When I came to, there wasn’t anyone else in the apartment. They didn’t give me a key or anything, but it’s not like I was going to come back or anything. I have my own apartment, my own job. That I haven’t been to in over a month.
Shit.
Now’s as good a time as any to check my phone, right? Gotta make sure that I still have a job and a place to go back to. 1000 emails. Most of them are junk mail anyway. Let me read off the cc topics from the ones that aren’t junk.
Right off the bat, I’m getting hit with a warning to pay rent and a no-call no-show termination. Cool, one month of torture and I no longer have a job. Maybe I need to stop there and be like ‘hey, I’m alive! Sorry I didn’t show up for work, a crime syndicate kidnapped me and I was tortured by a transphobic scientist for about a month! Also I can turn invisible if my anxiety gets to be too bad. Can I have my job back?’
... Maybe it’s time to find a new job, but before that, I need to figure out who the hell kidnapped me. Maybe train a little bit? I can’t just go invisible in public if some random 60-something year old dude says hello to me, and I can’t just have anxiety the whole time, it would fuck over my mental state too much.
Guess it’s time to get some hydroxyzine. I think there’s a rite aid somewhere around the park area, unless it got destroyed sometime within the last month.
Finally, I sat up from the bed I was resting on and left the apartment, walking down the 15 flights of stairs just to get to the ground. Once I hit the ground, I popped in my earplugs... wait. shit. All of my stuff is still at the movie theater. Even my wallet.
I guess it’s time to figure out how my powers work and see if I can steal what I need. Then I’ll make a quick detour to the theater. Hopefully. I’m going to try walking to the sidewalk near the street, maybe this’ll be easy.
Honk.
Several Honks overlaying each other.
It’s so loud.
Why do I live in Seattle, again? The drivers here are the worst. Wait, let me make sure my feet are still there.
Yep, I’m good for now. Let me get to the pedestrian crosswalk. The honking is dying down, so we should be good.
“Good morning!” some random passerby says to me.
“G...good morning...” I whimper back.
Shit, my anxiety’s starting.
Shit, I don’t have feet.
There’s an alleyway closeby, lemme just go in there and calm down. Alley’s are universally safe places, Batman’s fiction.
... Wait, I have powers and there’s a crime syndicate out and about. Maybe I shouldn’t go into the alleyway. My feet look like they’re back now though, so maybe I’m home free. Light’s green.
I crossed the street, I made it to the other side, guess I’m a chicken now. Wait, no I don’t like the implications of that. I’m the anti-chicken, I made it across the street to throw the chicken back to the other side. I’m making myself laugh now. People are starting to stare. Christ, this isn’t easy. I see a Rite Aid in view, hopefully I can make it there and hide before my feet disappear again. Then maybe I can get stuff I need to control my anxiety and thus, my powers. I think that makes sense. The theater can wait for a bit.
I continue walking, making it to the rite aid. Step one, done. Now, to see if I can pick things up while invisible. Okay, what can I do to make myself anxious as all hell? Oh, I know!
I turn back to the street and scream “THERE’S A ONE EYED ONE HORNED GIANT PURPLE PEOPLE EATER IN THE RITE AID PLEASE RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!”
Wait, I'm still in public, people will see me disappear. Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck. This was a bad idea. Well, my anxiety is all the way up. I can’t hear anything anymore, but people are running now. Cool, let’s keep this level of anxiety all the way up and see what happened.
I dash straight into the rite aid, the sliding doors not even acknowledging my presence. Cool, let me get to the pharmacy. It’s on the other end of the store. I walk through the aisles and counters, through the walls of the pharmacy. Made it, and I still can’t hear anything so chances are I’m still invisible. Okay, time to find the hydroxyzine... oh, hey, here's my HRT prescription. I thought it wasn’t getting renewed for the next few days. Good to know. Okay, seems like everything’s listed in alphabetical order, so let’s find the H section... here we go, Hydroxyzine! Fuck yeah! I should take one the second I leave the s- wait, why can I hear things?
I turn my head. I hear everything, shoppers, pharmacists, that one Natasha Beddingfield song, I’m losing concentration. How do I make myself anxious again? Umm... probably by assuming that by the time they realize that I am not only behind the counter of the pharmacy and call the cops. Fuck, I don’t wanna deal with cops.
