C - The Corridors of Hallucination

He walked down passageway after passageway, each one the same; he
began to drift faraway from his memories. He couldn't remember when he
had begun to stop talking, it seemed a long time ago now, he was lost
deep in silence and solitude, the world around him seemed far
way.

He'd been like this since Mr. Wancerre had brought Sandy to see him.
The grey mushrooms had begun to grow on his face, and he could no
longer disguise them from anybody. She had tried to hide the look of
disgust upon seeing them, but Wazzo caught it and felt his spirits
sink. Sandy had kept averting eye contact with him, trying so hard to
hide her horror. When they hugged, Wazzo felt the repulsion coming from
her and the kiss was short and she pulled away suddenly and said she
had to go, then hastily left the room. This had hurt Wazzo more than
anything, that the girl he loved more than all the colour in the world,
didn't find him attractive anymore; and yes, he understood, he did look
disgusting with these mushrooms growing out of his body; but it made
him question love and if it was real. He had always hoped that love
went deeper than a person's appearance... but after a while of
questioning he no longer cared about it anymore, and began to drift,
lost in his mind, aimlessly walking the myriad passageways of Mr.
Wancerre's grey tower, all fight gone from within him.

***

Mr. Wancerre watched Wazzo on his security monitors. Soon he would
start to despise the world: the shallowness of it, the falseness of it,
as he himself had done many many years ago. It was interesting to watch
the slow transformation that was happening to Wazzo. It confirmed
everything Mr. Wancerre had held to be true. With Wazzo's might behind
him, nothing would stop him from taking over, nothing would stop him
filling it with his colourless ways -- everything was proceeding as
planned...

***

Sandy walked to meet him down one of the corridors. "You're horrible,"
she said looking with fear at the mushrooms growing out of him. Wazzo
said nothing, only nodded his head in agreement, accepted her words
like a piece of clay accepts the imprints of a person's fingers; then
she faded into mist and disappeared - just another hallucination.

He continued walking, he met his mother's ex-boyfriend, someone who had
once been his stepfather, someone he had never got on with. A bully and
a control freak, who had always made Wazzo feel small, uncomfortable,
and ashamed of himself, someone who heaped more fuel onto the fires of
his depression and insecurity than anyone else he had ever known. Wazzo
felt himself shaking upon seeing the familiar face, turned to walk
away, but he had already made eye contact with the man.

"I told you noone could love you, I told you you would fail, look at
you, look at you. You're weak and pathetic, a failure. You couldn't do
well at school, you were always getting sent home, causing trouble.
It's all your fault, everything is your fault, it always was. You're to
blame, you're the reason me and your mother split up, you're the
reason, you have a lot to answer for...a lot.." his stepfather looked
at him with ice cold eyes of anger, and raised his fist to strike him.
But Wazzo accepted it and just stood there staring at him blankly, till
he too faded and disappeared, back to the place he had come from: his
head.

And so Wazzo walked down passageway after passageway and in each one
was greeted by a new hallucination. Till he reached one corridor that
resembled a hall of mirrors, and paused.

He gazed at all his different reflections there. In some mirrors he was
very tall, in others he was fat; in one mirror he had a big nose, and
in another he had a big head on a little body; all the mirrors
distorted his image in some wierd way; but perhaps the strangest one of
all, was one which gave him a perfect reflection of himself, this is
how he wanted to look, this was how he wished he was. He looked
beautiful in this mirror, like an angel, but too beautiful to be true,
and it scared him to see his perfect self, for it didn't feel
right.

He carried on walking to the last mirror, and this one showed him as he
really was. He stared at the mushrooms growing out of his cheeks.
Smiled and touched them gently, accepted them, for he no longer cared
what he looked like. He was actually beginning to feel a little
attached to them, for they seemed to be the only things he could be
sure of. He knew soon when they grew all over his body, he would
suffer, for sometimes they could be very itchy, and he couldn't scratch
them, for it hurt him to do so, and soon he might not be able to sit or
lie down, or wear any clothes at all for fear of squashing them... but
he accepted them.

And feeling angry suddenly, he began to despise the world, then in
irrational fury, he kicked the mirrors, one by one, till they all
shattered into many glistening pieces, which slowly faded and
disappeared back into his mind.

Like all these mirrors, everybody seemed to be hiding something, or
hiding from something; lost in egotistical illusions about themselves
and each other, whether they be nice illusions or horrible illusions.
Nobody seemed to look in the mirror which showed the truth, preferring
to gaze into illusions... as the world died around them. He wished they
would look into the mirror of truth and see what they were really doing
to the world and each other. He began to see where Mr. Wancerre was
coming from... he wasn't really the baddy; at least he was being
truthful about who he was, in fact Wazzo started to respect him.

Let them all be like that, he thought, all the people of this world, I
will no longer fight for them, no I will take the colour away from
them; and maybe then, colourless, they might be made to see the true
nature of things, and in losing what they had all taken for granted, be
shocked -- made to change their ways...

***

Mr. Wancerre frowned un-easily at the image of Wazzo on his monitors...
within the pit of his stomach he felt a joy rising, but also an
edginess, a panic: a fear that made him break into a terrible sweat.
This was the beginning of the end for colour, the grey hand was coming,
the great tide turning... this dark dream of his now surfacing into
waking reality...

and with such fury, such might by his side, who could possibly stop
him?

Yet, something troubled him.

-

to be continued...