Chapter Text
The soothing sound of sleep leaks out from under my apartment door, pulling me closer like a promising, addictive lullaby. Work today has been especially brutal. Every part of my body aches with pain and discomfort, and I can feel a headache growing from too many hours around too many people who are too stupid to function without constant assistance.
I finally push open the apartment door. My boyfriend looks up the second it creaks open. He’s lounged back on my couch, shoes kicked up on my coffee table again, like I haven’t asked him a dozen times not to do that. Like I’m not the one scrubbing dirt off the glass every damn day.
He scrambles to his feet as I set my keys on the kitchen counter. He looks…nervous? “Hey, uh…how was work?” He asks, stiff, yet too bright. There’s something in his hand, half-hidden by his leg.
He’s been working at some tech company called C&A for a few years now. He always says he’s not allowed to talk about it for legal reasons, NDAs, all that. I’ve never pushed. I'm not much of a talker, anyway. Well...not with him. Our relationship has felt like a dead end for a long time now. I don’t know why I’m still here. Or why he is. We argue, sometimes we fight. And sometimes it gets pretty physical. He’s manipulative, angry, narcissistic. I’m 90% sure he cheats whenever he thinks he can get away with it.
So why haven’t I left? It’s not fear of being alone. If anything, I prefer it. Maybe I just hate myself. Maybe I want an excuse to feel sorry for myself. Maybe if he stays the biggest problem in my life, I won’t have to turn around and face the rest of them that are stacked up behind him like a waiting avalanche.
“It was fine,” I lie, stepping towards the Chinese takeout trash on the counter.
As I gather up the empty boxes, I hear him speak again. “Hey…you wanna try this out?” I glance over at him to see him fidgeting with that thing in his hands. “It’s a new VR thing we’ve been working on. It’s… real cutting-edge shit.”
I tear my gaze away from it, disinterested. “No…I’ve had a long day, but thanks. I just wanna go to sleep.”
He shrugs like it’s nothing, but I catch a flash of something poorly hidden in his eyes. Disappointment? Maybe frustration? I’m too tired to care. Not even physically, I’m also mentally tired of him. I grab another box of the Chinese takeout, and I’m mildly surprised that there’s any left for me. But then again, maybe he just got full. Or maybe he didn’t even know this one was untouched. That feels more likely.
I turn and head for the bedroom without another word. Behind me, the room falls quiet. I glance back as I step through the door. He’s staring down at the headset in his hands, his fingers, and his jaw tightening.
A little bit later, I set the empty takeout box on the nightstand. It was cold, of course. I didn’t bother heating it up. It’s...It’s hard to care about…anything, when my career, social life, and love life all seem hell-bent on draining me dry. I feel like a drone moving on autopilot, doing what I’m supposed to do, always less than what I want to. Existing, not living.
I pop in my earbuds and lift my phone over my face, the screen casting a soft, pale glow across my skin. Spotify’s already open, its dark interface staring back at me like it’s my only friend in this world. I used to play music, on piano or guitar. But of course, I had to stop because it bothered him. I shuffle one of my comfort playlists and close my eyes, letting the music drown everything out. My phone rests lightly on my chest.
A few songs pass before the bedroom door opens. Light spills in and washes over my body like a spotlight, cutting through my little cocoon. I open my eyes, turn my head, and pull out one earbud. He steps in with that practiced smile. The one I used to think meant love, back when I didn’t know better. It’s fake. Polished. He wants something. He crosses the room and sits on the edge of the bed.
I sigh, tug out the other earbud, and pause the music. “What do you want?”
He lets out a soft laugh. “Damn, calm down,” he says, tone playful but just shy of forced. “I just…I really want you to try this headset.”
He holds it up between us. “I was having a rough day too, and…look, I don’t know how to explain it, but using this? It made me feel better. Like, actually better.”
I swallow back the sarcastic comment waiting on my tongue. Honestly, the sooner I try it, the sooner he’ll leave me alone and I can get back to pretending I’m okay and drowning my reality in other things. I sit up, eyes flicking down to the device in his hands.
“What is it?”
His whole face brightens. Still nervous, but hopeful. He turns the headset slowly, like it’s something fragile. It looks…normal? No different from a basic VR set. PlayStation, Oculus, whatever. Sleek, modern, a little too clean. Maybe it’ll be a tour of a galaxy, or stars blinking in fast-forward over a desert, or one of those soothing coral reef experiences.
He adjusts the headset in his hands and says, “It’s a new innovation we’ve been working on at C&A. Pretty hush-hush still.”
I arch a brow. “Didn’t think I was even allowed to know that.”
He grins at me, wide and warm, like he’s trying to sell sincerity. “Normally, no. But you’re special,” he says smoothly, brushing a thumb over the side of the headset. “I’m willing to bend the rules for you.”
