That between-space, the imperfect oblivion, feels in a way like going home. OA floats in it, in that deep-sea black, weightless, aimless, meaningless. Lifeless. Dark recollections menace the horizon of her half-consciousness like predatory things, black on black, too indistinct to see and too fleeting to catch. All manner of things swim in the recesses of her memory, and plenty of them have teeth. That’s familiar too. What she wakes to isn’t.
It’s muddy at first, too slippery to grasp, the greater-than-contextual wrongness. The bodied wrong, beyond even the sluggishness of her limbs, the lingering weakness, that disconnect between intention and action. She spent years honing that connection, marrying intention to movement in a way more intricate, more intimate than can be accounted for by conscious thought; the distinction between then and now is obvious and disorienting, almost more so than the setting in which she finds herself.
In spite of the gown, it isn’t a hospital bed. That’s the first thing she notices, and it’s what stops her from calling out, because it too feels half-familiar in a way that sends dread pooling in the pit of her stomach. It doesn’t feel like a room and she doesn’t feel like a patient – it feels like a cell and she like a prisoner. She struggles fumblingly to her feet, furious with her limbs for their clumsiness. Fear. That’s fear. She can forgive herself the reflex but she still can’t forgive the reality, not until she makes it to the door and finds it unlocked. That the hallway is deserted and dark doesn’t matter: it’s more room to move, more room to breathe. OA allows her head to fall against the doorframe with a thunk, closing her eyes and taking in a slow, shuddering breath.
With agonizing, slow gracelessness she ties the gown as tightly about herself as she can and begins making her way down the hall, the fingertips of one hand feeling along the wall alongside of and just in front of her, more out of reflex than necessity. The dry scuff of her bare feet against the floor seems intrusively loud in such a bizarrely empty place. She moves through it tentatively, door after closed door empty, until it isn’t.
She freezes as another door creaks open, another lost soul in a hospital gown emerges into the hallway. Their eyes meet and OA knows how she must look: shellshocked, deer in headlights, though who could blame her? Given this new interloper’s manner of dress, though, they must find themselves in similar straits, and that makes the encounter instantly less frightening.
OA opens her mouth to speak, heart in her throat, and the alarm blares – she claps her hands over her ears and squeezes her eyes shut, hunching over herself until it’s gone and she can unfold into the new silence.
“Do you know where we are?” she asks in an urgent whisper, drifting closer to her new companion. “I can’t remember... I can’t remember what happened; I don’t know how I got here.”
ii. into the dark
The air is sharp and cold in OA’s lungs as she plunges into the dark. She can hear them behind her, the... things, the creatures, whatever they are – they aren’t right on her tail, but they’re in pursuit, and that knowledge is good. She holds onto it; it’s what she needs. The other thoughts – the desire to lean into the impossibility of all of this, to allow it to become unreal – won’t serve her. This is real. It’s happening. She can consider the whys and wherefores if she survives it. With the sound of her own breathing ragged in her ears, distracted by the distant (not distant enough) sound of the creatures scrabbling and snuffling through the halls, she makes a mistake. Probably a lot of mistakes – there will be time to enumerate them later – but the biggest is to restrict herself to what she knows. She’s running, they’re chasing. What’s ahead of her is dark and that makes it easier to discard. She doesn’t reach into it, doesn’t listen ahead, and that’s what sends her hurtling blindly around the corner and into a near collision. She veers, losing purchase, and slips, falling onto the tile with a grunt of pain, but she’s on her feet again swiftly.
“Shit! Not that way,” she hisses urgently, gesturing to the person into whom she’d nearly run. “We have to keep moving.”
iii. waiting for a train
In the immediate security of the station, exhaustion slams into her like a wave. With nothing in the immediate vicinity to fight or from which to flee, the adrenaline flooding OA’s system seeps away, leaving her trembling. She realises abruptly that she’s cold, probably has been since she’s awakened but can only now feel it. Drawing the flimsy gown tighter about her helps not a bit but she does so anyway, pacing sluggishly to keep awake, to keep her blood flowing.
That she now has the space to consider her predicament isn’t much of a boon. Where is she? Never mind the... creatures, the monstrosities; this is nothing like the place she left and that should shock her, but it doesn’t. Maybe because she can’t conceptualize it yet, maybe because it doesn’t feel real. One of her hands finds her face as she walks, fingers tracing its shape – same as it ever was, shape and structure and texture entirely recognisable. But her hair, her hair is longer. She’d noticed that.
She paces. Everything, everything is changed. But her? Has she been? How long has she been out? What’s been done to her? Where are the others? Khatun had said amnesia was one of the side-effects of travel; is that what had happened? Has she jumped? Is it real? Or is she, somehow, dead? Is this the world she’d seen before, in her second NDE, that barren place with the strange, mechanical birds flying the sky?
OA stumbles to a stop, face contorting as if with pain, and squeezes her eyes shut. It’s too much. She thinks she must be in shock and it’s too much. She buries her face in her hands, retreats into her personal darkness.
