Work Text:
“Statement of Martin-”
“Can we… can we not do that? I just want to talk. Let it out, you know? That’s what the statements are meant to be for, isn’t it? Closure. Just getting it all out. Even if that thing has another use for it, that’s why people come here. Jon, please.”
“I… of course. Whenever you’re ready.”
“It started… I guess it started a couple of years back. Do you remember after Jane Prentiss’s attack? Things weren’t good but, well, they were as peaceful as it ever really got, at least before things spiralled again. I know you were worried about Gertrude but the rest of us, we were just glad to have survived.
I took a photo. Do you remember that? Right after, sat on the floor of the ambulance outside, the two of us. My arm around your shoulders, that stupid corkscrew still in my hand, and I snapped it on my phone. Both of us. We were tired, exhausted, hurt, but we were alive and part of me just wanted to capture that moment.
I wanted to remember that even after everything, we’d made it. I thought there was something special about that.
I had it framed. Is that weird? I don’t know. I don’t know many people who put up photos of them and a work colleague, but… well I had to. It was… I liked it. You can see how happy I was, not happy like it was my birthday or anything, but happy like I’d had a good long drink of water after days of thirst, that relief after thinking I’d never be happy, never be anything, again.
And your face, that gladness you tried to hide, that smirk as if to say I’d arm-wrestled you into the photo, as if you hadn’t gone along happy. You leaning into me…
Anyway. I liked it. And it was fine, it was fine, really. It’s not like I have it puffed up and in the middle of my living room or anything, it’s just in a small picture frame on the top of a table by the wall.
Then a few months ago…
I don’t know. I don’t think anything changed before that, but I might have missed something. It was subtle. I might have. But it… it was after you woke up.
I thought it was nothing. You know that cliché people say about paintings, that their eyes seem to follow you around the room? It was like that. Your eyes. Not my eyes, just the you in the photo, wherever I stood they seemed to be staring at me.
At first, I thought it was just that. I… I’ve been a bit jumpy lately. You have to be, working here. If I looked at the photo, it wasn’t like anything ever seemed to change. I peered at it and there wasn’t a dot out of place. You looked the way you always had, so did I, but no matter where I stood it always seemed like you were facing me. Watching me.
I used to spend more time in that room. I wasn’t staring at the photo or anything, but it had nice light, nice atmosphere; there was a reason I put all my pictures in there. I wrote poetry there. Or I used to.
I couldn’t any more.
Oh! Right, the other photos, I didn’t mention them did I? There are a few others on that surface, holidays, friends, family, the usual. None of them had that… effect. Just that one, and just you.
I kept trying to write, but the back of my neck prickled. I could feel you staring. But if I turned around, it was always the same. Nothing had changed. Just the same photo, the same image, and your eyes, always following.
I went in that room less and less.
But that was silly, I told myself. I know how many supernatural events there are, you don’t have to tell me, but it was my apartment and nothing had changed. I know the feeling of being watched but I only used to get that down here. It seemed so out of place at home, and the photo…
I’ve already said I liked it, haven’t I? It’s just, you know how electronic recordings are. Laptops never work when it’s important, and photos can be… fuzzy. It’s one of the clearest ones I’ve had of you. Honestly it’s probably the furthest away from the Archives I’ve ever been with you.
Silly really. We only really meet at work, and you spent a year trying to get me out from under your feet, and I still-”
“Martin…”
“I liked the photo, ok? I don’t want to just give it up, so I went back in there. I looked at it, actually, properly looked at it, stared back.
And I brought a post-it. If the eyes were bothering me so much, I decided, I could just hide them. I put it over your face, uh, sorry about that, then went back to my desk.
I managed a verse before I felt that same prickling. I tried to push it aside, ignore it; I told myself it was just what I expected to feel. But I couldn’t help it. Eventually I just had to turn around.
I don’t know what I expected to see. Maybe the post-it had fallen off, maybe there would just be a giant eyeball floating in front of it and I’d at least know I wasn’t imagining it. But no.
It was your buttons. That old-fashioned button-up top of yours, the violet fabric and the black buttons, they were… Tiny black circles, lots of them, rings with dots on the inside facing out. They looked like eyes. Beady black eyes, lots of them.
Nothing had changed, but it still felt different. The buttons were staring at me.
I know it sounds absurd but, well, absurd is what we do isn’t it?
I left the room quickly. I took the post-it with me. I don’t know why. I think I was half-afraid I’d made the photo angry.
I tried again after a few days. Your face hadn’t changed, neither had your eyes, or the buttons. I covered them all. I covered all of you in several post-its until I couldn’t see any part of you.
