Inside the Company: Chapter 3: Time after Time

The Brig is always in such a pristine condition. It is very strange to me. I never saw any cleaners or anyone else who’s not in a suit for that matter. Everyone here looks like they had business to attend to. They rushed about in a mechanical manner, like clockwork. I wouldn't have been surprised if all these people were actually made of metal.

Today, Mr. Green told me to familiarise myself with the area. Since I will be staying here for a while, I thought there would be no harm in at least scouting for a potential means to escape. It was a very brief conversation, it seemed that Mr. Green needed to be somewhere else as he was frequently glancing at his watch. He muttered something about ‘Red’ underneath his breath. I wonder what he meant?

Anyway, I was told to have a walk around instead of hiding in my cell. I was staying in my cell because I was afraid of two things. One, if there were any reflections out there that could lead to the Man in the Mirror coming for me. And two, since the Company was collecting Entities like Man in the Mirror, maybe something worse could have been waiting for me outside.

Outside my cell (well, it is my room but might as well be a cell), there was a long corridor of similar rooms. My guess is that they were the rooms that subjects like me would stay in once they have been screened through for safety reasons. The corridor’s floor and walls looked like they were made of the same sort of mysterious material as the room I met Mr. Green in. The floor and walls were seamless, you could barely tell they were separate.
I walked along the corridor, looking for something to do. Or maybe someone to talk to. Then, I heard a voice.
“Hey, you over there!”

I turned to where the voice came from and it was a man in a blue suit and a yellow tie. His suit looked slightly ragged and his tie looked like it came from a thrift shop. From what I saw, I could tell that this person had no fashion sense.
His hair was light brown, slicked back and looked somewhat greasy. In one of his hands was a brown leather suitcase. Frankly, he looked like he either stepped out of a strange period piece or he was a really confused pimp.
I decided to cautiously walk closer. He was the first person other than Green who spoke to me. Somehow, I had a bad feeling about this. He looked strange but his mannerisms, his posture, and his expressions seemed genuine. I felt that I could trust him despite that itching feeling in the back of my mind.

When I was close enough, he reached out his arm and offered a shake.

“Hi there! My name is Mr. Yellow. Pleased ta meetcha!”

Instinctively, I grabbed hold of his hand and shook it. Mr. Yellow? Is he another founder of The Company?

He smiled after the handshake and continued to talk.

“You look really anxious. Do you want to leave? I can help ya get out of here! It is very simple. Anyone can do it!”

I looked at him in utter confusion. Did he just say that anyone can leave? Then, what would have been the point of all the subterfuge and secrecy?

“Ya don’t believe me? Shame. I could help you get out, ya know.”

I decided that I might as well take the chance and I placed my trust in him.

“Well, what is your way out? I hope the way out isn’t in a body bag.”

He snickered, “Psh, nah my friend. All ya need to do is look for Room 116. You’d find an artifact there that can help you get out. And don’t worry, this probably isn’t gonna kill ya.”

“Why are you telling me this? Why do you want to help me get out? Aren’t you a founder? With the colour name and all?”

“Uh, yeah! I am a founder of The Company, ya know. I just wanna help ya because ya look really stressed. Do you miss home? I am sure ya do!”

“Actually, I can’t really remember… anything before I got here aside from my encounter with my Entity. Since you seem to be a very nice person, would you mind telling me what is going on? Am I going crazy? Am I forgetting everything?”

“Nah bruv! Ya’re just slightly sloshed is all. Your mems will come back soon, ya know. Don’t wanna go back to a home ya don’t remember so better get to the room and use the artefact soon!”

I smiled. No matter how sleazy this guy looked, he had a certain aura around him. I felt that I could trust him. I don’t know why I did but I just could. But in hindsight, I know I shouldn’t have.

When I walked away, I swore I could see a hole in the back of Mr. Yellow’s head, covered up by the slicked back hair. I decided to shrug it off and started to look for Room 116.

It was surprisingly easy to find. All the rooms in the main hall were very meticulously arranged. There were no errors and no strange maze-like patterns. The plaques in front of each door were very prominently displayed.