I fight the urge to roll my eyes and reach for it. For just a second, so quick I almost miss it, he pulls back. His fingers twitch, like the tiniest part of him doesn’t want me to try it after all. But then that second passes. He hands it over without another word.
I turn it over in my hands. “What am I gonna see?”
Another pause. Longer than it should be. Then his smile returns, tight at the edges. “Just a short intro sequence. Some nature shit like ecosystems and all that. It’s meant to show off the realism, you know? After that, you can decide where to go next.”
He’s improvising. I can hear it in the cadence, the way his words smooth over gaps in what sounds like a half-truth. He’s always been good at spinning lies into something that gets him what he wants. I know he’s probably lying. But I don’t care. My only real goal is to get him to go away so I can sink back into the half-peace I had earlier.
I lift the headset to my face, and he leans forward to help, gently holding it in place while I buckle the strap behind my head. I lay back without a word, pop my earbuds back in, hit play. The music resumes, and if anything, this headset helps me block out the world around me even more. So…a-okay in my book. I can’t see him anymore. I can’t hear him either.
But he sees me. His eyes linger on my face, that faint, crooked smile stretching across his lips. Bittersweet. But mostly...relieved.
“Bye, (Y/N),” he whispers.
I don’t hear or see him. The music lightly plays in my ears as I call out, “I don’t see anything. Is it even on yet?”
I pull an earbud out, but there’s no response. I reach down, trying to feel for him but…nothing. He’s gone. I should be able to reach him? I’m about to sit up and pull this thing off, ready to call him out for screwing with me, when suddenly a circular loading icon pops up right in front of me.
But…it’s not on the screen. It follows my gaze wherever my eyes move, looping endlessly. What the hell? It’s not just visually uncomfortable, it feels like it’s pressing against my mind. My thoughts get jammed up every time I try to focus on anything else. I shake my head, trying to push the feeling away. If he’s not here, whatever. I’ll take it off and tell him it was a “fun experience” when I see him again.
I lift my hand to grab the headset, but before I can reach it, the loading icon is replaced with a blinding flash of white. It’s incredibly bright as it erupts into my vision, stealing the breath from my lungs. My arm goes limp. It falls across my chest, as if every muscle has suddenly forgotten how to work. I stare at the white screen, eyes wide. Stunned like a deer in headlights.
The soft music in my earbuds begins to fade out, the last familiar sounds slowly draining away. The white screen flickers, then fades to black. The back of my mind just assumes I’ve drifted off. Maybe I fell asleep. That would make sense, right? That the flash somehow just made me pass out, I don’t know.
So I open my eyes again. But I’m not met with white, and not black either. Instead, there’s a blinding, saturated color. An image of velvety red, gleaming gold, a deep, rich blue. It's too vibrant, too vivid, like the air itself is painted. Then the colors begin to move away from me. They stretch, and I realize I’m falling.
The air rushes past me as I drop, weightless, until I land with a sudden, clumsy thud on something solid. Hard angles dig into my back and thighs. Not quite wood, not quite stone. It feels like it should hurt...but it doesn’t. Not really. It's a muted pain. Dull, like the volume’s been turned down on my nerves.
Still, I wince, blinking up at the strange ceiling above me. I shift my attention to the right, where a face appears in my line of sight. Or...not a face. Just eyes.
Wide, slanted eyes stare down at me, blinking once in surprise. The figure wears a flowing purple robe trimmed in white. It’s regal, cartoonish, and greatly exaggerated. He has no face, just big wide eyes on some wooden stand. I would’ve thought it was a statue until the being lets out a short, startled shriek and jerks backward like I scared him.
“AH—!” I yelp back, twisting away on instinct and scrambling back on my hands. My heart slams against my ribs.
But before I can fully register where I am, the floor beneath me gives way underneath my hands.
I drop again, flipping comically in the air before landing on my stomach, this time onto a solid wooden floor with a heavy. I would groan, but there’s no time to sit still. I push myself up, and look back ahead at the royal guy. That’s when I realize that there are two other beings on either side of me, looking down at me from their chairs.
One is tall and lanky, some kind of humanoid, purple rabbit, with long limbs, yellow eyes, and pink overall. He stares down at me with a mixture of both surprise, amusement, and annoyance.
On the other chair is a floating white theatrical mask, like the comedy/tragedy masks from stage plays. Only this one’s attached to a twisting bundle of red ribbons, which move like limbs. One ribbon-hand reaches gently toward me, an offer of help. But I flinch again, scrambling back to push myself to my feet, breathing hard in a panic. The three strange… people, whatever they are, they continue to watch me.
