Papier-mâché Mephistopheles
Title: Papier-mâché Mephistopheles
Pairing: Taoris
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Angst, Tragedy, Mindfuck (?)
Warnings: Hover
Length: ~4.8k
Summary: The devil is nothing but a powerful figment of imagination.
(A/N: This was written for fleuers during the [sadly discontinued] Totaolly exchange. This was definitely one of my favorite pieces to write despite the fact that I restarted it... just about the day it was due. It was something a little more experimental and out of my comfort zone but nonetheless, I'm glad to have written it and that my recipient enjoyed it! Thank you to mxrts senpai for beta-ing this up until 3 in the hecking morning with me!)
papier-mâché (adj.) - easily destroyed or discredited; false, pretentious, or illusory.
Mephistopheles (n.) - one of the seven chief devils in medieval mythology; the one to whom Faust sold his soul to in legend.
~✳~
phase zero
Every story has an end. Some of them come early, some of them come late-but what begins must end.
What lives, must die.
Kris stands so close to the window that every exhale collects on the glass, blurring the streetlights that lie just past the crosswalk of his apartment complex. His fingertips meet the icy air filtering in through the window pane, forming a faint outline of his hand. When he pulls back he can see the foggy patches of his breath and palm. As they fade away, he counts the spots upon the glass beneath his handprint which are still transparent. Untouched.
This is purity.
He reaches his thumb out slowly and smudges the condensation over the clear spots.
This is wisdom.
In a world teeming with lives, where no surface remains untrampled by something which fights for survival, wisdom is knowledge of when the ending should come. No story should go on forever until its feet drag, listless, on an empty sidewalk lined with the structures of decrepit memories, and fade as nothing but a colorless vestige of what once was a chromatic work of vivacity. These useless pages are not needed.
They are suffering.
In his mind, he sees the buildings blurring together as he follows gravity to his escape. The sidewalk beneath him remains solid. Falling is flying, flying to kingdom come. Survival, which has always asked him to keep writing the future, has played him to this extent. The pages of his story have long since repeated meaningless sentences.
This is existence far beyond its proper end.
He steps back as he watches the haze on the glass shrink into itself, disconnecting from its initial structure in bits and pieces, until the window is again a façade of purity and he is on his bed, cornered into self-preservation. Pulling the covers over his chin, he turns away from the window and shuts his eyes.
This is fallacy.
~✳~
phase one
The window is open. Wind leaves frosted breaths on his nose and cheeks, combing with frozen teeth through his hair. There is no point in escapism when the escape is so simple. There is nothing significant about this moment at all. He will climb onto the ledge and step over it onto nothing. It is only wisdom.
As he falls, he sees the buildings blurring together as he follows gravity to his escape. The sidewalk beneath him remains solid. Falling is flying, flying to kingdom come. Three floors up is not so much, perhaps not enough. The street lights twinkle with a different sheen, like stars hovering just out of reach. Surreal. On the concrete below he watches languidly as his memories spatter in dull hues over the ground: a story that was once filled with vigor, emotion, heartbreak, exhilaration; fading, fading into pages of mundane routine, numbness, indifference.
He knows the exact chapter at which his story should have stopped. If he could go back in time and change it, he would. Sever the story before he forgot how compelling it had been when it had first begun. He freezes the frame there and shuts his eyes. This is how he will be remembered.
Yet when he reaches the end of his fall, there is no nauseating crack of bones against the pavement. He is hovering, just a few feet above the cement, and then tilting, tilting, until his feet brush softly against the ground.
He straightens up to stand on his own, brushing the wind from the fabric of his loose T-shirt and rubbing abject frustration from his eyes. A deep, accented voice caresses his ear with lips both rugged and gentle.
“Don’t do that.”
When he turns, the figure has already turned the end of the block, dissipating around the corner like a thick tendril of shadowed smoke.
~✳~
phase two
Kris awakens two minutes before his alarm to the lingering image of manifest darkness meeting his gaze, sharp eyes gleaming like scorched patches of moonlight. Somewhere abstract, the question of why he didn’t try again after the figure left him crosses his mind, but it is more of a faint shimmering just on the horizon of consciousness than a thought. The walk back to his apartment seemed so much lonelier than it used to be.
But that changes nothing.
He calls in sick to work as he walks downtown with three one-hundred dollar bills shoved into his back pocket, all the way to the end of the block before the train station, and knocks on the door of an inconspicuous candy store just around the corner. One, one-two, one-two, one. The manager opens the door and whispers, “Aisle three, to your left.”
At the back of the store, he repeats the pattern on the entrance to the janitor’s closet. The rap of his knuckles against the wall returns strangely hollow. Someone should have noticed by now. He counts down the seconds, then drums against the wall with his fingers.
The doorknob exhales a soft click, inviting him in.
As soon as he makes out the dim outlines of cardboard boxes and shotguns against the back wall, he feels a circular, metallic pressure on his temple. The door slams shut.
“The money?”
The voice is deep, accented, strangely hoarse, as if the words have dragged themselves kicking and screaming from the back of his throat and flung themselves wildly out into the air from his lips. Something about the texture, rugged and gentle, feels familiar. The figure beside him pushes the gun harder against his head.
Kris doesn’t flinch. He’s more stone than human at this point, after all. “Back pocket.”
A quick hand darts from the gun to his pocket, pulling out the three hundred dollars before slipping them beneath his own clothing and dropping the gun into Kris’s palm. A series of footsteps echo and fade deeper into the closet. When turns to close the door after he leaves, the thin illumination through the opening just barely misses the gun dealer, who meets his eye with an apathy so extreme it borders on passionate, light glinting from his irises like scorched moonlight.
Don’t do that.
The dealer throws something at the door, slamming it shut before Kris can say anything.
