Chapter Text
Forgotten things, Made Beautiful
Solitary Confidement . :)
A fantastic morning! It’s a good day today.
Joel’s red eyes open with haste, and fiercely wide smile that spreads as they usually do. Her far-down, brown bulb-cut hair covers half of her sight, yet she never seems to mind.
She awakens to the same old, ever present gray wall. The grey wall of which never fails to arrive when she tries to leave this hallway. The hallway in the information team which she happily occupies every day, unless the fantastic red lights dance, and the soothing sound of the trumpet plays. Then she must be. Be… be. The hero! A hero. In black armor. no, a fuzzy suit. A fuzzy warm suit. The solitude…
Joel twitches. This twitching was not her own, rather a small electric shock, yet she cherishes it so much. It wakes her up from accidentally succumbing to her mind’s illusions, the managers one and only gift to anybody in the facility. Her smile condenses into a deep sigh. This isn’t a fantastical morning. It’s yet another dreadfully solitary day. The warm, fuzzy suit of engulfing dream and the revolver of solitude gripping against her. She shakes off the feeling. The edges of her mouth droops and her eyes sag, as she returns to reality. The same… the exact same hallway. Once more.
She stands up from her place on the cold, metal floor of this hallway she has been locked in since being hired, after they stuffed her in this fuzzy suit, and forced the gun into her hand. She’s only been let out to fight against Breaching abnormalities, and ordeals. Yet even then, she is returned to the hallway. This room where she can only reach two abnormalities, the old lady, and porcubus. Happiness and solitude. Those are her only friends. Though she knows it’s only fair. Well, Maybe. There’s no telling what she is really thinking. Joel is tempted to, perhaps, just this once… listen to the old woman’s stories. Of course, she would still have a taste of porcubus’ head-bursting happiness. Maybe she would finally be able to… to…
“Ugh.” Joel’s voice croak’s aloud, her throat parched and her confidence in herself collapsing.
The usual morning thoughts flood her mind as always. I wish I was different. I wish I wasn’t me. I wish… I wish I could just…
“….” Joel stares at the floor and and sighs again.
She walks over to the containment door, and grasps the handle, pulling it down and tugging the door open. Joel has to duck down to see through the door. It’s the old lady. Attachment work then… I think? Probably.
Joel grabs the ear plugs from her pocket and sits down Infront of Old Lady. She doesn’t put them in yet, though.
“Oh dearie. Let me tell you a story!” Old Lady said with the same exact old voice. No difference as before.
“Sure, grandma.” The automatic response detailed in the manual. She’s nailed the moody teenager impression.
“Once, a long time ago… there was a baby named Sally Sue, raised on a meat farm. Sally was born in the harsh backstreets to a family of rats, with loving parents barely scraping by. The parents lived, thankfully, and made it big by being butchers! Everybody loved the meats they made, especially little Sally!”
Joel’s eyes were dark as she stared at the ground. She grips her hands into fists.
“Sally’s parents Sold high quality meat for a low price at their butcher shop. They even had a bulk deal, buy two get one dollar off your final purchase! Ahem, back to Sally. Sally loved the meat their parents made so much, that she would do anything to protect it, and so would the customers. The customers, backstreet butchers and cooks in themselves, as well as little Sally, fought off anybody that tried to hurt Sally’s parents or their butchers shop. One day, Sally asked her parents, “Where does all this delicious meat come from?” Her parents smiled at eachother and brought her to the meat farm, far away in the outskirts, the same meat farm which they adopted Sally from. Cows with hooves of hands and legs of arms, pigs with wrinkly human ears and human faces, leathery, featherless chickens, and even wheat hair. The meat farm, where they got all of their delicious meat! Sally, however, was scared of the meat farm, and ran away from home when her parents were going to have her help around the meat farm. One day, Sally ran away, never to come back home after. Her parents, worried, searched for her for several days straight! But they never found poor little Sally, who had seen an Angel, which led away from ever seeing the meat farm again. The Angel was gone, though, and Sally was lost in the outskirts! Sally got scooped up by a massive bird with big claws and a large head, and we never saw them again! Sally’s parents loved her so much, that they vowed to become two of the eight chefs in her memory, and vowed to make sure nobody ever mistreated their kids again. The end, dearie.”
Joel is curled into a ball against the wall, tears streaming down her face and dripping onto the metal floor. The ear plugs are shoved so deep in her ears that she couldn’t hear a thing. She sniffles and turns to face the wall. So that she wouldn’t need to keep looking at the Angel looking down on her. The Angel that only could see her, and the Angel only she could see.
……..
The sounds of flesh being slammed against metal echos out for a long while.
Eventually, Joel stumbles out of the containment chamber door, her face wet with tears. Blood streams down from her nose, and bruises decorate her forehead like paint. She slams the door behind her, and ruffles her hand through her light brown hair. She stands up straighter, suddenly, and begins to walk further down the hallway, towards Porcubus’ containment chamber. Joel ignores the fake sound of banging that she has heard before. She knows it’s fake because it’s banging on a wooden door, when there’s only metal doors here. She wipes the blood from under her nose, pulls out the ear plugs, and shoves them back into her pocket.
