Chapter Text
At the bottom of Nowhere, in the empty darkness where the grave of a mountain high monster was laid to rest sat a broken mirror acting as a rift between worlds. What once was a portal home had soon become a doorway with no hinge, handle or lock. Low sat in his room on the other side of the rift. He’d been there for days, possibly weeks, always focused on his mirror. It had shattered into pieces and though he had made it home he lost the only reason he wanted to be there.
His best friend in the world, Alone, was trapped on the other side. She had begged him not to go through, but he did anyway. He was so focused on the chance to be away from the Nowhere he hadn’t considered or rather didn’t want to think about if she could even come back with him. But today was different. Low had finally worked out where everything went. He had spent so long comparing pieces and cutting his hands with shards of glass, but now it was finished. A complete mirror. Sure, it was a bit broken. Not all pieces went together quite right but he could at least see his reflection. Surely that’s all he needed.
He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, holding his hand up to the glass like he used to and tried to pull himself in. He could feel himself going through but it was less smooth than last time. Like he was being poked at by lots of tiny knives, and they were tearing him apart into tiny fractals, until eventually he made it through. Though it wasn’t to where he last entered, he could still recognise that it was the correct nightmare realm. There was always a faint whiff of misery in the air in the Nowhere.
This part of the nowhere was hot, like he was sitting in a boiling cauldron, with cogs turning around him. There were residents turning large tread-wheels together and throwing coal into the flames of a thousand ovens, the vibrant yellow and orange burned his eyes compared to the dark void infesting the rest of the room.
Where’s Alone?
Low sneaks around the workers using the darkness to his advantage and climbs up some shelves so he can jump across the wheels while they turn. Once up on the ceiling supports he had a chance to look over the grand room he was in. It seemed to be some sort of factory. The coal was for melting plastic to be moulded while the wheels turned a conveyor belt above him supporting trays of different broken toys that were being thrown back into the flames, recycling the waste into new product.
Low took this opportunity to hang off one of the conveyor belt pieces and bring himself to another room that it lead into. A little gnome ran past him as he landed on the concrete floor. The conveyor continued into a room lead by robotic workers. Their faces disturbingly mixed with bits of technology looked droopy and sad, their only movement being to occasionally pull a lever or remove a toy piece that didn’t pass regulations. Low sneaks under the tables through a box of spare toy pieces but having walked through them, discovered more than he had hoped for. There was a child in the box, a real one but its face was like porcelain, cracked from force. Along the walls are posters encouraging the workers with bonuses and showing off that 10% of their staff were human. The person on the poster looks like a relatively normal resident from the nowhere. The only difference was his weird arms that were bent above his head. The rest of his body below was hidden from the picture, but you could see he was sitting inside a Forklift.
Low continued sneaking past the residents, under tables, and boxes, occasionally throwing things to the side to distract the workers while he walked past, until he got a door that required a button being pushed to enter. Low reached for his arrow but stopped when he realised it was gone. When he went through the mirror he must have lost it somehow. Loosing his only weapon made him feel very vulnerable.
As to try and get to the button anyway, Low distracts a worker by setting off a toy in another area and jumps up onto the conveyors, then using a destroyed conveyor that was leaning against the wall, he climbs up to the button and presses it. This caught the attention of other workers and Low started running out of the room, dodging obstacles and using the conveyors to try and speed himself up. The workers were surprisingly fast.
Eventually, Low made it out of the room of conveyor belts and fell down a shoot for the toys being made by the company. He lands in a box full of various toy parts. Climbing out he can see more boxes in a row next to his own that lead up to a big sorting machine that checked which bits fit with which parts. Said machine had a resident’s head and arms attached to the sides. After the sorting machine, the toys all had to go through an electric machine that welded all the pieces together and the only way past it was a set of bars that were permanently electrified and shooting sparks.
Parkouring up to the top of the machine to a vent that lead to its power source, Low powered off the machine which seemed to upset someone close by. Through the wall a grumble and a miserable cry rang out while machine-like footsteps drew nearer. Low jumped down into a box to hide while a large door next him opened, revealing the shadow of… a person? A machine? Its body looked like it was pushed through the front of a forklift with their arms out in front like the forks, but then Low realized their body was welded to the machine itself, with its skin and the metal not easily distinguishable from each other. The bottom of the forklift is dressed in trousers that have been torn to fit the base inside them while their shirt and high-vis jacket went over their torso and the top of the machine with the arm holes in the jacket being so wide they look like windows for the head to look out of.
