Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

He was back in judgment hall. Walls of gold surrounded him like a touch of Midas. A child with cruel eyes tainted with a vermilion bloodlust lunged toward him in a swift motion. A sharp kitchen knife woven tightly between their fingers. before he could even blink the knife caught on his clothing and slashed across his chest in a quick slice. Veiled bangs of a burn shrouded the eyes of his killer like a curtain.

Their grin was demonic, wide eerie like Cheshire Cat's. Though he wasn't a rabbit or Alice trying to find her way out wonderland. He was trying to survive to avenge his brother. He wasn't sure if they were human anymore. They were a demon in the body of a child. Sans couldn't find a trace of humanity in those cruel eyes that only held a sadistic mirth. He saw a spark in the eyes of the human as his body slowly crumbles fading to dust. A satisfied pleasure of having, succeeded in killing him, a twisted megalomania. The eyes of who was once their savior the savoir of all monsterkind who wandered on the path on no return. No mercy. The only thing left of the kid he once knew, the kid he once trusted was a wicked bloodlust that danced in their eyes of crimson. Eyes stained red by their sin, red like the blood of monsters they slew.

Dust clung to their sweater and clothing it sprinkled off them like snowflakes falling in Snowdin whenever they moved to fast. In their eyes swam a desire for power that only grew with every death, every Level gained from XP. Though Sans wondered what will they would do when everything, every monster they once loved was all gone? And there was nothing left for them to return to. What would they do when their lust for power, and their own megalomania destroyed even themselves? Why Reset of course!

And that's what they did. Again, again, and again. Until Sans slowly lost himself with each Reset. He remembered how with a twisted fear how body around him crumbled to dust. When he awoke, he was in the bed he shared with Marcy. He was covered in sweat that ran down his bones. He could feel the pulse of his soul racing like a race horse. The sweat that stained his shirt made his T shirt feel like it was glue against his bones.

Could skeletons even sweat?

He looked around the room rapidly. And found that he was alone. With the slow ticking of the clock that haunted the room. Though where were you?
His mind ran to suspicion. He was still paranoid from his nightmare. He couldn't find it in himself to trust anyone anymore not even his own partner of three years. After each PTSD fueled nightmare, he always felt a paranoid fear that whispered in his ear like the demon on his shoulder. A nagging fear that consumed him for days. Not that anyone noticed of course, he hid his true feelings too well for anyone not to notice. If someone caught wind of his true feelings he'd just laugh it off with a joke or two, a pun or two that would soothe their fears, and all eyes would be drawn away from him once again.

He was trapped inside his own mind, in a world of his own paranoia where he was the star. It was like a psychological horror movie where he was the star, his life was like a horror film he couldn't escape from. And the genocides runs were like slasher films where he was that one chick at the end of the movie who survives for some reason.

It has been years since the last reset. Years since the 37th reset. How many years had he spent reliving the same day? Sans couldn't count. He'd lost years of his life to that kid. When it wasn't resets it was a true reset. Frisk the demon in angels clothes promised they'd never reset again. Yet a wolf in sheep's clothing if they aren't lying, then their doing something deceptive right? They promised they'd never do genocide again. Though how trustworthy could the kid who betrayed and killed their friends and mother over and over again truly be? They chose genocide and faced no consequence. If Sans were to talk about this who would belive him? How could they? It's not like anyone would believe him, would they? With a gnawing hatred after each genocide they'd smile at Sans, knowing fully well what they'd done. Like the blood of innocents didn't rest on their hands. They'd kill everyone only to wash their hands free of sin with the click of a button. With the simple touch of ‘RESET’, they'd be a pacifist again. It's like the damn kid couldn't make up their mind. Like they couldn't decide if they wanted to be a hero or a cold-blooded murderer. Why be one when they could be both?

In the final reset, they were the savior of monsterkind. With the click of a button they'd become Toriel's angel once again saving her from her loneliness. To her, Frisk was the perfect child who could do no wrong in her eyes. Sans' gaze slid to the empty spot in the bed beside him. His eye sockets lingered there for a few moments. Marcy wasn't home. She'd been out shopping with some of her friends. That's right how couldn't he have remembered? You said you'd be gone. His hand slid to the phone on his nightstand.

Marcy: 'Be back home later Sans : )' Delivered 2:15 pm

He read the text twice to make sure he wasn't forgetting anything. The right side of the bed was your spot. His gaze lingered there for a few moments longer. He felt hollow inside. Tired and unable to move forward. There was an indent in the mattress where you'd once been. The thin duvet and bedsheets were wrinkled with the blankets on your side of the bed being tucked under your pillow, as Sans' side looked like a tornado hit it. Though the empty spot only made your absence more noticeable. He swung his legs over the bed, the mattress groaned under his weight as he pushed himself off the bed. He started noticing the small things with you. How you'd been more temperamental lately, how you'd switch from being hot to cold in an instant. How you complained about the cold despite the temperature on the A.C being neither cold nor hot.

He'd began to worry that you were coming down with a cold and wanted to take you to Alphys for a checkup. Though you always were stubborn, weren't you? You'd always have been. It was one of your fatal flaws, though it was like cracked porcelain; the porcelain was still beautiful despite the cracks. He'd noticed things like how you would cry at movies you'd never cried at before. He even noticed you gaining more and more weight as time progressed. When he brought it up to you, you were understandably offended, and he remembered with nagging detail about how you both had a talk about how you never wanted him to bring up the subject of your weight ever again. So he hadn't bothered to ask. He didn't even question it when you vomited the quiche he made. He just thought he was a bad cook or it was a flu bug going around. Or one of those human colds. He was going to get to the bottom of this whether he liked it or not.

~Later... Your Pov~

It started with a kiss, then a lie. Sly little looks of suspicion you couldn’t deny. He started coming back from Grillby’s when the day was young, and the sun wasn’t out; it was around 1 am when he came home. He shambled to the bathroom to hurl the rest of his hangover into the bathroom trash. You'd just came home from a shopping trip with your friends, and you couldn't wait to tell Sans the news. You both wanted children and had discussed the prospect of adoption later down on in the relationship. As you both were convinced it wouldn't happen naturally. With hope in your eyes and glee in your heart, you waited to tell him the news. Though what he saw left him with cold dread.

The silent phantom of dread that tugged at his soul and shattered it within seconds. He was frozen when he saw the pregnancy test sticking up beneath the magic bile after he hurled in the bathroom trash. Two lines that marked his fate and the end of his three-year relationship. He felt anger and judgment stir within him. It wasn’t his kid. It wasn’t possible. He'd convinced himself it wasn't his. Marcy... You must have cheated somehow. If you thought you were playing him for a fool, he’d give you a taste of your own medicine. He stormed to the living room in his baby pink slippers.

And there you were. You had an excited grin as you as you held a shirt that said ‘World's Best Farter’ with farter being crossed out to say father. Increments of hope twinkled in your soft eyes. His permanent grim dropped slightly as you handed him a letter. He took it harshly, snatching it out of your hand. The letter said ‘There’s a bun in the oven!’ You frowned, seeing his reaction. He could smell the lunch in the kitchen you'd slightly burnt it. It smelled faintly like burning toast crudely paired with the smell of the burnt dinosaur oatmeal Papyrus had made himself for breakfast. How his brother managed to burn oatmeal, he wasn't sure.

“Is there something wrong, Sans?” You said with worry marring your sweet face. Your smile was like sugar, though your uneasy smile shook with nerves. It made him feel sick, like the kind of sick you get after eating too much sugar. It made Sans angry just to look at you. He felt angry you could manipulate him. Angry that you would betray him the way that brat did.

His bones began to rattle slightly with anger.
“No. I think your toast is burning, though.” He said shrewdly. “Sans, really, is there something wrong?” “We'll talk about this more tomorrow. When Papyrus isn't home.” He said coldly. “I think he should be back from his morning run soon.” You added awkwardly.

Day 2…

Meanwhile…The sky was the color of a raven’s beak. Stars swirled with an ominous gloom. Their relationship had been strained over the past few weeks. Sans was cold, distant. He left you feeling colder than a penguin in Antarctica. When he came home next, you caught him rinsing lipstick marks off his hoodie in the bathroom sink. He didn’t even try to hide the smell of cheap perfume when he came home from Grillby’s. He wasn’t slick. He didn’t even try to hide it. He sat you down. “We need to talk.” “About how you’ve been seeing another woman behind my back?” You shot back, arms crossed as you sat on the couch. “How you’ve been cheating on me?” You uttered. “Takes one to know one. How long were you going to try and get me to raise another man’s child, Marcy? A human’s child.” His voice dripped with venom. His eye sockets were dark, menacing like a void that dispelled any light. You flinched barely. “What?” “How long. Marcy.” You sat silent, confused. He thought you were cheating? “How long?” He repeated more menacing this time. His baritone voice emphasized his point. “I’ve done nothing but stand by you Sans. With your nightmares, your ketchup addiction. I don’t understand. Why would you ever… why would you ever think I’d do something stupid and ruin the greatest relationship I’ve ever had?” You said weakly. “I dunno pal that’s what I’m wondering when I see you pregnant with someone else's baby.” He retorted. His permanent grin didn’t match his eye sockets, and it was rather unnerving. “The baby is yours Sans.” You insisted.

“I dunno last time I checked humans and monsters can’t have babies together. Marcy.” He said simply. Tears began to well up in your eyes. “Sans! Why would you think I’m cheating! Who would I even cheat with? Ever since I’ve been with you I don’t have a life, I don’t leave the house, I don’t have many friends, wherever I go its always with you! So tell me… who… who could I possibly have cheated with?” Your chest began to heave as you hyperventilated slightly. “I dunno your baby daddy.” He said coldy as you cried into your hands. The silent accusation hung in the room like a looming dread. “Get out Marcy.” You weren’t sure if you heard him correctly.

He glared harshly as you made no move to leave. “I said get out Marcy.” He repeated. “Where am I supposed to go?” You felt lost. “Go back to the human you cheated on me with.” Those words were like a bullet to your chest. They struck you like a bullet. “What are we going to tell your brother?” You said through choked sobs. "What will your brother think of this?” You said through tears. “There is no we anymore, Marcy. You ruined that when you cheated. Don't worry about Papyrus, he’ll understand that some humans just aren’t worth the effort.” He said dismissively with his back turned to you. You instinctively tried to take a step toward him. As you touched his jacket sleeve in a placating gesture. “I'm not leaving until you listen to me Sans.” Then tension in the room dropped on you like a lead balloon, constricting around your neck tighter and tighter like a snake coiling around your neck.

Sans tore his arm away from your touch. His skull lowered in a foul look. The empty silence was only a reminder of the way things used to be. He didn't return your look with a darkness brewing in his eye sockets. “There's nothing to talk about. Nothing that you could say that would make me possibly forgive you pal.”

You brought your hand to your chest with a stunned look that danced across your eyes. You slowly turned to the door. Face marred with a forlorn sadness that couldn't be healed with ice cream alone. “Fine…” Your voice cracked with a pathetic squeak that made embarrassment stir inside your chest. You walked toward the door shutting it silently behind you. As you walked away from the life you built together.

The seriousness of his final words spoken to you, left you with the burden of finality looming over you like a nightmare you couldn't escape from. He was done, it was over. After three years, he threw you away like you were nothing. He threw you away like a mistake from his life that could be erased with whiteout. He looked at you like a child does to a toy that was broken.

Despair raw and final tormented you. You fell to your knees. Why weren't you strong enough? Strong enough to argue against him? Why weren't you strong enough for the child growing inside you? Feral sobs tore through your throat. As you hyperventilated on the doorstep. The stupid welcome home mat felt like a slap in the face with the irony. You weren't welcome here not anymore. You saw Sans in the living room window, when he laid his gaze upon you saw a look of guilt wander across his face briefly before he closed the curtains blocking you from view.

And like that you were alone. You found yourself on the streets, you didn't have a place to stay for the night. Your family was xenophobic, and hated monsters. They disowned you when they found you with Sans. The skeleton brothers were the only family you’d had and you lost them. You found yourself in a nearby almost empty McDonald’s you didn't have your wallet only your thoughts to comfort you though the more you listened to them the worse you felt. With a dumb realization you realized your wallet was back at home, or well it was at the place that was once your home. You sat at a booth alone as minutes burned to hours. A small line of people started to form by the cash register. The fluorescent light glaring from the digital menu on the wall flickered displaying burgers and sides that looked nothing like how they did when you fished it out the bag. Your stomach growled. Great. 'Don't worry baby I'll get us some food.' You thought, looking down at your stomach. You wondered how far along you were. Judging by your size you weren't far along into the pregnancy.

Some people in the line at the front of the restaurant gave you pitying looks. Though none dared speak to you. They all had their own lives to focus on and didn't waste effort on comforting you. The plaster seat of the booth was cold beneath your legs. There was a ketchup smudge on the table left behind from the last person who sat here. Ketchup… Sans. Looking at the stain made you feel like crying. You had to will away tears. There was salt crumbs on the table the person who last sat here probably had fried. The salt crumbs felt uncomfortable beneath your elbows. As you sat with your head buried into your arms as you fought away sobs. It was clear the last person who sat here clearly had fries.

Your phone vibrated in your pocket. You jolted slightly as you dove your hand into your pocket. You slowly retrieved your buzzing phone from your pocket. ‘Human you're dead when I find you.’ It was Undyne. You shivered at the thought of her finding you. How did she know about the breakup already? As time elapsed you tried calling, pleading with Sans only for him to block your number. You wanted to look at renting an apartment just in case Sans wasn’t willing to let you back. Though the thought stopped when you realized you didn't have your wallet. You hadn’t cheated, you weren’t a cheater or some skank with a tramp stamp who catcalled guys on the road.

A woman with dark skin in a McDonald's uniform approached your table with a mop in hand. She slammed a wet floor sign down in front of you with a tired sigh. She frowned at you with her sallow face. Her name tag was crooked and there was a toothpaste stain on her work uniform as she regarded you with exhausted eyes.

“You're gonna have to leave. Order something or leave. You can't stay here.” She said neither kindly or with any animosity. She simply sounded tired mostly likely just trying to get through her shift. You slowly slid out the booth weaving around the woman and wandered out the place and away from the golden arches with their happy meals that offered happiness, though you left feeling broken and upset. When you wandered back to the skeleton brother's house you saw your belongings in trash bags on the curb and began to cry. You sat at the curb with your head in your hands. You'd done harder things alone. Raising a baby on your own shouldn't be too hard... Right?

Chapter Text

Two months had passed since Sans abandoned you. First one, then two. Stretch marks, bold and angry, stared back at you. They were like bright red ugly tiger stripes that stuck out like a snowstorm in July. The marks were more noticeable than a clown with a red nose attending a business meeting. The marks made you feel like a zebra with neon pink polka dots in public. They were even beginning to form under your armpits as you grew, the skin stretched to accommodate the baby growing inside you. You felt ugly; your body was changing in a way that made you feel like an ogre in human skin. Your stomach started to swell up like a lead balloon and made you look like you were bloated.

The marks were like fingers of lightning that struck your thighs and ran up your waist, stopping below your navel. Stretch marks even began to form around the curve of your hips. You weren’t even that far along. The small, round curve of your stomach made it hard to hide in public. You often felt slow and tired; did all women have to go through this? The celebrities all seemed to have magical pregnancies, where their skin looked like it was glowing and they miraculously managed to drop the baby weight within a few weeks. You felt like you looked the opposite. You were glowing until you got pregnant.

Though you only had your body to blame, it wasn't the baby's fault. You knew you could never blame this child; they were innocent in all of this and didn't deserve to be born into this mess. Though your body felt like it was terraforming into something you didn't recognize. The only clothes you felt comfortable in nowadays are hoodies. No one could judge your body in baggy clothing. Hoodies hid the shame your body made you feel. Hoodies hid the shame this baby you feel towards your body. No one could judge a body they couldn’t see. And if no one saw you, no one could judge you. You felt like a ghost walking down the streets. And you knew with dread that soon none of your clothes would fit, and you would need to shop for maternity clothes soon. The thought of buying clothes made your already shrinking bank account weep.

Not to mention, with government inflation, baby stuff was expensive and growing more expensive by the day. Your hoodie could use a good wash soon, you've worn it out for the past three days, and you needed to find a laundromat soon. Detergent, even at the dollar store, was too expensive, and with your living situation, you couldn't afford a washing machine, much less a dryer, heck, you didn't even have a permanent living situation. Looking at yourself in the mirror, you were reminded of all your flaws at once. Each insecurity was bold like a slap on the face and as obvious as a pimple on a model’s face. And looking at your body in the cheval mirror of the hotel made you want to cry. Stars, when did you get so emotional?

You felt like you were more beautiful before you even got pregnant, you regret how you never appreciated the way your body used to look before you lost it. Though you couldn’t blame the baby. It wasn’t their fault, they didn’t ask to be conceived. And if you didn't love them, Sans sure as hell wouldn't. He'd rather leave you both to drown desolate and terrified. You were determined to love this child even if Sans never could. You wanted to see the look on his face when this child was born, and that you were right. You hoped karma would come to slap him, like life had you. Before you even got pregnant, you’d hardly ever cried, except when your childhood pet had died.

You were changing not just physically. The way you looked at the world around began to change as well, and you didn’t feel like the same person since Sans broke your heart. You were colder somehow. Or perhaps you were simply done. Emotionally exhausted. You deserved better. Deserved someone who didn’t hide secrets from you all the time. You decided you’d never settle for someone like Sans; you wanted someone who didn't have the trust of a paranoid lunatic. You often found yourself alone and missing the company of the brothers; that part was undeniable. There was never a dull moment with them around. And all your friends had left after they discovered the pregnancy.

Yet you didn’t miss how Sans treated you. He wasn’t abusive, though sometimes he was like a ghost in the relationship; he was there, though he wasn’t there at the same time. He was always so emotionally distant that it was like you both were on two completely different sides of the world. He was secretive and quick to lie. And you definitely didn’t miss his pranks. All the little things around you reminded you of the things you used to do together. You thought about how, whenever you kissed him, there was always the bad taste of ketchup on your lips, and it would leave you with a bitter aftertaste of his favorite condiment. Ketchup certainly didn’t taste good on its own. Whenever he spoke, it was hard to sort the lies from the truth; at times, he’d mix a lie with the truth, and it would always leave you wondering.

You remembered back when you still lived with the skele bros, how there were always Christmas decorations hanging outside their house. You thought of the bright Christmas lights with a sad remembrance. How they never bothered to take the lights down even as the holidays ended. The claret terrazzo carpet of the hotel looked clean yet felt dingy under your socks. It had garish pink shapes like confetti with abstract patterns imbued in the carpet that was built into the floor. Not to mention, there was even glitter painted on the walls that reminded you of a german sparkle party. This hotel was a glitter haters' worst nightmare. Then it dawned on you.

Stars, how would you even get to work? You didn’t have a car, and your government ID expired two weeks ago; you were too worried about Sans’ narcolepsy diagnosis that you’d forgotten to go to the Secretary of State to get your ID photo taken again. There were two small double beds in the ramshackle hotel room. And you understood why this one was the cheapest room in the hotel. The wallpaper was stained with nicotine stains, and the acrid smell of tobacco clung to the walls. Definitely not good for the baby, though beggars couldn’t be choosers. You couldn’t sleep, you spent the whole night tossing and turning until you passed out like a black out drunk, and only managed to steal three hours of sleep before the room service lady knocked on your door. It was like the world wouldn't let you sleep. You looked at the shell of your former self in the mirror before turning as you pinched your stomach above your hips with uncertainty. As you felt insecure about your weight.

Whatever belongings you managed to save were still in the trash bags that either Sans or Papyrus left on the curb. Some of your items, unfortunately, had been stolen, your neighbors, well ex-neighbors, raided the bags like hungry seagulls, and you didn't have the energy to pull your things out the trash bags you'd managed to gather.

You sent your boss a text saying you were calling in for work. You already had a few sick days saved up, and the constant churning in your stomach made it hard to think. You’d only left the room for breakfast in the lobby. Your stomach disagreed with the scrambled eggs, and the single piece of toast you managed to shove down. You felt bile rise to your throat. You ran to the bathroom next to the mini fridge and flung open the door like your life depended on it. You sat on your knees, emptying the contents of your stomach. Your stomach heaved, and your body quivered like a leaf in a storm. The brittle anxiety you lived with made you feel shaky, like a jolt of electricity bouncing around in a storm cloud.

