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cobaltjpeg · 4 days ago

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Are You Positive?

welcome to hell

ao3 link

He makes his way down the uneven trail to catch up, landing his way at his own side and dragging his eyes to where the flashlight beam focuses. It’s pointed up, its circle of light framing the subject like a portrait, nailed into the flaky bark of a nearby tree. In his periphery he can see the pale ghosts of other iterations, scattered in a radius all around them, all pinned to the trees like- Like a child’s art on the refrigerator, celebrated for all to see. Sock stares at the doodle in red crayon, maybe a mouse or maybe a dog, the connected shapes that make its body oblong and a little bit wavy. He feels something sink inside of him.

warnings: violence, mentions of animal violence & murder & suicide

the nights are lovely, dark and deep but i'll appear when you're asleep you'll wake up with a sudden hurt with mouth and nose all full of dirt

- the woods, san fermin

The blood is sticky underneath his shoes. It had made way for their soles as it flowed, the bastardized parting of a red sea, and it’s been a long time since Sock moved his limbs. It’s not the subject material that’s a shock. Maybe he would have been cool and clearheaded if he had been knowing and conscious. His mother’s fingers used to clutch an ankle, but they’ve since slipped weakly onto the hardwood, palm up and fingertips curled like the legs of a dead spider. His father’s are red from fighting back.

If he’s going to kill a person, at least let him remember it. Come on.

He tries to be that lighthearted about it, and the chuckle comes out, but it’s offkey somehow.

“Perk up, buddy, what’s wrong?” says the Sock on the kitchen table.

Well, that’s not supposed to be there.

“Uhhh,” says the real Sock. “This isn’t real, is it?”

His reflection wipes a fleck of blood off his cheek, and the result is a larger smear that peters out near the corner of his mouth. He’s only seen himself in mirrors and the reflections of puddles that’ll give you dysentery if you drink them. It’s weird to see himself this way, somehow more pathetic, just a kid grinning sideways, crooked down to the teeth. The stains on his sweater, the rust on his jeans, they don’t make that go away. Is that what he looks like right now? Rather, what he looked like. This is both today and several days ago, and the person in front of him is both protagonist and antagonist, a flurry of contradictions for the inside of the boy’s too-fast head. The point is that he doesn’t recognize himself.

“Coulda at least remembered the good parts. I mean, it was basically not worth it.”

“That’s what I was just thinking,” he says, and finally he unsticks his shoes from their rooted spot in the congealing mess. Sock steps over it and when he makes his way onto the clean floorboards, the tracks solidify themselves over the wood grain. It’s ruining the shine that still catches in the dim lamplight from the living room, the kitchen half bathed in warmth and half in shadow, mixing into greys that fall across the bodies on the floor and on the imposter in front of him. The floor still smells like cleaner from the last time Mom mopped.

“That it wasn’t worth it?”

“Yeah?”

“Ssshhhhshshsh! That’ll get you in trouble.”

Sock’s arms cross over his chest. His other self leans back on his palms.

“That’s not what I meant. What I meant to say is-”

A gasp rips out of the kid’s lungs, stolen from his diaphragm like a hand had reached down his throat and yanked it out. He’s been suckerpunched in the chest.

He’s in a grave, looking up.

Somewhere in between his ribs, it feels cold. He’s holding something tight in both his hands, though the muscles are just starting to lose their grip.

Sock stares up at the boy who means to bury him, and when he smiles back down, the crinkle of his eyes looks more like a cringe, like he wants to close them but he’s fighting against it. The stars cluster together and lean in to get one last peek of what’s about to happen, and it’s something familiar, the memory of looking up from this angle and realizing that the smattering of twinkles in the sky looked more beautiful tonight than it ever had before.

“Can we just be honest with each other? What’s the point in lying? It’s just the two of us here, and you might as well come clean, or it’s gonna be a lot harder down the road when you finally realize you can’t do it. When you get fired. What happens then, do ‘ya know? ‘Cause what I think is you’re gonna die, and you’re not gonna wake up ever again. And I don’t wanna die, Sock.”

