, like he was being pulled into the air like Vecna. And in every pore was a scream, his own and another's, as he was smothered by its malleable glass.
And then, within moments, he was back in the classroom, surrounded by shards. Gillian was nowhere. Boston blinked. What? He just got hit in the head, didn't he? Like, Gillian was right there? What just happened? He saw the light, he felt everything happen at once. And now, nothing? He lifted a heavy arm to scratch the side of his head, where once a mirror hit but now felt soft and cold.
He took a step backwards, and underneath his feet he felt five toes snap.
"FUC-"
The sudden shots of pain running up his right legs buckled him, and he started falling to the ground. He was falling to his side, where he expected to land on his ribs, but before the ground came, he felt another snap as a sharp corner on his side cracked, and with even more pain rocketing around his unfamiliar bones he fell on his chest. Broken toes, broken...arm...?
And then he was on the ground, heavy and sluggish, where he was supposed to be prone, laying flat, but instead he felt a round lump in his chest, one that wasn't there before. It moved as he breathed, heavily rising and falling.
What the FUCK WAS GOING ON!?
He tried moving his other arm, only to feel like it was snapped to his side, range of motion limited. Was he caught on his shirt? He looked over to try and pull it away, and it was only for trying to manage his other pain that he didn't immediately scream, already fighting the urge to vomit.
Boston was born with two arms. A third was now shooting out of the left side of his ribs, aiming for the air but catching his left forearm, shooting through the bones. Its fingers made it through, giving him two small lumps surrounding three unmistakable fingers, motionless. With the full knowledge of what he'd seen, he stopped moving, even though he was buckled by the urge to try and fix his broken toes and...broken...?
Filled with the utmost future regret, he looked at his other side, and his throat crackled in pain as he saw what could only be another arm, protruding from his initial armpit before jutting back at the elbow back into his ribs again. He saw the now blackening bruise from where he'd landed on it, doing untold damage to his fourth elbow. He had lost the fight against his urge, and the floor in front of his face was now puddled with vomit, as his throat rattled around the scream that was stuck there from before.
Boston could still move his right arm, so he shot it to a desk. He pulled himself up, a remarkably hard feat considering how heavy everything felt, and turned himself around, trying to lay on his back, avoiding his vomit as he fought every urge to scream and cry. As his back met the ground, he felt another snap as something else broke, and he contorted and lost the fight against his screams. Even with all of that, he still managed to pull his shirt down to find out what was on his chest.
The back of a head of brown hair, twin braids, curled down his chest. That was Gillian's hair.
Boston felt his arms shake, even the new ones lodged, as he stared further down at the malformed lump of flesh that had become his body, ridges of bone and flesh protruding from his belly that had never belonged to him. His screams turned from fear to cataclysm, because what was once his body had now even further been taken.
Gillian's body was now lodged inside of him.
With the only arm he could move, Boston thrashed, trying to find out where the rest of his body was, and everything he could feel but not yet see moved with him. The desks nearby were smacked over, colliding on top of him as they fell at difficult angles, as the catastrophe remained in his voice, unending. He felt a collision not where his leg was supposed to be, but from skin, bone and muscle jutting out too early like he'd attached a stilt to the front of his leg. Boston had seen what happened to his chest, yet he knew if he looked any further downwards, below where he stabbed himself on the first day trying to find his dick, he would lose what remained. His eyes gripped the ceiling tiles, and he felt the pain vibrate upwards, no longer content with just being the toes under his feet. And with every thrash, he felt the small snap that was lodged in his back go further, and further, until something broke and a sharp something stabbed with tiny sickles, and something cried thick and prolonged.
And yet Boston thrashed onwards, as though if he shook free, if enough pieces of the world fell into him, he could end the nightmare. That the new body melded into his could be shaken off like an oversized coat, and yet for every second he remained he felt another zipper rip, another button snap, another part of him wrong. Something hard, something that he could barely make out as calloused, was jutting out of his right shoe, stopping a chair from collapsing onto his real toes. His midsection was deep, dense, and despite a whole desk falling onto his pelvis, hitting what had to have been the cut in his underwear? He felt nothing. The arms he'd seen, the arms that orchestrated the ephialtes, were still stuck in place. Half of a head was stuck in his chest, and he was beginning to realize the other half was where the snapping on his back begun.
But it didn't end there, because that's where the tininess began. He felt spots of sensitivity through the score, like he'd been pricked with wear. The crying on his back, born from the snap, ran over these spots, and something else happened. He arched from a pure nerve being run over coals, feeling it pool in his shirt, and he hung there, realizing he'd felt the same thing before, but not there. Afraid to move his limbs or Gillian's limbs any further, he moved his tongue, shaking as it did so. His teeth were in his mouth, the same fuzz that had for some reason followed him into the cyber world, and yet he could never do anything about it. But the similar sensation wasn't contained, because he felt a pulse on the top of his mouth, and his tongue traveled.
There was another tooth there. One that wasn't his.
At some point, Gillian's head had burst in all directions. The back of her skull was on his chest, and he still couldn't see her face, but part of her mouth had ended up in his. He felt another, now becoming more afraid of how to move his very tongue, until he found another dangle of flesh and muscle where it wasn't supposed to be - one little spasm, directly from underneath his own.
And it was at that point his tongue shot to the roof of his mouth and stayed there, held by all the willpower his physical body - his REAL body - once had.
He wasn't a human anymore. He wasn't even a person, he was a pile of flesh and bones and muscle and what was once Gillian piled inside of him like a sausage casing.
He had to escape it.
Some time after the catastrophe in his throat faded, and still afraid of looking downwards, Boston's head, still afraid of what he could not see of himself, scanned beyond the root and tried to see what was from his head. He felt something fold in the back of his neck that wasn't supposed to, but that only stopped him for a moment. When he was sure nothing was going to bend or break, he continued. He saw the door he entered the room through - he saw it slightly open, having not closed it properly when he arrived. That was supposed to be the follow-up to the drink now spilled on the other side of the room.
Boston just needed to get into the hallway.
He couldn't fucking move, though. The fucking brainpower he needed to expel to get himself used to his CR body was nothing compared to now having to move one almost twice as heavy as before. The everpresent fear of seeing what had become of his legs meant he wasn't going to use them, so all he could do was try to crawl. One meager attempt at turning over later, unable to go one way but facing the paint of an unknown elbow injury on the other, he found himself leaning on his new skull, face locked into the path of the door that was ajar by only a technicality.