Your heart was like a racehorse beating like a drum in your chest. Your hair was greasy like you used a bottle of pizza grease instead of conditioner. Sweat pricked at the back of your neck. You couldn’t afford Walmart, it was too expensive. Meijer’s was more expensive than Walmart. And the farmer’s market was too far away. You could shop at the dollar store that charged five dollars per item, or the Dollar General that charged the same, and risk buying spoiled milk again after you forgot to read the expiration date. Or you could live off ramen like a weeb. Which would be both bad for you and baby, not to mention incredibly unhealthy.

Sooner or later you had to face to world. The world where everyone knows your face. The world where gossip was exchanged more than currency. Your tank top was dingy like the carpet. Cartons of soupy ice cream lay about the tiny wicker table that you used to eat away your feelings instead of facing them, though the sugar couldn’t erase the loneliness you felt or the looming sadness that haunted you like a ruthless depression. Crying wouldn’t fix the past.

Unfortunately the sugar high from the ice cream hadn’t lasted long and left you feeling sluggish and tired. Dark bags sat sallow under your eyes and made you look like you were a furry cosplaying a raccoon or a chain-smoking zombie. You’d been queasy the past few weeks and wanted to go to a doctor for nausea medication, though what would they do if they found out you were pregnant with a monster baby? Would the baby even look like Sans, or would they look like you with Sans’ features? What did a skeleton and human hybrid even look like? What if the baby had Sanses hollow eye sockets, though had human skin? That would be freaky, and you imagined you’d be scared to look at your own child in the face. Though you’d seen creepier monsters on the street, your college roommate was a monster that was just a walking mouth for stars sake! You needed to get a grip.

You were determined to love this child even if they looked like Freddy Kruger and Deadpool’s secret love child. Though your fear still persisted when you were safe, with only your thoughts to taunt you. If you went to a doctor, would the doctor send you to some human testing facility? Would you be looked at like some freak of nature? And you didn’t know where you’d give birth, if you gave birth in a hospital, would they take your baby to experiment on? If you had a home birth, what if you died of blood loss and needed medical attention? What if the baby got stuck, or their umbilical cord wrapped around their neck? What if they died in the womb? What if you miscarried? What if they were born with an autoimmune disease, or with some awkward disfigurement, or progeria? Could skeletons even get human diseases?

What if they had a disease and you couldn’t pay their medical bills? What if they broke their arm while playing sports? What if they wanted to join the army and were rejected because they didn’t have a birth certificate? Would they hate you for it? What if they managed to forge a birth certificate to join the army and died overseas? Did skeletons even need to breathe? What if you got a midwife and they killed they baby on purpose because they were some religious anti-monster hater? What if your baby needed to be vaccinated, though you couldn’t afford to vaccinate them. And they couldn’t be vaccinated because they were made of bone? What if they caught the measles because you couldn’t vaccinate them?

What if Linda tried to feed you her lemon squares? A hurricane of thoughts and worries swirled around in your mind like a violent maelstrom. What if the baby hated you? What if they grew up to hate you? What if they became a rebellious teenager and got knocked up at fifteen, like your Karen neighbor Linda’s daughter did? What if they ran away?

The Karen you lived next to Linda used to feud with the butch lesbian couple who lived on the end of the street, whose rainbow house apparently made her have the police on speed dial to ‘protect the neighborhood.’ The vibrant house with its gay flags apparently invoked the primal wrath of Linda and caused her to complain to the HOA constantly. You began to worry some more. What if Linda showed up? Stars that would be awful. That was like a nightmare waiting to happen. You often saw Linda with her awful lemon squares peeking through the blinds with her binoculars, like she was some criminal watch agent. She was a habitual stalker, and everyone who lived on the street knew their business was her business.

You felt bad for her overweight husband who always wore Hawaiian shirts like it was a personality trait. You felt bad for Linda’s husband and daughter who she fed Twinkies and Hostess brownies for breakfast. No wonder they were miserable. Though worry led to wonder. What, you had a son, and he became one of those ‘Alpha males’ online who believed hygiene and toilet paper were unmanly and for weaklings? What if you had a son who beat his wife like your ex-neighbor across the street, Kyle? What if they joined a gang? What if they ran away and joined a cult? What if they started a cult in your basement? What if they started World War three? What if they became a dictator and staged a coup, and attempted to overthrow the king of monsterkind and the president?

Your anxieties whispered in your ear like a mosquito you couldn’t swat. And if the media discovered your baby, what if the news and press bombarded you with cameras and stalked you like an animal being filmed on the ‘Animal Planet’ channel? You’d soon die from the stress you invoked upon yourself rather than the heartbreak Sans caused you. And you’d have to state hop, going from state to state just to try and give this child a chance at privacy.

You’d feared if you had a hospital birth, the knocking of journalists would always be at your door. And you feared that if you had a home birth you’d die from the pain alone. You’d even heard in some places that people shit themselves in labor just by pushing too hard. You'd die of embarrassment if that happened.

You could try and sneak your way down to the Rite Aid and buy some over the counter meds for your nausea and magic supplements for the baby, and risk someone from your old life seeing you. Though you’d risk the chance of being seen and didn’t want to test your luck. You remembered the time two weeks ago you were craving pickles and ordered a burger from room service.

You remembered how the chef accidentally replaced your pickles with spicy pickles. And as soon as you ate one of the spicy pickles, you learned the hard way that your baby hated spicy food and would kick you like a kick boxer if you even remotely tried to eat something a little spicy. You couldn’t even stomach that medium salsa you’ve been saving without your baby throwing a fit and punching your insides. Two months in the womb, and, they were already causing you trouble.

You were vomiting rainbows past midnight that night. Your vomit you noted was mixed with odd sparkles of magic, you didn’t know if it was from you or the baby. Didn’t monster babies feed off the magic their parents produced? You read somewhere in a grocery store magazine near the checkout aisle at Kroger’s that monster babies feed off tiny particles of magic their parents emanated like radiation.

Your appetite became voracious, and you were worried that you were gaining weight too fast, and that you had symptoms that should be present later in the pregnancy. You didn’t even think a baby the size of a cherry should be able to kick? Was this normal for monster babies? You didn’t even know how long monster pregnancies even lasted. Well, the baby was half human, so maybe you had a few months until they were born.

You looked at size comparisons for each month along you’d get and right now the baby shouldn’t be big enough to even kick. You were concerned the baby needed magic to survive. You knew you couldn’t produce the magic needed for them to stay alive. With the public dragging your name through the mud you even started to have your doubts, how did this baby even come to be? You hadn’t been with anyone besides Sans. Did someone drug you? No, you weren’t at the bar or any parties.

You knew you needed to buy magic supplements at the drug store. The baby’s life could very well depend on it. You had enough cash saved to live in the hotel for the past two months, though you knew you needed to be wiser with your cash. This was a temporary solution; you needed to find permanent housing unless you were desperate enough to get back with Sans (Not happening) or the hotel decided to give you free housing and let you squat here for free.

You patted your pocket, making sure your room’s keycard was still on your person, and slowly opened the door like there would be some horror game creature on the other side. You sighed, your shoulders slumped back in relief. You saw the words ‘CHEATER’ ‘WHORE!’, and “MONSTER FUCKER’ spray-painted in black and lizard green across your door in large bold letters.

CRACK… You heard a cracking sound resonate, though you didn’t see anything broken. You assumed you were hearing things and were slowly loosing your mind to stress. A ping erupted from your phone. You thought you put it on silent you had to have your phone on silent for the past two months or the messages would never stop.

You were half tempted to delete your Undernet account, though you worried too much about what others said to you to do so. Your screen buzzed and lit to life as you typed in your pin. You had the anxiety of a child about to check their grades as you saw the notification near your battery bar. 33% you’d have to charge your phone soon when you came back from the store.

(ALPHYS updated Status: I can’t believe some humans don’t know when to keep their legs closed SMH)

Your heart dropped. You and Alphys were close friends before the pregnancy. You’d both talk with her Undyne about your favorite animes and have movie nights with Frisk together. You were unsure why Sans always looked so uneasy when you brought up Frisk would be there. Perhaps he didn’t like the child. Or maybe it was he didn’t like children. Then why did he agree to adopt them with you? Was he lying? Or did he just lie to make you happy? Classic Sans...

You saw the way he looked at the child. He always gave them the stink eye when he thought no one was looking, looking at the child with such discord you would have thought they personally insulted all 20 generations of his ancestors.

(ALPHYS updated status) Can’t believe my girlfriend’s besties brother has such a taste for skank stank. SMH

The messages just kept coming. And she’d tagged you in all her new posts, much to your horror. Though you stopped and realized wasn’t she doing this already? Was she the one behind the gossip and rumors? Did she start this?

(ALPHYS updated status) Can’t believe some humans are just so unloyal. SMH

Why did she keep typing SMH?

(ALPHYS updated status) #Slut. I Can’t believe I was friends with such a skank oh my gosh

Within minutes, the post already got 21 likes. You already saw a comment from Undyne under the post. ‘Can’t believe I even trusted this human! NGAHH!’ Why did Undyne even feel bothered to write her battle cry over text?

(ALPHYS updated status) No one likes your trashy taste in anime Marcy. I can’t believe you still watch Yuri on Ice, Black Butler and Hetalia in 2025. You watch all this anime with dead ass fandoms. No wonder Sans left your sorry ass. NGL the Hetalia episodes are absolute shit. And you should stick to reading the fanfics, I can’t believe 12 year olds write better Hetalia episodes than grown humans. #Country garbage. Why are you even watching an anime about countries as people? Pea sized Ass brain and your 5 minute toddler brain rot anime.

Damn. Did she really hate your choice in anime that much? You supposed Black Butler was a little dark, you couldn’t even watch some episodes that were too dark for you. Especially not the dog town episode that one made you cry. Honestly the only reason you were stll into some of these animes was the fanfiction.

(ALPHYS updated status) : #Shitanime you should never watch #Marcy

There was a link to all your favorite animes under the post.

(ALPHYS updated status) : #Anime garbage

With each post your heart broke little by little. Why was she so quick to side with Sans in the breakup? Did your friendship truly mean nothing to her? Why was she so quick to throw everything away? Why was she always trying to start shit? With you especially. You shook your head trying to clear your thoughts. Stress would only harm the life growing inside you. You saw she tagged you under that last one and some of the other few posts.

You wanted to throw your phone at the wall though the screen was already heavily cracked and there was cracks that looked like spider webs stretching across the screen, with one skinny crack through the middle of the phone screen that resembled a tiny knife. You realized you also needed shampoo… darn.

You walked down the hall, passing each identical door before you got to the elevator down the hall. You pressed the button to the main lobby downstairs. Down one end of the lobby, you saw what you thought was a concession stand. You remembered how you rented this hotel room for a three month long free MTT hotel resort that you’d won tickets for during your neighbour's baby shower that you and Sans attended, you think it was for one of Grillby’s nieces who had settled down with a childhood friend.

You wanted to give the tickets for Papyrus and you wanted to surprise him with for either his Birthday or Gyftmas (Did monsters even have Birthdays?) though you decided not to give the brothers the tickets that would be a little awkward since you and Sanses fall out and besides you were hella pissed whenever you and Papyrus bumped into each other at the mall or the store and he’d give you a grand speech about how you were in the wrong and everyone can be a good person if they just tried.

It upset you to know not even he believed you. And then monsters in whatever store you were in would marvel and glare at you like you just killed a box of kittens and committed the worst war crime in all of humanity. You were tired of it. You just wanted to be treated like a normal person for once. Not as some cartoon villain who did something like stole all of Sugarland’s supply of maple syrup.

You were being harassed for something you didn’t even do. What even drove Sans’ mind to think you cheated? Was he cheating and projecting getting caught onto you? You didn’t know and you didn’t want to find out. Approaching the concession stand, you saw a cat with pumpkin colored fur wearing what looked like a fast-food uniform stamped with the MTT logo on his hat. He looked frazzled behind the counter. He took a slow drag of his cigarette as he took in your appearance. His eyes were dead yet still alive as he looked at you; his dark eyes shone empathetically. His dark eyes glazed over with exhaustion, glaze that reminded you of a glazed donut.

“Hey little buddy can I get you anything?” He said, eyeing you suspiciously. You weren’t even sure if you were hungry, then again, you threw up your breakfast earlier and would be hungry soon enough, though you weren’t sure if you were going to risk it. You were craving burgers, and maybe something with seafood if you weren’t allergic. You were kinda feeling French toast and tator tots with some snow cones you were craving snow for some reason.

Though maybe you'd like a milkshake with pickles to dip in the shake. The cat monster looked at you with a dead inside grin that looked forced. On the menu above him the glamburger looked like it had literal glitter thrown in it. The steak was probably too filling and you didn’t want to go shopping on a full stomach. You decided to risk it and order yourself a Starfait hoping the baby wouldn't disagree with it. “Is there anything without any spice in it? I have a bad spice tolerance.” You lied awkwardly. “Well, nothing on our menus really all that spicy little buddy.” You thought for a moment. “I’ll have the Starfait.” You said decisively.

You slipped out the gold from your pocket and slid it down the counter to the cat monster. Burgerpants in return slid you the Starfait across the counter. “Now ms aren’t you that lady from the Undernet?” You felt cold. A knot of unease formed in your throat. Burgerpants leaned on his elbow over the counter to face you.

“I know you didn’t cheat. I’ve seen a lot on the surface and in the underground to know a face. And yours isn’t one that lies. Well except that excuse about the spicy food.” Your eyes shimmered with hope that finally someone believed you. It was nice to finally have a stranger on your side even if you’ve just met them, and probably wouldn’t see them ever again. You took your star parfait and left feeling more confident than you had for a while. As Burgerpants slid you his number you read it with surprised eyes. “It’s not what you think.” He said quickly. “Its just I feel like you could use a friend. It seems like everyone in the town is against you. I’m not one of those monsters. And I feel kinda bad for you. You know?” He said simply with a huff of smoke.

You waved him farewell and continued on your journey to the store. Then embarrassment settled on you totally forgot to take a shower whoops.

Chapter Text

There was a rattle from the machine downstairs. A rattle like bone. Gears in the engine coughed and sputtered with spittle of smoke spilling out like cigarette smoke. He was tired. Anything to bring Gaster back. Anything to bring his forgotten father back. He sacrificed his sleep, his energy, his relationship all for this moment. His hollow eye sockets dropped down to his blueprints; his calculations should be correct. The machine should bring his father back from the epicenter of the void. The creation that destroyed him should be the one to bring him life. Steam whistled from the machine like an angry kettle. The needle on the dial was going crazy and was spinning noncommittally, refusing to land on a single number.

The photon readings were positive. Electron ratings were off the charts more than Mettaton’s show Underground. Neutrons were rating average- Then an explosion. The light was blinding. Sans’ head hit the corner of the table he fell unconscious and a group of skeletons emerged out the machine looking confused. “SANSSSSSS!!!!!!”

—

You got a bus for the first half of the trip decided you’d walk on foot the rest of the way to the store. You held on to one of the standing rails near the top of the bus. The odd patterns on the bus seats held imprints from the monsters and humans who sat there, and the weathered seats to permanently sag. The bus seats looked dirty and unwashed. A green fire monster in a Japanese school uniform gaze flicked towards you. Her flames were a bright viridian. It was Grillby’s niece, Fuku. Or at least one of them. She seemed hesitant as she approached you. Though the purple monster who accompanied her tried to hold back. The purple monster with a skateboard tucked under. Lightly held Fuku's arm to prevent her from talking to you. “Stop! Do you know what you're doing? You’ll be the talk of the town if you're seen talking to the whore of Ebbot!” She hissed, yet the fire monster untangled her arm from the purple monster's grip without looking at her.

"I just wanted to say you're never truly alone, there’s always someone here who cares. You just have to find them. You remind me of my friend who was bullied in middle school. I just wanted to warn you. The city isn’t safe, everyone’s talking… about you.” She seemed to hesitate before she continued. Her voice was soft yet high. You felt thankful you studied. monster languages in your spare time, enough so to understand fire dialect. “I don’t think it's safe for you. Everyone’s talking, and its like everyone hates you, and wants you dead.” The purple monster looked angry as she approached, hooking her arm under Fuku’s as she started to drag Fuku to the other end of the bus. She cast you a dirty look with her skateboard tucked under her arm. “Let’s go Fuku. Let's not waste any time on a filthy cheater.” She said shrewdly. “I just wanted to let you know that you're always safe with me, human,” Fuku said kindly as her friend dragged her away on the moving bus. It was odd to feel the floor rumble beneath you as the bus hit another pothole. It was nice to know you weren’t completely alone and hated in the city of dreams.

From the bus windows, you could see junkies and hopheads lurking in shady corners of the street. On the next stop, as the bus skidded sharply and you almost fell headfirst into the monster before you almost hit your head on theirs. “Hey, watch it.” He hissed softly to a monster who looked like Sully from Monsters Inc. You uttered a soft apology as you hopped out the bus with a swing in your step. You felt good for once, or perhaps it was just the hormones or the baby making you feel happy. You didn’t know. The walk was short yet felt long. The parking lot of Walmart was crowded.

And you saw the yellow paint in the parking lot was faded. And noticed the empty park near the Walmart with no cars parked near it. In the cold autumn weather, a guy near a ditch was flying a children’s kite. He seemed immune to the cold and was dressed in a winter parka and had a scarf around his face. You saw a homeless woman push a shopping cart full of scrawny cats with bodies that were like emaciated string beans. Old mildew mildew-scented blankets were towered inside the shopping cart and were folded helter-skelter over the edges of her cart. She looked old in frail in her dirtied scrubs. She looked too old to be alone. One cat that was missing an eye eyed you wearily. The cats were all identical. Creepy. You had to go to the Walmart on the bad side of town. The bad side of town where strangers selling dope approached you in the streets like an old friend trying to sell you a car. The bad side of town where skanks and strange men catcalled you and called you sweetheart.

There was a homeless camp down near the hedges that separated the park and store, separated by a thin curtain of grass surrounded by concrete and ornamental trees. They huddled around a fire in a metal can, and you worried the cops would be called on them soon for loitering. Though you were grossed out by the Pepsi bottles filled with piss surrounding their feet. And the buckets that served as their toilet was at the foot of their tent and benches. Some sat near cardboard signs saying ‘HOMELESS NEED MONEY’ You dropped some gold in the empty battered cans of Campbell tomato soup for them, making sure each person got a few coins, though you would be short on monster money for the week, though at least you still had human cash. You made the walk to the store, almost getting hit by a guy in a cowboy hat inside a fancy Chevy. The automatic doors opened, and you got a shopping basket and ignored the greeter walking past her in her walmart vest and you were greeted the produce. Walking past the aisle, you were nearly sprayed by the sprinklers that watered the vegetables. You knew you must persevere.

The shelves were massive; it seemed almost impossible to find what you needed. It was easy to get lost in the labyrinth like aisles. The aisles that were bigger than you were. Nothing was on sale, and it seemed like your luck was running out, and you had more coupons than cash. You didn't have a car and would have to take the bus back to the hotel. You couldn't get much or else you wouldn't be able to carry it all back. When you got your food and dipped you'd go to Rite Aid that surprisingly hadn't shut down. Or the sleazy American diner that charged you cheaply for low-quality food made by a depressed staff. And you would be lucky if they didn't have rats crawl over the food, though you were desperate about the months to come and wanted some of their soft serve.

Walking in the pasta aisle made you feel hungry. Angel hair spaghetti… Farfalle, penne… and there was even the brand Papyrus always used… You didn't want to linger like a ghost in the pasta aisle too long. Being here only brought back memories that hit you with waves of sadness mixed with anger. You didn't want spaghetti; it would only bring sadness and memories of what would have been. What would have been if Sans had believed you.

The pasta boxes were like a devil of temptation. You reached for a box, your fingers lingering just a little too long on a box. There was some kind of pop music playing from the overhead speakers that blended into the background. It helped keep you away from your thoughts; it helped distract you from the impossible reality of being alone. The music helped distract you from the possible reality that you'd die alone.

