Chapter Text
Let’s dispense with the formalities, shall we? If you’ve found this letter, you know who it’s from already. No need for me to introduce myself. Who you are, on the other hand. . .
—
Michael didn’t have anyone to play with, was the thing.
There were some people he still had in the tunnels, but most of them were dull, or had finished digesting at this point. Kevin was still there, sometimes. He wandered in and out of the corridors and desert seemingly at random, and there was a part of Michael that enjoyed watching this stranger’s form of madness. It felt almost familiar.
But Lyfrassir Edda was still out of commission, which was quite tedious of them, and Michael wanted someone new to play with. Someone different. Someone who could almost understand the mass of lies and confusion that formed the Spiral, who could see Michael’s anger and betrayal and see them as almost trustworthy. Almost, of course, because Michael could never really be trusted, not by someone who actually saw it, but something close.
Michael wanted a sibling, and he couldn’t have his right now, apparently, because Lyfrassir Edda had the utter audacity to be dead. Being around them made him feel less Distortion, and more Michael Shelley, in a way that he both feared and desired, and their decision to die and then be kept in a flat outside of his reach was quite irritating. It had wanted to understand Lyfrassir Edda, understand why being around them made him feel almost human.
But for now, Michael was bored. Thus, he’d decided to find someone else to play the role of sibling instead.
There was no logic, really, in the Spiral. Logic did not work when confronted with deception and insanity, not for long. Eventually, all logic fell to something close to a dreamy sort of instinct, something Michael had learned to manage, given time. But the Distortion remembered being one of many, and then being Michael and being alone. Michael had had friends, before, too. It wasn’t meant to be the only one of its kind, and the idea of a second spiraling twist in the fabric of reality. . .
If any being could share a title, it would be the Distortion.
Choosing someone to approach was the difficult part. Michael couldn’t just work with a person that was already there. The vase-eaten man was already far too gone to embrace the Distortion, or even to engage it in conversation. The people that their little sibling already knew did not seem like they would be pleased to be digested and transformed, and Lyfrassir would probably be unhappy about it, regardless of how the results came out. Whether the friend was still recognizably Lyf’s friend or not.
He had considered it, though. Long enough to find his way to Oliver Banks’ home and watch as the herald lived his life, and as he responded to crises, and as he worked alongside the bookburner to solve his own problems. The spiral, Michael imagined, might be kinder than the entities that had taken over the herald’s life.
Oliver, of course, might not think so.
“You’ve been watching me,” the herald said one lazy afternoon. Gerard Keay had gone out beforehand, saying something about checking in on friends. Oliver had stayed behind, claiming a headache. “Why are you here, Michael?”
Michael did not move an inch.
“You can just come out, you know,” Oliver said idly, flipping the page of his book. A new collection of Shakespearean sonnets, it looked like. “You want us to trust you. Showing up and sticking around when there’s not danger. . .”
Michael still did not respond, letting the silence speak for him.
“You’re not even able to check in on Lyf, are you?” Oliver realized aloud. “The flat doesn’t let you in. Maybe you miss them just as much as we—”
Michael had left, then. Utterly ridiculous for the herald to think Michael missed anyone. Of course, Lyfrassir Edda was an interesting case, but there was no reason—
He was just alone in general, and that situation was untenable. Either Lyfrassir Edda had to come back from the dead already, or Michael needed to find someone else. Someone new and different, someone who Lyfrassir wouldn’t recognize and who would present a friendly face, who might be Lyfrassir’s sibling as well as Michael’s. . . that would be a challenge, of course, but Michael had all the time in the world, it seemed. His spirally sibling was not getting any less dead.
Someone he could make believe any sort of lie, and who could help with his revenge on the Archives. Someone who could be made to believe anything and anywhat and anywho about Michael, and would be able to make her own lies in response, a sort of beautiful, twisted dance that the Distortion had not been able to perform in decades.
That was another point in favor of this plan, Michael thought, as he stared out at his newest candidate. She was busily escorting a couple around a house, pointing out all the positive features, distorting reality with her words alone. The couple didn’t notice the flaws in the place, or really see what this house would look like after several years of living.
If there was a second distortion, one that could be both a sibling for him and for Lyfrassir, perhaps they could find a way to whatever place it was that Lyfrassir was now. There was no reason, really, to think that her and Michael together could cheat death, but Lyfrassir was not entirely dead, were they? Michael knew secrets and lies like nothing else could, and it could feel that Lyfrassir was being lied to. Wherever they were, it was not a place where his doors could go, not alone. Another agent of the Spiral, though. . .
