Ben Florence woke with a start, falling down and landing nose first onto the floor. The moment he touched the ground he grasped his head in his hands and cried out. He could feel the veins shivering underneath his skin and sweat was forming across his body as it trembled. It felt like his brain had decided to give birth, pulsations of pain flowing down his neck and around his heart. He forced himself to sit up and blinked as his eyes adjusted to the darkness around him. Slowly the shadows turned into shapes and he lifted his hand onto the bed he’d fallen off, vaguely registering that it felt too hard and cold to be his mattress.
This wasn't his room.
It wasn't even a bedroom. He looked back onto the thing he was holding and felt a sharp pain shoot out from his head at the movement. He'd been sleeping on a smoothly cut rock that he was now groping with his fingers as he tried to keep himself steady. From the corner of his eye he saw a faint light reflecting off of a surface. A single cracked mirror rested on a wall where it caught the faint light coming from the roof in its reflection. Ben laid back against the smooth stone as the pain slowly subsided and he sighed, giving himself a pat down. He didn't remember falling asleep in an unfinished construction site.
He could hear a small buzzing noise and looked up to see a broken fan spinning around and showering him with particles of dust. Clearly not a construction site then. It didn’t look like any place a human would stay in though, it was bare, cold and the entire place looked like it had been cut from a single slab of concrete and then hastily painted over with the cheap stuff that was now peeling all over the place. Even so, he couldn't help but feel that this place was familiar to him. When he squinted and took into account the shape and contours of the surroundings, it looked like his room. Except it was empty and collapsing around him. Plus, at his place there wasn't a huge stone slab in the side of the room where his bed should be.
Ben shook his head to get the dust out of his eyes and groaned as pain racked through his body. His head felt like he’d had enough alcohol to black out. Then again he was in a dusty old place that looked like crap so maybe he had blacked out. As he moved his hands to his head he became acutely aware that there was something beating lightly against his skin. He looked down at his shirt and realized that the pajamas he'd thought he’d gone to bed with were gone, and in their place was a single black body suit. It looked like a gimp suit. He tugged at the material and was surprised as it almost melted in his hands like a fine silk. The melting material dripped at his feet and he caught his breath, the entire lighting in the room seemed to shift as the drops hit the stone ground. He stopped pinching the suit and slowly stood up, continuing to stare at the ground. Even though it was impossible, he could swear that the darkness of the room was pooling around his feet in a puddle.
He stepped away from the puddle towards the mirror and looked up from it, “Well...”
His attention was taken up by the figure staring back at him. Behind the cracked glass and badly cleaned surface a sallow, grey skinned face with a wide open mouth was looking into the mirror. It looked like a demon from hell, or one of those underground cave people you hear rumours about. Grey skin, pale and vein filled eyes, a shaved head and connected to all of it like a second skin layer was the black gimp suit. Ben’s body began to shudder as his nerves took a blow. The suit was moving, little puffs of darkness swirling across its surface and the different shades of black that it was made from were flickering about as though the suit was a living thing. When you added his entirely vampire-like looks then it painted a terrifying picture. Ben looked away and a thought crossed his mind and threatened to bring tears of frustration and panic to his eyes. He’d just had a sneaking suspicion that this wasn't his world. Part of him didn't want to believe it, but another part... Another part of him was telling him that maybe what he’d just experience hadn't just been a dream.
He distinctly remembered there had been a second voice talking to him in his sleep.
He shook his head. These thoughts wouldn’t help him now. His eyes fell onto the dark swirls that were crossing over his body and the drops that had fallen onto the ground. His hands and feet were fully covered by this strange material, and there didn't seem to be a way to take it off. It wasn’t doing him any harm as far as he could tell. In fact, it didn't feel like he was wearing anything, as though the darkness was a part of his body. A slow, rhythmic beat that constantly pressed against his skin gave him that uncomfortable feeling that it was alive. He touched his face and he realized that dots of darkness had somehow placed themselves in front of it, probably when he had fallen out of the stone slab. His nose was fine despite him hitting the ground second before. But if it had been bruised he wouldn't have been able to notice anything wrong compared to how squashed it already was, it definitely wasn’t the same nose that he remembered. It looked like he’d run into several trucks during his life, all of which had swerved into him while desperately trying to do the most damage possible. He ran his hands through his short hair and realized that he couldn't feel anything rushing against his palms.