This again. Something must sit on his torso that he can’t see, because breathing is such a labor. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about, because he’s never had any trouble in the past, Hell, his clothes are still stained and he holds the knife that - ah, that’s what’s in his hands.

The pain clutches the knife and twists it. The pain grabs Sock himself and twists him like a dish towel till he stops running red and he feels like he’s going to tear in two, the fault line running straight through his center. Past it, there’s still this thread of incredulousness, because the proof of who he is has spanned over years of hunting tiny animals and driving sharp things into the soft shells of their bodies, chasing away their warmth and performing autopsies on the leftovers. His palms have been red since they were tiny, fitting against his own with soft spindly fingers that only reach so far. There is no scrubbing them clean, his mother’s already tried it countless times, taking the brush to the evidence under his nails and to the crevices while she fought back her tears. She washed them between hers like he was a toddler again, a tactile example of how to be a human being. Throughout year eight, year ten, twelve and fifteen, she still held them between hers under the white light and the cold bathroom faucet, and all the while she believed that someday he could do it himself. The point is not that he never could.

It’s that he never would. He writhes weakly among the dirt and the crawling beetles that he would have once pulled apart, grits his teeth and feels the cold sweat take over his skin, and wonders: Now, when his eyes open from being wrenched shut, will the night look beautiful again? Has he inched close enough to the end to miss it before it's gone?

Is this what Jonathan will feel, what he might look for or think about? Does Jonathan remember when his mother washed his hands while he stood on some tiny stool, too small to reach the sink otherwise?

When he opens his eyes, Sock 2.0 is blocking the view.

“I don’t wa-” He wheezes, catching his breath, trying again. “I don’t wanna die either.”

“We’re the same person, dude.”

“I’m good at killing things,” the kid’s words all slur together, “doesn’t matter if they’re people I like. I just gotta get back into it. Just got used to…not doing it.”

“Dude-”

Other Sock’s sigh is long and dramatic before he continues. “I’m not telling you to do it, I’m telling you you’re not going to. Hey man, I know you. Remember what I just said? We gotta figure out a new plan.”

Sock lays silently. He just wishes he’d move out of the way. The second Sock continues.

“I can help you out of here. It won’t hurt anymore, but not until you’re willing to listen to me.”

Sock likes those lizards that he can hold up by their tail and grab by their body before it comes off, a neat little defense mechanism. He’s partial to the baby bunnies that the neighborhood cats catch from their nests and pack, wet black eyes blinking, across yards and concrete. He’s partial to the neighborhood cats. He loves lost puppies with their clumsy steps and the way they wrestle with your shoelace until you trip and roll around in the grass, tail wagging like a helicopter rotor while you fend off their soft mouths. Misses the dogs that are a bit too scruffy and walk across the road with too much confidence, ‘cause they’ve done it before so many times that they almost forget the danger. He used to covet them for the way they yipped and bowed their bodies as soon as they realized you wouldn’t kick them, how they followed quick at your heels. How they forgot about the danger.

It doesn't matter if he likes any of them, and it never did.

But there were times where he hesitated; he can't say that there weren't. Sock takes a heavy, thick breath.

His fingers crawl up to the knife and use the last of their strength, tendons flexing around the handle, to pull the blade free. As soon as it budges, the pain begins to unravel as though it were radiating from the metal itself, and when he slides it all the way free the wound closes, leaving nothing but the fleeting remainder of the feeling.

The other kid leans down and grips Sock’s clammy hand, dragging him up through the grave till he clambers his way to the top.

“Can I wake up now?”

“Nah, I don’t think you’re ready for that.”

“Hey! I think I’m ready for that, and I’m also me, so I know what I’m talking about!” A frustrated, growling sound of agony crawls up out of his throat, running his fingers through his hair before he shoves his hat back down. “Besides, I’d really rather you not keep telling me how I’m not gonna do my own job - that I do well.”

His double stands still while the wind nudges the flaps of his hat against his shoulder, saying nothing.

“I’m not gonna argue about it,” he says eventually.

