happy fourth of july jack skellington

"Why would you care? You're dead. You're not supposed to care about anything when you're dead,"

"Well, I care. And I dare to say you should be ashamed of the state of your home... Whatever would you do if you had guests?"

"I never have guests. And you never host. So who cares?"

"I care,"

You sit on the mangled mess of plywood and pleather you used to call a sofa. Skully keeps his distance, eyeing a cockroach scuttling on the wall behind you.

"...And, anyway, it has most certainly not been a week. You said the same thing to me last I saw you,"

You ponder on that. "...A month, then,"

"And the last,"

"...Two months?"

"And the year before, and the year before that..." he pauses to stare. The cockroach has crawled up the exposed piping in the wall and is presently hovering over your shoulder. "...But I only know as much as you do. You should sleep more."

"I appreciate the concern, but no,"

The roach scuttles down your sleeve and one leg of your pants, propped up on the cardboard box of a coffee table. You eye it maliciously, and squash it under your heel.

"I've killed that same one twice this week," you mutter, stamping it with your boot until it's naught but a fine paste. "It keeps coming back. Why, why does it do that...?"

Skully frowns. "You don't think it's a different insect?"

"Oh, no, it's the same one... mocking me," you leer over the puddle of bug goo. "...With its stubbornness... stupidity... doesn't it know I'm sparing it from a much worse fate? Is it so tempted by suffering? Well, I suppose everything is. At least around here. Though, then, there's nowhere on this planet where people are sane and sensible and don't walk readily into the slaughterhouse with their big, dumb grins. Oh, I hate that look. You know the one, Skully?"

The ghost eyes your boot, as if you might try to smush him next. "No,"

"Yes, you do. Remember how we used to talk? You'd tell me about all the people who hurt you? Mocked you? Made you feel small and stupid? Called you all number of terrible things? And, oh, you hurt them. You did. I remember,"

"...That was a long time ago. I aged out of my temper tantrums,"

"And I aged into mine. What a disappointing trade,"

"This isn't you,"

You turn, swinging one leg after the other and standing in the manner of a potato sack filled with sand, not a person.

You give him a look. "Then what is me? Explain,"

Skully is silent, and you walk through him. He falters as he floats alongside you, dodging cobwebs and drips of mysterious reddish-brown liquid coming from cracks in the ceiling. Ramshackle has seen better days... supposedly.

You don't remember so well.

"I know as much as you do," he says, "But even I remember that things were better than this before."

"Before what?" you say it in a sing-song tune, more than familiar with this routine. Skully insists, you deny, he insists, you question, he sputters and shuts down like a dying engine. Which is appropriate, because, well, he's dead!

That line of thought was not your own. You can't remember the last time you could think in a straight sentence, or when at least one of the many conversations happening in your head was in your own voice.

You laugh, anyway.

Skully gives you a disconcerted look.

"Before... this,"

"Which is...?"

He looks to the dark hall that seems to stretch on, and on, and on ahead of you. Somewhere down there is a door, and somewhere through that is a set of stairs. "Whatever it is that made you like this,"

The merriment is sucked straight out of your chest, draining from you like pus from a wound, like light from the hall, dark, darker, darker...

"Don't you remember anything?"

You've been victim to these mood swings for who-knows-how-long. Most hours, you feel nothing but a vague (pervasive) sense of boredom, drawn to pointless, petty endeavors to feed the fist-sized hole in your chest, the urge to move for the sake of moving, to eat for the sake of eating, to talk for the sake of talking, and nothing more...

...Some hours, though, it all comes at once. The rage, the fear, the euphoria, the misery, that weird little full-body shiver than only seems to happen on the toilet, it bursts out of your chest in an anti-poetic flurry of bits and things, red and bloody, sour and metallic. Your emotions feel less like a part of you, and more like a nebula, inescapable, heavy, and massive. The sort of feelings that only children should have, when their emotions are too big for their bodies and they've never had one before- a feeling, that is.

Doing anything for the first time is terrifying.

Adults usually get over the little things, the scraped knees and the first-days of whatever, it all just becomes tiny blots of paint in the pointalism of their lives. Fear and anger and sadness become boring, inconsequential, meaningless things, background noise in the day-to-day of their busy work weeks, more like the engine check light being on too long than anything really debilitating. Emotion is reserved for big events and special occasions, making the movement of the soul an exquisite thing. Everything hurts more and less at the same time, the grief of a death is inconsolable, the pain of a toothache is Tuesday.

But you, you go through life feeling everything for the first time, over and over and over again. Every time you're sad, it feels like the first sadness, every time you're angry, it's the first anger, the first pain, the first fear, the first joy. Every emotion is hungry, greedy, to make you its next meal, to consume, like a black hole, stretching you into spaghetti on the event horizon. The pain of a death is no greater than the pain of a toothache. It's all the same hurt.

"...No," you decide, hands in your pockets by the basement door. "I don't think so. I only have the faintest feeling that I might've been something, once. Maybe even a person."

You cup your chin in your palm.

Something's off about the wall.

How long has it been since you've been down in the basement?

You suppose you've been busy... sealing the cracks in the ceiling (no more gray water dripping in your Spaghetti-O's) and nailing more boards over the windows.

You found a skull in the gutter last Wednesday. It's probably Skully's, though you hadn't thought to ask. You're using it as a pencil holder now.

The wall's all... brown. And crusty. Is that how it's supposed to look? You don't even remember.

