Dream Sequence I

 Written entirely in English as a part of RP related to The Magnus Archives. No beta.

Orpheus wakes up… somewhere. It's a room where the fourth wall is missing, a scene. There's nothing beyond the room.

He hears the ticking of a clock, perfectly monotone tick-tick-tick, sound unchanging, no tock to be heard.

He feels as if his bones were made of wood and as if there was hay under his skin. He feels like only a bit more than just a puppet. Would a puppet have a name? He doesn't know. He no longer has blood, only ink, pumped by a near silent box he threw at the floor after the encounter with a ghost. His tendons are steel. When did they become so?

He sees a twisted table. It is imperfect and wrong. The table is a lie, and it lied to be there. Orpheus becomes the useless dream table, his wooden bones changing places and his body shifting, undulating until it finds a perfect spot to copy the table just enough. And then mercifully gives the table its name back, and there is a crack in it.

It's just theatre, and the names don't matter. The darkness flows like ink onto the stage, enveloping the Orpheus-table, suffocating, and the table is now pushed against the wall by its shadow.

A crack forms in a perfect paint on the wall when the table hits it. But when it moves away, the wall is just plastic with void that screams in many voices underneath. It gets stained with the ink rushing through the table's not-veins, with its terrible darkness and its pain. The wall… It was perfect before the twisted table came. It wasn't broken.

And that's when Orpheus realises. It's not a stage. He should never be on a stage ever again. He just lacks a wall, a support, it ran away. And he just damaged another wall. Except there's only paint, and paper mache, and some plastic.

What if the wall gives? What if the wall isn't there? What if it flakes away by fault no other than his own? What about other walls? Those can crumble too. He is an useless table in a place looking like an institute library, but dark and twisted beyond comprehension.

Maybe he doesn't need walls? Maybe he should run away so he doesn't hurt them? Cut contact.

One of the walls… is hurt. That wall has a distinctly red paint on it, unlike how the library looks like. It's alive but it's hurt, and it was hurt when he looked away. But maybe that wall doesn't need him? It didn't need him when he was leaving the paint on the floorboards of the stage. It is supported by the wall with cracked paint. But not by him, he only leans on it, his weight only being a burden that should never have been there.

There are spiders weaving on a table. They don't touch the wall, they don't even look at it. The crack in the paint acting as a wall is not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church-door; and yet… All of this library can stop existing if the crack stays that way. The paint is flaking away, and the table has only itself to blame.

The wall should hate it.

The table changes back into a puppet.

It is no longer Orpheus Hugh Mann. Not here. In dreams there's no need for a name. In Britain there is a law that two actors can’t wear the same name, and while it is certainly an actor, it only acts the name and life of the puppet.

A puppet feels itself dry out. It no longer has blood, only ink. It is hungry, a being of skin and ink and hay. It no longer has a name. Not here. To have a name is to be conceived of, even if it’s completely wrong. Which it usually is.

The puppet is a stranger to everyone, including itself. It likes (?) being nameless, and even if it did care about humanity once, how long can you care if your bones are wood, your muscles are hay, your tendons are steel coils and your heart is pumping ink?

But at least it can move, even if it no longer cares about identity here. It will awaken at some point, right?

It begins to wander, a faceless and lost being.

Somewhere along he gets some identity. Just enough to see what's the same and what's different.

He hears some shuffling. The bookshelves seem to come closer. They seem to close in on him as he searches.

Searches for what? He doesn’t know. He can’t know. And the Unknown likes it.

Fireplace, a safe center. He tries to reorient himself, gets only more disoriented between shelves of near infinitely reduplicated nonsense, mistakes made by everyone including himself, of the utter mess of things people do not know anymore. Not all people as a collective, but each and every person for themselves.

God, he hates this place.

And this place hates him. The lights dim even more, and with his wishes, behind a window there is a perfectly blank sky, no light, no warmth, no anything that would even suggest direction.
He doesn’t know. He can’t know in fact, someone took down all the signs, and this place is a mess. What is its organisation system? Why don’t the books have authors, someone has to write a book for it to exist!

After endless meandering, he finds a fireplace. Or a well, it seems, with water of infinite depth and darkness as he has drawn it. Why would a well and a fireplace look the same?

He drags some dark not-water with a bucket out of the inkwell and sips some of it using the always ink stained hands.

The water tastes a bit like sea water, but made more disgusting by adding bitterness of ink to it. His vision goes dark, and then crystal clear, and the lights seem brighter now again. He looks around and sees the crack in the wall. It looks even more odd.

He hears some rustling and loud white noise, all frequencies of the same energy. He turns around and sees some shitgibbon floating in the air, about a hundred eyes submerged in black and white TV static, a background radiation made visible in a nonsensical way.

