Wrong Place, Wrong Time

Alistor was perfectly content lying immobile in his bed and staring up at the ceiling tiles, soaking up the residual warmth seeping from his overly puffed blankets. He never had been a morning person, and now was no exception.   

"Another day," he sighed in a tired voice, stretching. The cartilage in his knees ground and popped almost pleasantly as he stretched, and he allowed himself a grim little smile. Another reminder that he was still alive, still who he had always been. Still a man by the name of Alistor Brandt going on an even forty years old. Constant reminders that he remained himself in the face of all odds.

"Normalcy…"

He sighed once more and sat up, twisting around in both directions and listening to the musical popping of his spine. He always had talked to himself, every day he could remember. Alistor had grown up an only child, living with strict parents who forbade him visits with friends and kept him on the family property at all times. Of course his parents never listened to him as a child. Why should they? They didn't care after all, and the only ones who did stop and listen were the myriad insects in the forested yard of his childhood. They never reprimanded him. They never yelled or ignored or glared. They simply sat complacently and listened. For, like Alistor, they had all the time in the world.

In many ways he counted himself lucky, he really did. Here he was, living in a completely paid for room with everything he could ever need, so close to his current work he could just stroll from his room and he was already there. Indeed, while many would scoff at the idea of the company he worked for housing him, Alistor never would. A roof over his head after a harsh life was more than welcome in his book. The added bonus of being fed and paid all in one was just that: an added bonus. An added bonus that he'd take over living with parents who hated him every day.     

He smiled at the memories, both fond and callous, and swung his legs over the side of the bed, his bare feet slapping on cold hard steel. For a moment he stiffened at the cold before relaxing and lazily rubbing the back of his head. He paused, confused. His hand, calloused and thick skinned from years of heavy labour, came against soft warm skin. He opened his mouth, then closed it again, confused.

"I… don't remember shaving…" he said after a moment, inspecting his hand. As he had always remembered it. He reached up to touch his head again. The same disturbing lack of hair presented him and he let his hands fall to his sides, bewildered. Mouth half open he turned his attention down to the cold hard floor and his feet. They, too, had all the semblance of the feet he always had. Nothing seemed amiss.

Except for his distinct lack of hair.

And, now that he thought about it, his room was off, too. Subtly, of course, but still off. The walls seemed less shiny then he had remembered, more dirty. And where were the windows? Why was everything so unbearably gloomy? Why did the distinct yet delicate tang of sharp ammonia weigh forebodingly in the air?  

"…I must still be dreaming…" he said aloud, slowly finding his feet. A pair of fluorescent tubes glowed diligently above his head, casting a monotone shade of white over everything and glancing off a mirror inset into the far wall. Alistor was, for the first time in his life, honestly frightened. But he decided, dream or not, to go about his morning routines as usual. For what else was there to do? Run screaming about? No. That would only complicate things, he mused, trudging over to the mirror.

He stopped short, dumbstruck.

There was someone in the mirror, someone here he did not recognize. A face he could not precisely identify because he had never seen it before in his life. Hesitantly he took a faltering step towards the reflective glass, bringing up a shaking hand to touch his face. The reflection that wasn't his followed dutiful suit.

"That's not me," he gasped, taking a quick step back even as his mind urged him forwards. Sharp straight features cut into a face like granite, every line at a harsh ninety degree angle to another, framing a pair of odd coloured eyes opened wide in fear. "That's not my face…"

Quite suddenly he ran forwards and leaned heavily on the jutting sink, hands gripping the thick concrete with white knuckle intensity. Something cracked and he wasn't quite sure if it was the concrete or his shuddering fingers. He simply could not look away from the mirror. From that scarred straight face with the pale skin and the thin lips. From the eyes coloured gray and orange, set deep into darkened sockets, from the face he simple knew was not his but someone else's. Something was very, very wrong, and he had no idea what had happened. Memory? What good was memory if it provided him with nothing more than rolling blackness?

"Not me," Alistor repeated, his voice still holding diligently onto its old familiar tones. It made him smile, which in turn made his reflection follow suit, revealing jutting and yellowed teeth on the verge of decay. Terrified the smile fell into a frown and he let out a strangled gasp. The chemical smell remained a steady constant.  

"Not me," he repeated again. Quickly he averted his gaze from the mirror, hoping when he looked back he would have woken up and the mirror would stop lying to him. But first he had to calm his nerves, had to slow his breathing. So he focused on the hands that were still his, tracing his eyes over the intricate tapestry of veins he knew like, well, the backs of his hands. It calmed him, and for a moment he deluded himself into believing this was all just a dream.