It didn’t work. Of course it didn’t work. When it turned around… It was that corkscrew, of all things. It was like it had turned up to face me – which it hadn’t, of course, but it still seemed like that – the silver circle of metal with the dot of silver in the middle, the screw around that, and after all that there was the glimpse of the background through it, the texture, like veins. A single bloodshot eye staring at me.
Maybe I should just have gotten rid of it. I know that’s the sensible thing to do. If I throw it away I know it can’t watch me any more.
Or maybe it will, and I won’t even be able to pretend I can do something about it. At least like this I can stare back at it.
And anyway… Even if I knew for sure it would work, I don’t know if I could get rid of it. I don’t know if I’d want to. I don’t have any other photos of us. I don’t know if I’d want any others, now, and the Institute isn’t exactly designed for taking other souvenirs.
I’ve tried everything, turning it around, even throwing a blanket over the top of it. The creases in the fabric though, the way it falls… no matter what I do, you can guess how it looks. It watches me. And if any part of the picture is visible… it’s like all of it is made up of eyes.
Eventually I gave up. No blankets, no post-it notes, I just let it stare.
I think it was only a couple of weeks ago that I first saw it blink. Saw you blink. Maybe it’s been doing it for longer and I just never caught it, I don’t know, but it definitely happened.
It wasn’t just the eyes that followed me around the room any more. I saw your head tilt. Not mine, just you in the photo turning to face me when I walk out, and when I walk back in you’re already looking at me.
I… I moved the picture to my bedroom. I’m not sure why. I can spend more time there, I think.
It doesn’t change, but I could almost feel it disapprove when I left the room. It was the way it stared. When I was out of its view, it was unhappy; when it could see me, it was glad.
It doesn’t mind when I come here though, I know that much. I felt that. If I’m leaving to come to the Institute, it doesn’t disapprove, but if I leave for any other reason, it wants me back where it can see me. I tried sleeping with it in the other room but all I can think is that it’s unhappy, for hour after hour, until I pick it up and bring it in. Then I can fall asleep, even if I am being watched.
I don’t know what it’ll do if it gets unhappy enough. I don’t know if it can do anything, I just want it to be happy. It has your face.
I… so.. yeah…”
“I… oh. Um. I don’t know… are you finished?”
“Not quite. I…
It was last night. Silliest thing really, I was reading something on my phone when I went into the room, and I walked into my bed. I kicked the post harder than I should have, stubbed my toe. It hurt.
I sat down, rested it for a bit. I was almost used to the feeling of being watched by then. But… this morning, do you remember? I came in, and the first thing you asked me was ‘how’s your foot?’
It’s not like I’m limping or anything. That isn’t something you could have known. That’s only something it knows, the picture of you, but you knew it anyway. And I… I don’t know what it means, what any of it means, but…
You’re changing, Jon. And it scares me.”
“I… oh.”
“So. Um. That’s it and… go, I should go.”
“Martin- uh, recording ends.”
Martin was outside of the Institute. As many stories as he’d heard about the sky reaching down and eating people, he couldn’t help but relish the fresh air, the open space, as a stark contrast to the cramped and bad memory-filled hallways of the Institute.
He needed to breathe.
“Martin?”
And then Jon was at his side. Martin tensed, but let himself relax. Peter would object, he knew, but he’d give himself today. He’d needed to vent about the picture, even if he’d run out of the recording room right after.
There wasn’t much point in not recording it. Everything seemed to end up on tape anyway.
“Hi Jon,” Martin said.
“I wanted to say I’m sorry,” Jon said. He hesitated. “Whatever it was… It wasn’t intentional, I promise. Sometimes I just know things without knowing how I know them.”
“Is that why you came to talk to me?” Martin said.
“No, I… I have been thinking about you,” Jon said. “Since I got back, I haven’t seen much of you. I wondered where you were, if you were ok… I don’t know if that has anything to do with it. I didn’t imagine…”
Martin looked sideways. When he met Jon’s eyes, he quickly looked away.
“I don’t control it,” Jon said. “But I’ll try.”
“Thank you,” Martin said.
He dragged his eyes up, at last, to look into Jon’s. It was a familiar feeling.
“It’s just-” Martin began, then faltered.
Jon could ask him, he knew that. One question and he’d start spilling everything, relevant or irrelevant; Martin almost wanted him to. It would be easier.
Jon met his gaze and stayed silent. Martin couldn’t shake the impression that he was being watched by far more than just those two eyes.
“We should talk more,” Jon said. “It might help. And even if it doesn’t… I’ve missed you.”
“Yeah,” Martin said. “Yeah. Me too.”
Another moment of silence. Then, ignoring the prickle on the back of his neck, Martin began to move away.
Maybe some things were better left unspoken. Maybe Jon already knew.