The monster sways just slightly, but upon hearing the name "Joshua Okafor" it finally stops moving, actually listening.
It lets them both finish talking and then finally reacts, like there's finally enough stimuli to make it move from a more passive state to an active state, like it's not about words but about stimuli and agitation.
He turns suddenly and they see that if this being was Joshua Okafor, he is nothing like what he once was.
He has no face.
Only wires and cables that are embedded where a face should be, like something forced so many of them in that any face was destroyed. There are no eyes peering out through the cables, there is no mouth, it's just all cables and wires and cords and the tape of tape decks. The other ends are threaded into the different broken screens in front of him.
He abruptly turns towards them and then comes after them in a terrifyingly fast crawl. From the front they can see he looks as sexless as he initially appeared, like some kind of troll-like doll. He scurries towards them at a speed that is far too quick for his size, the ground shaking as he his hands slam against it. Right when he's nearly upon them, close enough to start swinging his hands and crushing them, he gets yanked back by reaching the end of the length of the cords, like a dog being choked back with a leash.
He flails, reaches for them, swatting at them, straining to try to get close, but they're just out of arms reach.
The shrieking can be hear over the TVs again, like a voice overlaid with the sound of sheering reality from the earlier memory. The screens all flash to the moment of trauma again, to the grey wave in Josh's memory sweeping him down a hall into a control room with a console, now vacated. It slams him into it so hard his face breaks into a monitor. He withdraws and at least nothing major is damaged - his eyes are okay! But his nose is broken and bleeding and his face is covered in cuts. He tries to get up as the silver flows away into surrounding rooms, finally free from the pressure, and it seems like he should be able to leave...
But wires start to shoot out of the console, plugging into the cuts of his face.
He screams as they keep plugging in, trying to rip the cords out, trying to get free. But they move like living things, like snakes striking, hiding more and more of his face with cords, muffling his mouth and choking him as they go down his throat. They don't see the worst of the damage because his face is turned away but he starts to grow in size, as the studio warps and changes around him. He cries, struggles, screams, fails to get the striking cords to stop.
Eventually he holds massive hands to his head and shrieks in an inhuman cry, as his consciousness spreads - unable to stay in one brain anymore, one place, and disperses, stretching out until it's not really what could be considered a mind anymore. A collection of distant memories. Desires. Impressions. But not a mind.
The Stuff can do terrible things. Make unliving things alive, make living things unalive. Merge the two. Turn a tv station, and an 18-year-old with his whole life ahead of him, into an organism. One single organism, trying to comfort itself, that absorbs a whole town into a nightmare it's not even awake enough to realize it's creating.
He's not awake, not really. Because eventually, when the perceived negative stimuli is gone due to nothing directly attacking, Josh stops fighting against his leash and goes passive again.
He crouches low, his head near the ground - and near them - and looks down with them at a face that has no eyes, tilting his head sharply, like a bird, like he's forgotten he was upset, and is confused by human beings that aren't 2-dimensional and made of light and electrical impulses.
cw: face body horror
It lets them both finish talking and then finally reacts, like there's finally enough stimuli to make it move from a more passive state to an active state, like it's not about words but about stimuli and agitation.
He turns suddenly and they see that if this being was Joshua Okafor, he is nothing like what he once was.
He has no face.
Only wires and cables that are embedded where a face should be, like something forced so many of them in that any face was destroyed. There are no eyes peering out through the cables, there is no mouth, it's just all cables and wires and cords and the tape of tape decks. The other ends are threaded into the different broken screens in front of him.
He abruptly turns towards them and then comes after them in a terrifyingly fast crawl. From the front they can see he looks as sexless as he initially appeared, like some kind of troll-like doll. He scurries towards them at a speed that is far too quick for his size, the ground shaking as he his hands slam against it. Right when he's nearly upon them, close enough to start swinging his hands and crushing them, he gets yanked back by reaching the end of the length of the cords, like a dog being choked back with a leash.
He flails, reaches for them, swatting at them, straining to try to get close, but they're just out of arms reach.
The shrieking can be hear over the TVs again, like a voice overlaid with the sound of sheering reality from the earlier memory. The screens all flash to the moment of trauma again, to the grey wave in Josh's memory sweeping him down a hall into a control room with a console, now vacated. It slams him into it so hard his face breaks into a monitor. He withdraws and at least nothing major is damaged - his eyes are okay! But his nose is broken and bleeding and his face is covered in cuts. He tries to get up as the silver flows away into surrounding rooms, finally free from the pressure, and it seems like he should be able to leave...
But wires start to shoot out of the console, plugging into the cuts of his face.
He screams as they keep plugging in, trying to rip the cords out, trying to get free. But they move like living things, like snakes striking, hiding more and more of his face with cords, muffling his mouth and choking him as they go down his throat. They don't see the worst of the damage because his face is turned away but he starts to grow in size, as the studio warps and changes around him. He cries, struggles, screams, fails to get the striking cords to stop.
Eventually he holds massive hands to his head and shrieks in an inhuman cry, as his consciousness spreads - unable to stay in one brain anymore, one place, and disperses, stretching out until it's not really what could be considered a mind anymore. A collection of distant memories. Desires. Impressions. But not a mind.
The Stuff can do terrible things. Make unliving things alive, make living things unalive. Merge the two. Turn a tv station, and an 18-year-old with his whole life ahead of him, into an organism. One single organism, trying to comfort itself, that absorbs a whole town into a nightmare it's not even awake enough to realize it's creating.
He's not awake, not really. Because eventually, when the perceived negative stimuli is gone due to nothing directly attacking, Josh stops fighting against his leash and goes passive again.
He crouches low, his head near the ground - and near them - and looks down with them at a face that has no eyes, tilting his head sharply, like a bird, like he's forgotten he was upset, and is confused by human beings that aren't 2-dimensional and made of light and electrical impulses.