Another day with the sound of printing paper and pouring coffee mugs driving your auditory senses crazy.
People are seldom chatting as others focus on their work. You are just one at your desk, a body of no sleep and physical sadness. From what you can recall, you did not grab anything to eat this morning, so as consequence, your stomach groans at you every now and then as you feel almost unbearably empty.
At the moment, you are preoccupied with some paperwork and lending a helping hand to your boss, since there are not really many cases up for grabs right now, especially with the coworkers of this place who go and snatch all the cases, with commission money in their eyes and big grins on their faces. Though, this is Brooklyn, New York, so there are bound to be more to pop up. Crime manifests itself on the monthly, sometimes weekly, if the lot of you are lucky. Except for when the FBI pokes their head in and decides they are the only one for the job.
Honestly, they have good people and all, but sometimes you wish they would just shove it and piss off. You practically live and drown in your work for a reason, immersing your life within it, taking it home with you, and maybe even taking your home to work. It is kind of insulting that they think that you and the rest of the Brooklyn NYPD cannot handle things yourselves.
Your face twitches as you hear familiar footsteps that interrupt your train of thought.
"Hey! _______, what's goin' on? Any new cases?" You sigh a bit at the arrival of your coworker - Derrel. He is a tall Caucasian blonde with greyish-blue eyes, and he most often dresses semi-casual. He is a pretty outgoing guy - a social butterfly, if you will - but you shrink back at how loud his voice is and his circumstantial flamboyance. You were always more comfortable around more mellow people.
"If there were any new cases, everybody would be flocking around Judy."
"Well, that means you are open, right? How about we get a drink or somethin'? Things are gettin' boring around here. A bar with nice lights sounds great, right?"
"Go do your job." You are unsure if he is unlikable, or you are just unsociable. At one point, you and him made eye contact at Walmart. You got crafty and you lost him because you were uneager at the thought of him talking your ears off and asking for a coworker get-together.
"Well, I have an important case to attend to anyway." He waves the files for the triple count serial killer around. You have been wanting a case like that for ages now. However, Judy probably gave it to him for a reason, though, frankly, you are totally lost on what that reason may be.
"Alright. Why don't you go work on the case instead of pestering your coworkers then? Wouldn't want Judy to know that you aren't actually working on it and give it to someone who cares, like me, now would you?"
"Sure. Like you would snitch on me taking a break anyway." The tall and peached skin embodiment of a high school jock blonde walks off and you smile a bit.
Something about Derrel just makes you want to avoid eye contact with him. He has a mug with the words "Best Coworker" scrawled onto it very obviously in sharpie (you are not sure if he did that as a joke or not). If you make eye contact with him, he approaches you, like in the Pokémon games (where if you make eye contact with another trainer, it starts up a Pokémon battle). Not when on the job, though. You saw him on a crime scene once, and his expression changed to something much more serious, and it was like he dropped the outgoing co-worker act entirely, but would quickly shift immediately back into it when the need to be serious was no longer present.
Another set of footsteps click towards your direction. A small part of you thinks it might be Derrel, though you doubt it. He closed off the conversation with the last remark he made. Why does everybody want to talk to you today, anyway?
"______?" It is Angela this time.
"Hmm?" You look up at her baby blue eyes. She has her braided, long brown hair draping over her right shoulder, her pale peach skin matching her attire. You wonder if Derrel has tried going after her yet, and if he has not, is he crazy? She is quite the looker and has a pleasant personality. If you do not get something, you look to her to help you out - she has been here longer than you.
"Judy wants you. I think it's important." She glances to the right absentmindedly, seemingly thinking about something as her eyes seem to wander off into space as does her mind.
Letting out a sigh, you get up and respond with, "It's always important if it's Judy. Thanks for telling me." She snaps out of her trance, startled in the slightest.
"Oh, no problem." She mutters.
As you walk away and towards Judy's office across the grey tiled flooring, you wonder about what she would want from you.
