Prints on the Walls

[NightAir]

Summary:

Unremarkable even to his friends, Tai wakes up from a strange family dinner to a completely white room with no exit.

 

No doors. No windows. Just a small table set against a wall with a chair facing it, and a slot above it.

 

And looking through it, Tai sees the large form of an inhumane beast in another room...

 

[A retelling of Beauty and the Beast]

 

 

Status: WIP

 

Warnings: A M NE SIA!!! (B)a), werewolves (!!!!!my guilty pleasure), probably some violence, manipulation, language, sexual situations later yes good A+++, sporadic updates (sorry)

 

Comments: GREETINGS. It once again is I! I can’t finish anything….at the same time, I want....ed to write something that's been playing around in my head for a while. Cheers! First chapter will be up in a bit, so hold on tight.

[NightAir]

Chapter 1

 

The dinner is a mess waiting to happen. Tai just knows it.

 

"Sit still," his mother orders him where she has him sitting on the stool in the bathroom. She's a beautiful lady, really. Slim and thin-lipped, every movement carefully presented in almost regal and controlled motion, hair bundled into an elegant knot at the back of her head. She's projecting calm even though Tai knows she actually isn't feeling very calm right now, and part of him wants to apologize for the fact that he doesn't resemble her at all.

 

He doesn't resemble anyone positively.

 

"Do I have to show up?" he asks her. He's a nervous fidgeter and she knows it. She smacks his hand when he reaches up to scratch the back of his neck--he's already irritated the skin there that it shouldn't matter--and he drops it in his lap.

 

His knee begins to shake. His mother cuffs him around the ear for that, and Tai flinches. Stills it.

 

"Maa Mi," he pleads. "I don't want to go."

 

"Don't distract me," she tells him, tilting his chin this way and that. "No," she tsks to herself, eyes narrowing at his head. "No, no." She wets the comb again under the tap again, and runs it through his bangs to brush it back. Tai looks through the gaps of her arms to his reflection in the mirror where a guy with acne scars stares back with his hair parted straight in the middle like an idiot.

 

He's too old and too young for this, Tai thinks suddenly. He feels high strung and stressed--he's known about the family dinner since New Year's when they declared the date, but it feels like it's sprung out of nowhere. It doesn't help that his mother has pulled him aside for the thirteenth night to try to comb down the wicks of his hair before the guests arrive at the ornate restaurant he usually works as a bus boy at.

 

Tai pulls out his phone. Nothing. No one. He doesn't really know why he's surprised, or why he's hoping for some sort of an excuse to leave.

 

Eventually, his mother gives up. "Make an good impression," she tells him, and Tai feels a part of him folding deeper into himself as he replies in an uncertain affirmative.

 

Tai's had busy shifts before, when New Year dim sum is a bit more common, or pretty much any major holiday where large amounts of Canto people gather at the restaurant, but when he moves from the private staff washroom and through the kitchens, the chefs are already busy arguing with the waiters as they bang pots and start fires and do prep.

 

"Gwaai ji, what are you dressed so fancy for?" one of them queries. "Ah, don't tell me! Well, it is very strange out there, I will say."

 

Tai offers them a wane smile, before he takes one of the carts and rolls it out in the pretence of some sort of defence. He likes routine. He likes things being a little easier. Nobody really casts him a second look, but everyone is certainly decked out at their tables. Men and women speaking casually to each other in suits or formal clothes, little children dressed up running around chasing after their cousins and siblings shrieking, and the older crowd already seated at tables, discussing topics in large guffaws. Nothing seems strange--he supposes.

 

Everyone just seems like a stranger, anticipatory for something that Tai's not really sure is worth the trip made or the bill at the end of the night.

 

Eventually, he has to give up the cart, and settle himself at his family's table. There's already someone sitting there: a calm non-asian looking adult who might be of some sort of mixed or arabic descent.

 

"Hi," Tai blurts out.

 

"Lei Hou," the man replies calmly, and then returns his attention back to his phone. "I'm not gay, I'm afraid."

 

Tai shuts up, feeling his cheeks flare red. Around him conversations are settling into more proper, structured interactions where children are introduced. The man who speaks Cantonese with a better accent than Tai's Canadian-Born-Chinese attempts is named Hussein and gets along well with the other male adults. Tai gets a nervous tic of scratching at his eyebrow until his mother notices again and pinches his side.

