Ombrophobia - I

How long had she been waiting? Sitting there? Listening to the same looping tracks of what could only be described as the least offensive music that could ever be devised or calculated by man.

Previously.

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Ray studied her fingernails. Each one of them was uneven and oddly shaped edges with ragged cuticles. She’d gnawed on them for as long as she could remember. It was a nasty habit. Dirty. Gross. Uncivilized. Uncouth. Certainly unladylike, though, that was one particular adjective that had never been all that applicable to her for a myriad of reasons. It was a trait that her parents had always chastised her for and one that, despite their best efforts, they had ultimately proved powerless to stop.

She couldn’t help it. Really, she couldn’t. It was about as instinctual and involuntary as breathing or digesting or blinking. It wasn’t something that Ray consciously chose to do - she wouldn’t do it if she could, if only to spare her the commentary her parents would always give when they caught her with a finger in her mouth. It just happened, no different than the way her heart just thrummed in her chest or her pancreas just secreted hormones.

She knew why she did it. She did it when she was bored for the same reason that she was always tapping her foot or fussing with a pencil or fidgeting in her seat or pulling out strands of hair just to wrap them around a finger and play with them; she was bored, she had energy, and her body, whether her higher functions consented or not, was going to do something to stimulate itself. She’d be sitting there, waiting for the monorail to arrive at work, and no sooner did the thing actually show up did she realize that she’d been chewing at the tip of her thumbnail. It was every bit as annoying to her as it was everyone else. Back in school, her constant twitching and fidgeting and moving and tapping was cause for all manner of complaint from both peers and faculty alike, as if, somehow, one lone young girl’s inability to sit still was somehow personally offensive to them, or some active sleight against them that she was doing for the sake of antagonizing them and them alone.

Her constant need for stimulation was one that had caused her a wide breadth of trouble with, so far as she could see, absolutely no benefits whatsoever.

Still - she put the uneven white edge of her nail of her middle finger between her teeth and gently worked it. It’s not like there was anything else to do while she waited.

How long had she been waiting? Sitting there? Listening to the same looping tracks of what could only be described as the least offensive music that could ever be devised or calculated by man, carefully and expertly crafted to be the ideal music to indulge in extravagant, borderline unethical consumer indulgence. How long had she been sitting there, listening that bullshit with the tweedly trumpets and maddeningly upbeat and jaunty melodies?

She didn’t know. The clock above the door must have been out of batteries, because none of the hands had moved in what felt like an agonizing amount of hours. Even the second had sat still and static, in the dead middle between the numbers two and three, exactly where it had been before for who knew how long. There was nothing else to see either. Not really. There were some fake plastic ficus trees. Some tables in between the seats, where there should have been magazines or something, but there weren’t.

There was a framed poster on the far wall, a lone splash of color on the white drywall baking beneath the callous and clinical light of fluorescents, depicting a frightened kitten clutching a tree branch, bearing the words, Hang in there!

Directly in front of the poster, another Ray sat studying her nails. They were much better kept than her own. This Ray’s nails were painted some inoffensive and mild shade of pink, nicely filed and decidedly presentable, unlike her own. Ray never did paint her nails since she never really saw the point and, even if she did, she was afraid that, with the way she chewed them, she’d ingest enough paint to poison an elephant over the course of a week or so.

So, she wasn’t sure why the Ray seated across from her, with her one leg folded over the other and striking a dainty pose as she inspected her hands, had nails that were anything other than ugly and uneven and bare.

The more Ray studied this copy of herself seated across the room, the less she liked the cut of her jib. Her hair was sleek and umber rather than some ambiguous, muddy shade of unflattering brown, sleek and shiny beneath the fluorescent lights and neatly trimmed and combed into a long but fashionable cut that made Ray, in comparison, look as if she had a bird’s nest on her head. Everything about this other Ray - from the minimal yet tastefully applied cosmetics, her blemish-free skin, even the simple black sweater and blue jeans that looked new and fit her well - stood in stark contrast to the hunched and slovenly figure wearing clothes scrounged from the rack of a second-hand store and draped in a white doctor’s coat that was too large for her reedy frame. Even this other Ray’s glasses were thin and modern and chic, as opposed to the bulky, thick-rimmed glasses with large, square lenses perched on Ray’s freckled nose.

