Chapter 10. no one Laughing in the Background

He squirmed out from under the bed on his back, the sharp tug of nails on skin following the curve of his spine. The black box was clenched in his hand, cradled now as if it were something living. Something that had been born here. Something that remembered him.

And then—a jab.

He winced.

It felt like a needle sliding beneath the skin of his bicep, not piercing it—but threading. He flexed, and the phantom pain remained. Dull. Lingering. As if a long-forgotten IV drip had been yanked too fast. The air itself pressed tighter around his chest with each breath, thick like waterlogged cotton, bitter with the sting of copper.

He blinked. Once. Twice.

His thoughts were trying to leave him.

Whatever had just happened—whatever strange machine he'd heard from beneath that bed—his mind… simply didn’t want to carry it. It was like trying to cup fog. The memory of it slipping, smearing, washing away into a gray slurry.

No.

He grit his teeth, clutching the box tighter.

Step 2.
Offer your Hand in Union.
("Don’t let the fish distract you.")

His eyes turned—
The bathroom.

The only place where something had truly looked back at him.

Yes. The room with the broken tiles and sunflower wallpaper. The room where the animatronic bass fish hung like a failed joke—bloated and glassy-eyed, singing only to haunt. That grotesque puppet, centered perfectly above the shut toilet, mouth agape mid-sentence, dead mid-performance. The place with ink-draped vines and the slow, tar-slick drip from the shower.

If there was going to be a test of union—if he was meant to offer something—then this had to be the place.

He stood still a long moment in the doorway. One step inside and the light shifted again—paler, yellower. The kind of glow you only get from aged bulbs and old hospitals. The same light that shines right before grief takes hold.

And the fish—oh, the fish was waiting.

Its bloated face stared down at him. Plastic. Paper-mâché. Eyes too round, too close together. Not meant for motion. Its soft cheeks hung like overfilled sacks of dough, its plastic tail curved as if it had been laughing once.

He dared a glance back down to the journal.

"Offer your hand in union."

He looked to his hand.

Still bandaged from the earlier tear, still red beneath where blood had soaked through cloth and feathers. His left hand. The same hand that had touched the book. The same hand the ink had clung to.

He brought it close to his chest. Held it tight.

Now where? The fish? The key?

He scanned the room again, slower this time—really feeling the layout. The stall, the walls, the vines. The dripping pipe. The oddly pristine toilet, unmoved and unbroken. The linoleum warped from time, and yet the center so… untouched. Undisturbed.

And there. There. At the base of the toilet, half-masked by overgrowth of ink-black vines and water stains—a thin, silver rod jutting slightly from beneath the porcelain.

A handle? A switch?

No.

A lever.

One just large enough to be turned by a hand.

He didn’t move yet. Not immediately.

He simply stood.

Breathing.

Watching.

Because this was a test.

And nothing in this room would let him try twice.
--

He climbed the porcelain throne like a child mounting a stool at the grown-up's table—awkward, knees knocking, balance wobbling with every groan of plastic beneath his boots. He had to steady himself by gripping the towel rack, rusted and bowed like a broken flute.

Higher up now, he squinted into the air above the bathroom. It didn't help.

The atmosphere was still sick with that old sterile light—yellowed, paper-thin, and humming with the exhaustion of forgotten places. The vines along the shower glistened like veins, pulsing slightly, and the air smelled like dust, breath, and the inside of a toy chest left too long in the attic.

And then the fish clicked.

It clicked before it spoke.

The jolt of mechanical teeth grinding behind cloth skin.

“WELLLL LOOK AT YOU—”
the fish hollered, voice slurred with static,
“Crawlin’ back up on the potty throne! Here to try that special little trick again?”

He blinked up at it, frowning.

“That’s right! Deep-dove for the button, didn’t ya? Elbow-deep in fish guts like a starved gator at a piñata party. You oughta buy me dinner first, sweetheart!” it chuckled, gurgled, some of its innards flashing blue light through its cheek.

The man didn’t respond.

He’d heard worse. From deeper voices. Colder places.

The silence confused the fish. It shifted—gears grinding—voice dropping from comical mockery to a thin, eerie curiosity.

“…Heard ya died.”

A pause.

“Or maybe you’re just a ghost now. Hollow man. Ooooh… memory boy. Maybe that’s why you don’t flinch. You forgot the part where it hurts.”

Still he said nothing.

Then the fish leaned into venom.

“Or maybe you’re just used to it. That it, huh? Used to diggin’ deep in everything soft and living? You Holokon-lovers are all the same. Grabby little freaks, ain’t ya? That one you left behind? Hah—what a mess. She’d take it again. She’d let you. Just to get touched.”

The fish let the words hang like a moldy curtain.

“She’s an easy woman, that one.”

He blinked.

But his jaw twitched.

That...

That hit a nerve.

His fingers curled. The plastic underfoot creaked. His eyes stayed fixed forward, unblinking, locked on the horizonless wall beyond the mirror. The fish still chuckled behind him, spitting rot with each click of its motorized throat.

He opened his mouth, ready to snarl—ready to spit and scream and shred that damn puppet with his bare hands. But—

He stopped.

Because something clicked louder.

In his memory.

“Don’t let the fish distract you.”

Right.

He breathed out. Slow. Measured.

His eyes drifted sideways.

From this height… something new. Just barely in view.

There, above the edge of the medicine cabinet and sun-faded tile—

A small window.

Just a square. Dusty. Simple.

Beyond it: the thick green shrubs—that glow from outside. Lush, weirdly alive. Breathing in rhythm with the pulse of the vines.

The window was no wider than his forearm… but maybe just wide enough.

Wide enough to slide a hand through.

Wide enough to offer something.

He stared at it a long moment. Felt the words of the book flare in his mind like a ghost’s whisper.

Step 2: Offer your hands in union.
(Don’t let the fish distract you.)

He took another breath.

And slowly—hand trembling, bandage stained, knuckles aching from the day’s cuts—

He reached for the window.

YANK .  Something Grabs back.