“MARCY.” The booming voice was loud, startling and made you spin on your heels. Though who you saw next surprised you. You jumped, your hair whipped around you as you spun. It was Papyrus bold and angry yet he looked composed. You hadn't seen him since the fallout with Sans. The overhead lights were harsh, illuminating over you like an interrogation room. What was Papyrus doing in the bad side of town? Did he know you’d be here? Sans would throw a fit if he knew his brother came here.

Papyrus’ scarf was still the same shade of vermilion you remembered. You dropped the beaten-up box. Spaghetti fell and slid across the floor surrounding your feet like a halo. You took in a sharp breath. “Papyrus-” He stepped forward, he looked indignant. His neat posture was still the same you remembered. He was rigid as he stood before you. “DON'T YOU DARE TRY AND UTTER AN EXCUSE! I SAW HOW SANS IS! I SAW THE BAGS ON THE CURB! DO YOU KNOW HOW HARD IT IS FOR MY BROTHER TO TRUST SOMEONE? TO LET HIS GUARD DOWN?”

This wasn't the Papyrus you knew. His gregarious eccentric charm was replaced by his danger-tipped words. He looked at you with disgust and indignation. His gloved hands hung high on his waist. His elbow nearly knocked over a can of diced canned tomatoes. People and monsters turned to look at the spectacle like you were a reality show on the TV. “I THOUGHT HE COULD FINALLY TRUST YOU. I THOUGHT HE WAS HAPPY, TRULY HAPPY FOR ONCE. BUT IF HIS HP DROPS BECAUSE OF YOU IT IS TRULY YOUR FAULT. I NO LONGER BELIEVE IN YOU, HUMAN.” Your heart dropped at this.

Papyrus believed that even the prisoners on death row could be redeemed, though not you? He thought puppy kickers could be redeemed and not you? “IF MY BROTHER'S HEART BREAKS IT WILL BE BECAUSE OF YOU. IF HE FALLS IT WILL BE BECAUSE OF YOU HUMAN. IF HIS HEART BREAKS FOR GOOD IT WILL BE BECAUSE OF YOU.” He paused for a second and looked back at his cart full of pasta for a second. Did a guy without a stomach really need that much pasta?

“YOU ARE ABSOLUTELY NOT WELCOME IN OUR HOUSE ANYMORE. NOT WHILE YOU'RE CAUSING HIM THIS KIND OF PAIN.” You opened your mouth to argue. Though the look on his face silenced you. What would you even say? ‘Sorry, I didn't cheat on your brother?’ ‘Sorry he's wrong even though the whole town says so haha.’ You were out of tears to cry. You felt numb. “HAVE YOU NO SHAME?” Papyrus added scrutinizing you for any guilt. “IF SANS FALLS INTO DEPRESSION AGAIN… I HOPE YOU'VE FINALLY UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU'VE DONE TO HIM. SANS DESERVES… DESERVED BETTER. FAREWELL HUMAN.” He went back to his cart.

His feet seemed to march down the aisle as he pushed his cart with a bad wheel. He didn't give you a single glance as he left, leaving you stunned and with a mess you didn't want to pay for. You stood and stared at the mess of spaghetti around your feet.

Spaghetti crunched under your shoe as you left the aisle on the opposite end from where Papyrus left.

Chapter Text

(Two months ago August 31st 20XX)

Music danced in the air. The living room sang with the tune of old timey music from an old jukebox Toriel thrifted from the thrift store. Esoteric music swirled around them as they danced hand in hand. Alcohol fueled laughter twirled with the growing day as he danced with Toriel. The red wine in her champagne glass swirled in her glass as they danced to the jitterbug. With increments of wine occasionally spilling out the glass with every fast movement that would be hell to clean out the carpet later. There was a buzz from his phone. He ignored it. It was probably from Marcy anyway. He thought he'd blocked her number. Did she get another number? Little did he know it was from Marcy's sister. The only racist in her family who hid her racism under a guise of politeness. Sans was suspicious of her and had no idea how she even got his number. Though curiosity didn't make him want to answer. He knew Vaneska and Marcy weren't close, so what was the point of ignoring her? It wasn't like she was going to try and plead for him to get back together with Marcy. He had no business talking to Vaneska and she gave him odd vibes. Though he wouldn't let another reminder of Marcy ruin his day.

"Is something wrong Sans?" Toriel had asked with a worried expression. "Heh. Nah it's fine Tori. Just bone tired from all this dancing." He said. They had celebrated Frisk’s absence by getting drunk like teenagers. Open bottles of wine were spread across the coffee table like a banquet with empty bottles of champagne and seltzer tipped over on their side like a drunk in an alleyway. He held Toriel earlier as she cried lamenting over the fallen children she couldn't save. While Sans before they got drunk confided in her about Marcy.

Sans didn’t even care if he got a killer hangover in the morning. The memories he'd made with Toriel today were worth it. They both knew Frisk would be gone for a while. It was a school day for Frisk and they wouldn’t be home until 2:30 and it only 10:39 am, and they still had hours left to party the way all middle aged people did, with wine and sadness. At least that’s how it started, on Sanses end at least. He had some wine from Toriel’s wine stash even though he wasn’t really a wine kind of guy. It was free alcohol, and he couldn't complain. He wanted an excuse to spend time with the goat woman.

Who cared if anyone thought it was too early to drink. To them every hour could be high noon. It was the drinking hour somewhere in the world. The time where everyone tells you its socially acceptable to drink, though you decide not to. Sans needed a break from Marcy. It the day after he’d discovered the pregnancy test in the trash and he was a wreck. “Sans you know that test could have been from one of Marcy’s friends right? I don’t think its right to destroy something so beautiful that you have with her over an assumption.” Toriel had said, tipping the glass to her mouth. “I found the evidence. Tori the test speaks for itself.” Sans had said before not wanting to discuss this any further. They danced away their fears, and drowned their sorrows in wine. The music was loud, though the neighbours hadn’t complained. They were listening to good music anyways, Sans decided.

His slippers left imprints, and skid marks in the carpet as he slid and danced with Toriel twirling him like a princess. The marks in the carpet his slippers made remained even as their moment of debauchery ended. His slippers made it easy to slip on floor which he almost did a few times while dancing. The floor was pristine as Toriel had just mopped the day before and the clean floor made the living room slippery, despite it not being wet.

Toriel laughed covering her mouth with her hand as he almost slid across the floor like a banana peel. She would be drunk when they went to pick up Frisk, though that didn’t matter; they'd just ask Papyrus to pick the kid up later. One thing led to another and soon they were on top of each other in a way that would make Asgore cry. Hours later when he woke up he was naked down to the bone with Toriel snoring in her bed next to him. Sans panicked, though he looked somewhat calm on the outside with beads of blue sweat pooling down his skull. He held a hand on his head. He looked to the other side of the bed and there was Toriel. He wanted to shake her awake before the kid got home. Though he decided against it. He wanted to get revenge on Marcy though this wasn’t how he wanted it. He was thinking more along the lines of a prank or pranking her by using the old telescope trick or pranking her every time in public if she was unfortunate enough to see him.

He couldn’t go home not like this. They still needed to talk when he got home. And then he’d decide what he’d do next and how he’d end things. He was still planning on how he'd break things off with her and how he'd say things, how he'd word things. He was still figuring out how to word every excuse. He practiced the words in his head like he rehearsing for a play he didn't want the role for. He’d need to relax at Grillby’s to clear his head. The buzz from the alcohol still made him feel a little woozy though he wasn’t drunk enough to stumble and walk like he never learned how to walk in the first place. He was drunk enough to stumble, yet sober enough to realize what he’d done. And he knew he’d messed up bad.

After….

How it started… It started when the afternoon was quiet outside. Sans never imagined he’d stay on the surface for so long. He didn’t want to be comfortable. As soon as he got comfortable in a pacifist timeline Frisk would touch reset and it was like pulling out the rug from under him or pulling the chair out that he was sitting on, and getting thrown away from comfort. He cared about Marcy. Though he knew she wouldn’t last. Though he’d discussed the topic of children with her before, he knew it was just a dream to start a family. Why care when everything would be gone? Why care when everything would just reset? Then he started to get comfortable… Too comfortable and the kid damn well used it against him. He couldn’t threaten them. He damn well couldn’t. If he did they’d run and cry wolf to Toriel and he didn’t want to loose his chances with her. He knew he wasn’t good enough for Tori. Why would she go for him? So instead he gave up and settled for Marcy, he loved her in a way he didn’t love Tori.

Tori was like a friend you could do anything with. With Marcy though… it was different. It was love though it wasn’t quite like being in love with your best friend. That and Toriel snored. BAD. He’d once slept over at her place before he met Marcy and it was the worst sleep he’d ever gotten, even with his insomnia. He wondered how Asgore survived her snoring. He remembered how the bed shook just by her snoring alone. He remembered how her snores shook the curtains. He wondered how Frisk was able to sleep at night, not just with their sins crawling down their back. Though Toriel’s snoring made it impossible for anyone living with her to sleep. So he’d spent the night at Tori’s they’d gotten wine drunk dancing the jitterbug and things happened. It was fair Sans decided even with his guilt. Marcy had cheated. So why couldn't he? Though he still felt awful and disgusted in himself. Though he still couldn’t help the guilt that occasionally came to haunt him. Toriel had felt so guilty that she hadn’t spoken to him for two weeks and when they did it was awkward with Sans trying to tell a pun or two to break the ice. Papyrus hadn’t noticed. Or at least he pretended not too.

Now he sat at the bar. His legs dangling off the seat as he swung them back and forth. The air was wild with the song of chatter from the occupants at Grillby’s. Sans sat before the fire monster with his hood over his head. He ran a thin comb over his hood that concealed his bald skull. A bottle of ketchup was relaxed in his free hand. “So Grilbz.” He started. “You ever think you know a person. You trusted someone and they do something completely out of character and break your trust in them completely?” Grillby’s flames seemed to flicker for a second as if registering the question as he continued to polish an empty shotglass with a rag. His flames were a warm ochre as he paid no mind to two monsters fighting over the juke box in the corner. The bar smelled like hamburger grease and fries though no one seemed to mind.

Grillby noticed the lipstick stains on Sanses collar on his undershirt. He assumed they were from Marcy although he didn’t ever recall Marcy ever wearing lipstick. And he certainly didn't recall her wearing that size lipstick. This kiss mark looked a little big to be from Marcy's lips. Though Grillby didn't think anything of it. “Y’know you just spend time building yourself up brick by brick. Only to have someone knock it down from you? You ever loved someone who hurt you the most?” Sans said waving a finger with his head buried in his arms. “That’s enough ketchup Sans.” Grillby said though no one quite understood. With the crackles of fire that was his voice sounded like a log burning. The ex royal guard dogs continued to play poker at one of the tables. With lesser dog appearing to be losing a game of poker against himself in the corner.

Grillby said something in fire dialect that Sans didn’t quite understand. He didn’t even think Grillby could talk though he was a good listener. It was nice to have someone who listened and didn’t judge he never thought he’d spill his heart out to him while drunk.

“I just thought we had somethin real Grilbz. I loved her Grillby… and she just cheated. Like she didn’t even care. I found the evidence Grillby. Proof that she was seeing someone else. A human no less. How do you even begin to process that kind of betrayal when you thought you had something real? Like we even talked about adopting kids together. I always wanted to have kids though not this way. Not with her cheating and having a human's baby.” Sanses speech was slurred and he looked mildly inhebreiated. He sounded like he was going to cry. Grilby felt bad for the guy. Though he wasn’t pulling numbers away from his tab. “Now Grilbz. Marcy had me promise I’d never tell anyone this about her-”

What he said next was a lie. A lie so big it would be hard to deny. All lies start out small, though this one was larger. In a moment of rage while drunk Sans wanted everyone to feel the anger he felt towards Marcy. He wanted the world to shun her, to feel like his feelings were justified. He spent all that time on a damn machine and he wasn’t getting results. He was ignoring his health, pushing away the ones closest to him, all for a damn machine to rewrite death. He’d pushed away Marcy, ignoring her mostly to work on the machine. He sacrificed his time with her to work on a machine that was a metal death trap. Recreating the very creation that killed his father. And it was killing him the same way it killed him. It killed him little by little until there was nothing left of the Sans that once was. He was drunk and tired and angry. Not a good combination for rational thought.

Though little did they all know a spider outside the window heard. And little did they know this was one of Muffet’s spiders. Now gossip spreads fast with spiders. Especially Muffet’s spiders. There wasn’t a day without gossip with those spiders.

With the spiders exchanging secrets in the patterns of their webs

And gossip spread fast through the spiders. With the spiders exchanging secrets and gossip written in the patterns of their webs.

And soon all of Muffet’s bakery was talking about Marcy. The first spider spun a web near the bake sale stationed by the alleyway near the national bank, the first web said. ‘OMG DID YOU HEAR A SKELETON GOT CHEATED ON?’ The next web said, ‘OMG NO.’ In a language only spiders could understand. There was some Charlotte’s Web-type shit going on. The last web said ‘MARCY IS A CHEATER’ in a language everyone could understand and soon the whole town knew. With each web spun a spider engraved a message with a new rumor. Another lie to add to the growing list of lies. ‘MARCY IS A BIGOT’, ‘I BET SHE KILLS SPIDERS AND MONSTER CHILDREN FOR FUN.’ ‘I HEARD MARCY VOTED SO MONSTER KIDS WOULDN’T BE ALLOWED IN SCHOOLS WITH HUMAN CHILDREN.’ ‘HEARTBREAKER’ ‘WHORE OF EBOTT’ ‘I HEARD SHE STOLE MONEY FROM THE ELDERLY AND DYING.’ With each web came another lie to fuel the fire. How the spiders learned to write in English and why they decided to ruin lives with their gossip, I’m not sure, though Marcy certainly wasn’t the first to be run out of Ebbot city this way.

For the spiders, it was either gossip or die. And most would choose gossip, than to choose death. And when the spiders wanted you gone, they wanted you gone. And soon the whole town knew about the lies. Lies that only grew bigger with each web spun. Muffet’s spiders are drama makers like this, they weaved lies to fuel their gossip more than they weaved the webs themselves.

*Meanwhile with Muffet…*

She was rolling and flattening out the dough for the next batch of spider donuts with a french rolling pin. Next, she would have to fry the donuts in a pot of oil that was already sizzling on the stove, waiting for the donuts to be ready. Spiders ran and scurried across the bakery, holding ingredients above their heads as they carried the eggs and a carton of milk over their heads like ants. For they knew any spider who failed to meet Muffet’s quota would get baked into a spider donut or blended into a spider smoothie. They feared the smoothie blender, and they feared Muffet's wrath. It was an unlucky day for anyone who wasn’t a good spider. If they didn’t sell enough donuts or spider cider in their secluded bake sales, they would all pay the price. If they were lazy or refused to help Muffet bake, they were the first to go, along with the sick or injured spiders being next on the chopping block. And each day after opening time, the batch with the sick and injured was already baked and sold to many hungry customers for the breakfast rush. The last time Muffet got angry, she cleared out half her kitchen of spiders. And that was when she sat on a chair and broke it, she screamed and got so angry half the bakery was dead after just an hour of her rampage. And there was a spider shortage for weeks afterwards, and the spiders who remained were terribly overworked, and their only compensation for their efforts was having their lives spared from Muffet's wrath. There was hardly a spider that lived more than a few years in Muffet's kitchen. With the oldest spider besides her beloved pet Muffin lasting only 3 years.

The spiders were Muffet’s spies and unpaid workers. They spied on rival bakeries and ran them out of town until only Muffet’s bakery remained. They’d go for the employees first, then break the mind of whoever owned the bakery rumor by rumor until it drove them crazy until they either left or went bankrupt. Either way Muffet won. The spiders lived by the motto. If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. And that's what they did. Their patience lasted months, and it worked every time. Although Muffet wasn't privy to the schemes of the spiders. Muffet would grow impatient if their lies hadn’t moved fast enough and ran her competition out of town fast enough. She could have been sued for defamation by now, though who would want to become enemies with the monster who controlled all of Ebott's spider population?

Though Muffet hadn't known of the spider's misdeeds. The spiders knew she would get impatient and more angry as days progressed, as her competition ate away at her patience. Though from what they could tell whenever she saw a foreclosure notice on the window of a rival bakery, she'd be happy for days and in a pleasant mood for weeks. For now it seemed Muffet knew of the ongoings of things happening in the rival bakeries from her spies though she wasn't knowledgeable about the gossip.

So far from what the spiders could tell, Muffet was pleased about the lies they helped spread about Marcy, who worked at a dying bakery on the edge of town. She was the last of the employees still standing. And she would be the last to go. The spiders had been working hard to help the tarantulas in fedoras who lived down in the alleyways, forge documents that would surely get Marcy fired. The spider mafia certainly didn't mess around. It was bad to be an insect that wasn't a spider in Ebott City.

After all, mixing a lie with the truth was bound to help things work faster, like a puzzle piece clicking into place. The latest spider messenger brought the news to Muffet in the bakery and started spreading it around to all the spiders who were busy at work. Muffet was sure to be pleased by what the little spider had heard. Little did they know that spider was interrupting her baking. Her many eyes blinked in acknowledgement as the spider crawled up the counter to tell her the news.

“Ahuhuhuhu…. Spiders its not nice to gossip during work hours.” She said with a sinister smile. Covering her mouth with one of her hands. The spider's intrusion caused her to accidentally knock one of the spider donuts onto the floor with one of her elbows. “I think I know what this next batch needs. It needs something to make it extra special.” And as rumors are that spider was never seen ever again. And one of the spider donuts on display seemed to have extra spiders today.

“Now what have you spiders been spreading about Marcy?” She looked at all the receipts she kept from the customers who didn't want to keep their receipts. She saw Marcy's name on the receipt spike for an order of donuts. Marcy was one of her loyal customers, although she worked at the rival bakery she knew Marcy respected spiders. Although Muffet was suspicious of her at first and the accusations she had against her didn't help. Though Muffet supposed she could let this one slide. She wasn't cruel enough to have beef with a pregnant woman. Especially not when the whole town was against her.

“Ahuhuhu bad spiders deserve to be punished, don't they? We can't have you spiders spreading gossip during work hours, can we?” The spiders skittered away as the frightened taps of their feet echoed across the kitchen as Muffet giggled and went to count today's receipts and she counted all the cash and gold she'd earned today. While Muffet didn't like that Marcy worked at a rival bakery. Muffet would be pissed if she knew the spiders were spreading false rumors about an innocent woman who'd helped to support the spiders.

--

(Present day…)

When Sans woke up he had many eyes staring at him at once. “Oi! What the fuck is this guy looking like me?” He saw a version of himself who smelled like foul mustard. With a grease-stained shirt under a hoodie with spiked fur, and was that a dog collar..? Weird. Was he emo in his universe or something? He almost wanted to laugh when he saw a Papyrus that looked like he was going through a terrible emo phase. He knew the theory about AUS, though this was proving to be some crazy dream. “DAMNIT, SANS DID YOU CLONE YOURSELF!? I TOLD YOU NOT TO CLONE YOURSELF SANS!!! DAMMIT, NOW THERE’S TWO OF YOU!” An Edgy Papyrus in black yelled. Another version of him that was dressed in boots and a radiant blue scarf yelled. “FEAR NOT, BROTHER I THE MAGNIFICIENT SANS SHALL PROTECT YOU FROM THIS EDGY VERSION OF ME!” He posed heroically. “Heh, thanks bro.” The lanky Papyrus winked lazily. This was going to be a long day, wasn’t it?

Sans couldn’t help but be mildly upset. This wasn’t what he wanted. These guys weren’t what he wanted at all. This was far from what he wanted. He wanted his father back, not some clones. He didn’t intend to clone himself or his brother; he didn’t intend to bring them back from their original universes. Now he would have to build the machine from scratch, and restudy his father’s old blueprints to create another machine, and then he’d have to create another machine to bring these guys back to their respective universes. Which, for a lazy, depressed guy like Sans, wasn’t ideal.

When Papyrus, his Papyrus, came down to witness the chaos, he dropped the plate of spaghetti as he stood on one of the stairs near the bottom. The sound of the plate shattering echoed throughout the basement, garnering everyone's attention.