~✳~
Kris stands so close to the window that every exhale collects on the glass, blurring the streetlights that lie just past the crosswalk of his apartment complex. His fingertips meet the icy air filtering in through the window pane, forming a faint outline of his hand. When he pulls back he can see the foggy patches of his breath and of his palm. As they fade away, he counts the spots upon the glass beneath his handprint which are still transparent. Untouched. His grip tightens on the gun he holds at his side.
This is purity.
He reaches his thumb out slowly and smudges the condensation over the clear spots. The index finger of his other hand traces back and forth over the trigger.
This is wisdom.
For a second, he relaxes his hold on the smooth metal in his right hand, closes his eyes, and breathes in slowly. The air in his apartment is stale and stagnant. The crisp winter air still feels fresh on his skin. Exhaling, he brings the shotgun up until it aligns with his temple, hovering no more than an inch away. His hand is steady, steadier than its ever been. His finger traces the trigger: back and forth, back and forth.
Opening his eyes, he watches the last of the haze fade from the window, and shoots.
Before him, he can see the windows shattering in slow motion from the reverberating force of the gunshot. From the corner of his eye, he can make out the shape of the bullet, emitting nothing more than a soft whistle as it glides through the air. The shards fall down, down, down towards the sidewalk, slicing through the air, edges stretching, reaching for the impact; the end of time. Each piece projects a memory on its surface. Here, he severs the story before it can loop again and become more tedious. This is how he will be remembered.
The copper casing prods gently at his skin.
Then, there’s a hand around his, swiftly flicking his finger from its perch on the trigger and gripping the gun, coarse palm aligning with the back of his own. The bullet is pulling away again, straight back into the barrel. The projection on the shards flickers out of existence as they slowly fall back into position, aligning over one another, clinking like bells in staccato as they settle into their proper frame.
As the window continues to reassemble, the stranger removes the gun from his hand and tosses it over the growing edge of glass.
“Don’t do that.”
It occurs to him when he turns to face the other: scorched moonlight, the gun dealer, tendrils of shadowed smoke, the stranger who caught him the night before, the eerie whispers of don’t do that intertwining themselves with his thoughts.
“How do you show up everywhere? How did you get in here?”
“Coincidence,” the deep voice replies-for the first time, louder than a whisper. “And I used the window.”
“No, I mean it.”
He grins in amusement, tapping a cross-shaped earring and letting it swing before quirking an eyebrow and crossing his arms. “I mean it, too.”
“Who are you?”
“The devil,” he replies sarcastically, tapping another rosary that hangs over his chest. “Obviously.”
“That doesn’t make sense. You saved my life twice already.”
“I’m on a mission to stop heaven from gaining angels,” he hums, running his fingers through his hair and glancing out the window.
Exasperation eats away at the shield of disconnect numbing his every perception. Even though he’s been facing the stranger this whole time, this is the first time he has really looked at him. Everything about him is dark, from the tone of his skin to the hood that dips just beneath his eyebrows and hangs above his jagged bangs, the obsidian sheen of his irises to the crucifixes that adorn his earrings, pendants, bracelets. Despite the astounding lack of vibrancy, the inconspicuous, sagging grey cloaks, something about his appearance is sharp. Perhaps it’s the ever piercing gaze hidden beneath it all, always staring through you but not quite past you, burying itself somewhere between where you begin and where you end.
“Your name, then,” Kris sighs, releasing a breath he hadn’t been aware of holding in. “At least give me your name.”
When he blinks, the space in front of him is empty. The door creaks open behind him. He swears that the stranger-though he isn’t sure if that’s the right word anymore-really is nothing more than smoke. If he were to reach out and touch him, his fingers would pass through like that piercing gaze, right through the center, and his figure would disperse like a dark fog blown away by a hurricane.
This time, when he speaks, there’s the slightest twinge of mischief underneath the darkness.
“Zitao,” he says, and before Kris can finish his inquiry as to whether Zitao will be back or not, the door slams shut.
His pulse quickens.
The story continues.
~✳~
phase three
3 missed calls from Do Kyungsoo
Kris closes his eyes and sighs. His alarm had gone off an hour and a half ago. Regardless, he picks up the phone and flips onto his stomach, redialing his boss’s number.
“Kris.”
“Yeah.”
“You missed work yesterday.”
At the tip of the last word, behind all the brisk, harsh tones of Kyungsoo’s voice, Kris hears the teetering of concern. He furrows his eyebrows and gazes at the window, where the cracks should have been, where the gun should have been, and chews his lip.
“I called in sick, remember?”
“No. I don’t.”
If he had woken up a few hours earlier, he thinks, he could have tried again.
“Oh.”
A silence threads itself between the back of his phone and the cusp of his palm. Kris hears relief; maybe it’s only static.
“Well, maybe the secretary missed it and forgot to tell me. Are you coming to work today? You’re already half an hour late.”
“Yeah. I’ll be there.”
“Hurry up. The new sales figures come out tomorrow.”
The line clicks. His stomach rumbles a little too loudly, but he skips breakfast regardless.
On the way to the office he passes by the drugstore, advertising twenty percent off bulk packages of cigarettes. The entire block smells of second-hand smoke. Kris thinks about Zitao, half expecting him to form at the tip of some unsuspecting smoker’s cigarette and tell him, “Don’t even think about it.”
Don’t do that.
He bites on his lip until half of it begins to numb, leaking traces of blood onto his tongue, and walks past the drugstore. Life has not proven itself as mundane as he made it out to be. This story might reach the end of its monotonous cycle and continue in the melodious fashion that he knew before.
The air beyond the haze of burning nicotine tastes acidic, leaving a bitter aftertaste inside his mouth.
~✳~
In a world teeming with lives, where no surface remains untrampled by something which fights for survival, wisdom is knowledge of when the ending should come. No story should go on forever until its feet drag, listless, on an empty sidewalk lined with the structures of decrepit memories, and fade as nothing but a colorless vestige of what was once a chromatic work of vivacity. These useless pages are not needed.