His hand splay outwards on the linoleum in front of him, and tried to pull. No grip. It wasn't just the sweat, it was the weight. Every time he tried to gain friction, he slid. He tried wiping it on his shirt - it knocked his injured elbow again, sending pain echoing back through his body, and that was when the catastrophe in his voice turned to tragedy, because now he was just crying over the screaming. He couldn't even move his arm - the one thing he had left - without fumbling himself.
But it wasn't the end yet - after numerous failed attempts, he started to earn his grip. For a few inches, the bloat that was his body had momentum. All it needed was his fingernails, gripping into a surface it had no right to be in. It worked. They hurt, but it worked. He extended his fingertips as far as he could go again, and kept pulling. Within somewhere between a minute and an hour, numerous desks pushed aside by simple moving through them-
-the doorway was in reach.
The fingertips, now bloody and raw, nudged the heavy wood of the door, and it began to creak open. The tragedy turned to the saccharine as he saw his path out of hell. It sung in his throat, sounding almost like a laugh if he remembered what they were, and he tried to grip the metal lining on the floor. It was between the fingernail falling out of its socket, and the inch he managed to travel, that he then realized what was wrong with this.
He was still in a death game with his classmates.
Some of them had killed.
And he was a pile of flesh on the floor that couldn't stand on his own two feet.
That was when Boston's body curled up as much as it could, cognizant of the new ribs and spine in his belly that wouldn't let him, and the catastrophe and the tragedy met in the middle as he silently made a voice one could only describe as a gray hum.
And yet Boston thrashed onwards, as though if he shook free, if enough pieces of the world fell into him, he could end the nightmare. That the new body melded into his could be shaken off like an oversized coat, and yet for every second he remained he felt another zipper rip, another button snap, another part of him wrong. Something hard, something that he could barely make out as calloused, was jutting out of his right shoe, stopping a chair from collapsing onto his real toes. His midsection was deep, dense, and despite a whole desk falling onto his pelvis, hitting what had to have been the cut in his underwear? He felt nothing. The arms he'd seen, the arms that orchestrated the ephialtes, were still stuck in place. Half of a head was stuck in his chest, and he was beginning to realize the other half was where the snapping on his back begun.
But it didn't end there, because that's where the tininess began. He felt spots of sensitivity through the score, like he'd been pricked with wear. The crying on his back, born from the snap, ran over these spots, and something else happened. He arched from a pure nerve being run over coals, feeling it pool in his shirt, and he hung there, realizing he'd felt the same thing before, but not there. Afraid to move his limbs or Gillian's limbs any further, he moved his tongue, shaking as it did so. His teeth were in his mouth, the same fuzz that had for some reason followed him into the cyber world, and yet he could never do anything about it. But the similar sensation wasn't contained, because he felt a pulse on the top of his mouth, and his tongue traveled.
There was another tooth there. One that wasn't his.
At some point, Gillian's head had burst in all directions. The back of her skull was on his chest, and he still couldn't see her face, but part of her mouth had ended up in his. He felt another, now becoming more afraid of how to move his very tongue, until he found another dangle of flesh and muscle where it wasn't supposed to be - one little spasm, directly from underneath his own.
And it was at that point his tongue shot to the roof of his mouth and stayed there, held by all the willpower his physical body - his REAL body - once had.
He wasn't a human anymore. He wasn't even a person, he was a pile of flesh and bones and muscle and what was once Gillian piled inside of him like a sausage casing.
He had to escape it.
Some time after the catastrophe in his throat faded, and still afraid of looking downwards, Boston's head, still afraid of what he could not see of himself, scanned beyond the root and tried to see what was from his head. He felt something fold in the back of his neck that wasn't supposed to, but that only stopped him for a moment. When he was sure nothing was going to bend or break, he continued. He saw the door he entered the room through - he saw it slightly open, having not closed it properly when he arrived. That was supposed to be the follow-up to the drink now spilled on the other side of the room.
Boston just needed to get into the hallway.
He couldn't fucking move, though. The fucking brainpower he needed to expel to get himself used to his CR body was nothing compared to now having to move one almost twice as heavy as before. The everpresent fear of seeing what had become of his legs meant he wasn't going to use them, so all he could do was try to crawl. One meager attempt at turning over later, unable to go one way but facing the paint of an unknown elbow injury on the other, he found himself leaning on his new skull, face locked into the path of the door that was ajar by only a technicality.
His hand splay outwards on the linoleum in front of him, and tried to pull. No grip. It wasn't just the sweat, it was the weight. Every time he tried to gain friction, he slid. He tried wiping it on his shirt - it knocked his injured elbow again, sending pain echoing back through his body, and that was when the catastrophe in his voice turned to tragedy, because now he was just crying over the screaming. He couldn't even move his arm - the one thing he had left - without fumbling himself.
But it wasn't the end yet - after numerous failed attempts, he started to earn his grip. For a few inches, the bloat that was his body had momentum. All it needed was his fingernails, gripping into a surface it had no right to be in. It worked. They hurt, but it worked. He extended his fingertips as far as he could go again, and kept pulling. Within somewhere between a minute and an hour, numerous desks pushed aside by simple moving through them-
-the doorway was in reach.
The fingertips, now bloody and raw, nudged the heavy wood of the door, and it began to creak open. The tragedy turned to the saccharine as he saw his path out of hell. It sung in his throat, sounding almost like a laugh if he remembered what they were, and he tried to grip the metal lining on the floor. It was between the fingernail falling out of its socket, and the inch he managed to travel, that he then realized what was wrong with this.
He was still in a death game with his classmates.
Some of them had killed.
And he was a pile of flesh on the floor that couldn't stand on his own two feet.
That was when Boston's body curled up as much as it could, cognizant of the new ribs and spine in his belly that wouldn't let him, and the catastrophe and the tragedy met in the middle as he silently made a voice one could only describe as a gray hum.
Having long since lost the passage of time while laying on the ground, Boston took anywhere from a few seconds to a day to notice the shards.
His arms could bend, albeit not very well, so it had allowed him the courtesy of curling his torso into what could resemble a ball, though in reality it was probably more like an arch. But Boston couldn't move his torso forward very far, because of what he was beginning to realize were the new ribs and spine jutting out of his gut. So while he couldn't do anything about those, he could still reach. He could still gaze at the world on the floor.
