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“Did you get the fuse?” Ik chimed over the phone in that perpetual sing-song voice as they returned to the elevator. How he remained so chipper after sitting through what felt like well over an hour of listening to them sifting through storage shelves, they didn’t know.
“Yes.”
“More than one?”
“No.” It was a room of shelving, half-completely dismantled from the Jacks rustling things and knocking the shelves over. By all means, when he found the fuse he should’ve found a dozen more, but no dice. By the time he found it, he was too mentally drained to complain.
“Oh, well, that’s a shame.”
“Say it with any less enthusiasm and I’ll think you’re secretly sabotaging the elevator to get me killed.”
“Sir!” He sounded genuinely hurt. “I would never! And even if I wanted to, I can’t make it stop or start. I can only open and close the doors. And monitor its position, in case it turns sideways again!”
Dryly, he replied, “Well, that’s good to hear.”
Ik hummed and was quiet as he clicked the fuse into place. The elevator dinged and the doors shut. “That means you can only go up from here, then! Those storage floors are few and far between.”
“Don’t jinx me.” With his luck? Something awful was going to happen to him next time the elevator stopped.
“Bah! I would never.” Even with that, he heard Ik knock against something solid. Wood? “Well, talk to you later!”
The call ended and they were left alone with a respite they knew would be short-lived.
They collapsed onto a chair they’d dragged in and sighed. They’d dragged in some furniture to liven up the place, when they had finally concluded they’d be visiting the elevator often. An overstuffed chair, a lamp, and a painting they’d stolen from the museum. Staring at a piece of colorful canvas propped against the wall made them feel sort of normal, which perhaps cropped up questions about their mental state, but that was hardly the most pressing matter at hand.
The overly-familiar dinging of the elevator going floor by floor grated them already. And to think, they’d just started to miss it. They counted the seconds between each ding and watched the numbers blink up alongside them. He took the precious safe period to breathe. Every time he rested, he swore his reaction time slowed the next time he needed it, as his body neared the limits he was pushing it with surviving the Hotel California he had wandered into. Some of the ash on his arms and middle was loose, sandy, and came off when at the slightest movement. He ghosted a hand against the shoulder one Jack bit and winced. He’d had worse, though, so he forced himself to stop messing with it and focused elsewhere.
The painting they’d snagged from the museum floor was of that train. They couldn’t remember getting off it, just waking up on the ground inches from its galloping wheels, and then frantically scrambling back, frightened of its impossible size and speed. They remembered watching the silhouettes in the windows blur past. The painting caught that pretty well, at least from what they remembered. A train in the dark with searing golden windows under a non-moon.
Ik said they couldn’t sleep in the afterlife, which must have been true because he surely would’ve passed out already if it weren’t.
The next ding came a half-second late and he stood in preparation. The whole elevator shuddered before it came to a halt. The lamp flickered. The fuse sparked and the main elevator lights went out, replaced by dim red.
“Door!” Ik exclaimed, and the doors opened into a dimly-lit room. “Let’s see, that floor is…” he trailed off. They heard the tap-tap-tap of claws on wood. “...hm.”
“‘Hm’? What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I don’t know! I don’t remember what this one is for. I suppose it’s probably just rooms? So no fancy power generator, no storage, just guest rooms. Tell me, sir! What do you see?”
He swept the flashlight over the large, circular room. A circular desk sat in the middle, some sort of check-in. Big, blocky computers glowed a faint blue hue. He braced a foot on the desk and got himself over. Stacks of papers had been pushed up against the underside of the desk. “Does this place have a hospital?”
“Yes! But that’s not it, I’m sure. Or maybe we have multiple hospital floors?”
“You don’t know?” It was his hotel!
“You try remembering the function of a thousand hotel floors!”
“Point taken.” He knelt to peer into an open cabinet. Cobwebs. Helpful. He straightened back up and climbed back over the desk. He shined his light upwards, at the dark and useless ceiling lights, and turned his light off before it overheated. It’d already gone warm in his hands, a warning to turn it off before it decided that for him.
The first door to the right of the room was unlocked, and squeaked in complaint when he pushed it open. A hallway, a touch too cramped with desks and bookshelves for his liking. The air was thick with dust that choked the light in his hand. The first door was wooden, ancient, and whatever locking mechanism it once had was so outdated it snapped open when he put pressure on it. The door swung open into what looked like a cramped doctor’s office.
Methodically, he opened each drawer, every cabinet, and left no container unopened, effectively gutting the room in search of anything helpful. No fuse, because Lady Luck hated him; not even a set of keys or a keycard he could snag for later.