You take up the big mop (the little one's jammed in the kitchen sink, only way it won't clog) and bang it against the drywall.

"Anyone home?"

No response. You try a tender, gentle knock.

"Hellooooo~?"

Nothing. FWUMP. You slam the head of it into the corner.

"I KNOW YOU'RE IN THERE, YOU PIECE OF SHIT FREELOADER! COME OUT OR I'LL LOCK THE DOOR AND BURN THE WHOLE PLACE TO THE GROUND!" It's a half-serious threat. You could use another pencil holder.

...

...

...

"Huh," you say, setting the mop at your side and inspecting the crumbling paint. "Maybe Skully's right. Maybe I am losing it."

"Losing what?"

You turn to the basement steps behind you. Swing is standing in the doorway with a slushy from the campus convenience store.

"There you are," you say, putting your hands on your hips. "Did you go out again?"

He grins- his teeth are stained cherry red.

"What'd I say about doing that? You'll scare the civilians,"

"I think you do enough of that on your own. Besides, no one saw us,"

You give him a look. It may be past dark, but a six-foot-seven boogeyman who couldn't give less of a damn about being discrete isn't exactly hard to miss.

"Fine. It's your business, not mine," you say, following him as he walks down another flight of stairs, deeper into the basement.

"That's my jitterbug,"

You roll your eyes, tugging on the thin chain attached to the lightbulb above your head, sickly yellow-green light, faint, flickering, and dying, cascading over the narrow steps.

"Skully's been bugging me again," you say, "That's why I'm down here. If you're wondering."

"I wasn't," Swing says merrily, stopping at the bottom of the stairs and manhandling a plywood door open (tricky knob). "But we're not complaining. Are we?"

The head of his centipede tattoo peeks out from under his collar. You wave.

You follow him deeper into the basement. You don't remember if it was always like this- thousands of steps, hundreds of chambers full of rusty nails, iron racks, and brown dust, descending deep, deep into the earth- but, well, it's how it is.

Everything is just, how it is.

"What do you remember about me, before I was this?" you ask him as he moves another piece of plywood out of their path.

Swing glances over his shoulder, scrutinizing you with a gratingly unamused look.

"Nothing," he says, "You've always been this. So has Mr. Swing. There was no before."

"Hypothetically speaking, though, doesn't everything have a before? Matter can't be destroyed nor created, therefore..."

"I wish you'd stop reading those dumb books!" he shouts back with a big grin, obviously taking pleasure in trying to get on your nerves. It's working. You follow with a frown.

"I didn't read it," when's the last time you read something, anyway? You can't focus on anything while being electrocuted by all the loose wires in your head. "I just knew it."

"So, then, Doctor Science, what are you really asking?"

"What I was like. Before,"

"Before, what?"

"Before I was this,"

Swing knots his brow. "Dunno," he decides, kicking a burlap sack full of... something aside and walking deeper. "You were always this way. And what's so wrong with it?"

You linger in the doorway, boots glued to the ground.

"I'm not happy,"

"What does that matter?"

Now you remember why you prefer sharing your big feelings with Skully. Nonetheless, you persist on the spiral path Hell-bound. You could do without the lecture today.

"It just does,"

You stay hot on Swing's heels like an untrained puppy, nipping at ankles in hope of a treat.

"You complain too much. The wall was flaking today, did you see that?"

"Stay on topic!" you snap, "And I complain too much? All you do is whine about being bored and give me shit advice! You want me to stay down here forever, is that it?! You don't want me to think for myself because then I'd leave this shithole and make something worthwhile out of myself!"

Swing's smile turns, and that familiar shadow crosses his face. "You can't leave," he says, "And Mr. Swing's got no say in it either way."

You return his sullen face with a frown. "Why?"

He gives you another unamused look and keeps walking, turning back towards the darkness as if to use it as a shield.

"Why," your voice bounces against stone, echo following Swing down the hall.

"Ask your ghost friend," he says casually, "Mr. Swing doesn't want to talk about this anymore."

"I explicitly told you not to talk to him about it!"

You frown, folding your hands and steepling your fingers over the grimy tabletop, observing the ghost boy float from one wall to another in a sort of trance.

"Of all the things..."

"You haven't been very helpful. Besides, I like Swing," you pause. "He makes me feel normal."

"NORMAL!" Skully exclaims, and then melts into a puddle of ectoplasmic misery at your feet. "Oh, of all the things...! It almost makes me wish he was after my beloved Halloween again, like in the days before... and not... well, never mind, you've done it, and now I have to fix it, like always!"

You sigh, slumping, limp in your rotting chair like a true cadaver.

"Of all the things..."

The cockroach scuttles across the tabletop, and you glare at it- back again, are we?

Skully sighs as you smush it under your thumb.

"Oh, oh, it's all... What was the question, again?"

You look up. "Swing says I can't leave. Why?"

The ghost glances up from where he'd been groveling on the floor, an inquisitive touch to his features, now. "Can't leave... can't... ah, but you do go out every so often to, well, whatever it is you do. Then he must mean in a..."

"Metaphorical way?" you offer.

"Magical, I would guess. That man doesn't do metaphors. At least, from what I remember. It's been hundreds of years, after all, and he's long lost interest in me,"

"He seems pretty attached to the basement,"

"And the owner of said basement," Skully's eyes flick up to you. "What does he have down there?"