He could still look at the remains of the mirror that he'd dragged along with him.
At some point in the light, the frame of the mirror disappeared, leaving only the broken shards behind. As he'd attempted to drag himself to an early death disguised as freedom, his pants, having burst to accommodate their new occupants at some point in the prism, took them on a journey. One had slipped into the seams, and every jostle brought it to attention, like an unwilling housemate who wanted a refill of the bucket. Boston couldn't bear to look any further down, but he needed to see them. He needed to look what had made him this way in its eyes, or whatever could have been eyes on a thing that could just do this, destroy his body and remain a nothing.
His own closed, and he began to pull himself around. The scraped surface of his fingertips helped, but he could do this by himself. Always aware of the extra elbow, always aware of the other arm which could not move due to being propped up by the other, he slowly began moving his arm and his head to the small accumulation of mirror shards that took the long journey across the ground with him. For the entire time he moved, he did not look down at what had become of the legs. But soon the shards were in front of him, and in a move driven only desperately by vanity, he looked for his face in them. Unable to drag himself any further, his only free hand clasped desperately over them, attempting to pick up at least one no matter how much it cut him. Within moments, he drew the blue of the mirror shard back to his face.
He saw himself. Not his real self, of course, but his..."avatar". Fat chin, fat cheeks, small features, terrible hair, glasses he didn't need because he could see perfectly fine in both worlds, an awful grey shirt. It was him, split between the shard, his thick neck swaddled on one side and his lie of a face on the other. He hated looking at himself, only here, but at least it was grounding. None of Gillian had ended up there, that was all he could take solace in. He lay there, small eyes glaring into a tiny piece of reflection, before the part that was hanging by its thread snapped away, falling to the ground.
But in the brief moment he saw the new shard fall, he didn't see himself - he saw Gillian.
The old one fell from his hand, the new blue scooped back into what he could see.
He could no longer see Boston in there, real or avatar. He only saw the girl from before - Gillian's face. Her fat nose, her thin lips, her ugly eyes, all of it stuck in the shard. He raised his face, she raised hers too. He contorted, it did so. Every movement he made, Gillian made the same one. He could only see the girl in his movements. Within moments, he threw it away, and grabbed another shard.
It was his face again. But within moments, that shard was once again gone, and another had taken its place. Gillian.
Both thrown, he found a new one. His. Then Gillian.
Every single shard he could get his hand on, he threw once he saw a face, regardless of who it was. Both were lies. Neither of it was real. He could have cut himself a new face and it would have shown him the old one, the old fake one that taunted him in every class because it reminded him of how he never stood a chance of fitting in, because he was normal. He didn't like video games, or this fake cyber reality, or sports leagues that weren't played with real sports, he liked things that the real world liked and his class saw fit to make it his hell. Nobody wanted to watch UFC, nobody wanted to jam on the guitar, nobody wanted to hike - they were all stuck in this world like a boil, no lance necessary, and now it had ruined him. He'd caved to it, he'd changed himself, and now he was here, where he shouldn't have been, because all of those people out there deserved the worst thing that could ever happen to them and yet he was here on the ground living it out in their place.
And as the last shard he could see was flung into the corner, the gray hum returned, trying to even fathom what he was supposed to do. But all he could think about was the nick that had been made in his leg by one remaining shard in reach. He closed his eyes, and bent forward as far as he could, trying not to crush his frontal spine but clamoring desperately for the last one. Eventually, he felt it, sharp and rough but slightly dewy from the cuts it was soaking. He brought it back to his face, and looked into the silver.
He saw Boston. Not Gillian, or the fakeness that had become his life, but his real face. His handsome features that the girls loved, the smile on his face that showed his love for the life he'd lived, the hair he took care of, by which he meant actual care - haircuts, styling, fades, the works, everything that showed off just how Boston he was. He saw himself, finally, for the first time since he'd started, and he could only stay and stare. He'd almost forgotten who Boston was, but he could see himself. He moved his brow, it moved alongside him. He winked at himself, and his self winked back. The saccharine made an appearance, and he saw the saccharine in the real world.
And the passage of time would not tell him how long he looked for, but all it could tell him is that eventually his hand lost its grip on the shard - it fell to the wayside, and suddenly all he could see was the scattered remains of his legs.
On one side, his left, were the waves. A leg appeared, before disappearing, carving curves of fat and muscle where there shouldn't have been. It vanished into a waist of width, where he and Gillian had come together at the wrong angle. But his other leg was not. The back of Gillian's foot protruded from the top of his shoe, and the ankle joined at his shin. Below the shadow he could see her knee, jerking at an unnatural angle into the back of his own, and the back of her thigh had burst out of the front of his own. It too vanished into the waste of his width, showing where their bodies had fused.
The catastrophe was gone. The tragedy was gone. The saccharine was gone. The gray hum was nowhere. Only Boston's mouth hung, staring at the remains. It was never his body in the first place, but now it was even less. Twisted pounds of flesh, anchoring him to the ground. He could no longer see the Boston in the final shard, the Boston that should have been out living his life, and not stuck in something that didn't belong to him.
He thought about the cut he made to himself on the first day, and all the cuts that followed. They'd hurt. They'd done irreparable damage to what counted as his skin. What was that compared to this? What was anything compared to this?
He still hadn't found what he'd been looking for.
He could.
In the moments following, Boston reached for his knife.
His arms could bend, albeit not very well, so it had allowed him the courtesy of curling his torso into what could resemble a ball, though in reality it was probably more like an arch. But Boston couldn't move his torso forward very far, because of what he was beginning to realize were the new ribs and spine jutting out of his gut. So while he couldn't do anything about those, he could still reach. He could still gaze at the world on the floor.
He could still look at the remains of the mirror that he'd dragged along with him.
At some point in the light, the frame of the mirror disappeared, leaving only the broken shards behind. As he'd attempted to drag himself to an early death disguised as freedom, his pants, having burst to accommodate their new occupants at some point in the prism, took them on a journey. One had slipped into the seams, and every jostle brought it to attention, like an unwilling housemate who wanted a refill of the bucket. Boston couldn't bear to look any further down, but he needed to see them. He needed to look what had made him this way in its eyes, or whatever could have been eyes on a thing that could just do this, destroy his body and remain a nothing.
