Baker found himself with his face squished up against the concrete floor uncomfortably in the pitch black.

“We need to talk about consent,” he groaned. He levered his arms under his body and pushed himself onto his feet, dusting his pants off. His eyes started to adjust to the dark. There was, in fact, a tiny amount of light filtering from the ceiling. It wasn’t immediately apparent how this was happening. The ceiling was pitch black, save for pockets of soft light leaking through. From what Baker could see, the room stretched as far as the light would allow him to see, and was dotted by black pillars holding the ceiling aloft.

Shortly after acquainting himself with his surroundings, he was join by two new and very loud basement co-inhabitants. They landed on the floor in a heap, then disgustedly detangled themselves.

“Really Max? I thought you were better than this. And Persephone? God--”

“At least I’m not running around like, oooh look at me, I’m too cool for everyone now that I’m on honor roll.”

“You think I’m acting full of myself? That’s rich, coming from the biggest smartass in the school. And don’t even try to say otherwise. Chase did a poll.”

“Chase hates me!”

“Results are in!” Anna opened a fantasy envelope and peered at the results. “Survey says 95% of everyone else does too!”

“Persephone doesn’t hate me.”

Anna took a deep breath and cackled as dryly and derisively as she could.

“Persephone hates everyone. She’s a cold hearted bitch, jealous that I got on honor roll and she didn’t. Ever since I met her I knew she was the type to have a labelled dagger collection for all her friends’ backs.”

Baker and Romov watched, unsure whether to be entertained or concerned. Eventually, the former decided on the latter, and the latter decided on the former. As though sensing his eyes on them, the pair turned towards Baker and exploded into nonsensical overlapping argument again. Baker put a hand up to speak and they reluctantly quieted.

“Listen. I don’t know what I’m doing either. Some goddamn candle crawled into my head and told me to shove myself into that book.” Anna and Max’s faces were overcome by some grotesque combination of worry, confusion, and disgust, but this was short lived as well before they turned back to face one another and launched into their argument again.

As they continued their banal exchange of verbal blows, Baker took his opportunity to observe his surroundings a little closer.

“So why were you so desperate to get down here in the first place?” whispered Baker.

“I left a bit of myself down here.”

“Ah,” replied Baker in his developing unique tone that meant he didn’t understand but didn’t want to know more. He paced toward a pillar. Drawing closer, he realized that the black of the pillar was glinting. There was some kind of substance coating it. He made a face and pulled away from it. He looked up to where they had fallen from. Smooth ceiling.

And then he realized that the black substance was coating the ceiling too.

Firmly unsettled, he looked back towards Max and Anna, apparently oblivious in argument. And then he noticed something glinting blue far across the room.

The argumentative duo didn’t notice Baker drifting by them, allured by the blue siren. Romov gently encouraged Baker by offering a physical compulsion to push him forward.

After nearly a minute of walking, the loud unfriendly conversation was only evident by echoes of harsh words rebounding on the floor and ceiling, too diffused to divine any meaning from. Baker leaned over and investigated the tiny blue flame.

A part of Romov stretched. Another day, another eternity perpetuated in a yawning chasm of boredom. Why did he choose the lighter? Sure, it looked cool on paper, and technically he had made the decision when he was a whole being, but a lighter was the worst object to spend an eternity confined in. He spinned his sparkwheel absentmindedly, the flint long worn down. He wiggled on the ground. That was about the extent of his movement.

He wondered how tealight Romov was doing. That asshole got the best deal, and now he was sure of it. At first the idea seemed repulsive, but now he craved movement, sensory capabilities.

The only company he had now was the tar. And while talkative, he wished it was less so.

HI HI HI, said the tar into Romov’s lighter mind. Great. Good. This is exactly what lighter-Romov wanted right now.

Hello, tar, he droned.

TODAY I FOUND A STUDENT AND AND AND I ATE THEM, excitedly bubbled the foul black substance.

That’s nice.

