Chapter Text
Pedal-pedal, long chord, rundown, C#, trip-a-let-trip-a-let manual switch duh-digga-duh, rest one-two and flick out the next stop, left hand to top manual, hard part- thirty-six thirty-six thirty-six pedal pedal pedal, foot slipped, recover, rundown #2 both hands, major pedal minor major pedal minor minor digga digga digga digga trip-a-let ding-dong-
You keep your hands frozen over the keys for an embarrassing amount of time, all like, ‘where did that sound come from? I didn’t play that,’ until you realize it was your doorbell. Ha ha, wow. Organs don’t make ding-dong noises! What are you even thinking.
You suppose you have to go answer the door. You groan at the distraction, because you really need to solidify what you like to call the ‘John Egbert Throws The Beat Down: Movement Four, Yet Another Organ Solo’ section before tonight’s practice. You slip your feet out from the pedal keyboard, and put them in your yellow slippers you set next to your portable organ for exactly this purpose. Can’t have your mysterious solicitor seeing your really grody man-feet, that would be shitty of you.
You walk to your front door, open it, and greet the mailman standing with a package he wants you to sign for. A package? Wow! This development is entirely unexpected due to your lack of recent internet shopping, but you are a gentleman. You won’t complain, and will accept the burden of this surprise gift with dignity (heh heh).
You sign for it, heft it up, and take it into your hip Seattle apartment. It’s a standard cardboard box, the kind that lazy video game designers put in shooter games when they need some clutter. The label on the top is addressed to you, in your sister’s handwriting, and has some unknown address as the return. You’re not sure where your sister has been living for the past… uh, ever… so that could be her current residence for all you know.
You wonder why she sent you a package. She’s coming up for a long visit in a few days to see you in a very important concert. Couldn’t she have just waited until then to give you… whatever? You set the box on the kitchen counter, dig your keys out of your pocket, and rip the brown tape with them. You open up the flaps and look inside.
It’s a bunch of black clothing. Does Jade want you to restart your emo kid phase? Because that was for three months in middle school and no one enjoyed it, not even you. You pick up one of the shirts and hold it in front of you. It’s really huge and oversized, with a slogan in white that says “Rickman’s Auto Parts 2006 Beef Eating Champion.” Okay, that’s kind of hilarious in a terrible way, maybe she sent you it as a joke? Even though your sis isn’t usually this funny.
Your shirt-moving dislodged something else though, something shiny and reflective in the black mess of bad clothing. You ruffle through the box to get at it, and lift it from all the hokey catch phrase t-shirts.
It’s a mirror. A really gross, dirty mirror. You can barely even see yourself in the round, cracked glass, the edge of your chin the only part visible in the fogged up surface. You turn the mirror over, and the back is black stone, featuring a jagged, carved sun that’s about the height of your hand. Well, that’s freaky. It looks really old too, should you even be touching this thing?
If Jade sent it to you, she must have wanted you to have it. She usually has really good gifts for you too, what was she thinking? Ironic box of gothic goodies? No way, Jade would totally not send you anything remotely close to that, she’s not very subtle with her humor. This box of emo memorabilia must have come from the heart. Maybe you’ll like it more if you clean it up.
When you set the mirror next to the sink, your phone rings with the sweet sweet sounds of 8-bit ‘who ya gonna call-.’ What good timing, it’s Jade.
“Hey hey J-J,” you say, picking up the phone. You turn on the sink, then squeeze out a sponge. “What’s up?”
“Oh my god, don’t call me J-J, you were talking to Dave again, weren’t you?” You hear the noise of some kind of movie in the background. By the sound of those sweet melodic notes, it’s Hitch. Good choice, not really like your sister to pick that kind of movie of her own free will. Maybe someone else is over at her place. You hold the phone between your ear and shoulder, and pick up the mirror with your non-sponged hand.
“Um, maybe. Or maybe I just thought of a new, awesome nickname for you!” You start washing the glass, and the dirt comes off nice and easy. “By the way, I just got a package from you in the mail and it’s filled with ugly t-shirts and some other weird stuff, what’s the deal with it?”