You think. Dust, debris, a wall, a freezer full of icey-pops and cold soda...

"Nothing important,"

"I suppose so. What was the question?"

"You're as bad as I am!" you exclaim, sitting up straight in your seat. "I want to know why I can't leave."

"Mm... mmm..."

He cups his chin in his palm and paces, stepping over empty air as if it were earth.

"Well, at a point, long ago, you spoke fondly of going home,"

Home? There's a "home" now? You lift an eyebrow. "This is my home,"

"Well, it is, but was it always?"

You sink back into the seat and rest your eyes. Foggy, dreamlike images of people and places and faces and names, the sort of things you see in your sleep (in the few times you sleep, that is), dance in the dark behind your eyelids. Disconnected, isolated, and, yet...

"Why couldn't I go home?"

Skully swears and mutters to himself. "Oh, sometimes I do wish I had more to my memory than candy recipes and Halloween color coordination... not that I would give that up, no, never, but-"

"Why not, Skully?"

"It was..." he pauses. "...Well, that no one could find where you came from. It's as if it never existed."

The people and places and faces and names vanish in an instance, leaving only the black emptiness behind your eyelids. You think about that.

"So it's really like I came from nothing,"

"...That's a rather... unscientific way to put it, but, yes," Skully says. "Hypothetically, magic should have been able to send you back, but..."

"Nada?"

"Well... nothing worked. Yes, that must've been what he meant. Something is keeping you here. For what, I can't imagine... but don't lose faith, dear Prefect... don't give up on yourself just yet."

You swallow the thought, suffocating it beneath your tongue. Kept, not like a trinket or a trophy, but like a... mop in the sink, because the drain's messed up. Getting ground by the garbage disposal, slowly minced away until there's nothing but meat... wood...

...You fall asleep before you can psychoanalyze yourself any more.

"But if I came from nothing, then matter really can be created?"

"Yep. And destroyed," Swing says, kicking back with his legs crossed and one arm behind his head. "You can destroy anything."

"But cosmically speaking..."

"Realistically speaking. Don't go filling your head with stuff that isn't real,"

You look up from where you're hunched across the room. Swing was never one for hypotheticals and theories. Skully's usually the one with big ideas, and Swing's about what's right in front of him. You suppose you're a little bit of both, a cocktail of their worst traits... dreamy and imaginative, single-minded and impulsive.

Your eyes drop to your hands, cold and cracked, pressed together in your lap. "How am I supposed to know what's real?"

"Guess," he shrugs, and you glare. Not a very good answer to the mysteries of the universe.

Drywall and old paint crumbles from the wall behind you. You grumble under your breath and draw your hands to your chin.

"So then I was always this way... that's what you're saying?"

He smiles. "You were always you, Swing was always Swing. We were made this way..."

"Cut from the same cloth?" you offer, but he suddenly shifts in place, uncomfortable about something. He reaches beneath the layers of his coat and pulls a cockroach from under his back.

"YOU AGAIN!!!!" you shout, jumping and jutting a pointy finger at the insect. "TORMENTING ME!!!!!"

Swing doesn't wait for you to finish your rant before popping the bug in his mouth and chewing. Your eye twitches at the slow, sickening crunch.

You sit back down. "I should've thought of that,"

He leans back into the wall with his arms crossed behind his head and a smug grin on his lips.

"I do what I can,"

White wall. White wall. Brown wall. Footprints on the ceiling. Your eyes dart from once place to the next, never staying still for more than a millisecond. A side-effect of the sleep deprivation.

"If I have to guess..." you mutter. "Then how do I know you're real? Or Skully?"

"You don't. You just decide, and don't spend so much time thinking about it. It's not good for you. Normal people don't use all their day trying to figure out what's real and what's not, they just know. So, just know. As for the ghost boy... well, he may as well be a figment of your imagination. Do you talk to yourself often?"

"No. Yes? Well, now I don't know," you say, putting your hands on your hips. "And if you're not real, and he's not real, then what am I even doing here? Why don't I ever just leave?"

"And do what?"

"Well, I don't know. Whatever. Sing. Bus tables. Learn the trapeze and run away with the circus,"

"You can't,"

"Learn the trapeze?"

"Leave,"

You narrow your eyes. "You keep saying that. Why? And don't tell me to ask someone else, I'm through with your wild horse chases. Tell me right now, why can't I leave? What's keeping me here? Where has it all gone... my memories, my dreams, my reason for living...? What have I become? When? Why? Oh, you have to tell me who did this. Was it you? Can I go back? Is there any hope? I have to know... I have to... This is not me... This is..." you sniffle, overcome with emotion again, "I need to go back..."

Quiet sniffles fade into silence as you hold your head to the wall, hands on your knees, letting tears mingle with dry paint and drip, drip, drip, red on the concrete...

"Goose,"

You look up. "What?"

Swing picks an antenna out from between his teeth. "Wild goose chases,"

You frown. "Since when do you care about grammar?"

"Since never. I'm just avoiding the question. I don't like it,"

"Answer it, and I won't ask again,"

"Hm..." he ruminates on it, "No."

You jump in place, holding out your hands and shaking as if you mean to strangle him through the air. "YOU-!!! YOU!!! YOU'RE TRYING TO MAKE ME CRAZY!!!!!!! EVIL, WICKED, IMPETUOUS THING!!! IT'S YOU, IT'S ALL BEEN YOU, HASN'T IT?!!?! YOU- YOU GOT IN MY HEAD!!! YOU MESSED EVERYTHING UP!!! YOU... YOU..."