But they’re not alone. There are two other faces. A ragdoll-like woman with one button and one ‘normal’ eye, red twirly hair, and a light indigo patchwork dress. Next to her is some kind of clown with a big red mouth, a yellow hat, a frilly blue collar, and a yellow body with red pom-poms down his front. And finally…I don’t know what that is. It’s a colorful, mismatched creature cobbled together from different parts that don’t look like they belong together. They watch me with a gaze full of worry and some sort of empathy.
They're all seated at a long, rectangular dinner table, half-eaten plates in front of them. And on the table where I landed and shoved myself away, the entropy and disruption is clear.
The rabbit’s face shifts, the surprise fully vanishing. “Oh, great!” he groans, voice dripping with sarcasm. “Can’t even eat before we’re interrupted by something.”
I flinch, stepping back, heart pounding in my throat. The ragdoll woman stands from her chair, carefully walking around the table with her palms raised in a gentle, nonthreatening gesture.
“Hey… hey, don’t worry, alright?” she says softly, trying to meet my eyes. “Everything’s gonna be okay. I promise.”
The purple royalty guy blinks and shouts again, as if he forgot I was here, and he’s seeing me for the first time and is surprised all over again
I stumble back further, fully panicking now. “What’s going on?!” I yell, looking around. “ Take me out!!”
My voice cracks with desperation as I shout toward the ceiling, maybe pleading with my boyfriend to help for once. “Take this off!!!”
I reach up to my face, fingers grasping frantically. But I don’t feel the headset at all. Just smooth skin. My breath catches as my eyes drop to my hands, draped in gloves. Elegant, elbow-length gloves. My left hand is black, my right is white. Satin or silk, it’s hard to tell. They glint faintly under the strange, colorful light of this place.
I lift them higher, tracing down my arms. “What…?”
“ Weeiiirrd, huh?” The rabbit's voice cuts in from behind, thick with mocking amusement. “‘What’s happening, where am I?!’, am I right?”
I don’t even bother to indulge him. Another voice, a bit meeker, speaks for me. “Don’t scare her, Jax…”
The ragdoll woman steps forward again, placing herself slightly between me and the others. “Don’t listen to him,” she says gently. “He’s always like this.”
The rabbit leans back confidently. “You mean ‘fun’?”
The mismatched character crosses their arms. “No, she means a pain in the %$!#.”
I ignore all of them as my eyes are locked on my own body. I’m wearing a dress. Light teal, short and frilly. I don’t like dresses. There’s a wide, light brown band wrapped tightly around my waist. It acts like a corset, but there’s no zipper, straps, or buttons. Nothing holding it in place, and yet it stays like it’s a part of me.
The hem of the dress ends in various pointed shapes, like tattered leaves or tiny flickers of fire, each tip lined with pale yellow. One of my legs is striped with bright red and bold yellow. The other is just solid black. On my feet are some little slippers. I hate slippers. The left one is red, and the right is yellow, matching the one leg.
I take it all in, frozen, then I lift my eyes again. They're all still watching me, these bizarre, impossible to comprehend people, with faces of sympathy, curiosity, concern. All except one. The purple rabbit leans one elbow on the table, his head resting lazily against his hand, grinning like the cat that got the canary. There’s pleasure dancing behind his eyes. A gleeful, smug satisfaction at the way I’m unraveling.
I swallow hard, voice tight as I speak.“What’s happening?” I ask, scanning their faces. “I…I put on a headset, and now—”
I pause and something clicks in my brain. That’s right. It’s just VR. I exhale, letting out a short, breathy laugh, shaking my head.
“This is insane,” I mutter. “I mean…it’s so real! It’s like I’m actually moving my hands.” I lift my fingers in front of me, wiggling them slightly. “This is seriously next-level stuff. I can feel everything. It’s wild.”
The rabbit snickers loudly. “Aw,” he mocks, tilting his head further on his hand. “She thinks this is some kind of game.”
I blink, my confidence stuttering again. The mismatched creature crosses their arms. “If you’re not gonna be any help, just keep your mouth shut.”
The rabbit shrugs, grinning at them without remorse. “You know I can’t do that. Only fun I get around here is toying with all of you.”
He turns back to me, leaning forward now, eyes glinting with mischief. Then he lifts a finger and starts twirling it in a slow circle. “And I think you forgot to discover a little part of yourself, Tinker.”
“Tinker…?” I echo, brows knitting.
Then I glance under my arm, and my stomach drops when I see something’s hanging off my back. I spin in place, frantically trying to see it. Turning again and again, a tiny, metallic song plays out of me.
I freeze. It’s like a music box melody. I know this song. But there’s no lyrics. Just tinkling notes that dance and loop. However, the moment I stop moving, the music stops, too. My mouth opens slightly.
