The Sleepwalker

Part Three: 7̷͉̙̓͗ͮ

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What was his name? He didn't even remember. Where was he? What was he? Even the simplest answer was foggy, since he hadn't seen anything but the orange glow from inside the infernal helmet they had on his head for a few days now. Was it days? Who knew? Who even cared? He didn't. He stopped caring a long time ago.

But one day he felt a weird sensation... people in shiny black suits, like armor... they came and pulled him outside his room. He'd been hanging from his chains in his cell.... his cell... a prison... in space... a small four-walled room that was aways cold, like he was, on the inside. He had not walked anywhere in quite a long time. Walk... he hated that word. Yet the word Walker sounded familiar... sleep... walker...

"Shut up!" He said.

"No, you shut up!" He also said,

"You're so mean," He said, as he began to cry.

"At least I didn't kill all those people!" He said.

"No! That never happened..." He said.

He felt something being put into his neck and then felt numb. Not asleep, he hadn't slept in a long time. He didn't move as he body was loaded into a trolley and tied down. He knew this, even though he couldn't see it. How? He couldn't remember.

Next thing he knew he was sitting in a chair, something he couldn't remember doing in a long time. Tied from all angles of course, but he remembered the feeling of that quite well.

"Were you happy?" He asked himself.

"I enjoyed killing them. I did."

"No you didn't!"

"I did! I did, I did, I did, I did, I did!"

He began to sob profusely. The lack of sleep has caused him to lose his marbles, or at least lose all the ones that the monster inside him had already stolen. That, combined with only the memories of his bad actions, had convinced him he really wasn't human. Was he, after all he'd done?

Without warning, the orb that had encased his head for so long split, folding outward like a flower. Light from above blinded him, considering that he had been in the orange light of the orb for a long time. How long? He'd had it since he got here, which was only a few days ago. Or was it? Who cared, really? A few days... twenty-eight years... both the same amount of time.

Once his eyes adjusted, he saw only a wall in front of him and many steely chains connecting him to the walls. Of course, he had about three seconds to look around before his psychotic side kicked in.

The walls began to drip blood. A turret off to the side became a man who had no face.

"WHAT have YOU done?!" He shouted.

"Kill, kill, kill, kill!" He shook his head violently.

"WHY?"

"Don't be ashamed of your actions, embrace them!" He began to laugh. And laugh he did, for three whole minutes. You see, without sleep one begins to lose touch with reality. Eleven days has been the max, but the Society has been able to chemically induce a state of never sleeping.

"So silly!" He told the turret.

"You are very!" The turret said back.

Sadly the one-sided conversation abruptly stopped as the center wall, made of the same shiny white tile as literally everything else, was pulled up and toward the ceiling. Reality pulled back into focus as his eyes looked at the blue box at the other side of the room. It had been long since he had read anything, so the big blue 'POLYBIUS' across the top of the box looked more like a bunch of lines.

He stared at the box, waiting for it to move. Five minutes passed, with nothing happening. He began to laugh once more. Was this a funny situation? No. Was he still going to laugh? Yes. Over twenty therapists decided to probably voluntarily disappear after working with this particular divergence. Now you should understand why.
Long had the voice in his head depart, replaced only by his own mentally shattered state of mind. But suddenly he heard it. Like a whisper to his ear, incomprehensible yet so clear. He stopped laughing and began to shiver, eyes darting.

"Play along fool."

He jumped a bit. It was Joe. Or Jason. Jake? Jack? He couldn't remember, but he knew he'd heard that voice before.

"I don't know what the Society's playing at, but... by Pepper's soul, what's happened to you?"

"Shu... Shhhh.... Shut up!" He said, shaking violently.

"I've been silent for a long time now, shut in this broken box of your head, and you want me to become quiet once more? I want to be freed."

"AND I WANT TO BE ALONE!" He began to pull on his chains, causing them to tighten. After that, the voice left him alone, per request.

Silence ensued for about nine minutes before he was suddenly and abruptly falling. This was not like his other hallucinations, because this time a blue box was falling in the dark beside him. On its screen, it displayed the words 'Press Start,' but he didn't do anything since he couldn't read. So the box tried a different tactic.

As he and the box fell through the air, surrounded by what seemed to be clouds, two other skinny figures appeared. A skeletally thin purple one appeared to be asleep, the other oil-flesh one had its eyes on him.