AND DJYMM CAME AND HE BROUGHT PEPPER AND I SAID HELLO AND SHE ALSO SAID HELLO AND HE SWEPT THE FLOOR AND I TRIED TO EAT HIM BUT HE DID NOT GET EATEN, giggled the tar.

That’s nice.

AND THERE ARE NEW PEOPLE HERE AND I WANT TO EAT THEM TOO.

Then why don’t you just eat them?

ONE OF THEM SMELLS LIKE YOU AND I DO NOT WANT TO EAT YOU.

This piqued lighter-Romov’s interest.

How many?

UM, UM, THREE. THREE? I THINK.

The reliability of the tar’s counting skills aside, this was unexpected. Better safe than sorry, though. Blue flame snaked from the lighter and flickered in the dark. Now he waited.

Something entered his flame, and by instinct he latched on and screwed himself into the flesh of Baker’s finger, who yelped and shook out his hand.

Lighter-Romov joined with candle-Romov, and the two attempted to reconcile. They approached one another in Baker’s body like wary dogs, circling and observing, before attempting to meld.

“Woah,” said Romov. “Wooooahhh. Okay. New experience. Plural. Experiences. There’s a lot of… stuff in this new consciousness. Okay.”

Baker looked around the room helplessly. “Great. Now what?” An immense pressure exploded into Baker’s mind, like the pressure inside a descending airplane, rumbling his thoughts and consciousness.

HI HI HI, said the tar. DID YOU EAT ROMOV?

“No, tar. I’m still here,” answered Romov for Baker. “Thank you very much for your help the past year, but it’s time for us to say goodbye. Can you uncover the door now please?”

The bickering in the distance quieted and became echoing footsteps. The rumbling in Baker’s head grew abashed and almost disappointed.

YOU AREN’T STAYING?

“No, tar. It’s time for us to go. I very much appreciated your company though, and I will visit all the time.”

…

YOU AREN’T GOING TO VISIT.

The footsteps grew faster. The ceiling glinted a little more, then started dripping.

“We will. I promise. We’ll visit every day. And I’ll bring Pepper too. You like Pepper, don’t you?”

YOU WON’T COME BACK. YOU’RE GOING TO LEAVE FOREVER.

“Baker, go.” Baker started walking forward, unsure. “A little faster, friend,” urged Romov.

YOU WON’T LEAVE IF I EAT YOU.

Anna and Max sprinted past Baker, and a rumbling followed them.

If you’ve never seen a tidal wave of molasses, then descriptive language fails to paint a picture of what was chasing them. A burbling black mass of tar pushed forwards at speeds that tar was certainly not supposed to go. The tendrils of tar from the ceiling grabbed at Baker, and that was plenty to engage the “flight” half of his fight or flight response.

The three of them sprinted forward, away from the tar. It closed in on them quickly, wave enveloping pillars as it met them, slamming into the concrete and cracking it. A part of Romov flickered out of Baker’s finger.

“Wall. Tar burns,” he said, steely. They reached the end of the room, tar only twenty or so feet behind them. Anna and Max seemed to understand the flame better than Baker did. As the flame touched the wall, the tar screamed, and fire ate away at the layer of black goop. The blaze slowly crawled across the wall. Slowly. Way too slowly.

The wave slammed into them.

Baker found himself with his face squished up against the concrete floor uncomfortably in the pitch black. He stood rapidly.

“Do you remember that?” asked Baker.

“Remember what?” replied Romov. After a second of silence, Romov remembered. “Oh.” Baker started sprinting immediately. Max and Anna dropped into the room, and Baker screamed at them to follow as he passed them.

One didn’t survive at Kingsly for at least four years by asking questions when someone very clearly running away from something screamed at you to follow. Anna began sprinting alongside him. Max looked at the pair, then, in a colossal waste of time, looked at what they were running from. It seemed like there was nothing there. He shrugged, ignoring the deja vu.

Baker scooped the lighter off the ground and squeezed the flame from it. It rejoined the greater Romov within his head, and the two reconciled away. The tar began to remember too.