The rabbit hums, shrugging minimally with the tiniest hint of being impressed. “Cool.”
A soft sound draws my attention. The mismatched creature gently rolls something toward me, its wheels creaking softly against the wooden floor. I look over to see a mirror. I freeze as it comes to a stop beside me, and I don’t hesitate to step in front of it.
And what I see…Isn’t me. The girl in the mirror is someone else entirely. My shoulders sink in faded shock. My stomach turns as I lift a hand, slowly and cautiously, and the reflection copies me exactly. I touch my face, fingers trailing over my cheek, my nose, my jawline.
This isn’t me, but this is me… somehow. She wears the same teal dress, cinched by that strange corset-like belt. I see the pointed, flickering edges at the hem like falling leaves or licking flames. Her mismatched legs, the tiny and ugly slippers. But now I’m seeing it all from the third person.
I turn slightly, afraid of what I won’t recognize next, what the rabbit was talking about. My heart seems to stop when I see. Two pairs of wings sticking out from my back. The top set is long, elegant, and translucent red. The lower pair is shorter, with a similar translucent yellow hue. They look like dragonfly wings. Part of me would be a bit relieved that it’s something cool like a dragonfly, and less girly like fairy or butterfly wings. But that tiniest thought is drowned out by pure panic.
Like I’ve done this before, like it’s some strange, coded instinct.I lift them gently, fanning them upward. My eye twitches, and I force them back down, folding them flat against my back like they might disappear if I pretend hard enough, but they don’t.
I step forward, drawn back to the mirror. I lean in slightly, staring into the porcelain mask that is now my face. I reach up again, trailing my fingers along my cheek. It’s not skin. It’s smooth and just flexible enough to allow expression. There’s warmth beneath it, but it’s clear that I could break like a doll.
My hair is pulled up into a neat ponytail, a few cartoonish strands framing either side of my unfamiliar face. It sways gently as I lean in, breathing shallow, watching a stranger mirror my every move. I don’t know who this is. I don’t know who I am.
The clown speaks up from across the table, trying to lessen the tension. “Don’t worry, newbie! We’ve all had this out of body experience!” He laughs, his nose honking like he just told the greatest joke ever.
But I barely even process his words.
“What…”
The rabbit grins, permanent teeth flashing. “Here it comes.”
“The… F-%$!#?!?!”
Before I finish the curse, or whatever noise suddenly left my mouth, a gloved hand suddenly reaches from the mirror to put a finger to my lips. I blink in surprise and look down at it. It’s reaching out of the mirror like the glass isn’t even there. When I look back into my eyes, my stomach twists when I see that one of my eyes is an electric blue, and the other is a bright green.
Without warning, a face begins pushing through my face in the reflection. I shriek, stumbling backward just as a figure emerges, and float high in the air. But as my vision sharpens, I realize that it wasn’t a face at all.
It’s a man…sort of. Where his head should be, there’s only a massive pair of dentures with two googly eyes nestled inside. A pristine top hat balances neatly above it all. His body is more cartoon than human.
I barely register half of him before a cane materializes in his white-gloved hand, and he zooms down toward me like a dive-bombing firework.
“Well, well, well!!” he bellows, voice booming and theatrical. He twirls the cane as he floats backward, turning toward the others. “It appears a new human has entered our lovely, lively realm!!”
Panic floods my system. My breath catches in my throat, but I seem glued to my spot on the floor that appears to be a sort of a stage. To my surprise, a smile slowly stretches over my lips, one of my eyes twitching as a small giggle escapes me. They watch me with various expressions as my laughter grows.
The floating teeth brushes off his sleeve. “My! Well, I do believe my comedy is top-tier!!”
My laughter suddenly dies out, as if my sanity has returned to my cracking psyche. I look around at strange characters.
Nope.
Nope nope nope.
Fight or flight hits like a freight train, and I turn and bolt.
"Ope! There she goes!" The rabbit snickers, propping an elbow on the back of his chair, thoroughly entertained.
I leap off the stage, not even caring where I land. My shoes hit the ground with a thud, and for the first time, I take in the full, impossible explosion of color around me, shifting floors, floating shapes, untextured buildings painted in clown logic. I take it all in while I keep running.
There has to be a way to leave somewhere around here. There HAS to be!!! I need to get out of he_-er-re!!!
My eyes and joints feel like they're twitching, but it doesn't stop me from running. Back on stage, the floating man plants his fists on his hips, his teeth moving as if they’re both lips and eyebrows.
“Was it something I said?” he asks, his eyes crossing.
The ribbon girl fidgets with her hands. “Should…we go after her?”
The ragdoll sighs, rubbing her temples. “We really need to work on welcoming people in.”