Time was stagnant.

Basil spent days in solitary contemplation, millions of thoughts running through his head at every second. There, in that red box, he sat in silence. Unmoving, unblinking, and on a wooden bench that was inexplicably out of place. Somewhere in the real world, Something had its tendrils wrapped around his body. It moved and jerked him around like a puppet on strings, using Basil’s voice to speak. It spoke to Polly. The police. A doctor. A psychiatrist. His (friends???). It danced his body around, happy to fill a role that Basil could not.

Something had grown exponentially in the past few days. Basil blinked, breaking out of his stupor to look around him. No matter where he looked, Something looked back. Its many eyes dotted the red walls of the room, bulging, and never in pairs. Basil made the wise decision to close his eyes, though it was useless. There it was, staring at him through the back of one of his eyelids. It seemed to have wormed itself into his body, not that he was surprised about it.

It wasn’t fair.

Basil tightened his grip on the steak knife. Where did it come from?

Basil forced himself to open his eyes. The tip of the knife hovered over his right eye. Without a second thought, he brought his head forward to meet the blade head on. Immediately, his vision flickered as a spray of warm, red blood splashed onto his hands. It didn’t hurt. Curiousity getting the better of him, Basil decided to twist the knife around in his eye socket. It created a strange sound, a sort of soft scraping that wasn’t entirely unpleasant to the ear. A small stream of blood made its way down his face and dripped onto the floor. It was a darker shade of red than the floor, so it stuck out sorely.

When Basil looked up from the floor, he found himself face to face with someone. A thin, gaunt man with dark hair and skin so pale that it could have been bleached. A sharp pang shot through Basil’s head as he struggled to comprehend the figure in front of him. Why was he so familiar? Why couldn’t he remember? The more he thought about it, it seemed, the more it hurt. The sharper the pain, the brighter the room.

The man had an eyepatch covering his right eye and was dressed in a hospital gown. His face was the very definition of neutral. Basil started shaking. His legs and arms wouldn’t stop trembling. Forward facing and with an unbreakable stare, it seemed like he had an ultimate poker face.

Basil’s breathing grew more laboured. The shaking kept getting worse and worse. Tremors overtook his entire body, as if there was an earthquake happening. Behind the stranger, Something began to manifest. Basil wanted to scream. He wanted to warn him. He wanted to jump up and pull him away from Something. He wanted to save him.

“stop shaking stop shaking stop shaking STOP SHAKING”

Both of his legs bounced up and down, terribly out of sync. He pressed his arms down on his legs, but that didn’t help at all. Out of the corner of his left eye, he could see the handle of the steak knife bouncing up and down, still stuck in his other eye. The stranger stared at him.

Silently.

Judging.

He was disappointed in him, wasn’t he? No, more than that. Basil could sense it. The aura of utter resentment that emanated from the figure was so intense that it bled into the air. Despite his blank expression, it was clear that he held nothing but utter contempt for him. Basil started crying. He didn’t want to be hated by him. It tore at his very being.

“P-Please. Don’t hate me. Don’t hate me, I just wanted to help you. I’m sorry! Forgive me.” Basil choked. “Forgive me… I… I need you.”

The stranger turned around. Something wrapped itself around him, obscuring his figure from view.

“No! Please, n-not again! Don’t leave me… I’m sorry!” Basil screamed. His voice echoed within the confines of his red chamber, his useless apology repeating itself hundreds of times. He could feel it. The hatred. The sheer weight of it pressed on Basil, oppressing him, destroying him. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t see. Why couldn’t he remember who that person was? Why did he feel such an utter, overwhelming need to remember?

His life depended on it.

With a strangled sort of yelp, he yanked the knife out of his eye and threw it at Something, who remained impassive, continuing to hide the stranger’s body from sight. The knife simply went through it, not affecting it in the slightest.

“Wrong. So wrong. This is wrong.”

Something vanished.

The stranger stared at him. The steak knife was embedded into his stomach. The stranger stared at him. A dark, almost black liquid dripped from his mouth. The stranger stared at him. Trails of blood dripped from his scalp, leaving behind smoking crimson stains that burned. The stranger stared at him. Something reappeared behind him. The stranger stared at him.

Basil tried to apologize.

Basil felt the bench that he was sitting on begin to burn. Smoke filled the room. He couldn’t breathe. He dug his fingers through his blonde hair, scratching at his scalp and pulling out loose strands. The fire burned. His skin began to melt into the bench, which was already turning black. It melded and stuck to the wood at an alarming rate. And yet, it did not hurt.

“Wrong. It’s wrong.”

The fire spread to his clothes, flames jumping and dancing at the fabric, at the fuel. It didn’t take long for his hair to get caught as well. His entire body was burning. It was burning, and the room was red, and Something stared at him, and the stranger stared at him, and it was still wrong. He looked at his hands. The flesh was melting off, He could see small pools of blood through the holes in his skin. It was boiling. He was boiling.