“Oh, no! You got it early? That’s what I was calling about!” she says. She sounds nervous. “You weren’t supposed to open it, that’s all Karkat’s stuff. We couldn’t fit everything in my motorcycle so I shipped it ahead of time before we head towards your place. Anyway, don’t touch the objects in there, you’ll-”
Oh, right, Karkat. Jade’s super, super weird new boy toy. You’re not exactly sure why she couldn’t have just kept dating Dave. You like Dave, Dave is a total dweeb and safe for your dear precious virginal innocent sibling. Karkat is…
You’re not sure how to describe him. Weird? Pent-up with incomprehensible rage? A smooth talker, but in the loudest way possible? Eerie, but in the way American horror movies are eerie as opposed to Japanese ones? You haven’t met him in person, exactly, but you’ve seen pictures and heard his scratchy voice yell at you over the phone and while he’s absolutely hilarious in every way, shape, and form, there’s just something not right about him. You can’t put your thumb on it, like, he kind of seems like he’s not really here. Like he’s used to totally different lifestyle and is just kind of drifting by until he can get it back.
Maybe he was from a rich family or something? But a rich kid probably wouldn’t have what appears to be legitimate tribal tattoos covering his whole body. And those ear lobe holes he has are so big, eugh. It makes you uncomfortable to look at them, and you’re not sure why.
“-and especially don’t touch the skull in that box. Did you touch the skull? Because that is a real ram skull!”
Oh, right, Jade is talking. Wait, does that mean Karkat considers an animal's skull a necessary item for a two month visit at your place? Jeez, you’re totally going to have to dig that out of the box later. “Sorry Jade, I wasn’t listening. Could you-”
You guess you weren’t paying attention to the mirror, because there’s a quiet ‘crack’ under your sponge, followed by a larger ‘thunk,’ followed by the glass exploding into a humongous cloud of dust.
You drop the phone onto the kitchen floor, try to jump back as fast as you can because you don’t want any of this shit in your skin or airway. But it’s too late. The poof of immensely small splinters was too big, encompassing your arms and neck and face, and it is a very very good thing you were wearing glasses because you would definitely lose some amount of eyesight for some amount of time from this little accident. You try not to breathe as the glass settles into your skin, quietly, with no pain.
Standing stock still, you flash back to the time you accidentally poked that pink insulation fiberglass stuff. Your finger hurt every time you touched something for days after. If this tiny glass is all over you now… What happens if you won’t make it to the cathedral tonight? You really need to rehearse.
“John? John!?” says Jade, from the floor of your kitchen. “Are you okay?”
You bend down to the ground, your airway getting tight, then breathe out very very carefully. You don’t want to rub more of the glass in than you have to with excess movement! “Sorry, Jade,” you say. “Call you back.”
You slowly reach out to hang up, then stand again. You leave the sink running, because fuck it you’re covered in glass, and hobble your way to your bathroom. Even the slight wind against your forearms causes sharp little shots of feeling to tingle up your skin, but your bathroom’s not far anyway and you’ve got a positive outlook on life! No lasting damage from this weird accident, no-sir-ee. Not if you have anything to say about it.
You turn the shower on, then step in after waiting for it to get to a manageable temperature, clothes and all. No taking chances with your health! That’s what the homoerotic science safety videos always taught you, and you intend to follow them to the letter! Well, minus sharing your shower with a dudely high school dude, you might get arrested for that one.
You’ve been standing there for about five minutes, all of which you’ve measured by humming your incredible phone ringtone two in a half times, when your vision starts to swim.
You freak out for a second that maybe glass did get in your eyes and you are going blind, but the kind of foggy blackness fading in and out of your sight isn’t like that. This is more of the kind of blackness you get when you’re drunk and tired. Or when you donated blood way back when and fainted. Are you going to faint? Oh, shit.
You sit down in the tub, your back and neck supported by the white ceramic, and have a slight freakout as your head gets light. Why are you fainting? Someone’s going to notice if you die alone in the shower, right? Jade will call a million times and Dave’s terrible snapchats will never get returned and the orchestra and choir are going to be without their organ player and your dad will totally notice if they all don’t and-
You slip into unconsciousness.
**************
You’re having a dream, you know it.
You know it because you so easily passed from sleep into la-la land, fast enough to be lucid and aware that everything’s different from your bathroom. You appear to be point blank in some kind of painted-up living room created by somebody who had gotten all their interior design decorating advice from an off brand version of The Road To El Dorado. Huge mosaics of some abstract people shapes line the walls in front of you and wicked-looking stone carvings grace the corners. A whole mess of delicate beaded curtains block what’s probably the entrance to the room. You’re lounging against a bunch of pillows stacked together in a shape oddly reminiscent of the back of your bathtub. Guess your brain wasn’t being very creative, and also probably slightly racist, when it decided to smash together a scene.
Of course, the weird part of this dream is that you don’t feel like you’re asleep. You’ve never had a dream this clear, your dreams are usually just misty, cloudy things where you stumble around in your underwear at a carnival filled with grody clowns. You look down, and yes, pants still on, thank god.