“Oh, but apparently we have to, since you won’t-”

The woods near Sock’s house were never this close, but they stand tall and dark and looming above the two teenagers. He hadn’t noticed the flashlight in the other boy’s hand before, or maybe it was never there, but regardless his other hand is clamped down on Sock’s wrist and the switch flips on, the beam shooting off into the gloom while he leads him through the treeline. He tries to dig his heels into the earth just to be difficult, but his other self is nothing if not determined, and he drags him squabbling into the darkness, tripping over wet piles of fallen leaves gathered on the floor till he straightens up his gait. Now walking obediently, he still stops to traipse carefully through tangled weeds or free his shirt from a stickerbush, but he doesn’t trail too far behind his double. The other Sock walks confidently down the path, but he can’t help but notice that his fist is still clenched at his side and his smile has run away from his face, going missing somewhere.

Sock feels a tug at his ankle, almost tripping for the tenth time since just entering this place, and lets out another far-from-fearsome growl when he whips around to disentangle his leg from another thorny vine.

It takes him a minute, but when he turns back, the other kid is farther up the path, rooted to the spot. He makes his way down the uneven trail to catch up, landing his way at his own side and dragging his eyes to where the flashlight beam focuses. It’s pointed up, its circle of light framing the subject like a portrait, nailed into the flaky bark of a nearby tree. In his periphery he can see the pale ghosts of other iterations, scattered in a radius all around them, all pinned to the trees like- Like a child’s art on the refrigerator, celebrated for all to see.

Sock stares at the doodle in red crayon, maybe a mouse or maybe a dog, the connected shapes that make its body oblong and a little bit wavy. He feels something sink inside of him.

A long, sticklike lizard in green. A rabbit in a field of maybe daffodils or sunflowers or dandelions, the sun peeking out from the corner. A dog, another dog, and a dog after that. Planes and trains and cars. A bit more robust, a doodle of an orange cat, but above its body reads stiff letters he’d had to have help spelling out:

T A N G E R I N E

He knows that one. Doesn’t remember the doodle, but he can recall the way her fur felt through his fingers, how the pattern on her side was one huge swirl that reminded him of a lollipop. Her thick body would find itself sprawled out on his driveway every sunny day, the nextdoor neighbor’s but he didn’t mind sharing, and every sunny day Sock would find himself kneeling beside her, fingers walking down her soft purring form. She had one extra toe on her front left foot. He loved her. She was the first animal he had ever hurt, twisting her ankle just a little too much in his upset hand when he didn’t want her to run away from him, and he hadn’t understood that he could do that - that he could make a lasting impact because her bones were tiny in comparison, that her tiny networks of flesh and nerves and tendons could ever have to reconnect because of something he had done himself. And so easily.

When his mother had explained that he hurt her, he didn’t get it. Sock just knew that Tangerine now kept her distance, dipping out of the way when his hands got too close to her legs, to anything he could take hold of and pull, far after her leg began to pad on the ground again like nothing ever happened. A reminder that it did happen, which Sock would have forgotten entirely otherwise, but every time her paw twitched out of his way it was revisited. She was being so silly and selfish, worried about something that happened days and days and days ago.

When Sock broke his ankle falling out of a tree he’d been too bold not to climb, the first reason he cried was not necessarily because of the pain. It was because, looking up at the blue sky from the bottom, his first thought was that this was how he hurt her. His first thought was that he understood.

A shock of pain spasms through his chest, and Sock grasps at the spot, crumpling in on himself. It releases its hold on him soon, but the echo of its ache still radiates through his body like a ghost still haunting a house.

“I thought you said it wouldn’t hurt anymore!”

He picks himself back up, throwing his scathing, horrified look at his other version. The flashlight beam is fixed above him, still staring at Tangerine, and he can swear he hears a sniffle before it falls away.

“From the knife, yeah.”

This time Sock is the one to grab his doppelganger's wrist and drag him off into the darkness, determined to find another place. He passes by a glimpse of a tree with fridge magnets somehow sticking, spelling out S O C K in blue and pink and orange and green. When he passes the picture of himself between his two parents, he walks faster.

"You listen to me, okay?" He throws the other kid up against one of the thick, crooked trunks, and his back lands against it with a thump. Sock's finger juts hard into his sternum. "I get that you're self-doubt or whatever, and you're trying to get me to feel it, but I'm sick of this! We are a murderer, we kill people, that's something we like to do! How do you not see that?"