Coming to the door of her office, you grab hold of the doorknob and turn, gently pushing the well-oiled and squeak free door open. "Ma'am?" Judy is your boss. She announces when new cases pop up, and your coworkers eat it straight from her hands. She is of medium height for a woman of her age, in her mid-thirties, and dresses plainly yet sharply, going with her entire demeanor. She is a very straightforward black woman with a great intuition that has almost never steered her wrong, which sometimes leaves you to wonder why she has not taken a position like yours herself.
"Come in," she seems to sort through some tan folders and freshly printed papers as she does not meet eye contact. Did you do something wrong? "Take a seat." Now that is some Chris Hansen shit right there. "We have this new case, and it's of a man who went missing not too long ago. I want you to work on this case for me, since you seem the most capable yet available one at the moment."
"Alright." You smile a bit, happy that you are getting a case personally assigned to you.
She nods subtly, seemingly appeased, "Good, I expect results very soon, Ms. ________." Sometimes, she reminds you of Amanda from Detroit: Become Human. You have seen a bit of that game, as Angela will not keep quiet about it, since it involves robots, detectives, and robot detectives.
She hands over the classified files and you reach your hand out and grab hold of it, taking it into your own hands. Maybe you should keep this on the low for now, considering people around here are pretty nosy, especially Derrel. You have seen him approach co-workers who got new cases to ask questions and talk about his own several times.
"Don't worry, I won't let you down."
***
A yawn threatens to climb up your throat, the oil slicks under your eyes and your drowsy body language a huge indication as to why.
There is so little you can do as of now, but you were given exclusive files on the man you are searching for, so that is definitely a big crutch to lean on. What you are working with? Your mediocre laptop, a squeaky desk chair, and the darkness of the room. Apparently, this guy used to work as an animator. His name is Henry Stein, and is married to a woman named Linda, having a little girl back at home. The guy had gone missing for quite some time now, without a trace, which is odd. Perhaps you can try your luck though, and visit this old building that he used to work in as the co-founder of Joey Drew Studios.
You glance at the time and are surprised to see that it is five in the morning. You rub a hand through your hair and spin in your chair. "Maybe I could get going? The place is an hour away, though." Your speech slurs slightly as you think out loud. It will suck, having to investigate with little to no sleep, but you have to suck it up. After all, the reason why you hate Derrel more than you should is because you have different work ethics. Angela has told you that you are somewhat uptight and a workaholic, but Derrel does not stress out unless he has been pushed to his absolute limits. Maybe that is why he was given that case, since such an anomaly like that one seems like a stress-inducing dead end. You have heard that they can not even figure out how the people were murdered.
The quicker you get done though, the quicker you get paid, not that that overrides your desire to solve it for the people affected as well, as you do care about accurate results and will take time if need be, but you like to solve things as quickly as time will allow so you can move onto the next. It also feels satisfying to solve a case. Perhaps you will get lucky and actually find the guy at the studio so you can walk away satisfied as you move onto something like Derrel's case. As terrible as it sounds, you think a case like that sounds fun. You have always loved solving puzzles.
Maybe I could get promoted...
Maybe.
Getting up, you slip back into your thick layered coat and decently fix your hair into something that stays out of the way. Your keys jingle in the grip of your palms and your eyes sluggishly blink some of the drowsiness away. But what really gets you waking up? Stepping outside when it is currently twenty nine degrees out.
"Holy shit, it's freezing...!" You rub your sleeves and hurry to your car with a hushed adrenaline, unlocking the door to the driver's seat, getting in, and slamming the door shut with only the slightest of relief. You slip the key into the slot and ignite the cold vehicle, and the engine roars as you take off, heading for the abandoned building. This comes as a surprise to you - you would have thought you would need to heat it up first to get it started.
Too bad it is winter. The weather sometimes makes your cases harder than they are supposed to be, which puts you behind. What makes things worse is that you are working alone. For a while now, you have been in need of a partner, especially a profiler. A professional profiler can narrow down suspects with ease, guessing the race, gender, and motives of the guilty just by the simplest information. If you can get your hands on a partner like that, you could be cracking cases left and right and earning so much more money. You are quite the picky one, though, so you never talk to Judy about it.
