Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

There is nothing to convince you that this elevator isn't real. The concept of brunch, even more so.

As it happens, brunch is a fairytale people with poor time management skills invented to feel less awkward when they ask the waitress for pancakes around noon. Alternatively, it's an illusion created by greedy corporations to justify your torture for a six hour sales pitch; providing lukewarm coffee and un-toasted bagels in exchange for your suffering. 

In your case, brunch was the latter, and tortured you would be.

The soft, inner wall of your cheek was beginning to taste like iron after all your restless gnawing. A nasty habit and a subconscious effort to ease unsettled nerves. It was almost two o'clock and your company's annual progress meeting was about to happen twenty floors above your head

Sometimes you thought execution by maddened ducks would be more pleasant than being late (especially to a mandatory conference).

You kept reorganizing and flipping the files in your arms like it'd somehow make them neater as you glared ceaselessly at the numbers above the elevator, hoping they'd go faster. 10. 22. 37... It felt like they'd been ticking for a lifetime, yet, vehemently skipping your floor each rotation.

If you didn't think this elevator was being rude before, you definitely did now.

You double clicked the call button like you were trying to kill a particularly evil ant¹, sighing and stomping your heel the longer you were forced to wait. The sound of your impatience shot through the hallway like a rubber ball thrown at random, and you awkwardly withered, casting a paranoid glance behind you. You hadn't meant to be that loud.

The hallway you'd found the elevator in was. . . odd. Odd like rooms without windows are odd; squarish, whiteish, emptyish spaces with off-white fluorescent light.

It was unnecessarily long for leading nowhere but this elevator. The kind of hallway you see in dreams, with uncomfortably placed décor and stifling silence plagued by the insistent white noise of a nearby A/C unit that makes everything feel quieter when it comes to an unexpected pause. 

Honestly, you weren't even sure how you found this place.

The undotted 'i's in your progress report had you more distracted than the matter of where your feet were taking you. You made careless turns down yellow-walled corridors to get to your meeting on time. Now you were going to be five minutes late and this stupid, stupid elevator still refused to pick you up.

"Goddammit..." you breathed, tapping a pen against the papers in your arms. "This is taking way too long..."

You considered leaving and making up some excuse for not showing up because, at this point, showing at all felt like a potential blow to the ego. There was something universally unsettling about walking into a room when you aren't supposed to.

Rubbing the back of your neck, you turned around to make double sure the end of the hallway was still there and hadn't been deleted by the imaginary matrix you'd made up inside your head. . . to pass the time, of course.

Yup. Still there. Still square. 

The fake potted palms were staring at you. You felt awkward to no one in particular, mentally writing up a future email to your boss.

You dragged your feet in a forsaken display of defeat, decidedly leaving when the call button flickered and the hall lantern chimed cheekily at your behavior. 

It was a little too pleased to have done it.

Invisible wafts of dust, ozone, hydraulic fluid, and artificial lemongrass tickled your senses as the doors parted, scattering eerie yellow light across the floor unlike anything you'd ever seen.

Oh well. The elevator was here. You might as well go up.

You hugged your spread sheets against your chest and walked inside, looking at the gawkish walls and ugly art. Mistakenly, you locked eyes with the man leaning against the wall. 

"Pink," you thought.

Lots of pink. He definitely didn't work in accounting. Probably not even in this building. His upper lip was crusted with green snot, and as you scanned the rest of him, you noticed the back of his hand and knuckles were too. You tapped your shoe against the floor, idly shuffling papers as you tried to hide your scrunched expression. "Pink." It's what his shirt said. 'Tough guys wear pink'.

The elevator doors shut, and the pistons hissed, moving onward.

"Thirty-ninth floor, please."

The guy didn't turn, nor did his snotty fingers reach over to click the button. He must not have heard you. More paper shuffling—more shoe tapping.

"Excuse me...?"

He turned his head, a portion of his green skunk stripe hanging from his mouth. He chewed on it a few more times, raising a brow before the hair fell away and he lifted a finger to his chest.

"huh? wh0, m3?"

How did he say that with his mouth...?

"Yeah." Your brows sunk down your forehead and you shuffled your spread sheets again. More paper shuffling, more shoe tapping, more cheek biting. "Can you press the thirty-ninth floor?"

"0h! y0u w3r3 b31ng s3r10u5. l0l"

How is he talking like that??

