Chapter Text
What was it that people said? Something about your life flashing before your eyes when you die?
Quite frankly, Vincent has always thought that it was complete and utter bullshit; if his brain wasn't literally being fried right now, he might have been happy to have his disbelief proven correct.
No, his life isn't flashing before his eyes; the only thing flashing before his eyes right now is the blinding electricity, lighting up the room in bright bursts of white and blue. It's only a few seconds, if even, but it feels like it's been hours since that goddamn television fell.
Blood fills his mouth. The eye that isn't pierced with glass goes blind. His entire body seizes and burns. Vincent does not have any last thoughts as he dies - his screams do a wonderful job at drowning out whatever higher brain functions remain in his final seconds. If he were to have any, though?
He'd be praying that whoever manufactured those fucking cables got dragged down to Hell with him.
The first thing Vincent sees is red.
The colour is so bright and overwhelming that he has to shut his eyes again nearly immediately, groaning. His head feels weird, and he's… not quite sure where he is?
What the hell did he do last night?
He doesn't remember anything. His initial thought is that maybe he was drugged, though he doesn't know who would've done something like that - nobody had ever seemed to have that much of a problem with him before. Perhaps whoever they hired in his old position had a similar… ambition?
When would he have even had the chance to be drugged, though? He doesn't go out very often, and he's a pretty careful guy, all things considered - when you were in the business of killing people, you become all too familiar with the ways you could meet the same fate.
He tries opening his eyes again. His vision is a bit fuzzy, but it almost seems like he's lying in some sort of alleyway - though he has no recollection of how he could've ended up in one.
He shifts. His vision swims. His entire body just feels… strange. He can't feel parts of his face, and he almost feels like there are holes or something in his sides. Was he stabbed?
Shakily, he pushes himself to at least sit up. His vision goes grey for a moment as he does so, but he manages to manoeuvre to sit against the wall of one of the buildings. His heart is pounding. He has to figure out what's wrong with him. If he's bleeding out or something… he is not just going to bleed to death in a fucking alleyway. He's Vincent goddamn Whittman. He didn't spend the last 10 years of his life working his way up to the top just to meet the same fate as that no-name fucking newscaster.
He reaches a hand up to his face, intending to first figure out why parts of his face feel so numb. The second his hand touches it though, he pauses.
His hand doesn't meet skin. It meets glass.
Water ripples around his feet. A snapping sound cuts through his words. The TV falls.
“FUCK!”
Blind panic washes over him in an instant. There's glass in his throat, his head, his fucking face. Electricity courses through him, crackling, burning. His hands fly up to pry the damn TV off, and pain courses through his neck like he's trying to tear his entire head off, but he can't stop- he's going to die if he doesn't get it off-
A hard tug brings with it the worst pain in his neck yet, and his hands let go automatically out of instinct as he screams, half in pain and half in anger. For the love of god, he is not going to die like this.
He reaches up to the TV again, breathing hard. His hands come to rest on either side of it, and- it's weird. He's touching the TV, but he swears he feels it like he's touching his own body. The base of his skull aches. He swallows. It doesn't taste like saliva.
Shaking, he brings one of his hands to touch his face again. Once more, his hand meets glass, and he- he feels it. Like it's his face he's touching, and not a television screen. It's then he notices, for the first time, his hand itself. He feels like his heart stops entirely.
That is not his fucking hand.
The hand in front of him is a dark grey, tipped in- in cyan claws. It's shaking like the rest of his body is, but it is not his hand. It's not even a human hand at all. He brings his other hand down and is met with the same sight. When he looks down he's still wearing the same suit from his little speech, covered in blood, torn, and burnt - but in the tears and the holes, where he should see pale skin, he's met with the same shade of grey as the- as his hands, freckled with the same cyan colour as his claws.
Something is severely wrong.
Trembling with the effort, he manages to bring himself to stand, leaning against the wall. He's weak, though not in any real pain - regardless of what his panic was trying to convince him of - but he still doesn't know how the hell he got from the aquarium to a random alleyway, especially one that looks like this. Everything is red, the walls, the ground-
The sky.
He registers… noise. He's too out of it to properly pick out any one sound, but it sounds just like any regular city, only with a little more screaming. He was too busy staring dumbfounded at the surrounding alleyway - and then failing to get that goddamn TV off - to have been bothered to look past the entrance, but when he does, he falls back onto the ground entirely with a yelp.
