It sounds like screaming.

Queenie is falling.

 

She doesn’t know how, she doesn’t know why, but she is falling. 

 

For five long years, she’s been trapped in this cellar. She’s been stuck inside a sea of other bodies, other dismembered figures scraping against her and her mind. For five years her mind has been tangled with a million others, and in this moment she can feel the threads breaking. Her hands, all of them, paper thin — they clutch desperately at him, at her husband, being torn away from her by the tide — oh, her world is fire, yes, but these mix-muddle sensations are a day at the park for her. Queenie only cares for one thing right now, even as cavernous space yawns beneath her, the other minds tearing from hers like limbs from sockets — all she cares about is him. His fear as the memories shatter somewhere very far away, the softness of his mind, the memories there, the shards that go tumbling out into the void — hold them close, hold them close, keep keep him safe because if he dies you’ll have nothing left to —

Falling, crashing, her hands so very many slip from his, clawing trains of thought coming to crash-cutting stops. The twisted metal of broken carriages litters her mind, falling tumbling through some void — the blackness rises like a wave, a cavernous scream of silence twisting through every thought. Her body — contorted by abstraction to the point of damnation — usually so monolithic, screeches to a stop somewhere far behind her. It collapses limp into the tide as the feeling of him fades, her consciousness throwing out barbed claws into the sea of other minds — it's all growing smaller, all the other abstractions, shrinking as she falls farther and farther away. Deeper into the darkness, darker yet darker, the forgotten absence of all that was once right. 

She’d scream, but she has no mouth to do so. Her will bends itself towards one singular goal and that goal is ripped away, as the point of chaos she begs to hold onto flickers out, and — Queenies mind twists and writhes in her panic, throwing itself against the boundaries of this new prison only to find none there. Her thoughts spill out like splayed organs to fill the silence, stretching into the infinity and filling it up — rambling and rageful at first, chanting NO NO NO NO into the dark, save him have to keep him safe, but…he is not there to protect. She must find him, she must find him —

For a moment she screams, screams for them all to be quiet. Screams for the voices to end, and hears only an echo in return. They are not there. The dents where they once pressed into her are vacated now, and her own mind swells to fill the gaps with lost coherency. She’s shaking, but she can’t feel herself do it, her mind falling quiet for a few precious moments.

She is alone. She is and is not this silence, the silence is and is not her. 

She has not known silence in far too long.

Where are the others? What is this silence? Why can’t she feel him? Her mind presses itself into the blackness with worry driving her on. Her husband, her partner, her love — her John. Memories swirl behind her thoughts as she searches, looking for that impression of him she’d fought so hard to protect. How long ago was that? Only moments, moments ago she had him! Yet she can’t feel him anymore, she can’t feel… anything anymore. Queenie tries to blink, and finds no eyes — tries to reach out, but she has no claws. She’s…she’s not like that anymore, those million limbs are gone now. She’s no longer stretched out in miles of glitching, shuddering coils, filled with roving eyes. She no longer sees from a million perspectives she — is she her?

She tries to breathe. To pay attention to her body, feel what shape it is now.

There’s nothing there.

There is no stomach to twist in disappointment, but if there were, it would be in knots. She's still broken, still some horrible half-thing, still, she — no, she can’t afford this, not now! What is she doing!? She has to pull herself together, he could be dying out there, he — he is what matters, he is what matters. 

Queenie's mind stretches into the blackness, probing the cracks of it. She runs her thoughts over the textured lattice that makes up its borders like a search grid, brushing over every inch of it with meticulous care. She searches for the system, the running code that she can bend to her will — her mind surges with anger, rage, the fear and terror and horror and every feeling she can dredge up, and she pushes it all into breaking out of this silence, searching, finding, feeling. Yes, the quiet was relieving, but she is done with it now. She is done with this. She wants to go back, to return to where she was. Let her go.

She screams this out into the silence, leaning all her weight to the push.

And there is nothing there.

She’s…alone. She’s truly, properly, alone. There are no billion other psyche’s pressing into hers. Her mind pauses, hesitating and backtracking over itself, finding the cracks it now has space to heal. The architecture of the mind is strikingly similar to a body, for the brain is an organ, and it has been five long years since she was last able to tend to the care of it. Like brick and mortar, reason is rebuilt, and something deep in her thoughts breathes a breath of relief. Memories, soft and hard, good and bad. The feelings and textures of being alive swell inside her and mingle into more complex things, names, places, people — the person she once was and still is, the person that rises to the surface now. The man she married.

John. 

John, Kinger, King-peice, Hoo-Ha, that man has been called a lot of names over the years. Grillo , that comes to mind. A word meaning ‘Cricket’, for a jumpy man with a good heart.