 

"This is Tai," his mother says, from where she sits beside him, to another lady whose daughter is busy texting on her iPhone with long, bedazzled pink nails. "He's studying to become a doctor. Or an engineer. He's very lazy, however. It may take time."

 

Tai doesn't have it in himself to tell her that you don't become a doctor that fast. There's medical school, there's residency, there's a ton of stuff he hasn't even begun to research. He's not doing too badly in physics, biology or chemistry, either, but it isn't anything he's really interested in. He doesn't even know what he wants for himself, even if he is already eighteen and he'll be graduating in a few months, and he's already got several conditional acceptances lined up for a program or two that his parents approve of.

 

The woman responds, polite, and then criticizes her daughter (Ri-something) in kind.

 

Tai tries to meet the girl's eye, but she's defiantly typing at her phone as if she couldn't give less of a shit. Tai settles for sitting back in his seat and casting a glance around.

 

Several groups of tables are all in rapt attention with themselves. Some people are bringing out little white envelopes and waving it around, and others are reacting in kind with yellow ones. At another table, there are purple ones. Tai looks at their table: there aren't any envelopes, and none when he checks under the seat or under the white tablecloth.

 

A hush falls around the room. Tai looks up to the lights are dimming, except for the ones directed on a small raised platform of a stage. Hussein steps forward into the light, microphone in his hand, and he says something that Tai roughly understands as a greeting. Everyone echoes it. Cups are raised, so Tai does so as well.

 

He takes a sip of his--it should be tea, but it tastes like water, tastes kind of...funny. Hussein continues in a language that Tai is sure he knows how to hear, but it somehow he--

 

He what?

 

"--Tai," Hussein finishes, and suddenly, there's a light so bright it might as well be a spotlight directed right at Tai's eyeballs. "What do you have to say about this?"

 

Tai blinks, squints, and tries to focus. He says something he can't hear. Beside him, his mother is tugging at his sleeve, but he wretches free. Tai stumbles forward, chair legs tangling with dress shoes, and then falls onto the floor.

 

Limbs--limbs heavy. Tai stumbles to his feet.

 

Tai thinks that this is odd. That he can't make out people's faces around anymore. His palms should be sweaty, and his heart should be pounding out of his throat to be at the centre of attention, but all he can think is that he's so tired. His eyelids are really heavy, but then again, maybe he didn't sleep that much this afternoon.

 

He makes to sit back, but his upturned chair is still upturned, and he trips back over it.

 

Tai hears his name once again and the world gives way to quiet.

[NightAir]

Chapter 2

 

Tai wakes up to light.

 

Whiteness.

 

At first, he thinks he’s gone blind. Isn’t that what you see? A milky whiteness covering your vision. Or is it a never-ending darkness? He’s not sure. His head hurts, he feels out of breath, and some part of his body aches--not really sure what. Wait. His chest. He coughs, and it scrapes his throat—like he’s been screaming for a while.

 

Tai blinks, wheezes. His eyes, desperate for a sign to see, spot the blurry corner of what can only be a ceiling. Heart hammering in his throat, Tai realizes he’s in a room.

 

It’s not a very large room. It’s white for one. On all sides. He almost misses what might be a table that disappears into the wall; there’s something above it on the wall, and there’s definitely-a…a chair set under it?

 

He's alone. The lush of red on the walls and faux-golden figures, tables filled with relatives and strangers dressed to impress--all of that is gone.

 

Tai pushes himself off the ground to sit up. At once, his shoulder and hip ache. He’s been lying there for a while it seems. His hand knocks again something as he reaches up to scrub his eyes, hand trembling.

 

It’s a pair of glasses—black-rimmed and fashionable, he notes, as he draws it closer to stare at it. Oakley.

 

Tai doesn’t own glasses. He wears contacts—after a moment’s hesitation, he slips them on.

 

The world clears up, bright and clear, dizzying with clarity. These are…his? He takes them off, squints around, and slips them back on and notices what he’s wearing: a beige, knit-sweater sizes too big for him, and grey sweats.

 

Tai doesn’t own any of them. He doesn’t recognize anything. He feels his mouth go dry, and his blood go cold. Someone changed his clothes. Someone brought him here.