His own closed, and he began to pull himself around. The scraped surface of his fingertips helped, but he could do this by himself. Always aware of the extra elbow, always aware of the other arm which could not move due to being propped up by the other, he slowly began moving his arm and his head to the small accumulation of mirror shards that took the long journey across the ground with him. For the entire time he moved, he did not look down at what had become of the legs. But soon the shards were in front of him, and in a move driven only desperately by vanity, he looked for his face in them. Unable to drag himself any further, his only free hand clasped desperately over them, attempting to pick up at least one no matter how much it cut him. Within moments, he drew the blue of the mirror shard back to his face.
He saw himself. Not his real self, of course, but his..."avatar". Fat chin, fat cheeks, small features, terrible hair, glasses he didn't need because he could see perfectly fine in both worlds, an awful grey shirt. It was him, split between the shard, his thick neck swaddled on one side and his lie of a face on the other. He hated looking at himself, only here, but at least it was grounding. None of Gillian had ended up there, that was all he could take solace in. He lay there, small eyes glaring into a tiny piece of reflection, before the part that was hanging by its thread snapped away, falling to the ground.
But in the brief moment he saw the new shard fall, he didn't see himself - he saw Gillian.
The old one fell from his hand, the new blue scooped back into what he could see.
He could no longer see Boston in there, real or avatar. He only saw the girl from before - Gillian's face. Her fat nose, her thin lips, her ugly eyes, all of it stuck in the shard. He raised his face, she raised hers too. He contorted, it did so. Every movement he made, Gillian made the same one. He could only see the girl in his movements. Within moments, he threw it away, and grabbed another shard.
It was his face again. But within moments, that shard was once again gone, and another had taken its place. Gillian.
Both thrown, he found a new one. His. Then Gillian.
Every single shard he could get his hand on, he threw once he saw a face, regardless of who it was. Both were lies. Neither of it was real. He could have cut himself a new face and it would have shown him the old one, the old fake one that taunted him in every class because it reminded him of how he never stood a chance of fitting in, because he was normal. He didn't like video games, or this fake cyber reality, or sports leagues that weren't played with real sports, he liked things that the real world liked and his class saw fit to make it his hell. Nobody wanted to watch UFC, nobody wanted to jam on the guitar, nobody wanted to hike - they were all stuck in this world like a boil, no lance necessary, and now it had ruined him. He'd caved to it, he'd changed himself, and now he was here, where he shouldn't have been, because all of those people out there deserved the worst thing that could ever happen to them and yet he was here on the ground living it out in their place.
And as the last shard he could see was flung into the corner, the gray hum returned, trying to even fathom what he was supposed to do. But all he could think about was the nick that had been made in his leg by one remaining shard in reach. He closed his eyes, and bent forward as far as he could, trying not to crush his frontal spine but clamoring desperately for the last one. Eventually, he felt it, sharp and rough but slightly dewy from the cuts it was soaking. He brought it back to his face, and looked into the silver.
He saw Boston. Not Gillian, or the fakeness that had become his life, but his real face. His handsome features that the girls loved, the smile on his face that showed his love for the life he'd lived, the hair he took care of, by which he meant actual care - haircuts, styling, fades, the works, everything that showed off just how Boston he was. He saw himself, finally, for the first time since he'd started, and he could only stay and stare. He'd almost forgotten who Boston was, but he could see himself. He moved his brow, it moved alongside him. He winked at himself, and his self winked back. The saccharine made an appearance, and he saw the saccharine in the real world.
And the passage of time would not tell him how long he looked for, but all it could tell him is that eventually his hand lost its grip on the shard - it fell to the wayside, and suddenly all he could see was the scattered remains of his legs.
On one side, his left, were the waves. A leg appeared, before disappearing, carving curves of fat and muscle where there shouldn't have been. It vanished into a waist of width, where he and Gillian had come together at the wrong angle. But his other leg was not. The back of Gillian's foot protruded from the top of his shoe, and the ankle joined at his shin. Below the shadow he could see her knee, jerking at an unnatural angle into the back of his own, and the back of her thigh had burst out of the front of his own. It too vanished into the waste of his width, showing where their bodies had fused.
The catastrophe was gone. The tragedy was gone. The saccharine was gone. The gray hum was nowhere. Only Boston's mouth hung, staring at the remains. It was never his body in the first place, but now it was even less. Twisted pounds of flesh, anchoring him to the ground. He could no longer see the Boston in the final shard, the Boston that should have been out living his life, and not stuck in something that didn't belong to him.
He thought about the cut he made to himself on the first day, and all the cuts that followed. They'd hurt. They'd done irreparable damage to what counted as his skin. What was that compared to this? What was anything compared to this?
He still hadn't found what he'd been looking for.
He could.
In the moments following, Boston reached for his knife.
He stabbed the linoleum with the invisible knife once more. In a different time, he would have used that to traverse the ground, and mourn the lost fingernail that was. But it wasn't that time anymore.
That knife meant something. In some way, the people who ran this game knew what would become of him, maybe they planned it from the beginning. Maybe all roads were meant to lead to here. Maybe by doing this, he was giving them what he wanted. But at the end of this very, very long day, he knew what he had to do, and what he had to do was get his old body back.
And he was going to have to take the quickest path possible.
As he looked down at the nothingness that was his knife, Boston felt his tongue leave the roof of his mouth, and nudge against the part of Gillian's tongue that had lodged its way inside the floor of his mouth. His throat tightened, urging to gag. He stabbed the ground once more. The knife was exactly one stab long. He already had a better idea of this than when he started.
They would have to start first.
Boston held the knife between his knees by the blade, and reached inside his mouth. He felt around, the space inside being too different between tongue and finger, but eventually he found the scrapings that were a tongue that was not his. They dug around, filling his mouth with a copper smell, until he found the edges. Shaking his fingers, he pulled. To his hands, it was like he was trying to pull his real tongue out, and every time he got close to what was meant to be the snap, his head jerked backwards as his fingers shook too much, and it was back where he started.
Wasn't going to work. Needed to be the knife. Boston used his tongue, not Gillian's, to push hers forward. His hand found the grip of the invisible knife, and without a second thought he lodged the blade inside his mouth and began cutting. If it wasn't for the burning intense pain rocketing through every taut muscle in his jaw, bellowing echoed catastrophe around the room, it would have just been like cutting off one of those dead taste buds.
