Archive of Our Own ^beta

Being out so late is a bad idea. It’s a bad idea. It’s a bad idea.

“It’s a bad idea,” he says aloud, when chanting it in his head doesn’t stop him, but that doesn’t really do anything, either. It just makes the night a little louder for a moment. Like a firework going off: all flash, no substance.

It’s a bad idea. All flash. Caleb is still walking.

No substance.

He picks a place to go every time he leaves - quiet as a fleeting thought at two, three, four in the morning - somewhere to end up, and somewhere to start. That wasn’t always so important to him. He used to be able to just wander, slip out of the house under the witching hour sky and follow his feet wherever they led until everything in his head was quiet. Not anymore. Walking without a destination now just makes him feel wrung out. Listless. Pointless. It makes him feel the way he does most of the time, these days.

…What time is it?

Two, three, four in the morning blend together, lose their colour and their shape, become a road and a streetlight painted in a musty grey-brown, become a shadow of a tree scraping the pavement, become the hunched-shoulder silhouette of a boy slogging down one path and then the next until they start to look the same. Cold crawls over his arms when the breeze changes directions. Not a single branch rustles; not a single shadow moves except his own.

It’s the little things. That don’t make sense. That don’t add up. That make him feel wrung out, listless, pointless. It’s the little things he looks for in the flat dimensions of the road signs, the steadfast flickering of the corner store lights. 24 hours, endless variety!

Caleb’s seen the same sign two, three, four hundred times. Endless variety. The lights buzz like static and bugs, unanswered hellos in the night - all flash and no substance.

He pushes the door open, waits exactly four seconds. It’s always four seconds.

“Hey there, kid. Isn’t it past your bedtime?”

“Just say I’m up early,” Caleb says with a wave of his hand, slipping into the shelves. They seem to glow neon, the way they always do, eyesore crimson and lime, shocking magenta and orange. White lights fall down white walls and land on white floors, making the crinkly plastic and shiny stickers pop, bright, firework-loud. Flash-bang! He picks up some vivid foil-wrapped thing screaming for his attention and holds it up to the light like he’s considering it. Two, three, four beats pass. Screaming neon, painful neon, glaring, shiny, useless neon - it demands to be seen and it has nothing to show. He thinks about bleached-bright hair and candy-turquoise sweaters and sun-yellow vests. He puts the snack down with a little too much force.

Across the way, the cashier laughs. “Not a fan of… what is that, coconut?”

Caleb shrugs it off.

“No substance.”

Going back night after night is probably a bad idea, too.

At some point it was less frequent. At some point it was a last resort for when it was just too loud in his head, too stifling in his room, too heavy a darkness in his quiet old house. It was the best option, then, cracking open the door and sliding out into the old-trees cold-moon grey-scented night, taking a turn around the block, maybe two, coming back with his centre of gravity resettled. In that way, maybe Caleb hadn’t even noticed the exact moment he saw it all for the wrongness it was. Maybe it was just one bad night falling away, and then another some time later, and then another, sooner and sooner, thirteen nights, eight, five, three, two nights, one night after night after night until he heard his footsteps echoing through empty darkness more often than his own voice and realised that the quiet town had never had any scent to it at all but grey. No dying leaves, no fresh flowers. No rain and no earth.

Maybe it all started out mundane. Or maybe every time that itching had settled into his bones, every writhing worldly wrongness that hovered just under his lungs all the way from his childhood had been him noticing . Noticing how the shadows didn’t fall, or fell too far out of reach into void. Noticing how the flashbang sunlight didn’t warm his skin. Noticing how almost everyone repeated themselves if you waited long enough, their words just unnatural enough to sound stilted if you listened. Noticing how the trees… the ground… out at the edge of the woods…

…Maybe Caleb’s just been listening too hard.

One, two-three-four, “Hey there, kid. Isn’t it past your bedtime?”

“Do you think I’m just stressed out?” he asks the cashier, who shrugs.

“Do you think you’re just stressed out?”

Caleb shakes his head. It doesn’t mean no, but he doesn’t think he means yes. It could be a smaller problem. It could be something recently that’s worrying him, gnawing at him, making him think everything is wrong when really it’s all in his head.

It could be.

He stares at the shelves upon shelves of gemlike wrappers, neon and jewels, nothing and nothing and nothing. Caramelicious! one boasts. It’s a shiny, stripy magenta-fuchsia-red, magenta-fuchsia-red, repeating so seamlessly that he can’t see where it ends. All it has to it is its firework shout - the crinkle, the shine, the eyesore colours. Magenta. Fuchsia.

