5 2.2: Time Perception (1/2)
~the deeper you dig . . . the darker it gets~
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”How the hell?” I say confusedly. ”It doesn't make sense.”
Tobias sighs, gets up, and starts pacing around the living room. ”Look, this will be difficult to grasp-” He shakes his index finger as if warning me. I shift in the chair to have a better view of him talking. ”Basically, whoever designed this-” He waves his arms around. ”Wants us to suffer in the worst possible way-” He shrugs. ”And that is, by letting us live the same month we've killed ourselves in every year. We live in darkness in all the other months, then get resurrected just to live this damned month where we can see the damage we've done.” He looks down.
And I am too shocked to say a word.
”And I've lived through thirty cycles-” He says, looking away. ”Thirty years, thirty summers, thirty Mays, whatever you say-”
”You-you-” I stutter in utter horror at the thought. ”You've watched yourself die thirty times? You've watched your dead body being carried around thirty times?”
Tobias scoffs. ”That'd be easy.”
”Easy?” I make a face. ”It's-it's-” I shake my head, and the sniffing returns.
”Grotesque?” He completes my sentence with a lifted brow. ”Nothing compares to watching people you love, move on, and forget about you.” He then clenches his fists and opens them with a 'poof', and wide eyes. ”Oblivion. Forever.”
I stare openly at Tobias with a scowl. ”How can you be so sure that that's how this works? You've got no proof-” I trail off, looking in my laps. After all, he's a weird stranger who popped out of nowhere.
”Look, this 'shit'- your 'shit'-” He points upstairs for some reason. ”-isn't going to get even slightly better. This is like the tip of the iceberg as they'd put it. The biggest proof is that I'm literally a forty-seven-year-old, stuck in a seventeen-year-old's body-” He points at himself. ”I'm not sure if you'll meet more people who also killed themselves in this 'glorious' month-” He shrugs. ”But even if you do, not all of them will be as friendly as I am. Some of them are hostile. Some have absolutely lost their marbles. Some are just like wandering ghosts. And some are just not there for you to see because they're pulled into much more drama. As long as you're not in the Darkoom, you still have some unfinished business here.”
My mouth hangs open at the load of information he told me. ”God-” I rake my hair with my hands. ”Oh no,” I start sniffing as a question flies right through my head.
What have I done?
”Look, we've been promised hell. And here we are, living through it-” Tobias states with a heavy sigh. ”It's like God trapped our spirits with our sick brains. Ultimate torture.”
I stand up and shake my head. ”This isn't it-” I say, hurt. ”This isn't my end-”
Tobias leans back in his chair, a nostalgic glint in his hazels. ”That was what I thought too.”
”What do you mean?!” I sniff loudly, suddenly feeling claustrophobic. Like I am trapped in a little cage in the pit of the ground. I can't breathe. ”There's no way out?” My hands reach for my throat like I used to do when my parents started fighting.
Tobias frowns, making a face. ”How can you have a way out out of your way out?” He shakes his head. ”We killed ourselves. We had our way out. And this-” He waves around. ”This is your way out. This is all the out you can get. There is no 'outter' than that.”
I blink at him, gulping. ”I didn't know-” I shake my head, overwhelmed by the truthfulness of his words. ”I didn't know-”
”News flash, darlin'-” He cocks his head to the side, his red curls following. ”No one knew. We did the deed, and we're praying the price.”
”Look,” Tobias says softly with a sigh, and I divert my gaze to him. ”I didn't have anybody when I first arrived here in packaged delivery. No-one. I had to figure out all my shit all alone. All. Alone. No-one was there to comfort me when the darkness overwhelmed me, and no-one was there to guide me through my days-” He looks down, and shakes the mob of his red hair that looks so much brighter in the sunlight coming from the windows. ”I figured it out alone. So, really, I'm only trying to 'help' you if such a thing is permitted here-” He scoffs. ”Maybe I'll get damned by it, who knows. But that's all I'm trying to do.
”Figuring this out, took me five years. And God knows how difficult it was for me. So I just want to save you the time, and curiosity, because knowing whatever this is about is inevitable-” He sighs. ”I guess you just have to suck it up for eternity. Because this-” He purses his lips. ”This is what you deserve. What I deserve. What everyone here deserves-”
I make a face and get ready to argue, but he beats me to it.
”You might not agree with me now-” He says quickly, and stands up, towering over me. ”Naturally. But when you see what you'll see. The damage you've done. It'll hit you like double-decker in the gut. Your only option will be getting used to it. Sucking it up.”
”So-” I start, calming down a little, and thinking more. ”What happens after all the people who care about us die? What happens when the Earth dies?” I lock his honey drops for eyes. ”What'll happen to us?”
Tobias smiles hesitantly, lifting his bony shoulders. ”I don't know.”
”Awesome,” I say sarcastically.
”I think 'bout it too.” He then says with raised brows. ”But you shouldn't get too positive 'bout this 'aspect'. I mean, we'll probably relive the past or something morbid.”
I shut my eyes for a moment and then sigh heavily. I flutter my eyes open and glance at Tobias who's staring at me like an imbecile.
”What you staring at?” I ask bitterly.
”You.”
”Me?” I tilt my head down and look in his eyes. ”Why?”
He grins and shakes his head. ”You're the first person I talked to besides myself in my thirty cycles.”
His hazel eyes dilate, and I purse my lips. ”I'm...moved?”
He clears his throat and rubs his nape as I lift my brows at his behaviour. I then shake my head and move back before collapsing on the chair with a heavy sigh.
”When the hell are we getting back to the black shit?” I ask impatiently, slowly accepting my fucked up fate.
”You mean the Darkoom?”
”The what-?” I look up at an excited Tobias. I blink at him.
”It's a word I made up, twenty cycles ago-” He says with an easy smirk. ”It's literally 'Dark' plus 'Room'-” He smiles. ”Like a ship name-”
I snort. ”That's everything, but a ship name-”
”It kinda is the same thing-” He says with a shrug.
”Did you kill yourself because of your stupidity?” I ask irritably. ”This is some serious shit-”
Tobias lifts his brows. ”Of course not-”
I hear the defensiveness in his voice and roll my eyes. ”That shit shouldn't offend you, dude. Like, it's okay. We all killed ourselves for some stupid, fucked-up reason.”
”I'm not offended,” he says.
”Yeah, good. I thought I'm dealing with a forty-seven-year-old,” I tell him.
”Well-” He lifts an index finger. ”I am hypothetically forty-seven, but technically just seventeen. I haven't done what a forty-seven-year-old man does. You have to live something to be it.”
”Yeah, whatever.”
”I think-” Tobias starts, sitting down when the house's front door gets creaked open.
Tobias straightens up, changing his mind about sitting down, and I get up at the sight of a determined Aiden, dragging a red-faced Jacob inside by his pyjama's shirt.