The guy tossed his head to move his hair from his eyes and your fingers twitched. Who was this guy. You felt like you should know. Not because he seemed familiar, but because you knew everyone who worked in the accounting department, and right now, all the offensive colors on his outfit were waving red flags at your eyes. . . like a lady bug. Like danger.

"What?" You said the word without further attempt to explain, watching him tug his lapel over his nose to wipe it. Paper shuffling, foot tapping, cheek biting, heart palpitating. Little by little, that email was starting to come back.

"f1r57 t1m3?"

"What?"

You were even more lost. Nothing but a few short sniffles to answer your question.

You tried to lean past the guy to press the button because no one was going to help you but yourself now, but your fingers twitched halfway there and you staggered backward, realizing that there weren't any numbers on the panel. In fact, there was no G floor. No emergency button. No open door. Just a dozen or so infinity symbols—and beside them—four others: the plus symbol (with complimentary beach imagery), an exclamation point, green smiling face (very off putting), and purple smiley face.

"17'5 r34lly n07 b4d 4t 4ll dud3!"

"How are you—? What are you saying!? How do I get to the thirty-ninth floor? Where is this elevator going?"

"0h, 1t'5 g01n6 50m3wh3r3 dud3! ju57 n07 wh3r3 y0u w4n7 17 t0."

You stood and thought. Your meeting. You were probably twenty minutes late, but the phone in your pocket didn't ring with worried messages from your coworkers or boss. The papers in your hand swayed to the floor and you stumbled backward, grabbing the elevator balance bar. You were feeling very light headed. Very unlike yourself.

"w04h! dud3!" The guy lifted a hand and passively waved it in your direction like he were Moses and you were a particularly angry, tempestuous red sea that was ruining his vibe. "74k3 1t e45y. bu7 74k3 1t."

"Stop saying everything like that!" You laid your back flat against the wall, legs shaking. Seemingly in mockery, the elevator played the most ridiculous trap remix you'd ever heard. Like garbage noise. "I want to get off this elevator! Now."

"g37 0ff 7h3 3l3v470r? l0l." The offensively dressed man stretched his arms with total ease before leaning against the wall. He smirked, just a little, and looked your way again. "y0u'll g37 0ff, ju57 n0t wh3r3 y0u w4n7 t0 g37 0ff. . . w0rd 0f 4dv1c3!" He lifted a finger and rubbed the snot dripping from his nose away. "th3 r3gr3t3v4t0r l1st3ns t0 n0 dud3, m8."

"WHAT." As a matter of fact, 'what' was becoming your favorite word. You really didn't think (maybe not in that instance, but a later instance) that human society could've invented a better word to describe the sweaty palmed, heart racing feelings of confusion washing over you. It was a question, an exclamation, and a statement wrapped all in one. . . ugly present. 

You tried to argue, but as you threw out a defensive hand, the chime bell went off. Your eyes flew towards the floor counter. And the elevator opened.

1.  not that ants were inherently evil, but there were certainly ants that were evil. ^{[ ▲ ]}

Chapter Text

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It was a matter of which fruit loop sunk first.

In other words, 'Everything was already going wrong. Now it was just a question of what would go wrong first. . ." 

You could assume the freakish pink castle that smelled like gingerbread and cream was amongst the first fruit loop to sink because it pulverized your senses. Pink frosting floors, hellfire and high chandeliers. The curiously 2D rat in a dress sitting across from you was probably the second fruit loop. All things considered, it was an all around soggy bowl of cereal.

Obviously not the cereal you were eating. That cereal was actually good, and none of the fruit loops had sunken yet.

"You, 'gamer'!" The mouse. . . beaked. . . pink thing flailed. "Is that one," she pointed at you, and you withered away, "attempting to communicate with their strawberry puffs, or are they meaning to insult my royal kitchen's cooking?"

"1'm 601n6 70 b3 s0 l3g1t w17h y0u dud3. n0 clu3," snotty-fingers replied. Supposedly, he was called 'Infected'. It wasn't much better of a name. It wasn't a name at all actually, and the more you thought about it, the more you denied it.

"Rat's shouldn't wear dresses. . ." You gawked into your bowl. "This can't be happening. This isn't happening. . ." A cloud of sparkles grumbled over the dining table and sneezed glitter into your cereal, insisting that it was, very much indeed, happening. 
Your mouth opened a couple of times, fancy spoon mindlessly swishing the milk around to mix the glitter in like it hadn't been there in the first place. 