Ray decided that she hated this other Ray.

Why? She couldn’t really articulate why other than that she just did. Something about this Ray - it set her hackles off. She noticed the other Ray glance up from her hands. For a brief moment, the two near-identical women met eyes, but the better manicured Ray was quick to look away, her dark brows arching and drawing a long, exasperated inhale between lips with more color than Ray’s own, tinged with a notable sense of disdain.

Well - that Ray didn’t seem to like Ray terribly much, either, so it stood to reason that her dislike for the doppleganger was a mutual one.

She still didn’t dislike that Ray as much as the one in the dress. That Ray just look disagreeable, she also looked like an idiot. Even though careful and liberal application of cosmetics disguised many of this Ray’s facial imperfections, she still looked absurd, what with her hair dyed a lighter shade of brown and fashioned into loose ringlets, shoved in a lacy cornflower blue dress and hose and a pair of chunky white shoes with bows that all looked to be stolen from the wardrobe of an expensive china doll. Even the thin arms of her glasses were adorned with the same blue ribbons bedecking her ridiculously over-styled hair. She, too, noticed Ray staring from across the room. Her lips quirked into an uneasy and uncertain smile that Ray did not reciprocate.

Instead, her eyes turned to the other Ray slumped over a few chairs away. This Ray had sunken deep into her seat, head lolled forward and arms crossed over her chest, wearing only a pair of fleece pajama pants and a comically oversized black t-shirt, one hand clenched around an open and half-empty bag of ShrimpCrisps and one of the newer models of Meta’s VR headset strapped to her face. Reading the text printed along the front was a bit difficult, but the letters were big, bright green, and Ray thought that they said, GO WORK YOUR CRINGE 9 TO 5. I’LL BE GAMING. Which wasn’t a shirt Ray owned, and one she was about as eager to be caught in as the dress of that other Ray, dressed like she was going to a tea party for babies.

There was also two other Rays that looked similarly degenerate, wearing scandalously short black skirts and fishnets and knee-high boots that added a good six inches to their heights, but one's hair was fixed into bushy twin-tails dyed a sickening variety of bright, eye-searing colors and her neck and wrist laden with enough glow-sticks to be seen from space, while the other was dressed in black. All black. Black lips. Black hair. Black nails. Save for the sickly pale pallor of her skin, it was all black. She wore an expression that suggested she had just been delivered a terminal cancer diagnosis, while her more colorful counterpart nodded in time with the music and rapped her fingers - each nail painted a different garish color - against her knees, like the jazzy, muted trumpet filtering through the speakers overhead was the most pumped-up dance music she'd ever heard.

There were a lot of strange Rays present in the waiting room, actually, that, somehow, Ray had completely overlooked. There was a Ray dressed in a cop outfit. A Ray in a natty three-piece suit, her hair slicked back and a rose pinned to her lapel. There was a Ray in a flannel shirt, wearing a checkered bandana and a wide-brimmed Steson with her hair in two long, braided pig-tails. There was a Ray in one of those slutty Oktoberfest dresses with her non-existent chest on full display, hair in ornate, wreathed braids and sipping on a colossal stein of some yellow, frothing ale. There was a Ray in the uniform of a waitress at a fine dining restaurant scribbling on a notepad, seated beside a Ray wearing a long-sleeved, traditional maid's dress, who was exchanging dirty looks with a Ray who was dressed as a maid that was showing a lot more skin, who in turn was wedged between an uncomfortable looking Ray wearing nothing but a medical gown and a large, purple, cartoon wolf mascot costume with wide, excited eyes and a goofy smile that Ray assumed another Ray was inside.