His doppelganger's head lolls back against the tree trunk, and when his unfocused eyes eventually find him, his smile is weak and weary.

"You're right. You win there, we kill people."

"So, what, you still think I'm a good person?"

"Just tell me you don't wanna do it."

"I wanna do it right now!"

"That's aallll you gotta do," Other Sock continues.

Sock reels back and punches him with his scrawny fist. Then he snatches the flashlight and marches off into the forest.

There's a traintrack that snakes in a squiggly line across the trail ahead, a Christmas present from when he was seven. He steps over the chugging train when it heads his way. It feels like his insides are being torn to rags, his stomach turning like it's in a dryer cycle, then pulled apart like little sausage links. He passes by a treehouse and makes sure not to look at the old friend in the window. Over and over, reminders of things he'd buried, dug up the same way that he'd clawed his way out of the grave. Incessant despite the fact that their fate had already been reached, the drawings thrown away and the cat six feet under.

When the trail turns into dusty asphalt driveway marked with a collage of sidewalk chalk, Sock sighs and pauses, his legs tired, his heart aching. He sits down next to a sketchy rainbow, neon still standing out inside the gloom. Sock pulls his knees in, closing his eyes for a long time, hoping that if he just sits here long enough he'll wake up.

He knows his double is standing there before he opens them. He looks at the outstretched hand, then at the smiling kid who offers it, the rim around his eye turning marbled purple.

He takes it.

"I'm not doubt, you know. I mean, I guess I am, but that's not the main thing."

The moonlit lawn is lined by flower beds riddled with miniature statues of gnomes. They water the flowers, push tiny wheelbarrows, sit on mushrooms and play between the petunias. He remembers every one his father had ever placed in their cart, asking his opinion each time, adhering strictly to Sock's final verdict. His eyes cut away, and when his doppelganger opens the door, they find that spot between the kitchen and the living room instead. So close to the doorway. Feet away. Their bodies are gone as though nothing had ever happened, and before he walks in, one half of himself wishes his parents might be in their usual places, happy to see him. The other thinks that might be his worst nightmare.

"I'm your conscience."

His conscience. The house is so silent except for the sound of both their voices as the two of them enter, Sock making sure to step over the spot his parents had lain as though his foot still might connect with a body. In the dim outstretch of the living room lamplight, he can't see the mess, but can still feel it sticking to his shoes again.

"You're not listening, I don't care what you are. I don't even believe you."

"Fine. Then kill me."

"What?"

Hands on his hips, Sock whips his head to stare at his double like he's insane. At this point, his patience is a thread that's wearing thin, so maybe this is the best way to end it. Maybe it'll be stress relief - but he wants it, and he's waiting on it, and something about that is offputting to him.

"Come on, prove your point, Sock. Kill another person. Get out of the dream!" The other kid pushes him, hard, and his spine thumps against the back of the living room chair. He catches himself from spilling over, but he still inches backward from the double's spoiled smile, from his grit teeth leaking anger and disgust and tiredness all over him. "Kill me."

Sock can feel his face taking on the same expression as the double. He wants to run. He wants to be away from himself.

The second Sock makes a strangled sound, because he thwacks him in the shin with the edge of his shoe hard enough for him to shudder and bend. He shoves him, unstable, onto the floor and stands over the kid's windless form, scooping himself up from the floor like a bug trying to get off of its back. So many atrocities in this cold house caused by him of all things, a wiry boy with messy hair and a high-pitched laugh. Sock's not the typical type you see on the news, the mugshot of a disturbed kid staring back at you with hollow eyes. He guesses he's got the smile down, but not the lack of warmth and life, like a reanimated corpse that forgot it was ever a human. Funny that he thinks he's better than them. But he's always been a person, even if he has the animal sense of prey. Looking down at the boy in front of him, it's just weird that he seems almost normal. Is it just this dream version? Is there something Sock can't see about himself, this iteration inside of this body and not his reflection staring back? Perhaps there's something about himself that the dream won't let him see, or that his mind blocks out even in real life.

