Foreboding walls loomed overhead. Frozen in place like a silent scream. They stood at irregular angles and peaks, reaching out to the unfeeling, pictureless void above before dipping down suddenly, clawing at their feeble grasp this current upon reality.
Roosevelt stared at these walls for several seconds, contemplating with increasing frustration how such a thing could exist. How could a wall force him to think of a scream, it was preposterous. But yet it had and still continued to. Whining defiantly in the face of all conceivable logic in a constant and audible high pitched wail.
Then again the same could be said for the place itself. The absurdity Roosevelt chuckled internally, not the screaming. Not yet at least.
For it was at this very moment that one Roosevelt Graves stood at the entrance to the greatest educational institution in the world. The Grand Academy for Villainous Individuals. A single structure that stood in an impossible limbo between realms and realities, serving as the training ground for the antagonists of many of life's stories. Yes, it was indeed the only place in this world where corrupt dictators and Sci-Fi warlords could mingle freely. And if Roosevelt could stop admiring the scenery and actually enter it, it would become home for the next few years.
For you see Roosevelt had never been what one considered normal. Growing up in 1920's New York, he had been a queer child. Always antisocial and against playing with others. His parents had marked up his surliness for social interactions as him being a gargantuan twat, but it was when at the tender age of 7 Roosevelt was found biting the throat out of another child did they recognize that his issues may stem from other sources than his likeness to female genitalia.
When pressed Roosevelt had said that the boy had looked at him funny, the truth was he was merely curious as to the taste of another humans lifeblood. Needless to say, he was shipped off to a mental institute.
He would reside here for another 11 years. Enduring the frequent electric shock therapies and ineffective drugs until one day whilst dreaming he encountered a man. A stranger.
The man was well dressed, wearing a pressed black suit and had freshly cut and trimmed black hair with a stylish beard to boot. Roosevelt took one look at the dapper gentleman and then laughed. Usually, his subconscious would conjure up eldritch horrors with which to plague his dreams. In the face of these, Roosevelt was remarkably nonplussed about the arrival of the man in his psyche.
"Evening son." The man said in a rather clipped British accent while taking off a hat that Roosevelt was sure hadn't existed just moments before.
"STOOOOOOP!" Screamed Roosevelt in mock horror as the man approached him, causing the well-dressed individuals previously measured pace to falter and leave him with one foot hanging stranded in the air.
"Why, what is it?" Asked the man with what appeared to be genuine curiosity.
"Careful where ye' step, for 'ere dere, be monsters." Roosevelt drawled in the most stereotypical pirate voice he could manage before promptly falling to the floor and laughing uncontrollably. Ahhhhh, classic he thought as he wiped a non-existent imaginary tear from his eye, taking the time to admire the unique setting his subconscious had chosen for the clandestine meeting.
He was currently in a completely white room with very little substance, in fact, the surface that he assumed to be the floor had nothing to distinguish it from the rest of the faceless white void. But there it was, a solid surface out of nothing. It would be the first of many unimaginable things he would have to deal with over the next few hours.
"Ugh, why do I always get saddled with the crazy ones." Muttered the man while massaging his temples. Roosevelt took this as an insult. Not the fact that he was being called crazy, he had come to terms with that fact a very, very long time ago. No, he was annoyed at the fact that the man had lumped him in with other crazy people and, having spent a majority of his life surrounded by the bastards, Roosevelt could truly appreciate how unfavourable of a comparison that was. In fact, he told the man straight to his face.
After several long bouts of high energy complaining by Roosevelt and even more of tirades of insults being thrown also by Roosevelt, (most pertaining to the well-dressed man's mother and her penchant intercourse with goat's.) He believed that he had finally satisfied his desire for vengeance at the man"s accusation and sat down on a substanceless chair at an equally nonexistent desk and gestured for the man to sit across from him.
"Now my dear fellow, that the formalities are out of the way may we discuss the purpose of this visit," Roosevelt said in a formal voice as he tried desperately to suppress another fit of laughter.
The man shrugged, the boy was weird, but then again if he was normal the academy wouldn't want him. So sit he did and then he began to talk.
"Alright son, here's the deal. We know it may be hard for you to believe but there are worlds outside of your own." The man paused waiting for the realization to sink in before being dumbstruck when the boy in front of him gestured for him to continue, seemingly nonplussed by his big reveal. Sure he had done this several times and most of them to people who already knew of the multiverse. But according to all information, this boy had no knowledge of other worlds, and as such his nonchalant attitude was quite a surprise to the man. Even so, he was a professional and only allowed himself a fraction of a seconds reprieve before powering on with his speech.
