#10 - Lullaby

It sounded like the creepy tune of an old antique music box. The song wasn’t any classical piece Robin recognized but something completely its own, a somber bedtime lullaby.

She was in the dark, her feet bare, the floor feeling solid and cold as marble. She wasn’t alone, she could hear footsteps nearby, along with a strange modulated male voice, sounding as if it was filtered through a broken computer. It was humming along with the lullaby.

As she looked in the direction of this stranger’s sounds, she saw the bright light of an arching doorway shine out into the dark, and the silhouette of a man with an oddly shaped head walking towards it, his frame cast black due to the overwhelming glow of white.

“H-Hello?” Robin said.

She was afraid in a way she hadn’t been in a long time. It was a thing she had an easier time inflicting than swallowing herself. In an echoless void of darkness, her best choice was to follow the man towards that light.

The silhouette passed the threshold of the light and disappeared.

“Wait!” Robin shouted.

She started running for the same exit, afraid the bright doorway of light would close on her. Her bare feet slapping against the cold and black, as she ran through the dark in her oversized sleep shirt and bare legs.

Running into the light, Robin could feel the change beneath her feet, before she could even see her new surroundings, squishy, cold and chunky, like wet dirt. As the blinding light faded, she realized she was standing in exactly that.

Robin found herself in the middle of a hauntingly peaceful bog, brightly lit, not by sunlight, only more of that white serene empty brightness. Around her dead trees arched up from the soaked ground and murky puddles, every single one bent and tilted, only able to sprout broken fingers of wood. A thick layer of mist hung across the ground just up to knee-level.

The modulated humming returned. The strange man was walking only twenty meters in front of Robin, with his back to her. She could see him much clearer now.

It was a thin man, in a faded-black suit, which seemed custom tailored to fit his frame, narrowing around his waist. The bottom of his trousers and his black dress shoes hadn’t been spared by the deep mud he had threaded through before finding a more solid path.

His hands were covered by tightly fitted black leather gloves, the left of which clung onto the long brass chain of some sort of medallion, ornate compass, or antique pocket watch, which the man swung in circles beside him, as he continued to hum along with the disembodied lullaby.

The strangest thing about him, was what he was wearing on his head.

The odd head-shape Robin had noticed in his silhouette was some sort of weird hat the man wore, a big ball of white knitted yarn that lay atop his shoulders, out of the top left side of his head rose a singular pointy knitted ear, like a rabbit.

“E-Excuse me,” Robin stammered, as she fumbled through the mud with big steps approaching the stranger. “Hello?!”

As she got closer, the man’s hum stopped, and he turned around, revealing the front of his knitted plush head to indeed resemble that of a grandmother sewn rabbit.

The right ear, missing its stuffing, hung loosely across the rabbit’s face, swinging across its eyes, both of which were black sewn-on buttons. It didn’t look like there were any peep-holes for the man’s real eyes to look through his mask. The mouth was a thick black thread sewn horizontally in an irregular jagged sawtooth pattern.

“I’m-” Robin struggled to find her words, intimidated by the soulless glare of the mask. “I think I’m lost.”

The rabbit’s head tilted, its loose ear moving to cover one eye completely, before his modulated voice sounded from the mask. “Well, then I guess there is no point in telling you to get lost.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You say that a lot,” the rabbit paused. “Are you ever really sorry though?”

“I don’t know how I got here,” Robin explained. “I just heard the lullaby and-”

The rabbit raised its disjointed electronic voice, “yes, yes! The fucking lullaby. People keep showing up here because of it.”

He spread his arms in frustration and roared at the sky, “and we just can’t seem to shut the damn thing off!”

Robin followed the buttons’ gaze and looked up at the sky. In the empty white of it, she saw what looked to be a thick giant translucent tube floating completely still above them, it looked to be made of plastic, with ridges to make it bend without closing shut. It looked man-made, the type you’d see commonly manufactured at a smaller scale, but like this it looked eldritch and otherworldly.