It is unknown, and he is drawn to learn more about the thing floating just there, dropping eyeballs that bounce on the hardwood floor as they shouldn’t and leaving cobwebs like his grandma’s spiders everywhere. The thing is repulsive and the sight of the eyeballs makes him want to scream.

He doesn’t. The thing stops dropping eyeballs with their unrealistic physics and oddly zero blood and covers itself in cobwebs.

Because of course if it had to do anything, it would do the thing he associates with his grandmother.

The thing doesn't introduce itself, it is too bright to look at. It is repulsive. He doesn't peer inside. It looks like static enough. Utter nonsense. The thing looks how he feels then.

He waits for the thing to come closer and push him into the water. As the shadow did in his dreams. He doesn't expect it to… Do the same thing as Ms Ancelc did?

It hurts. The thing reshapes him, he suddenly knows things he'd have otherwise forgotten and he feels the thing's appendage moving through his throat scar. Why does a puppet body have the same scar?

Did it hope the pain would keep him overwhelmed? The static there doesn't seem to acknowledge that.

He feels some changes in his throat. Not painful, but… Uncomfortable. After that, the thing runs its appendage through his hair, as if trying to comfort him. He doesn't hear it. But… The thing is like spiders. He wants his hair played with and someone to give him affection, so he has a spider in his hair.

The thing is gentle and it brushes out all of the cobwebs. Orpheus just leans in. The thing tries to braid his hair.

He feels like he is falling asleep on it. He starts hearing. A voice, not quite feminine, slightly too low for that and too high to be masculine.

"Shh… You're alright. You're okay.  Now, try to speak."

“Why are you doing this?” His voice works nicely. Comes out a bit softer than it should.

“Hmm, not quite…” The appendage closes around his throat. It’s still unpleasant. When the appendage gets away, the thing tells him to talk again.

“Who are you? And why are you doing this?”

“Oh, we haven’t met before. I was Sibley. And I am trying to help you.”

“You didn’t even ask!”

“I wasn’t ever asked either.”

“And who are you to inflict the same thing on others as was on you? I hate how cryptic you were. I scrolled in the chat almost until the beginning of November. You never said anything clearly, always saying things that were not understood, calling human people “avatars”, what the hell is that word?! I am sick of you and your little group of friends. I feel like I can’t trust Ann and they probably knew you the longest.”

“Hm… But you are cryptic too.”

“It. Doesn’t. Matter.”

“It does, you scared Ann. I am glad to not be the only one bombarded by knowledge and torn apart by it.”

“I don’t know the things I draw! The only time I stopped drawing was in the tunnels under the institute.”

“The Eye affects everyone differently.”

“I don’t care about your little pantheon. I don’t know and I don’t care about knowing and I made that clear. I want to have a mundane life, in a theatre. Learn about interesting people so I can play better.”

“And be a lie?”

“If there’s a need?” Orpheus shrugs. “I already faked so much. I am a well-dressed lie.”

“And you own the imposter syndrome. Yeah, I know that. I know you.”

“Why this dream then?”

“Dreams are because you need to process all that. I think it's funny how you are talking to me now. You hate me, after all.”

“Where did you work in the institute?”

“Research for five years. And then HR for two and a half weeks because I died.”

“Did you know Ms. Ancelc?”

“Oh, string-puller. Yes, I did.”

“Why are you calling her that?”

“Doesn't she do that? She stopped me from saying she is something else, and I am not calling people I disrespect by name.”

“I have a similar rule about last names. But… How was she?”

“Oh, we fought.” Wyrd says fondly. “I wanted to show her the library. After all, Anansi was spinning tales too, just as I would if I wasn't a story to be told myself. And to be forgotten.”

“You are an awful person.”

“Thank you! Nothing is real so… chaos it is. Nyxus aeternam and all that. I can't say I disliked the feeling of being puppeteered. I reckon it would be so much better for you since you're already…”

“Shut. Up.”

“I don't have the highest opinion about Strangers. Never did since that circus interrupted my own little ritual.”

“My sibling was in that theatre.”

“Not sure if I met zir. If I did, it was when I got hijacked, again, as I did many times.”

“I hate how many people I like also like you.”

“Why do you hate me?”

“You're ominous and I hate that. Everything that I am not and yet.”

“If you had a way to get me to disappear forever, would you attempt to do that? You don't have to be kind.”

“Yes, in a heartbeat.”

“Great! Could you burn my book?”

“Pardon?”

“My book. Don't tell me Clark hasn't told you about the library yet.”
 
“He did, kind of? But you can't be serious.”

“I am, and look! You have an eye on your throat.” It points to Orpheus's neck. “If I vanish, it would too. If I don't, it will grow back, again and again. It will drain you out if you try to remove it. And you can just not remove it, and have fun with another place to see from.”

“Is this… I don't even have a word… Extortion of some kind?”

“You can read it like that. Try to sleep on it a little. When you are ready, you'll know what to do.” It smiles and the dream breaks.