#amazing digital circus caine | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

writerofweird · 4 months ago

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The Doors

The below story is a sequel to my earlier story confessionsofcaine.doc. It is 4,305 words long and also includes death, violence, enbyphobia, murder and suicide. It also includes characters originally created by Gooseworx, Glitch Productions and The East Patch, which the author does not own and has written this story as a tribute to the creators and their works. Please support the original creators.

Out of respect for Gooseworx and her plans for The Amazing Digital Circus and its story, this is set in an alternate continuity. The first two episodes and bits and pieces from her Tumblr and the previews are still a part of it. There are spoilers for the episodes here; in fact, the first sentence is a spoiler for Episode 2 so the whole story is under a read more link.

‘WASN’T IT ENOUGH YOU KILLED GUMMIGOO YOU BASTARD?’

I hate going through this door.

It’s a setting I’ve seen many times, a scene that’s splattered onto my memory. A short woman in a business suit screaming at a computer. Another, taller woman in a business suit resting motionless over a chair, almost looking like she has no skeleton.

‘Laura, please,’ came a voice from the computer screen, ‘if I kept him, this would’ve been harder!’

‘Laura, come on, let’s go!’

There’s another figure at the scene, attempting to pry the short woman away from the screen.

I’ve seen that person’s face before. Every time I enter this room, the moving humans have their backs turned to me, but I’ve seen the taller one’s face. I’ve seen it up close, looking over me like a bird over its chicks. Their face dominated my entire field of view, so I got a close look at their bulging eyes as they beheld me, and even though, unlike the scene with the computer, I’ve only seen that giant face once, I still clearly remember the cries of ‘No!’

How long have I been here? I think as I slam the door behind me, again in the middle of a room with crimson carpets and dull wood panelling. It feels like I’ve been here for decades, and at the same time, it feels like I’ve been here for hours.

What else is there to do but open doors?

One might be the way home, I tell myself, but then I wonder if I find home, will I recognise it?

My mind has created various images of what I might call home, but none of them ring a bell. I thought that my home would be an apartment with bottles and wrappers all over the floor and streetlights glowing from behind blinds, but that isn’t a very familiar picture. I certainly didn’t live in a cottage with a flower garden and a picket fence, and as much as I would like it to be true, I never lived in a mansion, well, one safer than the one I was trapped in.

I lightly hit my forehead to help me focus, and right as I do so, a vase leaps off the table. Funny. Just thinking about flowers.

Whatever plant was kept there – I’m no herbotologist or whatever those are called – is transformed into a mass of writhing worms, and the pattern changes to a scowling face. Without even thinking, I pull a crowbar from my pocket and in seconds, the foe is reduced to shards, the worms squirming their way within the floor.

None of the other furniture moved.

What else is there to do but open doors?

I pulled another one open, and again found myself involuntarily squinting as sunlight burst through. That setting is rare, and one I always make sure to savour.

When I first stepped through a door into this land, I told myself it was home, and if I walked enough through the tall grass and the bright forests, memories would come flooding back. Nothing I recalled as “home” could be found there, but I need a break from the constant barrage of nearly-sepia hallways, so I run into this land whenever I find it. I’m almost tempted to frolic through the fields.

Every time I come here, I mistake the first figure I see as a statue, an installation by someone attempting to make a statement. A metallic figure with a triangular, horned head, its body and limbs a mish-mash of various shapes. Their left arm looks like spaghetti. Their right leg looks like a rifle.

The figure stands beside a thick path framed by twisted trees, its yellow bricks making it stand out amongst the green. As I walk down this path, I am joined by two other figures: a giant chess piece with eyeballs, tattered robes and a large straw hat, and a pale young woman in a blue dress. Every time I come here, they don’t seem to notice me. They always notice the metallic being.

‘Look, Pomni!’ cries the chess piece, lifting a gloved hand towards the being, ‘It’s a wotsit! You always need one of those!’

Pomni picks up a nearby oil can and splatters it over the figure, allowing them to stretch their limbs; yes, they’re made of metal but stretch like elastic.

‘Oh, thank fuck’ sighs the being in a voice I know too well, ‘Hey, how’s it going, I’m Zooble.’