They are hopes gone unmet. The most clandestine form of suffering.
He purchases a ten-pack at the drugstore after work, ignoring the nagging presence of Zitao’s nonchalant don’t do that at the back of his skull. This is suicide in disguise. A long-term death sentence. His piercing gaze can look through him as far as he wants but he won’t see past the smoke swirling in his lungs and rotting his capillaries cell by cell, inside out.
After he reaches his apartment he takes the staff elevator to the roof, climbing over the ledge and dangling his feet over the concrete wall, swinging his legs as his gaze follows the smoke he exhales upward.
The world is a contradiction.
It’s already too late to rescue the precious pages of his story and keep them separated from the insipid ones. He’s written the future into decay. It will just keep withering, festering, rotting, becoming more and more rancid as time goes on. He can stop it here, kill it off, leave it what dignity remains; yet existence pulls him back to tell him to let it rot more, that he’ll grow used to the stench. Affectionate of it. Attached to his own demise and prevented from reaching for it.
Behind him, he hears footsteps growing nearer. He can tell who it is even without turning around. No one else would have a reason to approach him. He catches the cigarette between two fingers and pulls it away from his mouth, breathing out the smoke and eyeing the scarlet embers at the tip. The glow blurs at the edges, almost blending into air, fading in a steady gradient outward. A miniature sun caught between its last moments of life and its first moments of death.
Zitao settles down a reasonable distance away from him, reaching over only to flick the cigarette out from between Kris’s fingers. He snatches the rest of the pack from Kris’s pocket and lights one for himself.
“Well, you’re a determined one, aren’t you?”
Kris shrugs, watching the cigarette fall until it’s too small to discern amongst the pedestrians on the sidewalk.
“I highly doubt you really thought I wouldn’t catch you on this one.” He takes the cigarette between his lips and sucks in deep, blowing an impossibly voluminous plume out when he exhales. “But let’s make believe that you didn’t want to see me. Why do you want to do this?”
Unconsciously, Kris’s fist clenches above the concrete until he can feel his nails pressing crescents into the skin of his palm.
“Kris-”
“So you know my name, too,” he mutters, struggling against the urge to kick one of his shoes off so he can watch it hit someone below. “Figures.”
Zitao starts to reply when Kris continues, snatching his cigarette pack back and throwing it across the street as hard as he can, as if he intends to land it on the roof of the other building. “Why do you even care? Why can’t you just leave me alone like you do all the rest of the time, slam the door on me when I’m asking you if you’ll be back, selling me guns when you know exactly what I’m going to do with them? Who the hell are you? What do you want from me?”
“I told you. I’m the devil.”
“I’m being dead serious here. I attempt it every day but at least I don’t treat this like a joke.”
“Jesus. Didn’t take you long to get attached to me, did it? But I’m dead serious, too-”
“And what the hell kind of devil says ‘Jesus,’ anyway.”
Zitao snorts. And then the words soar with the cigarettes raining from the opening of the cigarette pack, dropping everywhere, spilling, but he can’t stop. Just on the horizon of his consciousness, a new idea flashes in and out of existence: maybe he can write time back to life.
“You wanna know why? I’m goddamn bored as hell, that’s why. It’s like my life is a book that just keeps getting longer and longer and longer and never ends. You know, like there’s a point when the story is supposed to stop. After all the action happens and everything settles out or the tragedy happens and it ends. And the reader leaves the story wanting more but with the best part of that story in mind, because the thing is, the story goes on past the last page. After that happily ever after? The princes and princesses live on. They have a marriage. They have kids. But no one is gonna write a story about that because it’s boring. No one wants to read it. No one wants to read about how the princess got up every morning to feed the baby and read about it on every page until the baby learns how to feed itself.
“My entire life has become that part that no one wants to read. The story is over. I want to end it while I can still remember a time when I wasn’t bored like this, when things that happened still meant something substantial to me. I want to end the story where it’s supposed to end. That’s it. That’s why.”
“And I suppose, then,” Zitao begins, slowly, after a few seconds of silence, “that this is the reason you bought those smokes today.”
“Did you think that I wanted to die?” Kris scoffs. “Wait, let me rephrase. Did you think that I liked wanting to die?”
“Admiring the use of past tense, there.”
Kris blinks and looks up at Tao, silent and scrutinizing.
“Well then, let’s keep it interesting for you, shall we?”
Before Kris can protest, a breeze pushes on them from behind. Zitao dissipates into the air like black powder, each piece catching on the breeze and spiraling around in lazy circles-for a while, still close enough for him to touch. The smoky grey filters right through his fingers and then whirls out with the wind, floating higher and higher, particles of a disassembled shadow vanishing above the clouds.
~✳~
phase four
Time is missing. Nothing has happened since Zitao blew away with the gust of wind over the rooftop, yet Kris finds himself waking to the sharp, mechanical beep of a cardiograph. The secretary smiles patiently at him when he blinks his eyes open to squint at her. He’d forgotten that she was the secretary now.
“Good morning, Kris.”
“Oh, uhh. Morning, Baek.” Baekhyun purses her lips almost imperceptibly. Some old ache thaws in his chest, not enough to make him any less apathetic, but enough so that he can feel it. “Hyun. Baekhyun.”
Baekhyun clears her throat and smiles again. “You passed out in your cubicle about eighteen hours ago. You’ve been unconscious since then. Kyungsoo found you when he was leaving work, and wants you to take the next few days off. The doctors said you haven’t been sleeping or eating enough, so Kyungsoo had a care package dropped off at your apartment.” The smile drops, and Baekhyun gazes at him indifferently. “That’s all I was assigned to say to you. Any questions?”