 

“Help,” he cries out. His own voice echoes into his ears. It hurts to speak. He manages out another “Hello?” but no one’s answering. Tai tries to breathe as he scrambles to his feet, eyes swinging wildly from one side of the room to the other. There has to be an exit.

 

It’s not a big room. It’s not special. Didn’t look very special either. Four walls, a floor, ceiling, all white. Is this someone’s house? Is Tai dead?

 

There’s nothing on the walls. They’re smooth plaster as he runs his hands over them. No bump, no tell-tale groove. A frantic glance at the ceiling doesn't reveal any cameras that he can see.

 

"Hello?" he manages out. It hurts.

 

He moves to the table next to the wall. There’s no design on it. Touching it, he realizes the top has been sanded down—it’s not plastic like he thought. It’s wood. A wooden table. Above it, there's...a metal slot. He pokes at it, but it's closed. Is it...is it for food?

 

There's no evidence that Tai has eaten in here. How much time has passed?

 

“Help,” Tai says again, voice rising in hysteria, head snapping around. “Is there anyone here?”

 

“Tai.”

 

His heart almost stops.

 

Slowly, Tai turns his head. "Who's there?"

 

“Tai.”

 

The voice is coming from the metal slot.

[NightAir]

Chapter 3

 

Surprisingly, Tai's first instinct isn't to back away. He thought it would be, and he's waiting almost indecisively, breath caught in his lungs and going nowhere in or out for the heart hammering, for the palms sweating--but there's nothing. It's like everything settled once he knew he wasn't alone, and that's...so weird to him.

 

Tai hasn't managed to be okay with being alone and stewing in his own thoughts since he was young enough to be ignorant of it all. Young enough out of the spotlight, young enough to not realize that people expected certain things from you, and that you alone were accomplishing nothing, and how dare you not.

 

The metal slot doesn't say anything else, but Tai can hear something like the air being pumped from one of those ancient accordian pumps whatever they're called--the things that slide open folded pleads open and closed. It's a giant wheezing sound, trembling in the same way that Tai's hands were earlier.

 

Tai ventures to lean his hands flat on the table. His. Still hands. "Hello?"

 

"Are you hurt?" It's not a voice Tai has heard before: not quite the baritone or the bass registers of a guy, but absolutely not the sweeter, higher pitches of a girl. It's something else, all gravely and deep--whoever is speaking is big, and sounds like they've swallowed dry grit and lurk at the edges of a haunted house. "Did they hurt you?"

 

Those words are animalistic and snarly; those words are not frightening. Those words are the type of words someone asks if they care about you.

 

"I'm okay." Tai's heartbeat steadies in his throat, and he wants, suddenly, beyond all else to know, "Are you-?" Tai's not sure who hurt anyone, but that must account for his sore throat, because it rasps against it.

 

There's a huge gasp of an airy wheeze, a shuddering Tai's not even sure why he can hear, but he feels it almost synonymously in the bones of his skeleton. And he hears it, a slow but high-pitched whine that makes his heart clench.

 

They must have been put in these two rooms together. Or talked enough for at least one time somehow for them to know Tai's name, for them to worry so much.

 

If Tai peeks through the metal slot, there's nothing on the other end: just a blackness that runs on in on, completely opposite to his white room. It makes the hairs stand up on the back of Tai's neck. "Are you okay?" Tai asks. "I can't see you."

 

At least, that's what he thinks, except that's not blackness. That's fur. Dark, matted fur belonging to something that can't even be called an animal.

 

It's huge, and it doesn't look human. Tai pales.

 

"Tai," the voice says, and it sounds like its owner is crying now. It's a deep, scratched out voice and it's trembling in a way that Tai recognizes: the kind that Tai makes when he can't take it anymore, when a situation is too overwhelming and things have kept piling up and on over and over again, and no more, please, no more. "Tai, it's cold and big and lonely here. I thought I was alone. I thought they took you away."

 

Tai knows this feeling. He's woken from nightmares like that, frightened of being alone, the earth swallowing its population from the shadows. To be the only one left with no one is petrifying. But this creature who can speak--"What are--"

 

There's a pounding on a metal door somewhere, suddenly, before the other person can answer. It slams open, ringing into the air and reverberating.

 

A man's voice barks out: "Get the monster first--"

 

"Hey--" Tai is shouting, but then he hears it: A large scream combined with a roar--something that belongs to that enormous animal--before it's silenced by a gun firing.