It was not an elegant process, cutting out half a tongue. But it was okay. Nothing would ever as hurt as long as he knew the reward that awaited the end result. He envisioned himself carefully slicing around the tongue, before pulling it out, but every time he scraped the hard part of his jaw it amplified the catastrophe into cataclysm until he couldn't take it anymore, so within seconds he changed the plan and began slicing it off from the underneath.
A few moments later, something in his mouth dislodged, like he'd coughed up a meatball. He spat forward, and part of Gillian's tongue landed on the ground in front of him. A half scream, a half moan, with half his grip still on the knife, he took it into his hand and threw it across the room, over to where the mirror that started it all once hung.
With all the movements in his mouth his tongue made, he became aware of the teeth that shouldn't be there. Once again, he found the foreign bodies with his tongue, then found them differently with his fingers, and then differently again with his knife. But teeth were different to tongues. He couldn't just slice them off. Instead, he found the correct angle, and lodged the knife under the offending tooth. Using his own tooth as support, he stabbed forward, and attempted to lever it out of his jaw.
The pain almost knocked him out, and the screams didn't end when he lessened the pressure. To that end, through the orchestra of a hundred flayed tooth canals and one jock, he continued, and feeling the loose ends of his gums ripped to the wind he pulled out one of Gillian's teeth, and spat it in another direction entirely.
Every future tooth was worse. Some where in the roof of his mouth, some were on the inside of his lips, and there were even two behind his molars, hidden beneath his gums. But through a mouthful of blood, dutifully spat onto his pants, he got them all out. They scattered the homeroom like loose peppercorns.
His tongue could only feel open wounds, but it could no longer feel teeth or tongue. They were fine. It hurt, but they were fine. He'd had canker sores before, this was nothing.
Boston felt around his face, and nothing was different. Whatever had merged him and Gillian hadn't reached that far. He knew something was at the back of his neck, but the sudden experience taught him that he couldn't go there until he could move. Whatever leverage the now sore muscles of his mouth had given him, he needed to replicate it with his other hand. If he was going to slide off something he couldn't see, he needed to be able to feel it as he did it.
He turned the knife to his shirt, and sliced along the sleeves. His shoulders became bare, but with it came a line of sight to Gillian's fingers sticking through his forearm. He'd always known they were there, but seeing them again just reinvigorated him, bursting through the pain like a cool wave. He'd fixed his mouth, there wasn't anything he couldn't do now.
Boston ran one side of the knife along the remains of his shirt. He saw a line of pressure move forward. He turned his grip around, and tried again. Jagged teeth dragged across, bursting some tiny seams he wasn't close enough to see. He nodded, to nobody in particular, before spitting out the new accumulation of blood in his mouth, and putting his immovable arm onto the nearest chair.
He could manage this - he'd cut himself before, what was cutting someone else if not just the next step?
With that, he began sawing along his forearm, and he watched as an invisible knife tore into the skin of Gillian's thumb.
At once, his arm jerked as the catastrophe once again erupted from his lips, as if trying to flee his body, his own fingers twitching like ants under pesticide, the rest of the arm following in kind. The pain was the same, but different - focused, but everywhere. A spray of blood coated an invisible flat surface, and for a moment Boston could see the jagged teeth tearing. But for as much as he wanted to stop, as much as his arm had enough of this, he continued to saw. The rhythm became mechanical, for all the good it did, as he was in control of his own pain. He was in control of body now, he was going to rid of its invaders, as shown by the thumb tip falling off of his arm and to the ground. Much like the tongue, he picked it up with his half grip, and threw it southwards.
He placed the knife back level to his forearm, feeling the tap of the metal touch the exposed bone and muscle of what was now becoming his arm again. The sawing motion continued, and Boston continued to scream even before the knife met the index finger, foreign items twitching as he worked mechanically through the row.
Eventually, there was a pile of three fingers and tip on the ground, blood gushing from his arm like a water balloon with holes. It was a good thing it was coming from there - that was the normal reaction to having to cut out foreign invaders by yourself, and it was good that he was feeling this way. Once again, he picked up the pile of meat, and threw it topwise.
But that wasn't the end, Boston though, as he looked at his mended arm. There was still an awning holding his arm out.
Fingers were nothing, if you really thought about it. What were they but tiny cuts, like pimples, or tongues? This was the real test, the real proof of his commitment to his real body - he had to cut out Gillian's arm.
His fingers had clawn their way into the decorative holes at the base of the desk chair, locked there like parasites, having not moved since he began working on Gillian's middle finger. They held his arm in place, for all the good it would do for removing Gillian, which was actually quite a lot of good. He needed the good, he needed the encouragement, especially from his own body doing the right thing.
But there was no time to waste - Boston began to repeat the motion along the underside of his arm, and he watched as the teeth once again began to tear into the flesh. He was surprised that the pain was still here, long expecting it to have disappeared having drunk deep from the well, but every nerve burned supernova, reminding him of its presence - its lie. It could pretend all it wanted that the pain he was feeling was real, but even if this wasn't a computer program, even if this whole situation hadn't been caused by it, even if in the real world Gillian had became stuck inside of him, it was not his pain to feel. It wasn't him. It was Gillian's arm, it wasn't his arm, and through every shudder as the knife moved back and forth, he was grounded by this.
He didn't deserve to feel this pain, so it couldn't hurt him. Not really.
But eventually, he found something he couldn't overcome, and that was the feeling of stone halting the progress of his knife. He'd hit a bone. Every other time he'd been lucky or been given leverage, but he knew that Gillian's bones couldn't be cut through, so he moved his knife backwards, extruding it from the flesh. Looking at the underside, he saw one of the cuts he made not too long ago, going along the bottom of his forearm, only to be swallowed up by a spray of blood, but even beyond that he saw it lead into the new seam of skin where Gillian's met his, and
Boston immediately knew what he had to do.
He re-angled his knife, aiming into his own arm, and began cutting once again.
If anything, the fact he could now feel real pain - deserved pain - only made him cut faster. He was being noble here. He didn't need to get rid of this part of him, but he was. The choice was either this, or leave a lump of flesh hanging out because he didn't want it bad enough. He felt himself go further into his own arm, despite a heavy head telling him he might be angled too deep.