The date on the digital clock reads January 18, 2014, and it hits him suddenly that something is very wrong. Yesterday, January 17th, he left work at five to buy a ten-pack of cigarettes, and met Zitao on the rooftop near an hour later. The current time is eight forty-two in the morning, which means he must have passed out at the same time he left the cubicle. A chill runs through his spine and he squints into the distance, petrified.
“I said, any questions?”
Feeling nauseous, Kris shakes his head and thanks her with a slight nod.
After Baekhyun leaves, Kris scrambles away from the bed, discharging himself with a hastily scribbled note and taking off towards his apartment. It’s Zitao. It has to be Zitao.
Without hesitating, he scrambles toward the knife drawer in his kitchen and pulls out the sharpest one he can find, pressing it against his own throat. It Zitao doesn’t show up, then that’s a shame-if even that-and before he can get to thinking of what will happen if he does, Zitao is standing in front of him, holding the sharpened edge with his palm, a faint burgundy color beginning to pool at the tip.
“Don’t do that,” Kris breathes in unison with Zitao, who tosses the blade up in the air and catches it by the handle with his other hand, shaking out the one he’d cut. “Anyway, you called?”
“What the hell is going on? I want answers this time. What the hell is this?”
“What the hell is what?”
“It’s January 18th and I’ve apparently been passed out for goddamn eighteen hours but eighteen hours ago I was smoking on the rooftop and you disappeared in a puff of smoke. What the hell is all of this? And for the last time, who are you?”
Zitao sighs in exasperation. “For the last time, I told you, I’m the devil-”
“I want a real answer!” Kris shouts, slamming his fist on the counter. “Give me a real fucking answer.”
“Fine, kid. I’ll give you a real answer. I used to be a guy just like you. I was bored as hell, my entire life was a big flatline, and I had nothing to do. So I did what you did. I tried to end the story where it was supposed to get ended. Now, obviously, that didn’t work. Someone caught me and brought me home and took care of me, then let me go again. Of course, after a while of being away I became bored again. So I did what you did, and tried again. At this point I had travelled more than halfway across the country I was residing in. But when I leapt from that second building, guess who caught me? The exact same person. Now, one thing led to another and it turned out that this person was-wait for it-actually the devil. I sold my soul to the devil-hey, don’t interrupt me, I’m telling the truth-and now I’m here. But not really. I’m not really here.”
Grinning, Zitao taps Kris’s head with a finger. “I’m here. You’re dreaming. That’s the only way you can see me, is if you’re dreaming.”
It’s funny almost, how easily the emotions fall into place over the apathy, how much simpler it is to remember how to feel than it is to remember indifference. It all comes out, bit by bit: attachment, hope, indignation, betrayal. He doesn’t realize that he’s nearly crushing the bones of his own hand until Zitao gently places his hand over Kris’s and uncurls his fist.
“Is this some kind of sick joke?”
“What do you want me to say to that?”
“This is-you’ve got to be shitting me-so, basically, you’re telling me, that I can only want to be alive when I’m asleep. Is that it.”
“I’m glad I mean so much to you.”
“You don’t. Oh my God, oh my God, you fucking don’t. I don’t know. I thought-well that’s funny isn’t it, I don’t know what I thought. You made me feel something. Confusion. Recognition. Abandonment. Fury. Loneliness. Company. After all these years of emotional void, you made me feel something. Hope; Christ, I’d almost forgotten that was a word. Hope. You sparked all these things that don’t make you mean anything and you just keep sparking them. You make me feel like the story is picking up again and then you just leave me, and that makes the story pick up even more. You stop me from killing myself and then disappear around some corner, and the next time I see you you’re dealing me guns in the back of a candy store even though you know exactly what I’m going to do with it. And then you stop me from doing it! And then you just walk out the door without a word-”
“I told you my name.”
“-shut up. You? You don’t mean anything to me-”
“Stop crying.”
“-I swear you don’t. But these things that you do remind me what it feels like to be alive, to be a part of the story people want to read. I don’t like wanting to die. I want to have a reason to keep writing the future as something other than a perpetually looping, rotting cycle. I smoked because I wanted you to come back, because who else was going to make me feel anything at all? And now you’re telling me-”
“God dammit, stop crying. I can barely understand you.”
Kris takes in a shuddering breath, squeezing his eyes shut to rid himself of the tears pooling over his lids, and clears his throat. “And now you’re telling me that you don’t even exist. Or that you only exist when I’m sleeping. Why can’t you just be there to stop this monotony all the goddamn time? Why do you-why do I-”
“Why do you have to feel this way?” Zitao finishes, pulling Kris closer, right into a hug when he doesn’t protest at all. “Well, you don’t.”
“What do you mean I don’t?”
“If you want me to be here, I’m here. You just have to want me here. It’s all on you. I’ll stay. But if I agree to stay, you have to agree to want me here, to stay with me.”
“Okay, well I’ve just said it, haven’t I? That I want you here.”
“Then promise. Promise me you’ll always want me to be here, and want to be here with me.”
“I promise.”
“Are you sure?”
“A million times over, I promise.”
Something digs into his back. A slight pressure. Maybe it’s just Zitao hugging him tighter, maybe it’s just him crying too hard.
Either way, everything goes black.
~✳~
kingdom come
The last time Kris wakes up, he sees his own body stretched out on a hospital bed. Kyungsoo paces back and forth at the footboard, barking commands to Baekhyun over the phone and looking up every few seconds at Kris’s vitals, as though he’ll wake up any moment now. The clipboard on the nightstand informs him that he’s comatose, permanently asleep.
Tao stands beside him, and on the other side stands a boy gazing at him pitifully, whom Tao addresses quietly as Sehun.
“What the hell is going on?” Kris demands for the last time, grabbing Tao’s collar in an attempt to pull him up. Kyungsoo, only a few feet away, doesn’t look up; presumably, doesn’t hear. Tao chuckles and slips right through his grasp, sauntering over to the body on the bed and ruffling his hair playfully.