 

Tai's heart has stopped. There's--they--are they dead? What just--

 

From behind Tai, he hears a knock. When he turns around, the plaster walls opposite where he is have slid outwards, and a man, blue-eyed, beautiful, and fair, walks in.

 

"You're awake," he says, grinning largely at Tai from under coiffed blond locks. "Though likely they woke you up. Ready to reconsider?"

[NightAir]

Chapter 4

 

Tai has no idea what he's supposed to reconsider, but everything about this man makes Tai uncomfortable. Maybe it's because he's good-looking, and he doesn't blink: he stares Tai straight in the eye as though he expects Tai to do the same, and he gestures in large, arm-sweeping motions.

 

The man--Regan, he says, dressed in a three-piece suit with cufflinks--apologizes.

 

"It must have been a shocker. I'm sorry for that." He has an almost noble sound to his voice; the kind you'd give to a leader, who is always in the spotlight and always moving the action ahead, but that feels wrong. His wrists are skinnier than Tai's, and his cheekbones are sharp. He looks sickly, like he'd fold over with the wind, but the look he gives to Tai is friendly. "Do you want to finally get out of here?"

 

"Yes." Tai doesn't want--he doesn't want to stay here.

 

Regan takes him out of the room through a long dark hallway, and the light behind them from the room disappears with the plaster walls sliding shut.

 

"I really am sorry for how I acted earlier," Regan tells him. His voice is a beacon, and Tai tries to follow it. "Admittedly, that wasn't the side of me I'd ever want to show you. In my defence, he left me no choice."

 

He, Tai thinks. And he thinks of the pained creature on the other side of that metal slot, and wonders desperately what they want with him. He doesn't know how either of them know him, and he's afraid to ask. He sets his eyes down at their feet; his eyes have adjusted to the point that he can see: Regan's wearing shined oxfords, and Tai's feet are bare.

 

A lump grows in his throat. Tai feels incompetent, grossly out of place, and he's not sure who to trust.

 

"You must be hungry," Regan continues, light-voiced. "I know I am. So don't babble my ear off all at once, right?"

 

Regan keeps talking to Tai even with Tai's silences, even before Tai has a chance to think about how he wants to answer, about things that don't give Tai any answers but seem more like excuses to talk to him. He doesn't seem dangerous, but Tai can't help but remember how nonchalantly he treated someone--something?--being shot at.

 

Eventually, they arrive on the other side of the darkness to the light.

 

Regan continues forward. Tai stops, shy of stepping over the boundaries, and shrinks back.

 

"Hey now," Regan says, laughing as he turns around. "Too much time in that room made you forget how impressive this place is?"

 

When Tai manages to take a step forward, it's crazier than he thought.

 

It's a castle hallway. As in an actual castle.

 

The ceiling is impossible to reach: painted murals maybe spanning from centuries ago peek out from the faded gold lavishing and the crystal chandeliers. The walls are covered in some sort of designed carpet, large gilded frames housing enormous portraits. Rows of plate armour stand at attention beside one another at every junction that Tai can look, with their hands folded over the hilts of their longswords.

 

"They're not real," Regan tells him, sticking his hands into his pockets, even as he begins to walk again, this time, backwards so he can keep Tai in his gaze. He cuts a beautiful figure, in that suit, his hair styled, his face spread pleasantly into a smile, versus Tai, who feels out of his element, but his smile falters when Tai doesn't react to him.

 

"I," Regan says, and this is when the insecurity shows through. "Please talk to me. Please don't be mad at me." Regan steps close, hesitantly, as though afraid that Tai will send him off. He reaches out with two hands for--

 

Intrusive, is all Tai can make of it. He takes a step back, and then another, whole body flinching.

 

"Tai," Regan says, again, his voice hardening even if it sounds choked. His eyes narrow. "Come with me or else."

 

Tai's heartbeat is skyrocketing now. Before he knows it, Tai's run back into the darkness, into the long hallway, until he reaches the end, where the plaster walls part as he nears. His lungs are burning, his eyes too with tears, and Tai whirls around.

 

He can see the speck that's Regan in the distance. Regan hasn't followed him. Hasn't said a word.

 

Tai doesn't move. Eventually, Regan leaves, and Tai returns back to the room bathed in white.