‘I’m bald now.’ He vaguely registered the lack of hair he’d seen in the mirror.
“Well fuck.” A gruff voice resounded through his mind and the room.
Ben turned around and saw someone sitting on the stone he'd been sleeping on. He hadn't seen or heard anyone come in, or even heard them. This person was... transparent. It looked like he wasn’t real, but Ben didn’t care about that. He recognized the person. It was him. But it wasn't this gray faced, pale and weird version of him that he could still see in the mirror. This was the Ben Florence he remembered, shoulder-length hair with olive-white skin and no black gimp suit attached to him. The only thing that was different from normal was the scowl that was contorting the normally pleasant face.
Ben continued to stare at the transparent thing with a frown.
“Yeah it's me fuck nuts. Take a picture it'll last longer.” The man stuck up his middle finger as he spoke.
Ben tilted his head to the side and tried to brush out whatever dust he had in his eyes. He felt like if he tried hard enough the person would disappear into the air. But the ghost-like Ben that was sitting in front of him continued to grimace and flip him the bird.
“You're...” Ben tried to wrap his mind around what was happening.
“The version of you that you were just talking to. Good to meet you fuckwad, looks like there was a slight mix-up. That's my body and you're not meant to be in control of it.”
“You look just like me. The me that isn't some sort of weird vampire living on a stone slab.” Ben blinked, he was slowly trying to connect the pieces of this weird puzzle in his mind, “Why does your head look like a shriveled up gray apple.”
Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.
“Oddly specific and insulting way to say it. We might have more in common than I thought. And about my appearance,” The transparent Ben shrugged, “Whatever, it's not that important. Like I said my parents, our parents, were aliens in this reality. They left behind the Shroud Uniform you're wearing and since I've been literally living in darkness the lack of sunlight made my skin wither up like a raisin... And short hair is just more convenient. Well that and the thing takes my blood as payment for working. It can’t let any old creature use it after all”
“... What?”
Ben tried to wrap his head around the person’s confusing words, ‘Shroud Uniform.’
Ben looked down, “Do you mean this black body suit?”
“Your brain thinks its a black body suit. But that mean mother fucker is an alien weapon designed solely for killing and espionage. Our parents intended to give it to us. They died. I got it off the person that killed our parents, the ultimate trophy. Its also my main weapon of choice for killing people. If you know how to use it properly it can do a lot more than just stick to your skin.”
“I... you sound awfully proud about something so horrible.”
“Yeah you'll soon find out that my attitude isn't such a big deal. We're the same person remember so before I forget...” The transparent Ben stood up and rushed towards Ben and slapped him in the face.
Ben recoiled from the smack, even though the other Ben was transparent his palm hit like a rock. It landed squarely on his cheek and Ben could feel his head begin to burn as pain once again began to shoot out from it. He lifted his hand to his cheek but the pain was coursing inside him, all over his body. He groaned and felt his knees his to solid stone ground as his body collapsed onto the floor. Blood spurted out of his nose and through the pores of the black suit, darkness swirling around the red little beads and smoothly ejecting them onto the floor. Streaks of blood gave the room the only other color it had. After a few minutes that pain subsided and Ben lifted himself off the ground and into a sitting position. The ghost-ben was standing in front of him.
“What the hell was that?” Ben traced a hand over his cheeks and then his body. There wasn't a speck of blood clinging to his body but there was clearly a lot of it on the floor. It was enough to make him worry that blood loss would cause him a lot of problems. Worse, he could feel that something had been taken away from him. Nothing physical, it was like he was missing a part of him that he hadn't realized he'd had before.
“You have the reflexes of a sloth.” The transparent Ben snorted and pointed at Ben's head, “I sealed off my memories from your mind, they're still there but you can't access them. I've seen your life and if you looked at mine by accident you would probably go crazy. Don't worry about the blood. We have a healing factor in our body. Anything bleeds and it'll be healed in a few seconds, anything gets cut off and it'll grow back in a few minutes. The Shroud Uniform is also self cleaning, no dust, blood or dead skin cells to bother you.”
Ben groaned again as he took in the information, “What about the pain? Anything to make that go away?”