Things walk past the entrance, monsters. He can't even make out what half of them are. Some of them look like animals, some look like inanimate objects, some look almost human and some don't look like anything he's ever seen before at all. They pass by the entrance without a care in the fucking world, barely even sparing him a glance - like he's not even there, or like some man sitting on his ass in an alleyway, paralysed by fear with a TV on his head and covered in blood is just a regular occurrence to them.
Vincent has never believed in the supernatural, even when he was a kid. He had never believed in ghosts, or monsters, never been afraid of the dark. When you start doing news, you quickly learn the real monsters are just human; he certainly had enough presence of mind to understand that he, himself, may fall into that category.
Yet, there's no doubting his eyes. The potential for them to just be people in elaborate costumes dwindles with each passing… thing that strays more and more from anything resembling human anatomy.
Maybe he's dreaming. Maybe he caught some kind of weird illness before his speech, and is lying in bed, shivering and miserable and asleep. Or maybe he was drugged like he first thought, and he's wandering through the streets, drooling and hallucinating.
Or maybe he really is bleeding out in some dingy alleyway, and he's going insane from the blood loss.
Shakily, he picks himself up off the ground yet again, trying not to make too much noise. None of the creatures are paying any attention to him, but he doesn't know if moving will change that - though he supposes his freak-out wouldn't have helped. They're wearing human clothes, but who's to say these… creatures didn't kill anyone for them? They clearly aren't human.
A voice in the back of his head tells him he may be one to talk, as his newly clawed hands remain in his peripheral vision. He ignores this.
Nobody pays attention to him still, even as he stands once more and takes one shaky step towards the entrance, then another, then another. There's every chance that the second he walks out of this alley, these things turn feral and just fucking kill him - he's terrified, but what other choice does he have? There are no payphones anywhere in his dingy little alleyway, there are no humans in sight, and he has to get help - the TV that nearly cracked his skull open and fried him is still on his fucking head. Maybe whatever the fuck is wrong with him will help him blend in, and they won't realize he's not one of them.
He holds his breath as one monster stops and stares at him for a second, but then it just… walks away. Like nothing was wrong. More walk by without looking at him, and the only ones that do look regard him with no more attention than one might give to a beggar on the street. They clearly see him, know he's there, but they don't seem to care.
The building next to him appears to be abandoned, but the front window is intact and clear enough to let him see his own reflection for the first time since he woke up. He manages to gain enough footing to stand without the aid of the wall, to stumble in front of the window and get a look at himself. The creatures continue to just walk past. They throw him glances, and he's pretty sure he can hear one say something to him, in English, but the view in front of him is more pressing. He can't help but feel the panic start to rise once more as he sees the TV where his head should be, but overwhelming dread overpowers it.
Wide, red eyes meet his. His mouth drops open, and the mouth projected on the screen follows suit. When he lifts a clawed hand to touch the screen once more, he feels it again, and it suddenly makes sense as to why. The TV isn't on his head.
His head is a fucking TV.
His… face looks like it was ripped straight out of a cartoon, all lines and flat colours. It looks nothing like his real face, besides the cyan outline around one of his eyes in a seeming mockery of his heterochromia. His mouth is filled with sharp, shark-like cyan teeth. Vincent has always been a pretty physically expressive guy, but the projected face betrays his panic and confusion to a degree his own face wouldn't have even been able to.
The revelation makes him suddenly far more aware of just how weird his head feels. His nose is just missing.
How is he breathing?
The panic had done a fantastic job at masking all of the weirdness before. When he breathes it comes naturally, but how it feels is immediately unnatural now that he's aware of it. The air feels like it's being sucked in through the sides of his head and his waist.
A shaking claw lifts one side of his shirt.
Horizontal, cyan slits line his abdomen. Are those gills? They resemble shark gills, though he seems to only have three on each side. They don't seem to work quite like actual gills given the lack of water, more like… vents, but they very much physically resemble them. He drops his shirt. His eyes meet the screen once more.
His brain cannot recognize the person- the thing in the mirror as him. It isn't him. He's… he's human. He's a human being, with white skin, and a hooked nose, a cleft chin and grey-streaked hair. He'd always looked younger than he was, and he has a smart look about him. He's a handsome man, especially for being close to 50. He is not… this.
