Chapter Text
It hurt not because he was facing the sublimation of all that is divine, but because he had to look away. That he wasn’t yet destined to embrace the being that embodied every blade of grass, every grain of sand, every drop of water.
He wants to crawl into the screen, press his fingers into the reflective glass of his computer and fuse with the King on the other side.
All he can do is stop and stare, gaze in awe at the otherworldly sight, somehow lessened and diminished by the screens high quality graphics, rendering set to the max. Frozen in devotion, in instantaneous soul consuming worship [Redacted] leans forward, hand trembling on the mouse as the sight draws him in.
He knows, oh how he knows with a rightness in his very soul, that the King will accept him with open arms, will cocoon him in the soft cloak that serves as an extension of Itself, a living limb. It will wrap him in all that is warm, all that is soft and all that is right. (But not now, not yet. That thought alone makes him want to sob, to weep at heaven taken away from him).
In that moment, [Redacted] grieves not the inevitable future, the certainty that he had succumbed to human curiosity, but the fact that he isn’t yet able to embrace the singular point in the universe that all earthly creation stems from.
He turns away, the last act he can manage with his indomitable human will, the very last thing that will bring him closer to his purpose, his reason for existence. He runs fast, going as far as he can through the right tunnel, fingers trembling as he holds down the left button on the mouse, using; of all things, a squid ink sac to break through the stone.
The message with his items had already been prewritten in his inventory, the strange compulsion that overtook him and made him jump into the water also influenced him to place certain items in different squares in his inventory. He couldn’t explain it but at the time it felt right; poetic almost, to arrange his inventory just so.
Hastily, sweat slicked fingers fly over his keyboard to write the message to Avery, spelling and proper punctuation the least of his concern. Even as a small part of him falters, wondering whether his hurried warning will only fuel the flames of curiosity, he still has to write this message. This is the only way. The task that will allow him to fulfil his purpose.
The coded message follows with a string of numbers flowing through his mind, digits mixing with dashes until his last and final warning is finished.
It’s futile, hopeless, an endeavour for his own peace of mind and the last act of the indomitable human spirit. It hurts so much, agonising pain sweeping through his body and making him lightheaded.
With a gasp befit of somebody ripping their own arm off through nothing less than sheer strength of willpower, feeling the bones shift and strain and ache in protest, he clicks off the game, saving the world and logging out.
It’s not enough, not nearly enough but this is the path he must take. Its still watching, still peering over his shoulder as he edits the video, making sure nobody can see the Kings face, or any of Its inhuman body.
Click click, tap tap.
He drags the black box over its form, concealing it behind the gates. He tries to avoid direct eye contact, ensuring through his peripheral vision that the box conceals all there is and all there will be.
Finishing up with the editing, he takes a sip of water from his water bottle in a futile attempt to calm his racing metronome of a heart.
The water tastes yellow somehow, liquid sunshine warm and soothing against his parched throat. Absolution offered as casually as a cup of melted gold.
He saves the videos, putting them into the google drive folder and uploading to the cloud. With a final sip, he places his water bottle down, hovering the mouse over the reset and reboot button on the laptop. [Redacted] gags, nausea wracking his body, tears springing unbidden to his eyes.
It feels blasphemous; like sacrilege, to even think of erasing the King In Yellow, those wondrous doors wiped from existence. But he knows that the King will not die so easily. No, with his fickle human hands it would be as futile as fighting Fate itself.
[Redacted] refocuses on the screen, watching it go dark, wiped clean. Well… not completely, but Avery wouldn’t know that.
He quickly packs his bag, bringing his laptop and nothing else. The house is silent as he leaves, yellow sunlight streaming through the open windows and bathing him in dappled light.
Occupants of the house long forgotten, [Redacted] closes the front door and takes to the car, his hands settling onto the steering wheel - muscle memory. The vehicle is an irrelevant make and model with one purpose, to deliver him to his next destination.
His mind is hazy, blank as he drives, nothing but the sound of his own steady heartbeat filling the enclosed space. Ah, thats right, the storage locker.
Hidden in plain sight in an anonymous location with rented space, a warehouse on the outskirts of the city filled with people’s forgotten items. A place nobody would think to look for a hidden god.
He enters the building, tracing his well worn keycard and ignoring the larger lockers. He moves forward, through the rows of lockers ten meters wide, down to five, down to one… and there.
A row of grey, unassuming lockers in an indent in the back wall of the warehouse. Small compared to the others as they are mainly used for storing documents, or in his case, a laptop. They blend in with the wall perfectly, barely visible save for the tiny white numbers for categorisation. He bends down, opening locker 25512121523. A seemingly random string of numbers that he solves almost instantaneously thanks to the swirling mass of knowledge consuming his mind, digging tendrils into the creases of his brain.
