Work Text:
After a certain number of months, days have ceased to exist.
Very few things exist at all, now: only you, your coworker, and the scissors in your hands that have turned blunt from overuse. The sharpness has been worn down primarily by escape attempts, mostly carving at the wall in hopes of dislodging something, tearing at the wallpaper and the flesh beneath. The wounds of the elevator heal in days, leaving a solid seam of scar tissue in their wake, stripping the pair of a single chance of cutting through.
Metrics of human existence like sleep and hunger certainly don’t exist in the elevator, either. One more thing has remained agonizingly constant: the hum of fluorescent lights have made you reach your breaking point again, again, and again.
You think you might be reaching a new one as you drag the blades of the scissors across your loosened tie once, then twice. Your eyes widen in a manic smile as the fabric gradually begins to fray under the sawing motion, each thread splitting one by one, coming beautifully undone. It splits under the pressure of the scissors and the gentle sawing motion.
“...What are you doing?” your coworker asks weakly. The man is seated as far away as humanly possible from you, defeated as ever by the stagnation of time. Your own excitement doesn’t fade from your face for an instant as you watch him. The other man is so meek and uncertain, deprived of all his bravado from weeks ago, and a five o’clock shadow remains in its place. The scissors might be useful for that, you think to yourself as you pick a lone thread from your tie. Only a few more threads keep it held together around your neck.
Only a few more threads before it breaks entirely.
“Want to watch?” you chime in return. You don’t give him the choice, though, stalking over to the man bearing an expression that brightens at every step. “You do. I’ll show you.”
He doesn’t. His knees are loosely bent, obviously prepared to bolt at the slightest hint of danger, but he isn’t being given much of a say in the matter as you kneel in front of him.
“Calm down,” you whisper, holding out the tie to reach the height of your coworker’s heart. His quickened pulse is almost palpable, even from this distance, and you watch his exhausted eyes widen in alarm. You can’t help the way your smile peels back even further at the sight. “I’m not gonna hurt you.”
You will hurt him—you need to hurt him because it would break the endless monotony of this room. Even if it means you’re alone forever, you’ll kill him simply to see what happens when you do.
“I wouldn’t hurt you.”
He squirms in a desire to move, to flee like a scared little prey animal despite his stature, and he jerks the fabric of your tie to yank your head away from him. You grunt at the sharp movement, and the last threads of your tie snap at the force, and the fabric slips onto the floor. Any sound it might have made is drowned out by your coworker’s shout of confusion as he scrambles toward the opposite corner of the elevator... as if that might save him. “Why are you—?”
You don’t give him the chance to ask—you pounce on him like an ambush predator the instant he moves, and when he reaches for the hand holding the scissors, you use your other hand to pull his hair.
The strain of concentration is visible in his brow, and you take great pleasure in watching it dissipate as you slam his head onto the wall behind him. Again. And again. And again. His defiance gets weaker with every strike against the wall, eyes shutting at what must be a concussion, by this point. He can hardly keep his hand on yours, and it slips down limply.
“I’m helping you,” you say gently. By the time you rear the scissors up high above you, you’ve begun to believe your own words.
You plunge the blades into his chest as far as they’ll go, relishing in that first agonized scream. The scissors are dull on their own, now, but the force of desperation to kill him drives them deeper into his chest despite their bluntness. You can’t help but let out a small laugh as you twist the scissors and listen to the cries of pain he offers in return—you want to open the blades by the handle and split him open completely, but you’d enjoy putting the wounded creature out of his misery, first.
“See, wasn’t that easy?” you murmur, leaning close to the wide, vacant eyes of your coworker as the life in his body begins to trickle away. You cradle the side of his face gently with the hand coated in blood, sighing fondly at the sensation. “...I could almost like you, like this.”
That comment seems to spark one last fire in him, grabbing your wrist with enough force to grind the bones together, fear plain and simple on his features. He doesn’t want to die.
“Are you scared?” You ask the question quietly, nearly silent near his ear. The strength dwindles, an outpour matching the beat of his heart that slows down more and more by the second—by the time you speak again, his hand hits the floor. You don’t even think he can hear you, anymore. “Do you feel expendable?”