He can feel the onset of panic once more, breaths coming faster and faster out of his fucking. Vents. Gills. The lack of air coming through any regular facial orifice gives him the impression of suffocating.
Growing up, he'd always seen Hell depicted as an endless pit of rock and fire and lava, people being prodded at with pitchforks and led around by chains. This is certainly not much like those depictions, but…
Everything is red. There's a pentagram in the goddamn sky, and monsters walking the streets like regular pedestrians. Surely, almost tearing his fucking head off would have woken him up, had this been a dream. He feels far too lucid to be under the influence of drugs, and if he was bleeding out surely he'd be dead by now? Which leads him to one last conclusion because this certainly isn't Heaven.
Vincent Whittman is in Hell.
Strangely, it's this revelation that quells the rising panic once more. Something about having at least one clear answer brings about a sense of relief, however mild, and however unfavourable said answer is. Hell is certainly not his ideal place to be, but it's… a place he knows. In a way. And with that revelation, he knows exactly how he got here, and why.
The relief doesn't last forever, of course. When it fades, the next emotion that swallows him is anger.
He had worked so hard. He had overcome years of people looking down on him, snide remarks about the little weather boy. He had power. For the first time in his fucking life, he had people listening to him, for more than just whether it was going to fucking rain tomorrow, and all that was just- over? Just because of a couple of weak cables?
All of it, gone in what couldn't have been more than a couple of seconds. One minute he's the “God of Entertainment”, running his own network with his own shows and adoring fans, and the next he's standing alone on a sidewalk in Hell having a fucking panic attack because he was dead. Where the hell even were his followers? They had to have died with him - they were all standing in the same water. Why the fuck weren't they there?
Maybe they were, but they got ahold of themselves and fucked off. Maybe he just can't recognize them. After all, if he looked like this…
He's hit with the realization that the “monsters” walking around may, in fact, be just like him. Humans, dead and sent to Hell. Many of them certainly seem to resemble things that he could reasonably see being a cause of death - there appears to be a woman made of rock, there's a man who seems to have a knife for a head - though some don't look like anything at all, at least that he recognizes.
If these are people like him, surely they were once in his shoes? Surely, someone knew what the hell he was supposed to do, where he was supposed to go - but nobody stops, or asks what's wrong. Just throw him glances and keep moving on, like they think he's just some fucking homeless guy.
Vincent spent most of his fucking life being ignored, treated like trash blowing in the wind. For the love of god, somebody was going to help him.
He tears his gaze away from the window. The creatures, the… people? certainly seem to be acting just like any other passersby. Some sit at outdoor tables, at what must be a restaurant, chatting away. They leave shops with bags full of items, they sit on benches with newspapers. He's pretty sure at least one of them spoke English earlier, and he thinks he can catch glimpses of it in the conversations he can pick up on. Surely, if he asks, he might get an answer from one?
At the next one that walks past him, he clears his throat - the noise startles him, sounding like it's coming from a speaker. He supposes that's what his screaming earlier must have sounded like too, he was just a little too busy to notice. The noise has its intended effect, and finally, finally, someone stops.
The man looks like a bull, and Vincent certainly has no questions about how this guy died, if he's right about his earlier assumption. The guy raises a brow at him.
“M-My—My apologies-s-” his head twitches uncontrollably for a moment as his voice stutters, but not like a regular stutter; like a fucked up tape. He's wholly unprepared for it - it's the first time he's tried to speak beyond his shouting earlier, and it catches him off guard. It immediately has the anxiety rising back up as he remembers the feeling of twitching, paralysed, knowing what was happening and having no way to get out of it-
When he comes back to himself, the guy is gone. Fuck.
He glances around once more. Nobody looks particularly friendly, but surely, someone is willing to tell him what the hell he's supposed to be doing - if there's some kind of meeting he's supposed to go to, a fucking… welcome ceremony or something.
He waits. He's hoping to see at least one person who doesn't either look capable of tearing his head off with one hand, or seems willing to do so. The most interaction he gets that he doesn't initiate is exactly one person, seemingly drunk out of his fucking mind, yelling a “Hey, freak!” at him before stumbling off faster than Vincent could even respond.
Freak, he thinks. That sounds about fucking right, but it's not like the walking pile of wax has any room to talk.
Eventually, he spots one creature who he thinks looks like it may at least let him speak.