“You promised, right?” Tao grins. “This is the deal you made with the devil.”
Pairing: Taoris
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Angst, Tragedy, Mindfuck (?)
Warnings: Hover
Length: ~4.8k
Summary: The devil is nothing but a powerful figment of imagination.
(A/N: This was written for fleuers during the [sadly discontinued] Totaolly exchange. This was definitely one of my favorite pieces to write despite the fact that I restarted it... just about the day it was due. It was something a little more experimental and out of my comfort zone but nonetheless, I'm glad to have written it and that my recipient enjoyed it! Thank you to mxrts senpai for beta-ing this up until 3 in the hecking morning with me!)
papier-mâché (adj.) - easily destroyed or discredited; false, pretentious, or illusory.
Mephistopheles (n.) - one of the seven chief devils in medieval mythology; the one to whom Faust sold his soul to in legend.
~✳~
phase zero
Every story has an end. Some of them come early, some of them come late-but what begins must end.
What lives, must die.
Kris stands so close to the window that every exhale collects on the glass, blurring the streetlights that lie just past the crosswalk of his apartment complex. His fingertips meet the icy air filtering in through the window pane, forming a faint outline of his hand. When he pulls back he can see the foggy patches of his breath and palm. As they fade away, he counts the spots upon the glass beneath his handprint which are still transparent. Untouched.
This is purity.
He reaches his thumb out slowly and smudges the condensation over the clear spots.
This is wisdom.
In a world teeming with lives, where no surface remains untrampled by something which fights for survival, wisdom is knowledge of when the ending should come. No story should go on forever until its feet drag, listless, on an empty sidewalk lined with the structures of decrepit memories, and fade as nothing but a colorless vestige of what once was a chromatic work of vivacity. These useless pages are not needed.
They are suffering.
In his mind, he sees the buildings blurring together as he follows gravity to his escape. The sidewalk beneath him remains solid. Falling is flying, flying to kingdom come. Survival, which has always asked him to keep writing the future, has played him to this extent. The pages of his story have long since repeated meaningless sentences.
This is existence far beyond its proper end.
He steps back as he watches the haze on the glass shrink into itself, disconnecting from its initial structure in bits and pieces, until the window is again a façade of purity and he is on his bed, cornered into self-preservation. Pulling the covers over his chin, he turns away from the window and shuts his eyes.
This is fallacy.
~✳~
phase one
The window is open. Wind leaves frosted breaths on his nose and cheeks, combing with frozen teeth through his hair. There is no point in escapism when the escape is so simple. There is nothing significant about this moment at all. He will climb onto the ledge and step over it onto nothing. It is only wisdom.
As he falls, he sees the buildings blurring together as he follows gravity to his escape. The sidewalk beneath him remains solid. Falling is flying, flying to kingdom come. Three floors up is not so much, perhaps not enough. The street lights twinkle with a different sheen, like stars hovering just out of reach. Surreal. On the concrete below he watches languidly as his memories spatter in dull hues over the ground: a story that was once filled with vigor, emotion, heartbreak, exhilaration; fading, fading into pages of mundane routine, numbness, indifference.
He knows the exact chapter at which his story should have stopped. If he could go back in time and change it, he would. Sever the story before he forgot how compelling it had been when it had first begun. He freezes the frame there and shuts his eyes. This is how he will be remembered.
Yet when he reaches the end of his fall, there is no nauseating crack of bones against the pavement. He is hovering, just a few feet above the cement, and then tilting, tilting, until his feet brush softly against the ground.
He straightens up to stand on his own, brushing the wind from the fabric of his loose T-shirt and rubbing abject frustration from his eyes. A deep, accented voice caresses his ear with lips both rugged and gentle.
“Don’t do that.”
When he turns, the figure has already turned the end of the block, dissipating around the corner like a thick tendril of shadowed smoke.
~✳~
phase two
Kris awakens two minutes before his alarm to the lingering image of manifest darkness meeting his gaze, sharp eyes gleaming like scorched patches of moonlight. Somewhere abstract, the question of why he didn’t try again after the figure left him crosses his mind, but it is more of a faint shimmering just on the horizon of consciousness than a thought. The walk back to his apartment seemed so much lonelier than it used to be.
But that changes nothing.
He calls in sick to work as he walks downtown with three one-hundred dollar bills shoved into his back pocket, all the way to the end of the block before the train station, and knocks on the door of an inconspicuous candy store just around the corner. One, one-two, one-two, one. The manager opens the door and whispers, “Aisle three, to your left.”
At the back of the store, he repeats the pattern on the entrance to the janitor’s closet. The rap of his knuckles against the wall returns strangely hollow. Someone should have noticed by now. He counts down the seconds, then drums against the wall with his fingers.
The doorknob exhales a soft click, inviting him in.
As soon as he makes out the dim outlines of cardboard boxes and shotguns against the back wall, he feels a circular, metallic pressure on his temple. The door slams shut.
“The money?”
The voice is deep, accented, strangely hoarse, as if the words have dragged themselves kicking and screaming from the back of his throat and flung themselves wildly out into the air from his lips. Something about the texture, rugged and gentle, feels familiar. The figure beside him pushes the gun harder against his head.
Kris doesn’t flinch. He’s more stone than human at this point, after all. “Back pocket.”
A quick hand darts from the gun to his pocket, pulling out the three hundred dollars before slipping them beneath his own clothing and dropping the gun into Kris’s palm. A series of footsteps echo and fade deeper into the closet. When turns to close the door after he leaves, the thin illumination through the opening just barely misses the gun dealer, who meets his eye with an apathy so extreme it borders on passionate, light glinting from his irises like scorched moonlight.
Don’t do that.
The dealer throws something at the door, slamming it shut before Kris can say anything.