There was a poster on the wall, though, which did catch their eye. It was reminiscent of the average poster explaining human anatomy, displaying a generic-looking ash-person, which looked a lot like them, and they started to wonder how utterly bland they looked by afterlife standards. The silhouette had eyes, and individual teeth pulled back into a smile that looked more murderous than friendly, all a paper-white. A spot of the same white glow was drawn on the chest, not quite where the heart would be in an actual human, but just sitting in the middle of the torso. The whole poster was bleached with age, making the words impossible to make out.
They wondered if they had organs. Hm. It sure felt like they had a heart, since sometimes they felt it beating in their chest. But did they have lungs, a brain, a stomach?
In the distance, something moved. The shuffling of ash on other surfaces, tip-tapping claws. He paused his snooping and looked toward the doorway. Without looking away, he felt along the desk until his hands came into contact with a thick book. He lifted it and leaned out of the room.
A chomper tapped out of the opposite door, snuffling very loudly at the desk and papers they’d disturbed in their quest. Its head snapped up and for half a second, white eyes glinted in the dark, before vanishing just as fast.
He stepped out of the room and braced himself as the creature hunched back on its hind legs. It sprang at him with a guttural noise, jaw unhinging to show dozens of sharp, conical teeth.
They swung the book at it at the last second before it could wrap its maw around their face, sending it careening to the floor. Dazed, it stumbled to its feet. Their grip on the textbook slipped and it fell open, only making it harder to keep a hold on.
“Sir?” Ik asked, reminding them that he was still there.
What he meant to say was something along the lines of “not now, I’m being mauled” or “give me a second,” but what he ended up saying was: “Shut up.”
The monster recovered and lunged, a blur of snapping jaws and red. Again he swung, grazing its muzzle. It sank its teeth in and tore the book in half, sending papers scattering.
He darted past it and found a stapler on the check-in desk. Without hesitation he spun and launched it at its face, knocking its head back. His breathing had gone uneven and shallow and he was light-headed, but he was used to that happening, focused but not. He took a risk and turned his back to lean over the desk, grabbing the base of a stool. He lifted it and twisted just in time to slam it legs-first into the chomping thing.
Again, he struck it, crunching it down into its barrel-chest. When it went down it still snarked and thrashed, so he slammed it down once, twice, and it went still on the third hit. The wood sank into ash and it spasmed around it.
He threw the stool aside, a little out of breath. Normal.
He stared at the creature laying still on the tile floor for a little while. He even turned his flashlight on to look at its battered body. Loose, sandy ash was already filling the punctures made by the wood. He knew it’d be a good, long while before it was getting up again. He was pretty sure they always got up, no matter what state their body was in. One time, he wrenched the head off of a chomper and when walking past it some time later, found its mouth open, panting softly, and it snuffled and vocalized when he got too close.
That being said, he wasn’t keen on sticking around, so he got moving. The door the chomper came from was wide open, so he walked around the desk and pointed his light down the hall. Rows upon rows of gray, sterile doors. He tried each one. Locked, locked, locked; they were metal and too sturdy to break. Unlocked. It creaked when he opened it.
A chomper was standing on its hind legs, repeatedly bashing its head into the bare walls of the spacious room. A harsh slam and then it pulled back, leaving a cloud of ash between itself and the wall, and hovered a second before bowing and slamming its head back into the cold stone.
…they shut the door.
The next unlocked door was open, having been forced open from the inside. Some ash scattered the floor and there were old scratches on the door’s inside.
The next one he opened was lined with cages, each filled with crows. They began to thrash and scream when they saw him. He shut the door again and they continued to caw and flap against their cages. It was only when he’d rounded a corner and was long gone did their shrieks stop echoing down the hall.
“Sir, it doesn’t sound like you’re getting harassed anymore, so I am un-shutting up!” Ik announced, making them jump and their heart leap into their throat. They’d forgotten he was still listening in.
It took him a second to gather himself. “Sorry about saying that, by the way. I could’ve worded that better.”
“Yes, you could have,” he said sweetly. “You are forgiven. Well? Still in one piece?”
“Yeah.” He came across a set of double-doors and pushed them open. This room was hardly bigger than the contaminants holding the monsters. It was the same smooth gray. Concrete underfoot and concrete walls, with splotches of imperfections and stains older than he was. In contrast to the other rooms, however, this one was furnished. The computers didn’t turn on and the drawers overflowed with yellowed paper.
“Well, I’ll be quiet now. You need to focus! Try not to die, sir!” and then Ik went silent. The phone clicked. True silence.
A stack of books sat atop a cage with a chomper stuffed into it, which just stared at them. Or at least, faced them. It was hard to tell when its eyes weren’t visible.