He doesn't know. He doesn't think that he'll ever figure it out. The kid wearing his face is using it to laugh.

"You coulda stabbed me," he says, and Sock can hear his grin without looking down, but he watches it grow in bubbling anger anyways. "But you didn't."

At some point Sock's own breathing has become shallow and ragged while the other boy's stutters out between chokes of laughter.

"Won't you ever shut the Hell up?"

His voice peaks high and worn, his fist shakes as it clenches tight, and his punch lands right across his doppelganger's nose. The other Sock's head bows to the side, a couple drops of blood spattering on the waxed floor.

"Why won't you just quit it? It's not gonna happen, you're the wrong one, this is so fucking stupid! You want someone to think you can be a good person, but it's not gonna be me, and I don't even think it's you. Even if I didn't kill Jonathan. I'm sorry dude, but this isn't helping anything, so why don't you wake up?"

He just gives him that smile, streaked with red.

Sock punches it off of him one more time with a grunt of pure desperation before he turns and rushes away, his breath catching in his closing throat, covering his mouth with a hand when it fails to keep down a sob. His body doubles over like it racks him with physical pain instead of the wave of psychological sensation. Shame. His body stumbles against the upholstery of the couch, letting the knife slip out of his grip, and when it does, the residue of rust begins to soak into the cream threads that his parents tried hard to keep clean. There is the fleeting thought that they'd be mad at him, or at least it would make them sad enough to pause and hang their heads before they tried to carefully scrub it back to its normal color. They never really got mad.

They never even got mad.

Shame.

He can hear the second Sock pick himself up from the floor. There is the soft sound of his footsteps tapping on the wood and his clothes rustling, and when he gets close enough, Sock's unfocused vision is fixed between the dark spots soaking his front, at how there's a new addition now from his dribbling nose.

"You have two options here. Kill me or tell me you can't."

Sock's hand isn't stained when he looks down and reaches again for the knife, but it doesn't have to be, the rust sunk deep into his bones. He grabs it and pushes himself off the side of the couch before he can tell himself not to. Grabs the second Sock by the collar of his shirt and drags him so that he can press him against the living room wall and hold the blade poised at the exact trajectory to sink straight into his heart. His twin squeezes his eyes shut, and he sees the tiny tear that spills its way down his cheek.

He knows the exact pain that he's about to experience. The harsh impact of the steel feeling more like he'd been hit by something solid and thick than a thin, sharp piece of metal. Every centimeter of the torn flesh aching and burning and screaming and begging, but too late to undo the wound. This Sock doesn't have stars to look for, only the popcorn ceiling.

Only some dreaming boy who has no business with a knife.

Had his father begged in his mind for the roof of the house to blow away, letting the constellations wink their condolences down to him before he left? Had his mother wished to hold his hands between hers one last time so she could wash the blood off, give him one last chance?

Is that what he wants, one last time? One last hope?

Wide-eyed in horror at a revelation that to anyone else would be a relief, Sock lets the knife drop out of his uncurling fingers. Both hands reach out to grip the other boy - himself - and he makes impressions in his shoulderblades when his voice breaks in panic. Fingers raise up to grip his own, but he barely notices through the wrenching in his chest, just the same as if he'd driven the blade.

"I don't wanna do it!"

"Don't wanna do what?"

Beyond his watery eyes, Jonathan holds him at an arm's length in confusion. The indigo shadows of the bedroom are quiet and still. Sock had curled at the very edge of the bed, as per his permission, as long as he didn't try any funny stuff and kept his back turned. Now he clings to him. In his mind, the dream is still falling away, but there's no rust on his clothes and his parents are far off in their cold graves, walled off from the moonlight that barely peeks through the curtains. Jonathan's lava lamp glows a thin ghostly green.

"Oh," says his small voice, barely a yelp in the darkness. "I didn't - It was just a dream."

"Are you...okay?" The other boy squints through his blond bangs, messy from sleep. "Can you stop grabbing me, though? It really hurts."

