DISCLAIMER: This work has not been edited beyond what was done in the video. The goal is to capture a story in a short amount of time and keep it as raw as possible.
The Story
The kitchen was empty, like X’s head. That’s what he’d been told anyway, although he knew it wasn’t true, but still kept it to himself because it was always better when people thought you had an empty head.
X. His name. It’s what he thought of himself, so it’s what you should think of him.
The kitchen wasn’t empty, in truth. There were other things. Haze for one, like you see in movies, as if no one ever dusts, no matter how wealthy the people appear. At least open a window, he always thought. No one ever did. He assumed the effect was to create drama and atmosphere, so he stood on the outskirts of the kitchen, shoes edging the linoleum so he could get a nice, wide view of this “empty” kitchen in case it was a ruse, because empty kitchens always seemed to be. He didn’t need drama or atmosphere. Though sneaking down here for a snack might create drama if he wasn’t careful.
He checked his suit, which he wore whenever he left his room as a protective measure. Everything was in order. Zippers zipped, pockets buttoned, gloves and boots affixed. He flexed his fingers, then his toes, then both together.
X stumbled back, losing equilibrium, catching himself on the door frame. Something moved inside the kitchen. Not drama or atmosphere. Well, maybe. He stepped onto the linoleum, which was rippled from time and heat. He supposed. He hadn’t been down here since he was a fetus, at least without the suit. Yes, a fetus, still inside his mother as she padded around the kitchen before the linoleum had grown distraut. Before she had.
X kept to the straight lines of the linoleum print, one foot in front of the other, toe pressing to heel with each stride. His name was comprised of what could have been straight lines once, though now angled and crossed.
X held his arms out for balance, head straight, or what served as a head. An empty box, because his head was empty, of course. Scuffed at the edges with a square at the front where his face would be if he had one. He would have smiled if he had a mouth. But he could see, despite having no eyes. Come to think of it, he wasn’t sure why he wore this suit at all, not having a head to breath in what could be poisonous dust, spores, maybe, from the fruit in the bowl on the table, which appeared fresh. He knew otherwise, could see the subtle movement of the skin where the scavengers burrowed, decomposing the once-sweet flesh.
X shivered, and brought his arms around himself, hugged himself, really, and something inside him–if he had an inside at all–bubbled. And he saw bubbles then, drifting across the room, mingling with the haze, coated with it, their surfaces transforming from glossy to matte, their transparency dwindling, then gone.
X could reach the table with the fruit if he took two more steps forward or fell over, which he felt like doing now, realizing he stood not the straight lines of the linoleum but on the centers of the squares that were so black they must be bottomless pits.
They weren’t. But X fell anyway, onto the table, where his hands planted at its edge, well, his gloves, because he didn’t have hands. His head, empty yet heavy, bent down from the movement to see something most curious: himself. A miniature version. Little X looked up at him, dressed the same, with the same scuffed-box head and the same absence of expression.
“Who are you?” X asked.
“You,” Little X said.
“But I’m me.”
“So am I.”
X studied Little X for any detail that would prove he was something else, a copy, an imposter. Everything seemed in order, and it troubled him.
“Aren’t you going to hit me?” Little X said.
X’s arm was raised, his hand clenched into a fist. “No,” he said and returned his hand to the table.
“Good, because I know you don’t like that.”
“Don’t like what?”
“To be hit.”
X shivered again, hugged himself again, and found that he did have arms inside the suit. They were thin and hurt from his touch.
“Stop it,” X said.
“Stop what?”
“You’re not me. You don’t know what I like or don’t.”
“I do,” Little X said. “But I won’t hurt you.”
“Like you could,” X said.
“I could. I may be small, but I know things. I know she doesn’t like it when you leave the cabinet doors open, and that earns you one strike. A second strike for the cluttered counter–”
“But I didn’t do it,” X said, hand raised again.
“It doesn’t matter,” Little X said. “Just like your name. You think if you hide behind dead eyes she’ll think you’re dead when she comes into your room and–”
X slammed his open hand down on Little X, who collapsed with a crunch. X went to grind his palm into the table, but a pain shot up both arm, and he staggered back. “I-I’m sorry.”
Little X sat up the best he could with broken arms and broken legs, and X saw a face in that empty square.
“It’s okay,” the face said, small and frail. “I forgive you.”
The open cabinet and the counter in disarray intensified the pain in X’s arms.
“No,” the little face said, because he wasn’t Little X, was he? “There’s no time. Go back to your room, where you can hide. Where you can play dead until she forgets. And then you can try again.”
X picked up Little X with both hands, because that’s who he was. X was sure of it. “I trust you.”
“I know,” Little X said. “You always do.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You always say that,” Little X said. “Now, put me down.”
“Why?”
“Because you always do.”
“Not this time.”
“No?”
X smiled. “No. Not this time.”
Little X smiled, too.
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