The Remnants of a Spiral

Chapter 1

The apartment was quiet and sulky, the bright sunlight outside could barely permeate the single double window at the end of the long, rectangular room. Everything besides the desaturated, teal sofa below the window and the adjacent coffee table was covered in a film of greyness; the oak floorboards at the opposite end of the home where the front door sat, waiting patiently, were devoid of enough light to hide the specks of dirt and mud that had accumulated on them from countless footsteps going in and out. The walls appeared dull, they were undecorated and plain, the drywall a little ways away from the door, abused by the doorknob, featured a clear dent. Though, how was anyone to notice it, when the short hallway was so far away from the single beam of light? 

The door creaked, bumped against the wall and shut once more. A brunet stumbled in, leaning back on the door with a dazed exhaustion. They swallowed, their throat and lips dry, and entered further into the depressing apartment. Leaning against the smooth edge of the kitchen counter, they gulped down a glass of water, reflecting on how rancid of an idea it was to think they could spend a day at work without a sip of water. Alongside that, the short brunet pondered about the silence in the apartment; were they alone? 

Unfortunately, before they could even make an assumption, that proved to not be the case.

Their feet were suddenly no longer making contact with the floor, having been grasped beneath the armpits like a child or pet and lifted up into the air. One foot, two feet, almost three feet up… 
"Whatever were you doing, Byrd?" Asked the familiar, soft and high pitched voice, laced with cruelty that was poorly hidden behind it's acute over-excitability. 
"Um, uh-" 
A terrible, headache-inducing shriek of laughter rang out, "Oh, silly, I always know what you're up to!" What had taken hold of Byrd was a tall man in pink, with blond hair that had too much volume and covered nearly half his face, whose features were somehow wrong- the eyes too big, with too little sclera and too much iris, the nose too small, the lips stretching into a grin that was wider than what they should've been capable of stretching into. And all too close, and a little too scrunched together. 

"Tell me, was your little retail work goood?" The blond drawled, taking long steps out of the kitchen, still staring at the face of the brunet in his grasp. But no matter how much the strange white pupil of the large, pale blue eye bore into Byrd's green ones, they couldn't bring themselves to speak. 

"Hm." He hummed with disappointment, and promptly let go of Byrd, who dropped to the floor with a yelp. 
They stared up at him, making feeble efforts to crawl away backwards from the man. But, no man had legs as long as what was in front of Byrd did. No one's calves and thighs were like that, as if they were pulled and stretched to be longer, thinner, inhumanly so. What was before Byrd, looming over them with those dreadful, slumped arms that hanged because they were just too long for the body they were attached to, was not a man; or a woman, nor anything else a human could be. It was a thing. 

Byrd slowly gathered courage, carefully starting to lift themselves off the hard wooden floor. A combination of apprehension and slight relief had made them sweat, and their glasses fogged up, white cloudy walls forming at the inner corners and the bottoms of the lenses. 

"Well, what was I to expect from you anyway?" Byrd received a push, nearly a kick from the gangly thing; their glasses slid off their face, but just barely hung on by the tip of their nose. They looked up at the blond again, making poor attempts at calming their nervous, shallow breathing. While they looked confused and afraid to a degree, the expression on their pale face mostly gave the impression that they wanted to be confused, that they wanted this to be an unfamiliar situation, to convince themselves it was one that they hadn't found themselves in before, one that was strange, unusual, uncommon. 

"You look dumb." It uttered in such a tone that sounded as if it considered its own words greatly important. The thing lifted a hand to its head, its oversized, concealing sleeve sliding back to reveal a large, spindly hand of pinkish fair skin, with thin fingers that just seemed to keep going. It walked past Byrd, its fingers running through its locks of long, variously textured blond hair that gradually turned tawny and then carob at the curly ends, sitting down on that sunkissed teal sofa that it had long since claimed as its own. When did this all happen? What was this? 

Byrd got up on their feet, stumbling a little in an almost drunken manner, they slowly raised themselves upright and carefully watched the mockery of a human look-alike that was using their furniture. He didn't have a care in the world. 
With the same cautious, patient movements, they manoeuvred towards the stairs that lead to the loft. They were practically right next to the coffee table, but usually nothing happened when they were trying to get upstairs. At least not these days.
They reached the base of the stairs, made of wood and each step essentially seperate from one another without a solid base. One foot on the first step, and they were fine. Slowly, the other foot jumped to the second step. Byrd stopped, and checked behind them for a second; the gangly figure's attention wasn't on them. They continued, one foot after another. This had only taken a couple of seconds, but it felt like minutes had passed. The brunet dragged their feet into the loft bedroom, taking a moment to look out the only other window in the house. The view was subpar compared to what the blond downstairs got, a decent view of the city and the buildings across the street, as opposed to some strange angle from the side of an apartment. Has their house always looked like this? 

They couldn't spare the energy to think a question like that through, instead opting to kick the shoes off their feet and lay down in bed. Laying on the neat but definitely not fresh covers, Byrd stared up at the ceiling, their face expressionless yet clearly recovering from the shock; how did this all begin? 
Their fingers clenched the fabric of the duvet, the tiniest bit of frustration springing forth from the resurgence of memories within their head. Though when one's mind is numb, a miniscule irritation can feel overwhelming at times. 

It was out of their control, it wasn't natural, it didn't make sense, they weren't trying to make it happen. 

That day… When all this started, and everything went downhill.