"I want to be freed," It said with no mouth. "Let me go."

The man began to stress, which seemed to be what the box wanted, because the land around them went jet black again as they picked up speed, falling toward some inevitable ground.

"Ben? Is that you?" The box rumbled, the voice sounding deeper and louder than the voice the falling man was accustomed to.

"Ben? Ben isn't here!" He said, eyes unfocused.

"Dead, die, death! Ben is gone!"

"Then who are you?" The box pushed harder, trying to establish a mental link between it and the Sleepwalker. It could care less about Ben.

"You... don't care about me?" The man began to cry. Seems like the link opened both ways, which means the box was getting somewhere.

"No, I do, I do need you. And I care. Do you want to sleep? To walk once more?"

"Sleep... Walk... Er...?" The man began to shake, again. "Please no, please, please no!"

The box rumbled out a sigh. This was harder than putting a human to sleep. But the box was still thankful that Hazard pulled through. It wondered what lie she concocted to get the Warden to give the box an audience with the Sleepwalker. Maybe one day the box would actually do as it promised to her. It didn't plan on it.

"Don't you want to sleep? To finally rest?"

He really did. And for the first time in what felt like his entire life, he felt tired. Sleep wasn't just in sight; it was in reach.

Suddenly, they stopped falling. When he opened his eyes, he saw that they were floating above a restless but empty sea. The box stood ahead, the shadow monster still stared at the man, and the final form, a purplish inky figure laid on the ground.

"What is going on?" The familiar voice said, sounding genuinely confused.

"I'm... going to go sleep." Ben said. Everything seemed so clear, he remembered and could think.

Jack's breath caught.

"Freedom?" The black shadow monster said, attempting to lay a hand on Ben's shoulder. But the box, Polybius, pulled Ben away from Jack's grasp.

"No, Sleepwalker is mine." It said.

"Idiot, I am the Sleepwalker! You'll just hurt Ben! Let me... go!"

Polybius still held Jack back, or pulled Ben away, it was impossible to tell.

"I don't care about the person! I care about the power, and it is mine!" Polybius rumbled. Jack switched tactics and began to walk toward the machine rather than Ben.

"You want power?" Jack hissed, " My power? I'll show you power..."

Ben had stopped looking at them, shifting his attention to the third form that had begun to stir. Ben approached, but suddenly the Polybius machine shifted Ben's perspective so that the arcade machine was standing right in front of the man rather than the purple thing.

"Ben! Listen to me, and give me your power! I can help you escape, as payment."
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Ben, the purple shadow now forgotten, thought about Polybius's trade.

"That's it? I want more. I want to know where he –" Ben spun and pointed at Jack, who still floated high above, arms and legs splayed like a star, "came from."

Polybius rumbled as if it were laughing. "Simple enough. Think back to your childhood. Remember it? No?"

Ben furrowed his brow. Nothing about his time before the Orphanage came to him. He chocked it up to just having a bad memory.

"No, you don't. But Jack remembers. Because he was there while you were not. At the age of... let's see here... six, you made an imaginary friend. His name was Jack. You based him off of so many different fictional characters, each considered 'cool' in your tiny, dumb brain. He comforted you for years to come, until... well he can tell you the rest."

Ben looked up to Jack, who's empty face stared back, silent. Did he remember this? Or was he just as clueless as Ben was?

"He's absolutely speechless. Your father left. Mother fell into a stressed frenzy, trying to care for you. Ben could not handle it, so at times he'd pretend to be cool Jack, just to cope with the trauma and drama. Reality soon became muddled with what Jack saw and thought. You single handedly crafted your own split personality, only that shouldn't be possible. There seems that there was an underlaying factor... A power that you should not have.

"Jack eventually went independent as you grew older and forgot about him, crafting his own set of personal emotions and personalities that he called 'Others', which essentially made him indistinguishable from a human. The clashing of two souls created a dark power inside of you, one I want. Jack may be crazy, but in all honesty I'd say he's nothing compared to the other one."

Ben looked around, confused. "Other one?"

Just then, he heard someone - or something - groan behind him. "Oh man, been a crazy few years, amiright?"

Thinking it was Jack, Ben spun and found himself looking right at the purple monster, only now it was much darker. And it had a mouth filled with triangular teeth. That was definitely not there before. Even though it had no eyes, it still stared at Ben like he was a yummy treat.