"Bah! They're doing it again!" The princess proclaimed. She stood on her chair, barely making her taller than the table, and threw a finger in your direction. "Infected, do something about your peon! They're doing that thing again. That thing where they start sulking and mumbling and shaking and generally ruining the calming, strawberry-scented mood of my plummy castle!"

"y0, m8!" Infected reached over, and you leaned away. He took no offense, tossing his arm around your chair instead. He cleared his throat with an ear-grating gag and cough. "l1k3, 74k3 4 ch1ll p1ll. 1t'5 r34lly n07 th47 53r10u5."

"The elevator must've dropped twenty stories. . ." You continued to mutter, not listening. "I flattened on impact. This is hell for pancake-ified corpses. Eternity stuck in brunch." Your spoon clicked the bottom of the bowl and the princess-rat-thing rolled her eyes.

"Pish-Posh. This isn't hell. Hell's downstairs, and anyway, the decorating isn't that nice. Certainly more toasty at least, but my castle is substantially more refined. Really! You're in perfectly good hands." She sat back in her chair, the big the pink bow on her head left staring over the table. "And my brunches rarely run past an hour. I'm a very busy princess, you know." Her little hand slapped a knife out of the way to grasp for a plate of sprinkled pop-tarts. "Lots of ruling to do. Lots of baking. Lots of torturing damned souls. Lady-like things."

"I'm a pancake somewhere back on earth. . ."

"They're doing it again. Stop that. Stop that—" The princess picked her scepter off the side of the table and smacked you in the side of the arm with the heart-shaped jewel at the end. You flinched, but she attacked you insistently. "Cease at once your depressing drivel!! You're ruining the tea party with your uncouth mood!"

"h3y, dud3. y0u 60nn4 e4t 7h47?" Infected interrupted, grabbing the side of your cereal bowl and tugging it away. "7h3 fru17 l00p5 4r3 60nn4 51nk 500n." He took the spoon from your hand, mixing and shoveling puffs into his mouth. Milk ran down his chin and Infected shut his eyes, smiling wirily. "7h47'5 d0p3."

No.

No, they definitely had.

The fruit loops had definitely already sunk.

You disassociated for the remainder of brunch.

You also learned that the rat's name was Mozelle. And she was, in fact, not a rat at all. Or anywhere related to the vermin family (though you highly doubted that part). She scolded you more after that fact with her scepter and various pop-tarts. You really didn't know how else to act. You could barely walk to the elevator when brunch concluded.

The princess ended up coming too.

Fanfare and confetti bid you three goodbye, and when the elevator shut, the pistons hissed with a mechanical farewell and the lift moved onward like it had never happened.

You leaned against the wall, releasing a deflated sigh. You couldn't seem to look anywhere but your shoes. Gravity forced itself past you the faster the elevator moved. For such an abnormally sized space, it felt unusually small. Infected in particular didn't seem to understand the concept of personal space, sticking indescribably close without actually touching you.

"1 h4pp3n 70 l1ke 7h3 3l3v470r, y4 kn0w," he commented, rubbing checkered snot off his lips. "1t'5 4c7u4lly pr377y l1t. y0u'll 637 u53d t0 1t."

"Am I to believe this peon of yours isn't already acquainted with the Regretavator?"

"n4hh!!! p1ck3d 7h15 n00b 0ff 4 fl00r 1'v3 n3v3r b33n."

Well, this was awkward.

The feeling one gets from being talked about when they're still present is a little like attending the 'Annual Duck Feeding Committee', but you've never met a duck before (let alone fed one), and all the other ducks in the room can tell and now they're mumbling about it, and you suddenly realize that you're the only member of the committee who isn't a duck.

It's a little like that—in a way. 

You rubbed your neck, eyes moving towards the elevator panel in a lame attempt to redirect attention. You wanted to ask if the buttons did anything, but Mozelle and Infected had gotten into a discussion about gaming tournaments, and you really didn't know either of them well enough to interrupt. 

Not that you planned to know them.

You exited the conversation and approached the panel to study the buttons. None of them seemed to do anything—nothing you could decipher. You clicked an infinity button. It made a silly sound. That was all. You tried the others, pressing them in random orders, but all they did was glow and beep, and, honestly, you were more cautious to try the others.