Swing watches you jitter and jump, stomp around like a toddler throwing a tantrum, kick over paintbrushes and empty buckets, howl in agony, before finally falling your knees again, clutching your head.

He hovers over you, sucking the last cherry-flavored mush out of his slushy before tossing the empty cup aside and kneeling. He casts a shadow over your crumpled body.

"Mr. Swing didn't do this," he says, "The cracks were there long before Mr. Swing came to stay. Think. Why are you here...? Why did they bring you here?"

You ascend the basement steps, clutching your arm (sore, from lying on the floor) and limping (also the floor).

The moon is high over Ramshackle, now, casting its light into the kitchen, illuminating the silver blade of every knife, the dull edges of hacksaws and loose nails, the broken mop handle sticking out of the sink like a cross on a hill.

You take a deep breath of the stale, moldy air. You'd blocked off the vents years ago (or months, weeks, who's to say?) and so the only taste of the outside comes from the cracks in the walls and the holes in the roof, slivers between baseboards and holes chewed through plaster...

You had a rat problem before Swing moved in. Now it's only bugs.

You always remember the strangest things. The rat problem, Skully's school stories, the laws of physics... nothing good. Nothing that really mattered.

It was as if the wires in your brain, the loose ones that shake and shimmy and jig around inside your skull, dancing with the electrical current of a beating heart, would, sometimes, touch the walls of your head, and zap you with something- a sound, a dessert recipe, the smell of clean laundry, a smile, a word, or, most often, something violent and unwelcome.

Thoughts of death, of cartilage and sinew, raw muscle and bone, black thorns, gas, haze, poison, sleep, death again, and death one more time. Sometimes the dead thing was other, faceless, nameless, people. Sometimes it was you.

Those things didn't belong in your head. You were certain of that.

Surely, no one is born this broken.

"Skully?" you call out. He's not where you left him at the kitchen table. Though, his skull is still lying in the living room.

You scratch the back of your hand. You have scars, sprains, strains, aches and pains, spots where you felt stiff, spots where you felt nothing, an amount of healed injuries that no slip-ups with the can opener could explain. Things that spoke of a past, one that Skully couldn't remember, one that Swing wasn't there to witness. One that you had denied yourself, perhaps all at once, perhaps over days, weeks, years, of quiet sitting, of staying in place, watching the clock count the hours, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, midnight, one, two, three, four, and so on...

Who had hurt you?

You try to focus on anything but the fog of fugue, the fever of insanity, crossing the wires in your brain.

"Skully?" you yell, louder. Nothing comes.

What had Swing said to you?

Why did they bring you here?

Who was "they"?

Where had you come from?

What did they use you for?

Obviously, you had been hurt. And you had come to be in this place, so you had either wound up here on your own, or someone had brought you.

There's another thing- the injuries you sustained weren't normal. Not like you'd slipped on the step ladder while hanging Christmas lights, or got a little too loose with the knife while chopping up some green onion for your Sunday night noodles. These were big ones, gashes and slashes and spots where you'd been impaled, crushed, or beaten. There was no reason you could have possibly lived through any of that, even with the most experienced magical healers on standby (and no one was ever on standby for you).

If something really was keeping you here, attached to this place, then it was keeping you alive, too.

Then... you couldn't die.

How long have you been here for?

Where had everyone else gone?

Both your injuries and your house mean someone must've known you. But you didn't know them.

Not anymore.

You peer out between the boards of wood you'd beaten over the windows, twice a year every year for as long as you can remember. It's just something to do, you suppose. And you can't stand the thought of being watched.

Nothing but overgrown grass and trees. A headstone peeks out of the earth a few feet away. The branches of a dead tree extend over the hill.

You narrow your eyes and step away.

"Skully!" you shout again, to more silence. Had you been imagining him? No. No, you wouldn't...

He was real.

They were all real.

Weren't they?

You take a sudden step away from the window and slice your pinky on a jagged edge of the wood.

What comes out is black.

You stand by the stairs.

Staring at the wall.

Inspecting it.

Squinting. Tilting your head. Turning as if to retreat upstairs, and then whipping around, trying to catch it in the act.

Nothing.

You bandaged your finger in cloth, unable to bear the sight of black blood coming from inside your body. Inside you. Something inside you. Something inside the wall. Black on the wall. It's brown now. Faded.

You stand. You stare.

The wind howls somewhere above you. The shutters on the outside of the house slam.

You're losing the stare-off. The wall stays where it is, unblinking, unmoving.

"Come on. Give me something..."

What is it? An omen? A warning? A disease? Could everything be attributed to some terrible virus that turned you into a monster, that stole your memories, your sense of being, that locked you in this asylum and left you to bleed out- black?

Blood like ink? It wasn't right. Nothing has felt right in a very long time...

"Don't just stand there. I know you have something to do with this!" you shout, but not at Swing, this time (wherever he is, if he was ever there at all). "TELL ME WHAT'S GOING ON! YOU PIECE OF SHIT! WORTHLESS FUCK! FUCK! AHHHHHHHH!!!!"

"What're you yelling at?"

You spin around to see Skully standing in the doorway. He comes down the stairs, each footstep silent and painless.

"Oh, it's you," you say, returning to your great opponent (the wall). "I thought you didn't like the basement."