Together, maybe their corridors could stretch to whatever place Lyfrassir Edda had reached.
He’d not been there, when Lyfrassir Edda had died. Michael had been busy elsewhere, watching on the Aurora as the chaotic band carried on its merry way. His sibling seemed fond of some of the members of that crew, for whatever reason, and so Michael had taken the chance to observe when he’d found it.
The crew there were strange, still. Michael had known some of them, from its first meeting with his sibling and counterpart. The robot, for instance, had had interesting ideas of how to approach the Vast, as had the man with the metal eyes. The baron that Michael’s sibling had expressed interest in was more questionable, but could be dealt with.
There were two real objects of curiosity on the Aurora, and those were the box that felt like Michael’s sibling, and the young girl with the metal arm. Michael approved of her, in a vague sort of way. She seemed just as interested in finding out what had happened to the inspector as it was, and he wished her well in that.
The fact that investigating the box had led to him missing Lyfrassir Edda’s death, though. . . that, Michael could not stand, along with the fact that Lyfrassir Edda had died at all. They weren’t supposed to. They’d been the closest to knowing Michael in a very, very long time. The Distortion wasn’t supposed to be alone like this, and no matter what steps Michael took to remedy the situation, there was only so little it could do.
An ally, though? It was possible.
The chances that someone like Helen Richardson would hate him after her becoming were high, Michael reflected. He still hated Gertrude, after all. Most days, there was little else in him than hatred, a fierce anger that tried to burn every other part of Michael away. But at the same time, Michael could not think of another path.
There was always another path, of course, many of them twisting and perplexing, leading in ways that would drive a person to madness. But Michael thought that this path would be the most interesting, and the least lonely.
It was too late to turn back, now. Helen might have seen his door, on that last viewing. Even if to a human's eyes he usually seemed less than monstrous, there was always the chance that she’d seen something a little beyond that.
Now was exactly the where and when to look at a house, and at Helen more closely. If she was the sort of person she seemed, well. . . playing with her would be fun, whether she found the important door or not. And if she did not, there were always others. Michael could have fun with this, even if it would be alone until that door was opened.
The door always opened, in the end. Most people were too curious to leave well enough alone, even when they really did know better. And poor Helen Richardson would not, would she? No, she’d open the door, and go in the corridor, and perhaps even find the right door, in the end. Perhaps.
—
It had been a busy morning of appointments and house viewings, and Helen Richardson was already exhausted when the laughing man appeared.
She’d only expected one more viewing. One more, and she could follow up with the families who’d come by to see the house later, and leave the morning behind her. Helen had been a few minutes late that morning, and everything had felt wrong, and she hated days like that, she really did. Time was supposed to make sense, and traffic was supposed to land within her error margin so that she’d get there before the client, and the different executives and bankers and similar clients who’d scheduled viewings were supposed to communicate with her.
This man did not look like a banker or an executive.
“Are you. . . Mr. Lombardi?” Helen checked, trying to hide how off-balance she felt. There was no world where a real estate agent being visibly disturbed by a client would go well. It was just. . . something seemed wrong about the man. He was taller than her with long hair, so maybe that was it? Most of the men she met with had short hair. It looked cleaner. This man’s hair was straw colored and fell in ringlets, so perhaps he’d just decided to go with an old fashioned haircut. His face was unthreatening, though, even if he seemed far too motionless.
“No,” the man said, with a sudden, out-of-place smile, “but I’m afraid Mr. Lombardi will. . . not be coming today. I’ve come instead. You can call me Michael.”
How strange. The Lombardi family had seemed polite enough when arranging the viewing. Usually, people like that emailed, or at least arranged something ahead of time. Maybe she’d just missed the communication. The cell service in this town was generally mediocre, and with the non-stop viewings all morning, it was all too possible that a last minute arrangement had slipped through the cracks.
Well, there was no reason to let on that she’d been caught flat-footed. Helen put on her best face, smiled, and said “Of course,” in a way that really wasn’t a lie at all, was it, and offered a handshake.
The man (and he had given his name, even if it’d slipped her mind) glanced down at her hand, and laughed. It wasn’t a normal laugh at all, and it echoed strangely in Helen’s mind. He stepped past her into the house, and Helen tried to stay calm.