A smaller tube without ridges wired itself across the sky. Robin traced it with her eyes to where it would end, and in the far distant mist she could just about make out what looked to be a massive floating IV bag.

“What is this place?” Robin said.

“Somewhere you’re not supposed to be,” the rabbit said, before swinging the chain around his hand for a few spins, until the locket crashed into his palm. “You’re supposed to lay low, pretend to be whatever you wanna tell your friends you are, and wait for us to invite you when its playtime.”

He clicked open the locket, revealing it to be a pocket watch, and tilted his large knitted head the other way.

“Won’t be long now,” he said.

“Wait, what do you mean, playtime?”

The rabbit’s buttons turned to her again, as the strange voice took on a tone of malice, “Wakey, wakey, Robin.”

The rabbit lunged forward with his free hand, grabbing Robin by the throat. Her eyes widened in surprise and she was in darkness again. This time however, the darkness was familiar, the light of the street dimly illuminating her room.

The relief of this all having been simply a dream quickly dissipated as she realized she wasn’t laying beneath her sheets, but on top of them. With a wriggle of her toes, she could still feel the dirt between them.

Robin grabbed her phone from her nightstand and looked at her legs with the extra light; dirty.

In a mania of confusion, she jumped out of bed, and rushed out to the bathroom to shower, unaware of Theo waking up in his tiny bed upon the living room table, who saw the light beam out of the bathroom door, and listened to the water in the shower go on. He decided it was best to keep quiet, and not ask about it the next day, assuming this was a private thing men had no business inquiring about. 

After a quick shower getting all the dirt off her, Robin climbed back into bed, she’d change the sheets the next morning, it was only the top of them that were dirt. She grabbed her phone and started furiously typing in the server.

Rotbeing — 03:42 AM

I just had a weird dream, but when I woke up, my feet had dirt on them from in that dream.

ChadBug — 03:48 AM

What?

Rotbeing — 03:48 AM

Chad hey
anyone else here?

ChadBug — 03:49 AM

What, I’m not enough?
Ouch
All murricans eepy right now ig
Did you hear the lullaby?

Rotbeing — 03:50 AM

Yes, how do you know about that?

ChadBug — 03:51 AM

Wr8 and her meltdown.

Rotbeing — 03:51 AM

I’m freaked, ok I’m losing it.
As if I the whole becoming a monster wasn’t enough, now there is a weird asshole rabbit in my dreams.
Or real dreams?
WTF WTF WTF

ChadBug — 03:53 AM

Rot chill
If you’re going through the same things, then maybe Wr8 wasn’t delusional.
Messed up and scary, but not delusional.
Could ask her

Rotbeing — 03:55 AM

No way
I don’t want to

ChadBug — 03:56 AM

I know but she might have answers.

Rotbeing — 03:56 AM

Answers that will try to steer me into shit I don’t want to.

ChadBug — 03:58 AM

got any superpowers?

Rotbeing — 03:58 AM

Bro
Take this seriously

ChadBug — 03:59 AM

I am
What about the games?
Did you hear about the games?

Rotbeing — 04:00 AM

The rabbit said something about being invited to play
You know what he meant.

ChadBug — 04:02 AM

It’s currently a rumor
Like an urban legend that sprung up this month.
Messed up games organized by shady people
Underground invite only
Killing tinies for sport

Rotbeing — 04:04 AM

How sure are you about those rumors

ChadBug — 04:05 AM

idk, some say the cops are hunting the freaks down.
Wr8 said she’d already played
You’re not planning on taking the invite, right?

ChadBug — 04:27 AM

Rot?

As much as she tried, Robin couldn’t fall asleep again for the rest of that morning. Her mind flipping back and forth on dismissing what had happened as a weird dream, to reminding herself the way she woke up proved it was more than that.

Maybe she had sleepwalked out of her apartment and ended up somewhere in the dirt, before making it all the way back without anyone waking her. She’d never sleepwalked before. Was that even possible while sleepwalking?