He knows he’s been silent and staring too long when the cashier pipes up.

“Not a fan of… what is that, coconut?”

“It’s not,” says Caleb, and then, because it’s true - “It doesn’t matter.”

It’s all flash and no substance; it’s an empty light in a sparkling advertisement. At the end of the day, does it matter if it’s caramel and not coconut? Does it matter if the cashier falls silent after that, if Caleb never meant to hold a conversation? Does it matter if he leaves without buying anything? He wants to turn back, wants to stop and ask, Do you have a preference out of all these shelves, maybe What’s your favourite colour , Which is better, a sunrise or a sunset or a cold grey 2 - 3 - 4am, or even just What’s your name? He wants to because he doesn’t think he’ll get an answer. He wants to because it’d be proof, it’d be fire in the night, it’d be vindication and everything finally falling into place, the confirmation that it’s all hollow.

He doesn’t want to, because he doesn’t want to know for sure.

Because if Caleb is a question without an answer - all talk and no reply, all flash and no substance, all fire and no warmth, all light and no shadow and no reflection in the mirror - if he knows that he is, what does he do? It terrifies him, seeing that, being that - a voice, a shape, a boy without dimensions, nothing but a sun-yellow candy-turquoise bleached-bright smile without a meaning. A sparkling question without a single worthwhile answer. A boy half-awake in an unconscious world.

So he doesn’t ask. It’s a bad idea. 

…and Caleb is a reasonable boy, who does not listen to his bad ideas, as it should be. Caleb is a reasonable boy who made just one reasonable mistake. He ran too far, one day, and looked out into the woods. He turned the wrong way, one day, and the darkness caught his eye.

“Red,” said Caleb, “what’s that?”

And the answer was nothing, it was nothing. It’s nothing, Caleb.

It was nothing. Easy to forget. Easy to look away from. It was nothing, and as he stared out into the line of trees that dutifully guarded empty space, as he stared out beyond the ground that stopped as sharply as if it were cut by a surgeon, he felt nothing.

No - he felt his mouth move.

“There’s nothing out here…” said the reasonable boy. “We should turn back.” 

Red shrugged. His eyes were glazed over, and Caleb felt terror strike the walls of his heart like a bird battering itself against a windowpane, trying to get in.

“Red! Red, listen to me, look at the trees, there’s nothing behind them!”

“Of course not,” agreed Red. “...Should there be?”

“Why - Red, come on, look! That’s not right, there’s something - there’s - nothing out here… We should turn back.”

Terror fell to the ground limp and feathered. The reasonable boy settled down and replaced his broken rictus smile.

“There’s nothing out here… We should turn back.” No movement. “There’s nothing out here… We should turn back. There’s nothing out here…”
At last, Red shrugged. His eyes were as they should be. Caleb, a reasonable boy whose reasonable mistake would soon be forgiven and forgotten, led the way out of the grey woods, down the grey path, under the grey moon. He saw it all. He was listening too hard.
Caleb walked into a 24-hour corner store that night and stood in the colourless aisles, holding a Caramelicious! bar in his hand and counting grey, grey, grey until he forgot what he was counting. He did not know if he wanted to hold on to what he saw or let it go. He wanted to let it go. It would be a good idea to let it go. Just forget about it.

He blinked. Magenta. Fuchsia. Red.

Yes, he could forget about it. All this would be okay, if Caleb would be a reasonable boy, and just forget about it…

…and Caleb is a reasonable boy, who forgets about it. He does not listen to his bad ideas. He does not listen. He does not listen. He does not see anything wrong. He roams the streets night after night after fruitless night, trying to hear them, trying to remember, trying to piece together why the trees… the ground… out at the edge of the woods…

Caleb is a reasonable boy who forgets about it.

It would be worse to remember.

But it claws at him! It settles in his lungs like dust, it never settles, it never rests! He rusts over, hinges creaking in his smile, he freezes over, permafrost in his wake, in the path ahead, the path ahead is nothing! There’s nothing, nothing, nothing! What does he do with that?

Caleb stares at the ceiling and resolves to go to sleep.

But it claws at him! It settles in his mind the way a sunken ship settles at the bottom of the sea, it never settles, it never rests, it thrashes and flails and falls apart under storm-tossed waves, under white sky white sea, blue sky blue sea, unfathomable, endless, void-black sky howling over an angry ink sea, it never rests, it never rests, it never rests!

(Caleb stares at the ceiling and resolves to go to sleep.)