He gave it a wide berth and went to the desk with the monitors. There was a set of keys hanging beside a door on the opposite side of the room. It was the same door as the ones that led to those barren rooms. He took the keys and tried the first one in the lock. Didn’t fit. The second one, however, did, but it took his shaking hands (his hands always shook now) a couple of tries to slot it in right. The door groaned when it opened.
This room was bigger. Ash dusted the floors and scrawled the walls in intentional nonsense. For half a second his eyes failed to adjust to the darkness, before seeing the thing that blended in with its ash-covered background.
It was bigger than a horse. Its head made him think of a crow, before he remembered that regular earth animals with elongated beaks like ibises or storks existed. It had been rubbing its face against the wall when he opened the door. Now it was turning its head and staring at him with two large eyes.
That was not a chomper, or crow, or a Jack. He stood there like an idiot staring at it, while it stared right back at him. This reaction vaguely reminded him of seeing Shrimp for the first time, how he’d just sort of stood there and stared at him for a while, dumbfounded by the latest thing the inn threw at him.
It leaned its head forward. Its whole head was angled down on a long, heron-esque neck. It may have once had a full body of feathers, but now it was half-plucked, littering feathers on the floor. It walked on the back of its “hands” and more feathers jutted out, cut and missing, leaving just the shape of bones to put its weight on. The most intact part of its body was the head, which bore a crest of feathers, but even then its whole face and neck were prickly with straggly bits of ash and fluff.
It took a shambling step toward him. Its massive head leered too close for his liking, and he backed up, leaving the door open.
The more he backed up, the more it seemed to stare. He looked away, just to check that the chomper was still sitting in its cage. He knew the things could escape—sometimes the lock would break if the cage fell and hit it just right. Still there. When he looked back, it was mid-step, head bowed from exiting the room. Though frozen, glowing white slits along its middle, between where its ribs would be, opened and shut with every slow breath the thing took.
He thought about hitting it to see what would happen. It sure looked like it’d crumple if forced to stand in a light breeze, but so did some chompers, and those could be stronger and meaner than they looked. Besides, it wasn’t immediately trying to peck him to death.
He turned to push open the doors to leave. He had keys, which was all that really mattered. A soft shhk-shhk-shhk behind him told him that the borse (bird horse) followed, step by slow step. He looked over his shoulder and it stopped walking. It did, however, turn its head to examine its surroundings. Moving as if in slow-motion, it looked to one side of the room, and then swung its head to look at the other. It stared at the chomper in the cage.
He took the chance to take his leave. The doors groaned when opened and he cast another look over at the new creature. He really, truly thought about shutting the doors and keeping it in that room. It didn’t look like it had the force to open the doors, and looks could be misleading, but if there was a chance to lock it back up…
They held the door open and stared at the floor while it took its sweet, succulent time exiting. For a brief time it passed very close to them. They watched it from the corner of their eye when it passed. Their head came up to its shoulders. Its head dipped down in a hook, and swayed when it walked. It meandered by and they let the door shut and turned around before it could get completely behind them.
The ceiling was high enough for it to raise its head fully. Something cracked in its neck as it straightened out. Its head stayed down, bordering on being parallel to the rest of its neck. It was hard to tell where anything in the afterlife looked since nothing had pupils, but it felt like it stared directly at him.
They eyed it as they skirted by. It was free to wander the floor as it wished, boom, freedom, no need to stay so close to them! But instead of wandering off, they listened to it shuffle after them as they continued down the hallway. It looped into a T-shaped intersection, one side leading to double doors with windows slotted into them, showing the check-in. The other side, however, was a mystery. So he picked that direction.
An overhead light flickered, and he turned his flashlight on to stave off the darkness. Doors. The same kind that held the bird-thing following him, and the same holding other “patients” as well, no doubt. All locked.
Around one corner was what looked to be an office, pitch black as everything else. Like clockwork, he stepped over a knocked-over chair, adjusted his hold on the flashlight, and started sifting through desk drawers.
The thing loomed in the doorway and watched him go about his business. He pretended to ignore it. The file cabinets made a racket when he opened them, metal clattering against metal. There was a switch built into the desk, bright yellow against the dusty wood. He left it alone for the time being, instead making sure the room had anything other than stacks of patient files.
He knelt by a cabinet piled high with staplers, tape dispensers, and paper, opened it, and found a cluster of electronics. Bulky, industrial-sized flashlights, unused security cameras, and pushed into the corner, a fuse.