But he'd passed the point. He was no longer hindered by Gillian's bone. His cuts became faster, more vigorous, curving back away from Boston's arm, and the torrent of blood coated Gillian's arm like a red velvet glaze, the kind his dad always got for his work birthdays. It wasn't appetizing in real life, and it wasn't appetizing now, but the volume just meant he was close. For every motion, every start and end of the saw, he felt Gillian's arm become looser and looser.
In the final moments, he screamed.
The final tendons snapped. Gillian's wrist was freed from Boston's forearm, and fell heavily to the ground, like a sack of meat had fallen from the rack, slopping noisily around the linoleum. For the moments, or minutes, or hours that followed, Boston could only look at the gaping hole in his arm. His sacrifice. The flesh he had given so he could be free.
And in that moment, the nerves that had told him to feel everything, doused by ice.
He'd done it.
He'd done it.
He'd removed the part that didn't belong to him, and he could move his arm. His fingers untangled themselves from the chair, and he orbited his head with his now free hand. He had two now.
He could do anything.
And with that, the cutting became as natural to Boston as eating. With an unnatural glee, drowning out any notions of pain, he began hacking away at the other side of the arm lodged in his ribs, knife going through skin like it was butter. It was unnaturally fast, but he didn't care, because Gillian's forearm had been yanked from his body, and he threw it into the air, splattering across the window.
One down.
Knife edge pushed so hard against the flesh of his armpit he could literally sweat bullets, he lacerated through bicep and bone, letting the squish of the arm against the ground punctuate his move to the other side, gashing away wrist from rib. Again he threw the foreign object against the windows, twinning the other.
Two down.
He grabbed at the hair on his chest and hacked it away, not even bothering to pick it up as it lolled sadly down to the floor, almost floating in the blood.
Three down.
He grabbed at the spare tyre around his waist, and found unnatural bone. Without even waiting, he found the gap he needed, and started to cut. Within moments, the fat was gone.
He treated his right leg like a steak, and cut without wait. Gillian's leg tried him, falling to the side as he cut away her thigh as though trying to yank him from his newfound purpose, but he moved so fast that it didn't even impede him, because the ankle was next. He shook off the blood and viscera, before moving to the other side of his leg like he was coating himself in body soap. Toes. Knee. Midsection.
Four down.
And finally, his left leg. The difficult leg, the one that wanted to be creative. He felt it, up and down, every gap and cranny becoming a new degree of difficulty, as though trying to trick him into forgetting what he used to look like. That too fell. His knife had become a whittle, cracking through the lie. He saw Gillian's toes melt away, along with the fatness of her legs, her chubby ankles, her widened thighs, already such a lie since Boston knew what she really looked like.
And as the ever growing pile of flesh surrounding Boston threatened to smother him, despite the knife cutting and tearing, he found the ledge of the zipper and tore through the heavy coat.
His hands gripped the desks as he stood there, finally unburdened by the mistake. He took in deep, long breaths like he'd dunked his head in the tub for a little too long, but they finally expanded to meet him, and he brought his hands to his face.
Red, raw tendons coating bones formed the shape of fingers, but they were no longer a stubby sham. He saw the hole in his arm, shaped as though someone had taken a bite out of it, but there was no longer a girl's arm lodged inside of it. His shirt had been torn away, and the hair and skull no longer sat in his chest, nor the spine in his gut. His legs were the tree trunks they deserved to be, strong and lean, the perfect resting place for the perfect girl. His feet were the way they were supposed to be, the proper size, the proper strength, holding him upright. And even his underwear had been removed, his junk dangling daintily in the wind as he finally, FINALLY, realized what he'd won.
He'd actually done it. Not the feeling he'd felt when he'd just taken a measly fake arm out, but he'd reclaimed. His body was back. His body was his. Boston's body was where it was supposed to be.
The saccharine triumphed, and Boston laughed. Not a maniacal laughter, not at all, but the laughter of relief. He was free, free from the pile of flesh the game had tried to imprison him in, even giving him Gillian as a disadvantage.
He could take on anyone now. He was properly prepared.
Boston turned around to see where his bag had ended up, only for his eyes to meet the pile of flesh that remained.
He didn't remember the arm still being stuck in the chair. He didn't remember all the blood piling under it. He could have sworn he remembered taking Gillian's arm out entirely, but there it was, still attached to his former ribs, even if it had been freed from his forearm.
Strangely enough, he didn't remember touching his chest. His fingers lingered there, unable to find the skull. Or the ribs. Or the spine.
A cool breeze wafted through, and on his naked skin, he felt tiny spots of nerve on his back. Without a word, Boston put his hands on the base of his back, and started working upwards. He felt nothing, until he felt something.
Teeth.
Nose.
Eye socket.
His hands lingered, the skin sticky and raw. Tiny movements held them down, pores like leeches, sucking them in place.
Wordlessly, Boston collapsed to the ground.
His gaze could not move from the pile of flesh lodged in the chair, the array of arms and legs and skin and bone that he'd removed from himself. He saw Gillian's right arm. He saw her left arm. He saw his chin. He saw the knee. He saw the toes. He saw their waist.
Unable to move, Boston could only lay there, trying to remember what he'd taken from him that was his, and what was Gillian's.
That knife meant something. In some way, the people who ran this game knew what would become of him, maybe they planned it from the beginning. Maybe all roads were meant to lead to here. Maybe by doing this, he was giving them what he wanted. But at the end of this very, very long day, he knew what he had to do, and what he had to do was get his old body back.
And he was going to have to take the quickest path possible.
As he looked down at the nothingness that was his knife, Boston felt his tongue leave the roof of his mouth, and nudge against the part of Gillian's tongue that had lodged its way inside the floor of his mouth. His throat tightened, urging to gag. He stabbed the ground once more. The knife was exactly one stab long. He already had a better idea of this than when he started.
They would have to start first.
Boston held the knife between his knees by the blade, and reached inside his mouth. He felt around, the space inside being too different between tongue and finger, but eventually he found the scrapings that were a tongue that was not his. They dug around, filling his mouth with a copper smell, until he found the edges. Shaking his fingers, he pulled. To his hands, it was like he was trying to pull his real tongue out, and every time he got close to what was meant to be the snap, his head jerked backwards as his fingers shook too much, and it was back where he started.
Wasn't going to work. Needed to be the knife. Boston used his tongue, not Gillian's, to push hers forward. His hand found the grip of the invisible knife, and without a second thought he lodged the blade inside his mouth and began cutting. If it wasn't for the burning intense pain rocketing through every taut muscle in his jaw, bellowing echoed catastrophe around the room, it would have just been like cutting off one of those dead taste buds.