Ray didn't really like any of these other Rays any more than she liked the one that had just been mean-mugging her. Ray looked down and - damn it. Her finger had been in her mouth again. She slapped her hands against her knees and slumped back in her chair with a sigh. Just as she was wondering when anything was going to happen, the door with the words Employees Only printed across the frosted glass window opened.

All the Rays present turned to watch another Ray - this one wearing an old-fashioned, powder pink nurse's dress - peek out from behind the door. She brought a fist to her mouth and cleared her throat.

“Um - Ray? Ray Partrite?” She glanced down at the papers fixed to the wooden clipboard in her hands. “Is there a, ah - a Ray Partrite, here?”

Across the room, Ray heard a hard sigh of relief as the Ray in the nice sweater and nails lacquered pink stood up, the barest hint of a smile on her lips.

Ray felt a twinge - no, a bolt of indignant anger course from the top of her head down to her feet.

“W-wait.”

The nicely dressed Ray stopped mid-step, turning her eyes in her direction, narrowed into a venomous glare of annoyance. All other Rays turned to look at her, too. Some were exasperated. Some were irritated. Some looked confused. Even the Ray in the wolf costume tilted her head at an angle to express puzzlement.

Ray tried to ignore them all and focused on the nurse, who looked no less pleased to be interrupted.

“Wait,” Ray repeated. “Wait a second. I - I'm Ray Partrite,” she said, placing a hand on her chest for emphasis.

“Uh, yeah?” the other Ray snapped. “And so am I?”

The Ray in the ridiculous dress gave a dainty little giggle and raised her hand. “And me,” she said in a voice that was a whole octave above Ray's natural range. “I'm also Ray Partrite, you know.”

“Well, you just hol’ up there just a peanut-pickin’ second, princess,” said Cowgirl Ray, raising two hands in leather gloves. “Now, Ah may not be tha sharpest hobnail in tha boot, but Ah reckon Ah'm Ray Part-rhait, too.”

“And who do I look like?” Cop Ray asked. “The Queen of England?”

“Et moi,” the more conservative of the two maids added, while her more racy counterpart nodded in agreement. “Je suis, ah - Ray Partite."

“Hey!” The Ray in the suit snapped her fingers with one hand and gesticulated wildly with the other. “Don't be forgettin’ about me over here,” she added in an overwrought pastiche of an Italian-American accent.

“Und ve are all Ray Partrite,” said the slutty Oktoberfest Ray.

The purple wolf raised a furry hand - or paw - with one finger raised, giving a pitiful imitation of a dog bark that Ray figured was an exclamation of solidarity.

“You aren't that special,” Goth Ray added in a coarse, droning monotone.

“So, like, sit yer scrawny little ass down,” said Raver Ray beside her, speaking in a grating Valley Girl affect.

“And wait your turn,” the other standing Ray finished. She gave herself a small, snide smile and began to walk for the door, when -

“Screw you.”

Again - the nicer dressed, better composed Ray came to a stop. This time, she looked at Ray with wild disbelief, as did most of the others. The Ray in the dress gasped as the coarse language. Gamer Ray snorted, shifted her weight to the other chair, and drifted back off to sleep.

“I've been waiting here for hours,” Ray said.

“So have we,” said a Ray wearing a bulletproof vest, shades, and what looked like some kind of tactical fatigues.

Ray balked. She gestured in Tactical Ray's direction and let her arm slap back against her side. “You - you literally just showed up,” Ray said. “You were not there, like, two seconds ago. Where did you even come from?”

None of the Rays answered. They all looked to one another with varying degrees of discomfort, unease, and confusion.

“Where did any of you come from?”

Ray surveyed the assembled legion of Rays now packed into every seat in the room. She turned around and found that her own seat was now occupied by another Ray - this one wearing a bright blue and very thin two-piece swimsuit that Ray would have never been caught dead wearing. Worst of all, this Ray was every bit as pale, slovenly, and riddled with freckles and dark spots and weird hairs in unflattering places as she was. Judging from the blush burning on her cheeks, she knew it, too. She gave Ray a rickety smile and a stiff wave.