"It's just a dream," Alistor reassured himself, his breathing having evened out to a steady pace. "Nothing more than a bad dream. You're tired, Alistor. That's it. Just… tired…"

Another deep shuddering breath and he looked up again, expecting to see himself.

Alistor stopped dead and did the only thing his brain registered: stared. Something hovered diligently behind him, something dark and huge and utterly alien. Something that grinned at him without a mouth, that glared at him without eyes, and that whispered diligently to him without a voice.

"Alistor, you've finally noticed me," it hissed, like escaping gas. Terrified the man whirled around, expecting to come face to face with a monster. His room was the only thing that greeted him. His room, so tiny and neat and ordered. So empty.

"What, you don't remember?"  

This time, the sound of rocks rumbling across a mountain slope. Gingerly he turned back to the mirror. It was still there. Still as tangible in reflection as it should have been in reality, if it had decided to exist. Apparently it did not abide by such arbitrary rules and for a fleeting moment Alistor seriously considered his sanity. In response the entity laughed a hollow laugh, a thoroughly unpleasant sound, showing off what Alistor could only surmise as a mouth full of grasping tentacles in the process.

"Yessss, doubt your sanity," it prodded, its voiceless words taking up the semblance of decayed wind chimes clattering hollowly against each other in a sick stormy wind. "I need to grow, after all. And I can't survive without you…"

"You're not real!" Alistor yelled, lashing suddenly out at the mirror like a rabid beast. His fist collided with misleadingly thin glass and the mirror shattered in a burst of glittering fragments, the disconcertingly gentle jingle jangle of falling shards for the briefest of moments sounding like rusty laughter. Shaking he backed up quickly, away from the pile of glittering glass.

"You're not real," he repeated again. The sound of his own voice was satisfying, got his mind off his altered face and the thing in the mirror. And even though the mirror was now lying in a million glimmering pieces he could steal hear it. Still make out the voice that wasn't a voice whispering like a babbling brook just off the edge of his hearing. Trying to ignore something he refused to acknowledge, that he tried to convince himself wasn't real, he quickly looked back to his hands again. His real hands, all sunburnt pink and calloused like he had always remembered. And for a moment he managed to forget about the voice, about the thing.

"Those aren't our hands," it said after a moment, snickering unpleasantly. Alistor's eyes screwed shut and his breathing quickened.  

"You're not real…"

"They're yours, but they're not ours… What say you I do something about them, eh?"

Suddenly Alistor's hands were on unholy fire, a blazing wildfire that quickly spread from his bones to his skin to his arms that he could not contain. He watched in abject horror as his hands took up the same pale shade as his face, the blood draining from his flesh and his skin tightening against bones and tendons, throwing thick black veins up in stark relief. Screaming he clenched his hands into shuddering fists and his eyes closed, willing these pale abominations to go away and for his real hands to come back. It didn't work, of course. The thing in the mirror that he knew was still watching him saw to that, and with a deep laugh like black mud bubbling at the bottom of the ocean the pain receded, and Alistor opened his eyes.

He let out a sob and held the hands that were no longer his close to his chest.

"What are you?" he asked huskily. Alistor had never been one to cry. There was a first time for everything.

"I'm me, of course."

"But what are you?!" he yelled suddenly, falling exhausted against the wall.      

Silence. Apparently the thing did not know. Or maybe it simply did now know the right words to use. So it remained in stubborn silence, and where Alistor would have welcomed it instead he shunned it, for the quiet held no answers and only served to mock him. Shedding soft tears he bent forwards and held shaking hands to his head, terrified.

"What are you?" he repeated, listening intently to his voice. It was the only thing of his he had left. "What are you?"

"…You really like your voice, don't you?" it asked quietly. Quickly Alistor leapt to his feet and started banging on the door with all his might, bloodying his fists in the hope someone would hear and help him. It never occurred to him to simply open the door, because deep down he knew that the door was bolted from the other side. And he was correct. For what else to do with the employee who had suffered the unfortunate fate of being at the wrong place at the wrong time then lock him up in his own room where he couldn't cause any harm?

"Somebody help me!" he screamed, crying. "Please! Help me!"

The thing laughed and did something to Alistor's voice, to his trachea. His voicebox. Without warning he devolved into a coughing fit, unable to scream or cry or speak for his throat was on fire just like his hands. The pain continued unabated, scorching the last of what belonged to him straight from his being, to the point that when he was able to speak again it was not him speaking. It was not his voice.

"Help," he rasped, the pounding of his hands fading into something feeble and pitiful. It changed it. The thing had warped it to something else entirely, something to match his changed face and altered hands as surely as one picks out matching socks. And when Alistor screamed next it wasn't at the thing but at himself.  

Alistor Brandt was no longer Alistor Brandt. And nobody cared.