As you drive, the heater spits out hot air, warming you up just a bit. What you wouldn't do for a new car...
***
"Well hello, ominous and abandoned building. Come here often?" You laugh and lightly shake your head as you step through the frozen grass, ice crunching under your feet. Frost bites your fingers and nose as the frozen air discourages you from staying outside any longer than you need to be. Heading inside the worn building, you shriek a bit when you almost fall into a giant hole in the process after opening the squeaky door. "Holy shit-!" Your mouth turns ajar as you look down the pit.
It seems as if it was waiting for the chance to swallow you whole, the deep abyss it leads to staring back as it beckons for you to jump. Your sharp breaths calm back to normal and you get a nervous look on your face.
The air in this building reeks of chemicals and ink. It has a musty air to it as well as a strange feeling. You stomp your feet, testing the durability of the wood in front of you, looking from where you stand to the other side of the hole. In a moment of pure balls and boldness, or perhaps just handsomely sugar coded stupidity, you make a jump for it. Surprisingly enough, you make that jump with a thud.
The wooden boards groan under your boots as the cold nips at your skin, even through the layers of clothing. Perhaps this place was filled with life, once upon a time - a golden age of animation. Now it looks like ink was pissed all over the place with rotting wood saddening the abandoned studio.
An old projector flickers across from you as you make it down and further into the studio. It looks like it wants to play something, but just does not have the reel to do it. This is not the only sad display of the studio's interior; leaking ink stain the boards as well as big puddles of ink. It seems like a flood of it occurred recently. No wonder the projector won't work - it probably got ink all in the nooks and crannies of it. Chairs are knocked over, papers are drenched in the thick black substance, and your nose feels like the smell is going to kill you sense of smell.
Enough dilly dallying though - you need to look for leads on the missing man's location. Could there possibly still be information on him here? Did he not quit this job decades ago? Yes, yes he did, and there probably is info. Is this still one of the greatest chances you will get on finding him since he is pretty much a ghost to the world? Yes, yes it is. Actually, it was nearly impossible to find anything on anyone who worked, even on the studio itself. What a failure this place must have been.
However, it seems like finding something on him will still not be easy, even with this place. Everything is in ruins and the putrid smell of chemicals is trying to drive you out, yet you still persist. You have this odd feeling that something important is here.
There are many doors in this place, and most of them are locked. Most every knob has jingled violently within your grip, but to no avail. However, the last thing you thought was wiped from your mind once you saw a particular wall with ink dripping from the ceiling.
"DREAMS COME TRUE."
You quickly walk away with an unsettled look only to find even more doors, provoking a loud groan to rise out of your throat. It's like a fun-house here, except without the fun, no mirrors, and this is not a house.
It gets even less fun when your foot hits into a pipe on the floor.
"Motherfucker--!" You bend down and clench your foot, squeezing your eyes shut from the throbbing pain in your appendage. Even through a boot, a pipe can make you down for the count. However, you have a lot more to worry about when the building groans even louder than you ever have and you hear cracks coming from the walls.
You only got a few seconds to jump out of the way before wood comes crashing down where the pipe was while you leap like a frog forward. "Holy shit..." You throw yourself against a wall, which startles you when you heard another loud noise from above, thinking you had provoked another avalanche of splintered stakes and torn wood, but luckily you realize you did not as you hesitantly sit there and eye the ceiling.
Needless to say, this place is coming down and it just might decide to take you with it. You need to be more careful and aware of your surroundings while you are here. Just find clues and evidence, try not to destroy anything, and get out.
Well, that plan sounds great until you look back to see the pathway is blocked.
You hiss in pain through gritted teeth. Maybe you can find something to break through the debris with. Until then? Explore what is in front of you. While there is a lot of unexplored places you have passed, you feel like what is in front of you holds something more important. You feel drawn to something, but you just do not know what.