He’d had a name. He was a normal person, even if he wasn’t quite up to her normal standard of clientele, and she was going to do her job, even if he was a little. . . off-putting. Sure, he didn’t seem like the sort of person that a business executive or banker would even know, or think was appropriate to send in their place, but. . . he’d seemed quite certain that he was there instead of Mr. Adrian Lombardi, and the words had settled into her mind with the weight of truth.
Mr. Lombardi wouldn’t be here. This man was. Thus, he had to be here on Mr. Lombardi’s behalf, right? There was no other conceivable answer that made sense. Unless. . . maybe he was one of those maniacs people talked about on the news, and the scheduled viewing would show up any moment to find her long since dead.
In another world, Helen might have called the police. Certainly they would be able to do something, and she’d be safe. No matter if the man hadn’t done anything criminally wrong yet, as far as she knew for certain. It was just—
His laugh was still echoing in her head, and Helen felt the first seeds of fear in her gut.
She leapt into her sales pitch, clinging to the familiar words as though they were a weapon. If she finished, if she took him around the house, then it would be over, and he would be gone, and she could go home safely.
The man’s fingers tapped against his legs slightly as he followed her, and he smiled all the while, as if asking her why she was lying to herself.
—
The Distortion liked Helen.
Michael could feel that much. The woman in front of him was lying in more ways than one with every passing second. There was the slight disapproval at his rainbow pin, completely camouflaged as she talked about the house, the way she tried to talk around the obvious flaws that the property had, the way she was lying to everything and everyone just as easily as breathing.
She dressed fashionably to hide a meager paycheck and to pretend to be the same class as her clients, but she also had come up from a “lower class background”. She voted conservatively, even though she knew deep down that the Tory leadership would most likely act against her own interests. It was all a tangle of lies in there, lies to herself and lies to others, and the Distortion thought that she would be delicious.
Helen Richardson also looked much different than Michael did, with a different name and a different face, and even a different color of skin. With her as the Distortion, and Michael as the Distortion, and Lyfrassir Edda’s past day in the role, the opportunities to make the world doubt reality were endless.
“--and this could be the dining room, or a sitting room,” Helen said, gesturing at a room that Michael knew would be too small for either in the long run, if the person in question had a large family. The walls were painted in such a way to make the room look bigger, but if a table was put in the middle. . .
Michael knew lies. Real estate was full of them, as it turned out, and Helen was a master, both personally and professionally. Both to others, and to herself.
She would work perfectly.
The house, on the other hand? The Lombardi family might have considered it, but Michael was not going to waste his time. The Distortion had no need for a house. Its home was everywhere, besides the flat that their sibling and the bookburner had protected together. One day, either Helen’s home would be the same sort of everywhere, or she would be dead. There was no real in between, not for this sort of thing.
“And this could be a bedroom, or a study— “ Helen said as they reached the room at the top of the stairs. She turned around, looking to see if he was paying attention, perhaps. Such a strange little room for a bedroom, though, wasn’t it?
But Michael wasn’t where she’d think it would be, no. The start, perhaps, of her next few hours of unpredictable, maddening chaos. No, Michael had instead walked across the landing, away from that tiny, pathetic bedroom-or-study, and brought his door through.
It was an impossible spot. An exterior wall on an upper floor, where no door would or even could be. Helen would know that. But she’d look inside anyway, eventually. Whether Helen would work as a second Distortion or not, Michael still thought he could have a chance to play, this time.
The door was dark yellow, as was his habit nowadays. It’d been Michael Shelley’s favorite color, in life, and from what it had heard from its sibling, it was the color the Spiral appeared as. It wondered what connection there was, and if the color would have been different if someone else had entered the Spiral that day in Sannikov land. There was no way to know, but it did seem like a fascinating little thought to follow.
“What is behind this door?” he asked, as Helen stepped out to the landing. Michael didn’t turn toward her, no. That might give the game away.
She didn’t answer. Of course she didn’t. She stepped towards it a little, almost unconsciously, mouth hanging open in shock. Michael could see her confusion, her sudden doubt of the reality of the door, her fear. It was all delicious, every bit of it, and Michael savored it.
Eventually, Michael repeated the question. Build the curiosity and fear just a little, but make sure her mind was focused on where it should be: what was behind the door? What was on the other side, what could be there, in the impossible door that had never been there before?