On the door was the large plaque, emblazoned with ‘116’ and there was another phrase on the door, ‘Time after Time’. I decided to shrug it off as the strange naming thing that they’ve got going on around here. Much like how they named my Entity ‘Man in the Mirror’.

I reached for the knob and it was unlocked! I was in luck! I pushed the door open carefully as I looked around to make sure nobody else could see me.

The room inside was dark and heavily contrasted with what I felt while walking around the Brig. The room had the scent of smog, oil, and rust, like a factory that was abandoned and condemned for years. There was this oppressive feeling that what I was about to do was very wrong. As I walked closer to the pedestal, each step weighed on me with warning bells in my head screaming for me to stop. It felt as if there were arms reaching out to pull me back outside.

The notion of getting home made me push through all the negative emotions as I reached the pedestal. A green pedestal with a golden pocket watch.

The pocket watch was very finely crafted with winding snake-like patterns entwined around it. Upon closer inspection, they weren’t just snake-like, they WERE snakes, carved into the gold with emerald eyes. The button to open the stopwatch had a glistening emerald, dazzling off what little light there was in the room. It was a spectacle to see and would make a great snatch for a daring thief.

How could this help me get out? I looked at it, wary to touch it.

Eventually, I caved in and picked it up. I pressed the button to open it up and I saw that it was not wound up. So, instinctively, I thought that winding it up would do the trick and do whatever it needed to do to help me. That was my mistake.

I twisted the knob to the right and suddenly it felt as if the world just stopped. The air was stale and there were no sounds. I pocketed the watch and walked outside of the room. The Brig was in complete darkness. The once-spotless walls were now tainted with black soot and dark green moss.

On the floor, there were dried bloodstains. What the hell happened here? Am I in the mirror dimension? I thought as continued to walk around looking for any sign of life.

Suddenly, I heard a low growl. It sounded somewhat mechanical, like the revving of a chainsaw. Despite that, it still felt like an animal. Then, I smelt it. The dark scent of decay, the smell of a rotting corpse that I am all too familiar with from when I saw my reflection’s body.

I turned around and I saw it. It looked like a man but completely naked, crouched in the corner munching on something. It was bald, hairless and skinny. He reminded me of those pictures of POWs in World War II. I slowly stepped back, not wanting to alarm the creature.

It continued to munch and crunch. In between the crunching noise, there would be the occasional squish. I felt both disgusted and scared. I continued to shuffle back to increase my distance with this creature. Then, CRACK!
I looked down at my feet and I stepped on a bone, a human bone. Then, I saw the creature’s face. It looked human but was severely disfigured. Its eyes were sunken into its skull, you couldn’t see much of an eyeball but rather just a slight glint in the darkness. It didn’t have a nose but had sharp slits where the nose would have been. The strangest thing was its jaw, it looked like it was a slab of metal, hastily rammed into his face.

I also managed to see what he was munching on, he was eating a human head as he dropped it, spilling blood and brain matter all over the floor. I swear I also saw the head’s eyeball dangling out of its socket.

Since the creature had already seen me, I decided that trying to be stealthy would have defeated the purpose. So, I decided to make a run for it and hope that whatever that thing was couldn’t catch up to me.

Just when you’d think that the scariest part of the creature was its appearance and eating habits, I heard its call. It is an ungodly screech, like nails on a chalkboard mixed with scraping metal, all the while being guttural and animalistic.
Then, my hurried footsteps were not the only sound in the empty Brig as I heard the scuttle of the creature’s nails scraping against the floor as it charged at me. The way it ran was so unnatural, it was like a limping chimpanzee. It was hobbled over and stumbled slightly before regaining its balance to continue its pursuit.

I picked up a bone I found on the ground and hurled it at the creature, hoping to distract it for a moment. Unfortunately, it was dead set on rushing at me. I continued to run. And run I did.