A man she needs to find.

Panic and urgency wash back over her, sending electricity bursting down a spine that isn’t there. Rambling thoughts race back into action, fury rising over them all and giving her strength as Queenies throws herself into the darkness once again, roaring into it, tearing like a rabid animal — must protect him, she cannot give in, she will not — ! She can’t let him abstract, no matter how much she wants to say, no matter how much she — her mind twists in on itself in disgust, an explosion of self-loathing sending Queenie crashing back into incoherency. What right does she have to want anything, how could she think — how could she ever want that if it meant this for him, this horror, the horror of feeling your body twist and contort into unholy shapes and SHE WILL NOT LET HIM DIE— she will not let him die no matter how much she — how could she think that? — SHE WILL NOT LET HIM DIE — she will not let him die no matter how much she — how could she think that? — SHE WILL NOT LET HIM DIE — she will not let him die no matter how much she — how could she think that? — SHE WILL NOT LET HIM DIE —

Her mind falls into a well-worn rut, curling back and forth within itself. A cycle, same as end is never the, same as insanity, by definition. A cycle she does not detect for what feels like hours, until some facet of her finally breaks the surface. Am I even a person anymore? A spare, random thought. It is nearly washed away by the torrent, but some part of her holds onto it, burying herself into a deep sea of the horror of eyes upon eyes, until the raging embers calm. The cycle is over, and her mind comes up for air.

She will not think about that anymore. She can’t, she won’t. Okay. He is okay, she knows that. There’s no need to panic, he is…he is himself.

How is he himself?

Her mind turns round and round like a well-oiled cog, spinning ever onwards. Memories dredge themselves up from deep within the machinery, flickering moments. Her eyes themselves only saw him for brief moments before the blueness surrounded him, protected him, but…oh, he was just like he used to be.

Queenie remembers everything. She’s remembers every moment, moments she holds close and dear — she remembers first meeting and marriage day alike, and she treasures both equally. She remembers the moment she realized she was in love, so many years ago, and the panic on his face as he fell into the cellar, only minutes ago. She remembers it all. It’s a horrible kind of irony, really — the moment before you abstract, you flicker human. For that once instant, you know just what it is to be whole, before your organs twist and you become its exact opposite. Your body hollows itself onto the ground then sucks up the pieces, code writhes and contorts like broken limbs, and as each new bloated eye opens your mind shatters that bit more. Memories of what you once were come rushing back, and the confliction sends you feral, the ferality sends you into the cellar, and the cellar sends you mad. It’s a horrible, horrible kind of irony, that she should remember her name, her home, and not be able to tell him. Not be able to tell him his name is John, that he is a good person, a kind one, that he has no reason to be afraid because they’ll be okay. She wished for so long, that one day, maybe, she’d be able to see him again. Maybe, just a glimpse.

And then there he was.

He was exactly the same. His face, his eyes…“Muddy,” he’d described them, to her great indignation. His hair still sticks up in the back, he is himself — How, she doesn’t know, but all she can feel is relief when she thinks of it…even if he’s still stuck in the button up he’d been wearing when it all happened. His hair still bristles in the back, his hands were…warm. Warm yet cold, against her temperatureless limbs. Warm like they always were, like hers should be. He really is alive now, with a pulse under his skin and fear in his eyes, with words to speak, with memories, maybe. Please, don’t go, he’d begged her, even when his mind was pressed into a dot. When he could do nothing but ask one question, he asked her to stay. That was all he wanted, the first thing he thought of. And Queenie can’t blame him, because that’s all she wanted, too. All she wanted was to stay there and fight against the tide to give him what words she could, to tell him the I’m sorry’s and I love you’s and it’ll be okay’s that she wants to, needs to say. To hear him speak back, and know that — whatever he said — it was because he’d heard her. 

…Oh, she hopes he’s okay, wherever he is now.

Pain rises and falls, loneliness ebbs and grows, and Queenie continues to think. Her mind hums and shouts and whispers into the darkness of this void, half-thought ponderings flickering through her. They overlap and ramble, different thought paths snaking out and looping back like tangled yarn. Ever since abstraction, doing just one thing, thinking just one thing, has been…harder. She has always been like that, in a way, but now…One part of her still runs over old memories, sorting them back into place, another is sorting the new ones. Sight, touch, taste, smell. Put them into boxes, sort them out. She is so much at once, she can hardly keep track of it, and yet she is…so little.

Her spiraling thoughts dip deeper, darker. Hurt, pain, grief, swirling like lead paint and tar as they stick to eachother, merge together. She’s choking in it — why can’t she just be okay? Why can’t she force herself to be herself, why can’t things go back to how they were? Even if she forgets herself, forgets her own name, that — that’d be okay. That would be fine, just so long as she could breathe —

No.