“WOWIE! THERE’S ANOTHER ME! HE’S SO BEAUTIFUL SANS! IT’S LIKE LOOKING IN A MIRROR.” Papyrus looked like he wanted to cry tears of joy. He looked at the edgy papyrus like he was the statue of David or something. “BEAUTIFUL?!?! WHAT DO YOU TAKE ME FOR!” Emo Papyrus roared, summoning a sharp red bone in one of his hands. The Sans with the accent roared with laughter. “There’s two of ya, boss. And this one thinks he’s you! Your not gonna let him pretend to be you right?” Sans wasn’t sure what to say. The other lazy Papyrus was napping in the beanbag chair in the corner, looking unbothered. “BROTHER! NOW IS NO TIME FOR SLEEPING. STOP BONEDOGGLING AND WAKE UP THIS INSTANT YOU LAZY BONES!” The baby blue Sans was stomping his foot indignantly as carrot Papyrus napped.

Sans wasn’t sure what to tell Papyrus. Should he lie? Then again, he’d be lying to his brother, and he was a judge, and judges weren’t supposed to lie or to do unjust things. (Oh, the irony…) He decided one little lie wouldn’t hurt; it would be safer for his brother’s mind to process anyway than the truth. “Uh, Paps, these are our… brothers…” “WOWIE SANS! I DIDN’T KNOW WE HAD ANOTHER BROTHER! MUCH LESS FOUR.” “That’s because they're our cousins???” Even Sans sounded like he didn’t believe himself. Stars, why was he so bad at lying? Why was he so bad at lying to his own brother? “WOWIE COUSINS! I SHALL MAKE US ALL FRIENDSHIP SPAGHETTI!” Papyrus said. “AS IF I, THE GREAT AND TERRIBLE PAPYRUS, WOULD HAVE A MONGREL LIKE YOU FOR A BROTHER.” He growled at Sans. “OTHER BROTHER! THAT WAS RUDE AND UNCALLED FOR!” The other Sans scolded. Sans could hear the other Papyrus snoring lightly from his corner. They’d have to decide on nicknames later, when the fighting had stopped.

—- Her perspective...

Anger hit you like a bullet. You remembered how you were almost homeless after Sans dumped you. How you failed to get a lease for any apartment as soon as the city labeled you the neighborhood tramp. They thought you brought bad news and made lame excuses when you tried to book any monster-owned hotel. Human hotels were too expensive. You were tired. Though sleep was overrated anyway, your baby seemed to think so at least. It felt like they were always doing somersaults and backflips inside you, like they were auditioning for the Olympics or something. You were tired of feeling bad for yourself and wallowing in your own pity. You would go to work with your head held high and wouldn’t take anything from no one!

You managed to buy some off-the-counter nausea pills and magic supplements, and the hurricane in your stomach seemed to calm. Though there was always calm before the storm. Your mind thought back to your family. What would they think of this? Would they have a riot? If you had nowhere to go, would they take you in? Probably not, then again, you didn’t think you wanted to be with them anyways. You remembered how your mom always used Cheeto bags as folders, and used coupons as if they were cash. You remembered how she always haggled without shame. How she scammed the government into giving her food stamps when she had a well paying job. What you would give to be her right now. Living alone was expensive, and you had more worries than money. The pills made you feel a sudden relief and calm. And you no longer felt exhausted like your body was working overtime. You remembered with satisfaction seeing the price drop on the monitor above the cash register as the tired Walmart employee scanned each coupon. The price dropped to something so low it felt like stealing.

You could only afford travel-sized bottles of shampoo and body soap, and the shampoo inside one of the bottles wasn’t enough to even enough to give a garden gnome a shower. And you could only get cheap deodorant sticks that weren’t taller than the middle finger you wanted to give Sans. You lay on the bed like a starfish with your limbs splayed out and legs dangling off the bed. Knowing you’d have to leave the comfort of the mattress to go to work soon at the bakery you worked at.

When you got there, you were in for a surprise. After you clocked in on the digital app to start your shift as you were mixing some batter for a rum cake someone ordered. Working at a bakery was tough, and the hours were grueling. You wake up at 6 am with sore feet and leave at unsteady hours. Your friend stopped you with a somber expression. The bakery was in her name, it was even named after her. Most didn't even know you were a co-owner though you helped her build the business from the ground when it was just a sapling.

You watched as she fiddled with her hands and watched as she began to make odd nervous gestures with her hands. “Marcy. You know I’m your friend and all… and I know that when we decided to start this bakery together. And I don't mean anything bad by it, though I'm saying… what I'm saying is… I'm saying this to you as my dearest friend, but…” Your friend inhaled with a heavy sigh. “What’s this going on between you and Sans?” You stopped searching for words, though you found no answer.

She saw you fumble for words and frowned. “Whatever you got going on it's bad for business. And I’m sorry, though I’m going to have to let you go. And I'm saying this as your friend. Though with the accusations… have you heard the accusations they've been saying about you??? You're bad for business, Marcy. And I say that in the kindest way possible. I know we built this place together, and it's been a lovely few years. It really has! At least while it lasted… though I’m going to have to let you go. I can’t let you and your drama, as well as your whore baby, ruin the life we built together.” Your lip twitched downward in anger as you tried to tune out your anger.

“-The business we built together, you already ruined it by you cheating on Sans. Our reputation is in the dumps because of you. All because you and what's his face, Sans? Or is it Sand? Sandman. I guess. Whatever its name is.” She ran a hand through her hair. “No hard feelings, right? You know the business is technically under my name, right? And in the employee contract and pamphlet I made, it said you can be fired for terms of adultery, and forfeit all money this place has earned us when you signed that employee contract. I’m sorry, Marcy. You're fired. But hey, I heard that flower place down the road is hiring. If you're into flowers.” She flashed you a toothy yet nervous smile. "Please don't sue me. We can still be friends, right?"

Chapter Text

Ethereal shades of blue. Placid, vibrant clear waves of the ocean. The roar of the waves was like a gentle beast. The sand was white and soft between your toes, and there was pink and yellow granite speckled in the sand far away. Granules of sand stuck to your ankles with sea water. Light glinted bouncing off the water like ribbons of laughter. Seashells big and small hid in echos of sand. Each shadow of blue danced and coalesced with the beauty of ocean. Halos of sun light casts from chaplets of light from above that shone like prismatic gold and twinkled with all that glitters. Before you was a skeleton. You couldn't decide if she was tall or short. You couldn't see her features behind the shadow of blue the ocean cast. She stood under a striped umbrella with the shade cast from the open umbrella shadowing her delicate features and left her face shrouded with darkness.

The wind played with her hair, echoes of laughter imbued with the summer sound of wind tousled her hair as the breeze tangled her hair. You could almost smell the smell of salt water and the roaring cry of seagulls circling overhead. She had hair, though she was a skeleton, did skeletons even have hair? Her hair was glossy and beautiful like a L’Oréal shampoo commercial. She had hair so beautiful it couldn't be real. You could hear the hum of the ocean behind her. She revealed her palm to you inside her small hands was a seashell. What? Why was she giving this to you? Her bones a pearl white and her wig was a rust brown, (although you didn’t know it was a wig.) Her mermaid-like short waves of curls were draped over her shoulders like a veil. With long bangs that were longer in the front than in the back of her wig. The magic in her eye sockets was radiant and soft as a plum that shone, acknowledging you with a gentle perseverance. Balanced under her arm, was a inner tube. You saw despite her being a teenager she wore water wings on both her arms.

Her fingers were small yet delicate as they wove around yours, pushing the seashell into your hand with a gentle whisper. Her voice was eaten away by the roar of the ocean waves, belly flopping down onto the sand with a loud smack. You could see had a belly piercing when she lifted her arms to stretch you saw her shirt rid up her stomach to reveal a crescent-shaped shaped bejeweled belly piercing on her ecto. She wore a leather jacket over a plum colored swimsuit. There were small scratches on her arm bones as if the scratches were engraved into bone. She must be hot in this weather, you decided. Leather and summer didn’t mix. The skirt on her swimsuit was a royal purple that was poofy and wide. She was shorter than you just by a little, though she was taller than Sans. She was definitely taller than Sans. The sand was white and dreamlike. And there seemed to be a figure in orange sitting in the shade under an umbrella. You could barely make out the shape of his silhouette, which was stretched and oblong. Though you couldn’t make out his face. You saw another skeleton kid running in the water, splashing in the waves, though they ran away with laughter when the waves got too close.

She reached out to touch your hand. Her fingers grazed against your knuckle. The bone felt smooth against your knuckle. “Mom? You need to wake up.” Her voice was like a songbird. Her voice was a deep contralto that she’d definitely inherited from Sans. Had she even inherited anything from you? Was this your dream? Man, this dream was creepy, and there wasn’t some video game horror mascot chasing you. When you looked in her face, you only saw Sans in her. She was nothing like you. Her face was heart-shaped, though her face wasn’t as round as Sanses, you could see the roundness in her cheekbones.

The dream began to blur like a ripple of water. And like a ripple, it was gone. When you woke up, you felt more tired than rested. What was that about? You never wanted to have a lucid dream ever again. You were in the same hotel bed you were in before. The bed springs creaked under your weight and pushed against your back when you sat up. You were so tired and exhausted in the pregnancy that you hadn’t checked the bed for lice or bedbugs. You knew with a dull ache in your lower back that you would need to find another job. This placement wouldn’t really last you so long. It was a vacation that didn’t really feel like a vacation, there was no joy or relaxation, only the stress and fear of tomorrow. You felt more like a criminal running from the cops, jumping from place to place, and fleeing when they got too close to finding you like the gossip that found you here. You felt like a prisoner having escaped from death row, rather than someone in a crappy room in a expensive hotel. Because you were hiding. You were hiding from the judgement of the outside world. You hid from yourself, and you were hiding from the outside world so much these walls became your prison.

You were like a bird with its wings clipped. There was freedom around you, yet you couldn’t fly to it. Your heart knocked on your chest, and you tried to still it. You’d go job hunting today. You hoped you wouldn’t be on your feet too much.

You sat in a wicker chair you pulled in front of the ceramic bathroom sink. The bath tiles were slippery and dangerous under the chair. Your feet were swollen and began to swell around the ankles. Your ankles looked red and puffy despite not being injured. Between your fingers were each picture of you and Sans. Gone, ashes. There was a sudden stillness as you burned each Polaroid picture with a damp lighter you found behind the park bench on a morning walk when there was still morning dew that hugged the grass, and made your shoes wet with blades of glass that stuck to the front with grass stains like glue. It was finders keepers, and it was a scratched-up disposable lighter made of cheap plastic. It's not like anyone was going to miss it.

The pictures felt grainy between your hands. Pictures that were yellowed at the tips from age like a bad memory frozen in time. You made yourself numb. You wanted to forget, you desperately wanted to forget though time would never let you. Time wasn't kind like that. It hadn't been to you. You watched as the ochre flame danced at the maw of the lighter and licked at the edge of the photo you held. The old photos with a thin plastic film that melted when burned. Old pictures that held years of memories. Gone in seconds. Consumed by fire, by wrath, and sorrow. You were surprised the lighter still worked. Pictures held incantations of memories. Memories that turned sour with time. Old pictures you managed to salvage from the trash bags from when Sans dumped your stuff in bags to the curb.You felt numb watching each flame pirouette around the picture's edge before slowly spreading toward the middle, with each flame eating holes into each photo until each memory was consumed by fire.

Yours eyes were dull watching the holes burn into the photos with that spread like cancer. Consuming every photo of ever monster you once loved like a twisted greed. The pictures darkened to an envy of black once the fire ate away at the plastic film. Entire photo albums gone. Ripped to shreds in seconds. One by one, more memories were gone. Rage, sadness, fought a war that was won by numbness in your heart. When the flames were satisfied and the fire was full, you felt empty watching the flames devour everything with avarice. When the flames grew desperate, hungrier greedier for more you drowned them in the water of the sink. Black ashes swirled down the drain, spreading like moss in the once winter white porcelain. The sink tainted with ash like a blackened heart. Seriously, did the hotel need a toilet shaped like Mettaton’s face? Who even put that there?

It made you uncomfortable to pee, and besides, you were running out of clean clothes and needed the Laundromat soon, though you were running out of money. And couldn't risk going hungry. You couldn't lose the child to starvation. You couldn't lose the baby like you had lost everything else in your life. You couldn’t lose the baby like how you lost everyone. You'd lost everyone, even your best friend. She didn’t even give you a chance to explain yourself. She didn’t even try to listen or understand you. She believed gossip like it was the truth. She took all the credit for a business you helped build and support. She treated you more like an employee than her co-owner. Yet you still kept the drawings you both made and exchanged during middle school about the bakery of your dreams. Hopes and dreams of the you’d both own together when you both grew up. Not many kids achieved their dreams, yet you did. And not every kid loses their dream once they achieve it.
You had done both and had nothing to show for it. All you had was guilt, betrayal, regret, and sadness that ate away at you from the inside chasing someone else's dream. To help someone achieve success you pretended their dreams were yours... Kaylee… She didn’t even list you as a co-owner on the property management bills for the bakery. Even if you fought for your share of the business you’d probably lose, after all what lawyer would listen to you? You were poor and pregnant. And didn’t have any money left in your bank account after it got hacked and your money was stolen by a Russian scammer. And you didn’t have a job besides this was her dream not yours. Had you really spent your life following someone else’s dream?

How much time had you spent living in her reality and not yours? You had never got to live in your reality when you were busy helping someone else live for their dreams instead of living for yourself. You never got to live your own life. You spent so much time helping someone chase their dream that, you didn’t know what it meant to be yourself. What were your dreams? They say when you hit rock bottom there’s no way to go besides up. Yet what if the trench you dug for yourself is so deep that you're drowning in what feels to be the Mariana trench. And when things can’t seem to get worse you fall deeper and deeper into the pit of failure you dug for yourself. A single tear slid down your cheek. The tear swirled down the drain with the ashes of your past. You lifted a hand to touch the streak the tear had left on your face. Your tears were hot against the solid cold of your face. You couldn’t cry not now.

You looked down at the drawing you and Kaylee made in elementary school together. It was a poorly made stick figure sketched in colored pencil with rainbow squiggly lines for hair. There was a baker’s hat drawn behind the stick woman that had Bakery misspelled. ‘Bakry’ . It said. Kaylee had drawn herself while you drew her dream bakery. That was supposed to be you both in the future. Yet you were never apart of her future, just an accessory like a table or chair that was disposable and replaceable when it got too broken. You were expendable like an accessory that's nice to have though easy to live without. It was like having an extra chair for your kitchen table, nice to have though if there's something wrong with the chair you don’t need it, toss it and buy another. You were expendable. You crumbled the notebook paper into a ball in your hands and threw it at the wall. You grabbed the sides of the sink and pulled yourself up from the scratched up wicker chair that looked like a cat hit it. You had taken a shower earlier and were wrapped in only a towel that was wrapped around your head and body.

It’s an odd feeling to look in the mirror and not know who you see. Though when you stare long enough its the past and present staring at you all at once. Looking in the mirror, you didn't recognize yourself. You still didn't recognize yourself behind the fog. You didn’t recognize the you that once was. It was still, you though it didn't feel like you. Not anymore at least. You hadn't felt like you in a long time. You weren't sure what it meant or felt like to be you at this point. You felt hollow, like the remnant and shell left behind of your former self, and you were desperate to have your old self back. Sans abandoned you and you were left trying to pick up the ashes, trying to mend your broken heart with tape, and the remnant of yourself that remained left behind in the past. Always trying and searching to to find that broken piece of you that was left behind and forever broken when Sans broke your heart. While you desperately tried to rebuild yourself and your life piece by piece, only to fail without trying. Why is it so hard to succeed but so easy to fail?

For some success comes naturally though to you it felt failure came more naturally than success. Why did you have to try twice as hard to succeed only to get nothing in return? Your reflection in the mirror was distorted. The glass was still fogged from the shower you took earlier. You wiped at the glass with your hand. And still didn’t like who you see. You couldn't stand to see your reflection. You couldn't stand to see what you'd become. Your body was changing every day. And with each day, you were less of the you, you were before. Today you were less of the you, you once were. You missed your old self. Who you once were. You didn't want to be this. You didn't want to be whatever person you saw now. You didn’t want to be her the girl who lost her smile. That couldn't be you. Not anymore. In the mirror was a stranger with your face. No longer did you recognize the tired version of yourself that you saw hiding behind the fog in the mirror.

Looking in the mirror, your eyes deceived you. Beauty felt like a sick joke to you. You could only spot imperfection where you once saw a face. Your face was odd with eyes that didn't fit quite right. Eyes that were asymmetrical paired with an empty frown that didn’t look quite right and made you feel like a zombie living in your body. To you, everything about your face and body was wrong. From the way you moved to the way your voice sounded. Things you used to enjoy, you didn't have the energy for anymore. Things you didn’t notice about yourself before were now your greatest flaw. Hobbies you couldn’t afford, and things that brought you happiness. They no longer brought you joy and doing them only felt like a chore. Cleaning and taking care of yourself was was a struggle, though you had to do it. No one else was going to care for you.

You were born with your frugal mother hating you. Clothing and feeding you was the bare minimum of her love. As long as you weren't dead, that was love to her. She didn't hate you. Though she didn't love you either. You've grown to accept it with a cruel acceptance. Your mother wasn't a deadbeat, though she wasn't present either. She was there in the house with you, though she wasn't there for you at the same time. She had the emotional capacity of a brick wall with harder defenses to break down than a guarded prison. Even a brick wall would be more sympathetic and a better listener than that woman. She wasn’t cruel; she just walked without emotion. She was like a machine trying to go through motherhood; emotions just weren’t programmed into her hardware. She just wasn’t born to be a mother, she never wanted to become one, yet became one anyway. And she didn’t come with an instruction manual for feeling or a guide for understanding empathy. She tried to parent you through books and manuals, knowledge and reason. Choosing logic over emotion. She let books raise you instead of doing it herself. She followed the books and living through life like reading a blueprint, and treated parenting as a job she got though never truly wanted.

You got dressed though it was hard to fit the clothes on your body when they seemed to stick to you like glue with the damp water that clung to your skin like frostbite. It was hard to pull your shirt down when your body was still wet. You got out the bathroom and slid towards the nightstand near one of the double beds in the hotel room. And when you were dressed you took the old battered friendship bracelet out of the drawer that sat there like a sacred treasure. You slid open the sliding door that led you to the balcony. And dropped the bracelet over the edge into traffic. You watched the bracelet descend down like a falling star and hit the pavement below. You watched as a truck ran over the bracelet with a morose expression. Then you curled on your bed and cried with your head hugged in your knees and arms hugged around your legs. Tomorrow was another day….

Then the maid walked in her rags of black and white. She looked at you from behind the malodorous cart full of blue cleaning spray and dirty rags that stunk like dirty water from a unclean fishtank. She was armed odd bottles of Windex, whose contents were colored like an evil elixir straight out of a witch's cauldron. The maid with dirty hairs hand flew to the walkie-talkie on her utility belt. And she brought it to her lips. “This is Emily from room 209. There’s an emergency, I think this lady’s having a mental breakdown. She’s crying and yeah I there’s trash bags and I think she might have killed someone and hid the body in the bags….”

She was quick to make assumptions and quicker to report you to hotel management for arson and for a false crime you never committed. And soon you were out on the streets and hit with a bill covering damages, and the removal fee for your own personal belongings. Out of all the MTT hotels in the city this one was the worst rated on Trivago. Hotel management had called the cops, and you somehow managed to dissuade them from arresting you somehow with the charisma you lacked. And you were forced to watch in handcuffs as they searched the trash bags with your belongings. When they found nothing beside some clothes and half eaten granola bar. They saw through the rest of your things they looked at you like you were a weirdo for carrying your things in heavy duty trash bags instead of a suitcase. They gave you an awkward apology, as they uncuffed you in the hotel room you called your home for two months. Though you remembered how they explained they would still have to escort you out the premises, and then they left you out on the street while they drove back to the station with the heat in their car on.

Perhaps they felt too guilty to arrest a pregnant woman and dismissed you burning all your pictures of you and Sans as ‘hormones’. You rubbed your wrists were the handcuffs had been. Your wrists were red from how tight the cuffs were around your wrists. You remembered how the cops always held their hands over their guns like they were ready to shoot off your face at any moment if you so much as breathed wrong. It was the most nerve-wracking moment you’d had in a while. The security cops who escorted you out didn't even let you take your things that were still in trash bags. They didn't return them either. You guess they just threw them out. They demanded you tell them what was in the bags with a gun pointed to your head and you were crouched on the ground. They didn’t believe you everytime you told them the truth.