Your finger ghosted the happy face.

"What does this button do?" You asked and a shadow loomed over you, leaning around your shoulder to see where you were pointing. Green and purple snot dripped on your arm. "GEE'ZUS—!" You jerked backward, flailing, but Infected didn't notice much to your chagrin. 

"0h! n07h1n6." For good measure, he clicked it three times to prove his point, but it turned checkered instead. "0h. . . wh00p5."

He shrugged for his mistake and the elevator rattled to a stop. Smoke entered the vents above your head without warning, and you stumbled backward, watching the doors gape open and allow bigger clouds of smog to slink inside.

"AH! It looks like Mach's floor! Double-Plummy!" Mozelle spoke, scuttling over. "Mm! Smells like death and suffering out there. Reminds me of Dad!"

"WHAT THE HELL IS THAT!" You shouted. "I'm not going out there!!"

As vindictive as you thought it was, the elevator ended up tipping over and shaking you all out like pennies in a piggy bank. You landed on Mozelle and Infected landed on you (nearly making you as two-dimensional as the former). 

The room was huge with a wire gate and haphazard pedestals blowing fire to the air. Mozelle was right. It did smell like death. The aroma of sulfur and gasoline was so thick in fact that it felt oily on your skin.

Your head ping-ponged from floor to ceiling. This place was crudely designed... like a torture chamber.

"WHAT THE SH—"

"m4ch d1d 50m3 r3d3c0r471n6!!"

"Hm. You're right," Mozelle observed, turning towards a random far wall to observe offensive blood splatters and charred bones.

There was a figure sitting on a ledge in the distance. 

Infected nudged you in the shoulder then and your eyes shifted to glare at him. "h0p3 y0u'r3 600d 4t 0bb1es, n00b@!!" He tilted his head and struck a few stiff stretches. "7h15 i5 50m3 h4rdc0r3 g4m1n6 5k1ll."

"...What?" 

You started to pace, tugging strands of your hair and gasping puffs of ill-flavored smoke. The carbon dioxide wasn't leaving your lungs fast enough. "What is—!? What is happening right now!?" Your voice came in a strangled whine. "Thirty minutes ago I was fixing my tie and reorganizing spread sheets for my company's annual progress meeting, and now I'm—!"

A wall of fire burst from behind you three and you whipped around, beholding hell itself.

"0hhh n0!!! h3r3 17 c0m35!!!" Infected exclaimed all too gleefully, spinning and leaping onto the nearest pedestal. Mozelle was the only one who didn't seem the least bit bothered. She fixed her dress and lifted her snout (or beak maybe?) to the air, giving a pompous huff.

"The fire back home is hotter." Waving her hands, she floated upwards in a wisp of sparkles and levitated across the room, leaving you pointedly behind. Pointedly in shock. 

You twisted around, watching the wall of fire.

"Dreams can't hurt you," you insisted. "Yeah. No. Of course. It's stupid to think I'll die." You tried very hard to believe that at least as the room got hotter. A groan forced itself from your mouth. You were very upset that none of your backwards thinking was making the smoke in the air nor the tingling of the great wall of fire feel any less realistic. You took staggering steps backward, contemplating how far you must be from the thirty-ninth floor now. 

The thirty-ninth floor. The annual progress meeting. Visions of your life from a mere hour ago swam sickeningly through your nauseated mind.

Infected was far behind at this point, tripping awkwardly across spinning pedestals and narrowly missing columns of fire.

You tried to prod at those feelings of delusion clouding your judgment. Strange men with multicolored snot. Talking not-rat's that wore pink dresses. Rude elevator's with infinity symbols. No. You couldn't wrap your head around it. 

Weird, long hallways with nosy fake potted palms. Pink castles made of candy, cream, and hellfire. Annual progress meetings you would never attend! Your boss would never see such wonderful spread sheets! Your conscious, stuck down here in a smoke-scented obstacle course from hell—!!

You fell to the floor. It took a minute to get out all your pent-up sobbing before you came back to yourself with a great big blossom of anger swelling in your chest. You leapt to your feet. The fire was close enough to sting your skin, but with those jarring thoughts, you finally grasped it.

You grasped how stupid this all was.

How utterly insane. And strange. And unreasonable. And dangerous it was.

Because, yes!

That's right, you realized.

This was real, and you were about to get every fiber of skin and hair on your body burnt extra crispy.

.