See No Evil (Airy X Reader)

Prologue

You were just five minutes from the door to your apartment complex. Five more minutes before you would have been home free from the eyes in the shadows that had followed you home that night.

Four minutes from your door, there was a hand around your waist and the cool edge of a blade pressed to a very vital place.

A struggle ensued, and the battle was a blur; you punched, he kicked...

... you screamed. You never thought of getting stabbed as something that would be loud, but between your ragged breathing and the pounding of your own heart you felt like you were going to go deaf. You hit the ground, the world spinning as you felt your personal belongings being robbed from your body, but you were too dizzy to care. The pain was all-encompassing and came in excruciating waves, yet you still tried to crawl the last three minutes back home as your assailant disappeared back into the dark. You laid there, fighting to keep breath in your lungs as you slowly bled to death. Phoneless, walletless, and pretty soon lifeless if you didn't get help soon.

You managed to pull yourself up the handful of stairs that led to the door. You were so very close now, but also so very tired. Maybe, just maybe, if you simply rested here for a bit, someone walking by would see you and call 911. You could always get up when you felt better and go inside. It was the best course of action, your fading consciousness told you. So you closed your eyes and went to sleep.

A nearby streetlamp flickered twice.

Somewhere, a dog barked.

The night went still.

At 3:42 AM, you were found and pronounced dead.

*****

When you opened your eyes next, you were in a rather strange place. It was vast and tinted in hues of pink and yellow with a thin layer of water covering the floor for as far as the eye could see. The only other discernable features in the area were two brown armchairs with a wooden table in between them, atop which sat a small radio emitting soft static. There was only one other person here – a tube of toothpaste occupying one of the chairs. You gravitated towards the scene, as it was so far the only place to go in what was otherwise an empty void. The toothpaste man sat sprawled out in his seat with a dead look in his eyes, with one hand mindlessly fiddling with the knob of the radio beside him.

You approached cautiously, unsure if he wanted company. After waiting a beat for a reaction from him but receiving none, you chose to sit in the unoccupied armchair. Eventually, you couldn't take the silence anymore.

"Am I dead? Is this... the afterlife?"

The toothpaste man said nothing.

"A-are you God? Or maybe... are you dead too?"

The toothpaste man said nothing.

"What is this radio for? Are you... looking for a particular station?"

The toothpaste man said... nothing.

"Hey, are you even listening to me? Hellooo-?"

You leaned over the table and tried waving your hand in front of his face, but that didn't do any good either. It was like he wasn't even acknowledging your existence. Fed up with being ignored, you gave up on communication. The strange radio now between you both had your full attention, for upon closer inspection you noticed something rather off about it; the channel numbers were massive. Too massive to represent normal stations.

"I'm gonna... take a look at this for a bit. Hope you don't mind."

You inched the radio towards yourself, releasing it from the toothpaste man's weak grip.

... His fingers were still rolling the air where the dial was. Creepy. How long had he even been here?

You turned the knob to and fro to get a feel for the sensitivity, observing the numbers as they jumped. Curious, you decided to do a test run on a random channel – the last one you landed on should do nicely. Without any hesitation, you extended the antenna of the radio.

Toothpaste man was once again alone.