White boa

He didn’t know on what floor he was. Didn’t know how much time had passed, but it seemed like he could wait a little more for it to be an eternity. How did that even happen? Who was here with him? Who abandoned escaped? He wraps his fingers, that were sticking together from that black ichor, with the once pink ribbon, tightens them until he could feel at least something. He leans against the wall and slides down to the floor. Poppy, one of a two other living — if you, of course, can call them that, — Twisted, just disappeared, leaving him completely alone. Except for Rodger, but he didn’t even think about opening that Research Capsule. Detective was too silent, too thoughtful even in his normal state, let alone when he became Twisted. And it was a shame, really. Glisten would welcome any sound, any other than the occasional bubbling of pipes behind the walls, muffled rumbles, and god knows what else. Steps, sound of someone’s voice would give at least some confidence, drowning this feeling of loneliness deep inside, again, just like he always tried it to be, of being… He didn’t remember how exactly he became like this. Or rather, it was so sudden! At one moment his legs gave way, almost numbing, and something, right in the middle of his body, seemed to crack, causing him to fall to the floor. Right onto these dirty mirror shards. He pulls his knees to his chest, leaning over them, shutting his remaining eye tight. His beautiful face, once beautiful, unblemished, now was… H-he was… A screeching sound echoes throughout the floor, so familiar, he thinks he heard it before he fell on the floor and that black slush, ichor, finally filled his vision. Before they left him alone. Before they… “H-hey?” he can’t control his voice, it comes out hoarse and breaks right away, so painfully he has to pause, take a couple of quick breaths, as if he was about to dive."Hey? Is someone’s here…? Please…” But in response there’s only silence. Horrifying, tinkling almost like pieces of glass falling onto the wooden floor, slipping from his smeared, blackened fingers. He sways to the side, his legs shake as he stands up. Glisten hopes he’s not imagining things. Please, let someone really be here. He walks slowly, even stopping every ten steps, no matter how much he wants to run and rummage through the floor, just to make sure that he is alone. Or perhaps isn’t. And perhaps he could find this unfortunate Toon, find them, sink his claws into them, tear out their eyes, just so they don’t look at his disfigured face, break— Glisten stumbles, almost falling down, but manages to grip into the nearest shelf. He coughs, looking around with a panicked need to distract his boiling mind from this want to devour and tear someone apart. He’s not like that. He’ll never be like that. Please. A distant ding, weirdly familiar, he’s definitely heard it when… this black liquid reached the end of the machine. Glisten jolts, feeling something inside him coiling, preparing for a jump. He wasn’t alone! Of course not, he was sure of it now. After all, what Twisted would even think about filling and rerouting ichor in the machines over and over again, especially while not even being able to enter the elevator? But in that case. Glisten takes a couple of quick steps to side, spinning in place, trying to figure out where the sound came from. How many machines were here anyway? Four? Five? More? Please let there be more. He needed to find them. Needed to— Glisten clings to the wooden frame, his hands twitch and those sharpened, deformed fingers leave little grooves. He needs to calm down. He needs to calm down. He needs to breathe. And Glisten breathes. Though he probably had nothing to breathe with, — who in their mind would come up with a respiratory system for a cartoon character? Definitely not those who made them all. This thought makes him chuckle, a stifle chuckle, but nonetheless. It relaxes him, in a way, at least his head seems clearer. …It’s not for long though. Glisten knows it. He sighs, looks up, glances sideways at this room that is somewhat similar to a child’s room — there are these drawings, posters, posters everywhere — and then moves on. Step by step. He needs to find that Toon. Find them before he loses his mind completely. And it’s, well, hard. Impossible even. Every time he turned a corner just to find absolute nothing, this nagging feeling bubbled higher, as if Glisten wasn’t fast enough for Toon to get away and he should just speed up, run, and… Glisten stopped, pain piercing through his head. Suddenly, a soft ding vibrates across the floor, along with the churching, which was actually dying down now, as the ichor finally reached the end of a machine, he can almost see the light bulb turn red and green. …An annoying, too bright shade of a green. Glisten finds himself shaking. They’ll go away soon, won’t they? Yes. Definitely. They will leave. Whoever it is. They will leave him right here, alone, in the dark. They… The soft clicking, almost like the sound heels make, echoes through the premise again, approaching the one where he was. So close, as if right behind the wall. Glisten involuntarily jolts towards the sound, but the pain makes his stoop and clutch at the once pink fabric of his bow, wrapping it tighter and tighter around his wrists again, too tightly, so much