Getting up, not without a hiss from your abused appendage, you continue on your way only to be rendered speechless upon entering a giant room. Railing seems to be blocking the fall to the floor below, where you can see tons of barrels across the floor and papers taped to the walls. All of this surrounds a gaping hole in the floor with chains coming out from its abyss. If you thought everything else about this place was ominous, you just got a slap to the face.
What kind of animation studio needs this and where in the hell does it lead to? You think critically, eyeing the anomaly.
As your eyes scan the area in awe, a glimmer catches your eye from below. Your gaze averts to the front of the gaping hole on the floor and you see something glisten. Snapping out of you awe-stricken trance, you position your body and muster the courage to leap over the railing and land on the floor below.
Thump!
"Yowch..." You hiss as your foot complains from the earlier smack when you land on your feet, whether the trip down was high or not. You will live, though.
As you look back up and at the object you came down here for, you smell something putrid and very faint. It does not smell like chemicals....it smells like something else - something organic yet nose wrenching. After you see what caught your attention over here in the first place, you will go and check out that smell.
Your feet pad across the wood as you walk towards the little object before coming to a halt for you to bend down and get a closer look. It is a necklace and a note. The note seems recent, but not too recent - only about a couple days ago recent, maybe even a week, from what you guess. You pick it up first, despite your almost unnatural attraction for the necklace, and read.
It reads, "I'm sorry, Linda. If you have found this, then I am probably dead. You should leave this place, it's not safe. The whole thing is coming down and there are things here that no one should have to witness. Get rid of the necklace any way you can. I love you, and I love our daughter so much. I'm sorry." The writing is loving yet messy, like whoever wrote this was on a deadline, and you are pretty sure you have a solid idea of the man who wrote this - Henry. You would be emotional over reading this, but you are not that emotional of a person, and this isn't a soap opera - you have a job to do.
You look back at the necklace. The pendant is attached to a gold chain - solid and real gold. That is why it seemed to reflect light from afar. The pendant itself is a flat, crescent shaped piece of pure metal, one you cannot identify because you are not an expert on geology or metals, with what looks the be sharp cut, genuine rubies where the eyes are expected to be. Its shape and character remind you of a more intense and wicked version of the studio's mascot - Bendy. You do not know why, but you have a very strong and latching urge to put it on, as if your inner tenacity for pursuing your curiosities is seeping through your sense of decency and procedure. However, you cannot be playing dress up right now - this is evidence. You just do not know how. In the note, he says to get rid of it, but why? Does this piece of jewelry hold some form of infamous value? Maybe superstition?
You can ponder later. Right now, you need to find something to chop up the wood that has fallen and blocked your way out, unless there is an alternate exit. Another thing you need is more evidence, more clues, and to find out where the chains and the big gaping hole leads. Especially the big gaping hole. For now, you think you will just stick to finding the source of that awful and putrid smell.
Resisting the urge to plug your nose, you waft the scent that it picks up on and step around the placing, watching your steps as you try to see where the smell gets stronger. It surely is not ink or chemicals. From what you guess, it could be a dead stray that wandered in here. God, what if it was a human? Your wet boots click against the damaged and discolored boards beneath you as you sniff around.
Click...
Click...
Click...
Click-
"Oh God. It's a stray...at least." You were right about the source of the smell with your first guess. At least it was not a human corpse, and not Henry Stein. Before you, hidden among some mighty big and splintered wooden crates, is a decomposing corpse - a fresh corpse. It seems to be a white and typical house cat with some slash marks. Ink stains its fur as the putrid odor emitting from it invades your poor nostrils. Why are there slash marks on this cat's body? "Maybe this is linked with a murderer?" If this cat was brutally killed like this, you don't have much hope for any other living creature that wanders into this studio, whether it be domesticated animal or human.
You reach over to your knapsack and pull out your high-quality photography camera, flicking it on and focusing the lens on the putrid and heart wrenching sight before you. You feel a wave of nausea lightly wash over you. However, you have been trained to act calmly in a situation like this, so it is not anything that you are unable to handle. It may just be a cat, but this decaying corpse is still a revolting sight to bare witness to.