After about a minute of running, I began to feel out of breath. It wasn’t the normal lack of breath, I felt more tired. I felt my muscles began to tense up. I felt as if more and more weight was put on my more and more weakening joints. Eventually, I couldn’t handle it and I stumbled and fell over.

Thankfully, the creature was nowhere to be seen. I didn’t have time to ponder where it could have gone, nor did I really care at that point. I was too… tired. I looked down at my arm and I saw that I have gotten wrinkly. My skin was loose and crumpled. There were dark spots sporadically appearing on my skin. I scratched my head in confusion and a clump of white frayed hair fell off.

I gasped in shock as I began to have trouble breathing. It felt like as if my lungs couldn’t support the air that was coming in. At that point, it dawned on me. I was getting old. I was dying.

Dying of old age puts your life in perspective. At this point, I thought to myself of all the things I wished I could do. Normally, they’d say to not die with regrets but at the point of death, even if you’d think that there was nothing left, there’d always be something. Someone you didn’t spend enough time with, something that you had to forgo to do something else. I felt a slight glimmer of memory, a memory I thought was lost, a woman? Who was she? All I know is that it was a familiar thought. A thought I wish I could have fully retained.

My vision began to get blurry as I saw more creatures slowly scampering over. My tongue and throat began to feel dry and my hearing started to deteriorate with a soft pop. Then, I saw a light. It was faint like candlelight. Warm. Inviting. I felt like I wanted to go closer. I saw shadows formed from that light, a tall one fighting off a bunch of smaller ones before the tall shadow reached for me. And then, BANG!

I found myself on the ground in front of the green pedestal. A very tall person standing over me. He wore a black suit with a red tie. He had no eyes, nose or ears but he had a large toothy grin that stretched out from where his ears would have been.

“Well, you wouldn’t do that, again would you? Time after Time is a dangerous tool.” He sneered at me.
As my vision began to clear up, I realised that I was back to my young self. I looked up at the strange man and with a sudden burst of energy, I shouted.

“Who the hell are you! What the frick just happened?”

He snickered a bit.

“Well, you see, you have interacted with an Entity. This one is one we call Time After Time.”

He held it up, twirling it in his fingers. His fingers were long like Man in the Mirror’s.

“Time After Time lets you travel through time! Isn’t that fascinating? However, eventually, the years catch up to you and you realise that you should have spent your time living in the now rather than in the future. I guess a slow death always puts the most important things in perspective.”

I stood up. “You still haven’t said who you were.”

“Ah, where are my manners. The name is Mr. Red. Anyway, why did you choose this room, of all rooms?”

“Mr. Yellow told me that -“

“ Who is Mr. Yellow?”

“I thought he was one of y-“

“Oh, did he have light brown hair and a hole in the back of his head?”

I nodded.

“Oh, he is called Little Lies. He is the ghost of a lawyer who was shot in the back of the head due to him wrongfully imprisoning a man… A man who was able to hold a grudge after 10 years of imprisonment. He tends to cause trouble for newbies. He is mostly harmless if you ignore him.”

“So, he was an entity?”

Mr. Red simply nodded and told me in a condescending tone, “Be careful with what you touch around here. You wouldn’t want to get hurt. Besides, you aren’t going to be leaving here no matter what anybody else says. So, I’d suggest that you do not simply trust other people around here. In fact, can you even trust yourself?”

He laughed and walked off.

I looked back at that green pedestal with the stopwatch. Every day I am here, I swear I have more questions than answers.

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Once again, this is the writer's notes out of character section. This was a fun one to write and will serve as a buffer before we get into the really spooky stuff next. Well, that depends on the advice Michael receives from the comments.

You, the reader, are a character in this story. In what I call "Interactive Writing", you are encouraged to participate in the story. How? You may ask. Well, like I said earlier, you are a character in this story. You may not be directly referenced individually in the story but the main character will respond to your comments (or rather me, as the writer, will be responding as the main character). Your comments WILL influence the outcome of the story in one way or another. Be careful, you may accidentally kill the main character, in which case, the season ends and after that... Well, we'll keep that a surprise for now.

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