Work Text:
You wake up on the tiled floor of an old kitchen with a note; ‘find the watch’. What watch?
You stand up; guess you're looking for a watch.
You find it in what looks like a dining room on a table with a huge mirror behind it that you can’t help but stare into. You see the wooden table and the old couch behind where you stand as well as the ancient pocket watch staring up at you from the table. But not you. You have no reflection. Though for some reason you don’t panic, like you're used to having no reflection. Like you’ve done this before.
You look down at the pocket watch that’s about the size of your palm. It is old, older than anything you’ve ever seen but still in excellent condition; you can hear the ticking in your ears. Tick tock, tick tock again and again. The time reads 12:37, whether it’s am or pm you don’t know but as you stared at it you notice something odd. The time doesn't tick on like it’s supposed to. You look at the second hand; ‘56’ ‘57’ ‘58’ 59’ ‘60’. The minute hand hasn’t moved. 12:37.
You reach out to pick the odd contraption up and take it in your hand, feeling the cold metal when you sense a change in the air.
You look up and all around you see a field boxed in by tall, thick trees coated in layers upon layers of emerald leaves. You can see the sun shining above you in the blue sky. It’s a beautiful sight.
Looking ahead, you see a man; he is tall and thin with plain brown hair and a grey suit. He has a serious expression imprinted on his face.
The man opens his mouth and starts talking to you but no sound comes out. Like a mute button, you internally muse. You call out to him ‘I can’t hear you’ but he doesn't acknowledge you’ve said anything, he just keeps talking. You let him.
After what seems like hours you start to notice your surroundings melding together like when you add too much paint to a painting and the colours blend together until the picture becomes blurry and smudged.
The man keeps talking still as clear as when he first opened his mouth.
Your surroundings keep melting and mashing into one, the man keeps talking to deaf ears until he doesn’t. He closes his mouth, nods and walks away on the melting ground until he too just becomes a grey paint stroke on the now abstract piece.
You start falling, falling, falling. A never ending drop.
You land on your feet in what looks like a night club with bodies surrounding you from all sides dancing and pulsing to the music, making your ears hurt after so long in a silent world, the stench of alcohol and cigarettes lingering in the stale air.
You see the man from the painting world a few feet in front of you with a woman in a tight red dress, tan skin and long, dark hair who looks over her shoulder at you before giving you a nod and a sly smile before they both move away and into the crowd.
You're here for a reason, you know this but you don’t know why. Why are you here?
You look at the people around you, all either drunk or dancing or both. No one seems to be taking any notice of you, all too wrapped up in their own worlds to care about one insignificant person.
Your observations take you to a man in his thirties with a star tattooed to his left cheek. He's laughing a kind of deep guttural sound that makes you cringe. He turns and spots you from where you stand ten feet away and grins a dangerous grin showing all of his black and yellow teeth. He places his drink on the table next to him before rolling up the sleeves of his black leather jacket and runs straight at you.
Time distorts, the room around you bends backwards and ‘Pumped Up Kicks’ playing over the speakers slows down and plays as if it’s underwater.
He keeps running, running, running, ten feet feeling like ten miles, never stopping, his grin never leaving his dirty face.
Just before he rams into you, you begin to fall again. Down; down; down the rabbit hole; falling; falling; falling.
Then darkness.
You wake up on the tiled floor of an old kitchen with a note; ‘find the watch’. What watch?
You stand up; guess you're looking for a watch.