You get your stuff back together and look around for something to break passed the collapsed wood with. Obviously, this place is not safe for you to just wander around in alone. There could possibly be an unhinged killer in this building, the place appears to be in the very slow process of caving in, and the chemicals are starting to get to you. You are going to have to call in a team for this, unfortunately. And while there is nothing wrong with getting a little help, because you are searching for a missing man, so a wife does not become a widow, you still really wanted to be able to do this all by yourself. However, you are not stubborn to the point of insanity. There is no way you would be able to get a thorough investigation on your own without getting hurt.
Your feet pad away from the decomposing and puss oozing feline with sorrow in your mind. You feel really bad for the poor thing. Maybe you would have given it a proper funeral, if you were not on a deadline.
...
After looking around aimlessly for a good amount of unknown time, you swallow a lump in your throat and pace around out of nervous habit. Pacing is highly preferred over biting your nails. "Shit, how am I going to get out of here?" Huffing, you pull out your phone in a spark of hope, only to be extreme disappointed when you find that there is zero cell service. Actually, you do not really blame it - this studio is far out of regular society's reach and you are somewhat below ground level at this current moment. Honestly, you should have seen this coming.
Congratulations to me, I am now an idiot character from a horror movie. This is what I get for being a "lone-wolf Lucy".
You walk over to a nearby chair and sit down while avoiding numerous puddles of ink, letting out a long sigh. The chair feels like torture to your behind. This is literally the stiffest piece of furniture you have ever sat on. However, it is better than nothing. Opening your knapsack once more, you shift your hand around only to meet your touch with the pendant's, your hand brushing up against the gold chaining. Your eyes focus in on the shiny, chained piece of jewelry. It almost feels as if you are hypnotized, as the urge to put it on pulls on your will.
Maybe it wouldn't hurt to try it on?
Agreeing completely with your poor judgement and respect for this possible piece of evidence, you pull it out of your knapsack, and against your better judgement, unhook it and put around your neck before reattaching it with an exaggerated click sound. It fits perfectly - it is as if it was meant for you, built for you even.
After a few seconds of basking in this strange piece of jewelry, you attempt to take it off only to be unable to find the hook as your fingers fumble around the gold chaining. Where did it go?
You have no time to ponder these things when you hear shifting. Looking around, your gaze wanders to the floor, where your eyes suddenly to wide at sight before you. On the ground in front of you is an ink puddle...that is moving.
You sit there in shock as you watch puddles of ink from various areas in the room gather into the one before you. You spring yourself out of your seat and quickly pull your loaded Glock from out of your leather waist belt and turn off the safety lock on it with haste, raising it to the shifting puddle of thick black ink in front of you before you back away from it slowly.
Something starts to rise from the ink - a figure. Your breathing becomes rapid as your heart pumps like crazy while you try to control yourself and keep from letting your newfound anxiety and fear control you. Curse your human nature, fearing what you don't understand!
Horns, head, smile, shoulders, ribs, spine, bowtie, gloves, tail, and boots. Long arms and long legs with hands big enough to chuck you into a wall from across the room, and clawed, gloved hands big enough to choke you with ease. That is what has just risen from the ink puddle. Your finger trembles on the trigger as you wait for anything, anything, to happen.
Then, something happens.
The creature turns it's head and that is enough to cause you to mentally panic enough to the point where you reflexively fire a shot at the creature. The noise is the loudest you have ever heard.
It hits the thing in the chest, but seems to just bounce off, as if it was nothing. Your bullet did not work. The towering figure before you steps towards you, growling lowly for just a second before it practically stomps on over to your shaken form, ink running down its figure. By the time it makes it over to you, you raise your Glock to try and take aim to try and scare it and make it believe you have more than one bullet (though you are not allowed to have more than one), only to have your wrist gripped harshly, making you drop your weapon.