“Ex-Excuse me, Miss,” He says politely to… what he thinks is a woman. It kind of just looks like a blob with eyes strewn randomly across it, but it's wearing a dress, so he'll take his chances. It… she… looks at him, eyes narrowing. She looks pissed off, quite frankly, but she stops. Vincent throws on a smile, at least he hopes - he has no fucking clue what might actually be showing on that screen. “Is-is there any way you can-n tell me where to go- go? I'm n-new 'round here.”
She looks at him like he's stupid. He silently curses his fucking stuttering - he's never stuttered, but this goddamn body is apparently useless. She opens her mouth to speak, though Vincent doesn't get to learn whether she was actually about to help him or tell him to get lost before someone else's voice cuts her off.
“Everyone! There's a broadcast starting!”
A lot happens at once.
Everybody, near simultaneously, runs to the nearest radio - some inside of stores, some jumping into their cars. They all drop what they're doing entirely like this radio broadcast is about to tell them they're all going to Heaven. A large number of people gather at one radio which appears to be displayed behind glass - the most easily accessible one. Nobody says a fucking word as they stare in anticipation.
What the fuck?
It takes less than 10 seconds for the entire city to go dead silent - not just the street he's on, or even the block. There's not a single noise, at least not close enough to be at all perceptible. Like the entire city, or the entirety of Hell has stopped to listen in. He almost wants to ask, but he thinks speaking up right now would be a bad idea, to say the least - maybe this was some kind of tradition down here?
Out of nowhere, a voice pierces the overwhelming silence.
“Greetings, Sinners! The time is just striking 5 o'clock, and the weather is clear - certainly appreciated after that nasty bout of scream rain yesterday…”
The voice continues on, a man, somewhat high-pitched, jovial, and speaking with a transatlantic accent. The sinners sit enraptured as though they're being told the answer to life's biggest mystery, and not the fucking weather.
He can't figure out why everybody seemed to drop what they were doing for… this. For all Vincent can tell, it's just a regular radio broadcast - the man quickly moves on from commenting on the weather (Vincent is going to choose to not dwell on what the hell scream rain is for his own sanity) and just… talks. He cracks a couple of jokes, and everybody laughs at them like they're being paid a million dollars to do so. He says something about playing some jazz shortly. Vincent seriously cannot tell why this man seems to have everybody in the goddamn city on a choke-hold. Is he some kind of celebrity?
He stalks closer to the largest crowd, around the displayed radio, straining to hear a little better. His only warning for what comes next is a quiet whining sound, one that he barely would've noticed if it weren't coming from his own head.
The sound of screaming starts in an instant, a cacophony of seemingly hundreds of voices stacked on top of each other through the filter of a radio. Vincent stumbles back immediately, clawing at his head like he can physically tear the sound out of it. They're almost animalistic, the types of screams that can't be replicated even by the best actor. Screams of pain and horror, the last sound somebody makes before they die, but it never stops. It's the loudest noise he's ever heard in his life, and it feels like it's being broadcasted directly into his brain. His eyes squeeze shut automatically as sheer terror beyond any normal level grips him. A strange, tingling feeling spreads across his antennae as the sound only seems to get louder, and Vincent is pretty sure he's screaming, but it's lost in the sea of voices like he's one of them, like he's dying all over again, like he's back in that fucking aquarium-
All at once, the noise stops. His screams trail off. His chest is heaving, and he registers sharp pain in the sides of his head where he had dug his claws in. His throat is sore from screaming, but when he finally opens his eyes and looks up…
Nobody even spares him a glance. They stare at the radio like mannequins.
“In fact, my mother once told me…”
The voice sounds no different from before. and Vincent doesn't even know if… whatever that was even had anything to do with the broadcast - nobody else seems to have noticed a thing. Nonetheless, the voice now makes terror creep up his spine once more, and he can't even figure out a reason for it. It's just some fucking radio host! Probably the happiest damn radio host Vincent had ever heard.
The echoes of the screams still linger in his mind. Maybe that was just something that was going to happen to him now. He's in Hell after all.
Either way, the radios have suddenly switched from perfectly normal to making panic rise in him just by looking at them. He'd backed off in his little… episode, but now he turns and runs - he has to get away from these fucking things.
It doesn't happen again, even as he passes more and more radios, but he swears the screams are right beneath those jovial words - like the faint hiss of static that undertones any regular broadcast.