When he stood up, precious item in hand, the bird-thing loomed directly over him. He side-stepped away from it. “‘Scuse me,” he mumbled, and nodded at it as he retreated away from the creature. He glanced at the lever.
Well, now, it was just tempting. It was rusted, squeaking in protest when he pressed it down. Then, it snapped, cleanly switching with a loud clang that was echoed by things not too far away moving and shifting.
He got a bad feeling. Something broke the silence, and not his new companion. The shifting of ash on floor, the rumbly vocalizations of many chompers and other such nightmares.
He regretted the lever.
A peek outside made him ponder if he’d just released every beast in the nightmarish hospital. Based on the resounding clanging down the hall, he concluded that yes, he had.
So he did the only reasonable thing, and began to run. The tall creature skittered after him at an above-average pace for itself, which was more like a brisk walk. He left it in favor of preserving his own life.
It was a straight shot to the lobby but something was in the middle of it, a wobbly chomper that lunged at him the second he rounded the corner.
He flattened himself against the wall and the thing crashed into his odd companion. It made no noise when the chomper came into contact with it, and just crumpled to the floor like a wet napkin. Its eyes constricted to pinpoints of light and it swung its head, flailing all limbs to get the just-as-unhappy chomper untangled. The chomper wailed and twisted, attempting to skitter away, but a thin, sparsely-feathered forelimb came down onto its side and knocked its breath out. It… pathetic wasn’t the right word. Well, maybe it was a little pathetic to watch.
Eventually the larger beast succeeded in shoving it off, or maybe the chomper just finally untangled itself, with no help from the larger creature. It was hard to tell where one soul ended and another began in the dark. Discouraged from this, the chomper scrambled off, back the way they’d come.
The creature just sort of laid there flat on its side, breathing hard. He knelt and grabbed one of its forelimbs, which made it groan when he tugged at it. “Get up,” he said under his breath. He tugged harder and the whole beast was dragged along an inch.
Something else came down the hall to intercept them. A crow hopped along the floor and locked eyes with them. They released the beast. If it wanted to lay there and get chewed on, fine. Fine. They had to take care of themself first. Their own thoughts chilled them. They didn’t want to leave it, but it looked like it’d hardly fit in the elevator, and if they waited any longer who knew what things might appear to give chase.
They approached the crow to kick it or get around it, and the second they walked in front of the intersection, they felt a dozen eyes on them. Mistake. They should’ve kept running.
A beak dug into their shoulder like a needle and they rammed it into the wall to stun it off. Despite the prickling pain, they forwent fighting to just booked it, scrambling away from the mob of birds determined to rip them apart.
They bolted through the doors and around the front desk, and threw themself into the elevator. Their hands shook too much recently, fighting to recall the fine motor movements needed to just get the damn thing working again—
A screech made them jump and nearly drop the fuse. It sounded like a grown human shrieking for dear life; they knew the sound too well, a desperate, frightened thing. Their heart leapt into their throat at the noise, urging them to attention. The sound twisted into something shrill and whistling.
The thing’s beak nearly skewered a crow as it lurched head-first into the room, body lagging to keep up, and collapsed into the elevator. It immediately tried to cram itself against the far wall. It bodied anything in its way aside and it produced a sick snapping noise as it folded over itself in its frenzy.
They slammed the fuse into place as hard as they could without breaking it, as if that would get the elevator to move faster. They pressed the close door button over and over. A crow shot into the elevator anyway.
With a practiced ease they reached out and grabbed it from the air by the neck. One time they snapped it like that and felt it go stiff in their hands. But that didn’t happen this time. It cawed and twisted to bite at their hands. They felt grateful for that, in a sense.
He hurled it back out of the elevator like a baseball just before the doors shut. The thing in the elevator with him twisted, stumbling to its legs. It scrambled up onto the back edge of the chair he’d dragged in and perched there, legs digging into the seat cushion while its wings rested against the top. The slits between ribs opened and closed rapidly alongside faint, quick breathing, air whistling from its slightly-open beak.
The elevator rattled as it began moving. The thing whipped its head side to side, knocking it against the wall as it scanned the room. It scrambled down from the chair and now stood directly in front of him, strangely contorted to fit within the space.
He held his hands up in surrender as it stared him down. “Hey,” he croaked. It shuddered violently when the elevator beeped as it moved a floor. It turned its tall frame to face the floor numbers. The next time it beeped, it pecked at the screen, producing a dull thunk. Again, harder, when it continued to beep. “Don’t—don’t do that, you’ll break the screen.”
