Reverie [The Distortionist x reader]

Chapter 8

(Art by cakesdown on Tumblr)

You're lost in a world of funhouse mirrors

Twisted for eternity

-----*-----

You are everywhere. In every crevice, in every fold. Your face is reflected infinitely across eons of a cracked world, spreading only black and white. No other colors exist.

No, this isn't true. You feel the same as if you were only one; you aren't omnipresent. You reach out your hand. Many others move around. These are mirrors. Once your finger touches a piece of slick glass, it touches a mirror image of itself. You can see the reflection's finger poke your own. You can swear you feel the tip of a finger, too.

The image is blocked by a stream of red trickling down, breaking the monochrome. Blood. You quickly retract your hand, smearing the substance on the mirror.

The red refracts on all the other mirrors. The red is as infinite as you thought you were. It drowns you with the smell of iron.

You close your eyes. If the red clouded your vision any longer, you'd go insane. So you pretend it isn't there.

A slow creaking coaxes you to open your eyes. There are no longer any mirrors, and there is no longer any blood. In front of you, there is a wooden door, like the one leading into your office. As you look to either side, you can see the same door repeated forever. It only goes horizontally, though; it's as if you can see absolutely nothing on the vertical axis, not even an empty black.

With nowhere else to go, you open the door immediately in front of you, just a little. All the others fade to nothing, starting with the farthest away. The growing haze finally consumes every door except the one whose knob you were gripping.

You open it wider. A blinding light shines through the breach but fades to a bearable brightness the wider the door swings. Even so, once you saw what was inside, you almost wished it stayed bright to cloud out the universe it contained.

Madness is the best word to describe this indescribable world. Not the colorful madness like your last dream, but a violent, malevolent kind. Its aura overwhelms you from the get-go, freezing you in place as your fight-or-flight malfunctions, your heart beating fast.

A hand reaching for yours breaks you out of your anxiety-induced trance. It came from behind you, from beyond the door that brought you here. You rip your clammy hand away, stumbling further into the evil world. The floor inside is unreliable, so you almost fell through, about to be lost with no escape. The same hand you rejected gripped you, just barely saving you.

"You're not supposed to be here, [Y/N]. Let me bring you elsewhere."

A shock goes through you, starting at your hand and quickly dominating your body. This would usually cause you to freeze, but you go limp instead. Your vision glazes, returning to a peaceful and familiar state of black and white.

-----*-----

You wake up feeling relaxed, despite the nightmarish elements in your sleep. Sitting up in your bed, the blankets pool around you. You stretch.

A meow catches your attention. Missy has entered your room and climbed onto your bed, carefully stepping over the tall folds in your blankets. You coo and scratch behind her ears.

"Oh... You have a cat."

Before you can figure out why the voice was male while your household was all-female, you instinctively turn your head to face it.