He never quite escapes the radios, but finally, finally, the voice rings out a quick, simple “stay tuned!”, and all at once the broadcast is over. Vincent allows himself to stop running.
There's a feeling of… something in the air as the sinners resume the day as normal. Everybody is acting just the same as they were before, but there's this aura that Vincent can't even explain, undercutting the air like an electric current - like everyone is... scared, in the way a peasant is scared of their king.
Nonetheless, the radios are silent. Vincent breathes.
His fleeing led him to a slightly more run down, more empty part of the city. Fewer shops, more apartments and abandoned looking buildings. More creatures simply loitering on the streets, leaning against walls and smoking. These ones seem much more willing to give Vincent dirty looks and sneers rather than just ignore him, like he's somewhere he doesn't belong.
It reminds him a lot of the worst parts of his own home city, the areas he tended to avoid as much as possible. It's almost comforting in its familiarity, but just as equally distressing - he almost thinks he would've preferred the stereotypical lava and fire and chains over this… almost mocking copy of the world he knows.
He doesn't stop - stopping in his tracks would make him stand out just as much as running blindly through the streets would - but he slows down, wary. He's come to the realization that, well, if these are all people who died and went to Hell, just like him… he's not exactly safe around anyone. Vincent is not a weak man by any means, but in an unfamiliar place, with no weapons on him, a whole new body and stressed out of his mind, he's not particularly in the mood for a fight - he can wait to test how sharp these new claws of his are. He tries to keep his head forward.
For a while, he just… walks. He tries his hand at speaking to a few people who don't look as murderous as some of the others in another attempt to get any sort of direction, but the friendliest answer he gets out of anyone is a sneered slur and a glare he's half convinced actually will kill him.
He has no more answers than he started with about what he was supposed to do now. He assumes there's some kind of economy given the shops earlier, but he certainly didn't wake up with any kind of currency on hand. He can't get a job looking like this, covered in blood and clothes half torn off of him, but he has no other clothes, no access to a shower, anything. He's also starving - he's not even sure if you can die down here at all (where would he even go?), let alone starve to death, but it doesn't change the discomfort. He's certainly not suicidal enough to ask someone to buy him a meal with the reactions he got to simply asking for some directions.
Where was he supposed to sleep, either? There's no sun to go down, just a blinding white light in the sky that he's pretty sure might be Heaven, but the sky is getting darker nonetheless.
The next corner he turns gives him… a potential answer, in the form of a run-down motel. It looks like the kind of place he would've ended up reporting murders happening at back when he was a newscaster, but he doesn't have any other options. He can't exactly pay for a room, but maybe somebody would take pity on him? He's aware of some of the things the bible lists as sin - there has to be people who ended up down here for, like, wearing the wrong fabric or something who'd be willing to help.
The bell chimes as he walks in, but nobody is at the desk, though there's a radio sitting on it that immediately puts him on edge. The floor is covered in a dingy, yellow carpet that looks as though it wasn't always yellow, and he's pretty sure he sees a bloodstain in the corner. Promising.
When he walks closer to the desk, there's a faint snoring sound. Peering over the edge reveals a… man? sleeping on a torn mattress behind the counter, some sort of pale white canine-looking creature. Empty bottles of alcohol are strewn across the floor around him alongside miscellaneous pills. Tentatively, Vincent clears his throat. The guy's eyes open slowly.
“Mmgh… who th' fuck is it?”
His voice is thick with sleep and rough like a smoker's. Vincent tries to put on his friendliest voice.
“Ah, apol-apologies for waking you up!” The guy winces at the volume of his voice and the staticky stuttering, and Vincent is quick to speak a little quieter. “I was wondering-g if you had any- any rooms free?”
The canine grunts, sitting up and just staring from his spot on the mattress rather than actually moving to the counter.
“Just you?”
Vincent nods.
“How many nights?”
That question gives him pause.
How long would it take him to get a steady job? To make enough to get a real place to stay? He wasn't just going to live out of a fucking motel - he had more dignity than that. On the other hand, if he was going to try to worm his way into staying at least one night for free…
“Just tonight-t-t,” he answers. If his convincing worked, he could just ask to stay longer when he could actually pay. The canine grunts again.
“Rate's 50 bucks a night,” he says, sounding like he'd rather be doing anything else. “Pay upfront.”