The A1Z26 encryption. A simple code that serves its purpose of reminding him how present the King is. It is everywhere, everything, all stretched in an infinite loop of past present and future.
It’s laughable, almost not worth solving because of how obvious it is. A poor excuse of a puzzle from one who has all knowledge. But the purpose of these numbers is not the act of solving the puzzle, merely the final result. It is simply a message, a reminder.
25... Y.
5 is E.
12 and 12 are L and L respectively.
15 can only be O, and 23 is W.
Y
E
L
L
O
W
…He doesn’t know how to react, or what to think.
It’s almost funny if the implications weren’t horrifying. But then… how would it be possible for the King to manipulate objects in the real world? Hide a message in the number on his locker as a show of… What? Power? A reminder of his infinite knowledge?
[Redacted] knew that the King wasn’t truely free, was biding his time in streams of code inside digital technology.
This… shouldn’t be possible. The knowledge that he had couldn’t be wrong. The King’s power came from the overwhelming, all consuming truth, so it would make no sense to plant a false narrative in his mind.
The other possibility is more grim, more realistic and potentially the true explanation. Because [Redacted] very distinctly recalled the fact that his locker number had been the same from the beginning.
His memory was almost photographic before the King, now it was perfect. The fog clouding his mind when he looked back into his past; an unavoidable byproduct of being human, had cleared. Even his oldest memories had been easy to recall perfectly thanks to the King, every conversation, every action, every thought and feeling that he has ever had now accessible.
And he knew for a fact that 25512121523 had always been the number on the plaque of his locker.
He had memorised the number without even realising its significance. When he had bought the storage locker; still young and impressionable, he had been drawn to this one in particular, the number drawing his eye. At the time, he needed an extra space for documents, deeming his desk at home too messy to handle more papers.
He had walked past this row, stopping in front of this locker just as he was now.
“I’ll take this one” he had stated to the employee guiding him, giving a noncommittal answer of why he had chosen this locker in particular. He had brushed it off as a coincidence, as a strange feeling rectified by the fresh air on the drive home and hadn’t thought much about the reason for his admittedly odd action.
It was odd, now that he thought about it, to choose a locker six from the end, more so on the left hand side of the row. Not centred, not on one of the ends despite those lockers being available.
It was just another example of how he had been fated from the start to go down this path. Six, of course. Six letters in the word Yellow. Even back then, he had chosen to go left, choosing the locker on the left hand side.
This time, he opens the locker. He deliberates for a moment, staring at the empty space before putting his laptop inside, leaning it against the left wall of the locker.
Despite his warning to Avery, his frantic typed message the last thing he could do to protect him, [Redacted] had already chosen this path.
At the crossroads don’t turn left.
Turn left. Turn left. Turn left.
Always left, now and forever, because that was the path he was meant to take all along. The path that would lead him back to the King. Back to the purpose of his existence.
He closes the locker, turning left and walking away. In exactly a year and six months Avery will open it, finding a used laptop. He will reboot it, deciding to keep it for himself. He will download Minecraft, puzzling at the preloaded world, but deciding to play in it all the same.
[Redacted] pauses at the exit, taking in the employee roster on the wall, eyes drifting to a blank space below the other meaningless names. Months later, Avery’s name would join the roster as a new employee, given the task to allocate lockers to customers. Customer service, a simple job with a very low chance of accident or injury. At least, under normal circumstances.
One could classify what Avery would experience as a horrible accident, no mortal should ever have to encounter something so beyond them. But [Redacted] knows now, there’s no such thing as accidents.
In the beginning, Avery will be content with his role, efficiently working with customers and learning the process of managing lockers.
Despite that, Avery will become curious. Will wonder what people left behind in lockers stacked up to the ceiling. Will volunteer to clean out the lockers that hadn’t been opened for more than a year, contacting the owners but in the event of no response, would be allowed to keep what’s inside.
At the end of a long shift, Avery will unlock locker 25512121523, the last one on his list. Finding a laptop and nothing more, he will decide to do the right thing. He will contact the owner, receiving no response. He will speak to his manager, who allows him to keep the laptop as its already been wiped clean, no trace of anybody needing it.
And that will be Avery’s part in the future. Unavoidable despite the countless warnings he has written. Set in stone.
His hand twitches, the instinct rising to take the laptop out of the locker and run, far far away until Avery will never know him. But he can’t, for the future has already been predetermined. This is his path. This is Avery’s path. This… is the future.
He closes his eyes, swaying, leaning against the left door frame of the exit of the warehouse. A patch of sunlight bathes the floor beneath him in light, growing and deepening in colour until yellow fills his vision.
He falls, part exhaustion part deliberate action, the patch of sunlight swallowing him whole. Cocooned in Yellow.
[Redacted] disappears from the face of the earth not with a scream, not a cry for help or even a sob, but with a sigh. A sigh of relief that something long awaited has finally come.