It looks around unnaturally, then scoots over to the machine and resets the power to start the factory back up. He then leaves through the same door, leaving it open for Low to sneak through behind him unknowingly.
The next room is filled with toys being painted after being put together. An eye lit up to check weather the toy was painted properly but it looks like it petrified some of its workers along the way. All the toys were being filtered into boxes shaped for them at the end of the factory line. Some of them looked familiar to Low. His therapist had these sorts of toys in his institute while it was still running. Train sets, toy blocks and… dolls….
An ugly feeling lurked in Low’s stomach as he remembered who he was looking for. Truth be told when he was first in the nowhere, he had tried to ignore reality as to let himself believe in something better. Before he had entered the mirror and was met with the nightmare realm the only friend he’d ever had was a red-head doll that sat with him when he drew on his bed. He always imagined she was his best friend but when he entered the nowhere, he didn’t need to imagine. She looked like a real kid, she acted like one, and she was as real a friend as any real-world human. The only difference was that Low knew she wasn’t one. Not really. But he couldn’t afford to see the truth. He wanted to go home, through the mirror, but she wasn’t like him. He should have listened to her and never left, but he did anyway, and now he’s lost her. Maybe there’s a reason the mirror took him here instead, and hopefully it’s for a good reason.
Sneaking past the eye and down into the shoot, Low falls in a parcel and gets placed inside a room full of other boxes.
The forklift guy lurks the halls carrying a clipboard, adding labels to all the boxes before lifting them up with his forklift arms and taking them out to be shipped. Low jumps down from his box, dropping lots of plastic peanuts around his feet. The other boxes in the room have parts of dolls and toys popping out the sides of them like they tried escaping but were put back in their boxes after trying. Pulling out his light, Low continues on his quest to leave the facility and find his friend.
When turning the light on though he is interrupted by the Forklift creature and turning towards Low. In fright Low turned off the light and hid away from his previous spot, hoping the Forklift couldn’t see him. Once he heard the unsuccessful clunk of the monster hitting a wall instead of him, Low sparingly flashed his light to get a grasp of his location, then dashed as far as he could, memorising his steps and occasionally altering his path so he wouldn’t be caught.
Eventually he makes his way towards a lit-up hallway and runs as fast as he can away, knowing that the truck can very much outrun him and run him over in the process. The Forklift pursues Low on his two caterpillar tracks, turning faster with better control of the path ahead. Low runs down the hall as fast as he can, swerving around corners so fast his feet cant keep full grip on the floor. He attempts to dodge under a gap in the floor and continue underground but the Forklift’s arms are made of strong enough metal skin that it penetrates the floor and disrupts Low’s momentum, shaking the path ahead and knocking him to his feet. He has no time to wait though as the monster attempts to grab him using his long arms through the floor.
Low continued running under the floor then back up into previous rooms where the Forklift continued chasing him, breaking through conveyors and dropping piles of unorganised toys onto the floor. As Low entered the organising room again, the Forklift knocks out a power line, making it possible for Low to break through the live bars from before and hide on the other side, but the door ahead has been blocked by debris. It put its bendy fork arms through the bars and violently attempts to grab Low. He pushes further and further, breaking a dent in the floor so wide it tilts the sorting machine on its side, leaving the opening facing the monster. The bars start to break as he continued pushing, only for them to give way and drop him into the sorting machine.
The machine started to whir, organising the organic material inside. It decided that the Forklift monster shouldn’t be put together how it has been and begins graphically tearing its body apart, pulling its metal and human skin from each other until its pained screams stopped and its body went limp.
Low made his way back to the room full of boxes, running as far as he can from the body, but a screen flickered on. The screen flashed on to an auction for a doll that was bided on and had just been paid for. The object being sold showed a picture of Low in his box from when he hid in one downstairs.
As it shows the bid being won, a pipe comes down from the ceiling and sucks a box and Low up into itself, through several interconnected pipes until it lands him in a room, filled to the brim with weird collectables. The most of these collectables being dolls.