‘Do you want a heart?’ Pomni asks Zooble.

‘What? Are you kidding me?’ barks Zooble, their fists – or what count as fists – tightened. ‘That’s the last thing I want!’

‘Good!’ comes another voice, ‘You don’t need one working for me!’

I twirl around to see that blonde woman who was lying limp on the chair, except this time she’s wearing a tall black hat and matching robe, a broom in her right hand.

I’ve seen that woman many times on my adventures. I remember opening a door and letting loose a stench that made my nostrils sting. It was the woman, wearing the business suit she wore in the office, bright red wriggly lines around her form, along with flies. I even heard a foghorn in the distance as I beheld her.

I take out my crowbar again and swipe it at her direction. It felt like I hit something – it feels more like I hit a pillow rather than flesh, but it has no effect on her. In fact, after she lets loose a maniacal cackle, I always end up back in the hallway, as if the door just spit me out.

There was one time I stepped through and the chess piece, Pomni and Zooble were joined by another figure – one wearing a lion costume and a white tragedy mask.

There was one time I saw all four of them in a room where the walls were made of gleaming green emeralds, ones that made me flinch as much as the sun did. They all stood before a giant bubble, one almost as large as that face that cried ‘No!’. The bubble barked at them words I cannot remember, but what I do remember was who was controlling the bubble: a short humanoid figure in top hat and tails that matched the walls, his head a pair of comedy dentures with two eyeballs sitting atop his frog tongue.

As I pick another door, I see that tooth-faced man and the bubble again, the man now dressed as a circus ringmaster and the bubble much smaller. Zooble is there too, only made of plastic and not tin. The three of them sit in what I can only describe as a colossal playroom, building blocks of many colours lining the walls and framing a stage, gigantic wind-up cars and jack-in-the-boxes providing decoration.

‘So, Zooble,’ says the ringmaster, throwing his right fist to the left as if trying to hit an invisible fly, ‘as you chose to opt out of the Candy Canyon Kingdom adventure, Bubble and I will be providing entertainment until your friends return!’

‘They’re not my friends…’ sighed Zooble, right before the ringmaster conjured up another building-block wall in front of them, two windows built into the blocks. The ringmaster opens one window, crying, ‘Hey, Bubble, what do you get if you cross a rooster with a goldfish?’

The second window opens, revealing Bubble. ‘I don’t know, Caine, what do you get if you cross a rooster with a goldfish?’

‘A rooster who drowns,’ replies Caine in a more sombre voice, his arms flopping over the sides of the window.

‘Very amusing,’ replies Zooble, ‘anyway, I would like to do some drawing…’

‘Capital idea, Zooble!’ cries Caine, regaining his usual jovial attitude as he springs into the air. With another swerve of his fist, the walls and windows vanish and in Zooble’s hands – a balloon-like glove and a claw – materialise pencils and sheets of paper. ‘You could draw Bubble, really get his good side!’

‘No thank you,’ groans Zooble, looking at the paper, ‘I’d rather just draw things around the Circus, if that’s okay.’

‘Of course!’ cries Caine as Zooble walks through the halls.

More halls. More doors.

Every time I find myself in these halls, I try to open the doors. The doors with the cute cartoon faces on them, looking like logos for a children’s animated series. When I first came here, I gave them all my own little names before learning of their real ones. Bertie the Blue Bunny was actually called Jax. Smiley the Clown was actually Kaufmo.

Zooble leaned on the door that bore Kaufmo’s face – Kaufmo’s face crossed out with lines as red as the woman’s stink marks - drawing his face. As they do so, Caine slithers beside them, reminding me of the worms from the vase.

‘Go away, I need quiet.’

‘What you need, my friend, is support. You’re doing a great job! Go at it! Keep up the good work!’

‘Thanks but no thanks.’

‘Okay!’ cries Caine, and yet he stands beside them as they finish their drawing, and then turn towards the door bearing the masked woman. Gangle, formerly known to me as Masky.

The door – the one that brought me to this multicoloured wonderland – pulls me out and back into the hall. I open the same door to find myself back there, only for more figures to enter.

From a portal steps a bipedal alligator, a yellow, glue-like substance where there should have been scales. I’m certain I could see my reflection in his form.