But it claws at him. Can’t he hear it? Doesn’t it sound like a drumbeat, a heartbeat, a single wingbeat from a butterfly across the world? What is the world, can he hear it in the quiet of the night if he gets up now, opens the window, looks outside? Will he find his answer sitting in the middle of the question? Will he find drums playing in the centre of the silence?

(He stares at the ceiling and resolves to go to sleep.)

It’s a bad idea and it sits under his lungs waiting for him to breathe it in.

It’s a bad idea and it’s shaped like a light switch, a doorway, a pair of shoes, a house key slipped out from under a mat. It’s a bad idea like l’appel du vide, which should give him pause, shouldn’t it?

(The boy stares at the ceiling and resolves...)

The boy stares at the ceiling and resolves to go to sleep.

He is in a blue bed, in the middle of a bright bedroom with sunshine walls. This late at night, when the moon washes through the window, something wavers in his mind, painting it pale and thin… but it doesn’t matter. He knows the colours of the room, the house, the firework town. Lively and loud, glimmering and gorgeous - it doesn’t matter what it looks like. It doesn’t matter that the sound fades.

Why is he awake, again? Perhaps it’s just a passing bout of unease. The boy thinks this sounds reasonable. He should sleep on it. It would make him feel better in the morning, when the sun would rise jewel-bright and glorious, when the birds would sing sweet melodies and the air would carry the scent of flowers and promise. It would be a very good idea, resolves the boy, to go to sleep.

It would be fitting for a reasonable boy to have such a reasonable idea. It would be fitting, straight-edged, and dull and flat and grey.

Caleb sits up and tells himself, “It’s a bad idea.”

Then he gets up and follows it to the light switch, the doorway, the shoes waiting for him, the familiar weight of the house key. Far too familiar, as of late, but if the grey town won’t let him be, he supposes there’s no use in pretending.

It’s a bad idea. Caleb’s out of ideas.

“Hey there, kid. Isn’t it past your -”

“What’s your name?” Caleb demands.

“- bedtime?” the cashier continues, ignoring him.

He leans over the counter to squint at their name tag. It’s blank.

The door opens without a sound and shuts behind him just as unnoticeably as he leaves. 24 hours, endless variety! Grey on grey on grey. Caleb considers the shovel in his hands. It’s grey, too. But it’s important, or so the misty, uncatchable feeling driving him says. It’s a WEAPON. So is Red’s baseball bat, the one he’d left behind in Caleb’s grey shed one long-forgotten afternoon what feels like two, three, four lifetimes ago. He barely remembers that day. Any day. Autumn sunshine blurs in his head into one thin streak of warmth before an endless stretch of colourless night, becoming an unbroken shadow if he backs away enough. The cold moon’s taken over his mind. He only feels awake when he’s supposed to be sleeping. He can only sleep once he wakes up from this nightmare.

The nightmare goes like this, he remembers, staring into the treeline, where the stone he’s tossed should, by all means, be hitting the ground any moment now:

Infinity. The pool does not have a bottom.

The nightmare goes like this. He is remembering.

The nightmare goes like this. There’s something wrong with the world. He knows he should be able to move. He knows there should be colour beyond - magenta, fuchsia - grey, grey, Red - he knows there should be shadows and wind and people talking, really talking, endless variety . He knows it two, three, four times over, two, three, five, eight, thirteen times unlucky and over and ignored, fizzling out, flash-BANG! As desperate as a signal flare, fading quickly, never remembered, no substance. Not here. Not in a void like this. Not like this. Go home, Caleb. Go home. Be reasonable. It’s begging. It’s pleading. It’s a bad idea.

Does he want to drown in this? Does he want to burn in it? Does he want to freeze, fizzle out, doesn’t he want sunshine? It’s a bad idea to be out so late. Go home, Caleb. It’s a bad idea. It’s a bad idea. Two. It’s a bad idea. Three.

His phone is in his hand.

Does he want to be stuck in the ashy moonlight forever two-three-four in the morning? Does he want to know what it looks like beyond the sharp-cut end of the road, end of the Earth? Does he want to know why people can’t stop repeating themselves? Why they can’t cross invisible boundaries like it’s salted ground, running water? Does he want to know why he can’t, either? Does he think he’s special , does he think he’s exempt, that the world will keep him if he listens too-hard enough? Flashbang, flash BANG, no substance, go home! This is a bad idea! Say it, say it again, Caleb, say what it needs you to : This is a bad idea. It’s a bad idea. It’s -

It’s quiet out here.

He knows. It’s a bad idea.

hey red. sorry for texting you so late…