Sock's hands zip back to fold across his chest, clutching at his shirt and staring unfocused at a space near Jonathan's collarbone. He tries to keep quiet, he really does. But the result isn't exactly ideal - it's a heaving series of sobs that feature his choking throat and his broken voice, clutching tighter and tighter at the spot beneath his shirt that doesn't beat anymore, a hollow figment of a heart. Why does it still work if it isn't real, just enough to feel? Sock sniffles and flinches with each involuntary, annoying rack of his body while his hands slide across his face, hiding it from Jonathan so he can't see the wet running down the pores, can't see the ugly cringe of his features and the way the tears make his eyes puffy and red. He insists that this is his own private breakdown, closing the doors inches from the teenager's face without even moving from his grasp. When Jonathan tightens against his shoulders again, a couple brief squeezes to remind him that he's there, it pulls Sock's senses forward just enough to cause a pause in the hiccups.

"Yeah, I'm really awesome," come the muffled squeaks through the barrier of his hands.

"Alright, that was a stupid question, but - uhhh, I don't know how to fix you? Just breathe? Please just breathe."

Sock lets in a struggling, rasping breath that leaves the other boy cringing. But, hey, it does make him feel better if only slightly.

"Okay, now just...look at me?" When two of Sock's fingers part, his wild eye stares back at Jonathan's uncertainty. "What was your dream about?"

The million dollar question. Sock clamps his mouth shut because lying to him just feels wrong, but there is no way he can possibly tell him the full truth and nothing but. To say it out loud, not in a dream, is a mistake and he knows it. Yeah, sure, this all isn't going to end with life draining out in a quiet bathroom on some cold midnight, but he's still got to keep up the act, has to keep it together except in discussions with his subconscious and well-timed whispers while the man downstairs turns his head, occupied by his other lost souls. How closely does the Devil listen?

To say any piece of the truth, actually, makes his insides shrivel.

"It was before I died," he says, peeling his fingers away from his face after they wipe most of the moisture away. "I wanted-"

Sock pauses for a long time, his arms going limply in front of him, rumpling the duvet between the two boys. Slowly, indecisively, Jonathan's hands loosen from their grip on him, and one floats to rub just barely against his back. Sock's eyes flick to the other boy immediately, but his own are focused on some wrinkle of his shirt and steadfastly refusing to break contact with it. It doesn't matter - it's more than he'd ever expected, and it's definitely more than he'll ever deserve. Another tear wets the pillow, biting the inside of his lip hard so that it doesn't wobble embarrassingly.

"I wanted to change something, but it was way too late," he whispers into the night, solidifying it as truth.

"Do you wanna tell me what it was?" Jonathan's voice is a mumble, his eyes a quick glance in his direction.

"Myself?"

They stare at each other.

"Yourself."

Sock doesn't dare to elaborate. He thinks of soft paws and sidewalk chalk and garden gnomes. After a moment, the other boy gains confidence in the rhythm of circles he rubs into his back, and the warmth brings a hum to his spine, something that begins to dim the harshness of regret in his eyes.

"You're annoying, but I have to admit, I really don't know what I'd change. I think I'd even miss the part that makes you weird. And that's, like, a huge secret, so don't tell anybody." The blond boy grins at him, and it's a bit tired, but it's genuine. "I dunno what you did, but whatever you were freaking out about in there, it can't be too bad. Besides, I'm pretty sure you have all the time in eternity to move past it?"

Sock's mouth can't help but turn into a wobbly grin, disbelieving and genuine, overjoyed. He stares across the warm bedsheets like he hangs the stars, clutching the compliment to his chest like it's a lifeline, and it radiates something into his core that he hasn't felt in forever. His only reply is a shaky laugh, uneven notes singing from his tight voicebox while he shifts to make himself more comfortable against the pillows.

"Especially since you have a lot of free time in your work schedule. Since you, you know, don't do shit ever?" He flicks the kid on the nose.

Face scrunching, Sock presses himself back, swatting away Jonathan's invading hand.

"Dude, just you wait. I'm just getting starte- Jonathan! Hey, quit it!"

Hope.

#w2h #welcome to hell #posting fanfic on tumblr feels extremely wrong for some reason #also writing serious prose when the character's god damn name is Sock is so funny #writing #i just watched w2h2 though yippeeee so i had to celebrate

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