The wave was more vicious this time. It exploded into the room and chased them, but they had a good head start. Wall burned. Door uncovered. Baker and Anna stepped through, then slammed it.

Max was too slow.

Gasping for breath, Baker sank down the side of the door into a sitting position. Anna panted, hands on her knees. She broke into nervous laughter.

“You might last longer than two days after all, Baker. I don’t know what the hell that was, but you saved my life. Thanks.” Baker buried his face in his hands.

“Saved your life, maybe. What about Max?”

“That kid was a deadbeat. Persephone manipulated him and he fell for it, hard.”

Silence permeated the air again. Baker breathed in deeply.

“Yeah.”

But he couldn’t stop thinking about the kid struggling to breathe in an ocean of tar, air squeezed from his lungs by the pressure.

This image continued to haunt Baker as he drifted through the rest of his day.

Romov was completely exhausted from the immense effort required to sustain a small flame outside of Baker’s body, and so decided to do research on whether sleep was possible as a flame inhabitant of someone else’s body. He left Baker to find his bearings and navigate to the next class that he teached, Specificity with Mrs. Fawn -- who was out at a meeting. In his time attempting to decipher the meaningless room number next to the entry on the schedule, Baker discovered that there was in fact a methodically mad hallway organization in Kingsly.

Rooms seemed entirely unaware of the space they occupied. Doors led to their attached room, regardless of where the doors existed in relation to their rooms. Branching hallways, fractal-like, sprawled in all angles from each other. Each hallway only led to deeper hallways in one direction, and following a hallway in the right direction will always eventually spit you at one of six seemingly random nexuses. Following a hallway in the wrong direction never seemed to lead anywhere at all, and after ten minutes of walking the same way down a series of halls with increasingly sparse lighting and strewn papers, Baker decided that it was for the best if he didn’t go too deep into the innards of Kingsly.

Judging by the nexus that you access the hallways from, it seemed remotely possible to know where one was going, answering a question that lingered for longer than Baker thought it would. So long as you kept your bearing, and remembered whether you were moving in or out from the nexus in question.

The first nexus that Baker found was the school bathrooms. All three of them. It hadn’t yet occurred to Baker that he hadn’t seen a single bathroom in the entire school until now. Now they seemed foreign and out of place.

He sighed and sat down on the floor, bracing his back against the wall. He’d take a minute to recharge and process the events of the day so far.

First: he had started existing, probably. Baker wasn’t sure if his lack of memories was because those memories had been destroyed or if they had never existed in the first place. This was problem number one. From his interactions with Romov, he knew that the former student knew more than he was letting on. Maybe he could explain, but for now, to keep him as his ally, Baker settled for playing his game of self-fetch.

Second: he had met Anna. She seemed to like him, and maybe he had gathered some of her respect by saving her from the tar. But still, she watched him like a creepy uncle watched NASCAR in the hopes of witnessing a fatal accident. It was more than a little unsettling.

Third: he had been hired by the school. The only other teacher he had met so far was Hendrick, and using Hendrick as his baseline, Baker supposed he wasn’t any weirder or more normal than the average staff member. But he also knew he’d been hired for a reason. He was useful to someone, somewhere. And that was leverage.

As these thoughts continued racing through his head, they melded in organization, losing their deliberacy and forming into anxious feelings flitting about inside his head like incessant moths.

His ruminations were interrupted by a kindly aura opening a bathroom door and slyly poking out a grandfatherly face. Djymm caught Baker’s eye and grinned.

“Ah, you’ll do just fine, you will!” Djymm walked forward, revealing that he was towing a steel cable behind him.

“Hello again, Djymm,” said Baker, with the remote mildness of someone jerked from deep thought. Djymm performed a small friendly salute, dragging his cable to the door adjacent to Baker and fiddling with the end, blocking Baker’s view with his body.

“Djymm, do you mind if I ask you a couple questions about Kingsly?” asked Baker slowly and deliberately. Djymm halted, nodded sagely, then continued.