"I don't. But I'm not really Skully,"

"Ah, I see,"

"Yes. Why are you yelling?"

"I want answers," you say, "I want to know what this has all been for. The quiet. The loneliness. The..."

"Madness?"

"Yes, I suppose, we can call it that,"

"What's it about, this time?"

You kick a paint bucket aside and begin walking, taking yourself down the next flight of steps.

"I bled today. It wasn't normal. It was..."

"Black?" Skully's head (his body stayed on the higher level) answers.

"How did you know?"

"I know everything you know. I'm not really Skully, remember?"

"Oh, right. Well, it was black, and it wasn't really blood. I think I'm contaminated with something. I might be really sick, Skully, and who would know? You? Real you? Swing? If he was ever real at all? I might die this time. Really die, and it wouldn't matter,"

"I think it would,"

You kick the plywood door open (tricky knob) and keep going, wandering the endless maze of concrete rooms and little lightbulbs with little metal strings that give sickly yellow-green light.

"You're only saying that because you're some twisted part of my imagination,"

"Well, no. No one wants you to die more than you do. I'm saying it because it might mean something, you know, cosmically,"

You raise an eyebrow. "Be realistic,"

"You've let that Swing rub off on you too much. I'm being perfectly realistic, and we both know it," Skully's head says.

You ponder on that for a moment- is it worth taking advice from yourself? But, then, who knows you any better?

"Alright, then, explain. What thought has the back of my mind cooked up for me today?"

The floating head accompanies you down to a lower level, then deeper, deeper, further into the black abyss, rust and mold and bugs and dust and nails and hammers, hacksaws, and chains...

"You're right about one thing. What's in you isn't blood, it's blot,"

"What's that?"

"You used to know it," the head says, "But you've forgotten. You've been stuck here for a very long time, you see."

"Yes, I know, but back to that other thing,"

"Right. It's a sort of magical residue. When a spell is cast, it accumulates on the spellcaster,"

"That sounds right,"

"Doesn't it? We used to be very clever, you know," the head clears its throat. "But anyway, there are certain instruments meant to absorb that blot, called magestones. If a magestone becomes too full, the accumulated blot on the spellcaster can kill them."

"I see. And then what?"

"That's all we know,"

You narrow your eyes. "Then what was the point of bringing it up? I can't cast any spells, and as far as I can remember, I never have,"

"As much is true, but I'm afraid that's all we could find in your brain. The true answer might lie deeper, deeper than you are now in this basement, and it would take all of us a very long time to get there. There are certain things working against us,"

You raise an eyebrow. "Things?"

"The blot. Maybe something bigger,"

"But what-" but when you turn to look, there's no one there.

"What did you find?"

You look up from the old film tape you'd been using for suspension, testing it with a twang.

"A rubber boot, silly putty, a tea cup, shoelaces, yarn, film tape, a broken mirror, a quill, a deck of cards, an arrow, cumin, a computer chip, a disc, and this thing,"

You toss something black and stubby over your shoulder. It looks like a hunk of rock, but might have been attached to something else at some point- like a horn.

Looks sorta burnt.

"Okay," Swing says. "And what are you doing with all that?"

You narrow your eyes at the device you had pulled together and rigged to the front door.

"Isn't it obvious? See, I cleaned,"

Swing looks over his shoulder. The foyer is spotless, save for the mold in that one corner of the ceiling no one (not even he) could reach.

"For what?"

"I figure," you say, "Since I can't die under the usual circumstances, I'll have to do it myself." You punctuate the sentence by placing a tiny glass unicorn on the tip of the boot.

Swing blinks. And then he chuckles. "Well, well... not feeling any better, then?"

"No," you turn to glare. "Besides..."

You nudge the unicorn a half an inch forward.

"...It's just a little experiment,"

Swing grins, sitting at the edge of the sofa. It makes no sound beneath him. "So, then, how does the little experiment work?"

"I have a system," you explain. "When it sets off, the arrow will shoot me... I didn't have a bow."

"And what sets it off?"

"The door," you turn to the front door. "When someone comes in, it'll..."

But no one ever comes in. You never have any guests, and Skully never hosts (wherever he went off to- he's been quiet for a few hours/days/whatever).

Maybe you hadn't thought this one through.

You stand.

"Never mind,"

"You're giving up so soon? But Mr. Swing was just about to settle in! We were going to make popcorn!"

You narrow your eyes. "It's not funny! I have to know! I have to know if it's... well, whatever. I just have to know!"

"You're making less sense than usual. And the wall's cracking,"

"I DON'T CARE ABOUT THE DAMN WALL!!!" you shout. "I DON'T CARE, I DON'T CARE WHAT'S IN IT, I DON'T CARE WHAT'S IN ME! NOW I'M GOING TO GET SOME ANSWERS, FUCK, OR I'M GONNA DIE TRYING!!!! ANYTHING IS BETTER THAN THIS!!!! LISTENING TO ALL OF YOU ARGUE WITH ME ALL DAY!! FUCK!!!!!!!!"

Swing grins, gleefully. "Oh, but that's the best part! I'm not really Swing at all!"

"FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU BOTH! STAY OUT OF MY HEAD!"

"You're just yelling at yourself now!"