"I süppøse yõù dīdñ't see whæt happēñed the fīrst tîmë." You wince under the strong grip of the monster's hand as it leans forward, its ink dripping face moving down to your level as you stare doe-eyed. Its voice sounds a bit distorted, covering an early 1900's accent. Its seemingly perma-grin twitches and falters a bit, but still remains a creepy, toothy smile.
You can not seem to get a single word out as you stand there in silence. It continues to hold you by your now numbing wrist as he has supposedly cut off the blood flow in your hand (not really, but you are very dramatic when you are scared). The monster huffs and drops you, leaving you to stumble back and fall to the floor, as if it was not towering over your shaken figure enough. Now it looks over your form and stares you down with a glare. The humanoid creature seems to stand by patiently as you take this chance to scramble to your feet and make distance between the two of you.
"Næmè..." It stares at you expectantly, as if awaiting an answer.
"Wha-"
This time, it's voice booms, "What is your n a m e?"
You stutter out your name, quite frankly terrified. Your lips are chapped as your mouth is dry, your nose is currently dying from the smell of this place and burning a little from the inside, your wrist has taken on a more purple color - a bruise - while you are about ready to faint. It seems as if your brain cannot process the entity before you and how it came into being just a minute or so ago through the most perplexing and unbelievable method in all of history.
It stands there idly for a few more excruciating seconds before stepping towards you, which leads to you being backed into a wall. It does not corner you though, nor does it pin you, rather, it grabs you by the wrist again and drags you to the front of the wall with the mini balcony that you jumped from. In a moment of terror, you do not struggle. You figure that not going along with whatever it wants you to do only escalates the situation.
The grinning thing looks back to you and growls, "Get on." Confused and scared, you stare at the creature with an indescribable expression. "Get on my back." It sighs irately after a few dead seconds of thick tension, grabbing you by the back of your collared button up shirt, ironically resembling a mother feline picking up its kitten. A squeak is let from your throat in response to this, but it seems to fall on deaf ears. Not that the monster seems to have any physical ears, nor anything that resembles a pair of auditory receptors, but it can hear you anyway, that much is obvious, with it asking for your name and what not.
This is not a time to be freaking out. First, you need to establish its motives, which remain unclear to you as of this exact moment.
Your body is held by the collar of your shirt as the tall monstrosity, who then proceeds to jump and claw on to the wooden wall, yanking the two of you up with a single gloved hand, claws having dug deep into the floor boards. You expect any form of pain from the sudden jerk, but you only choke half a second from it holding your collar before you are dropped carelessly back onto the balcony flooring. On the ground, you cough from the sudden air cut off as you recollect yourself physically and mentally.
After having a moment of silence to rejuvenate your senses, you hesitantly stand up. It stops to look at you with that blank look and turns toward the collapsed hallway. In your head, both regions of your brain argue whether or not you should tell the creature that it is blocked off, not that it is guaranteed to listen to you or anything.
The two of you round the corner, only to be met with a big pile of debris blocking the path. For a moment, you mentally revel in the road block's presence, that is until the monster starts slashing at the blockage, wood splitting and flicking towards your direction, making you flinch and turn your head away.
"W-wait..." It may have just been an almost inaudible whisper, but it snaps its head towards your direction.
"W h a t?" At his sudden verbal aggression, you nearly flinch once more.
"Won't you...uhm, speed up the collapsation o-of the building? Isn't there another...uh... way...?" It stares at you for another noiseless time, ever so subtly and seemingly subconsciously cocking its moon shaped, grinning head.
"It wøñ't."
Turning back to what it was doing, it slashes up the broken debris better than you would ever have, especially considering you could not find a instrument of demolishing value around here. The thing you can not believe of all of this is how calm you have been. There is literally a sentient puddle of ink smashing up wood before you, capable of speech, movement, and thought. Assuming it is a he, he does not really seem like he would be one to care for your thoughts, yet he is taking the time to respond to you and drag you around, as well as supposedly trying to get you out of here along with himself. Are you possibly an asset or of value to him?
Maybe it is because of the pendant. He did form right after you put it on. Maybe it is tied to him?