It was not an elegant process, cutting out half a tongue. But it was okay. Nothing would ever as hurt as long as he knew the reward that awaited the end result. He envisioned himself carefully slicing around the tongue, before pulling it out, but every time he scraped the hard part of his jaw it amplified the catastrophe into cataclysm until he couldn't take it anymore, so within seconds he changed the plan and began slicing it off from the underneath.
A few moments later, something in his mouth dislodged, like he'd coughed up a meatball. He spat forward, and part of Gillian's tongue landed on the ground in front of him. A half scream, a half moan, with half his grip still on the knife, he took it into his hand and threw it across the room, over to where the mirror that started it all once hung.
With all the movements in his mouth his tongue made, he became aware of the teeth that shouldn't be there. Once again, he found the foreign bodies with his tongue, then found them differently with his fingers, and then differently again with his knife. But teeth were different to tongues. He couldn't just slice them off. Instead, he found the correct angle, and lodged the knife under the offending tooth. Using his own tooth as support, he stabbed forward, and attempted to lever it out of his jaw.
The pain almost knocked him out, and the screams didn't end when he lessened the pressure. To that end, through the orchestra of a hundred flayed tooth canals and one jock, he continued, and feeling the loose ends of his gums ripped to the wind he pulled out one of Gillian's teeth, and spat it in another direction entirely.
Every future tooth was worse. Some where in the roof of his mouth, some were on the inside of his lips, and there were even two behind his molars, hidden beneath his gums. But through a mouthful of blood, dutifully spat onto his pants, he got them all out. They scattered the homeroom like loose peppercorns.
His tongue could only feel open wounds, but it could no longer feel teeth or tongue. They were fine. It hurt, but they were fine. He'd had canker sores before, this was nothing.
Boston felt around his face, and nothing was different. Whatever had merged him and Gillian hadn't reached that far. He knew something was at the back of his neck, but the sudden experience taught him that he couldn't go there until he could move. Whatever leverage the now sore muscles of his mouth had given him, he needed to replicate it with his other hand. If he was going to slide off something he couldn't see, he needed to be able to feel it as he did it.
He turned the knife to his shirt, and sliced along the sleeves. His shoulders became bare, but with it came a line of sight to Gillian's fingers sticking through his forearm. He'd always known they were there, but seeing them again just reinvigorated him, bursting through the pain like a cool wave. He'd fixed his mouth, there wasn't anything he couldn't do now.
Boston ran one side of the knife along the remains of his shirt. He saw a line of pressure move forward. He turned his grip around, and tried again. Jagged teeth dragged across, bursting some tiny seams he wasn't close enough to see. He nodded, to nobody in particular, before spitting out the new accumulation of blood in his mouth, and putting his immovable arm onto the nearest chair.
He could manage this - he'd cut himself before, what was cutting someone else if not just the next step?
With that, he began sawing along his forearm, and he watched as an invisible knife tore into the skin of Gillian's thumb.
At once, his arm jerked as the catastrophe once again erupted from his lips, as if trying to flee his body, his own fingers twitching like ants under pesticide, the rest of the arm following in kind. The pain was the same, but different - focused, but everywhere. A spray of blood coated an invisible flat surface, and for a moment Boston could see the jagged teeth tearing. But for as much as he wanted to stop, as much as his arm had enough of this, he continued to saw. The rhythm became mechanical, for all the good it did, as he was in control of his own pain. He was in control of body now, he was going to rid of its invaders, as shown by the thumb tip falling off of his arm and to the ground. Much like the tongue, he picked it up with his half grip, and threw it southwards.
He placed the knife back level to his forearm, feeling the tap of the metal touch the exposed bone and muscle of what was now becoming his arm again. The sawing motion continued, and Boston continued to scream even before the knife met the index finger, foreign items twitching as he worked mechanically through the row.
Eventually, there was a pile of three fingers and tip on the ground, blood gushing from his arm like a water balloon with holes. It was a good thing it was coming from there - that was the normal reaction to having to cut out foreign invaders by yourself, and it was good that he was feeling this way. Once again, he picked up the pile of meat, and threw it topwise.
But that wasn't the end, Boston though, as he looked at his mended arm. There was still an awning holding his arm out.
Fingers were nothing, if you really thought about it. What were they but tiny cuts, like pimples, or tongues? This was the real test, the real proof of his commitment to his real body - he had to cut out Gillian's arm.
His fingers had clawn their way into the decorative holes at the base of the desk chair, locked there like parasites, having not moved since he began working on Gillian's middle finger. They held his arm in place, for all the good it would do for removing Gillian, which was actually quite a lot of good. He needed the good, he needed the encouragement, especially from his own body doing the right thing.
But there was no time to waste - Boston began to repeat the motion along the underside of his arm, and he watched as the teeth once again began to tear into the flesh. He was surprised that the pain was still here, long expecting it to have disappeared having drunk deep from the well, but every nerve burned supernova, reminding him of its presence - its lie. It could pretend all it wanted that the pain he was feeling was real, but even if this wasn't a computer program, even if this whole situation hadn't been caused by it, even if in the real world Gillian had became stuck inside of him, it was not his pain to feel. It wasn't him. It was Gillian's arm, it wasn't his arm, and through every shudder as the knife moved back and forth, he was grounded by this.
He didn't deserve to feel this pain, so it couldn't hurt him. Not really.
But eventually, he found something he couldn't overcome, and that was the feeling of stone halting the progress of his knife. He'd hit a bone. Every other time he'd been lucky or been given leverage, but he knew that Gillian's bones couldn't be cut through, so he moved his knife backwards, extruding it from the flesh. Looking at the underside, he saw one of the cuts he made not too long ago, going along the bottom of his forearm, only to be swallowed up by a spray of blood, but even beyond that he saw it lead into the new seam of skin where Gillian's met his, and
Boston immediately knew what he had to do.
He re-angled his knife, aiming into his own arm, and began cutting once again.
If anything, the fact he could now feel real pain - deserved pain - only made him cut faster. He was being noble here. He didn't need to get rid of this part of him, but he was. The choice was either this, or leave a lump of flesh hanging out because he didn't want it bad enough. He felt himself go further into his own arm, despite a heavy head telling him he might be angled too deep.