You stomp your foot and the floor rattles beneath you. "SHUT UP! YOU DON'T TELL ME WHAT TO DO- YOU DON'T TELL ME WHAT TO DO! I'M SICK OF IT! I HATE BEING STUCK HERE WITH YOU CIRCUS CLOWNS! GET BETTER, GET WORSE, FIND PEACE, ENJOY THE PRESENT, WHO CARES! WHO GIVES A SHIT! NONE OF YOU WANT ME TO LEAVE! YOU JUST SIT AROUND WITH YOUR THUMBS UP YOUR BUTTS ALL DAY THINKING OF NEW WAYS TO MAKE ME MISERABLE SO I'LL STAY HERE IN THIS DISGUSTING ROTTING VILE REPULSIVE REVOLTING NAUSEATING STICKY WET SQUELCHY HOUSE WITH YOU! I'VE HAD IT! I'M SICK OF IT! I'M LEAVING- I- I'll leave!"

You stand straight and begin to pace. "I'll leave. I'll go. It doesn't matter where, does it? As long as I'm away from this house... yes, that's it! I can train myself to turn it off, can't I? I can go..."

You turn back to Swing (who wasn't really Swing at all) and there's no one there.

Grumbling, you turn to the coat closet to collect your boots. Maybe an umbrella, if it rains.

Kck, kck. You look up. A visitor? At this hour? Strange.

But, well, you did clean.

"...Come in," you say.

It's dark.

Darker than the basement.

Darker than sleep, darker than the dark behind your eyelids, darker than any dark that's ever existed.

You rub the back of your neck- sore. Did you land on your head?

The floor must've finally given out beneath you, dumb old house, and sent you tumbling down into the black abyss of the basement. Somewhere deep, somewhere not even Swing has been yet.

You sit up. The darkness extends endlessly in every direction, beneath your feet, under your nose, above your forehead. You wonder, for a moment, if the whole world is hiding behind your back, and leaping just out of sight when you turn.

Not the basement.

"Not the basement, indeed,"

You blink into the darkness. Something is coming towards you... it's light? No, not light, a person. A person with light for eyes, two twinkling yellow stars in the inky void.

You feel calm. The incessant buzz of loose wires and ebb and flow of electrical currents doesn't exist here. You must not be in your body... or your mind.

"Where am I?" you ask, "Who are you?"

"We met once before, but you probably don't remember that. It's been a very long time for you,"

"How..." you start, standing slowly. "How do you know me?"

"I gave you that house. The one you've taken such dreadful care of,"

Ah... you can make out the figure now more as he approaches, cast in green light that doesn't seem to be coming from any particular source. He's too tall, too thin, too pale, dressed in black, with a beaked mask on his face. If not for his fancy way of talking, you might've thought you'd met the devil.

"Do mind your manners. Your thoughts are quite loud in here,"

"Pardon," you say, the word coming from you with such ease it's startling. "Where is here?"

"Why, the mirror, of course,"

You look around, eyes boring into the inky, green-black void.

The man hums. "Well, a part of you is. Your body is alive, but barely. If you were dead, you would be somewhere much different... but, as I am sure you're well aware, you are quite incapable of dying,"

"Huh," you chime, "So, how'd a part of my consciousness get stuck in some mirror?"

"Walk with me,"

You obey, following the tall bird-man into the dark. "It isn't just any mirror, but an ancient, powerful artifact. You understand that when one casts a spell, that magic creates a negative residue?"

"Yes," you say, thinking back on the conversation you'd had with... well, yourself.

"Well, as magic is tied to the soul, when magical residue accumulates, bits and pieces of the soul go with it- anger, fear, joy, hopes and dreams... a tiny, imperceptible chunk of the spellcaster's personhood is lost in the magic they create, and concentrated in blot. It's quite unnoticeable to the mage. Anyway, when used, even by non-mages, magical artifacts have the same effect as spells. A bit of one's soul becomes trapped in it, and, well... here we are,"

You glance around at the big nothingness. A never-ending void of green light and echoing thoughts.

"So, you, also..."

The man nods. "Only a piece of a soul, though, perhaps, a more omniscient one. The mage I'm attached to used this particular artifact often,"

"Huh. So I was slingshot into a bit of soul trapped in a mirror cause the big soul in my body is... uh, busy?"

"I... suppose, you could call it that," he sighs. "And I suppose you have other questions for me. It's only right that I answer them."

You look up. "Who are you?"

"I was the Headmage of a very fine College of Magic..." he says. "And you were my ward."

...Huh. Huh? You were a ward? That feels... well, like another life. Something you saw on TV, maybe. But not this. Not this body, not this mind.

"What happened to me?" you ask.

"No one knew, at the time, the nature of your purpose in our world. You came out of thin air, with no home, no family, nothing to your name except, well, your name. We thought it was an accident. We never knew..."

Your spit is suddenly solid, impossible to swallow, and you choke on your own tongue. "Never knew what?"

"Well, that you had a purpose,"

"Which was?"

The Headmage seems reluctant to answer, and he begins walking again. A cane had materialized in his hand, and he swings it back and forth before the tip of his blue oxfords.

"...I suppose you're more than familiar with blot, now?"

"Yes," you say, narrowing your eyes. "I got the picture. What about it?"

"Well, sometimes..." the Headmage hesitates. "When a mage accumulates too much blot, it can... overwhelm him, shall we say. And in such cases, in order to preserve the life of the victim, certain magical artifacts may absorb some of the blot. This mirror was ours."

Your eyes widen. Then the darkness around you is... a primordial shudder goes up your spine.