Okay, I can’t hear things again. Let me try to take the meds... and my hand is swiping through the pills. Okay, Serenity, Focus. You can do this. One more time... shit, my hand went through it again. Plus side, every time I try my anxiety goes up so I don’t have to worry about being discovered. Okay, let’s try to tighten my anxiety. How the fuck do I do that am I just making shit up? Well, whatever. Let’s try it. One more swipe... nope, doesn’t work. Few more times... nope.
Shit, can I not touch things while invisible? That’s so fucking lame. Okay, new tactic, can I just... un-anxiety my hand only, then turn the pills invisible? Lemme try that. Okay, deep breaths... but only for my hand... yep, that worked somehow. I got the pills, let me turn my hand invisible again... nailed it! But... wait, the pills aren’t in my hand? The fuck?
Oh, cool, there on the floor. So... wait, if I can’t grab stuff while invisible, am I actually invisible? I can’t hear anything. I can’t touch anything. I can walk through walls... am I a ghost? Am I on the ghosts plane of existence? Did I become the Transfemme Danny Phantom? This seems like a reasonable assumption to make. Which means my entire power is fucking pointless. If I could at least hear things, I’d be useful. Why am I crying ghost tears in the middle of a rite aid pharmacy? I don’t wanna be a ghost anymore. Fuck.
I closed my eyes, waiting for the anxiety to go away, but it just kept getting worse and worse. When I opened them back up, the rite aid disappeared completely. I was now crying in front of a gate made entirely out of marble.
... There’s no FUCKING way I just anxietied myself all the way to heaven. Y’know, I might as well just see if the Christians are right.
I walked through the gates, on a floor of pure white clouds, and the first thing I saw afterwards... was a jackal standing on two feet next to a justice's scale.
Okay now I have no idea what the fuck is going on.
“Speak.” The Jackal bellowed at me.
“Hi. I’m Serenity. Not fully certain if I died yet but this seems like a good indicator that I have.” I replied, anxious as fuck.
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“You are not dead,” He bellowed back, “Merely traveling.”
“Travelling? Through what? How the hell did I get here, and where is here, exactly?”
“The Du’at. It has many names. Heaven, Elysium, Valhalla. It exists within one place, showing humans what they believe they are seeing after death.”
“Does that make you god?”
“I am Anubis. This is the realm of Gods.”
“Plural?”
“Plural.”
I took a second look around, examining my surroundings. There’s gates all over the place, and each of them look like they come from a different realm. This must be the central area for the realm of the dead.
“So... what am I doing here?” I asked, still unsure of everything, still anxious, though slightly less now.
Not fully certain how I’m still here, but I don’t think I’m gonna care much just yet.
“For Answers, I presume. You are not the first phasewalker to walk these halls.” Anubis bellowed back at me.
“Phasewalker? The scientists torture gave me the ability to shift through dimensions?” I asked.
“Realities, but more or less, yes.”
“Why not planewalker, like planes of existence? Or dimension-walker?”
“Because your language did not exist at the time of our inception, I am using a rough translation, and dimension-walking is a different thing altogether.”
“Fair point. Next question, why am I here, right now?”
“Because you shifted here.”
“Is that what you call traveling through different planes of reality?”
“Yes.”
“So was I like... in the ghost realm before I came here?”
“The Paranormal Realm is the first one the Phasewalker goes through, before all the other phases of reality. This is the top of the realiry ladder, the highest plane of reality.”
“So... where are the other gods?”
“In other planes.”
I stopped asking questions and contemplated everything. This is a lot to take in. My power wasn’t to turn invisible, it was to shift through realities.
Fuck. This is getting to be Jean Grey levels of convoluted.
“Okay, so what exactly can I do? I can’t take things from the human realm and bring them into different realms-” I asked before I was cut off by the bellowing Jackal.
“You can. It’s just harder to pass them through the Paranormal Realm, as it is Paranormal and your body takes the realities of that realm to make you fit into it.” He replied bellowingly.
“So if I go to the paranormal realm, I become a ghost?”
“Yes.”
“... So can I just skip it?”
“Yes.”
“That is super useful information. How do you know all this?”
“I’m Anubis.”
Yeah, that’s more or less a fair point. I tip the hat that I don’t have on to him and head towards the gate that I think I had come through. My anxiety is gone, but if I think of these realities like a ladder... I might be able to use my anxiety to sort of... push myself back down. Cool, glad nothing I’m thinking makes any sense.
Anubis didn’t say anything while I was walking around. He’s just watching me, creepily, though I guess he gets a pass, for being the god of the scales or whatever. My anxiety is pretty much gone at this point, I got the answers I was looking for and I was being pretty good. I step through the gates I came in and the second I step onto the clouds outside it, I accidentally tripped through every single reality.