that he almost can hear the fabric cracking. It won’t last for long, will it? “I need…” he mumbles, the words hardly come out, scratching like the shards of his own broken mirror. He closes his remaining eye, tries to breathe evenly, to calm down, but with each breath it becomes more and more difficult, as if he were drowning, as if… There is a gasp, from above, followed by that familiar thin click of heels against each other. “Glisten…!” Glisten shudders, looks up immediately and meets Teagan’s gaze, her expression, slightly disheveled look, compared to how she usually looked at least. She was scared. Glisten knows this for sure, he sees it in her tense, raised, as if defending herself, hands, her narrowed eyes. She is frightened by how he looked, she hates him, she will leave him. Glisten shakes his head, wraps his fingers with his ribbon again, brushing away these thoughts. After all she, Teagan, was still here. “…Don’t leave me.” Glisten takes a step forward, uncertain. “Please, don’t go, I—” Another step and his foot catches on a fold in the carpet, making him lose his balance. It happens so fast that he doesn’t even realize he’s fallen. He’s just suddenly on the floor and… pain pulsates from his arms, waist, knees. Hah. Even Shrimpo would be nimbler. Glisten pshaws to himself. He’s pathetic, really. Disgusting. Yet for some reason, when he looks up, Teagan still there, didn’t vanish like a mere figment of his sick imagination. Instead, she moves closer to him, lowers herself carefully to the floor. “Goodness gracious, Glisten, how long have you…” her voice quiet, soft, Glisten focusing on it, immediately noticing this manner, exclusively hers, how she always spoke, in this fluttering, flowing like that very warm tea she always served at her tea parties. …It makes him snap, jolt forward, so suddenly, that at that very moment he himself is not sure whether he twisted. His hands are shaking, clinging tightly into the white feathers of the boa, immediately leaving ink-black stains on it. Glisten feels Tegan twitch in response, hears her click, but just can’t let go, ignores any of her displeasure. He needs it. So much. Once white scarf rustles and cracks under his fingers, each sound reverberating in his chest. She tried so hard to keep it clean, spotless and now… “Sorry, sorry, you, uh,” Glisten gasps, choking on the ichor that was again filling his entire body, even though Tegan was here, the sight of another Toon made him feel better, “Forgive me, please, I’m…” “Shh, I’m here, I’m here.” Teagan sighs, looks away for a second, and then, with all the carefullness, covers his hand with hers. “I’m with you, okay?” He nods, unable to respond properly. But he wants to say something! Just talk, break this silence that suffocated him more and more, the awkwardness, muffled, far away sounds, or the sheer reminder of his loneliness. Seriously, closing his eye, the thoughts, terribly loud, heavy, rushed back, making him huddle even more, wanting to run away and, well, smash his head right into the wall for instance! Oh what an idea! Just end this disgusting, pathetic excuse of existence once and for all! Yes! Just like that! Maybe Poppy did just that, maybe she didn’t want to be with him, see him, talk or interact with him, whether she could or not, maybe she— There’s a noticeable pressure on his hand, the one that makes him shudder, open his eyes, look around. He was still alive here. And Teagan was with him. “I…” Glisten coughs, and falls silent, not quite knowing what to say. Teagan nods and they sit in silence for a while, listening to the noise of old, rusty pipes and some muffled metallic rumbles somewhere far, far away. Funny how quickly Toons started to sort out the floors by now. Though, perhaps, it didn’t mean anything. Teagan shifts, stretching her legs out. Glisten suddenly feels his own going numb too, his grip on her white boa slightly loosening. Teagan doesn’t yank her scarf away. “You can come with me,” he looks at her, noticing how her painted lips were slightly raised, “keep me company, while I’m feeling the machines. How does that sound?” Keep me company. Glisten chuckles, shaking his head slightly. “I don’t see why not.” Teagan laughs back, as they stand up and begin to walk. Just like that, as if Glisten wasn’t… As if it was like in the older days, when she would throw tea parties and he would decide to honor everyone with his presence. He glances at her briefly before quickly look away, onto the dark floor beneath the feet. How long it already passed since then? And what did he miss in all that time. Teagan walks slowly, which is… good. Glisten couldn’t catch up with her otherwise, but if he tried, he feared tripping, crashing into something and… tearing his ribbon. Or else. So, carefully, slowly, they walk first to one machine, then to another, and then… And then he finally dares to break the silence and ask something unintelligible: “How’s everyone?” Teagan thinks for some time, frowns, walking closer to another machine, before shrugging: “They’re okay.” the valve twitches under her hands, so she has to pause, applying more force to keep it in order. “More or less.” “Ah.” wow this dialogue was quick to get into a dead end. Glisten twitches slightly, shifts from foot to foot, feeling weird compulsion to just start pacing around this