He sucks in his breath through his teeth. "But there was another,"

You look back up at him. "What?"

"...You,"

Your heart stops beating (if it ever was- can bits of soul have a heartbeat?) and you're suddenly stuck in place.

The Headmage stops with you, clutching his cane and avoiding your eyes.

Your hand, or your soul-hand, or whatever the Hell it's supposed to be, is still bandaged tight. Black blood, blot, still pumps through your veins.

You were a sponge.

The nasty, greasy sponge at the bottom of the sink, the one that smelled like meat and burnt oil.

"It was never our intention. And we didn't know, until..."

You look up. "How?"

"I can't say. It couldn't be stopped. And they left,"

They. Who is they? The people Skully used to murmur about? The shadows? The strangers? The pervasive feeling of being watched, the one that followed you everywhere?

"And the wall?" you ask. The Headmage only shakes his head.

"I'm afraid I don't know. At a certain point, we stopped understanding what went on in that house,"

You wake with a gurgle.

It's not really much like waking, or at least the sort of waking you're used to, the sudden loss of air in your lungs, the constriction of your chest and the painful squeeze of your heart, the momentary panic that convulses you into a state of non-consensual consciousness...

...No, not that. You just sit up.

Your back and hair is sticky with black blood. A muddy, ink-colored bath of curdled innards under your body, seeping into the porous, splintered wood floor. That'll be a pain to clean. Skully will be complaining about that for weeks.

Scattered across the floor, some distance from you, is the arrow, soaked in blood and little bits of... well, you. Your fingers instinctively draw to your chest, and you prod around the squishy stuff there. There's a hole in your shirt, and blood on both sides, but no entrance wound, or anything that would indicate that you'd been shot straight through at all.

The front door is shut tight.

Grumbling, you scramble to stand, and use a moth-bitten curtain to soak up the remaining blot on your fingers.

You stretch. There's a dull pain in the center of your chest, just east of your heart. "Skully?" you call out.

No response.

You ascend the steps to the attic and poke your head through the hatch. "Skully?" you whisper, but the crawlspace (can ghosts crawl?) is dark. A moldy armchair sits beside a round, antique coffee table, covered in paper blueprints. Wind howls through the cracks in the wall between window and wood, and a few papers fly off the table and land in a puddle of brown rainwater nearby. You narrow your eyes and descend.

"Skullyyy!" you shout, your voice carried through the timber house with an echo. "Come ooout! I wanna tell you somethiiing!"

You're sure he would be very interested to hear that you were once someone's ward. Such a fancy-schmancy word is sure to impress him.

Still, no answer.

"Hm," you mutter, putting your hands on your hips. "Fine! I'll tell you later."

Next is the basement. Swing would be less impressed, but you had to tell someone. It was big news, after all.

You descend the crooked concrete steps, the first flight into the deep. You're sure that if you kept going, further and further and darker and darker, you'd someday reach Hell. Maybe Swing's already found it. You'd have to ask when you see him.

You pause at the wall, brown and flaking, buckets stained black and brushes crusted with cobwebs and grime kicked to the side. You briefly remember your earlier temper tantrum.

There's a dull ache in your hand, and you raise your bandaged pinky, a big bulbous wad of white cloth, comparing the color of the dry blood on the gauze to the wall. Near identical.

So this came out of you, then?

For what purpose? Fun? Sadomasochism? Modern art??

"A warning,"

You nearly leap out of your skin and whip around to see a fat... pudgy... thing pawing at your knees.

"YUCK! A RAT! I thought Swing put all of you in the blender ages ago!"

"I am NOT a rat!" it shouts back, glowing blue like some sort of... blue, glow-y thing. "I'm just a figment of your fucked up imagination! You've been in this place way too long. And when's the last time you slept?"

"Oh, joy. Another one," you say. It hurts to be so self-aware sometimes! "What news have you brought me, oh chubby one?"

"You were wondering about the wall,"

You turn back to scrutinize the dark brown ooze crusting the plaster surface, and you fold your hands behind your back as if admiring a painting in a museum.

"So I was. What is it for, then?"

"A warning. I already said. You're really bad at paying attention, you know that?"

"I have issues with memory," you concede. "But, anyway, onto the important things. Why would I warn myself with a wall of goo?"

The rat-like cat-like raccoon-like creature waddles beside you.

"You didn't want to forget what you are,"

A snort. "And I did a great job of that, clearly. I never think about this old wall. Swing's the one always bugging me about it,"

"No, not Swing," the creature says. "You."

You turn your eyes down on it. "Me... so, all this time...?"

"Well, there really is a Swing down there. Sometimes you're talking to him, sometimes you're only hearing his voice."

"How am I supposed to know the difference?"

It shrugs. "Guess,"

You grimace and turn back to the stairs, descending the next flight down. The door above you slams shut in an unfelt breeze.

The stubby cat-creature follows, walking on two feet like a little person. You might've laughed at the visual if you weren't so morose today. Moody as ever, we see.

Shut up! you think, I'm trying to have a conversation with myself!

"What about Skully?" you ask, "Is he just me, too?"

"No, but he only comes around once a year. You just have a weird sense of time,"

"I suppose you're right. Why only once a year?"

"Well, you probably don't remember this, but it was actually Halloween yesterday,"

"Wow," you say. A Halloween suicide? How festive. "Do you have a name, little not-rat?"