It swiveled around to face him and retreated back onto the chair, pressing itself bodily into the corner. Its head brushed up against the ceiling and it raised it, sliding it parallel along the tiles. He wasn’t a big fan of how it moved. Almost like a chicken, in its jerkiness. A slender pouch of “skin” between jaw and throat expanded and shrank with a thin, doglike whine. Its needle-pointed hind legs poked through the fabric of the chair, perpetually sinking in, and therefore it was constantly shifting to readjust itself.
Like any sane set-up within an elevator, resting against the wall across from the chair was the painting of the mysterious train he’d stolen from the museum, and in the opposite corner was a lamp he’d dragged in. Comfortable. Even if just for a few minutes he could rest, but he found himself doing that less. The doors would always open unless he asked Ik for a breather, and he would always strive onwards. The desire to let go of adrenaline-fueled hair-trigger reflexes didn’t crop up often. But sometimes it felt like he was stepping into a home. He didn’t like that feeling.
Its neck cracked when it lowered its head. Passively, it folded its limbs inward and laid upon its side, directly observing the art in front of it. The edges were a bit scuffed with his own ash, due to not being in the best physical state whilst hauling it in. The creature’s bones made disconcerting noises as it moved.
He stepped over its flaking tail and leaned over it. It tracked dust and ash as it laid down. It shivered when he got near. Given all its reactions so far, he assumed it didn’t like that, so he gave it some distance. As much as he could within a cramped space, anyways. “Hi,” he tried. He’d talked a little to Shrimp, to minimal acknowledgement.
The creature shuddered violently when he spoke. He took only mild offense to this, and decided maybe it wasn’t that conversational. It still watched the canvas, and then rubbed the side of its face against its top. It reminded him vaguely of a cat when particularly fond of something. Ash and feathers flaked off. The motion produced a soft shhk-shhk-shhk sound that paused whenever the elevator beeped. He supposed it was a nice painting. Maybe it liked it? It was probably more visually stimulating than concrete walls.
The elevator shuddered and the creature was abruptly trying to stand again. One front leg buckled and it pitched forward, stumbling directly into the side of the elevator. It heaved itself up, shook, and pecked the screen displaying the floor numbers again.
He pressed himself back to avoid it accidentally running into him. The elevator produced a broken clicking noise from outside of the room itself, rattled, and stopped. The fuse sparked, popped, and fizzled out with a thin puff of smoke.
Fantastic.
The creature leaned down and pecked at the floor. It shuffled all its limbs and did an odd sort of prance where it circled itself tightly. It stepped over its own tail and pulled several feathers loose, and given the shudder and heavy huff this pained it, but it did not stop right away.
And then it stopped. And it just stood there, head bowed, staring at nothing. And it kept standing there.
The doors slammed violently open, and even they winced. It flinched and turned so it wasn’t facing the doors. He backed up to the next floor, and very quietly said, “Wait here.” Shrimp, he assumed, could handle himself and didn’t fancy doing what was told of him. This thing, though. Less so.
If it heard him, it didn’t show. He thought that ought to be good enough to keep it in one place, so he wouldn’t have to rescue it later.
He turned his back on it, and immediately a low paranoia arose. Would it follow? So he gave it some time, listening, and heard a shuffling. He turned.
It was settling curled around the painting. He didn’t like how far it could rotate its head to watch him. With that, he figured, it wasn’t moving anytime soon.
Shrimp followed him and moved nimbly through the environment. Shrimp had a sense of independence about him and had never gotten in the elevator with him. So he didn’t exactly know how to react to a massive beast there. He waved a goodbye at it. “I’ll be back soon.” Hopefully. Sometimes it took him… well, not like any of the clocks worked, but sometimes it felt like he could spend hours on a floor. And it already felt like he’d spent days in the inn. He rubbed at his face, or lack thereof. Another floor. Another fuse.
His phone went off partway down the hall, and he answered before the first ring could finish. “Hello, sir! How was that last floor? Are all your limbs still attached?” It was good to hear Ik’s voice again.
“Yeah.” He paused. “Anyways. I have a question. Was there anything else like Shrimp?”
The resulting pause stretched on uncomfortably. He opened a door in front of him, deciding Ik would answer in his own time. “Why do you ask?”
“I found a thing in a big, empty room.”
“Like Shrimp’s room?” He sounded frightened by the concept of two Shrimp.
“No, like, an empty concrete box. Holding, say, a very bird-like horse thing. Hypothetically.”
A shorter pause. “Yeah, no, I have no idea what that was. Whatever it was, hopefully you left it be! Shrimp can be feisty!”
He leaned back to glance at the distant, glowing red light from the elevator. “Yeah, about that.” He paused for dramatic effect. “It’s in the elevator with me.”
“What?”