The Backrooms

I recall I was once called a shell. By whom I have not the slightest idea. With all that's happened, I'm lucky even to know who I am. But the description was right; that is what I am now. I can feel, but I can't really. If I place my hand against the trunk of a tree, the texture is lost somewhere inside my skin. My world, now, accepts only pain.

I am not sure of what I was supposed to be. I know I wasn't his creation; I know I was somehow snatched here — by him. Then I was locked inside a little white cell with no doors or windows. He phased in through the same wall every day. He would grab my wrist, his soft grip tightening until it dug like talons into my flesh, then pull me out. I couldn't phase, so I hurt. My body, painfully concrete, was caught in the sickeningly white substance, and he pulled me through numberless dimensions and all states of existence and non-existence…and I got through.

I would be taken into an iron room after that. Everything in it slate gray, and cold — stone cold. It was there where he committed the more atrocious acts. Taking parts of me and replacing them with things he soothingly called "his". Taking and feeding me vials of molten, glistering gold liquid that glowed white-hot, and ate away at what little was left of my broken body. Taking from me what little comfort I had in this at least familiar place, and subjecting me to the flashing horrors of fractural madness. My form began to flicker erratically during those cruel ordeals. Sometimes chunks of me would disappear, or dislocate for a second or two. Sometimes I'd vaporize; sometimes I'd melt. Whenever the pain overwhelmed me, he would scream in fury. My ears bled every time I returned to the white room.

It got better over time. Gradually, it felt like he took from me less and less. In retrospect, it must've been my senses growing numb. He did not know how painful it was, and that was the flaw in his grand plan. It was the one thing he had overlooked that, consequently, resulted in my imperfection: that I was — mortally, painfully, regretfully —

— weak.

Things were blurry, back then. Despite it all, I relied on him for every single thing. I maintained warm feelings for him, as a well-loved child has warm feelings for their father. I could not see it at the time, but every scratch his talons etched upon my skin, every word he whispered into my ear, every second I lay under his watchful eye reshaped me, rebuilt me, remade me.

I haven't now the faintest clue what I used to be. I might have had four arms, two brains, ten senses. But creation cannot come from nothing, in any case. Before I even thought to think for myself, he decided that I didn't look good enough for him, and forced me into the contours of a human being. As if humans were anything beautiful. They're weak. Emotional. Simple, and yet irritatingly complicated.

The number of wooden imitations I've seen in his rooms… it could fill entire caverns. Mannequins, they were called. Rough models that mimicked the two-legged creatures. But his weren't whole. Limbs hung from the blank ceilings, the whitewashed walls, strewn across the colorless floor. Two were attached to him each day. I don't know if he changed them like clothing. The way their solid tips scratched across the liquid ground… they were slowly consumed, then and there, soaked in by the blinding white like ink upon paper. The sounds were horrible.

I saw myself in a dream last night.

She appeared first on the horizon of the white-bleached void, drawing closer and closer until I realized she was more than a mere image, until she entered my cell exactly as he did. She had dark eyes, spheres that revolved like comets round her head. Black branches twisted around her, sprouting from her back like a pair of featherless wings, dragging across the ground like his cloak and his legs. I was stuck, rooted to the spot. By horror, or by her — who knows? She herself was a horror to behold. Blue-tinged remnants dripped down her side. She had no face, but I knew she smiled. She walked up until she stood towering over me; her heart pounded in my ears. She leaned down with half a hand over my heart.

have you found a new name for yourself? what is it?

I refused to speak. I refused. Every inch of my intact mind fought to stay silent. But I found my cords responding. Or perhaps it was her doing, digging into my consciousness, using her voice to mimic mine, speaking aloud the thoughts running through my head.

eliezel?

It was a beautiful name. It didn't come from anywhere; soon after I'd grasped the axioms and intricacies of language, I made it up for myself. Maybe it's a real name; maybe it means something. But I chose it simply because it looked and sounded beautiful. Yet as much as I loved that name, I hated how the syllables came croaking and hissing from her throat. Her voice was broken. Fragmented. The very thought of her speech stained my mind.

how cute. are you tired of existing as you? suppressed subconscious, prideful ego?

you could just die, you know. let's go back to how it once was. with me. and happiness. look at how you took all of my happiness away.

I had not so much as thought about the possibility of happiness in that previous state. I was paralyzed. Hypnotized. She was stagnant; she dwelt in that place and never had the courage to walk out. I almost felt sorry for her. But the way she spoke like she was proud… I could hear traces of him in her words; bitter strands of hate encircled my mind.

don't be so foolish as to think you could ever be greater than him! remember you are just a shell, nothing without your shielding petals, remember that

She talked. And talked. For far too long, she had taken his words and made them her own, fully aspiring to be his little clone. Tall as a statue, her head held proud, she stood and praised a forthbringer of hell. There she loomed, a faithful preacher, speaking senselessly from her podium, an orphaned chick childishly condescending from her aerie.

I wished. I wished to never be like her. I wish I had never been like her. I hated her with every fiber of my being, and yet.

Oh, how I wished — how I longed —

— how I wanted her to be saved.