Sometimes, a peculiar thing happens when it’s clear you’re in danger. Grave and terrifying danger, danger you’re unable to do anything about. You have thoughts that seem just entirely unrelated to presently occurring events or tenuously linked at best.

For Tedrick, that thought was about this very idea. There was probably some fake-sounding German word describing it, like Whatenfucken or something. “Intrusive thoughts” was close but not quite the same.

Thinking about thinking. He was thinking about how strange it was to think such confusing thoughts at a time like this, with a situation like this. Why the name of fuck was he thinking instead of, oh who knows, getting away from the danger? Was this what a “deer in the headlights” reaction was like internally?

These are what the thoughts running through his mind were like as he stared at himself through the glass of a door that he couldn’t pass through - but apparently had passed through anyway, and somehow without opening it. He could have sworn he did, but the door was old, as old as the house it was attached to, and broken for generations.

It was stuck in place fast, and they couldn’t find anyone who could open it without doing some damage, an unacceptable condition. The door somehow yielded open to him with ease when he opened it to investigate the strange floating mirror that appeared in this alien room in his familiar home.

Though perhaps “mirror” was the wrong way to describe it. It was far more like a thousand slivers of glass, each one drifting around in tiny circles. The gentle mid-air collisions made a “shhh” noise, like a dense seashell curtain set upon by a breeze.

Through these manifold little mirror shards he saw what was undeniably himself through the glass door to this room, still closed even though he never shut it behind him. Ear length black wavy hair, tanned skin, and honey-colored eyes and all… there he was, eyes empty and dull.

But he was not looking at his paralyzed body in his wheelchair, instead, his eyes found purchase staring at the monster that stood behind him.

At what couldn’t be but was.

It made him feel like he was straining his eyes just looking at it. As if the very light in the area fled from it, and it was the brave remaining few bits that he was left to see with.

A creature tall enough to brush the ceiling with its head, at least nine feet, stood there without a sound. A... something, a tall, spindly something, with flesh more like a twisted tree with gnarled knots for joints and one, two... four sets of arms ending in thorns at the three ends of three-fingered hands, all sets coming out at odd angles. Sometimes it seemed like more, sometimes less, all thanks to its unearthly form.

It had a mass of smaller roots like you'd see at the bottom of small lawn plants coming out from below the bottom set of arms roughly mid-body, obscuring whatever form of locomotion it had.

Oddly, its head was nowhere to be seen, just a tall twisting, knobbly… Trunk, almost? It was like someone took a young willow and made a monster of it. But if he focused he could see something in the small roots. Something like a hollow in a tree, big and round and empty with a thick ridge of bark-flesh around it.

Like a demonic mop, his mind helpfully summarized, trying to pull up some courage from somewhere deep in himself. It didn’t work. He never was very good with humor. At least, not in a way anyone else appreciated.

He couldn’t feel its presence like one might a beast with its fur touching you, despite its proximity to his immobile body, but in a faint way, he almost could. It was like imagining a sensation, like when someone describes a feeling, or when you swear that hair that brushed across your arm was actually a spider, and you feel it continue all the way down.

But in that imagining, it was damp, and muggy, like a swamp in the summer.

There was a breeze it seemed, moving the small roots in short but visible bursts, though the air conditioning and fan were both off. Its movements were so inhuman and jerkish, like some b-rate horror movie villain that still managed to haunt your dreams even though the animatronics were twitchy.

The odd eye… hole… Thing… was clearly looking at him, though, not his body. Could it see the mirror, too? Probably…

Whatsenfucken.

That wasn’t German, of course, but he did wonder what the word for that would be. Would he get the chance to find out?

The thought brought a faint, distant sense of panic, but it was like an impact through a thick weighted blanket. Even the memory of it was transient; he could notice it if he tried, but why would he want to? As if in response to this cowardice, one of the thing’s entirely too many arms rested its hand upon his head. It was rough like bark as it seemed to get a grip on the top of his head.

The hand, though, felt like a ten-pound weight just fell right on top of him. A weight wrapped in a live wire, the way it made him feel. Burning not-quite-pain rushing through him, from his head to his toes. Once the sensation completed its trek through his body, he felt himself slipping, falling as if pulled by gravity. Not to the ground, but backward.

Backward, towards the floating glass.

Towards whatever happened next.

What happened next was breaking. Shattering, splintering into a million pieces at the same time as the glass. It was almost like he went from seeing with his two human eyes to what he imagined a fly or spider saw, multiple complete individual images that overlapped. Unlike these creatures, though, he saw, he felt more of them than he could count. This could be described as “disorienting,” but while it wouldn’t be an incorrect word, it didn’t stress the severity of the sensation. “Maddening” or “traumatizing” might be more on point.

This soon, thankfully, ended. Oblivion embraced him and not a moment too late. It didn’t seem to last, unfortunately, with him waking up in flashing glimpses.

The room he was previously in, but like he was viewing it through a hole from far away.

Somewhere that looked like outer space, but full of colors, and the stars seemed to strobe, pulse, and move. But it didn’t feel how movies and recorded videos of space seemed to be at all, bore no resemblance to the description of astronauts professional or amateur. He felt watched.

A sky with multiple smaller moons, no less than five but fewer than fifteen. They were all different colors and sizes, and on one or two of them, he could swear he saw straight lines. How strange. Nature didn’t do that. More than that, there seemed to be something bigger in the sky. Not a star, but a… Planet? Was this a moon? The larger astral body was varying shades of orange, like Venus, but seemed to have bands of blue most akin to Neptune.

Before he could properly count the moons or rings, he was out again. He could have sworn there was a voice. Then he felt a strange compulsion, something about higher powers. Taken by nothingness once more, the chilly air of wherever he just was… vanished, and was replaced by a feeling of yellow.