But he'd passed the point. He was no longer hindered by Gillian's bone. His cuts became faster, more vigorous, curving back away from Boston's arm, and the torrent of blood coated Gillian's arm like a red velvet glaze, the kind his dad always got for his work birthdays. It wasn't appetizing in real life, and it wasn't appetizing now, but the volume just meant he was close. For every motion, every start and end of the saw, he felt Gillian's arm become looser and looser.
In the final moments, he screamed.
The final tendons snapped. Gillian's wrist was freed from Boston's forearm, and fell heavily to the ground, like a sack of meat had fallen from the rack, slopping noisily around the linoleum. For the moments, or minutes, or hours that followed, Boston could only look at the gaping hole in his arm. His sacrifice. The flesh he had given so he could be free.
And in that moment, the nerves that had told him to feel everything, doused by ice.
He'd done it.
He'd done it.
He'd removed the part that didn't belong to him, and he could move his arm. His fingers untangled themselves from the chair, and he orbited his head with his now free hand. He had two now.
He could do anything.
And with that, the cutting became as natural to Boston as eating. With an unnatural glee, drowning out any notions of pain, he began hacking away at the other side of the arm lodged in his ribs, knife going through skin like it was butter. It was unnaturally fast, but he didn't care, because Gillian's forearm had been yanked from his body, and he threw it into the air, splattering across the window.
One down.
Knife edge pushed so hard against the flesh of his armpit he could literally sweat bullets, he lacerated through bicep and bone, letting the squish of the arm against the ground punctuate his move to the other side, gashing away wrist from rib. Again he threw the foreign object against the windows, twinning the other.
Two down.
He grabbed at the hair on his chest and hacked it away, not even bothering to pick it up as it lolled sadly down to the floor, almost floating in the blood.
Three down.
He grabbed at the spare tyre around his waist, and found unnatural bone. Without even waiting, he found the gap he needed, and started to cut. Within moments, the fat was gone.
He treated his right leg like a steak, and cut without wait. Gillian's leg tried him, falling to the side as he cut away her thigh as though trying to yank him from his newfound purpose, but he moved so fast that it didn't even impede him, because the ankle was next. He shook off the blood and viscera, before moving to the other side of his leg like he was coating himself in body soap. Toes. Knee. Midsection.
Four down.
And finally, his left leg. The difficult leg, the one that wanted to be creative. He felt it, up and down, every gap and cranny becoming a new degree of difficulty, as though trying to trick him into forgetting what he used to look like. That too fell. His knife had become a whittle, cracking through the lie. He saw Gillian's toes melt away, along with the fatness of her legs, her chubby ankles, her widened thighs, already such a lie since Boston knew what she really looked like.
And as the ever growing pile of flesh surrounding Boston threatened to smother him, despite the knife cutting and tearing, he found the ledge of the zipper and tore through the heavy coat.
His hands gripped the desks as he stood there, finally unburdened by the mistake. He took in deep, long breaths like he'd dunked his head in the tub for a little too long, but they finally expanded to meet him, and he brought his hands to his face.
Red, raw tendons coating bones formed the shape of fingers, but they were no longer a stubby sham. He saw the hole in his arm, shaped as though someone had taken a bite out of it, but there was no longer a girl's arm lodged inside of it. His shirt had been torn away, and the hair and skull no longer sat in his chest, nor the spine in his gut. His legs were the tree trunks they deserved to be, strong and lean, the perfect resting place for the perfect girl. His feet were the way they were supposed to be, the proper size, the proper strength, holding him upright. And even his underwear had been removed, his junk dangling daintily in the wind as he finally, FINALLY, realized what he'd won.
He'd actually done it. Not the feeling he'd felt when he'd just taken a measly fake arm out, but he'd reclaimed. His body was back. His body was his. Boston's body was where it was supposed to be.
The saccharine triumphed, and Boston laughed. Not a maniacal laughter, not at all, but the laughter of relief. He was free, free from the pile of flesh the game had tried to imprison him in, even giving him Gillian as a disadvantage.
He could take on anyone now. He was properly prepared.
Boston turned around to see where his bag had ended up, only for his eyes to meet the pile of flesh that remained.
He didn't remember the arm still being stuck in the chair. He didn't remember all the blood piling under it. He could have sworn he remembered taking Gillian's arm out entirely, but there it was, still attached to his former ribs, even if it had been freed from his forearm.
Strangely enough, he didn't remember touching his chest. His fingers lingered there, unable to find the skull. Or the ribs. Or the spine.
A cool breeze wafted through, and on his naked skin, he felt tiny spots of nerve on his back. Without a word, Boston put his hands on the base of his back, and started working upwards. He felt nothing, until he felt something.
Teeth.
Nose.
Eye socket.
His hands lingered, the skin sticky and raw. Tiny movements held them down, pores like leeches, sucking them in place.
Wordlessly, Boston collapsed to the ground.
His gaze could not move from the pile of flesh lodged in the chair, the array of arms and legs and skin and bone that he'd removed from himself. He saw Gillian's right arm. He saw her left arm. He saw his chin. He saw the knee. He saw the toes. He saw their waist.
Unable to move, Boston could only lay there, trying to remember what he'd taken from him that was his, and what was Gillian's.
But already, it was impossible to say which was which.
A couple minutes after all of that, Gillian might as well died.
((from Border Zone))
"What... what is this?"
Jon's breath came in quick snatches.
Calling it like a horror movie was a joke, a comforting story to turn the insane into the understandable.
The thing with comforting stories was that they were still lies, and the thing with horror movies was that those had a director, those had intent.
The mutilated ...person...people...person...thing...body...bodies...
...
the... sight Jon saw wasn't a plan. It didn't have a reason. It was just—
Just—
Something he couldn't, refused to, would always keep in his mind.
Jon backed out of the nightmare, and fled.
((elsewhere))
"What... what is this?"
Jon's breath came in quick snatches.
Calling it like a horror movie was a joke, a comforting story to turn the insane into the understandable.
The thing with comforting stories was that they were still lies, and the thing with horror movies was that those had a director, those had intent.
The mutilated ...person...people...person...thing...body...bodies...
...
the... sight Jon saw wasn't a plan. It didn't have a reason. It was just—
Just—
Something he couldn't, refused to, would always keep in his mind.
Jon backed out of the nightmare, and fled.
((elsewhere))