Helen stood there for a very long time, just staring at the dark yellow door. Finally, she reached forward, gripped the black handle, and pulled it open, and Michael watched with a smile. He’d follow her inside soon, enough to scare her out before she got too deep. Enough to suggest making a map of the place. It could be his undoing, or it could be the end to his loneliness. Either way, the Distortion would stop being so stagnant, and that was the real problem, wasn’t it?
Things fell apart, shifted and changed, and an unchanged Distortion was a dead Distortion. No, the existence of the Distortion had to defy reality, had to make people question what they thought was possible. If Michael and Helen could share that title, then that would certainly change the way things were in a stunning way.
He kind of liked it.
—
Helen didn’t remember going through the door.
She remembered touching the doorknob, gripping it, and that impossible door opening. She remembered looking out into that windowless corridor that could not have ever existed in a house like this, and taking in the insane colors, the electric lights, the distant sound of crying. . .
And then she was inside the corridor, and the door was gone.
The corridor itself was perplexing, and Helen could only think of what she’d once imagined the rabbit hole in Alice in Wonderland to look like as the young Alice fell down, down, down the hole into another world entirely. The walls were a swirling, dizzying green pattern, with electric lights spaced out about every ten feet. The floor was a faded yellow carpet, with a worn black rug down the center. The longer she stared at the rug, though, the less plain black it seemed, and the less yellow the surrounding carpet seemed, too, like the colors were shifting around to trick her eyes. The only decorations were mirrors spaced oddly on the walls, interspersed with what seemed to be pictures of the corridor, so well-done that they might have well been mirrors themselves.
Helen took it all in, and wanted to scream, and run away, and get out of there as quickly as possible. She wasn’t an Alice or a Dorothy, ready for whatever insanity came her way. She really just wanted to sell a house, and keep her mind intact, and stay firmly grounded in reality. Instead, here she was.
She took a step back, to the point where she bumped into where the door had been, but it wasn’t there. There was something else. Something cold, and hard, and not like a door at all. It gave a soft click, whatever it was, and she knew. Still, Helen spun around to see, because she trusted her eyes more than her ears, even if this place seemed designed to play with the senses and make her feel insane.
There was no door at all. It was another one of those terrible mirrors that lined the hallway, with no door in sight. The mirror was wrong, and cold, and hard, and no matter how long Helen tried, the mirror did not become a door again after screaming, or pounding at it with fists, or after sobbing.
She didn’t deserve this. There wasn’t anything she’d done that screamed “I should be locked in another dimension”. Everyone did silly things over their lives to the same degree she had, like going a little above the speed limit, or being impolite to retail workers when they were in a rush. Helen’s crimes were tiny in comparison to the wider world, she thought, and she was supposed to be safe because of that. She’d worked her hardest throughout her life, or at least as hard as she was supposed to work. Didn’t that mean something?
This had to be a dream. Just her mind, lying to herself about the reality of her situation. Helen had just gotten too stressed about something or other, like the chance of a promotion or the idea of being able to afford a house like this, and she’d imagined the man with the horrible laugh and the unkempt hair who’d stood too still and always, always smiled.
There was nothing for it, in the end. Helen stood up, slowly, in her heeled shoes and her nice clothes and her carefully styled hair. She looked down the horrible, buzzing, constantly shifting corridor. It curved to the left, it looked like, with passages every so often going off to the right. Eventually, she told herself, it had to go somewhere.
“Whoever you are,” she muttered aloud, as if the laughing man would hear her. For all she knew, he could. “Whoever you are, you’re not funny.”
Helen pretended not to hear the echo of a laugh. No matter how much she had to delude herself to start moving, what was important was the moving. The lies weren’t important at all, she thought. Just an in-between state. Nothing more.
—
The corridors weren’t empty.
Noises echoed from side corridors sometimes. Once, Helen thought she saw the shadow of a huge snake, taller than her, that dripped down to the floor and sang. Another time, she saw what looked like the shadow of a woman that very clearly was avoiding her. And then, there was Kevin.
Helen. . . didn’t know how to describe Kevin. He came out of nowhere as she began to take her third turn. (Testing the first turn had revealed that backtracking was pointless, as the mirror that had once been a door had completely vanished, so she’d begun counting and keeping track of her turns instead.) She’d nearly screamed at the first sight of him, something that he seemed to almost expect.
“Oh, hello!” he said, through that terrible, bloody, smiling mouth. “What brings you here?”
“Who are you?” she asked in return, trying not to look at the blood, or the eyes, or the tiny snake he carried on his shoulder.
“Oh! I’m Kevin. And you are?”