They accused you of murder. First this town accused you of cheating now murder. You’d never forget that awful moment. That moment was forever ingrained into your memories. It was where your heart seemed to stop, and your nerves jumped like electricity in your veins. That moment would forever haunt you. You would be haunted by the memory in dreams and in life.

Outside was more hopheads and junkies, followed by a throng of dizzy alcoholics roamed the streets, and puked in alleyways; this was where you would be sleeping tonight. All of the women's shelters were full. And when you asked to stay a night, the receptionist just gave you a sad look and told you they were full and sent you out to sleep on the street. She gave you a pamphlet about domestic violence and a domestic violence hotline, as if you needed it. As well as a pamphlet of thin papers stapled together about a support group for abused women, that you would either use as a pillow or tinder depending if you could find one of those Bob's fires in those metal barrels. Now you truly had nothing. Just you, your thoughts, your unborn child doing backflips inside you. And all you had left from your bags now was the hair tie around your wrist.

You were tired of living in the past and wanted to live for the future. You were tired of the present. You were tired of being pregnant. You were tired, of being tired, and you still had seven months left if you had a normal human pregnancy. You tried to get comfy on a bench in the park. Though the shadows taunted you. And the world was shrouded in darkness that made it hard to see your hand in front of your face. No matter how you turned on the bench, you couldn’t find sleep or comfort. The wind was cruel, like bitter laughter whispering against your ears. And the cold made the hair on your arms stand up. And the skin on your arms became as rough as goose eggs. Sleep never came. The sandman had forgotten you. You couldn’t stay like this. Though you didn’t want to go to Sans. There was old pop cans, and pop bottles littered between the patches of grass on the bad side of town.

You thought of your likely future, the future of when your child grows up and goes to college, and moves out, and never talked to you ever again after they graduated college. You thought they, too, would one day abandon you eventually everyone did. They all did when they promised not to. You didn’t want to get your hopes up, you were scared of getting attached to this baby like everyone else. Though you already were.

You wouldn’t let yourself blindly trust anyone ever again. Trust was blind though you weren’t. The devil on your shoulder screamed the your baby would abandon you like your sister did when she left for college. Everyone did eventually. And promises were no better than lies. Crack! What was that sound? You were still devastated over losing your best friend. The only friend you had left since this mess started. She stood by you through everything why not now? You began to realise your friendship was one sided. Even back then. You remembered bringing her chinese food to her college dorm even though you both attended different colleges. You drove two hours to comfort her after her boyfriend dumped her. Though when your parents disowned you for dating a monster, she just gave you a half eaten bag of barbeque chips, with burnt flame orange nail polish stains smeared over the chip bag with a snail trail of nail polish that was still wet. You remembered how the polish smudged on the pads of your fingers and made it look like you had cheeto fingers for two weeks because you couldn't scrub the nail polish off. And you remembered how she explained with a sheepish smile how she said just got done painting her nails. She didn’t even try. You knew Kaylee wasn’t good at giving gifts, and even less at comforting people. Though this was the same girl who bought her ex boyfriend tickets to a vacation to a luxury dream resort in the Philippines because he was sad his cactus died, and he had killed his fifth cactus that month.

You remembered how Kaylee funded the trip with the bakery money back when the business was going well. And you remembered with anger how she explained you’d be taking a pay cut until she could repay the expenses back to pay the property bills for the bakery. You remembered arguing with her about it over the phone while Sans napped as a boring game show played in the living room background. Then Kaylee a few days after begged you to come to make sure she didn’t get kidnapped and trapped without a visa in a strange Mexican country. You were upset she couldn't tell the difference between the Philippines and Mexico. It was like how she thought Tijuana was near Beijing.

You wondered how you could even make sure Kaylee didn’t get kidnapped. Sans declined going to when you were both invited, to do his mad scientist work in the basement and wished you good luck and a fun trip. Kaylee had brought you along as well mostly to carry her suitcases, and whatever souvenirs she brought that she could pile into your arms before you dropped it and would always give you an upset look whenever you dropped something. She always had you drive her places like her personal Uber because she had lost her license the weekend before at a house party because of a D.U.I she got driving herself home. You couldn’t enjoy the vacation because there was always a suitcase you were carrying that blocked your eyes. You remembered how your friend just stood awkwardly with a smoothie in her hand when you accidentally bumped into a man on a bike in the middle of the road during the trip. You remembered how she just slurped her smoothie loudly as the man screamed at you in tagalog.

You remembered how proud Kaylee looked when she gave you the crinkled bag of southern heat chips. You remembered how the logo on the beaten up bag was beginning to fade and how the chips tasted slightly stale like they were left out the cupboard too long. You remembered how Kaylee patted you on the back like she was congratulating a toddler. Then you remembered how she took you to dinner and to see a movie afterward which you paid for. And at the restaurant you reminisced as she made sure to order the most expensive steak and stuffed lobster on the menu with a side of lobster tail she ordered to bring home to her cat. So Mr. Ruffles could dine like a king, and you were left shifting between just scrolling on your phone and watching her eat as your stomach growled. And that was two weeks after you broke up with Sans and she wanted a girl’s day out to make you better. It was more of a Kaylee's dys out if anything.

And you both hadn’t even gone to some fancy restaurant. It was just some random Texas style steakhouse, playing beer dad country music. The place was full of middle aged trucker dad’s with heavy paunches, and five o’ clock shadow who couldn’t stop talking about their car and arguing over their favorite brand of whiskey near the foosball table as they stood in a circle holding bottles of cheap beer. And you couldn’t even afford to order for yourself after your friend ‘borrowed’ your wallet for the fifth time this week and said she’d pay you back later.

She never did. She stole your wallet and she controlled how your money was spent as your pleas fell upon deaf ears. Kaylee was on the track and girls wrestling team during highschool so you definitely couldn’t fight her over this, and before when you tried to wrestle your wallet out her hands you failed drastically, and Kaylee had more muscle than you. You remembered how when Kaylee said she took your wallet she made these lame excuses about how she knew you didn’t mind. And you remembered how she said it so casually between chewing a mouthful of overpriced ribeye steak. She had a bad habit of talking with her mouth full and you could see bits off chewed food occasionally flinging out her mouth with spittle as she talked. You even remembered how she said ‘Dinner’s on you right?’

Your friend even had the gal to order a large side of loaded cheese fries which she refused to share with you. And when you tried to reach for a fry she smacked your hand with the fry she was already holding and accidentally flicked american cheese and green onion all over your favorite shirt which you had to throw out because you couldn't scrub out that obnoxious yellow cheese stain. Eventually seeing how sad you were Kaylee gave you a tiny crumb of bacon from her loaded fries that was small enough to the feed a flea. And you remembered with growing annoyance how she flicked the crumb of bacon at you like a booger. And remembered with a grimace how the piece of bacon landed and ended up in your eye and how you practically dunked your head in the bathroom sink trying to rinse it out.

You even remembered how when you returned she giggled with a hand over her mouth, and a fork in her other hand as she saw your wet hair that made you look like a mop cosplaying a drowned rat. And when the waitress came to you with her tablet that displayed your friends order on. You remembered how she asked you both if you wanted any dessert. And remembered how Kaylee ordered a large double chocolate sundae with extra carmel for herself, and you remembered how she then ordered herself some soft serve for the road with extra sprinkles and nuts and drizzled with peanut butter sauce over the top. Then she ordered a large order of king crab legs for the road with a side of garlic butter sauce when the waitress came back. You tried to protest though the waitress had already typed your friend's order into the tablet and yelled at the chef in the back to start preparing it.

Your wallet wanted to cry. How this woman could eat an entire lobster, and a giant ass steak all by her self and still have room for dessert and a giant king crab was beyond you. Perhaps she was training for the Ebott City’s eating contest that was held once every five years. You knew Kaylee would give whatever contenders a run for their money. And no matter how much she ate she never gained, she was as thin as a toothpick. And you were always surprised, how a lady with the life of a couch potato could be so healthy. Though she looked odd being so skinny and muscular at the same time. She didn’t even share anything in her to go boxes with you she just looked at you with a satisfied grin and said ‘thanks for treating me tonight.’

The bill came out to be a whopping 299 dollars and 98 cents and that was with the gift card her mom bought her for Gyftmas. And that wasn’t even mentioning the cost of the movie she dragged you too. She didn’t even ask what movie you wanted to watch. She bought you both tickets for the Minecraft movie, and stole your debit card to buy candy and sour patch kids, and a children’s bucket of popcorn because she liked the design better than the regular buckets. She even bought you a small popcorn as well though ate all her popcorn before the movie started then stole your bucket and proceeded to eat all of yours. When she gave you back the bucket with a tiny ‘I’m done’ You looked down and saw she had only saved you the kernels. You saw as she leant down and spit out a burnt kernel of popcorn that was bathed in butter grease back into the bucket you held. Ew. And she didn’t even save you a single piece of popcorn. You couldn’t even enjoy the movie over her and a bunch of rowdy kids screaming ‘CHICKEN JOCKY!!!’ halfway through the movie as Kaylee threw your bucket of popcorn at the screen and screamed like a drunk barbarian, or a viking charging into battle. You watched helplessly as she and the children and teens in the crowd started pelting the screen like they were in a snowball fight. As the crowd roared like a deranged group of Vikings. After the chaos the crowd was still throwing roses to the feet of a singer after their performance. You still remembered Kaylee standing up from her chair and squatting like the hulk and posing like a ripped kangaroo that just came out of prison, after she threw the popcorn. You could even see the veins pulsing in her neck. Her face became tomato red, with the intensity of her emotions. You weren’t sure if she was angry or excited. Though judging how she was screaming it was definitely excited.

You both got kicked out the movie with half the people in the theater and you weren’t able to get a refund. And that’s how she single handedly managed to get you both banned for two years. And it wasn’t the first time Kaylee had stolen your debit card or ‘borrowed’ your wallet. She treated you like a personal ATM or a tiny dog in a purse rather than a friend. You supposed it was one of the reasons Sans didn’t like her. The only good thing that came out of that day was that it ended. Yet still Kaylee was the only friend that stood by you when the drama first broke out. You weren’t even sure why the town hated you and desperately wanted to find out, though everyone refused to give you answers when you asked and avoided you like a contagion some even crossed the street or to the other end of the side walk just to avoid you. What the hell did you even do?

Kaylee was the longest friendship you’d ever had and it felt unreal how it ended so suddenly and without warning. The friend you started a bakery with who had once had stood by you since elementary school. She was once your rock through everything. What changed? Why now all of a sudden? Why was she so quick to drop you like you meant nothing? Why was she so quick to throw away 15 years of friendship like it was nothing? She was your best friend. She didn’t even bother to listen to you. She didn’t even try to hear your side of the story. She didn’t even give you a chance to speak, to defend yourself, before she threw accusations your way. You just lost your best friend. And weren’t sure what to do. You spent all that time with her, only for your memoires with her to feel like a joke, like you were living a lie. You remembered driving two hours during a snowstorm just to give her panda express to comfort her, in her cramped college dorm during her break up. She never drove that far to your college to see you. She just sent you cat memes and pictures of her ‘fluffy prince’ Mr. Ruffles in weird outfits and hats.

You lost your only friend in all of this. You lost, Sans, Papyrus, Alpyhs, Undyne. Heck not even Toriel was on your side. And that’s when you knew things were bad. You were lost in the world. The only friend who dared stand by your side when your sister and her friends in her clique made fun of you in the halls of your old highschool. You confided in her about everything, your secrets, your fears. Shared memories now felt like broken promises. And now you were truly alone. You couldn’t believe she called your baby a whore baby. You couldn’t believe she called you a whore. You stood by her when she was getting bullied in high school, and kept in touch with her after her family moved across the city. And this is how she repays you? With betrayal? Did all those years truly mean nothing to her? Were you nothing to her? You still remember making friendship bracelets and flower crowns with the dandelions near the patch of grass by the wood chips in the playground. You remember sitting under the slide that was under the playground with her and braiding dandelion chains and exchanging secrets during recess. You remember how you both treated under the slide like it was a secret hideout, you remembered how the slide would rumble whenever a kid slid down it while you both were sitting under it.

You even remember the graffiti under the slide, and remembered how you both would draw on the underside of the slide with pencil during recess. And you still kept the one friendship bracelet she made you in the drawer in 4th grade until now. 4th grade… the year you met.

You’d embraced the reality that it was very possible that you'd die alone, or at least you’d die alone in a nursing home after your child gave up on caring for you when you become old and frail. You weren’t even sure if this child would love you. Though if monster protective services saw how much of a wreck your life was. You knew they take your child from you. You didn’t have a home, were living off gas station food when you couldn’t afford the luxury of hotel food before you got kicked to the curb. The food there was expensive even if the breakfast was free. The brunch and dinner here there were too expensive, and you were tired of the rubber-like steak that looked like Mettaton’s face that was always dry somehow. The food was overpriced and slightly crappy, though at least then you had food. And you were growing tired of eating the same old thing there. You remembered how before the day began you prepared yourself the best you could before going into the city, though you didn’t expect you’d end up here out of your own volition. Though you wanted to keep a low profile. Anyone from your old life could find you. And you didn’t want to become a homebody like your dad on his tractor. And staying inside the hotel made you feel like a hamster in a cage. Though in the hotel that felt like your cage, there was no wheel to run on. No way to escape. You were too poor to leave. And now, without the hotel, where would you go?

You’d just become another stranger lost in the sea of faces forgotten by the Earth. You walked to find if you could find a cafe or someplace to hang out in. Around you, you could see the whitewashed bricks of the brownstone houses. Today would be a long day and you wanted it to be over. You decided if you were to ever make another friend you wouldn’t let them walk all over you or use you as a personal ATM you had more respect for yourself.

—-

Hours had passed, and Stretch and Blue were having a hard time settling in with the others. The edge brothers cursed like sailors and were constantly shouting at each other and breaking things. And the fighting got so bad Classic wanted to kick them out, though he didn’t want to risk the public traction or the public finding out about them, and risk having nosy journalists on his doorstep.

When the swap and tale brothers first met, they couldn’t believe they were one in the same. Tale Papyrus was appalled to find a lazy version of himself and did his best to correct Swap Papyrus's bad habits, and nagged him for smoking inside the house. Tale Papyrus nagged him for his bad habits like a mother hen. With Tale Paps trying to encourage him to be more active. And Blue was embarrassed of Classic; he was embarrassed that Classic was even considered a Sans. Seeing the other Sanses made him ashamed to even be a Sans. Were all the versions of him so lazy? He was disappointed and saw his brother in them whenever he saw them in the living room. Stretch seeing his brother’s disappointment. Stretch decided to go get his brothers some tacos while his phone didn’t work here; he was sure he could find a food truck somewhere or some Mexican restaurant. “Hey, why don’t I go get us some tacos, bro? On the house.” Stretch winked. Blue’s smile returned. “WOW, THANKS, BROTHER. I THE MAGNIFICENT SANS WOULD APPRECIATE IT!” Stretch was happy to see his brother happy again. He could tell he was missing their friends back in their old universe. He could tell Blue was starting to get homesick, and that the weirdness and slight hostility of this universe was starting to get to him. Though when Blue asked Red how he could want to be in a universe where everyone gossips and is talking trash about a woman named mainey or minty or something. Red just laughed in his face, called him weak and said how this place was a daycare compared to Underfell and that it was super peaceful compared to there. It was somewhat peaceful in the neighborhood even with the occasional Kevin kidnapping Linda's cats or the occasional mugger.

Everything here was backwards, and Blue didn’t like it. He didn't. He kept going downstairs and nagging Sans on being lazy and fixing the machine. Though he was determined to enjoy this place while he was still here even if it hurt.

Blue didn’t like anything here and when the others weren't looking complained to Stretch a out it. He was upset how Grillby wasn’t a hippie anymore, and how Undyne was buff. And Blue complained to Stretch about it once. Blue didn’t like it here at all, and here all of his friends’ personalities were backwards, and he didn’t like how the Alphys here wasn’t his Alphys. She was nothing like his Alphys; she was nerdy and withdrawn like the Undyne of his universe. It made Blue upset how nothing here was how he thought it should be. And he didn't like how nothing was what it is was in their universe. He even missed the annoying cat. Yet he would never admit it. Stretch would tease him if he ever found out. Although through the uncertainty Blue kept his confidence and didn’t let it waver. He was determined to get home. He wanted to go back home.

They knew that the fell brothers came from a harsh world where violence was normal. Though they both agreed they didn’t want to know what kind of hell those brothers escaped from. What kind of place did they come from for them to become the way they were? What kind of upbringing did those two have? The soft part of town where they lived in was peaceful enough with the occasional pet getting kidnapped, and the occasional woman’s purse being stolen, though the occasional cat burglar running free was normal, though he didn’t like the hatred that came with being in the bad side of town and avoided it at all costs. He didn’t like the slums; he preferred the hood over the slums any day. At least there on the east side of the city, in the hood everyone ignored each other and minded their own business, though he’d prefer to avoid there as much as possible. He didn’t expect to see her at the taco truck run by a friendly Mexican family. There were pictures of food items on the truck with a menu painted on it. “You go first.” He had said, watching as she ordered the carnitas with a side of lime and the weird green secret sauce that came in those clear ketchup bottles. When it was his turn to order, he got his brother some birria tacos. He was sure he’d like them though just in case he didn’t he requested to order some tacos with ground beef though when the guy in the taco truck said didn’t have ‘white people’ tacos Stretch just picked something random off the menu and took a wild guess what his brother would like and hoped for the best. Blue was unpredictable sometimes. Stretch hoped this universe had a Muffet’s for him to stop by later. He needed a smoke break. And could feel the itch and pull for a quick drag of a cigarette pulling at him.

His shadow fell over her like a curtain. And she stood small beneath his shadow. As they stood under the dappled shade of the old alder tree. There was a stop sign near the corner. Stretch could see the heads of trees and bushes ruffling in the cold October breeze. With the heads of trees shaking like a cheerleader’s pom poms.

“Heh, my name's Paps. Yours?” His lazy grin was crooked as her leaned down to see her. “Marcy.” She responded simply pulling the end of her baggy hoodie down to better cover her stomach. He saw her pulling on the strings of her hoodie. He got her number while they talked while their food was being made. He could hear the clatter of pans, and the yells of orders being barked in Mexican Spanish as the cooks in the food truck scrambled to make their food. He took the opportunity to CHECK her.

Marcy LV 1

She seems hopeful.

So she wasn’t a murderer then. Cool. So Classic has lied. So she wasn’t a dirty killer after all. Though Stretch wasn’t too sure about the ‘heartbreaker part.’ she didn't seem like the type to be a heartbreaker. Stretch hated liars. The XP she had was so little she probably that it could have been chalked up to her killing a bug or something. Maybe a cockroach wandered into her bed during the night or something.

Liars… They reminded Stretch of his mother. His mother, who abandoned him and Sans when they were kids and left them for dead. Liars were the same as his deadbeat mom, that all she was a anyways. A liar, one who taught him his smoking habit. He wasn't even sure why he started smoking in the first place. Liars made him feel bitter. If Classic had lied not just once though Stretch could name a few instances where Sans had lied or dodged the subject like a bullets. So Classic was a liar like his mother who left with them for her affair partner in Hotland. And left them alone without electricity or food for two days until —- won custody of them in court underground in a divorce case against their mother and gained full custody.

Wait… who was — anyway? Who had raised them? And why couldn’t he remember —---’s name? It was like the name was dancing at the tip of his tongue like a ballerina. A name that, as soon as he got close to it, always left his grasp. He’d have to ask his brother later Wait what was he thinking about anyways? Stretch was sure it wasn't important? Had Classic been lying about Marcy? She seemed kind enough. So what if her family was bigots? Or was Classic lying about her family being bigots just so he'd avoid her?

Whatever. Marcy was alone and pregnant. And Stretch felt bad for her. He felt empathetic for the woman, she was pretty too, not knock out gorgeous or like a model though she was pretty in her own way. and he had even laughed at a few of her puns they exchanged while waiting in the line that was just the two of them. He laughed. Something he hadn’t done in a long time. Perhaps Classic had judged her wrong, or jumped to conclusions. Perhaps Classic just let his spite override his judgement of Marcy allowing him not to judge her fairly as a judge. So why couldn’t Sans see her stats? Weird or perhaps he was just deluding himself into hating her. She was his ex after all.