“Of course not,” came his reply. “Hold this.” He handed Baker a small metal capsule. It looked like medication for a robot. Baker dutifully took it in his hands.

“I don’t remember anything from my past, but I do feel like there’s a reason that I’m here at Kingsly. Do you know… anything about… No, let me rephrase--”

“No need, my friend. I understand just fine.” He stepped away from the door and wiped his brow, revealing a delicate bow knot on the handle of the door. “You want to know why you’re here, don’t you?”

“Yes, exactly.”

Djymm held out his hand expectantly, and Baker dutifully dropped the metal capsule into his palm. He pocketed it inside his cloak’s lining. “I think that if you are here for a reason, then you will learn what it is sooner or later. Who knows, maybe trying to find the reason is your reason!” Djymm winked and chuckled. Baker accepted this new idea only reluctantly. It wasn’t very satisfactory, but it was all he had. Djymm withdrew a small white piece of chalk from a pocket, then leaned over and drew a tally on his tattered shoe, joining several other chalk tallies.

He then bustled back into the door from whence he came, and after a second, the cable pulled taut.

After a minute he returned, blowing on a piece of paper threaded through a carabiner clipped on the cable. It skated along the cable reluctantly like a sailboat. It bumped into the door handle, and the cable, Djymm, and the paper all vanished, misplaced outside the universe.

Baker watched the slightly ajar bathroom door, half-expecting Djymm to exit again. Immediately as his eyes fell on the door, he was seized with an informative memory of bathroom layouts. According to his inexplicable prior knowledge, mirrors were typical in bathrooms.

He ruminated on the prospect of seeing himself. He still didn’t have a proper resolved idea of what he looked like.

Almost against his will, he wedged himself upright and floated absently to the door, gently pushing it open with his hand. The floor looked like glass with a chasm below, and the walls were tiled with grainy blue painted ceramics. A single rectangle of light pulsed from above. The air felt cold and damp. An aquamarine series of stalls loomed to his right. To his left was a bank of sinks, divots in the smooth alabaster with minimal faucets hooked above. And above was a mirror.

He stepped forward, ghostly. The mirror, angled slightly away, curved towards him until he finally stepped into view of himself.

He was there. Plainly, with no tricks, displayed in the mirror -- the one object in this school that hadn’t yet attempted to gaslight him. But it might as well have been a picture of a stranger. His eyes lingered on his own eyes as he lost himself in the process of observation. Every movement recorded in the mirror. Pale, almost sickly. Messy hair matted down. He realized that his jaw was clenched shut, and he tried to relax it. He watched himself, moving, breathing, being. Drawn deeper, intrigued by a vision of a cohesive self. What did he seem like to Anna? To Djymm? He could barely recognize himself as a person, but this image in the mirror certainly was. He was almost jealous of his reflection; it wasn’t expected to be any more than an image. Locked eyes, brown, dark eyes with a sunken appearance. Lost eyes.

He felt a distant hand on his shoulder. Djymm gravely stood next to him, lips tight and pulled at the corners in an almost-grimace. His severe gray eyes bored down on Baker’s reflection, still staring at itself.

“Don’t fall in love with the mirror, my friend...” His voice was dark and cold, and echoed against the tile. He reached out and tapped the glass with a gnarled finger, meeting his reflection at the silver tentatively before continuing.

“...because it isn’t Kingsly that makes the mirror dangerous.”

He began to wash his hands, eyes still locked on Baker’s reflection.

“The mirror, siren-like, bends the mind into a lotophage. You will drink in your visage as your visage drinks you, your every loss reflected by its gain.”

The water stopped, and the faucet thumped.

Baker only barely tore his eyes away from his own, watching Djymm leave. The sudden depth was overwhelming. He realized that his breath had become shallow in an attempt to still himself and somehow match the frozen glass. Space stretched before him, and he felt his joints, his muscles, his every cell humming in awareness. He risked a look back at his reflection. It was just him.

Just him.