~✳~
Kris stands so close to the window that every exhale collects on the glass, blurring the streetlights that lie just past the crosswalk of his apartment complex. His fingertips meet the icy air filtering in through the window pane, forming a faint outline of his hand. When he pulls back he can see the foggy patches of his breath and of his palm. As they fade away, he counts the spots upon the glass beneath his handprint which are still transparent. Untouched. His grip tightens on the gun he holds at his side.
This is purity.
He reaches his thumb out slowly and smudges the condensation over the clear spots. The index finger of his other hand traces back and forth over the trigger.
This is wisdom.
For a second, he relaxes his hold on the smooth metal in his right hand, closes his eyes, and breathes in slowly. The air in his apartment is stale and stagnant. The crisp winter air still feels fresh on his skin. Exhaling, he brings the shotgun up until it aligns with his temple, hovering no more than an inch away. His hand is steady, steadier than its ever been. His finger traces the trigger: back and forth, back and forth.
Opening his eyes, he watches the last of the haze fade from the window, and shoots.
Before him, he can see the windows shattering in slow motion from the reverberating force of the gunshot. From the corner of his eye, he can make out the shape of the bullet, emitting nothing more than a soft whistle as it glides through the air. The shards fall down, down, down towards the sidewalk, slicing through the air, edges stretching, reaching for the impact; the end of time. Each piece projects a memory on its surface. Here, he severs the story before it can loop again and become more tedious. This is how he will be remembered.
The copper casing prods gently at his skin.
Then, there’s a hand around his, swiftly flicking his finger from its perch on the trigger and gripping the gun, coarse palm aligning with the back of his own. The bullet is pulling away again, straight back into the barrel. The projection on the shards flickers out of existence as they slowly fall back into position, aligning over one another, clinking like bells in staccato as they settle into their proper frame.
As the window continues to reassemble, the stranger removes the gun from his hand and tosses it over the growing edge of glass.
“Don’t do that.”
It occurs to him when he turns to face the other: scorched moonlight, the gun dealer, tendrils of shadowed smoke, the stranger who caught him the night before, the eerie whispers of don’t do that intertwining themselves with his thoughts.
“How do you show up everywhere? How did you get in here?”
“Coincidence,” the deep voice replies-for the first time, louder than a whisper. “And I used the window.”
“No, I mean it.”
He grins in amusement, tapping a cross-shaped earring and letting it swing before quirking an eyebrow and crossing his arms. “I mean it, too.”
“Who are you?”
“The devil,” he replies sarcastically, tapping another rosary that hangs over his chest. “Obviously.”
“That doesn’t make sense. You saved my life twice already.”
“I’m on a mission to stop heaven from gaining angels,” he hums, running his fingers through his hair and glancing out the window.
Exasperation eats away at the shield of disconnect numbing his every perception. Even though he’s been facing the stranger this whole time, this is the first time he has really looked at him. Everything about him is dark, from the tone of his skin to the hood that dips just beneath his eyebrows and hangs above his jagged bangs, the obsidian sheen of his irises to the crucifixes that adorn his earrings, pendants, bracelets. Despite the astounding lack of vibrancy, the inconspicuous, sagging grey cloaks, something about his appearance is sharp. Perhaps it’s the ever piercing gaze hidden beneath it all, always staring through you but not quite past you, burying itself somewhere between where you begin and where you end.
“Your name, then,” Kris sighs, releasing a breath he hadn’t been aware of holding in. “At least give me your name.”
When he blinks, the space in front of him is empty. The door creaks open behind him. He swears that the stranger-though he isn’t sure if that’s the right word anymore-really is nothing more than smoke. If he were to reach out and touch him, his fingers would pass through like that piercing gaze, right through the center, and his figure would disperse like a dark fog blown away by a hurricane.
This time, when he speaks, there’s the slightest twinge of mischief underneath the darkness.
“Zitao,” he says, and before Kris can finish his inquiry as to whether Zitao will be back or not, the door slams shut.
His pulse quickens.
The story continues.
~✳~
phase three
3 missed calls from Do Kyungsoo
Kris closes his eyes and sighs. His alarm had gone off an hour and a half ago. Regardless, he picks up the phone and flips onto his stomach, redialing his boss’s number.
“Kris.”
“Yeah.”
“You missed work yesterday.”
At the tip of the last word, behind all the brisk, harsh tones of Kyungsoo’s voice, Kris hears the teetering of concern. He furrows his eyebrows and gazes at the window, where the cracks should have been, where the gun should have been, and chews his lip.
“I called in sick, remember?”
“No. I don’t.”
If he had woken up a few hours earlier, he thinks, he could have tried again.
“Oh.”
A silence threads itself between the back of his phone and the cusp of his palm. Kris hears relief; maybe it’s only static.
“Well, maybe the secretary missed it and forgot to tell me. Are you coming to work today? You’re already half an hour late.”
“Yeah. I’ll be there.”
“Hurry up. The new sales figures come out tomorrow.”
The line clicks. His stomach rumbles a little too loudly, but he skips breakfast regardless.
On the way to the office he passes by the drugstore, advertising twenty percent off bulk packages of cigarettes. The entire block smells of second-hand smoke. Kris thinks about Zitao, half expecting him to form at the tip of some unsuspecting smoker’s cigarette and tell him, “Don’t even think about it.”
Don’t do that.
He bites on his lip until half of it begins to numb, leaking traces of blood onto his tongue, and walks past the drugstore. Life has not proven itself as mundane as he made it out to be. This story might reach the end of its monotonous cycle and continue in the melodious fashion that he knew before.
The air beyond the haze of burning nicotine tastes acidic, leaving a bitter aftertaste inside his mouth.
~✳~
In a world teeming with lives, where no surface remains untrampled by something which fights for survival, wisdom is knowledge of when the ending should come. No story should go on forever until its feet drag, listless, on an empty sidewalk lined with the structures of decrepit memories, and fade as nothing but a colorless vestige of what was once a chromatic work of vivacity. These useless pages are not needed.