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"Anyway these worlds come in all shapes and sizes, fantasy, science fiction, horror, thriller and just plain old boring like your own. Now, these worlds need catalysts, beings of change to shake things up. Thin of it like inbreeding!" He said in a way that possibly made him appear to be the most excited man alive at the prospect of inbreeding. Apart from rural Americans that is. "If we allow the world to stew for too long then you'll get all manner of nasties popping up, now our job is to stir up this metaphorical gene pool."
"Now, believe it or not, we weren't always here and before we existed all the multiverse had was a roiling mass of unspeakable horror and an infinite amount of people who were quite fed up with the whole mess. And with this desire for change welling up within the multiverse, the academy was born. Forged in the fires of the collective latent psychic energies of infinite amounts of sentient beings. Think about it, with every great period of change, of upheaval, there has always had to be a catalyst first. And the one thing these events all share is that they were caused by someone or something evil. To use examples of your world the plague caused people to reevaluate religious belies that had abandoned them and after World War Two in the shadow of powerful regimes only then did people feel the need to advance science and politics into a new golden age." Roosevelt just looked at the man curiously, World War Two? He knew about the first but didn't know the world had, had a second. He really had been locked up in here for a while.
In the face of the boy's curiosity, the man thought back on his slightly over-excited explanation before apologizing for the break in the timeline and continued on with his speech.
"But where child do you think all these people come from?" He asked with the manic smile that can only be held by someone about to recite a slogan they believe in, to the point of reverence.
"The Grand Academy for Villainous Individuals that's where. It's the stupidly stupendous, the amazingly amazing institute for higher learning that trains all corrupt politicians, fascist dictators, evil overlords and eldritch abominations to become the best that they can possibly be and to achieve their dreams." He said throwing his hands up in the air for extra flair at the end of his sentence.
"And the board of this esteemed institute has deemed you worthy of walking their hallowed halls and learning at the admirable, erudite atriums." He said with yet more alliteration, it was beginning to make Roosevelt's head hurt, either the man was going to stop or he was going to kill a bitch.
"Now just sign here, here and here and you will be allowed entrance to the grounds." He said in a practised voice, sweeping out a lengthy legal document from God only knows where and thrusting it toward Roosevelt.
He opened the contract warily and watched in grim amusement as more and more of it began to unravel before its contents reached the floor and then some. he was going to have a fair amount of reading ahead of him. He poured over its entirety for several minutes before sitting down and signing. For what was the prospect of dismemberment, disembowelment and the possibility of being dissolved in the face of prospects like these!
And yes, he had decided to believe this strange man in his head. Why? Why not? At worst he would lose his sanity or would have if that ship hadn't sailed a long while ago. At best it was his chance for greatness, so sign he did.
"Well great, let me just have this and then ill be on my way." Spoke the man as he dematerialized the contract right before Roosevelt's young eyes.
"Yup everything here appears to be in order and as such I shall be on my way." Said the man as he once more donned a hat out of nowhere and turned to leave.
"Wait!" Roared the boy into every facet of his mental landscape, causing the man to flinch and then turn around slowly.
"Before you go you simply must try the tea." Spoke Roosevelt now in a much more subdued and pleasant tone whilst sliding over an imaginary teacup.
But unlike the rest of this impossible landscape, there simply was no teacup, it was an imaginary object even to an imaginary world. A truly absurd notion that the well-dressed man had no intention of partaking in. But when he tried to leave he found himself unable, seemingly trapped within the mind of this mentally ill young adult.
"Surely you aren't trying to leave without tasting it? Now sit down and drink. Your. Fucking. Tea." Said the boy cold as ice, watching amusedly as the man sat down stiffly and pretended to drink from an imaginary tea-cup. With this action, they were both forcibly ejected from the dreamscape. Roosevelt to the outside grounds of The Grand Academy for Villainous Individuals, dressed uncomfortably in a white straight jacket and equally bland cotton pants, and the well-dressed individual that Roosevelt had internally taken to nicknaming "Steve" for no other reason than for the fact he assumed Steve would hate it was taken back sweating in terror to the teacher's lounge of the same institute. Never before had he been bested before in a dream world, it seemed he would have to keep an eye on this Roosevelt Graves.
When the morning sun finally bathed the spires of the mental health facility Roosevelt had previously known as home all was assumed to be well. That was until they found the cell of one of their high-risk patients empty. Devoid of anything save the stark clinical furniture mandated by the facility. And oddly, with no conceivable reason for being there was an ornately crafted china tea set, still warm, presumably with the remnants of the beverage from which it derived its name.