A picture. He was dead. His decapitated head sat in front of an elevator, surrounded with a pool of blood. He deserved this, didn’t he? That’s why the stranger was staring at him. The knife was still in his stomach. He wished, oh how he wished, that the stranger would pull it out. Basil needed to say something. Anything. But when he looked down, he saw that what remained of his jaw sat on his lap, nothing more than bones and flecks of curled flesh. He ran his hand through his hair and came back with a fistful of black, matted straw. When he brushed it off, a few of his fingers decided to come loose as well.

It didn’t hurt.

Aubrey knocked on the door. One knock, two knocks, three-

The door opened.

“Ah!” Aubrey yelped and pulled her fist back, just barely managing to avoid slamming her fist into Basil’s face, though she did manage to graze a few hairs. For his part, the boy didn't even flinch. "B-Basil! You, uh… I didn’t expect you to answer the door so quickly.”

Basil smiled. “Oh, hi Aubrey! Can I help you? I was just about to head down to the Othermart and pick up some gardening supplies. Polly’s there too, getting some ingredients for cooking so I was just planning to meet up with her. As of recently, my flowers haven’t been doing too well… I might be losing my touch, huh?”

Aubrey stared at him as if he had just grown a second head. All in all, what he said seemed perfectly normal. That is, if it weren’t for the fact that his best friend had jumped off a building less than a week ago. Basil seemed completely inconsolable at the hospital, remaining unresponsive and not eating or even drinking anything. And yet…

“Right... I was just… checking up on you?” Aubrey said cautiously. “You know, after what happened…”

“Uh-huh.” Basil nodded. “How are you guys doing, by the way? I haven’t gotten the chance to get into contact with any of you-sorry about that, by the way-and to be honest, I’m kind of worried about how everyone's been holding up.”

“What-”

“You know, if any of you need someone to talk to, I’m always here. I may not seem like it, but I’m a great listener!” Basil suddenly gasped and stepped backwards. “Oh, I’m sorry, I should have invited you in! Do you want to have a seat? A drink? I think we have some tea left, though we’ve been running short… ah, I’ll probably have to grab some more when I go shopping.”

Aubrey slowly stepped in, expression unreadable. She took a seat at the couch and looked on as Basil started boiling a kettle of water.

“Anyway, have you been doing alright?” Basil suddenly asks, back turned. “Sunny was a good friend of yours. Of all of us. To just lose him so suddenly…”

“I… I don’t know.” Aubrey looked down. She hadn’t been expecting this, at all. To be honest, she was anticipating to find a broken Basil, stuck locked in his room. She… felt guilty. For a long while, she had been treating him like absolute garbage, and even getting her other friends in on the act. She figured that… Well, maybe Basil would need some support, after everything that’s happened. It was obvious that his mental state wasn’t very stable even before what happened between him and Sunny. And in the back of her mind, she had that sneaking fear of “What if?”

What if Basil had enough? What if Basil decided to just stop trying and… and…

No. She couldn’t lose another friend. Not so soon. Not so quickly. She wouldn’t let it happen.

But…

She felt a familiar flash of anger strike her. She looked on as Basil took the kettle and poured the steaming water into two small cups. Carefully, he placed a teabag into each one before taking them and walking to the couch where she sat. She silently took the cup that Basil handed to her, though she kept staring at Basil who sat across from her.

“Why… Why are you so calm about all of this?” Aubrey asked in a tone bordering on accusatory. She felt tears begin to form in her eyes, but at this point she was beyond caring. “Sunny just… Sunny is dead! And he jumped off a fucking building! Right after you two had a fight! Now he’s gone! He and Mari, they’re both gone! And you, you… You look like you’re doing better than before! Why? What happened?”

Basil tilted his head. “Aubrey… Don’t get me wrong, I cared deeply for Sunny, and still do. But I’ve mourned. That isn’t to say I'm over it or anything, but… I’m just trying to move on. That’s what Sunny would have wanted right? And Mari too. We shouldn’t get stuck on this bad memory forever.”

“Forever?!” Aubrey snapped. She slammed the cup down on the low table in front of her, hissing as the hot water splashed on her skin. “Sunny stayed locked up in his room after Mari’s death for four years! YOU spent those four years isolated and being a nervous wreck! No shit we should try to move on, but… you… It sounds like you don’t even care!”

He frowned. “Aubrey, please calm down.”

She clenched her fists. Closing her eyes she sat back down and breathed in… then out.

Right.

Different ways of mourning, right? Like Kel. He looked like he got over Mari’s death pretty quickly too, but that was just on the surface. He just had his own way of coping, which happened to be different from everyone else’s. Don’t make the same mistake twice. Basil definitely cared about Sunny, right? They were best friends. Don’t be so rough on him… again.

She opened her eyes.

“But… still.”

Basil smiled at her reassuringly and took a sip of his tea. He met her gaze without hesitation, and held it unwaveringly. His posture was completely relaxed, as if they were talking about the weather or something.

“It just seems..."

"Wrong.”