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Language:
English
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Published:
2019-10-01
Completed:
2019-11-01
Words:
73,951
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32/32
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188
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Whumptober 2019 (ephemeral-afterlight)

Chapter 12: Day 12: "Don't Move"

Summary:

Prompt no.12, "'Don't Move'".

They're poised to attack, observing at a glance.

Warnings in end notes!

Notes:

Word Count: 720

Relationships: none

A/N: i know this one is shorter, but i really didn’t want to be any more behind. hopefully it’s not terrible.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

Something’s wrong.

Logan knows something’s wrong, has known it since he woke up. Everything is different. It’s all wrong. This isn’t his life. This isn’t his family. He shouldn’t be here. He shouldn’t exist in this way. 

Today is wrong. It’s two years wrong. This isn’t right. Where is he?

He should be asleep. He should be awake. He should be in limbo, but not here. He doesn’t like it here.

These aren’t Logan’s parents. His mom hates wearing earrings. His dad doesn’t speak like that. They’re wrong. They’re wrong. They stole their names. They stole their faces. Logan wants his real parents back.

His brother doesn’t like the colour green, or that band, or read that many books. That’s Logan’s thing. He stole it. He stole it from him. That’s his.

Logan’s sibling should be wearing their binder. They’re not. They look like a girl. They look like they hate to look. They hate pink. They hate dresses. They hate long hair, and the name Elizabeth, and they hate sparkles. This isn’t his sibling. This isn’t them. He wants them back.

He doesn’t have a dog. Logan has never had a dog. He’s allergic to the fur. He can’t breathe. Why is there a dog here?

He tries. He asks his “mom” why everything’s different. He asks why he can’t remember anything from the past two years. He asks why they have a dog. She looks right through him. She doesn’t even answer him. She just stares at the wall, and smiles, and puts a pancake on his plate. He hates pancakes.

Logan tries to ask his “dad”, too. He doesn’t acknowledge his words. He throws a baseball at the window, shatters the glass, and the grass outside turns into dust. It’s like a painting ripped into shreds, perfect pristine landscape interrupted by slashes of static. There’s nothing. It goes on forever. Logan wants out.

His brother walks over to the broken window and slams a hand down on the jagged shards. One goes straight through his hand. Even as he bleeds, the others just smile. His hand disappears into the static, becomes the static too, and then his body is being shrunk down and sucked into the abyss. Logan wants out.

His other sibling stands up. Logan grabs their hand and yanks them away. They look at him, meet his eyes with lids painted in a glittery pink, and they’re not real. They’re not real. They’re not real. They’re not real they’re fake they’re wrong they’re wrong they’re wrong they’re

Logan sits down at the table. He stabs his pancake with his fork. He wants to vomit as it slides down his throat. Logan wants out. Logan wants out. Logan wants out.

He tries to leave. As soon as he opens the front door, the outside turns to red night and blood light. There are thousands of people standing outside his house, looking at him, looking at him, looking at him, looking in him and his brain isn’t in his body. Then they’re gone, and there’s light again, and everything is normal. Too normal. Suspicious. Wrong.

He tries to walk out onto his driveway. His mother stops him with an iron grip, turns him around quickly. She smiles, wide and awkward and weird and fake and wrong, and there’s terror in her eyes. 

“Don’t move.” Her eyes flick around the street, searching, fast, too fast, quick jumping from one place to another to another to another to another and

“Have a great day at school, honey!” She says, fake and wrong and hollow and robotic and coding in the machine, and Logan is glitching. He can’t move. He’s paralyzed. Her mouth is wrong. Her smile is wrong. Her eyes are wrong. She’s not real. She’s not real. He’s not real either.

The world flashes red again, and the people are close, too close, in his face and their stares slithering into his eyes and his lungs and intruding to control his body and his insides and his soul and his brain and then it flashes to “normal” again. It’s wrong. It’s not real. It’s not real. Shadows creep in from the sides of his vision. They look like monsters. They look like demons. They look real. Too real.

There’s nothing outside. There’s nothing inside, either. Logan wants out.

Notes:

CONTENT WARNINGS:

NOTE: All warnings are subjective depending on your interpretation of what is going on in the story! This is very ambiguous to what is going on, so unfortunately I won’t be able to tag every potential warning, because what one person thinks is going on while reading this may differ from what another person thinks!

There are a few that stay the same: Derealization, mild gore, blood, broken glass, potentially disturbing imagery, train of thought/fever dream-type prose

Based on a potential interpretation: Mental breakdown, hallucinations, schizophrenia/schizophrenic-type behaviour

Another potential interpretation: Manipulation, “glitch in the matrix”, outside entities/aliens, literally anything is possible with this one idk what to tell y’all

Lmk if I need to add something!