room, a kitchen of some sort, if it weren’t so wrecked over time and… other things. And it’s not like he didn’t know what to say. On the contrary! He wanted to know so much, like how they were living there, how they were feeling, for real, in details, more than just bland 'okay'. How they… How many of them is left now after his… disapperance? What were they doing this whole time? Do they even think about him— Hell, even finding out about that stupid book club Brightney, Astro and Dazzle was throwing would be worthwhile! Ask about Rodger, Toodles! About Vee too, about… Glisten clenches and unclenches his fists, looks away from the ichor slowly filling the machine’s flask. All the right words seemed to disappear just when he was about to grab them. It was… irritating. Because, well, how can that be? Before, he always knew what to say. How to joke, how to put himself in the best light possible, how to… be in the best light. And now? Now… His fingers, sharp and deformed from ichor, twitches slightly. Well, not like he needs it anyway. After all, what’s the point of a mirror if no one looks on it? He coughs, clears his throat again, attracts attention. A habit. “And how’s… Toodles?” Teagan’s hands twitch at the mention of the name. “Tries to tag along with Rodger on his investigations. And takes a great offense when he doesn’t let her. As usual, you know.” Glisten laughs: “Ah, classic. And he…?” “Nothing much really, just keeps standing in front of that evidence board, and last time he saw the light of a day was… Well, never, as I can tell at least,” Teagan’s chuckle sounds along Glisten’s laughter, grows louder. She pauses, turning the valve with more force. “…We try not to tell her what’s going on.” “Oh. It’s… a right think, I suppose,"-he nods, feeling some disappointment, a strange one, inappropriate maybe, -"and it’s difficult, considering that, um…"-a pause, it becomes difficult for him to speak again. “Does she remember? Me, I mean. Does she miss…?” Tegan gives him a weird look, he can’t quite make out the emotion in it or her face. The valve creaks as it turns. ”…How could she not?” Glisten exhales, turning away immediately. Those four little words… calm him down. Give hope of some sorts. Something he never thought he’d feel again. But then that black viscous liquid, substance, ichor, reaches the end, causing the machine to ding. The sound of an elevator door opening echoed through the floor, and this terribly loud, nasty screech makes him flinch. Makes him feel how something inside growled, crawled so hard that he almost fell to the floor. And he’d fall, break, shatter completely, yet suddenly Teagan caught him, wrapping her hands — surprisingly strong, although still so soft — around him. Glisten clung back, just as tightly, again, blinking rapidly and driving away a tear. No, not a tear, black ichor, an infection poisoning every cell of his cartoonish body. The thoughts make him feel even worse. It hurts, it… “Glisten…” “N-no, no, no, you’ll leave me, leave me if…"—if I let go. Cause, of course, who would want to be with him? Especially now, when he’s deformed, screwed, covered in ichor and— “Listen to me,” Teagan intercepts his hands, squeezes them in hers. “I’ll be back. Okay? I promise.” Glisten stays silent. He simply cannot answer, feeling the ichor rising higher and higher in his throat, clogging it. Teagan leans closer. “Do you believe me?” “I…” No. Because who in their right mind would even try to do that? Because who can say how many floors is here and how many do they have left to this so called freedom, Dandy kept going on and on about it? Because why would they even need someone like… “I… can’t.” Glisten hears her sigh, feels her gaze on him. “Ah well… I suppose that’s fair,” she says as if she hadn’t expected anything else, as if she isn’t scared. God, she even chuckles! Glisten feels sick. Teagan sighs again, before looking at the open elevator: “I don’t have that much time left and…” She moves one hand away from his, and out of the corner of his eye Glisten could see her stained boa dangling as she takes it off and wraps it carefully around him. “How about a guarantee?” Glisten feels his hands twitch in response, but he says nothing, just lifts his head slightly, now actually meeting her eyes. “I’ll come back, get Rodger here… Surely, with that mind of his, he managed to learn enough to help you. And if not,” a pause. “We’ll still help you. I promise, Glisten.” The elevator starts beeping, louder and louder, causing Glisten to squeeze Teagan’s hands so tightly he can almost hear cracking sound of her porcelain-like body. “…Please be back soon.” He couldn’t look into her eyes. “I will,” she’s too squeeze his hands gently in hers, before finally letting go, Glisten suppresses a twitch, feeling how the remaining mirror shards crack even more, how ichor feels to getting even more into his head. “I will.” He lets her go, watches as she steps into the elevator, giving him one last look, before finally it shuts with the loud crash, leaving him alone. All alone. Again. Glisten shuts his remaining eye so tight he might as well see the stars, clutches the boa she left behind — such a small detail, proof that Teagan was real, and really with him, her promise — rocking himself. She will. She promised. She will. She promised… She will come back.