“So me and my brother are new in town.” He watched her more loosely now with a lazy grin on his face. When she remained quiet for a moment he raised a bone brow as she was lost in her own reverie. “Oh, sorry, you just remind me of someone I know is all.” She laughed awkwardly fiddling with her hoodie sleeves. “S’alright.”

“You come here often?” “Oh no I was just hungry and happened to be here.”

He felt some apprehension about hanging out with the alternate version of his brother’s ex, though he decided to ask her out anyways. It wouldn't hurt to try, even if he knew the answer would be a no.

To his surprise she'd reluctantly accepted. Soon enough, they’d already exchanged numbers. “So, uh, Marcy? Howzabout you go to Muffet’s with me?” He was surprised when she said yes. And felt something like hope stir inside his soul. Something he hadn’t felt in a long time. He wasn’t quite sure what had drawn him to her. He just felt a tug in his soul pulling him towards her like a happy sparkle inside his chest. Eventually, she began to cry, softly and slowly at first. “Nyeh?!” He was concerned. “I’m sorry, though you’ve been so kind to me… and I haven’t met anyone this kind since I can’t remember when… and I have to go to to a doctor's appointment. And I don’t have anywhere to go, I don’t have a ride I lost my home… my life! My trust my feelings. And my heart! It's all ruined, because my ex thinks I…. did something. And I lost my best friend, and there’s rumors… It's like there's someone out to get me who doesn’t want me to be here. It's like they don’t want me to be happy.”

Stretch felt guilt as she blubbered into his hoodie that smelled like old cigarette smoke and stale cigars. Even though he wasn't a cigar kind of guy. He smelled like a cigar anyway. Despite not smoking cigars. He hugged her as he held her against his chest. It was odd, he felt so comfortable hugging a stranger. He never once felt so comfortable hugging a stranger. He wasn’t as social as his brother. And didn’t often stop to make friends with strangers on the street, unlike Blue though this… felt different somehow. Like it was meant to happen.

What he felt was a feeling he never quite felt before. A feeling that wasn’t quite love. Though it was a feeling he couldn't place. He’d just met her, and she was telling him her life story. At least he knew she didn’t have trust issues, though it looked like she reached her breaking point and the same in her mind couldn't hold the tears anymore. And stars, she felt cold. Even her hair was cold as he hugged her to his chest as she cried. He didn’t even mind the damp spot in his hoodie. He didn't even mind the woman in the food truck who watched them like she was watching a telanova or some chick flick. Stretch knew he couldn’t leave her alone. It would be cruel and he couldn't live with the guilt. He’d house her for as long as she wanted, for as long as she needed, until she got back on her feet. He couldn’t leave a pregnant woman out on the street to fend for herself.

It would leave him with too much guilt if he did, though this would be awkward to bring up to Classic. Like who says hey I met your ex? I know you both hate each other though can she room with me until you fix the machine? Stretch had no idea what he would do when Classic repaired the machine if he managed to repair the machine that is.

“Heh, ya know me and my brother have been house hunting. You're welcome to stay with us for as long as you need. You can come search with us. How about I take us to Muffet’s, my treat?” He needed a cigarette, yet fought off the urge to smoke. “What about our food?” Whoops. He hadn’t thought of that. “Another time, maybe?” Minutes passed with a comfortable silence that draped over them like a blanket. Eventually, their food was done, and Marcy wiped her eye with her sleeve when she went to pay. “It’s on the house tonight. Say, why don’t you put it on my tab?” He went to fumble with the cigarettes in the box, though his eyes dropped to Marcy’s stomach, and he paused and slid his cancer sticks back inside the box and tucked his cigarettes and lighter back into his pocket.

Now I want you to close your eyes and trust me.” You couldn’t trust not anymore. Not not. He saw you hesitate and took your hands in his, and the world felt like it was spinning around you as the scenery shifted and twirled around you both. Did you both just teleport? Strange you thought that was something Sans could do. While you weren’t unused to the feeling, it was strange teleporting after going so long without it, though.“Whelp, this is where me and my bro have been staying.” Oh no.

Before you was the same pristine lawn. Sans's house. Oh no. You knew his brother wouldn't be happy if he saw you here after he warned you to never come again. The same festive lights that seemed like a slap in the face. Some of the lights were broken and flickered awkwardly like fireflies. “BROTHER. I SEE YOU HAVEN’T BEEN SMOKING.” He sounded proud and he said this with a prideful puff of his chest. How odd the eccentric skeleton before you looked like Sans's twin brother. However, the magic in his eyesockets were an energetic blue. It was odd seeing a smaller Sans that seemed energetic. It was odd to see Sans so energetic at all. Was this a prank? No, it couldn’t be; they sounded different somehow. “HUMAN. I AM THE MAGNIFICENT SANS.” “THOUGH YOU MAY CALL ME BLUE.” He turned to Stretch. You found it odd how he even had the same name as Papyrus. Was it a coincidence or identity theft? Or just another dream? You were dreaming. “Pinch me, I must be dreaming.” Blue then proceeded to pinch you hard on your shoulder. “Ouch!” You hissed as you jumped back, recoiling hard. You promised yourself you'd never trust again. Though what choice did you have? They were offering you a home, a place to stay. your ex's home nonetheless. The place they invited you to stay over was your ex's. The realization covered you like a bitter frost that caused the hair on your arms to raise. You noted with unease how the lawn was still the same pristinely cut lawn and the same verdant shade of viridian it had always been.

“YOU MUST BE STRETCH’S WOOHOO PARTNER CORRECT?” Stretch seemed to wheeze in embarrassment. “Oh gosh- oh gosh.” He seemed to mutter as he pulled the strings on his hoodie and pulled the hood over his skull. The bone blush on his cheekbones reminded you of the color of carrot cake. At least the color reminded you of the little frosted carrots that are always frosted on a slice of carrot cake. “STRETCH YOU NEVER COME HOME WITH A DATE MATE. I AM HAPPY TO MEET YOUR DATE MATE. HUMAN I AM STRETCH’S MAGNIFICENT BROTHER SANS. THOUGH YOU MAY CALL ME BLUE IF YOU’D LIKE.” Stretch was hiding in his hood as Blue wagged his bone brows at him. “TWO WEEKS HERE AND YOU ALREADY HAVE A DATE MATE BROTHER. MWEHEH HEH HEH! I SUPPOSE WE’LL HAVE TO TAKE HER BACK HOME WITH US. I’M SURE EVERYONE BACK HOME WON’T MIND.”

Wait… this their home? Or was this just where they were staying? This was the Sans and Papyrus you knews house. Were they just Sanses long-lost brothers coming to visit? Where they having a family reunion or something? It was strange how he and Papyrus both had a twin brother with the same name, and similar voices. Perhaps their parents weren't very creative. You were upset Sans never mentioned having a brother in all your three years of dating. He never mentioned having another brother much less two. You were upset at having caught him in another lie. Perhaps they were all separated at birth and born in different countries. Though the skeleton in the orange hoodie and blue bandana seemed close. What if they immigrated here illegally? Well you didn’t really have a problem if they came here illegally, they were just trying to survive like you. Though at least they weren’t in a gang or something.

Besides there were still monsters being released from every underground in different countries, with the monsters from Norway escaping the underground a few decades earlier in the 1950’s way earlier before the monsters of Ebott did. This lead all of Norway to shut down all foreign trade and caused the Norwegian government to close the borders to protect the monster population that remained. You believed the country with the highest monster population currently was Sweden. You were sure the monsters there followed the law of the human king there in Norway. Though remembered hearing in the news from an announcement from the monster's ambassador that Asgore was going to Norway to discuss the monsters in Norway to transfer their leadership from the human king to him. You remembered he even tried to locate the monsters from Norway to America though that parliament bill was rejected by the human president because there would be too many monsters and not enough room for the humans.

And you knew Asgore was working hard to release the monsters trapped in each underground, though it was hard to locate the exact location of each.

The American prison system, regarding the prisoners on death row, their souls were used to help break the other barriers after they died from the lethal injection. You saw a documentary on it last week. “I MADE AN APPOINTMENT WITH THE REAL ESTATE AGENT.” “You did, bro? Aren’t you going to eat your tacos?” You saw the plastic bag with his tacos draped over Stretch’s wrist. Stretch handed the plastic bag with the styrofoam take out box to his brother. Blue took it gratefully. “THE REAL ESTATE AGENT ON THE PHONE SAID OUR MEETING IS BEING RESCHEDULED FOR SOMEONE ‘WILLING TO DEAL WITH OUR KIND’ AND WE WILL BE MEETING A MONSTER REAL ESTATE AGENT TOMORROW.” Blue seemed a little bummed. Though his smile didn’t waver.

“HUMAN, WOULD YOU LIKE TO TRY MY FRIENDSHIP TACOS? I’VE BEEN WORKING ON MY SECRET RECIPE.” “Bro- we just got tacos-” “NONSENSE BROTHER. EVERY TIME IS A GOOD TIME FOR FRIENDSHIP TACOS. EVERY TIME IS A GOOD TIME FOR TACOS EVEN AFTER THE FIRST TACO BRUNCH OF THE DAY.” Blue slung an arm around your shoulder and led you into the house. “Uh, no no no, actually, while I’d love to have tacos later- I actually have a doctor's appointment to go to soon.” “MY APPOLOGIES, HUMAN. I THE MAGNIFICENT SANS, SHALL BE WAITING WITH FRIENDSHIP TACOS.”

—------------------------------
Stretch teleported you to your appointment after telling you where the clinic was located. It was your first ultrasound appointment. There was cracks in the faded tarmac. By the demure dentist’s office nearby there was maternity clinic there. Bushes of weeds were growing between the wedges in the chipped bricks. The gray bricks of the dentist office looked dull compared to the warm ultrasound clinic. Vines and shrubs have overtaken half the building and it looked like the building had an afro made of sickly green weeds.

You knew with disappointment you couldn't afford the first appointment without health insurance. Though you were too concerned about the baby’s health to avoid going this month. You weren’t sure if everything was good with the baby or if the baby was developing properly and wanted to be certain everything was healthy and going as it should. You turned to Stretch as your hair was blowing in the mild cold of October. The crisp leaves crunched under your dirty beat up shoes.

“I know this is a lot to ask… though could you please go with me? I don’t want to be alone.” You were tired of being alone. You felt helpless with half the town hating you. You weren’t even sure what you did, or why they hated you. it was hard having your parents, the people who were supposed to love you hate you. It was hard having all your old friends hate you. It was hard having your eye hate you, and it even harder having the whole town against you. It was hard to be hated like you were the villain of some children’s novel. It was hard being the villain of someone else’s story. Sanses story. You were the villain of Sanses story. And would always be known as the one who broke his heart. It was hard being known as the one who ruined his life.

Stretch’s gaze dropped to you. “I’ll come if it makes you feel better sweetheart.” He said kindly. You wanted to laugh, he was such a flirt. You were surprised how he never tripped with his perpetually untied shoelaces that looked dirty at the ends. It was like he was playing russian roulette with his shoelaces. Where one mistake meant he tripped. He held open the door to the ultrasound clinic for you and let you go first.

The clinic was small. With only about three rooms. The waiting room with its leather chairs, seemed oddly cold somehow. And there was one room down the hall with ultrasound equipment. Another room was filled with stuffed animals with large bows draped around their necks like they were attending a fancy candlelit dinner. The walls were painted a boring eggshell white that was more yellow than white. There were pictures of women’s ultrasound photos hung on a cork board near the receptionist desk with happy couples posed next to babies. None of which you saw were the receptionist who sat behind the desk filling her nails. For a while only the sound of sandpaper filling down her nails could be heard. You took in the room while she ignored you.

On the other end of the cork board were more pictures of married couples with golden wedding bands posed in cute pictures with their babies. Each photo on the other end the board were the prenatal ultrasound photos the woman who owned the clinic had taken of when they were still in the womb. It was a little creepy, though you didn’t pay much mind. There was a small square bookcase on the floor with only hardcover children’s books. You could see the bright tic-tac-toe board on one of the walls for kids. And there was a bead maze for the kids to play on the little table in the middle of the room, along with other waiting room toys you'd see in a doctor's office.

The ultrasound clinic was a small self-owned clinic, owned by an ultrasound technician whoses name you didn’t remember, and whose name you would avoid saying at all costs to avoid an awkward situation. You got the thought that she often saw many first-time mothers and married couples judging by her friendly smile as she finally noticed you. She sat behind the reception desk in a swivel chair and practically jumped up to greet you as if she had been bored all day and you were her savior from her boredom.

“Hi! Is Marcy correct? Your bill will be three hundred dollars for the emission fee.” Your smile dropped. “Ha! Just kidding, we’ll discuss payment later. The emission fees actually just 150 dollars or 11 gold in monster cash.” She smiled wildly, blinking her tarantula like eyelashes. Those eyelashes definitely weren't real. You wondered where she got them from. You wondered what store would sell lashes that big and outrageous. They looked like they belonged in a drag queen’s vanity.

Her lashes kinda reminded you of hairy tarantula legs the longer you looked at them. “I can set up a payment plan for you at the end of the appointment if you’d like.” She waved a hand at you in a gentle motion and smiled at Stretch. Her hair was pulled back in a short ponytail and her bangs were like yellow catfish whiskers.

She looked at Stretch and twirled her pale bangs between her fingers as she basked in Stretch’s appearance. Her mascara was clumply from applying too much mascara all at once. And she wore too much orange contour that made her look like either she was dressing up as Donald Trump or a carrot. You also noticed she had a bad spray tan and you could see a farmer’s tan under her exposed bra strap. She dressed more like a hooker than an actual doctor then again looks could be deceiving. She dressed kinda like an Americanized gyaru girl in black platform heels. Though this woman was an insult to all gyaru girls. She was dressed head to toe in cheetah print. And looked odd and looked like she belonged in an African savannah rather than in a doctor's office.

She looked like the type to drink and party and copy her classmates' homework rather than the type to study and get a doctor's degree. She batted her eyelashes like she was a batter in baseball. She was overly friendly and talked to you like she was speaking to a child, trying to get them hyped for a trip to Disneyland. “So, this must be the father, right?” She smiled with her teeth exposed so you could see her whitening strips. Though the smile never reached her eyes. You could even see some of her lipstick stained on her teeth.

“Uh, no- the father couldn’t make it. We’re well its complicated….” You explained sullenly watching as the lady applied cherry red lipstick to her lips in circles as she leaned over the receptionist desk and wiggled her butt in the air like a cat in heat, as she practically undressed Stretch with her eyes. He looked uncomfortable as she eyed him like a hungry cat as she licked her lips before she turned to you.

“Oh, no, father right. Yikes!~ So baby daddy then.” The technician said, wrinkling her nose as she scribbled on a clipboard. You could see the disdain momentarily wandering in her eyes. Before the veil of disdain was replaced by a ruse of cheer. Her mirthless eyes glittered with deceit. And you saw her shirt was rugose and cinched around her waist like a corset. “Anyway so like heyyyy~ I'm the doctor. The sonographer. Dr. Candi Michaels. Pleasure to do business with you.” She said in a pleasant nasally voice. Reaching to shake your hand in a firm grip though she kept her eyes on Stretch.

She acted like an exuberant teenage cheerleader captain and sounded like one, too. She had the voice of a stereotypical 1980s teen. Stretch eyed the room with the stuffed animals with a hint of suspicion mixed with curiosity. “Oh, that’s for near seven-month ultrasound appointment, for the 3D ultrasound. It's for when the baby is close to term and not at risk of dying. So I don’t get sued and almost lose my license like last time. I keep those out for near the end of the appointment where I let the woman pick out a stuffed animal for the baby for their nursery for free. And the books over there are for them to pick out for their baby as well.” The sonographer gave a strained smile. The floorboards in the maternity clinic were a rustic brown that seemed estoric and archaic. You followed behind the woman.

Until you were brought into a room painted a dull ice blue and was instructed to lie down on a 1980s futon, the ultrasound technician thrifted at a garage sale. The futon smelled faintly like Parmesan cheese and pizza sauce, and there was even a pizza sauce stain on it. “Oh, that don’t mind the stain brings character. I was giving my bestie her ultrasound here, and she just had to have pizza.” The technician said as she rolled her eyes, and waved her hand dismissively. She had a bad habit of waving her hand. She spun around in another swivel chair and flipped on and started the sonography machine. You watched as she checked to make sure the machine was plugged into the outlet. And you saw her stiletto nails click away on the computer that was hooked up to the machine. How did she even type with those nails? You didn’t know. Those nails were as sharp as a cat’s claw and you definitely didn’t want to get on her bad side with a technician with knives for fingers. When she was done she got out a strange tube with mystery gel from the back of her cart.

“Now I’m just gonna lift this shirt above your belly. And!~” She squirted some gel on your stomach from a tube-like container. The container made a fart noise as she squeezed it so hard you thought the tube and gel might explode all over you. You moved to hold Stretch’s hand instinctively as you felt scared by her touching you so suddenly. You weren’t even thinking when you did it. He seemed surprised, though squeezed your hand lightly in return.

You were afraid you were moving too fast for him. You were afraid you’d scare him away and ruin your chance at any relationship with him. You weren’t sure if you were ready to move on. Two months felt like days since you last broke up with Sans. You wanted to move on, though felt rooted to the past. Always living in the past and future, yet never in the present where you were. Always living in the past or future made you never enjoy or appreciate the present. You were tired of living in the past and wanted to enjoy the present.

The ultrasound technician rubbed the transducer over your belly in circular motions boredly. “Now we just have to see where this little nightmare is hiding.” It took her a while to locate the baby. Though when she eventually found them. She was obviously expecting to see a human child. You never expected her to nearly fall out her seat when she saw the baby on the monitor. There was a black and white grainy image of a small skeleton on the screen moving in small movements. You wondered why she was so shocked if she thought you were together with Stretch maybe she thought you cheated even though it wasn't Stretch's baby. She seemed so surprised to see a tiny skeleton instead of a human baby. Then again you'd specifically told her he wasn't the father.

Looking at the baby on the monitor was like a slap in the face, you couldn’t believe they already looked so much like Sans. Looking at the fetus on the ultrasound brought back all your memories you shared with Sans. While you knew they would be a skeleton you’d wished they’d at least inherited something from you in appearance. Right now you felt like they were a mini Sans Jr. You saw Sans in them. When you saw their face you saw Sans. You wanted to have a heart attack and felt your heart break all over again.

You remembered your promise to them. How you'd love them no matter how they looked. knowing they deserved a mother who at least tried instead of hating them for their appearance. You didn't hate that they looked like Sans. Though seeing a mini Sans on that screen made you feel like your heart was breaking in ways you didn't know was possible. It was like your heart was shattering all over again. Right after you managed to fix the broken pieces of your broken heart that had been stomped and shattered. It broke all over again seeing the baby on the screen.

You felt guilty, though looking at the screen only brought you pain where you should feel joy. You should feel happy to finally be able to see your baby though, why did you feel so sad? Why weren't you happy? Why did you feel so bitter they looked like the one who abandoned you? They weren’t their father and didn’t deserve to be compared to them. They were their own person. And you knew they shouldn’t have to pay for the mistakes of their father so why did looking at them make you feel so depressed? Why did looking at them make you feel emotions you knew you shouldn’t feel? Why couldn’t you bond with the child in your womb like other mothers who talked to their stomachs like an old friend and said soothing words? Why couldn’t you move on? Why couldn’t you move on fast like Sans? You remembered how one day you walked into Grillby’s and saw Sans talking and telling jokes and chuckling as if nothing had happened before Grillby threw you out on your ass. You remembered how you fell flat on your ass when he kicked you out.

Why couldn’t you move on no matter how much time passed? With the baby growing inside you, you would always be tethered to Sans. A piece if you would forever be bound to him as long as the baby exsisted. You felt ashamed. You were already planning a scrapbook to document all the babies first moments and milestones. You were touch starved and desperately wanted a hug. Though looking at the fetus growing inside you made you feel emotions you didn’t want to feel. Stars, you were tired of feeling sad. You were tired of feeling defeated like you just lost a war you were fighting against yourself. You were tired of being at war with your mind and the people around you. You needed a nap.