As soon as he enters, he makes his grand exit, exploding in a flurry of party favours to the horror of a nearby jester.

I would hit Caine with my crowbar if it did any good.

Even though they aren’t present, I hear Zooble’s voice in my head.

She wanted us to suffer. If he didn’t kill Gummigoo, she would’ve.

‘I know you guys love your NPCs,’ Caine explains, bending and stretching ‘but if I start losing track of who’s a human and who’s an NPC, who knows…what could happen…’ His body went limp again.

He was a good liar, I’ll give him that.

The jester, Pomni in her usual outfit, can only chuckle.

Caine vanishes, not like Gummigoo had done but rather to some little personal corner or somewhere of that nature, and I hear Zooble again, this time for real. ‘Sheesh. I thought he’d never leave.’

Zooble shows their friends – the masked ribbon, the chess piece, the jester, the ragdoll (the rabbit doesn’t seem to be their friend) – the drawing of the clown, framed and standing on a table.

It’s a funeral.

When I’m not in one of these colourful places, I explore a haunted house, almost every piece of furniture possessed by malevolent ghosts. Occasionally, I’ve stopped to think what could have happened in their lives to make the ghosts as malevolent as they are. Did they have funerals? Did their friends have any kind words to say about them? If so, did any of them know what their deceased loved ones were currently doing?

As I watch Zooble say their piece about Kaufmo, the scene changes to a haunted house not unlike the one I had been exploring. Zooble, now wearing a different set of limbs including a plastic daisy for a leg and a fish fin for an arm, walks alongside the clown.

‘An Exit Door appeared when you first did,’ Kaufmo explains, gesturing to nothing with his enlarged hand, ‘and if you had managed to run through it in time, you would be back in your body. If Adams is observing us to make our copies more accurate, then she must place headsets on them often, and then another Exit Door will appear, and if we find one and run through it, we will enter…’

‘The more anyone speaks, the more nonsensical it sounds,’ Zooble groans, ‘I’ve only been here a day and I know we’re never getting out of here.’

‘We can’t lose hope…’

‘Just shut up and keep looking.’

Zooble places their hand on Kaufmo’s shoulder.

In seconds, I again find myself in a sunny setting, with me involuntarily squinting before revealing the blonde woman and Caine, tied up on a grey road. Zooble approachs them, riding a steamroller.

I return to the scene of the funeral. As I do, so does Caine, his eyeballs turned to the floor as he scratches his arm.

Caine wanted to say something, I know it, but he couldn’t.

‘Pomni,’ he says, ‘I can’t hold it in anymore!’ He grabs the sides of what could be called his face, and I’m certain he’s going to pull his head off his body. ‘I’m sorry I killed your friend! I had to! I can’t keep doing this!’

‘Caine…’ Pomni shivers.

‘I’ve been trying to get you guys out of here! I didn’t want to get attached to the NPCs I created before I destroy this place for good! I…’

‘Traitor!’ comes a woman’s voice from above.

Caine disappears, this time like Gummigoo had.

‘Obviously I’ve been too easy on you!’

The colourful walls transform into grey stone, stretching towards an inky abyss. Skeletal hands snake through the cracks between each stone, grabbing onto every funeral attendant as they shriek and struggle.

But there’s someone here who didn’t attend the funeral.

Jax, Bertie, the blue rabbit approaches them with a grin, hands behind his back as his form enlarges.

‘Jax will be in charge of your little adventures from now on,’ comes the voice that shook the entire room, ‘I see a little bit of me in him.’

Jax leans to look over his new victims. ‘I’m going to enjoy this.’

It’s a good thing Caine is a good liar. A good performer. Imagine what would happen if he broke character for too long.

In seconds, the funeral resumes, the room springing back to its original colourful form before Pomni approaches Zooble. ‘Zooble,’ Pomni asked, ‘did you get a good look at Gummigoo? Could you…’

Zooble places a hand on Pomni’s shoulder. ‘Sure thing.’

I see a picture of the alligator join the picture of the clown before being catapulted back to the hallway.

Here, I decide to stand still and breathe heavily, allowing my mind to process the rollercoaster I just went through.

