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The first time Arthur kills him, he expects it more than he should.
That’s the thing about making friends with strangers you peel off of taproom floors. Parker likes Arthur. More than that, he thinks he may be closer to Arthur than anyone else in his entire life. But there’s always been a sort of darkness to the man. Even if he tends to play the good cop to Parker’s boxer, there’s a violent side that Parker’s only seen the few times he’s witnessed the man be backed into a corner. Parker had done some pushing in the past, but he’d never gone too far once he saw Arthur’s hackles start to rise. He could wait until Arthur wanted to talk, which he almost always did. But even with that awareness, Parker had always felt confident in his ability to overpower his friend if need be.
So maybe it would be more accurate to say the attack was expected. His loss was not.
Arthur’s fingers are a vice grip around his throat. His lungs tighten. His vision darkens. As he dies, he only just notices how his friend’s eyes are no longer that deep shade of brown that he’s grown so accustomed to.
It’s the second time Arthur kills him that he realizes they’ve turned gold.
It’s the third time when Parker thinks to do anything differently. When he hears Arthur make a move toward him from behind, he sidesteps him and, with some regret, aims a punch at his jaw. But instead of taking him down like it should, all the punch does is clock his head to the side while he continues to advance. Parker realizes that maybe his original hypothesis was correct. Arthur, normally, wouldn’t be able to take him in a fight. The conclusion he comes to as black spots dance in front of the gold above him is that this isn’t Arthur.
It’s by the sixth round that Parker realizes it’s the book. He swears at himself for not being a better detective but from a distance it really had looked like any ordinary old tome. And it’s hard to focus on much when you can’t seem to stop dying at the hands of your best friend. The loop always begins right when there’s a knock on the door. Arthur sighs loudly and says “I’ve got it,” before standing from his desk and going to open the door. The sixth round, Parker watches as Arthur unwraps the tome, opens it and freezes. He tries to bolt as his partner lunges for him, but whatever has gotten into Arthur is faster.
During the seventh round, Parker jumps to his feet before Arthur can even get a syllable out. Opening the door, he grabs the package. Rare booksellers, seemingly not addressed to either of them… likely intended to affect the former tenants then. It could be that the book causes a murderous rage in the reader, but Parker needs to at least unwrap it if he’s going to get to the bottom of this. He excuses himself to the bathroom, Arthur looking at him strangely. He hopes that if whatever infects the mind upon reading the book affects him, he’ll be far enough away from his partner that he won’t be a danger. Its lucky that the offices are so dead on weekends, otherwise he’d be worried about collateral damage.
Taking a deep breath to steel himself, he opens the books and begins to read.
He learns that there are more painful ways to die than asphyxiation.
That round throws him off kilter, and it takes him a few to get back to trying to solve the problem. On the twentieth go around, he manages to grab the book from Arthur, and convince him they need to return it to the sender since it obviously isn’t for them, “Jeez Lester, don’t you know opening another man’s mail is a crime?”
And so they head to a rare bookshop and all Parker gets for his efforts is zero information and a bullet through the eye.
“Wait!” He shouts as Arthur as his friends hands close around his throat.
“Drop it!” He barks as a golden eyed expression snaps towards him.
“Who the fuck are you?!” This makes Arthur pause.
The next loop is different. Arthur still manages to open the book somehow, but he’s slower as he attempts to attack Parker— less animal rage, more methodical. Like he’s thinking about something as he corners the man. He still kills him.
And then it begins again. And again.
One loop, Parker tries to knock Arthur out as he opens the books. He hits too hard, and Arthur hits the wall with a crack. The second the panic starts to wash over him, he thinks he hears something in the back of his mind, but then there’s just a ringing in his ears and everything goes black.
Three loops later, things become even stranger.
Parker is losing hope. Either he’s dead and in hell, reliving his last moments ad infinitum, or some Arkham magic bullshit is going on. Possibly both. But it seems that if he tries to avoid his fate at Arthur’s hands he dies anyway, or worse. He isn’t really paying attention when he mumbles, “Just get it over with,” and Arthur responds.
“We’ve been here before, haven’t we?”
Parker’s head shoot’s up from where he’d been leaning over the desk.
Arthur’s eyes are yellow and his voice is… different. It’s still clearly him speaking, but there’s a deep edge to it, like he hasn’t spoken in years and isn’t quite sure how to use his vocal chords.
“Yes, fuck, yes!” Parker rasps excitedly and stands up, which is the wrong move, because at the sudden movement the thing inside Arthur rushes him. His neck snaps before he even gets the chance to lose his breath.
“Okay,” he says with his hands out in front of him as those golden eyes slide toward him. “Let’s not do anything hasty.”
“Why are we back here?” The voice says.
“Hell if I know, friend, but what I do know is that the clock only rolls back when I die so if we could both keep our hands to ourselves that would be nice.” The entity inside Arthur laughs at that and advances.
“Nice try.”
Parker feels vindicated the next time those golden eyes appear and the entity screams.
He is killed five more times for his trouble.
“Why can’t I kill you?!” The beast yells. Parker is once again glad their neighbors aren’t in today.
“Oh no, you’ve definitely killed me.” Parker replies. “It’s just every time you do, we begin again. And everytime I manage to make sure that Arthur doesn’t open your little book, I die some other way. So I think the name of the game is to avoid death with you in the room. Now why don’t you just pop back into your tome and my partner and I can figure this out.” Unfortunately, the entity just uses Arthur’s face to grin.
“I’m afraid that’s not possible,” It rasps. “Your partner is… well. No longer with us.” Parker goes cold.
“You’re lying.”
“It’s a side effect of my existence.” The entity speaks as if it’s delivering a sad truth about the world to a child. Like it’s announcing the death of a goldfish and not Parker’s best friend.
Parker dies after making sure at least one golden eye is no longer capable of opening.
He frantically returns to trying to prevent Arthur from opening the book, but it seems harder now. Like Arthur is being pulled to act against his own best interest. Now even when Parker gets it away from him at first, he still manages to open it when Parker lets his guard down.
“I know he’s still in there,” Parker says when he’s lost count of what loop they’re in.
“Believe what you will,” the entity is now thumbing through the pages of his own book. He’s twitching oddly. Like he’s taken something, or had too much to drink. Parker stares at him. The entity lets out a harsh breath and drops the book, Arthur’s long fingers moving like a spider’s legs. Once again those eyes land on Parker.
He rushes him.
He blames the following loops on the entity’s stubbornness. He feels he knows this creature’s personality now. Parker has a habit of connecting with stubborn assholes, and thinks rather wildly that perhaps if they had met under different circumstances, they could have grown on each other. But then again, that isn’t possible, so Parker shakes away his momentary madness and allows himself to hate this thing that is keeping them both in Hell.
The entity loses energy. Loops repeat. The time between deaths lengthens.
Finally, once again, Parker can see something start to happen to Arthur’s body. The twitches. But this time he’s ready when the entity snaps. He dodges, throws a chair at him, does all he can to keep the thing away.
Suddenly the beast’s eyes roll back, and Arthur collapses like his strings have been cut. Parker rushes to his partner. Cradling Arthur, he searches for a pulse and almost cries with relief as he feels the steady beat of blood under his fingers. He was right, it’s going to be ok, maybe this was all he needed to do, survive this one thing.
But when Arthur’s eyes open, they are not the shade of brown that he has come to desperately miss, and Parker knows he isn’t out of the woods yet.