Joel’s hand falls onto the metal door of Porcubus’ containment unit. She opens it and steps inside, closing it quietly behind her. We see a rather strange porcubus on the other side, one who’s thorns are massive… at least 4 inches each. The childish giggles from the flowery head of this prickly thing enter her ears like a spore cloud of discomfort. Porcubus does not just float a good distance away, like it may for others. It coils towards Joel, sensing her distress once more. It’s black coal-light eyes reflecting Joel’s tired and frowning face. It lends a part of it marked with teeth marks and a notable lack of thorns, and Joel offers her wrist. This exchange has been ongoing between these two ever since, during one episode, Joel bit into Porcubus. And now, Joel does does the same, a weak bite into Porcubus as Porcubus stabs a thorn into Joel’s wrist. Mutual hallucinations, only possible because Joel was…
Happiness. Positive hallucinations onto one, and endless nightmares onto the other. Joel slid to the floor and laughed. Dialated, distant eyes and a wild guffaw. The giggles of Porcubus twist and morph, into whimsy, silky words of a mature man. A mature man who’s looked like the color red, just like Joel’s eyes. Joel laughs, how could words have a color? How silly and funny!
“Joel my companion in growth! How has your day fared? Mine has went swimmingly, myself!”
“Same as always, you silly goose! Hahaha, horrible till now! The solitude is unbearable, hahahaha!”
Joel laughs hysterically, so much their coughing.
“Remember not to laugh too much, dear companion! Your head may not burst, but your lungs might rupture! I can’t have my dearest companion without her magnificent voice!”
Joel holds her throat and coughs a bit more, a few more laughs, and she settles down a bit, a wide smile still on her face.
“So, what is it you wish to ponder on today, dear companion?”
“I’m pondering, about confinement. Of confining another, y'know man? What makes it ok, what makes it right?”
“Hmm. Yes, what is there to be done? Confining another can be for many reason no? The safety of others and themself, or in order to keep them away from something trying to hurt them?”
“Yeah man, but what if it’s not for their betterment, but for the betterment of the person confining them? What makes it ok to confine another based on your own biased interests?”
“I think we both know the answer to that, dead companion. We both are in that exact situation.”
“You bursted 5 other employees heads and left 3 others with crippling addictions. I wouldn’t say it’s the same… right?” Joel’s wide smile is akward now, shrinking.
“Maybe? Dear companion, you don’t know why they have confined you, just like me. They leave you to rot until your needed for one specific thing, and then put you back in confinement when their done. And, dead companion, can you say you are innocent as well?”
“… yeah… I guess we really are alike, in confinement. So… what about me and you? What’s the point of going on when your only confined to be user as a tool? Why do you keep going? How can I keep going? I’m scared about this. About all of it. The visions have only been getting worse…”
Porcubus’ head rises and their eyes close, like they think about their response.
“I suppose it is hard to say. What brings us forward when we have this brick wall blocking our path? I’ve asked myself the same thing. But it is because of that one use that they let me have, that one purpose, that I may do what I love. Making people happy.”
“But I… I don’t know what I want. I don’t know what I…”
“Is something arry, dear companion Joel?”
Joel mumbles.
“The… the Angel. He came again today.”
Porcubus is silent for a few moments.
“The same Angel they led you away from your parents?”
Joel barely nods her head.
Porcubus slowly coils as it descends onto the ground next to Joel.
“Why do you fear them so, my dear companion? Please remind me.”
Joel looks away.
“It’s.. its because they remind me of the meat farm. That… f*cking crazy experiment dumped in the outskirts that my parents used to get profit. With their butcher shop.”
“Why do they remind you of it?”
“Because… I was… from that same farm. Like a package deal, hahaha… haha. Ha.”
The happiness is already wearing off. Joel is fine with that though. She continues speaking.
“That’s not true. Not that it reminds me of it because of that, no. It’s because I was… I saw it so much. But never at the meat farm. It was only everywhere else. So… no matter what, it reminded me of where it never was. It’s scary. And.. all of its mouths don’t help. When it gazed upon me with those f*cking golden eyes…”
Joel’s face is distressed, because she is finally gushing out all these insecurities.
“Well, dear companion. Why must you fear an Angel who care for you, only fills you with dread? They must not truly care for you, only itself, no? Fear them not, loathe them. They don’t deserve your fear if it has never even hurt you. Rebel against the Angel. For they are no Angel at all, dear companion.”
Joel looks at Porcubus’ deep black eyes. A smile appears on their wetting eyes.
“Thanks, man.”
“The unbearable pleasure is all mine, dear companion.”
“Hehhehehe! Hahah!”
Joel laughs with all her heart, without any influence from Porcubus’ thorns. She stands up, as the wise words of Porcubus turn back into giggles. She walks to the containment door with a pep in her step, and steps out. A bit more pep in their step than she has ever had, since she was a Kid who didn’t know any better.
Solitary Confidement ( End of part 1)