“Uh… hey?”

“Oh, my God,” Ray muttered. “Why? Why are you -” She clamped down her jaw on her bottom lip. Breathed deep through her nose. “No. Nope. Forget it.” She threw her hands up. “I don't care.”

“Wonderful,” Nurse Ray intoned. “Can we get on with this already?”

“Get on with what?” Ray asked. Again, she scanned the collection of confused, puzzled, and bewildered faces around her. “What are we doing here? What are we waiting on?”

She turned back to the Ray who'd appeared in her seat, who flinched and recoiled when Ray's attention returned to her.

“Do you know?”

That Ray feverishly shook her head, desperate to be unacknowledged again. So, Ray turned to the Ray in the Ray beside her, bundled up in a trench coat, hands jammed in the pockets, and a fedora pulled low over her face.

“Do you?”

Hard-Boiled Ray shook her head. “Your guess is as good as mine. This case’s got me stumped, toots.”

“Don't call me that,” she muttered. She turned to the Ray on the other side of the cowering girl in the swimsuit.

“You,” she said, pointing at her. This Ray looked the most like her out of everyone, with the one critical exception being that a pair of brown, feline ears sprouted from beneath her hair, twitching in a way that fake ones glued to a headband couldn't. “What are you doing here?”

Catgirl Ray gave a bitter, bemused laugh. She shrugged her shoulders and her tail swayed in a slow, relaxed, and unconcerned rhythm behind her. “Shit, man. I dunno.”

Ray sucked a sharp breath between her teeth.

“Worthless,” she said under her breath. “You're all worthless.”

“Hey, man.”

The hoarse, whinging voice from behind spurred Ray to turn back around. The better-dressed version of herself that kicked off hostilities was still standing, and looked just as confused as Ray did as to why there was now another Ray sitting in her chair - one dressed in baggy, bell-bottom jeans and a tie-dye t-shirt, over which was a tasseled leather vest. This Ray had long, unkempt hair fashioned into braids and adorned with colorful flowers, her prescribed glasses replaced by a pair of circular lenses tinted purple or pink or something similar. She wore a dreamy, hazy smile as she looked at Ray with unfocused eyes.

“Don't, like, be sayin’ stuff like that, man,” said this new Ray, her voice low and crackling with vocal fry. “Like, seriously. Not cool. You know, she's, like… you? So, like, if you call her worthless…” Her words trailed off, as if she’d lost her train of thought, and, for a long moment, she paused. “Like… what are you sayin’ about yourself, man?”

Ray gave it a moment’s thought. “That… that I’m worthless?”

Hippie Ray nodded sagely. “Exa-a-actly.”

Ray once again surveyed the surfeit of various colorful incarnations of herself populating the room. All of them looked back, expressions ranging from disappointed to dejected to feigned apathy and more. All of them, to one degree or another, looked miserable.

“You gotta be nicer to yourself, man,” said Hippie Ray, breaking the uncomfortable stillness - not silence - that had pervaded the room, mixing inharmoniously with the chipper and cheery music still crackling from unseen speakers.

Ray was silent for a moment.

“Why would I do that?”

“Okay,” Nurse Ray said. “Alright. That’s enough of this.” She took a pen from behind her ear and scribbled something on the clipboard. “Ray? We’ll be seeing you now.” She gave the other, neater, nicer, better Ray a polite smile and waved her in. That other Ray, perfectly content to abandon the gaggle of dysfunctional doubles behind, began to hurry for the door. She didn’t stop when Ray snapped at her.

“Hey!” A few Rays jumped in their seat as her voice echoed off the bare drywall and tile floors. She pointed towards the Ray in the black sweater. “Uh-uh. No. Hey!”

She didn’t stop. In fact, she began to walk for the Employees Only door even faster. Ray felt the last frayed thread of her patience snap.

