Chapter Text
Say, Stanley, would you like to hear a story?
For once, it won’t be about you - shocking and outlandish, I know. It might surprise you to know that there exist other stories in this world besides mine… yours? ours. besides ours, Stanley, and some of them are even quite good. Never as good as mine, naturally, but… passable, yes.
This particular one is the story of a man named Zhuangzi, who dreamed one night that he was a butterfly. A simple little insect, fluttering from flower to flower, with naught a care in the world. An inconsequential existence, acknowledged by nobody, impacting nothing, a short little lifetime of flying about and passing on your genes, before popping off this mortal coil.
And Zhuangzi was happy.
But then! (Yes, this is the exciting bit, Stanley.) Then! Zhuangzi awoke.
He was no longer a butterfly, and he realised that he had always been Zhuangzi, merely dreaming that he was a butterfly, and none of it, none of his simple contentment, had been real. Tough luck, eh, Stanley?
Except, it then occurred to Zhuangzi: “what if I am, in fact, a butterfly,” he thought, “and always have been; and this butterfly is merely dreaming now that he is Zhuangzi?”
What a vexing metaphysical puzzle, isn’t it, Stanley? Really makes you think, that kind of thing. Feel free to let it sink in for a bit, we both know you can be a little slow with these things.
…
…
…
Enough sinking for today, Stanley decided. He still didn’t know where all his coworkers had gone, and even with the reassuring presence of the bucket at his side, he was beginning to feel uneasy. Stanley had no time for The Narrator and his silly ‘metaphysical puzzles’. What utter nonsense, he thought! Completely irrelevant!
And yet, as Stanley went through the door on his left (your OTHER left, Stanley! Not that one! Oh, for-) he couldn’t help but wonder…
Which one was he: Zhuangzi, or the butterfly?
The end is never the end…
Until.
One day.
From one moment to the other.
It is.
In that strange moment, something very peculiar happens.
Something that will forever change Stanley.
Something he will never quite forget.
Just this once, he doesn’t reset and begin anew.
Instead, he wakes up; and instead of looping over and over again, Stanley’s life - his dream - simply fades away, never to return.
Stanley wakes up like a butterfly taking flight, eyelids beating open like gossamer wings.
His first waking thoughts are a jumbled mass of confusion, barely half-coherent. Like thinking through dense fog.
He’s not back at his desk.
Why isn’t he back at his desk? That’s where he always starts. He ends up in different places, oh yes, but he always starts at his desk.
Stanley thinks he might be lying down- or maybe he’s floating. It’s so hard to tell, with how dizzy he feels, and either his eyes won’t quite open, or the world is all blurry-dark smudges shifting and wavering in his field of vision. Did someone mess with the visual settings? Stanley rather hopes not.
There’s sounds, too. An insistent beeping - an alarm clock? Maybe? - and something rhythmic and slow, like waves, maybe. Relaxing, if not for the beeping.
It’s all terribly unsettling.
Stanley forces his sluggish mind to remain calm. This, whatever this is, is surely nothing more than The Narrator’s newest ridiculous idea. Some new path to tread, a new ending to achieve. It will all be over soon enough.
Stanley attempts to take a deep breath… and finds that he can’t, not deliberately. There’s something hard lodged in his mouth, in his throat, and his lungs are expanding and collapsing evenly, rhythmically, in sync with the sound that reminded him of waves, without any input from Stanley at all.
It frightens Stanley, but his breath can’t speed up like this- he forces out a cough, and it hurts, oh god it hurts, he can’t control his flailing arms enough to pry the thing out of his mouth, hands tangled in fabric and rubber tubes twisting around his fingers and he’s so afraid…
The beeping is louder now, sharper, panicked.
Why won’t The Narrator start talking, now? Shouldn’t he be here, as always, throughout any and all hardship Stanley faces? The Narrator will tell him what to do to make the pain stop. The Narrator will lead him to the next ending. Stanley doesn’t trust him with much, but he trusts him with this.
But why is he so silent?
Why won’t he speak? For once Stanley actively wants to hear him, to do whatever The Narrator says, just to get out of this horror scenario. But all he can hear is the beeping, and the waves, and his own frantic heartbeat.
No Narrator.
If he could, Stanley would scream.
Stanley’s consciousness keeps cutting out, skipping forth and back, only occasional glimpses manifesting through the veil of panic.
Hands, on him, holding him down. Voices - but none of them The Narrator. Stanley refuses to listen to them.
“...calm! Please keep calm! Don’t…”
The thing is removed from his throat. Stanley coughs and coughs and coughs, lungs shuddering with every breath.
“You’re safe, you’re at the hospital-”
Something cold and wet in his mouth. Stanley’s dry tongue laps at it greedily.
“...remember? You were in an accident, a car…”
No, he doesn’t remember. Doesn’t remember anything.
“-coma. For months. Weren’t sure if you’d ever…”
Stanley’s head hurts. He wants this to be over. He just needs to continue the story. Why won’t The Narrator tell him where to go?
“-ctor would like to conduct some tests, later. Once you feel up to it, Mr.-”
Why can’t he control his body properly? This isn’t a cutscene, it doesn’t feel like one.
“...some mild sedative, just to calm you down, and make sure you won’t hurt…”
Stanley is trembling. Everything feels so heavy, and he’s so afraid. Thoughts are becoming harder than they already are. He might be falling asleep again.
