Sev Elev- Michael Mell x Reader

Untitled Part 22

"You certainly took a hit back there." It was the squip's voice. Not the Jared Kleinman one, but the original, more feminine one. Yet it sounded strange. She-

"They. If you aren't going to call me an it, then I am a they." They looked terribly familiar, but you couldn't put a finger on where you've seen them. They had pink scars, some big, some small, all over the visible parts of their body. Their skin was a sepia color, and their face-

You found it a little hard to look at.

On the left side of their face, the skin was mangled and uneven, like a

"A burn scar." The squip didn't take its strangely intense gaze off of you when it spoke. Then it finally hit you, why it sounded so odd. You weren't sort-of hearing it in that weird, muffled way you did before. you were actually hearing it. It was like the difference between a bootleg and a studio recording. They narrowed their amber eyes at you.

"Wake up."

You suddenly shot up in the bed, looking around. You were still in a hospital. You looked around the room which seemed to be full of people. There was Michael, Jeremy's dad, and that browned haired boy from the Halloween party that you suddenly realized was Jeremy Heere. He looked reasonably uncomfortable; even more so when you glared at him. "Uh, hi, I'm Jeremy, Jeremy Heere-"

"I know who you are, Jeremy." You said calmly. The screaming headache you had was taking a lot of energy out of you, but you were able to think with a certain clarity you didn't have in a while. Then you gasped.

"Michael, did the Mountain Dew really work that well? I don't hear anything unusual." You asked. Michael smiled awkwardly. "I guess? I had done some research, but there was nothing on a squip-hive-thing this size. You'd have to ask Jeremy."

You looked to Jeremy. "Did it work? Or is my squip ignoring me?" He avoided your gaze. "Yeah. I think it did."

After a few hours, you went home with nothing worse than a concussion. While you were gone (for a grand total of seven hours), your mom had apparently taken flight after finding out that the Dillinger couple also left after that money laundering thing had happened. So now you and your underage aunt ruled the house with a tyrannical fury. That is, if "tyrannical fury" meant that you and your garbage can of an aunt screamed along to musicals and ate junk food until you passed out on the floor. Occasionally, you thought you could hear the original squip humming along, or laughing at you and your aunt's antics, and even sometimes mumbling a comment at different things.

Then there were the dreams. And the nightmares.

The pleasant ones were always soft, happy and blurry. They were of sunsets and pretty lights in the city.

The nightmares were sharp and defined, every detail standing out perfectly and implanting themselves on your brain. Many involved fire in different places; in the forest, in a school, even in a house. There were also ones where it was dark and you were trapped, binded by fear.

You could easily link the fiery nightmares with the burned, disfigured face your squip showed you the last time you saw them, but everything else? It wasn't as easy to figure out. You sighed and picked up your favorite jacket, throwing it on. Jeremy invited you to come to the mall with him and a girl named Christine for Chinese food. There was also going to be that short kid who sold you the squip in the first place.

"It's important," he had said.

You walked up the street, breathing in the cool air. The cold had settled in already, and the sky was overcast today, making it feel even more like winter. Finally, you stopped at the bus stop and waited. Before you had gotten the squip, you were never able to do this. You were too nervous and scared.

Guess I was good for something, eh?

You looked around, trying not to seem conspicuous. That was definitely the squip's voice, but its presence was gone as fast as it had come.

You got on the bus and sat down in a window seat by yourself. You still weren't yet comfortable enough to listen to music on a public bus. You just looked out the window until the bus neared the stop in front of the mall. You got off and walked through the mall until into the food court. Jeremy, a girl you assumed to be Christine, and- Rich. You finally remembered his name. When they spotted you, they waved you over.

"We heard from Michael that you, uh, had a squip. So I thought we'd all get together, I guess." Jeremy explained. "If you don't wanna talk about it, that's fine. Also, I'm sorry if my squip did anything to you." You shook your head. "It's cool. My squip, for the most part, was pretty cool from what I could tell. They seemed to be genuinely interested in general improvement of my life rather than just making me fit the status quo. At least, until we had an argument. They finally decided to create a physical... Image? But I was already feeling really bad, so when they did, I told them it was awful even though it was really good." Christine leaned forward. "What did it look like?" She asked. "Um. Very straight, thin nose with a feminine supermodel face, blue-gray eyes, and very dark skin." You described her as best you could. Rich, who had previously seemed very disinterested in the conversation before, suddenly sat up straight in his seat. "I know who you're talking about!" He rummaged through his pocket and pulled out his phone, scrolling through it. "Lola Chuil. Called the 'real Black Barbie,' Instagram famous with a guaranteed future in modeling." He showed you a picture. He was right, that face is a spitting image of what you saw that day.

You took in a breath. "Yeah. She looked like that. But after that day, the squip became an asshole. They deleted all of my music and even when they were shut off, they'd kind of whisper to me about how awful I was." Jeremy nodded. "He did something like that with me too." Rich looked somewhat distressed and changed the topic.

This chapter is the longest one; it has 1079 words. Hopefully the next one won't be like this.