You might be going insane. Months prior, you would never talk to anyone in this way, let alone a superior. But after countless agonizing deaths, your chest swells in gratification as you watch him die slowly, painfully, and finally on the same level as you. You hope it hurts, and it surely does—his eyes are lightless and unfocused, tears gleaming in the grating fluorescent lights.
“Good.”
You wedge the scissors farther down into his chest, rocking them back and forth in a mockery of a soothing gesture. You’ll see him soon. Regardless of whether he dies permanently or returns as part of the cycle, you’ll see him soon, won’t you? Maybe he won’t remember at all, and you’ll be able to do this over again.
The lights of the elevator fizzle out, then flutter back on.
You’re suddenly standing upright, acutely aware of the missing panel of buttons next to the unopened doors. You run your fingertips over the metal in your hands: the scissors’ blades are sharper than ever, and the metal lacks the warmth of body heat—cold and unused, identical to how they felt when you first plucked them from the duct behind the vent grate.
To your right...
Your coworker flinches the moment you glance over to face him. He’s terrified—a very good look on him, you think—shrinks away to take an unsteady step away from you. Your vision narrows into a squint before you’ve even realized the excitement has appeared on your face.
You take a step toward him. He takes another.
“How did it feel?” you ask. “How much did it hurt?”
The man doesn’t reply. He doesn’t want to think about it... how cute. You let the silence stretch onward, spanning an eternity as he squirms in discomfort.
“Did it feel cold to bleed out?” you ask. “When did you finally go numb?”
He shudders, surely recalling the looming chills of death. You couldn’t forget that experience yourself, trembling long after your final breath. Those same tremors haven’t yet left his muscles. That reaction is satisfying enough, for now. You’re just pleased he’s felt a fraction of your suffering.
“You remember everything, don’t you?”
All you want is a nod—a single nod would be enough of a confession for your liking—but he refuses to indulge you.
That’s workable. You can push him just a little further.
“If you don’t remember...” You lean in close with a wicked expression. “...I’d be happy to try again.”
A blatant threat, just to watch his resolve crumble. His eyes won’t meet yours as he wrestles with his response as he gauges just how serious your statement is. You would do it again in a heartbeat if he stayed silent.
His inhale sounds louder than any of his screams, amplified by the near-silence of the elevator. Your grip tightens on the scissors just to tease him, and his gaze locks onto the motion to assess the threat. “...It...”
“It hurt,” he whispers.
You laugh in his face, and he flinches. You’re towering far above him. You are more powerful than he will ever be, no matter who he pays off or how many connections he makes. You find that beautiful.
“...Good.”
—
You press the button to close the elevator doors, shutting the two doppelgangers out.
Something torrential twists in your stomach: a sensation of your body rejecting your actions as if they’re an illness plaguing your system. The feeling doesn’t subside as a voice that isn’t quite your own shrieks in fury that he’ll find a way through and murder you where you stand.
You rub your thumb along the handle of the scissors. You think those people were real, and you could tell that they thought so, too—that kind of primal desperation couldn’t be faked by any actor. Even now, hands claw at the door in an effort to pry it open, to reach you and kill you. You don’t doubt that they would.
“Huh,” your coworker says dumbly. You can’t seem to separate the voice from that of his doppelganger, worn-down and so terribly afraid. His despair was real in a way that nothing else has been thus far. You can’t get his face out of your mind. “I didn’t know you had that in you... That was cold-blooded.”
Suddenly, you feel queasy. “...Don’t remind me.”
He maintains a solemn silence, and you press the button to send your elevator to the floor below.
If they really were the same two people, if that was you and your coworker, the ones who’d been abandoned on the elevator a few deaths ago, then why was his coworker so distraught...?
He’d looked terrified of both you and your doppelganger... What had you done to him?
The blunt blades in your hands have all of the answers you need. As the doors open to reveal two hanging, rotting carcasses, you glance back down to the scissors.
...You could swear you see flecks of dried blood, lying in wait beneath that center screw holding the blades together.