Foreigner spun around in the abyss, moving through the same kaleidoscope colored hallways with its fractured corners and its disorienting bright colors. The tormenting voice wasn’t far behind, breathing over his neck and behind his ear whenever he lost focused.
“You’re wasting your time, Puppy…” The voice whispered in a disdainful voice, venom oozing from each uttered syllable. “And here I thought you were so pressed for time. To help your friends? To help your son? Your family?” Foreigner tried to shake the uneasiness and found one of many doors to fling himself through, hoping that the exit would lead somewhere else not so disorienting. He needed time to think time to plan, time to mope around and whine about the situations he openly threw himself into. He would have been better off without these stresses but he just needed the space. The door led to another meandering corridor, and the next door led to the next winding pathway until Foreigner found his mind numbing to the situation.
“What do you want from me! I just want to get out of here!” The floor beneath him became viscous and his legs began to sink within the carpeted flooring of the hallway. He recoiled and flailed and at once found himself at the entrance of a library.
“You thought of this. What cheeky irony to trap the manipulative monster within an institution of learning and facts. Is that why Keeper is stuck with a thinking man’s game? Why Gardener toils away at tasks never-ending, the mere antithesis to the hedonistic lifestyle you cut her out of?” The voice slithered within and without the room, its statements echoing throughout the expansive wooden shelves and within Foreigner’s bones. “Come to think of it, I should be thanking you somewhat. If it weren’t for you rummaging around where you weren’t supposed to be, I might not have gotten a glimpse into what your room was meant to be like.” The statement this voice was making confused Foreigner but he made his best attempt to pay it no mind and venture ahead, becoming attentive to the books and their bindings. He pulled out a book with a small hourglass on its binding and dusted away the title, ‘Carlito’s First Steps’. In his hands, the leather bound paperback morphed into a small plastic textured child’s book.
“Carlito took his first steps today. He was scared at first but soon he was practically running around the house. He’d trip and fall and scraped his knee, but that’s okay. We’re a family.” The book ends with a drawn picture of a small child and a large brown man, Carlito and Dad scrawled underneath their forms. Foreigner picks up another book, ‘Carlito’s First Words’ and the same morphing process begins.
“Carlito has been struggling to form words. I’ve tried hard not to baby talk to him but I just can’t help myself. Ana and I were in the living room when it happened. He looked at both of us and triumphantly exclaimed ‘Familia!’ while pointing to the both of us. We couldn’t be more proud. We’re a family.” The book ends with another drawn picture, this time of a small child being held by two figures, a man and a woman. No scrawled label could be found. The name, Ana, felt like velvet on Foreigner’s tongue, like the act of saying the word brought him mental pleasure. He could see something just out of the corner of his eye, likely his tormentor, but he paid them no mind and focused on the books and their titles. Each one morphed in his hands, each one about Carlito and his firsts; first time in a City, first time taking a bath, first time seeing the ocean, numerous firsts that always ended in that ominous and peculiar phrase.
“You really do like to waste time, don’t you.” The figure was hard to describe. It was lithe and colorful like a peacock but getting anywhere closer revealed how alien and unfitting it was, like it was an approximation of the human form created out of patchwork paper of varying shades and hues. “You’re gonna get bored of it eventually. We all do.”
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Foreigner turned around and faced the amalgamation, “Can you stop it? The first time I’m getting straight, albeit brief, descriptions of my life and how things were before I lost my memories and you want to be as antagonistic to me as possible? What’s your fucking problem?” The thing gave Foreigner a grin, about the only human expression it could deliver without dipping into the uncanny.
“You still believe in all of this. I was hoping you’d be faster on the uptake, after all you were left in charge, but this is beyond sad.” The things arms stretched out, reaching to Foreigner, then past him to a book on a high shelf. It gingerly gripped the bindings with its elongated flattened fingers and handed it to Foreigner. The title read ‘Carlito’s First —————’. The next set of words were jumbled, rolling around like slots in a slot machine. Before the slots settled on a title, the thing grabbed the book properly and opened its pages. Letters and ink began to spew out of it, wounded cries and whimpering coming from the paperback. “These aren’t real. You think your life could be so cozy? You think you could live a life so quaint and at peace with the City and the way it is? With your occupation as a Ruins delver? A mad scientist? A megalomaniac?” No. Foreigner couldn’t accept what this thing was telling him. He just had to hold onto those dear memories of his and find a way to get out and everything would be fine. He would be fine. He has a family. He has Ana and Carlito and they’re waiting for him. Foreigner feigned indifference and reached out to another book, his hand getting slapped by the thing.
“I’m through with the subtleties. It isn’t in my wheelhouse but I’m giving it to you straight.” The things body bent and twisted around Foreigners head, its grip becoming tighter and tighter as the library around him blinked out of existence and his head burst into a million little pieces. They reformed in a dingy white padded room. He was looking through reinforced glass, staring at a human approximating his tormentor’s features. Its image flickered, lights adjusting to provide a clear picture for observation.
“Sliver Number 2, Project Gestalt, Samuel Arenas, Head Researcher and ongoing subject for the project. Observation begins with Number 2, dubbed ‘Inconvenient Truth’ being tapped into for the length of twenty-four hours. They were compliant to engage in conversation with the clerks but their engagement left them with elevated levels of paranoia and will require rehabilitative efforts on the part of Doctor Milton to handle their psychosis.” Arenas leafed through his clipboard and pressed down on his pen, whispering something to the research assistant to his left and becoming left alone to observe this Truth by himself.
“I know you want me to dance. You think you can have me dance around for your amusement? While you play at science messing with a clearly unsound mind?” This Inconvenient Truth’s voice maintained the same venom and vitriol in its intonations, but there was a decidedly hoarse and human undercurrent that suggested possession or a merging of its voice with someone else’s.
“It seems that you like to root around where you’re not supposed to if you’re messing with the research this much,” Arenas whispered under his breath while coldly writing down notes, “Reminder: Inform Snake in the Water to tighten their grip around Truth and his access to the other slivers. They may want to stop our efforts but they will not taint the rest of them. I have made too many sacrifices to suffer at the hands of something that is lesser than the sum of its parts.” Arenas continued to the recording and observed the Inconvenient Truth’s behavior. He observed the way it had interacted with the clerks, the way it had aimed to unsettle them with its voice and develop an atmosphere of paranoia and dissonance. Numerous mental tests were performed to properly identify and verify the existence of this second entity, although its connection to Arenas meant that true delineation between it and him were inconclusive.
The assertion of voices whispering at the backs of their minds might have sounded like the first signs of derangement to Arenas, but after coming back, he was certain there was something alien presiding within him and everyone else that bore witness to those White Days. Something he had managed to verify the existence of with the first experiment.
“Do you get it now, Puppy?” The Inconvenient Truth coiled its arm around Foreigner and shook its head.
“We’re nothing but puzzle pieces.”