They are hopes gone unmet. The most clandestine form of suffering.
He purchases a ten-pack at the drugstore after work, ignoring the nagging presence of Zitao’s nonchalant don’t do that at the back of his skull. This is suicide in disguise. A long-term death sentence. His piercing gaze can look through him as far as he wants but he won’t see past the smoke swirling in his lungs and rotting his capillaries cell by cell, inside out.
After he reaches his apartment he takes the staff elevator to the roof, climbing over the ledge and dangling his feet over the concrete wall, swinging his legs as his gaze follows the smoke he exhales upward.
The world is a contradiction.
It’s already too late to rescue the precious pages of his story and keep them separated from the insipid ones. He’s written the future into decay. It will just keep withering, festering, rotting, becoming more and more rancid as time goes on. He can stop it here, kill it off, leave it what dignity remains; yet existence pulls him back to tell him to let it rot more, that he’ll grow used to the stench. Affectionate of it. Attached to his own demise and prevented from reaching for it.
Behind him, he hears footsteps growing nearer. He can tell who it is even without turning around. No one else would have a reason to approach him. He catches the cigarette between two fingers and pulls it away from his mouth, breathing out the smoke and eyeing the scarlet embers at the tip. The glow blurs at the edges, almost blending into air, fading in a steady gradient outward. A miniature sun caught between its last moments of life and its first moments of death.
Zitao settles down a reasonable distance away from him, reaching over only to flick the cigarette out from between Kris’s fingers. He snatches the rest of the pack from Kris’s pocket and lights one for himself.
“Well, you’re a determined one, aren’t you?”
Kris shrugs, watching the cigarette fall until it’s too small to discern amongst the pedestrians on the sidewalk.
“I highly doubt you really thought I wouldn’t catch you on this one.” He takes the cigarette between his lips and sucks in deep, blowing an impossibly voluminous plume out when he exhales. “But let’s make believe that you didn’t want to see me. Why do you want to do this?”
Unconsciously, Kris’s fist clenches above the concrete until he can feel his nails pressing crescents into the skin of his palm.
“Kris-”
“So you know my name, too,” he mutters, struggling against the urge to kick one of his shoes off so he can watch it hit someone below. “Figures.”
Zitao starts to reply when Kris continues, snatching his cigarette pack back and throwing it across the street as hard as he can, as if he intends to land it on the roof of the other building. “Why do you even care? Why can’t you just leave me alone like you do all the rest of the time, slam the door on me when I’m asking you if you’ll be back, selling me guns when you know exactly what I’m going to do with them? Who the hell are you? What do you want from me?”
“I told you. I’m the devil.”
“I’m being dead serious here. I attempt it every day but at least I don’t treat this like a joke.”
“Jesus. Didn’t take you long to get attached to me, did it? But I’m dead serious, too-”
“And what the hell kind of devil says ‘Jesus,’ anyway.”
Zitao snorts. And then the words soar with the cigarettes raining from the opening of the cigarette pack, dropping everywhere, spilling, but he can’t stop. Just on the horizon of his consciousness, a new idea flashes in and out of existence: maybe he can write time back to life.
“You wanna know why? I’m goddamn bored as hell, that’s why. It’s like my life is a book that just keeps getting longer and longer and longer and never ends. You know, like there’s a point when the story is supposed to stop. After all the action happens and everything settles out or the tragedy happens and it ends. And the reader leaves the story wanting more but with the best part of that story in mind, because the thing is, the story goes on past the last page. After that happily ever after? The princes and princesses live on. They have a marriage. They have kids. But no one is gonna write a story about that because it’s boring. No one wants to read it. No one wants to read about how the princess got up every morning to feed the baby and read about it on every page until the baby learns how to feed itself.
“My entire life has become that part that no one wants to read. The story is over. I want to end it while I can still remember a time when I wasn’t bored like this, when things that happened still meant something substantial to me. I want to end the story where it’s supposed to end. That’s it. That’s why.”
“And I suppose, then,” Zitao begins, slowly, after a few seconds of silence, “that this is the reason you bought those smokes today.”
“Did you think that I wanted to die?” Kris scoffs. “Wait, let me rephrase. Did you think that I liked wanting to die?”
“Admiring the use of past tense, there.”
Kris blinks and looks up at Tao, silent and scrutinizing.
“Well then, let’s keep it interesting for you, shall we?”
Before Kris can protest, a breeze pushes on them from behind. Zitao dissipates into the air like black powder, each piece catching on the breeze and spiraling around in lazy circles-for a while, still close enough for him to touch. The smoky grey filters right through his fingers and then whirls out with the wind, floating higher and higher, particles of a disassembled shadow vanishing above the clouds.
~✳~
phase four
Time is missing. Nothing has happened since Zitao blew away with the gust of wind over the rooftop, yet Kris finds himself waking to the sharp, mechanical beep of a cardiograph. The secretary smiles patiently at him when he blinks his eyes open to squint at her. He’d forgotten that she was the secretary now.
“Good morning, Kris.”
“Oh, uhh. Morning, Baek.” Baekhyun purses her lips almost imperceptibly. Some old ache thaws in his chest, not enough to make him any less apathetic, but enough so that he can feel it. “Hyun. Baekhyun.”
Baekhyun clears her throat and smiles again. “You passed out in your cubicle about eighteen hours ago. You’ve been unconscious since then. Kyungsoo found you when he was leaving work, and wants you to take the next few days off. The doctors said you haven’t been sleeping or eating enough, so Kyungsoo had a care package dropped off at your apartment.” The smile drops, and Baekhyun gazes at him indifferently. “That’s all I was assigned to say to you. Any questions?”
The date on the digital clock reads January 18, 2014, and it hits him suddenly that something is very wrong. Yesterday, January 17th, he left work at five to buy a ten-pack of cigarettes, and met Zitao on the rooftop near an hour later. The current time is eight forty-two in the morning, which means he must have passed out at the same time he left the cubicle. A chill runs through his spine and he squints into the distance, petrified.