"Grim,"

And the festivities continue! What a fitting name for the occasion. You grin as you venture deeper into the earth, nearly slipping on every other narrow step. "That's a good one. Did I come up with that myself?"

"Thank you, and no," its little nose twitches, "We used to know each other. I used to live in this house, too."

You lose the smile. How unfortunate for the little creature. You don't think anything living deserves to be stuck here besides you, the boogeyman, and the bugs.

And the rats, but, well, those have been taken care of.

"I see,"

You skip a step to avoid a pile of red mush, and then a few rusty nails. Things that weren't here before, or that you at least didn't notice. It's impossible to tell.

You open the door at the end of these stairs and walk through a room of harnesses and electrical wires. There's a chute with a ladder in the corner that'll bring you to the room with the icey-pops and cold sodas. You could use something frozen and artificial. The house feels especially real today.

"So, then, there really is no escape," you say, sliding down the iron bars to the floor below.

"What do you mean?"

"Well..." you traverse a chamber of batteries and saw blades. "For a while, I thought it was the house that was making me sick. Or something in it, anyway: the black mold, the mysterious gases, that wall... but now I know it's not the house. It's Me. Leaving might help, but the parasite is already inside of me, a part of my body, in my blood... I couldn't get it out without killing myself, and I can't kill myself, because I can't die. This universe has designated me as some kind of garbage disposal for all of its worst, and I can't reason with something on such a cosmic scale, let alone escape it. I just got unlucky, I guess. Or maybe I brought this onto myself. Whatever it is, it's Me. And if I did die, then what would happen? All of the concentrated magic and evil that's been packed into me like I'm some fucked up vacuum bag wouldn't just disappear. It's a law of physics, you know. Matter can't be destroyed, only rearranged in little space particles. Rearranged in me. It's the damn particles."

You kick through another door, the not-rat Grim close behind.

"So, then, I'd just explode into this big blotty thing of evil, and then what? The world would end. The universe as we know it,"

"You're being overdramatic," Grim says.

"Or maybe I'm being perfectly sane. There's really no such thing as being overdramatic in my position- in fact, anyone else would lose their marbles upon discovering that they've been chosen to be the flusher of all of magekind's ugliest traits. All that greed, anger, sadness, fear, insecurity, the leftover waste of humankind, all packed into one unlucky bastard..." you continue, "This isn't me. This is not me. Do I even count as a person, anymore? Did I ever at all? Who knows how much of me is this... thing, now. And, surely, it's what's been poisoning my mind, making me forget things, making me moody, violent, impulsive, angry, lonely, miserable, paranoid, and never quite sure what's real and what's not. The world's been in black and white for some time, Grim. I can't think in my own voice anymore. Everything feels... flat. Like I'm living life through a screen. I'm not in control of my emotions, my impulses, even my blood is something not of my own. This isn't me. This is that... thing. So, no, I am not being overdramatic. I think I'm handling this perfectly fucking well."

"So you're abdicating yourself of responsibility? That's not very sane of you at all,"

"What responsibility? What's my crime?"

"Look around you. Do you really think all of these things came from nowhere?"

"Yes," you say, "The basement creates itself. It came from nothing, like me."

"Listen to yourself! You used to be so smart, always talking about physics and science and hypotheticals and theories, and now you've become what you've always detested in others- small-minded, impulsive, and driven by instinct. You didn't come from nothing. You were a person, once, with a home and people who cared about you..."

"Everyone leaves," you say, stalling by another door. "And I become what I detest, inevitably. The more I avoid it, the more it becomes me. And what does it matter?"

"It matters because you're denying yourself the catharsis of believing that, one day, this could all be over. You could get better,"

"Doubtful," you say, "It's all gone. My only friends left in the world are a Halloween ghost, a boogeyman, and my own fucking brain- and I don't even like myself! Besides, who's to say that any of the people who cared about me are even still alive? Who knows how long it's been. Centuries, maybe..."

"Five years,"

"...Well, there's still no point in it. I'm no longer fit for human contact, you know as well as I do,"

You nudge the door open with the toe of your boot and step around piles of wooden crates to reach the next. Your daydreams of icey-pops have vanished into the deep pockets of your mind, and now you walk with no particular purpose at all.

"And who's fault is that?"

"Let's not play the blame game," you say, "And it's that thing. You know as well as I do that this isn't me."

You tug on the little chain connected to yet another light bulb, hanging over yet another set of stairs, deeper.

"You keep saying that, but how can you be sure? You don't even remember what you were like before,"

"You said we were smart," you say, "We knew about things."

"We still are, and we still do. How could you be having this conversation if you weren't aware of it?"

You concede. "But it's so very hard to think these days... maybe I have lead poisoning,"

"Not lead poisoning. You have blot in you, remember?"

"Oh, right. Little particles of soul," you say, "Not destroyed, but rearranged in space. In me. But, then, if that's all true, then I can't be destroyed, either."

"This was established,"

"So then I must be rearranged. The blot can't be destroyed, but I can live with it, can't I? But how does one go about rearranging a brain as messed up as mine? I suppose talk therapy and daytime TV wouldn't help,"

"I would say both of those would make you worse off,"

"Exactly. But what could I do, other than not feel or think anything again? It's impossible. It's a part of me. It's in my body, in my head... Oh, I wish someone would just turn me off for a while and... fix me," you step through another door and pause in a dark room, not even bothering to find the little light this time. "Grim?"

"Yes, Yuu?"

"I'm not happy,"