“Breathe,” she murmurs to herself, heedless of anyone else who might be listening in. “Just breathe. Be here. All you can know is what you have in front of you now.”
iv. wildcard! (( Feel free to throw me a curveball or request a tailored starter! I can be reached at v__ or viveri#0501 if you want to plan something out. ))
The OA | The OA | OTA
That between-space, the imperfect oblivion, feels in a way like going home. OA floats in it, in that deep-sea black, weightless, aimless, meaningless. Lifeless. Dark recollections menace the horizon of her half-consciousness like predatory things, black on black, too indistinct to see and too fleeting to catch. All manner of things swim in the recesses of her memory, and plenty of them have teeth. That’s familiar too. What she wakes to isn’t.
It’s muddy at first, too slippery to grasp, the greater-than-contextual wrongness. The bodied wrong, beyond even the sluggishness of her limbs, the lingering weakness, that disconnect between intention and action. She spent years honing that connection, marrying intention to movement in a way more intricate, more intimate than can be accounted for by conscious thought; the distinction between then and now is obvious and disorienting, almost more so than the setting in which she finds herself.
In spite of the gown, it isn’t a hospital bed. That’s the first thing she notices, and it’s what stops her from calling out, because it too feels half-familiar in a way that sends dread pooling in the pit of her stomach. It doesn’t feel like a room and she doesn’t feel like a patient – it feels like a cell and she like a prisoner. She struggles fumblingly to her feet, furious with her limbs for their clumsiness. Fear. That’s fear. She can forgive herself the reflex but she still can’t forgive the reality, not until she makes it to the door and finds it unlocked. That the hallway is deserted and dark doesn’t matter: it’s more room to move, more room to breathe. OA allows her head to fall against the doorframe with a thunk, closing her eyes and taking in a slow, shuddering breath.
With agonizing, slow gracelessness she ties the gown as tightly about herself as she can and begins making her way down the hall, the fingertips of one hand feeling along the wall alongside of and just in front of her, more out of reflex than necessity. The dry scuff of her bare feet against the floor seems intrusively loud in such a bizarrely empty place. She moves through it tentatively, door after closed door empty, until it isn’t.
She freezes as another door creaks open, another lost soul in a hospital gown emerges into the hallway. Their eyes meet and OA knows how she must look: shellshocked, deer in headlights, though who could blame her? Given this new interloper’s manner of dress, though, they must find themselves in similar straits, and that makes the encounter instantly less frightening.
OA opens her mouth to speak, heart in her throat, and the alarm blares – she claps her hands over her ears and squeezes her eyes shut, hunching over herself until it’s gone and she can unfold into the new silence.
“Do you know where we are?” she asks in an urgent whisper, drifting closer to her new companion. “I can’t remember... I can’t remember what happened; I don’t know how I got here.”
ii. into the dark
The air is sharp and cold in OA’s lungs as she plunges into the dark. She can hear them behind her, the... things, the creatures, whatever they are – they aren’t right on her tail, but they’re in pursuit, and that knowledge is good. She holds onto it; it’s what she needs. The other thoughts – the desire to lean into the impossibility of all of this, to allow it to become unreal – won’t serve her. This is real. It’s happening. She can consider the whys and wherefores if she survives it.
With the sound of her own breathing ragged in her ears, distracted by the distant (not distant enough) sound of the creatures scrabbling and snuffling through the halls, she makes a mistake. Probably a lot of mistakes – there will be time to enumerate them later – but the biggest is to restrict herself to what she knows. She’s running, they’re chasing. What’s ahead of her is dark and that makes it easier to discard. She doesn’t reach into it, doesn’t listen ahead, and that’s what sends her hurtling blindly around the corner and into a near collision. She veers, losing purchase, and slips, falling onto the tile with a grunt of pain, but she’s on her feet again swiftly.
“Shit! Not that way,” she hisses urgently, gesturing to the person into whom she’d nearly run. “We have to keep moving.”
iii. waiting for a train
In the immediate security of the station, exhaustion slams into her like a wave. With nothing in the immediate vicinity to fight or from which to flee, the adrenaline flooding OA’s system seeps away, leaving her trembling. She realises abruptly that she’s cold, probably has been since she’s awakened but can only now feel it. Drawing the flimsy gown tighter about her helps not a bit but she does so anyway, pacing sluggishly to keep awake, to keep her blood flowing.
That she now has the space to consider her predicament isn’t much of a boon. Where is she? Never mind the... creatures, the monstrosities; this is nothing like the place she left and that should shock her, but it doesn’t. Maybe because she can’t conceptualize it yet, maybe because it doesn’t feel real. One of her hands finds her face as she walks, fingers tracing its shape – same as it ever was, shape and structure and texture entirely recognisable. But her hair, her hair is longer. She’d noticed that.
She paces. Everything, everything is changed. But her? Has she been? How long has she been out? What’s been done to her? Where are the others? Khatun had said amnesia was one of the side-effects of travel; is that what had happened? Has she jumped? Is it real? Or is she, somehow, dead? Is this the world she’d seen before, in her second NDE, that barren place with the strange, mechanical birds flying the sky?
OA stumbles to a stop, face contorting as if with pain, and squeezes her eyes shut. It’s too much. She thinks she must be in shock and it’s too much. She buries her face in her hands, retreats into her personal darkness.
“Breathe,” she murmurs to herself, heedless of anyone else who might be listening in. “Just breathe. Be here. All you can know is what you have in front of you now.”
iv. wildcard!
(( Feel free to throw me a curveball or request a tailored starter! I can be reached at