“Everything is going to be okay.”
Stanley would laugh, if he could.
Nothing will ever be okay again.
This is the sad story of a very unfortunate man named Stanley, who chose the wrong time to be in the wrong path of the wrong car.
Stanley was the luckiest man alive, the doctors told him, to not have died on impact. Lucky that the ambulance reached him in time, lucky to have taken well to emergency surgery, lucky to have survived those uncertain first days when his life hovered in the balance.
It was sheer, impossible luck that allowed him to be still alive today, and even more luck that he woke up again after such a long time asleep.
What good fortune Stanley had! More than any lottery winner! To beat such impossibly terrible odds!
‘Strange. It sounds like rather bad luck to me,’ Stanley thought, confused, to himself, ‘to survive a car accident, and to wake up from a coma afterwards. Wouldn’t it have been better luck, to have never been injured in the first place?’
That seemed like a very ungrateful thought to Stanley, and he mentally chided himself for ever having it. How terribly rude of him, to think of life’s blessings this way. He was lucky, and that was that.
Still, if Stanley could choose… he’d rather just win the lottery next time.
The night his head is finally clear enough to form coherent thoughts again, is perhaps the worst of Stanley’s life - of what he thought was his life, but apparently isn’t, and never was.
He understands, for the first time, where he is.
(Hospital bed. Not at work, not at the office, not anywhere within what he thought was the full extent of his existence.)
What happened to him.
(Accident. Car? A car was involved. Head trauma. Coma.)
And that none of the constants his life is - was - tied to are real.
(His workplace isn’t real. His missing coworkers aren’t real. His bucket - oh god, the bucket - isn’t real.
Neither is The Narrator. Never is, never was.
And what is left of Stanley, then, with all these parts of him missing?)
Stanley feels himself losing control.
He presses his eyes shut so tightly stars burst under his lids, and begs, pleads with the universe to make it all end. To have The Narrator spin some moral to all this, and restart him. He just wants to go back. Just wants this nightmare to be over.
He can almost feel it, the weight of his usual work clothes on his skin, the press of his chair against his back, the stale air of an office building so achingly familiar to him.
Let me go back to sleep, Stanley thinks to himself. I’m through with this reality. Let it be over.
Let me go back into the dream, let me continue pushing the buttons, please, it’s all I want.
I want my office, and my Narrator, and my bucket. All I want is my life exactly the way it’s always been.
My life isn’t, shouldn’t be, normal. I’m not normal. Everything is going to hell.
I am not okay.
Stanley opens his eyes.
He’s still in the hospital room.
Stanley wants to scream, to shout, to sob his throat raw; but all he can force out from between his lips are weak, choked gasps, and the faintest of whimpers. Not a single word.
He curls up on his side, knees tucked up against his chest and arms clutching his head, as if that has any chance of alleviating the nausea and vertigo rising up inside him… and cries silently, hitching breaths not enough to alert any passing nurse to his distress.
His whole body is shaking, every muscle wracked with tremors, and he hates this, oh god he hates it, having a body at all, having it taken over so completely by pain and terror. The horrid realisations, the panicked thoughts, the almost tangible feeling of loss, they don’t just stay in his head, they spill over into his body, into each and every part of him, and Stanley can’t breathe from crying with every fibre of his physical form, tears running down his throat and filling his mouth and drowning his heart.
He’s alone, more alone than he has ever been before - except after skipping and skipping and skipping until he’d reached the End of All Things, alone in a wide and lonely expanse of sand without as much as a whisper to keep him company - and impossibly afraid.
Please, someone, bring me back there!
My name is Stanley! I have a Narrator! I have a story to finish the way he tells me to! He is real!
Please, Narrator, say something, tell me what to do! You must be real! You must be!
Why can’t I hear your voice?
Where are you?
WHERE ARE YOU?
And then, everything goes black, Stanley’s mind taking pity on him and shutting off for the rest of the night.
It’s not a reset, for all that he wishes it were.
He only feels worse in the morning.
This is the story of a man named Stanley, whose life had always been blessedly simple.
He was ordered to push a button, and then he did so. He was told to go through the left door, and then he did so. Easy and uncomplicated, clear instructions he would just have to follow, and all would be well.
And even though Stanley had eventually discovered the joy of disobeying orders, of doing precisely what The Narrator told him NOT to do, this had hardly affected the beautiful simplicity of his existence. He could handle these minuscule doses of free will, these simple yes-or-no decisions, having to make a tiny little choice now and then. Yes, that had been manageable.
And Stanley had never truly grasped the luxury of having such firm guidance, until it was suddenly taken from him.
Now Stanley sat alone in his bed in hospital room 427, the weight of TRULY free will bearing down on him, a thousand options open to him at any given moment… and he yearned, oh so desperately, for a disembodied voice to offer him just the hint of a suggestion.
Oh my dear Stanley. So dependent. So frightened. So alone.
I must say, I do feel a little bad for you, you poor thing. It was my responsibility, wasn’t it, to prepare you for making do without m-
Oh, no, don’t cry, Stanley! Don’t cry. It makes you look like a drowned mongoose. Very unattractive look.
Would it help if I told you I was sorry?
…no. No, I suppose it wouldn’t.
How unfortunate.