"I had to rip you away from both personalities in order to actually have an intellectual conversation with you." Said Polybius.

Ben pointed at the purple thing, unafraid now that the initial shock had worn off. "This is what was making me go crazy?"

Before Polybius was able to answer, the purple thing spoke in a low but somehow cheerful voice.

"Hah! Imagine that. Me, make you go crazy? Heck no. I am your crazy! After you killed those weirdos back in Peppers shack, I was born! At first, I was only a thought. From there I grew into this quite handsome figure. One could call me a conscience." The purple thing took a step toward Ben. "I'm all your regret, anger, pain and fun rolled into one really big snowball," The purple thing tapped his chin, spirals of smoky purple haze drifting off with each tap, "granted, it's more like a snowman, but who's to say?"

By now, Ben's fear had returned and he had taken a few steps backwards.

"Few more steps, Ben, that's all we need." Polybius said from behind. Ben was pinned, giving him only two ways out: to the sides.

"Tick tock, what's your play going to be? For years now I've grown and matured. I want to see what I waited for," The purple thing began to reach out with a thin and long arm, "but I'm not going to waste this opportunity..."

Jack strained against the mental shackles and broke free. Polybius sparked as Jack ran and tackled the skinny purple monster to the ground with ease, since Jack was much larger than the creature. Jack, holding the thing by the neck, looked up at Ben, emotionless and empty face somehow projecting sadness. "Run! Get out of here!"

How Ben was to escape his own mind, he didn't know, but he began to do as Jack said and ran. It felt so normal, so grand, to run once more. Being locked up in a cell for what felt like eternity, hanging from chains and forced to never sleep, with jets of water being shot into one's eyes instead of blinking, now doing something that he used to do back when he was free was refreshing. That was, until he looked back just in time to see the purple creature wrap spirals and cords made of the same fleshy material he was made of around Jack. The black monster struggled, but the purple one only laughed in delight as the cords tightened and pulled Jack near.
Then he was gone. The last of the black was absorbed by the purple.

In response, the waves below calmed for a few moments just to be stirred back up as the purple creature began to convulse, evidently fighting with Jack inside it.

"Ah, finally." The thing slowly drew itself up to its full height and sighed, voice deeper than before. "I apologize, I'm always a bit psychotic before my first meal."

It turned to Ben, as if making sure he was still there, then it spun to Polybius.

"Mmm, I'm always up for a twinkie." It said as it walked toward the arcade machine, which began to frantically plead for its life. "I'll deal with you later, Poly. For the time being, would you be so kind and GET OUT OF MY HEAD!"

Polybius disintegrated, blue pixelated ashes falling past the invisible ground and into the waves below. Whether the arcade machine was dead or just gone, Ben couldn't begin to guess. Mostly because now the creature was actively and slowly walking toward him, a grin still on its face.

Ben went pale and began to slowly back up. When the body is in shock, it's difficult to do anything. The adrenaline makes the body jittery. Fear turns the legs to jelly.

The purple thing sped up but still seemed to be taking its time to approach. Its body was no longer skinny, Ben realized, but laced with sinewy muscles and half of its form seemed to just melt into many spiraling hazy lines.

It truly was born of a shadow, the shadow being Jack.

The silence as it came near was enough to make Ben deaf. Not even the waves made a sound as the purple thing stopped a foot away from the man.

"Don't hurt me..." Ben stuttered, looking right into the purple mess that was supposed to be a face.

The purple thing tilted its head like a confused dog. "Hurt you? I would never."

Ben tried again. "Don't hurt me. Walk away."

"Hah. You think you can control me? I'm not like Jack, I took what I wanted from him and got this great new body. You created me, and now, after many years of torture, I am finally Aware."

"I never tortured you!"

"Sometimes memories are the worst kind of torture. That is why you shoved them all deep down and created me to cope. You can't control me. I am fully Aware."

Ben felt his skin get cold. "This can't get any worse, can it?"

The thing - Aware - chuckled mirthlessly. "I'll take that as a challenge."

Cords shot out from Aware and wrapped around Ben, who gave a few weak attempts at breaking free but still failed.

"Let us see how you like being a prisoner of your own mind. Only this time, I'll make sure I won't keep feeding you with guilt."

The last thing Ben saw was the waves of his troubled mind becoming absolutely calm as Aware personality became the only personality.

They were both well aware that it had, in fact, gotten worse.