It was like falling off the first rung of a ladder in slow motion. Seconds pass as I get very brief glimpses into every single reality that exists, which is a lot. I saw so many things I couldn’t even comprehend. Every realm of the dead, every universe of fiction ever created, every supernatural realm, I saw all of them within a second as I fell directly onto the floor of the pharmacy room of the rite aid.
All the Pharmacists looked at me, bewildered at where the fuck I came from, and I used it to my advantage. I took the hydroxyzine that no one apparently picked off the ground while I was in the Realm of the Gods, jumped over the counter and ran as fast as I could outside. The second I was out of the rite aid, I took one of the pills and ran straight to volunteer park.
Minutes later, I made it. My anxiety was gone now, so I don’t have to worry about shifting realities for the time being. I walked over to one of the empty trees and pulled out my phone. It’s only been 10 minutes, but I was added to the group chat for the Unreliables. Y’know, for a second, I thought I was actually a hero, but then I realized that I clearly stole a bottle of pills from a pharmacy.
I sighed and texted the group chat.
SERENITY: Hey, everyone. Crazy shits going down. Turns out, my power isn’t to simply turn invisible, it’s to climb a ladder of realities.
BRENDAN: what the fuck that’s dope
ALPHONSO: Is it still an anxiety-controlled ability?
SERENITY: Yeah.
ALPHONSO: How did you figure this out?
SERENITY: I tried to steal anxiety medication from a rite aid and then got so anxious I blasted myself all the way to the Realm of the Gods where Anubis told me I was a phasewalker.
BRENDAN: why did I get stuck with a fucking dodo bird if you could get a power this cool via torture
JACOB: you can literally summon any extinct creature not just dodo birds
BRENDAN: then why haven’t I summoned anything but dodo birds
SERENITY: I literally saw you headbutt a robot with a triceratops while you were riding it
ALPHONSO: you did literally do that.
BRENDAN: fuck fine you got me i’ll summon a sabretooth tiger next time jacob leaves the apartment
JACOB: why me specifically
CASPIAN: What is a phasewalker?
SERENITY: a traveler of the multiple different realities I guess
BRENDAN: why not reality-walker then?
SERENITY: dude I don’t fucking know anubis is old as shit
ALPHONSO: Okay I think we need to group up again. Where is everyone?
BRENDAN: work
JACOB: also work
CASPIAN: classified
ALPHONSO: Casp I need your exact location
CASPIAN: Absolutely not, my dad will find me.
SERENITY: Dad?
CASPIAN: yeah hes straight up evil and transphobic as fuck
MYLO: woah cool another trans guy that’s awesome
CASPIAN: I guess legally I would qualify as transmasc.
ALPHONSO: Mylo, where are you?
MYLO: hold on catching up with chat.
SERENITY: I’m at volunteer park. I took an anti-anxiety pill.
MYLO: Okay caught up with chat. Serenity, fuck yeah, glad you have a power stronger than mine.
SERENITY: yeah it’d be better if it wasn’t a complete bitch to control
MYLO: anyway I am in mount rainier national park
ALPHONSO: How did you get all the way over there?
MYLO: bean powers
BRENDAN: I would give anything to become food personally
ALPHONSO: Can you get back to Seattle, Mylo?
MYLO: I’m not a bean anymore can someone pick me up
JACOB: find a shack, it has a door that goes directly to our apartment
MYLO: I’m sorry what
CASPIAN: Shacks in the woods cannot have doors that go to places that do not exist in the woods
SERENITY: I literally just tripped through reality and even I’m surprised by this information
JACOB: we can explain just find the shack please
MYLO: roger dodger
I turned my phone screen off and put it in my pocket, before heading back over to the theater to grab my stuff. However, while I was on my way there, I passed by a car that had it’s radio all the way up and windows all the way down waiting for the light in front of them to turn green. I was waiting to cross as well, but the light was still red cause I got there a bit late. I could hear the radio clearly. The host was someone with a calm, raspy voice.
“... So remember, listeners, even if they tell you science is against you, just say my name and spit in their face. Thanks for listening, this has been The Matt Slap. I’m Matthew Shapiro, signing off.” the radio host said before the car drove away.
I recognized the voice instantaneously. I heard it every single day for a month. That same calm, raspy voice. It was him.
The man who tortured me.