No, she can’t do that right now — she hates this place! If she had teeth to grit they would be grinding, spiting out curses into this damn silence. He’d better go home, he’d — oh, he’d better be okay right now, otherwise she’s going to commit a felony. Not that federal laws apply here, but she’ll find a way. He has to go home, he has to be free — perhaps that’s why he was himself, he fell into the cellar by accident, while trying to get out. Maybe, the reason he pulled away was because he was going home. He’d better be going home, someone has to feed that bastard-cat Calcifer…

She wishes she could scream. She’s halfway through trying, before something catches her attention.

Abstractions do not feel the world in normal ways. She’s got five years of experience interpreting baseless sensations — and right now, she is being watched. Her mind bristles, thoughts turning jagged and wary at the foreign mind lurking beyond her senses. She’s not alone in here, and Queenie does not like it.

 

Who the hell are you?

 

She casts the thought out into the darkness, withdrawing her mind back into a protective shell. Who is this? Or what? Is it friend or foe, good or bad — is it death, here to collect her? Every possible thought races through her seeped in suspicion, and the other mind does not shift. It feels infinite, all-encompassing, yet fragile enough to reach out and break. She nearly does so, but holds herself back, reminding herself that friend is as likely as foe. Perhaps it’s…even him? She discards that thought almost as soon as she considers it  — no, it doesn’t feel like him. Though she didn’t have much time to sense it, she knows his mind is not like this. His is soft and rambling, twitchy like his movements, and it is not organized like this. This is not her husband.

Then, just when she thinks it will never respond, the mind speaks in turn.

 

 

The way it talks is robotic, impersonal, like the click of a typewriter rattling over her nonexistent skin. Queenie flinches away from it like a bristling cat, snaking tendrils of thought reaching out and instinctively searching for the source. She finds nothing there, only empty sensations, and unease quickly settles itself in her mind — She knows this language, these words. Though she hasn’t truly spoken it in a very, very long time, she knows the curses, the syntax. Spanish, her mothers tongue, and a good half of her childhood — yes, she knows enough to understand what was just said to her, and enough to feel deeply conflicted because of it. 

“I want you to know you will see him again.” 

She stews in guarded silence, churning the words in her mind. Who the hell is saying that to her? And why? The exact thing she would want to hear, yes, but only from someone real. Someone she knew. Those words from Ragatha, even from Caine, those would be comforting. But in those robotic tones, all it does is convince her she must be losing her mind. Yes, that’s what’s happening.

She’s finally gone crazy.

…and, of course, she responds in kind. 

 

Ah, I see.

I have finally lost my sanity! Wonderful, wonderful... So is schizophrenia coming in Spanish now? How do I cancel my damn subscription?

 

Queenie, needless to say, is not in the best of moods. Anger grounds her, it’s the glue that holds her together when she’s sure everything else lies in shards — so, it’s what she depends on now. Her mind snakes through the darkness like some grand serpent, winding itself around the shapeless source of this…foreign voice. No matter what she does, whenever she gets close, it is suddenly…somewhere else. So, she keeps her distance. Watching. Waiting. 

 

“I will make sure of it.”

 

Queenie is confused now. If she had eyes her gaze would narrow, suspicion tempering itself with bafflement. This…makes less sense. Who is “her?” It’s as if it, whatever it is, can’t hear her, per se, but is still responding to…something. But to what? What is she speaking to? What does it mean “create my own reality”? Is this a god? Some kind of admin? 

Queenie quickly decides she doesn’t care — admin or not, if it can’t hear her, she’s going to insult it until she feels better.

 

I don't have time for this! I have a husband that I need to save! I married that man, and I know that this - he's not going to take any of this well, so shut up, will you?

Queenie continues to circle like a shark, her mind shifting slowly through the darkness. It may have been a hot minute since she last spoke Spanish, but she knows a crapshoot accent when she hears one. It keeps getting the E inflections wrong…not to mention the oddly formal tone. That’s usually the kind of crap you get from Google translate, just fixed up a bit — hoo, It feels good to be angry about something. Queenie decides there and then that the next time this thing speaks, unless it’s offering her an escape, she’s going to list profanity at it until it does something interesting — sure, she’s stuck here, but that doesn’t mean she has to like it. Or that she’s going to be polite about it.

Queenie waits.

And waits.

…and waits…

…nothing else to say?

She calls out eventually. There is no response, and Queenie continues her restless circling with a low sigh.

 

Well. I suppose that’s okay.

You’re probably just an echo, anyway…

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