The lack of devious harlequins might be rectified unfortunately soon, as you hear the beaded curtains start to rattle with movement. Man, if a whole squad of clowns comes through to raid your bad “ancient Mexican” themed party you are going to be so pissed. You are going to have to go to dream therapy sessions or something, maybe.
The hand that brushes aside the curtain is definitely not attached to a painted up monstrosity. However, it is definitely attached to a completely balls-to-the-wall naked human. Your first reaction is to start throwing pillows at her while yelling towards the ceiling, ‘I thought I stopped having these kinds of dreams at age 13, brain!’ But you don’t do this for three reasons.
One: she’s got horns. Two asymmetrical, spiral horns jutting from the crown of her messy black hair. One of them kind of looks like a wrench. Which you guess is kind of an original character design aspect? Good on you, self.
Two: her eyes are pure white. Full on creepypasta blank, no pupils, just lifeless white orbs. That is not a very original character design aspect, that’s like your 15 year old-era anime OC, fuck that.
Three: she is built. You’re a pretty tall dude, but she’s easily over six feet, shaped from head to toe with full-grown muscle. She must have had a lot of dream-plastic surgery for that look, holy shit. Every part of her is as modeled as all those classic Greek sculptures you saw in Italy that one time, minus the tacked on leafy greens over genitalia.
So, all you can do is say, “Uh. Hi?”
She smirks, raises her lip, and purrs at you. Which is totally hilarious, but you’re kind of afraid of her kicking your dream-self in half with those thunder thighs, so you don’t laugh. She flips her long hair back in the second most gaudy gesture you’ve ever seen in your life, then trails her hands down her whole body in the most gaudy gesture you’ve ever seen in your life. You realize, with a dawning horror, that this is one of those dreams you haven’t had since you were 13. You can’t say you were missing out on much, honestly, watching this lady do a poor-man’s burlesque routine while already naked is like watching a banana peel itself.
She does this weird dance thing, and you can’t tell if the technique is bad or it’s just you. Either way, your eyebrows raise to new, judgmental heights at this truly awful apparition your mind summoned up for you. She twirls her wrists above her head, wiggles her hips around, and generally tries to act all sensual and whatnot. You have a feeling this would be better if she was wearing bells or those bellydancer scarf things, because the jingles created by this dance would be a legendary thing to hear.
She crouches down all ‘sexy huntress,’ and begins to crawl slowly, on all fours, towards you. You can feel your face wrinkling itself into the most ‘what the fuck’-brand wince, a wince which is usually only reserved for Dave Strider snapchats. You hope your real-self is making this expression alone in the bathtub, that would be funny if someone walked in seeing that.
Your generated dream stripper-minus-clothing apparently does not get the hint, and crawls right up into your lap. Her arms rest themselves heavy against your totally pathetic, music-major chest and if you weren’t afraid of her ripping you apart before, you are definitely afraid now. She’s got some kind of black lipstick on, and when she puckers ‘em up all in your face, you can’t help but speak up.
“Whoa, hey, no, shhhh,” you say, putting your hand on her mouth. “I’m not really feeling up to this right now! Or, ever, actually. Sorry, dream girl! I’d be okay with just makeouts, but you look like you’re in the mood for more than that. And since you really don’t have the agency to woo the rare boner or two out of me, as you are fake and I am not, I can’t ever see us getting jiggy with it. Sorry!”
She makes this face that speaks a thousand words. A thousand words of confusion, rejection, and total anger. You can basically see the steam coming off of her. She smacks your hand away with her own, pushes her pointer finger into your chest, and says with fire lapping at the end of every syllable,
“Yziuvtz ztztliuvitztcoti ciltrwxyin, nixwylzn!?”
“Yeah,” you say, nodding earnestly, because that’s what you do when you can’t understand people’s accents. “Yeah, that.”
She looks at you with utter disgust, her tongue with at least eight tiny piercings sticking out and eyebrows narrowing her eyes into tiny little slits, but you don’t get to see what happens after that because you wake up.
Still in the shower, clothes on, the pads on your fingers wrinkled to all hell.
You look at the clock on your wall— you were asleep for forty-five minutes. Bleh, and you wanted to get more practicing in before dinner, too! Fuck that weird mirror, and fuck your penchant for cleanliness, that was something you really didn’t want to deal with today. You turn off the shower, and stand up, patting your hands against yourself to check for any glass-splinter pain. You don't feel anything, so either the glass absorbed itself into your skin so far it's never coming out again, or the water washed it all away.
You sigh. You suppose it’s a good thing you’re going to the cathedral for practice today, you feel like you need to confess for some kind of sin or another after that dream. And you’re not even Catholic.