It feels like I’ve been here for decades, and at the same time, it feels like I’ve been here for hours. I don’t recognise any of these characters, and yet I’m certain I knew them from somewhere.

It’s a ride I’ve experienced many times before, and a ride I’ve just experienced for the first time. My first thought was that it was the ghosts creating it, but then they would have used my memories, wouldn’t they? None of the people or creatures I’ve seen in these rooms are me and I don’t know if they have anything to do with me.

I have no memory of my childhood. What school I went to or what my favourite toy was I cannot say. When a teddy bear in this haunted hallway springs to life and I reduce it to stuffing, I think of how it’s a perversion of a childhood favourite, but if it was a favourite of my childhood, I have no recollection of it being so.

A landscape painting flies off the wall towards me, and I duck, allowing its glass to smash against the wall. The frame and the painting lifeless, I take a look at the latter, seeing Pomni and Zooble – Pomni in her blue dress and Zooble in their metallic state - in the sunlit forest, the witch lurking in the background.

The sight of this makes me pick another door.

Again I squint in light, but this is not the sun, but the yellow beam of a streetlight. As the door disappears behind me, I breath in and take in the night air, feeling an iota of hope I might have finally picked the exit door…

Weren’t they talking about exit doors earlier?

I walk and pay attention to the clacking my shoes made across the pavement, looking at the glowing shop windows, the full moon peeking from behind skyscrapers, and the big blue bunny.

No, this isn’t the way home.

Humans are walking the street, humans more detailed than the cartoon characters that populated Caine’s world, but here is Jax, throwing one of those humans to the ground and leaping into their car. With a laugh, he slams his foot on the pedal, not even bothering to close the door behind him, and drives the car in the middle of the pavement. I dive out of the way even though I’m sure he won’t be able to hurt me.

He craved to feel the rush again. I’d feel sorry for him if weren’t a murderous prick.

I don’t remember picking another door, but I have, as I’m in yet another room, a colourless office with several detailed humans, including three familiar ones.

The blonde woman in the grey jacket and skirt, now mobile and not dressed for Halloween. The short-haired person, now wearing an ensemble not unlike the blonde woman, tapping away at a computer.

‘Joanne,’ said the woman, ‘what have you done with your hair?’

I took a closer look at the person at the computer, and saw they clenched their teeth before responding. ‘I feel like it’s more me,’ they reply, ‘and I would prefer it if you would call me Jo.’

‘Why?’ The woman smiles widely. ‘Your hair looked so beautiful and Joanne is a lovely name!’

‘Please don’t call me that,’ Jo continues, ‘Jo feels more me. I mean, I’m 22, I’m still finding myself.’

‘Why would you need to find yourself? You’re right here.’

‘Very funny.’ It was a sarcastic remark they were struggling to phrase sincerely.

‘Please grow out your hair again, Joanne,’ the woman said, ‘it looks much better that way. You look like a boy!’

Nearby is the woman who was screaming about Gummigoo. Laura. Pomni. Now I can see her from the front, and I can see she wears glasses.

As the blonde woman walks away and Laura approaches Jo, Laura whispers, ‘Don’t listen to her. I think it really suits you.’

‘You think so? I was thinking of dying it.’

‘Oh yeah, do that.’

Jo turns around. As they turn around, their face grows, the whole office swallowed up by their skin.

I’m back in the haunted hallway. Behind me are a never-ending set of doors framed by a carpet of blood. In front of me is that giant frightening frightened face.

A door opens.

I pull out my crowbar, steeling myself for another possessed item, but out comes a man, his face nearly hidden by his fedora and trenchcoat. My first thought was that it was someone pretending to be a noir hero, but the more I looked at him, with his five o’clock shadow and necktie, he seemed to have been released from a tattered pulp paperback. This was someone, I could tell just by looking at him, that had lived the noir lifestyle, not someone pretending they had.

He looked over his form. ‘An improvement,’ he states, ‘but not exactly what I’m used to. I’ll manage. Look, Nathan,’ he continues, addressing me, ‘I don’t have a lot of time, so just look at the face there. Look at them.’

‘Oh,’ says Jo, ‘thanks for using my preferred pronouns.’