“Helen,” Helen said slowly, although she was starting to doubt things like that in this place. She was starting to doubt her knowledge of herself. She had always been Helen, yes, but was she still Helen here, with the strange shifting walls (now a spiraling crimson), or was she someone else entirely? “How did you get here?”
“A door in a desert,” Kevin responded cheerfully. He gave the bloody snake on his shoulder a small scratch, and Helen held back the scream when she realized no, the snake wasn’t covered in blood, it was blood somehow, held in a snake-like form. “I come here sometimes to say hi to everyone, you know? The desert is a lovely, welcoming place, filled with smiling people, but these corridors feel almost like home, don’t you think?”
Helen did not think, in that respect. The corridors were so warm that she couldn’t stop shivering, and she hadn’t been able to talk to anyone, and when she’d pulled out her phone that once, it had only shown the same image that was on every mirror and every picture on the walls: the corridor curving to the left, with spiraling walls and the too-yellow carpet and the too-black rug.
“Oh, you’re still overwhelmed by it, aren’t you?” Kevin said sympathetically. He reached out, touching her cheek. “Just wait! Soon, you’ll be smiling at the thought of this place, just like me.”
Helen didn’t remember lashing out at Kevin’s hand, but she could see that she had, based on the gash in his clothing, and the strange look on his face.
If she had, she didn’t regret it. She’d been told to smile enough over the years, and she’d perfected that smile. It was a lie, but it was her lie, and it was a comfortable one, ready to make anyone more likely to trust her. Being told she’d smile about this. . .
No.
“Maybe we can talk more later,” Kevin said finally. He smiled at her, the bloody wounds on his cheeks almost looking like extensions of his wide grin. “You’ve got a long walk ahead of you, don’t you? And I’m sure the Smiling God will help you on your way. . .”
He set down the snake made of blood, and continued off one of the side paths. By the time Helen thought of following him, since he seemed to know where he was going, he was already well out of sight.
—
Helen didn’t know how long it was after Kevin showed up that the strange cat appeared, but it felt like an eternity.
She was alone, or she was never alone, or she was continually watched and guided by that strange laughing man who’d sent her here. Had she chosen to take that step, to walk inside the corridors, or had she been pushed? Was there a way out? Was there even a reality outside of this dizzying corridor?
She hadn’t had food or water, during her time in the corridors, and she hadn’t really been able to sleep, either. The closest she got was collapsing in one of the twists and turns of the passages, pulling her knees up to her chest, and trying not to cry. Crying took water, and she hadn’t had water with her when she entered this place. Any water spent crying was water wasted.
It was during one of those times when the cat appeared.
She looked up, eyes bleary, as the thing rubbed its face on her leg, angling to get patted. Then, Helen squinted.
“Hello,” she whispered, offering her hand to it. She didn’t really like cats, not usually, but pretending otherwise made people less skittish, and she’d been alone for so long that she didn’t really care at this point. “Where did you come from?”
The cat licked her hand. It looked— it looked wrong, with too many legs, or not enough. Did cats’ legs always curl and wind like tentacles? Helen had been certain, before this moment, that cats usually had four legs, not tentacle-like at all, but this was a cat without a doubt, and it had a different number.
“Do you know the exit?” Helen asked the cat, trying not to feel stupid in doing so. If cats could have too many legs that looked like tentacles, perhaps cats could talk, too. “I— I promise, I’ll find some sort of treat for you. I don’t have anything on me now. . .”
Of course, she was lying through her teeth, but the cat wouldn’t know that, now, would it? All the cat would know was what she said and how she smelled, and Helen was feeling desperate enough at this point to ask a cat for directions anyway.
The cat looked at her as though she was stupid, and then it smiled, and Helen remembered exactly where she was.
“I never liked Alice in Wonderland, anyway,” Helen muttered, and then stood up. “And I don’t like cats either. I’ll find my way out without you helping. You’ll see.”
The cat still smiled, far too human-like for any sort of comfort, as if it didn’t really believe Helen either.
It followed her as she continued to walk, too, passing through corridor after corridor without making a single sound. Sometimes, she’d not see it at all for a good long while, and then it would seem to come out of a mirror, seamlessly ending up by her side. No matter what happened, it was always smiling.
Helen didn’t like it one bit. For now, though, she kept up appearances, pretending to like its company. Even if it was a horrifying creature that made her feel like she was losing her mind, it was still better than being alone. She’d get out eventually and leave it behind, but for now, better not to anger it.