The ultrasound technician was so surprised she fell off her chair and fainted hitting her head with a loud ‘thud!’ Stretch jumped. You blinked surprised with your hands folded over your stomach. You and Stretch looked at each other wondering what you both should do next.

—---------------
You and Stretch waited for the doctor to wake up and debated whether or not to call the paramedics to come get her. You both gave her a while to catch her breath and regain her calm. “When can we find out the gender?” You asked to the stunned technician. Who remained stunned jaw dropped with a dazed expression on her face. You were scared what if she tells the news station you were pregnant with a monster baby. Though what she said next surprised you as she gave you a strained smile. “While it isn’t polite to immediately bombard someone who just fainted with questions, I understand your excitement. It's not often I get monster babies here. Usually we can tell the gender in as little as three weeks. Though all fetuses start as female before they eventually begin to develop into either a girl or a boy later down in the road. Um however…” She glanced back at the monitor. “Uh the gender doc?” Stretch repeated.

“Uh… it's… a baby…? And it's moving? You can see here's the baby is drinking the amniotic fluid.” She said pointing at the screen. “And uh… congratulations it's a… baby??? Congratulations?” You saw she had the same incredulous look on her face. “What's the gender doc?” “Uhh…. It's too early for me to tell though congratulations on your little bundle of joy- er bones??? I'm sorry I have no idea what gender this kid is developing into. For all I know it could be a moving corpse.” Stretch gave her a disappointed look. “All we know that it's alive and that's all that matters… Yayyy?” She said quickly. She gave you an awkward smile. You waited for an explanation.

“Usually gender in human babies starts to develop three weeks after fertilization. And after they they kinda follow a path whether they grow to be a female or male based on whether the father.” She gave Stretch a look. “Gives the baby an X or Y chromosome through his DNA. Though the baby I’m seeing doesn't have any skin. Or organs. And the baby's legs are bunched together and their not letting me see what their pelvis looks like. Then again I have no clue what or how to tell the difference between male and female skeletons. Especially skeleton monsters. I can only tell by how they present themselves with clothing and babys in the womb definitely don’t wear clothes.” She said dumbly.

“That and baby keeps moving so I can't get a good picture of their face. For all I know the fetus could be intersex.” She stopped for a moment. “You can see the soul right here in her ribcage its upside down like a monster soul though it’s purple like a human soul. And the white outline around the soul indicates a boss monster. I don’t see many hybrids here though that trait is common in all of them. Usually more anthropomorphic and bipedal monsters are more compatible with human DNA. With monsters like froggits and whimsums being unable to have children with humans unless it's like a soulmate situation or something. Then again why would a human fuck a fairy? I don’t know. I can understand a someone trying to kiss a frog though not… that… anywayssss~ Most hybrids are conceived through soul… woohooing… though occasionally during sex if the mated pair have a strong enough bond and a high enough love points.” She explained gesticulating with her finely manicured nails. The way she said ‘mated pair’ made you feel uncomfortable. It was like she was referring to animals in a zoo.

“-Not level of violence. And its simple when a human and a monster love each other very much a piece of the father’s soul can break off and fuse with a piece of the mother’s soul creating a souling that festers. While its uncommon for a child to be conceived naturally for hybrids. It is possible though unlikely. Your not the first human i’ve seen here that was pregnant with a monster child- the woman I saw last month was pregnant with a golem baby and she looked five months pregnant at three months. Poor woman, that baby’s going to be massive and she’s probably going to have such a huge C- section scar- The husband looked like an Iron Golem straight outta minecraft.”

What did she mean? That you and Sans were soulmates? No it couldn’t be you refused to have Sans as a soulmate though the baby was living proof otherwise if they weren’t conceived naturally. You had no idea how this child was conceived if it was almost impossible. Stretch blushed at the mention and adverted his eyes shyly.

Stretch then pulled out a sucker and began to suck on it to gnaw his cravings for a cigarette. “Is everything alright doc?” She then began to frown at Stretch's question.
though “I have no idea how a skeleton would even have a placenta attached to it or how it's works for skeles in the womb.” She droned on. “Anything else?” Stretch said.

Well the placenta placement is a little odd and the kid is a little small for being this far along so I'm worried the placenta isn't delivering them proper nutrition. The position of the placenta could indicate a placental insufficiency. Which if she has it could either cause her to lose the baby or worse. I’m not saying she has placental insufficiency though if she does it could be deadly and she would have to choose between her life or the baby’s.” Stretch’s eyes darkened. “Though the baby’s size could be from genetics. Was the dad a small dude? Otherwise if she does have a placental insufficiency it could cause preeclampsia which could shut down Marcy’s organs and cause prenatal diabetes. Which is common with these kinds of pregnancies. It's just because the baby's so incompatible to your human DNA- that the baby’s system could potentially try to kill you and shut down your organs one by one, though it usually only happens in cases where the mother can’t produce any magic or isn’t producing enough magic to support the baby’s development. You have been taking magic supplements have you? If you have early symptoms of preeclampsia, the symptoms in hybrid pregnancies are pretty easy to spot. The symptoms are kinda tiredness and vomiting. That kinda jass… wait so you have been taking magic supplements haven’t you?”

You nodded hesitantly. “Are you sure you're not an expert on this? You sound like you know a lot for someone who claims to know nothing.” Stretch asked. The doctor waved her hand and ignored the question.

“I just started taking supplements before I got kicked out of the place that I was staying at.” The sonographer frowned. “That’s not good, lady dude. You need a constant supply of magic going in you every day. Human mothers need to either switch to a diet of magic food entirely or take magic supplements at least three times a day, one for every meal. Can you tell me what prescription the doctor gave you for those?” She looked mildly worried. “Uh I can’t afford to pay for my check ups. And my family doctor dropped me as a patient three years ago.” You fidgeted nervously on the futon that was like laying on a brick. “Oh honey that’s not good, you need to get a doctor immediately. Those over the counter magic supplements don’t do shit. They hardly give you any magic injected into your system. So if those worked wonders your body must have been desperately low and deprived on magic. Boss monsters especially need more nutrients for all that magic.”

“You're at severe risk for monster preeclampsia. And while super duper rare monster preeclampsia is worse than human preeclampsia. You don’t have any mage ancestry do you? Though the chance of having monster preeclampsia is like one in a million. It only happens to monsters who starve while pregnant or if they haven't been eating enough and monster preeclampsia only happens with monster babies. I’m going to write you a recommendation for some doctors, though only the sexy ones since I can’t prescribe you anything by law and it isn’t my expertise. And I want you to go get a check up from one of them. Do you have human health insurance?” She began to scribble in unkempt handwriting that was hardly legible on a wrinkled sheet of notebook paper. While Stretch raised an eye at the word ‘sexy’. “What you don't want to be treated by an ugly doctor do you? If you have to look at them for an entire check up they might as well look good.” The doctor fluttered her eyelashes innocently at Stretch.

“Aren't you glad I'm not an ugly doctor? Mr. Skeleton? Great right.” She seemed to answer for Stretch. “Anyways again mage ancestry! Do you got it?” “Uh no.” You responded honestly. “Not from what I know of. I don’t really know much of my family tree before my grandma and grandpa.” You played with your fingers and folded your hands over your stomach. You smoothed down your shirt. “Then this baby truly is a miracle then?” The sonographer commented wryly.

“Anything else doc?” Stretch added. “Well from what I can tell the placenta is in an odd placement. And Marcy has a posterior placenta which means the placenta is in the wrong place. The placenta from what I can tell is growing against Marcy’s spine, pressing against her spinal cavity and it's pressing against her spine which indicates the placenta is probably causing you some wicked back pain. Though nothing special, it's not deadly. Basically there’s no cushioning between you and the baby meaning if they kick you you're probably going to feel it more than if the placenta's position was normal. And in front of the baby cushioning them and the stomach wall.” She explained dryly.

“I’ve been feeling the baby kick for a while now.” The sonographer then smiled wryly once more at your answer. “That’s good that means you don’t have placental insufficiency. Though the placenta usually provides cushioning for the baby and protects it. Right now its kinda serving as their mattress and you should be extra careful not to accidentally hit your stomach. Since the baby doesn’t have that extra shield to protect it with the way your placenta is growing- anyway how have you been doing lately? Feeling any stress lately?” You admitted you had. You’ve been stressed a lot these past few months with not just the pregnancy. “Usually the strain a baby like this puts on the mother’s body is exponential. And is enough to kill them if they haven’t been eating enough monster food. When it happens they usually just vomit their brains out and the mother's body begins to reject all human food otherwise. Other times the mother’s immune system and white blood cells mistake the baby for a foreign bacterium or a virus and then begin to attack the baby’s cells and nervous system. Though magic supplements help easily prevent this if you were responsible and talked with a doctor. This could have also been avoided easily with a condom and a sex ed class. Though doctor prescribed magic supplements help the body recognize the baby as not a threat. It's just again because the baby's body is so different from you. And because when monster and human DNA mix it can be a hit or miss from the way the body reacts. That and sometimes the monster cells inside the baby are so incompatible to your human cells it makes the cells in your body think your body is in danger. And sometimes your cells might not even recognize the baby as a baby and stop sending nutrients to the fetus entirely. Then the white blood cells will swarm the fetus and begin to calcify it as a defense mechanism to try and smoke the life outta them. And now we just have to make sure your cells don’t reject the baby’s DNA. And that your body adjusts to the baby just fine.” You wondered how she could go so long talking without stopping to breathe.
“-Though even with human babies this still happens with the mother’s body rejecting the baby’s DNA.” She gave you a gentle smile. “Stress is bad for mother and baby. Too much stress can lead to miscarriage and can trigger the immune system to attack. And too much stress could trigger a placental abruption.” Stretch seemed taken aback by the boatload of information dumped upon you both without much explanation. How young did this doctor even think you were? The condom comment got to you in a way that didn't sit well with your brain.

That definitely didn't help you feel better. “Basically I’m assuming the reason you felt so crap during the pregnancy was because your body was working overtime to try to supply and deliver all this blood and all this energy to the fetus with boss monster magic. And tried to provide it with energy and nutrients it couldn’t provide. So basically your body was exhausting itself trying to keep you and this baby alive. In other means your body was trying to use other means to try and substitute that energy by sending you extreme hunger signals similar to Prader Willi syndrome though on a wayyy wayyy less intense scale so you’d eat extra to try and get the baby more energy and nutrients. As a result you haven’t been getting enough. And a doctor will tell you that from your blood tests, charts and diagnostics. And the nutrients the baby’s received from what I'm seeing wasn’t enough to make it grow. That and monster babies need love to grow, and if your all negative and sad and all boo hoo! Woe is me! The baby won't ever grow and you'll be stuck being pregnant for five years like my friend Jennifer before the hospital finally agreed to induce labor. That woman suffered being pregnant for years, only for the baby to dust as soon as it was born because they weren't receiving enough love and weren't absorbing enough positivity. And then her husband left her. And told he hated her ugly cheetah print and told her to pack her bags and go. So don't be a Jenifer Marcy. Never be a Jenifer.”

“Basically romance between the parents helps baby grow because their kinda like emotion vampires that slurp positivity like vacuums. So my advice is I dunno maybe talk to it more? And it should grow.” She stopped for a moment.

“And the baby could be small because you weren’t taking good enough care of yourself. This thing is common with the monster human pregnancies I see. Though I’ve been told it's easy to spot skeleton halfling because they bleed unlike 100% non mixed monster skeletons. Then again blood is found in the bone marrow of all creatures.” It was like she was flaunting her knowledge now as she admired her nails.

“How did you tell all of that just by looking at her for a second?” Stretch got up and scrutinised the monitor that monitored the baby’s heart beat and vitals. You watched as the sonographer flipped off the machine and stood up.

“I’ll see you next month Marcy. Now about payment- I’ll charge you less because of this handsome fellow right here. Though the bill.” She whistled at the end to empathize her point. “It’s not gonna be pretty. For this appointment alone its gonna cost either 150 or 400 dollars depending on my mood, and if you wanna break up the cost and pay with a payment plan I'm down with that. If you're gonna pay with monster gold however, it's gonna be two gold. Cheap I know though things are cheap when your paying with literal gold. So the cost in human cash added with my time and the resources is gonna be 350 dollars even. Though I’d prefer you pay in human cash so I can get my nails done. Pretty please. No pressure though. My manicurist always charges me extra for these babies.” She said tapping her nails against her face.

“It's always like 400 dollars to get my nails done.” You gave her a shocked look. “I'm a doctor sweetie of course I can afford it with this profession. If you even knew how much I got paid you'd be shocked and think I'm stealing from the economy. It's a kill be kill world out there baby. At least my world is.”

She smiled brightly. With her bubblegum pink manicured nailed curled under her chin. And her bronze spray tan looked garish on her skin. “Its your choice sweetheart. Its not like i’m gonna send the tarantula mafia on you if you don’t pay in human cash, honest. Though you gotta pay me at the receptionist desk. I gotta get paid two paychecks, I’m a busy woman working both ultrasound tech and my own personal secretary.” She said as the ultrasound pictures were bring printed from the machine. She battered her eyelashes at you and Stretch innocently. “You want me to get new nails don’t you?” She was trying to guilt trip you into paying for her mani penny with money you didn’t have. “I deserve it don’t I?” She said innocently. You weren’t even sure if you could pay for a check up, much less your technician’s nails. A check up at the doctor caused 350 dollars for a ten minute check up. Stretch dropped two gold into her palm with an unhappy expression. The sonographer’s smile dropped. Then she fake smiled with the corner of her lip twitching with annoyance, as you saw her eye twitch as well.

You heard her mutter “cheap bastards.” As she counted the gold between her fingers.
“Usually my patients let me keep a picture of the baby to hang it on Corky my corkboard in the waiting room to show off all my happy clients. Mind letting me take a picture to go with the other beautiful babies.” Honestly you wanted this conversation to be over. “Great.” She fake smiled again with her smile that never reached her eyes. You weren’t sure if she liked you or hated you at this point. Though judging by the comment she made earlier it was probably the latter. The sonographer handed you both a strip of ultrasound pictures that looked like it came from a photo booth. And you felt sad as she took the single most clearest ultrasound picture of your baby. You saw the picture she took was the biggest picture of them all. And you saw that the picture was printed separately from the others. You looked down at your pictures and saw most were blurry, except one where your baby’s tiny hand was curled into a tiny fist over their sleepy eyesocket. With their hand shrouding half their face from view. They looked like they were tired and rubbing their eyes.

“Can we retake these pictures? They're all blurry?” “-Nope sorry! If you want more pictures that’ll be 500 dollars and you’ll have to reschedule another appointment, with another minor fee taxed on top for wasting my time.” She smiled brightly again. Well that was unfair. And not to mention rude as well. Stretch glared as you both left the clinic. He saw from the corner of his eye socketas the sonographer kept an extra ultrasound picture and pinned the photo to a cork board hidden inside her medical cabinet that was titled ‘Ugly Baby Wall of Shame’ And there was plastic cutouts of numbers pinned next to ultrasound photos ranking pictures of the ugliest ultrasound babies the woman had ever taken. Some of the babies weren’t even ugly, some just had facial deformities or their faces were just wrinkled like tiny pugs. And some were just bald.

Stretch saw as she pinned the picture of Marcy’s baby onto the number 5 spot and took down the previous holder of the number five place. It was picture of a 3D ultrasound scan of a fetus with down syndrome. Man he hated that woman. How could someone be so cruel to a baby? A baby with no evil in their hearts. How could someone be so cruel to unborn babies who didn't even have a chance at life yet?

Those poor parents not knowing their unborn baby’s face was pinned to a rankings board of babies the technician thought was the ugliest. When they left the sonographer threw the last and clearest image of Marcy’s baby into the plastic trash can near her door. The last picture she saved for herself and had neglected to give Marcy. When they were gone and all was quiet. A monster knocked on the sonographers door frame outside the room to signal their arrival. They stood under the door frame holding a large beribbioned gift basket. In his other hand he held a fruit bouquet with pieces of skewered fruit on sticks. The fruit was cut into fun shapes like flowers and stars. Boy the technician was annoyed. Soon the fruit would start to attract fruit flies.

“Is there a Marcy here?” The bird monster asked behind the mountain of gifts. The sonographer smiled. She could hardly see his face behind a mountain of gifts. “Yes, that's me.” She lied with a smile like melted sugar. “Wonderful. I just need you to sign this NDA disclosure here, promising that you won’t ever speak of this incident ever again, and that you won’t say anything that could potentially damage the MTT brand’s reputation, and signing means you also forfeit any right to file a lawsuit against MTT resorts, regarding your unlawful removal. Just sign here, here and here. Just sign your initials on the bottom line and we’ll be done.” Seeing her smile the bird monster added. “Its a gift from Mr. Mettaton. Out of the kindness of his heart and him wanting to keep his sexy legs and image clean from drama surrounding you Marcy because the internet trolls and press would absolutely eat this up if they found out about the hotel incident. Mr Mettaton himself wanted to come and apologize personally for the indolence of his staff, although he had a interview today and a live autograph signing as a guest star for the Jimmy Kimmel show.” The bluebird monster explained politely.

“When do you think I’ll be able to meet Mettaton in person?” The sonographer asked her hands clasped together happily her initial annoyance gone. “Well he has a guest star appearance on the Muppet show reboot next Tuesday though he should be free next wednesday at 4 o’ clock. Though I’m sure I can fit you in his schedule somewhere if I push back his brunch with with this one pop singer by ten minutes I can have you see him sooner. He needs to settle a little disagreement with the sassy singer is all. Divas like him don’t like any monster more popular than them stealing their spotlight.” The bird monster seemed to scribble something down on his clipboard that was tucked under his wing. He had on a headset with a built-in speaker around his head. “And Mr. Mettaton wanted us to send you these as an apology Ms. Marcy. As well as a payment for a free tuition at Ebbot private academy for when your bundle of bones grows up.”

Monsters and humans pushing dolly carts with large packages towered haphazardly on the metal carts. Droves of overworked MTT employees in the company uniform piled in gift baskets wrapped and thin plastic and adorned with sparkly bold magenta bows and ribbons that glittered. Even more employees flooded in wielding gifts. It was her lucky day. With stolen presents, and stolen happiness. After all, if she couldn’t get her nails done, she’d just sell all of this crap to make up for lost wages. And you could practically see the dollar signs spin in the sonographer's eyes like a slot machine in a casino. Besides, what did it matter? It's not like Marcy needed the money. It was her fault for being cheap and not being able to pay the full price of her services. She’d get to meet a celebrity while committing identity fraud against a poor woman who no lawyer would bother to defend. And with Marcy’s lack of money? What Lawyer would bother to spend time of day even looking her way?

—---

Honestly You didn’t know if the checkup went good or bad. And you felt like a hypochondriac scared for your health. Scared your immune system could suddenly decide to turn on you and kill the babybones growing inside you.

Ping! It came from your phone. ALPHYS UPDATED STATUS.

It was a selfie of her and your sister. They seemed to be at the mall and were both holding smoothies together outside a Hot Topic. Their arms were hugged around each other like they were besties. They both wore anime paraphernalia. Alphys wore a Mew Mew Kissy Cutie shirt with a skirt and a cat ear headband. While Vaneska was wearing a Mitsuri cosplay that revealed a bit too much cleavage.

(ALPYHS: OMG so glad to finally have a new bestie! So glad to have a bestie who treats me right and isn’t a gross cheater. Gonna watch the Mew Mew Kissy Cutie finale together. #BESTIES)

First your sister stole your date in high school. Then she stole your prom date. Now she stole your best friend. Well one of your ex best friends. Actually scratch that Alphys was your ex best friend besides Kaylee. Since when did you treat Alphys badly? Undyne would have beat your ass if you even thought about it. Now not only was she lying, she was rewriting history. You felt dull, sad though there were no tears left to cry and your eyes felt dry. You scrolled down to the comments.

(VaneskaTHeKAwaii47 COMMENTED ON ALPYS’ POST : ‘Its sad how some people just get uglier and uglier. It's sad my sister wasn't blessed with father's genes. She looks like an ugly fish just like mother did. #blessed )

(Two comments)

There was one reply to her comment.

(Coolfish297: You trying to start a fight? You wanna fight punk?)

(VaneskaTHeKAwaii47: you know what I mean.)

