#godd I’m so tired sorryyy

[froggyworlds]

ugh fuck listen. I’m on mobile and the formatting on here is whack idk how to put things under the cut on mobile I’m sorry. inspired by the HTB AU, tw for suicide and body horror and all the usual fun mandela catalyst things

update: got the cut in there.

it was all good until things went wrong.

okay. okay, that was a lie. it stings a little in the back of his throat, even now, even when lies are all he is. it is? he isn’t really sure, and bites his tongue a little too hard and is met with something thick and tasteless that definitely isn’t blood.

Adam spits it out with a gag, ignoring how it’s darker than red.

^ my skin is not my own. ^

no fucking shit.

he sucks a breath into lungs that don’t need air, and wonders briefly if he ever really needed to breathe at all, or if this whole time it’d just been one big lie.

as noted before: he’s made up of lies.

^ lies and shadow and static. ^

he feels his eyelids start to droop, not in a really tired way, but in a my-humanity-is-slowly-seeping-out-through-the-cracks-in-my-body-into-the-floorboards-and-my-eyelids-feel-like-they’re-lined-with-needles way.

no. no, he cannot close his eyes. they’re too far open and if he sinks he doubts he’ll be able to claw his way to the surface again. it’s so dark back there.

^ I am a cog in the machine. ^

he can’t feel anything. it’s not an entirely foreign sensation, but in this context it makes awful sense that he wishes it didn’t.

it’s bizarre, for certain: being… vaguely aware, somewhat, of your surroundings, but every detail becomes blurred, every emotion only half-processed. his screams don’t even reach his own ears, but his throat still burns with anguished, staticky wails and the taste of chlorine and saltwater and soap.

^ please, just fucking kill me. ^

Adam’s skin feels awfully like rubber, and moving makes the partially-melted substance shift over his bones horrifically uncomfortably, so he can’t even bring it in himself to try and get up. not that he really wants to. he’d be content to sit here until he rots, until the thing in his mind with him dies.

he has a terrible feeling, though, that if one half of him has to go, his humanity will drain first. it already is, in a steady drip-drip-drip like a leaky tap or an IV filled with black ichor instead of plasma, into a murky puddle that stains his palms and soles of his feet.

^ there’s not enough room for the both of us. ^

except there’s only ever been one of it. it was wearing a very well-crafted mask, and it has worn that mask for a very, very long time, but there was never an internal war to be had for long. it remembers now. it knows what it is, and it knows that Adam Murray died 17 years ago.

he shoves that away. no, no, he's alive. he has to be. there must've been something there that was real: the way his fingers felt intertwined with someone else's, the way cheap arcade pizza always tasted better when he was eating it on a date with Evelin. the way a laugh tasted in his eyes when Jonah told a stupid joke, the way his teeth ached whenever he stared at the mirror for too long even though he couldn't remember what he was looking for, the feeling of metal against skin even though it never cut through, stop, stop it, stop fucking messing with my head.

^ PLEASE, JUST GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY HEAD. ^

he hates the way his skin feels like plastic shrink wrap over his tendons, shifting around inside him like an action figure over an open flame. without really thinking, he puts a hand over his mouth and forces out a sob into it; why would he have to force out a sob? crying is one of the most natural things to do in this situation.

oh. that answers itself. crying is the most human reaction.

^ I’m not the real me. ^

he hasn’t stopped to breathe in a little while now. he doesn’t cry anymore, but he thinks there is something streaking down his cheeks, blurring his vision even more.

coils and claws grab the back of his mind and yank downwards, and instead of gasping for air he grasps for purchase on the slippery glass-smoothness of reality, trying to hold himself away from the cracks that it knows it would be oh-so-easy to slither into. it cannot close its eyes now.

^ my eyes are wide open. ^

Adam (or whatever it is that’s been Adam since it killed him) screams again, jaw swinging open like a door on broken hinges. it can’t keep clinging on like this. sooner or later it- he will falter.

^ no one is coming to help me. ^

Sarah and Evelin wouldn’t. what reason would hey have to? neither of them owe Adam anything. they probably wouldn’t even recognize him as the Adam they know if they were to see it now, curled up and screaming and frantically trying to hold onto his humanity as his insides roil.

who would even come into this house on accident? generally peoples’ first instinct when they hear a static-filled scream is to run in the opposite direction.

so he's fucked. that's it. he's going to lose himself here, and that's that. he can almost hear his friends' the others' voices clamoring inside his head, shouting nonsense ranging from weather reports to "are you still there?" to "Adam, please, I know you're in there-" to "we always knew you were weak." it doesn't make sense, it's just pointless cacophony, and Adam thinks that might be the point.

^ PLEASE, JUST FUCKING KILL ME. ^

Adam curls into himself a little more and keeps screaming.