As the thought crossed her mind, a gut wrenched realization hit her. If she was sleepwalking how dangerous would that be to her friends. A half-conscious giant lumbering about the apartment, doing what came natural to it, doing what came natural to Robin.

She threw her sheets aside and swung herself out of the bed again. Storming towards the living room and turning on the light. She rushed to the table as sudden light, and the earthquake of her panicked steps work every single one of her friends up at five in the morning.

They were ok, they were alive. She hadn’t hurt them.

“What?” Oscar yawned. “It’s still dark out.”

“I’m sorry,” Robin said. “I thought, something bad had happened.”

“You have a bad dream?” Jade said.

Robin nodded, as she sat down on the floor beside them, leaning her back against the couch, “I worried I’m starting to lose it.”

Elias put on his tiny glasses, “I think I speak for all of us, when I say it’s very important to all of us you don’t.”

Jade frowned at him, “Since when did you become such an asshole?”

“It’s ok Robin,” Theo said. “You don’t have to worry so much. You’re doing good. I mean, this afternoon was maybe a bit…”

A pink glow appeared on his tiny cheeks as he thought back on the line that had been crossed that Saturday. Not Robin’s dark line, but a physical one. All of them had realized it in their own way. Their friend would no longer be a giant landscape in the distance for them to paint, but someone who could grab them, put them intimately close to her in a way friends usually didn’t.

“Theo is right, you are doing good,” Elias said, as if influenced by Jade’s judgement of him.

Robin could see he meant it, but also what he meant by it. He wasn’t complimenting her for being a good host, he was acknowledging the restraint she had exercised so far.

“Sorry, for waking you guys up,” Robin said.

“No Robin,” Jade said with a soft smile. “Thank you for caring.”

Robin left, back for her room, letting her friends pick back up on the sleep she couldn’t have. A few hours later she was sitting in the couch, gulping down her giant can of energy drink; her version of morning coffee.

The group was watching a Sunday morning talk show, with a controversial guest, Tobias Arkland, a pastor who had quickly risen to fame grifting off a religious angle to the Omen Glow phenomena. He was clearly taking his spot on the show as another opportunity to publicly debate his views.

His interviewer, a brunette in casual business attire was the first to speak, “I just don’t think we should be demonizing an entire group of people based solely on the fact that they’ve been spared from a terrible disease.”

“A disease, huh?” Arkland scoffed. “I’m glad you call it that, it shows just how desperate you vaccine junkies cling to your medical science mumbo-jumbo, even as the impossible unfolds right in front of your eyes.”

“You want science,” he said, “I’ll give you science. They’ve done studies into this, they’ve got numbers, you like numbers? You like looking into what the numbers say.”

The woman tried to keep her composure as she spoke. “The sample sizes of the studies you’re referring to aren’t enough to prove-”

“Oh, it’s never enough for you people. Leave the pattern recognition to the people actually paying attention.”

Arkland continued, “People with the devil’s mark are twenty-five times more likely to have committed a violent crime than the average person. Over 40% of them are in active therapy. That’s almost-”

“Are we judging people for seeing a therapist?” the interviewer said, with a smirk that told the audience she believed it to be a good retort.

“Let me finish. That’s almost double the national average.”

“Let’s not forget the case where the glow struck a prison,” Arkland said, “and left more than a quarter of its inmates immune. The largest instances of black marks during a mass glow event, and it happened at a prison.”

“Yes, I know about it. Correct me if I’m wrong but many of the wardens also received a black mark during that. Maybe if you’re arguing down this road, it might be worth including these figures of authority you like so much, into your demonization of these people.”

“If they’re marked black; they are demons,” the pastor said. “They are no neighbor of mine.”

“Sir, I think you should be more careful with that inflammatory rhetoric, given how it might influence people to commit acts of violence against innocent-”

“The Omen Glow is the devil’s work, and it is the devil’s children who are spared from it. I wouldn’t trust someone with that mark anywhere near my wife or my children. And in a world where so many people find themselves weak and defenseless by unholy magnitudes, I think we should be a bit more attentive to the signs we are given. Thank you, ma’am.”