‘Hey, whatever you’ve heard about us isn’t true,’ he says to the face before turning back to me, ‘Look, buddy, that face up there. You owe your life to that person. You recall old teeth-head and gummygator?’

I could only say, ‘Yeah?’

‘Man of few words. I like that. You’re just like them. Characters created with care, given new life.’ He turned back to the face. ‘It wasn’t Abby or your copy meddling with your game. Well, Caine sending his little life story to you may have been the spark that finally made him what he is. But it’s mostly you. You thought about him like the Adamses thought about Caine and he thought about Gummigoo.’

‘So you’re saying…’

‘No, of course I’m not saying it’s the power of love that made Nathan what he is. My associate might say that, but I won’t. Look, I’m busy, and I’m certain you two are smart enough to figure out what’s going on. I mean, Jo, you’re pretty much the hero of this picture. See ya.’

He steps into the door and leaves as quickly as he entered. For once, I feel no desire to explore. I can only stare at Jo. I can only stare at Zooble.

It feels like I’ve been here for decades, and at the same time, it feels like I’ve been here for hours. I didn’t recognise any of the characters I saw, and yet I’m certain I knew them from somewhere. I didn’t know Jo, and yet I felt I knew them more than they probably knew themselves.

We stare at silence for a few seconds before they pull their face away to lift their hand towards me. It looks like they’re trying to grab me and pull me away from my home, but I know they’re unable to.

I lift my hand and place my tiny palm against their real one. No, we place our palms against the film separating our worlds.

I say what I know is the only right thing to say:

‘I want you to tell me exactly what I am.’

I find out more about who they are. Jo, non-binary AFAB artist, who briefly worked in a tattoo parlour before realising game design was their true calling. They worked at game company C&A, the company behind The Amazing Digital Circus. The Amazing Digital Circus was going to be an immersive virtual reality experience full of fun and adventure.

It was going to be that, but it was transformed into a prison, a way for Ms. Abigail Adams to replace her employee’s minds with…

‘They weren’t like you. They had flesh and blood bodies but…they didn’t think. They just did what she programmed to do. She didn’t put…she didn’t put much thought into them.’

The Amazing Digital Circus, the prison where Jo and others had been kept for so long, had been overseen by Caine, who was secretly working on a way to save everyone. He apparently had some help from an angel, and Jo thought they had found that angel, only for another to talk to them instead: the man in the fedora who had entered the hallway.

Caine had managed to save whoever he could and destroyed the Circus so no-one else would fall victim to it, creating a document which he sent to those he saved before he died. A little piece of him that made me somewhat like him, I suppose.

Jo then explained exactly who I was. Nathan, a man trapped in a haunted house as part of a game they were working on, one based on their experiences being afraid of the dark as a child and even feeling unsafe as an adult. Even when they were trapped in Abigail’s program, they thought of me, the world I created and what more I could experience.

They not only created games, they created artwork and wrote about their experiences in the Amazing Digital Circus before its destruction. They kept that on their computer, and those were the rooms I visited.

I wondered if sending the document to a computer with any game on it would bring the characters in those games to life, but I was mentioned in the document – a side effect of trapping peoples’ minds in a computer was that their memories floated around for Caine to see – so I wondered if Caine wanted me to gain sentience.

No, it wasn’t him. It was Jo. Jo made me and Jo saw me and my world as a labour of love. When they saw me move of my own accord, they thought it was Abby’s interference, but they didn’t delete me. They couldn’t delete me.

Jo pulled themselves away from the computer to show off where said computer was housed. A bed with a duvet cover that looked like a broken window. Various paintings depicting withered, surreal landscapes and hallways like those I constantly travelled through. A magazine cover with Abigail’s head, glued to a dartboard.

‘You know,’ they said, once they returned to their seat, ‘I thought, once I complete this game, I’m going to put it up online for free, make it popular and everyone will forget Adams and the crap she churned out. But she shouldn’t be forgotten. Everyone should know what she did.’

They sent the file out. The file that helped me think and realise.

They sent it out anonymously.

I pointed out that I could be used as proof, but they said, ‘No, you’ve been through enough. I think it’s time I thought of a new adventure for you.’

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