Better to smile and laugh and pretend that she cared, than to try to kick it away and get scratched for her troubles.
—
Michael watched her, the wanderer, throughout her time in the corridors.
It kept her away from Manuela, for now. Manuela wouldn’t have engaged with her, since she was still trying to break out by creating a dark star inside the Distortion, which was completely impossible as far as Michael was aware. He still made sure to mess with Manuela’s materials and understanding of reality as much as possible, leading her to make small mistakes each time. She’d get out soon enough, if she actually tried breaking the mirrors.
The wanderer, on the other hand, it decided, could have some time in reality. Enough to make a map, if that was what she chose to do. If not, her fear would only worsen the second time, making for an even better experience from his perspective. Confronting reality, realizing how much less sense it made than the delusion. . . Well, it could break her mind in fascinating ways. Perhaps then, she might even believe Michael, when it told her she came willingly.
But considering how, when she walked around, she was counting the corridors and trying to find a sort of sense in all of the nonsense. . . yes, he thought she would end up making a map. End up surviving, in a way, when the time came. She could be a fascinating Distortion-half one day.
Still, it was time to let her out again. Otherwise, she would end up chewed and digested thoroughly, and Michael couldn’t have that. That option was, truth be told, the least fun way out of this situation. Besides, Lyf was still being utterly stubborn and entirely dead, as far as Michael knew. This was the only real option for entertainment and company, and Michael wanted both.
So, it appeared down the way from where she’d collapsed in misery, in a sort of form of itself. A distorted version, perhaps, but that was the real truth of what it was, wasn’t it? Bulbous and twisted and thin and sharp, moving like it was shifting rather than walking at the strangest of angles.
If Michael scared the wanderer enough, it knew, she would either find a way out or she would die. It rather hoped she found her way out. It would certainly be the more entertaining option, and he liked playing with her. The Distortion liked her in a way it had never liked Michael Shelley. Seeing her as the Distortion. . . well, it would be quite an experience.
She did run further. She ran, and she screamed, and she found a mirror that didn’t reflect them and broke the glass, and it let her out. For now.
Until then, Michael would have work to do, pulling the mirrors back and tightening the seams in this little reality. Keeping Kevin out when it was time for the final performance. If Helen was to be transformed, nothing inside would stay quite the same.
For now, he watched and waited as the wanderer got rescued, and then he considered what to do with the blood snakes loose in the corridors. He’d keep them for now, and give them to Lyfrassir Edda once they were awake once again. It seemed like the only thing to do. Michael still wasn’t sure how they had gotten in, really, but the things had really seemed to like growing in the Spiral. The closest he could have to pets, perhaps, excluding the few Octokittens that had ventured in.
No matter what happened next, Michael decided, it was sure to be entertaining, and he looked forward to seeing it unfurl. For now, though, all he could do was wait.
—
When Helen stumbled out of the corridors, reality set in and it hurt.
She hadn’t slept in who knew how long. Couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten or drunk anything, either. It was hard to remember the world beyond the corridors, in some ways, other than as a laughable idea of what might have been reality.
Rain was falling, when she surfaced. Rain, with pavement underneath her feet, already slick and filled with slippery puddles of unknown depth. Helen had almost doubted that rain existed, during her time in the corridors. It seemed like a strange dream, a memory she’d made up to make herself believe that somewhere in this world, water fell from the sky.
Helen almost, almost, let herself drink it. It had been days since she’d drunk water, after all, as far as her body was concerned, even if time felt like a lie in those endless corridors. Her lips were parched and her head was pounding and the world felt like it was spinning, and an old voice in her head insisted that she’d feel better if she just drank some water. Instead, she collapsed on the pavement, screaming.
It took minutes of screaming for someone to find her. Longer still for an ambulance to turn up, and even longer before she felt anywhere close to how she would have felt before, physically. Helen doubted her mind would ever return to normal.
She saw the yellow door sometimes, and tried to pretend it was a hallucination. A nightmare. After all, the doors at the hospital weren’t the same color, and it shouldn’t be there. Refusing to go through doors alone there got her odd looks, but explaining the hallucinations would have made her look mad.
Helen didn’t think she was insane, but then again, sanity looked more and more like the real delusion, these days.
She remembered the last thing the creature inside had said to her, before it had started to attack. There was no map to the corridors.
Well, Helen had a fairly good memory. Perhaps it was time for that to change.