“I said, any questions?”
Feeling nauseous, Kris shakes his head and thanks her with a slight nod.
After Baekhyun leaves, Kris scrambles away from the bed, discharging himself with a hastily scribbled note and taking off towards his apartment. It’s Zitao. It has to be Zitao.
Without hesitating, he scrambles toward the knife drawer in his kitchen and pulls out the sharpest one he can find, pressing it against his own throat. It Zitao doesn’t show up, then that’s a shame-if even that-and before he can get to thinking of what will happen if he does, Zitao is standing in front of him, holding the sharpened edge with his palm, a faint burgundy color beginning to pool at the tip.
“Don’t do that,” Kris breathes in unison with Zitao, who tosses the blade up in the air and catches it by the handle with his other hand, shaking out the one he’d cut. “Anyway, you called?”
“What the hell is going on? I want answers this time. What the hell is this?”
“What the hell is what?”
“It’s January 18th and I’ve apparently been passed out for goddamn eighteen hours but eighteen hours ago I was smoking on the rooftop and you disappeared in a puff of smoke. What the hell is all of this? And for the last time, who are you?”
Zitao sighs in exasperation. “For the last time, I told you, I’m the devil-”
“I want a real answer!” Kris shouts, slamming his fist on the counter. “Give me a real fucking answer.”
“Fine, kid. I’ll give you a real answer. I used to be a guy just like you. I was bored as hell, my entire life was a big flatline, and I had nothing to do. So I did what you did. I tried to end the story where it was supposed to get ended. Now, obviously, that didn’t work. Someone caught me and brought me home and took care of me, then let me go again. Of course, after a while of being away I became bored again. So I did what you did, and tried again. At this point I had travelled more than halfway across the country I was residing in. But when I leapt from that second building, guess who caught me? The exact same person. Now, one thing led to another and it turned out that this person was-wait for it-actually the devil. I sold my soul to the devil-hey, don’t interrupt me, I’m telling the truth-and now I’m here. But not really. I’m not really here.”
Grinning, Zitao taps Kris’s head with a finger. “I’m here. You’re dreaming. That’s the only way you can see me, is if you’re dreaming.”
It’s funny almost, how easily the emotions fall into place over the apathy, how much simpler it is to remember how to feel than it is to remember indifference. It all comes out, bit by bit: attachment, hope, indignation, betrayal. He doesn’t realize that he’s nearly crushing the bones of his own hand until Zitao gently places his hand over Kris’s and uncurls his fist.
“Is this some kind of sick joke?”
“What do you want me to say to that?”
“This is-you’ve got to be shitting me-so, basically, you’re telling me, that I can only want to be alive when I’m asleep. Is that it.”
“I’m glad I mean so much to you.”
“You don’t. Oh my God, oh my God, you fucking don’t. I don’t know. I thought-well that’s funny isn’t it, I don’t know what I thought. You made me feel something. Confusion. Recognition. Abandonment. Fury. Loneliness. Company. After all these years of emotional void, you made me feel something. Hope; Christ, I’d almost forgotten that was a word. Hope. You sparked all these things that don’t make you mean anything and you just keep sparking them. You make me feel like the story is picking up again and then you just leave me, and that makes the story pick up even more. You stop me from killing myself and then disappear around some corner, and the next time I see you you’re dealing me guns in the back of a candy store even though you know exactly what I’m going to do with it. And then you stop me from doing it! And then you just walk out the door without a word-”
“I told you my name.”
“-shut up. You? You don’t mean anything to me-”
“Stop crying.”
“-I swear you don’t. But these things that you do remind me what it feels like to be alive, to be a part of the story people want to read. I don’t like wanting to die. I want to have a reason to keep writing the future as something other than a perpetually looping, rotting cycle. I smoked because I wanted you to come back, because who else was going to make me feel anything at all? And now you’re telling me-”
“God dammit, stop crying. I can barely understand you.”
Kris takes in a shuddering breath, squeezing his eyes shut to rid himself of the tears pooling over his lids, and clears his throat. “And now you’re telling me that you don’t even exist. Or that you only exist when I’m sleeping. Why can’t you just be there to stop this monotony all the goddamn time? Why do you-why do I-”
“Why do you have to feel this way?” Zitao finishes, pulling Kris closer, right into a hug when he doesn’t protest at all. “Well, you don’t.”
“What do you mean I don’t?”
“If you want me to be here, I’m here. You just have to want me here. It’s all on you. I’ll stay. But if I agree to stay, you have to agree to want me here, to stay with me.”
“Okay, well I’ve just said it, haven’t I? That I want you here.”
“Then promise. Promise me you’ll always want me to be here, and want to be here with me.”
“I promise.”
“Are you sure?”
“A million times over, I promise.”
Something digs into his back. A slight pressure. Maybe it’s just Zitao hugging him tighter, maybe it’s just him crying too hard.
Either way, everything goes black.
~✳~
kingdom come
The last time Kris wakes up, he sees his own body stretched out on a hospital bed. Kyungsoo paces back and forth at the footboard, barking commands to Baekhyun over the phone and looking up every few seconds at Kris’s vitals, as though he’ll wake up any moment now. The clipboard on the nightstand informs him that he’s comatose, permanently asleep.
Tao stands beside him, and on the other side stands a boy gazing at him pitifully, whom Tao addresses quietly as Sehun.
“What the hell is going on?” Kris demands for the last time, grabbing Tao’s collar in an attempt to pull him up. Kyungsoo, only a few feet away, doesn’t look up; presumably, doesn’t hear. Tao chuckles and slips right through his grasp, sauntering over to the body on the bed and ruffling his hair playfully.
“You promised, right?” Tao grins. “This is the deal you made with the devil.”