Perhaps he has the will to answer questions. Though, after all this, attempting to question him would not be ideal, so you will have to tread lightly. Especially since he seems to have a physical strength beyond you. For fucks sake a bullet bounced off of him, so chances are he can snap you in half like a twig with ease. However, offense and defense are two very different things, although closely tied. Though, just by watching him demolish the raw splintering wood in front of you, you can pretty much guess he is pretty good with both.
Looking back at the crumbling rubble, he finally slashes it down to just a dusty and splintering pile of wood. Walking over that will probably hurt quite a bit if you are not careful.
His tail twitches before he steps over the debris pile, wood crunching under his weight. You follow suit, doing the same with more care. Pursuing this monstrosity has you on edge, yet you follow after it anyway, knowing that it would be pretty pissed and would probably just out-run you if you tried bolting off. You have never seen such a capable being before, so you should not underestimate its speed either. You need to start taking physical notes rather than just mental notes if you are going to start speculating like this.
Following behind the tall lanky creature of ink, your eyes seem to do a second wandering of the place; the creaky board, the rotting wood, the staining ink, the putrid smells. His tail seems to sway behind him as he seems to pay no attention to these things. He seems to gaze at the beaten metal door for a few seconds though, before turning away and moving on. His feet, assumably boots or tap shoes of some kind, click across the rotting floor. You just hope the ground beneath you does not give out, as seen with the gaping hole at the entrance.
The area around you somewhat feels less eerie with another presence near you, yet you get the feeling of something bad lurking about. Sometimes, you bite your lip at your intuition, and this is one of those times as you swallow hard a lump in your throat, locks of your hair dangling a bit in front of your face as you lower your head.
The two of you pass by all those doors you tried to jingle open with fail. You pass by all those loose boards and stains on the wall, this time with another figure, who you are silently tailing. You cannot tell if it is cold or murky in this place, for different areas seem to have different minds on temperature. Maybe it just depends on how deep underground and deeper into the studio you go.
After a bit of walking through jet black puddles, the substance oozing through the boards and leaking from the ceiling above as dripping noises ring out from the silent and moist atmosphere, the two of you pass the writing on the wall, all dried up and glaring at the two of you. He seems to glare back at the words with a snarl as his grin twitches at the edges and his tail ceases movement.
After a few moments of him seething through teeth, and you awkwardly standing and waiting behind, he picks up his feet again, as do you. At least through all of this, you have not broken or dropped any of your possessions...
Wait.
Yes you did...
Your Glock.
Shit, Judy is so going to kill me. You audibly wince, which makes the tall behemoth in front of you glance back at your form, which in return leads to you averting your gaze as you try to pretend you did not say anything. He knows though, he knows it was you. Who else would it be?
"What?" He snarls. You give no response as the two of you continue to walk. From your peripheral vision, you see him glance down at your bruised wrist for a few seconds, as if taking mental note, before turning his head once more. You are sure it is safe to say that he is a he, given the masculine body structure and voice. What even is he? Why does he want you to follow him?
The questions buzzing in your head all cease when the two of you arrive at the entrance of the studio. The two of you seem to linger your gaze on the door before he looks back at you, expectantly. You look at him briefly and then quickly make a jump for it at his expectancy, letting out a squeak when half your body falls through the hole, the pointed ends of the wood scraping your stomach. Your nails grip on to the floor boards as you try to keep yourself from falling into the pit, blood dripping from your stomach as you can feel the warm liquid dribble down your skin. Your teeth grit before you feel a large hands pull you up by wrapping around your waist line, feeling breathe dust your neck as you are lifted by the very monster that has been dragging you around.
Pulling you from the gaping hole completely, he sets you down. Since when did he get on the other side of the hole? You did not see nor feel him jump.
"Idiøt." He growls as he looks at your scraped up stomach before turning to the door. "Wê ãre gøīñ' to yœur hœuse, cørrèct?"