“Yeah, it’s called living with it. A little pain is nothing compared to the ability to grow back limbs. Hell, you could survive almost anything as long as a single molecule survives. Maybe. I’ve never tried it, and even if you did get into some sort of limb-cutting event the Shroud Uniform is hard to destroy and self-repairing. As long as you maintain some sort of contact with it, it'll protect you. But that doesn't mean we're indestructible, this isn’t your little boy league world with ordinary people and puny nukes. In this reality we're in the small league. People that can kill us pop up by the dozen in this country alone. And trust me, with what your world was like, you do not want me to tell you what the big league guys can do. ”
“I'm not sure what to say to that... I think you just listed a bunch of impossible things.”
“Yeah, it's not too bad. Just think of it as being in that world of comic books you have in your memories. Things don't make sense unless you're really smart and we're not really smart. But I think that comic book stuff is a lot more accurate than you think. So if you could just go off and hunt down the fucker that merged our minds that’d be grand. I can't guarantee killing them would work, but it never hurts to try. So we should probably do it for good measure.”
“I see. I think I see... I didn't get any of that.”
“Well shit. There's probably a lot more I should explain before you go off to kill whoever did this. And there's this thing about all that blood being on the floor, you should definitely get rid of that. There are way too many people that can use your own blood against you in this world. Rule one Ben is that you never forget to mop up after yourself or it'll come back to kick you in the testicles and then shoot you in the face. Also this will come as a surprise since my face is a raisin twat but we don't reveal our identity to anybody. Our identity stays a secret to everyone and everything. Got it? Now mop up that blood.”
“How?” Ben looked around, the room was bare except for the stone slab and the broken mirror, “Uh..”
“Use your brain dipshit.”
“That doesn't help me at all.”
Ben stood up and moved towards the door, opening it and leaving. He found himself in a narrow hallway that was just as decrepit as his room. And there were no windows. He hadn't realized that until just now but there were no windows in this place. Or in the room he'd just been in. And everything was made of stone. He was definitely being way too calm about this as well. On the outside at least, his insides were getting hit by waves of pain from his head and behind that was barely suppressed panic. But at least something seemed to be holding it back from becoming a full blown mental breakdown.
“Yeah this isn't what I meant. This is going to be harder than I thought.”
The air shimmered in front of Ben and the transparent Ben appeared. He looked disgruntled and annoyed.
“Alright Ben, you saw how the Shroud Uniform cleaned all the blood off of you. Well it can suck up the blood as well, in built feature the Shroud implemented so that nobody could take the DNA of their agents. It also works on telepathic commands. I know you know what that means. Go back into the room and think real hard about the blood disappearing and the Shroud Uniform will destroy it. Just don't think about destroying yourself since your healing factor means that's going to be one hell of a never ending pain-filled fight.”
“Right...”
Ben walked back into the room and was suddenly struck by a sense of deja vu. It was such a simple place, stone walls and stone floor. But it felt like he'd seen it all, and even walked into it like this a thousand times. It was different from what he knew, but it was definitely his room. The one he remembered living in all his life in his parents house. But it was all different as well. For one thing, it was missing the giant window on its side. It also lacked almost the entirety of his furniture, book collection and wardrobe. And anything else that had been in it for that matter. He spotted the mirror as he walked back inside and sighed. He'd changed too, even though he was still Ben, he was covered in a pale black layer of skin, a 'Shroud Uniform', and he could feel his face drooping an impossible amount due to its unhealthy complexion. Everything reminded him of himself and his life, but at the same time it was all so different. Was he even the same person any more?
He closed the door behind him, the only thing that wasn't made of stone in this place, and looked down onto the streaks of blood that were plastered onto the ground like a weird tribute to modern art. Despite the large amounts of blood he had lost, he felt perfectly fine. He tiptoed around it and was suddenly hit with the urge to heave and vomit. It wasn't the site of the blood that did it, he was oddly calm about that, it was the smell of it. That weird metallic smell that wafted through the air. The thought that all this blood was his didn't help him either.
“Stop being a pussy and tell the suit to clean it,” The transparent Ben's annoyed voice floated towards him and Ben almost let out his bowels. Being surprised at this moment wasn't good for his mental state. The transparent Ben seemed to relish in his predicament, “You know, I don't think you're quite ready to do things with your mind yet, try saying it out loud. You can do that without chucking right?”