Vincent puts on the most pathetic smile he can muster, and hopes it looks how he imagines on his screen.
“Ah-h, well,” He starts, deliberately holding his hands up to his chest where the attendant can see from his spot and fidgeting with them. “I, uhm, happen to be- to be new here-e?”
The canine looks thoroughly unimpressed, like he knows exactly where Vincent is going with this.
“Is-is there any-y chance, perhaps, I could-d-d stay for free? Just for tonight-t!” Where Vincent had been cursing his fucking stuttering earlier, he now hopes it helps add to his 'pathetic' act. The canine only growls at him, sharp teeth peeking out from his muzzle. Vincent does his best to quell the instinctual fear.
“This look like a fuckin' charity to you? If you can't pay, fuck off.”
“Wa-Wai-Wait!” Vincent pleads. “I prom-omise, I can… clean? May-maybe I could help fix- fix up rooms after-r other guests? I just-ust need somewhere to stay to get-t-t a job, in-in fact I'll pay double what I owe, I just need-d one day!”
“You goin' deaf or something?” the canine barks. “I ain't giving you no free fuckin' room, now get the fuck out!”
“Please!” Vincent near yells, desperately. “I don-don't even need a room-m, I'll sleep on-n the damn floor in he-here or something, just-”
A bottle misses his head by less than an inch, shattering loudly against the wall behind him.
“I said fuck off!”
Vincent fucks off.
To be entirely fair, simply getting chased out was one of the more charitable outcomes Vincent had imagined. He never really thought it would work, but…
He really doesn't know where the hell he's supposed to sleep now. He almost considers trying to see if any of the room doors are open, or even simply breaking into an empty room through the window, but at the same time he has no way to tell which rooms are empty for sure and no intention of disturbing any residents and actually getting kidnapped or murdered or something.
He walks down the street once more, slowly coming to accept his inevitable situation. He can't tell if he's lucky or unlucky that he ended up in a decently quiet area with no nightlife - there's nobody out on the streets at this hour anymore, but also nobody awake to hear him scream if someone tries to attack him or something; not that he thinks anybody would fucking help him anyway.
Many alleyways are already full of homeless people sleeping in them, and Vincent has to hold back the urge to judge when he knows he's about to be doing the same damn thing. Whatever. It isn't the same. He was going to get a job and make a living, it wasn't his fault he didn't wake up in Hell with the deed to a house already or something - they seemed to have been living on the streets for a while. He just needed one night.
Finally, he finds an alley that's occupied by neither an actual person nor signs that somebody is staying in it. It's noticeably smaller than the others and filled with trash but…
Vincent slumps against a wall. There's barely enough room for him to sit perpendicularly to the alley. Like it was waiting, tiredness seeps in almost immediately. He hasn't even been awake for that long, really, but the stress works its magic on him.
It's uncomfortable. He brings his knees in closer to his chest and crosses his arms, leaning his head back against the wall. The shape of his new head forces his neck into an awkward angle, and for some reason out of everything, it's this that brings tears to his eyes. He tries in vain to manoeuvre his body and take the strain off of his neck, but nothing works - lying flat on the ground is worse, and he finally finds himself back in his initial position, body trembling with held back sobs.
It's pathetic. Not like his little act in the motel lobby - genuinely, truly pathetic. He's a grown ass man, and he's crying because of a fucking ache in his neck, like a child having a breakdown over a scraped knee. He doesn't understand why the fuck he's crying, but the harder he tries to stop it the worse it becomes. He doesn't even know how he's crying. His face is a fucking screen, but the tears fall and drip down onto his arms anyway, real.
He wants to go home. He wants to go home so fucking bad. He could've gone home, if it weren't for one, tiny little happenstance. If he didn't choose to hang a TV right over his goddamn head, if he had moved just a little bit faster, if he didn't hold that fucking meeting in the first place - he could've been home, wrapped in his shark blanket that he'll never admit to anyone he has, safe, warm.
It's childish and weak, but he misses that stupid blanket the most.
He doesn't know how long he sits in that alleyway, sobbing to himself like a fucking child, but eventually, his tears begin to subside. Exhaustion overtakes him once more, and he almost, almost, can convince himself he really is a child again, having a tantrum on the floor of his living room, to be carried safely to bed by gentle hands once he's done. That he'll wake up, and everything will have been one long nightmare.
His screen falls to black, and everything fades away.