"Nothing To Fix" - Chapter 1 - Scene 1
The workshop was spotlessly clean. Organized. Tidy. Utterly spotless, with not speck of dirt to be seen anywhere. No bubbling tubes, no steam vents, nothing to mark the space out as anything other than a sterile laboratory.
Pentious hated it.
He stood in the middle, turning slowly, as if maybe looking hard enough he'd be able to manifest a single imperfection. But there was nothing. Not a speck of soot, or a single misplaced tool. Every surface shone and gleamed, as if it was judging him just for being there.
He tried to force a laugh, but it sounded hollow and brittle. "Of course, safety regulations and heavenly standards. No matter how much I use it, it's always clean the next time I enter." His hands twitched, but his pocket death ray isn't there. No hardships in heaven. No death rays or airships.
No Egg Boiz scurrying about. No cheerful salutes, insane commentary, or the constant 'what's the scheme, boss?!' he'd come to expect. The golden Egg Boiz that Emily had conjured had numbed the loneliness, not cured it.
Pentious picked up a perfectly polished wrench. Perfect. Pure. Like everything else. He set it down almost immediately, as if the metal were red hot. But of course it isn't. "What on Earth am I meant to do with this?" he muttered softly to himself.
Silence was the only answer. With a furious shriek, he hurled the wrench across the room, overturning another table full of tools with a flick of his tail. The tools skittered across the floor and bounced off the walls, not leaving so much as a single blemish, either on themselves or on the laboratory itself.
It isn't even the usual silence. Not the comfortable background hum of electricity, the subtle grinding of machinery, or the distant chaos of the world outside. Silence. Clean, empty, endless nothing.
Exhaling shakily, he curled up in a corner of the laboratory, hunching his shoulders inwards. "I did it," he mumbles to himself, quiet and so soft he could barely hear his own words. "I was good. I was better. I improved and I earned my way to heaven. That was the point..."
"Wasn't it?"
His voice nearly cracks as he starts to chuckle. Then giggle. "Marvelous! Splendid! Pentious, you did it! You actually overturned your afterlife. You achieved everything anyone could have every possibly wanted." Pentious paused, eyes glazing over as he stares into nothingness. "So why do I feel so empty? Why does it feel like I've been left behind?"
"I didn't bring them with me. But the Egg Boiz would have loved it. All this extra space. And all the materials and tools you could ever want. Miss Bomb would have hated it. No neon nighttime, no explosions or bombs. Can you imagine?" he asked the empty air, "She'd be furious, and furiously bored."
He tried to smile again, but it dies before it can reach his eyes. "I'd give anything to see them again. Even that spider freak. Or Alastor... ... I don't belong here. No matter what The Speaker and Sera and Emily have been saying. I don't belong here. Not really."
[art by: MaguerramovaEva]