"Uhm, actually...I was just going to call my boss for a crew and-"
"Nœ. N o o n e e l s e w i l l b e c o m i n g h e r e." He growls lowly at you, hunched as his clawed hands outstretch in a threatening stance. Your body tenses up as you physically and mentally shrink before him. His spine from underneath his ink skin seems much pointier when standing like this. "Nœ møré of yœúr pàthetīc līttlē spēcīes wîll mëddle hérè." You stare with widened eyes for a moment before nodding, which seems to be enough for the monster to go back to a more neutral stance. You get the feeling that he is very territorial, and is not very fond of humans, much less fond of them impeding on his territory? Domain? Whatever this place is.
The two of you stand in tense silence for what feels like a good minute before you finally gather the courage to speak up. "H-how will you even get in my house without people seeing you?" You look down to the gaping hole as you await a response. He seems to ponder for a minute, head cocked off to the side as if in thought before letting out a singular yet attention grabbing word of response.
"You."
"What-?" He grabs you and pins himself behind you as his body starts to melt all over you, ink seeping into your clothing, drenching it as he holds you down while doing this. He seems to think nothing of it, as if the possible implications never crossed his mind. However, you are far less than comfortable with this in the slightest. It feels violating to you in an indescribable way as his inky form sinks into your now staining attire, your long sleeve button up shirt and the jacket draped over it wanting to off themselves and your black jeans getting the least of the sharp end of the sword.
When he is done, you no longer feel a weight of force pinning you, rather a weight of your clothes. They feel five times heavier, and drenched from head to toe, yet are not leaking, as if the substance within has a will of it's own - which it probably does. They are pitch black and feel like the heaviest set of clothes you have ever worn. Thankfully, your under clothes were the exception...
Your face cringes before you let out a startled noise from your clothes pulling towards the door. The force is enough to make you stumble a bit before you make the connection and get the message, recomposing yourself as you reach for the knob of the creaky wooden door and pull it open, light rays from the beaming sun above attacking your eyes. Immediately, your eyes squint at the sudden source of light and your pupils try to dilate and adjust to the daytime consequence. You did come here when it was about six in the morning, and it seems it is no longer freezing, but rather really warm. The heat is fine though, considering the cool ink that has taken residence in the threads of your clothing. That is the one perk of the violation - temperature comfort.
The muddy dirt below you and wet grass indicates that ice indeed melted as you were in there. It is probably about ten to eleven right now going off of the position of the sun, so you were in there for quite the amount of time. Shaking your head, you walk through the stick ridden and weed grown field, making your way to your vehicle. You pull your keys out from your knapsack, a small reminder of what you dropped back in the studio.
The smell of chemicals is soon replaced with the smell of pines and the sound of birds chirping mating calls in the distance. Your headache recedes. It is odd though, considering your clothes are now drenched in ink. Is there holes in logic now too instead of just the studio flooring?
You unlock your vehicle with your keys as you walk over to the driver's side and open the door, taking a seat and pulling the rest of your body in. The smell of your still dripping blood wafts through the vehicle, the pain throbbing at your stomach. You need to get home fast, since the hospital is not an option considering you don't want to draw attention to your case, and monstrosity risen from ink still is with you, although sunk into your clothing.
You shudder a bit at the thought. The beast having sunk into your clothes feels like five extra layers of attire wrapped around your body and makes you look a little more busty and well fed than you really are, like Russian soldier attire. Either they are really skinny or really fat underneath all that clothing.
You have no choice in the matter though, seeing as it could seriously injure you at any time it wanted to, especially now. The only comfort you have is that this being seems to want you alive. You feel like you should be far more scared than you already are. Yet you never screamed, never cried, and never ran, which in itself scares you. The fact that you seem to being unnaturally calm scares you on a different level. You do not even know why.
It can rip you in half. It can snap you like a twig. Bullets do not effect it. It could probably outrun you. It could walk all over you without you being able to do anything about it.
So, why aren't you all that scared?
Sorry if it seems that the reader and Bendy met too fast. While it might seem the reader got okay with Bendy too fast, there is a reason for that. Don't forget to vote and give me your thoughts.