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When you wake up inside of Robert’s projection, everything is pitch black and silent. Even if you’ve been here before, it’s hard to avoid the sinking fear of something gone wrong, leaving your soul adrift in the sightless void for eternity…
But slowly, shapes start to take form. You see the wardens and your fellow prisoners, glowing in strange neon colors as if lit by a massive, invisible blacklight. You don’t feel like you’re floating, yet the ground at your feet is indistinguishable from the empty black surrounding you. The door you just came through has vanished completely.
It takes a few minutes of your eyes adjusting for you to spot a glimmer of something else in the darkness…
A few meters away, just barely visible, lies a red rose.
All alone in the darkness, it looks a bit lonely and dry– a loose petal falls as one of you picks it up. There’s no gift tag or anything to indicate who it belongs to, but somehow… you get the feeling you need to keep this with you, all the way till the very end.
As the rose leaves the ground, there’s a sound like a bell, and a flicker of red light beneath you. Like a will o’ the wisp, it flits away, leaving a glowing trail behind. What choice do you have but to follow? It’s not like there’s anything else to look at here.
Following the trail around an invisible corner, your surroundings grow almost imperceptibly lighter. There seem to be walls and hallways, though it’s hard to judge the scale of them just yet. Against a far wall is another speck of something in the distance…
On approach, it turns out to be an envelope, glowing an eerie shade of blue. Written on the outside in neat, curly handwriting are the words “For Anthony.” No path forward shows itself when you pick it up, though. Maybe you have to open it?
The notebook paper inside is covered in writing, but it swirls on the page before you, only sometimes forming into words. You blink a few times, trying to find something to focus on… no, wait, if you unfocus… It seems the shapes of the words are telling the story as well, the letters themselves forming into impressions of figures and scenery.
A young man kneels on the ground, holding another in his arms as sirens flash through the window. Arms that read Sorry. Sorry. I know you’d say it’s not my fault, but–
Periods and semicolons drip from the prone figure’s head at an alarming rate. The doorway to the left is empty now. In that space– What if I’d told him first, like a man? Instead of hoping he wouldn’t find out?
A group of people rush through the doorway with a stretcher– EMTs, presumably. They have to pry the two figures apart, frozen in shock.
Maybe he would’ve shot me instead. I guess that’s not an improvement. At least you’re alive…
There’s another sound, softer than the bell from before. You look down. Another fleeting light traces a path through the darkness.
You can now see the dim outlines of doors as you pass down to the hallway. They don’t have signs, labels, or even handles, and they won’t budge as hard as you shove on them. Still, the sheer amount of doors and the layout of the place so far… If you’ve ever been in one, it reminds you of a hospital.
After some time, the light in the floor leads to a purple clipboard, its clamp stuffed with– sure enough– medical paperwork. But once you pick it up, the words start to swim again…
Anthony Ward, 23, male. Admitted at 4:37AM, May 26th, 2015. A crowd of figures in lab coats made of parentheses stands restlessly around a hospital bed. A heart monitor flashes with Vs and carets.
Injuries require reconstructive jaw surgery and enucleation of the left eye. Damage to brain indeterminate at this time. Patient appears to be comatose.
The young man from before sits dazed by the window as the doctors rush past him… until a large arm grabs him by the wrist and pulls him away. You have a sinking feeling.
A dull ring, like a gong, and another stream of light lead you to a crumpled ball of yellow paper. It resembles the lined paper in the envelope from before, but it almost seems to resist being unfolded… Are you really meant to read this? There doesn’t seem to be a path forward until you do.
Most of the words on this paper are crossed out, like the author just doesn’t know what to say.
The images are disjointed flashes of things– a young boy flinches from a looming shadow, fighting back tears. An empty bottle falls to the floor and shatters. A woman tries to smile reassuringly, while hiding half her face. A father, mother, and son sitting at the dinner table in dreadful silence. The glint of a revolver in a doorway. A calendar with an X on it, and a shotgun hanging over a bookcase.
The images fall away to a single sentence, scrawled in the center of the page with enough force to gouge the paper. I won’t let him hurt anyone ever again.
A path lights up again, but it only travels a few feet before stopping short at an orange newspaper, folded neatly, about ten years old. The headline on the front of the paper is clear:
ACTOR JOHN MCCAY FOUND DEAD IN MANSION FIRE, SUSPECTED SUICIDE
Opening the newspaper, however, tells a different story.
A man sits in a chair, his eyes obscured by the brim of his cowboy hat. Behind him, a young man shakily presses the barrel of a shotgun to the back of the headrest. Though the medium of newspaper typeface collage doesn’t allow for much detail, you can still tell these two are the spitting image of each other.
You only have a second to make sense of the shapes before everything explodes into letters and punctuation. They sink down the page like flakes in a snow globe.
When you fold it back up, there’s another little bell sound, almost jarringly cheerful. The orange mote of light guides you around another corner, and things start to look brighter. Is that… music in the distance?
Continuing the neon paper trail is a program in green. On the ground, it indicates the order of events for an extravagant televised funeral. In your hands, the letters twist again, printed text mixing with the handwriting on the back…
A disheveled woman sits at a table, with the young man from before at her side. We don’t need him, Ma. I’ll get another job. And when Tony gets better, he can help too…
A bittersweet chord plays, and a light trails out once more. You won’t need the guidance for much longer, though– there, to the left at the end of the long, long hallway, a door stands open, shining bright.
There’s still plenty of things to look at on the way, though. Little gifts and cards and memorabilia strewn across the floor, more as you get closer to the light, every gift tag and label reading the same thing: “For Anthony.” As the environment grows brighter, it also becomes easier to read the actual texts, through the swirling and the phantom shapes.
Among the items you pick up, you find:
A “Get Well Soon” card with a little orange cat on it. Well, I don’t think the pizza delivery job is working out. But I heard my muse today, for the first time since… you know. Maybe I’ll write a song for you, and that’ll wake you up?
Several small sheets of notebook paper held together with a binder clip, with lyrics and chord charts scribbled upon them. Soooo it might have turned into an album. I know it’s not the psych rock duo album we always wanted to make, but… well, I hope you get a chance to hear it.
Another “Get Well Soon” card, this time with a bouquet of flowers. Remember when you said I should grow out my mustache? Well I am, and it looks pretty good. Maybe you’ll get to see it soon. It’s been six months now…
A teddy bear with a big red bow, and a Christmas card tucked under its arm. … A Christmas kiss didn’t wake you up. Maybe I’ll try again on Valentine’s Day.
…There’s too many letters to read them all. And it seems like you’ve reached your destination.
Passing over the threshold into the hospital room, the ethereal music swells, and you see the source of all light and color and life in this dismal place.
There, lying on the bed, draped in white cotton sheets and surrounded by gifts of all shapes and sizes, is a man. His skin is freckled and pale, his face is gaunt and partially covered in bandages, and his mop of curly red hair spills across the pillow. Just an ordinary man, not particularly striking or handsome– but at the same time, he shines so brightly it’s almost hard to look at him.
Sitting next to the bed like a guardian angel is the Muse, their fingers brushing tenderly through the man’s hair. Leaning against the wall beside the window is the Sheriff, his arms folded, tense and standoffish as always.
Judging by their voices, neither of them seem particularly concerned about waking up the patient.
“Hm? Visitors again?”
"…What did y’all see this time?