“Oh. Oh, no. I don’t think so.”

She, too, started for the door, only to find the floor hadn’t been where it was when she last lifted her foot. It was lower than before, and she stumbled to the side and veered right into the plush, furry shoulder of Furry Ray as the entire room tilted at an angle. A small chorus of panic and confusion rose from the crowd of Rays as the flourescents flickered and the music momentarily warped and distorted and the room was filled with a deep, low, and odious groan, so loud and so powerful that Ray felt it in her teeth - the distinct and unmistakable moaning creak of an overtaxed something made of metal, and huge.

The disturbance lasted for a three seconds, maybe a bit more, before the room steadied. The music evened out as well, and, aside from one last lingering, withering strain of some metal behemoth groaning and one blinking light, it appeared as if nothing strange had happened at all. All that remained was the terror and uncertainty stamped on the faces of all present.

Furry Ray grunted as Ray pushed herself off the thickly padded exterior of her suit.

“What was that?”

Most of the Rays looked at one another and shrugged, or sighed, or made puzzled faces.

“What - what was that noise?” Ray repeated with more urgency. The last flickering light went steady, and the room returned to a state of total normalcy. “How are you all -” Her words caught in her throat, cemented there by sticky disbelief. “Why are you all being so nonchalant about this?”

Tea-Party Ray spun a lock of curled brown hair around one finger in an obnoxiously childish way and kicked her feet in a way that Ray never would, the thick heels of her white shoes clunking against the tile, offering nothing but a shrug and a neutral look. “Well, I can’t say I know what just happened,” she said in that grating, pitchy voice of hers. “But what I do know is that worrying never fixed anything.” She smiled, as if she had just stated some great, profound truism, and was proud of herself for having done so.

“It’s prolly nothin’,” Italian Mobster Ray added.

“And even if it is something,” Goth Ray drawled. “It’s not like we can do anything about it.”

A few other Rays - including Furry Ray - nodded in agreement.

“You just gotta, like, go with the flow, man,” said Hippie Ray, flashing peace signs with both hands and a dopey smile. “Don’t, like, rock the boat, y’know? Take it e-e-easy.”

This was insane. These other Rays - they were insane. Ray had never done anything but worry for pretty much her entire life. Taking it easy was simply not something she knew how to do, and, despite their convincing acts, she doubted any of these other Rays were as sincere in these beliefs as they presented themselves to be.

Her eyes shot to the ceiling again as the room once more trembled with the creaking yawn of groaning metal, though, this time, the sound was distant and muted, and the room remained thankfully still. No one seemed particularly bothered by it.

No except Ray. The Ray. The only Ray that wasn’t some cartoonish caricature or dark reflection of herself, or how she could have been if she’d made different, better choices. The Ray that was suddenly wondering why she was even bothering with talking to these copies, clones, doppelgangers, and doubles when there was another door - unmarked - on the opposite side of the room. She went for it. No one tried to stop her, though, she did hear Nurse Ray calling at her back.

“Hey! You!”

Ray put her hand on the door handle and turned to look over her shoulder. Once again, all eyes, each set behind a different pair of lenses, were fixed on her. Nurse Ray pointed a pen in her direction.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

Ray smirked. “Well,” she said. “You are.”

She turned the door handle, she pulled, and the dark, salty water that knocked her off her feet poured through the opening in a great and violent burst.

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This story is a part of the Blackwater Files Project, more of which can be found here, and a follow-up to my previous entry, Smoke Break. This will be a much longer and more ambitious story than the first, which, in a way, could be seen as a primer for this one.

A second, smaller follow-up to my first work, Submechanophobia, featuring the other key character from the Smoke Break series can be found here.

Credit to Jon T for creating the mix-tape that inspired this idea in the first place.

Credit to The Chronicler for creating the Blackwater Files Project in the first place. Be sure to check out their own contributions and other works - if you like anything you read here, you’ll like what they have to offer, as well.

Part II can be found here.