“Sir-”

“Thank you, ma’am.”

Arkland had clearly gotten across everything he wanted to say, her retorts didn’t matter to him, only the airtime to list his own talking points.

Robin put down her can on the table, the weight of what was still inside sending vibrations through every tiny nearby.

She wondered, was he right? Sure, if she were only looking at herself and Wr8 it checked out, but those were the only two examples she had right now, she had never gotten close enough to another person with a black mark to tell. Harm and QTpopper would probably add to the pool of examples, if they were really like they claimed to be, like her, but they had never been caught inside a glow to a mark.

The idea of it though; the thought that there were really others out there with monsters inside them like Robin, that they could be recognized by their mark, counted in studies. It would mean she really wasn’t as alone as she always believed herself to be, but was that a good thing? How many of them managed to control it? How many of them even tried?

“Checks out,” Oscar said, as he turned to Robin with a shit-eating grin.

“What?” Robin said, caught off guard.

“You can be a little psycho sometimes,” he said, playfully.

Theo happily chimed in, “I mean, you were pretty scary yesterday!”

Jade gave a squinted smug grin, “Our demonic little devil child.”

“Little, huh?” Robin said, hiding her worries behind a confident smile that attempted to overpower Jade’s.

Elias wasn’t commenting on what he heard, to him it was a new fact to keep in mind, one he knew to be true. People with Robin’s mark were dangerous monsters, and if the Omen Glow continued, sadistic psychopaths would one day inherit the earth.

They spent most of their Sunday lazily watching TV, and as the following week went on, this new dynamic began to settle into the early stages of normalcy. The boring work days mostly following a repeating pattern of Robin leaving them in front of a giant screen, and coming home too worn out to do much.

Robin lamented the fact she couldn’t just prop her feet up on her table anymore, undress or leave a mess at her leisure. Maybe that could change in time. Perhaps she could train the little bugs to just get used to her stink, or get used to her half naked body strolling by if she just pretended it was normal and went on despite the comments she might get. They’d probably like it anyway.

Maybe Harm was right, maybe she could get a hold of things. Leave the morbid fantasies to the imagination. Maybe she had simply been too self-loathing, too distrusting of herself. Causing her to make untrue conclusions about where she would and had to take things, conclusions that had hurt someone whom she might never fix things with.

With each passing day she grew more confident of that, more trusting of herself. This monster wasn’t going to touch her friends.

It was Thursday evening when the package arrived at her apartment complex, the one that reminded Robin what world she now lived in.

It was a small cardboard box, the size of a tissue box. The problem was Robin hadn’t ordered anything, the package felt light, and shaking it didn’t seem to move anything inside. It was an unsolicited package from a complete stranger. Robin was stupid to bring it upstairs. An idiot to sit down in front of her tiny friend’s encampment to open it.

“Ooh, what’s in there?” Jade said.

As she flipped open the cardboard flaps, there was a thin strip of paper atop the bubble wrap with a message. And a tiny crimson spot of something which had dried onto the paper. Robin’s heart sank, as she carefully turned the paper around inside the box, so her friends wouldn’t see the bloodstain, and read the message.

“Really wish we could’ve done this together, but U coping,” it was signed off with a heart and the name ChainedWr8.

Oscar tried to peer in on his tippy toes, which was still a foot too low, “So, you gonna show us what’s in there?”

Robin carefully dug her fingers into the bubble wrap, carefully pushing it aside, until she froze up completely, “No…”

Elias saw the look on her face, that mix of morbid fascination and dread, “Robin, what’s in there?”

Robin looked out above her friends’ heads, her eyes wide with her attempt to disassociate from the moment. She expected herself to cry, but didn’t, and hated herself for it. Her lip quivered.

Elias shouted at her, “Robin, what’s in the box?!”