(ALPHYS: Please don’t be mad Undyne she didn’t mean it)

There was another post from 20 minutes ago.

(VaneskaTHeKAwaii47 UPDATED STATUS: ‘Ugh I can’t believe some people are so ungrateful. I can’t believe I was cut off by my ungrateful sister for no reason over a stupid joke. I can’t believe some people are so petty and sensitive to hold grudges over nothing. Girl you need to learn to when to forgive like I forgave mom when she brought you home from the shit shak you were born in #surviving entitlement)

You saw she had tagged you in the post. That sounds like her alright.

Alphys had commented.

‘That sounds like Marcy alright. She once cried because I offered her a milkshake with pineapple. I think it was a before she knew she was pregnant. Honestly some humans need to learn to control their mood. And she needs to learn the world doesn’t revolve around her. I can see what you mean by entitled I hope she changes so that baby can have a good like upbringing. I couldn’t stand having a mother like her)

1 Reply.

(VaneskaTHeKAwaii47: It’ll be a miracle if this baby even survives)

The phone felt icy in shivering hands. Quivers of sorrow wracked your body.

(VaneskaTHeKAwaii47: Knowing Marcy she's probably cyber stalking us like a creep. She always stalks our posts like a loser with no life. What an absolute creep lol)

(VaneskaTHeKAwaii47: UPDATED STATUS)

For Marcy Moo whose always followed my posts aka my dedicated cyber stalker. To my sister this song goes to you. This reminded me of you and I knew I just had to share it XOXOXO)

under Vaneska’s last post was a link for a Bart Baker parody called ‘Little Things.’ You watched the song without the volume on and turned on subtitles and wanted to cry. It was a song dedicated to calling one of the actors in the video fat and ugly.

(VaneskaTHeKAwaii47: UPDATED STATUS: (I love it when their singing to the girl in the song. It's what Sans should have told you sooner. Its just something I thought you really needed to hear RN. Just worried about your figure <3 Plz don't get fatter or else we won't be able to fit you through the door of my wedding.' (VaneskaTHeKAwaii47: UPDATED STATUS) ( Ps Sans says hi. Just wanted to send you holiday wishes this year <3)

Under was a picture of your sister at a bar with Sans with her arm slung around his shoulders as she pressed her cleavage against his cheekbone. WTF. Wasn't she supposed to be getting married? To who? What kind of guy would want to marry your sister? You'd never met the guy then again you hadn't been close to your sister since you were like seven. And who said you were attending her wedding? Why would you attend a wedding for someone you hadn’t seen and talked to in years? Why would you go to support someone who always tore you down and pretended to build you up only to be the one to push you down again once you got up?

You weren't sure if it was the baby or hormones. Though you were seriously your breaking point. Stretch looked over your shoulder. He gave Vaneska's post a dirty look. “Don’t listen to them sweetheart.” Stretch said. You wanted to cry. He held you as you cried into his hoodie. Rubbing circles in your back gently. Tomorrow was another day.

Chapter Text

It was sophomore year of high school again. And it was a terrible day to be alive. You felt like you were trapped in a nightmare. The walls were for familiar yet the familiarity brought you no comfort. The walls were a prison that seemed to echo fear and doubt. The walls echoed each insecurity you had about yourself.

The afternoon was young, as you stayed after school for a club. The hallway was empty, not a soul for miles. You were like a cactus alone in a wasteland desert. The halls were silent where life once was. Some lockers were spilled open, with a deluge of school papers spilling out of one in a sea of crinkled paper and smeared graphite. Your sister Vaneska, with a smile as fake as plastic and her smile as sweet as sugar. When most looked in her eyes of stone they got a sugar rush from how sweet she was. And just like sugar too much could make you sick. And eat enough sugar, you just may die. Slowly she was like a sugar that got inside your system, slowly killing you. There was no stopping the death that would fall at her hands. Death that Vaneska would make look like an accident. Like how when the girl who auditioned for a spot on the cheer team went missing mysteriously. A body was never found through mysteriously enough the spot the girl auditioned for was Vaneska's spot on the cheer team. And if she had got if Vaneska would have been kicked off the team. And strangely enough Vaneska was the last person to have ever seen that girl alive.

Though she had an alibi, she was at a friend's sleepover, she was supposed to be at the cheer captain's sleepover for all her cheer friends. Though Vaneska hasn't gone, instead she left to go shop lifting with her friend from a different city. Though she was so sweet no one ever thought she possibly could have done it. She was too sweet, delicate. Incapable of murder. Though when she wanted you dead she got close to you and from then on was like a poison working through your veins. It would have been safer to drink poison than to mess with Vaneska May. At least then you knew what, or who was killing you. At least then you knew your killer had a face.

Sugar sick, your father called it. What happens if you eat too much. Though eat too much sugar and you get fat, like how Vaneska would butter up people and fatten them up with lies until they couldn't stand and see the truth. She was the one who pushed you in the ocean and threw you a life ring only to drown you afterward after she could pretend to be a hero. She only did things to make her look good. If it didn't benefit her she didn't bother with them.

And with how wide and fake Vaneska's smile was, made you feel like you had a snake crawling down your back. And if you looked at it any longer you'd get diabetes if you looked at her sugar smile too long. Her sugar smile she called it. People saw her eyes, and her eyes were like sugar. Easy to get addicted, hard to quit. Vaneska was like an addiction to her friends, easy to be addicted to her presence, hard to get rid of.

Though you couldn't prove your sister killed someone. Though you felt the doubt creep, and crawled down your back like a lying serpent. You felt guilty to accuse your sister. Your own flesh and blood who would never do anything to betray you right? She only teased you during school and dropped your lunch tray on your new shoes, spilling sloppy joe meat all over your brand new white shoes because she only wanted what's best for you right? That's what your father said at least.

You still remembered feeling humiliated as almost everyone in the cafeteria turned to laugh and point at you as if you just sat on a whoopie cushion in front of the whole class. You got scolded by your father for messing your new shoes while he took Vaneska out to the city for ice cream because she felt stressed about her midterms. (I wonder what else she could have been stressed about, it definitely wasn't that she just accidentally killed someone and was trying to get away with murder. It definitely wasn't.)

Though it didn't seem like the reason why she lied about being stressed. Vaneska's lips were pressed thinly together as she licked her chapped lips, as she dug around in her pockets for a tube of carmex. Her lips looked drier than the Sahara desert and her hair looked messy with fly aways as it was held up in a ribbon in the school's colors. Her ponytail swung as she walked. Her ponytail was on the side of her head held up in a larger than life ribbon.

“Marcy moo. My friends want to meet you. They think you're pretty enough to be on the cheer squad. Don't try to be taking my place! You know when Emma graduates I'm gonna be next cheer captain. Do go competing with me.” She scolded playfully as she applied chapstick popping her lips afterwards. “Don't go embarrassing me, okay?” She giggled. “And you need to stop hanging out with that thot Kaylee. She totally smells like fish and not the good kind. Besides she has bat breath and fish lips. Lips that make her look like some kinda ugly lake trout. And I don't want this looking bad on me ok? You can be friends with whoever you want as long as no one says anything about it to me.” She seemed proud of herself as she walked with her head held high as she hooked her arms around yours. “You're my sister after all, you have to look good for me even when I'm not there, kay? Everything you do affects me and changes the way people think of me. And you wouldn't want to make me angry would you?”

You moved awkwardly like a newborn fawn. As Vaneska kept her arm around yours and laughed merrily with a skip in her step as she led you to the auditorium where the cheerleaders would be practicing with the coach barking instructions at them like a drill Sargent with a voice like a 90 year old smoker. It was odd Vaneska was holding your arm when most of the time whenever you touched her she washed her hands with vanilla and jasmine scented hand sanitizer. And said ew after you touched her, or even if you handed her a paper like you were some foreign disease instead of a person.

Yet when you got there it was empty. With the gymnasium lights glaring like an angel from above. You stood confused while Vaneska just grinned like she was in on an inside joke you didn't understand. When you heard laughter and a giggle from above. You thought you were hearing things when you heard the harsh cruel laughter sing from above you, followed with a muffled giggle that was shrill like the cackle of bacon sizzling.

The auditorium. Loud voices, echoing with raucous laughter. You felt anxious, the fear swimming in your chest made you feel like drowning. The way Vaneska looked at you with wide eyes, you could see the glee swimming in her eyes of stone. The sadistic glimmer like a sparkle of diamond. You looked above. Vaneska's friends stood with a metal bucket filled with something. They were like vultures circling overhead, as they poured the bucket that would spell your doom.

You began to run toward the exit as the loud flash of a camera followed you. You were helpless as the bucket of acid that was meant for you was dumped all over the head of Vaneska and poured down her need like mutagen from the ninja turtles. She screamed loud. It was a scream of pain, worse than being burned alive. She began to throw off her jacket anything to avoid the pain of her clothes melting to her skin with the chemical burns.

It was a terrifying sight. A memory that gave you nothing besides terror and guilt. As you watched the acid meant for you burn your sister. The next day in the school paper was a photo of Vaneska with her jacket on the floor. Someone had taken a picture of her trying to remove the article of clothing that had started to burn and melt into her skin. The title was called ‘Vaneska or Freddy Krueger?’ ‘A face only a mother could love’ was the header. It was a cruel article written by one of the school journalists in the journalism club in charge of writing the school paper that came out every week. The school paper that no one bothered to read. Until today.

‘Rising star Vaneska May, and cheerleading star finds career as a professional cheerleader ruined! Reports say after a chemical burn, she has a face no mother could love and has been referred to as the cheerleader of Notre dame. Our once radiant star is now as ugly as a walking disease. The cheer star from Notre Dame was seen walking the halls and reports from students claim they petition for national geographic to film this strange creature in its natural habitat has been gaining traction. In this picture here we see the wild Vaneska eating, a viral sensation. This creature's diet seems to be carnivorous, with a passion for steak. Cheer star or vampire folks? Does this wild beast have a double life? Half Bigfoot? Half human is she the missing link? Stay tuned folks. All we know if students and herbivores beware! From fab to flop. Hideous cheerleader finds herself humiliated and mutilated by friends and sister in auditorium.-’ It was a paper written by Vaneska's ex boyfriend who she dumped for the school's meathead quarter back. Who has more muscles than brains. Another picture was attached of Vaneska eating a medium rare steak, the phone had been photoshopped so she was eating the steak with her bare hands and blood running down her chin. You could even see a sunburn on her shoulder from her magenta spaghetti strap shirt. You remembered Vaneska's ex got kicked out the journalism club and suspended for writing the article. Though nothing was ever done about it. The school never took down the article from the yearbook, and it even stayed in the school's paper.

And those who actually had a copy, were reading it in the halls, while walking, and they read it in class while chuckling or giggling. Finally the paper was popular. It was the only news the school was interested in until the journalism club disbanded and Vaneska graduated after failing summer school. You heard she only passed because she slept with the math teacher and the school guidance counselor and convinced them to up her grades.
You weren't invited to your grandmother's birthday dinner and had to stay home to watch the plants. Well that was the excuse your father gave you though you didn't know how much pampering and attention a cactus needed to need a babysitter.

That was the day your relationship with your sister was truly ruined. She wanted to destroy your face. And she had destroyed the face she loved the most, instead. You woke up in a cold sweat. On an air stress in the basement next to Stretch’s air mattress across the room. “You ok darlin’?” what was he doing up so early? What time even was it?

“Stretch? Did I bother you? What are you doing up.” Your face felt cold like a phantom, clammy somehow. You never wanted to relive that day ever again. Maybe if you could have saved her somehow she wouldn't have hated you. Then again were you willing to destroy yourself for the one who hated you the most? Vaneska hated you that was without doubt. “Nah tibia honest couldn't sleep. You look shook to the bone. Marc.” He looked chill yet tired. “Wanna talk about it? Talking about it might make you feel better.”

He tipped his bottle of honey to you. It was shaped like a bear. How cute. You weren't sure if you could chug a bottle of honey like it was a smoothie like he could. “Nah thanks Stretch don't wanna get sugar sick.” He raised a bone brow at that. “It's just an expression from when I was little. My dad used to say it.” You fiddled with your hands that clutched the thin white blanket. It was old and yellowed at the edges. Sans had even been kind enough to give you the best pillows in the house.

‘there on the house pal’ you remembered him saying with ill disguised spite in his voice. The pillow cases were yellowed at the corners from age that made the pillows look like they had pee stains. One was hard as a brick, the other was more yellow than most, so yellow that it was hard to tell it had even been white. The pillow was firm yet not super uncomfortable the color reminded you of yellow teeth though. Ew.

There was even a pillow filled with bricks that Edge gave you that was too heavy to be on the air mattress without popping it. You noticed that as soon as he found out you were pregnant he was nicer to you in an odd way. He explained how when he was younger and Sans annoyed him he filled his pillow with bricks and used it to hit his older brother in the crotch. Oof. Poor Red. You felt bad for the guy and definitely didn't want to upset a guy who fills his pillows with bricks. He gave you the pillow to protect yourself. Though the pillow was kinda heavy to lift you didn't want to refuse and seem rude or like the bad guy. You didn't need more skeletons besides Sans to think of you as the bad guy.

“It was just a bad dream Stretch. A terrible bad dream that I don't want to talk about.” He looked mildly concerned. Through the rest of the night you and Stretch exchanged puns like oxygen as night drew on until you both feel asleep.

You feel Into a troubled sleep. Tomorrow was another day…

—-----

You didn’t want to face your old neighbours; you couldn’t face them. You could see some of your belongings proudly displayed in their windows through the open curtains. They all had stolen something of yours, well most of them did anyways. Whether it be your favorite band T shirt, to your favorite pajama bottoms, heck, even your old laptop was stollen! You saw the local granny playing Call of Duty before she switched to the new Doom game on your old gaming PC, and you could see her gaming through the open kitchen window from where you stood on the sidewalk. When had she downloaded that? And why is her window open during this kinda cold? You could hear old Dorothy a few houses away cursing out 12-year-olds through a headset your neighbor bought her. You could hear her yell from the open kitchen window as you stood on the sidewalk. You tore your head away you didn’t want to seem like a creep or a stalker. Though you had no idea how you would get any or your stuff back. You supposed you would have to confront everyone who had stollen from you. Though to confront half the neighborhood? That wasn’t an easy task. You didn’t feel up to it. You could go to the police though if they hadn’t personally broke in and stole your things they probaby wouldn’t do anything. And to potentially risk everyone hating you? Not today. The sight of your old things only saddened you.

You thought a walk would help you clear your mind (Blue had recommended doing so). Though everywhere you went you were surrounded by memories of the past. No matter where you went you couldn’t escape from the past. Even in the future where the past couldn’t find you it still found a way to crawl back to you somehow.

You had no idea you once lived a few houses away from a gamer granny. And one that had the mouth of a sailor either. If things were different maybe you both could have been friends. Everything reminded you of the way things once were back from when you were with Sans, from the potted plant you used to own, the one that now sat in Linda’s window. Your old plant Sans, had got you for your last birthday. The tiny, once vibrant plant now sat in a cracked pot with its leaves dropping, as it sat forlornly on a display table with a doily in Linda’s living room. The leaves were brown at the edges, with the brown slowly spreading like a rotting contagion that spread like cancerous mold replacing the green on the once vibrant leaves that now appeared wilted. Sans gave you the stink eye as he sat on the couch across from you. You wanted to curl up and die somewhere, or at least hide far, far away from here. You could feel all eyes on you.

“RED, YOU INSOLENT BROTHER. WHAT IS A A DROWNED RAT DOING IN OUR LIVING ROOM? GET RID OF THE DAMN BEAST THIS INSTANT!” “Uh bro I think that’s a human.” The stout skeleton seemed to check you out. “She ain’t bad lookin’ either.” The taller skeleton with jagged teeth seemed to quiver with rage. “SANS. GIVE THE DAMN BEAST A SHOWER THIS INSTANT BEFORE IT GIVES US THE DAMN PLAGUE.” Edge sneered down at his older brother, Red, who was next to Blue who was shuffling on his heels restlessly. Odd. You were more upset Sans and Papyrus had lied and hid the fact that both of them had twin brothers. Triplets? You supposed. Though it was odd both brothers both had two almost identical twins. You had seen Papyrus’ baby pictures before after Sans showed them to you one day. None of the photos held any trace of their estranged family.

You supposed perhaps that their parents were divorced and they split the children between them before going on their ways. Sans tried to explain to you cooly that they were cousins, though you didn’t buy that. They were all too identical to be cousins. Though if that perhaps was the case did it mean one of their parents were identical twins? It didn’t seem plausible. Then what did their parent marry another set of identical triplet sisters? It didn’t seem possible that they would even be born looking identical. It was probably just Sans caught in another lie again. Perhaps they’d all just found each other recently due to some ancestry DNA kit or something. Then again did they even have that for monsters? Then again why was the color of some of their eyelights different? You knew the color of one’s magic was hereditary. So why were the colors of their magic all different? Perhaps they’d inherited different colors from recessive genes or something. You were glad they all found each other and their family was reunited again. Albeit they were all a dysfunctional family. You knew that monster families all tend to share a house, with them only moving out unless they got married or something.

So why were Stretch and Blue so quick to jump ship and leave after they just found their brothers? It confused you. You found it funny two of the skeletons were nicknamed Red and Blue, you remembered Blue joking they were color-coded for your convenience, you supposed. Though Blue seemed not to like having to stand in place. Usually, he was energetic and hard to keep up with. You were still anxious about the doctor's appointment you had scheduled and would have to go to in a few days. You called all the doctors from the list that Dr. Michaels gave you, and none would take you when you mentioned you didn’t have Medicaid or some other fancy health insurance. When they heard that they dropped from your calls like flies, and you had to get some quack doctor across town who definitely had been sued for malpractice in the past. It is was it is though, you supposed.

The fell brothers then diverted their attention from you were play, arguing across the room. Their arguing was constant. Though not as intense as before.

“So, you and Stretch, huh?” Sans started. You froze unsure of how to answer. You wanted to get as far away as possible. “We’re just friends Sans.” Sanses eyes looked at you with suspicion as slid off the couch. When he tried to talk again you interrupted him. “Not now Sans. We’re done you made that clear when you dumped my things to the curb. I don’t have to say to you. No apologies can make me change my mind otherwise.” You said strongly. And Sans seemed intrigued by the strong timbre in your voice as you had said it firmly, and with such conviction. Though he had no intention of appologizing. To him there was nothing to appologise for. There was no one to feel sorry for besides himself. Himself for having trusted you. He sat stiffly. “You lost all right to contact me me, when you let me be homeless for a day when pregnant with your child.” He looked like he didn’t believe you as he rolled his eye lights. The fingers of his phalanges drumming on the arm of the couch. As he averted his eyelights. You could see the doubt elucidate in his white eye lights. “You still lying pal? Keep lying, and you're gonna have a bad time. Even Paps said you're not welcome.” That’s right. You didn’t want to face Papyrus again. Not after that confrontation in the store.

“HUMAN. I HAVE RETURNED!” It was Blue who posed heroically with a plastic grocery bag draped over his wrist. “WE BROUGHT YOU STUFF TO MAKE YOUR STAY BETTER.” Blue handed you a plastic grocery bag filled with some random conditioner, shampoo, and some flower-scented bodywash, as well as a few solid colored pants and shirts. “WE WEREN’T SURE WHAT YOU WANTED. SO WE GOT A BIT OF EVERYTHING. WE WEREN’T SURE IF YOU LIKED DRESSES OR WANTED A DRESS SO WE DECIDED TO JUST GET YOU THIS. WE WEREN’T SURE ABOUT YOUR SIZE SO I THE MAGNIFICENT SANS GUESSED!”

You smiled genuinely as you took the bad from him. “Thanks, Blue.” Blue seemed to perk up and smile at this, well he was always smiling though his grin seemed wider at the corners. You had on a shirt under your hoodie and were so focused and caught within your own thoughts that you had ignored Edge entirely and he often gave you offended looks. You saw Edge’s eyes drop to your stomach, and the lights in his eyes comically widened. He looked as if he had committed a great offense, or committed a war atrocity and seen taken aback. “Is it ok if I shower?” Red and Edge shared a look. “It would be good if ya did. Ya smell like ass and not the good kind I like.” Red shrugged. “SANS YOU DERANGED MONGREL. HOW DID YOU NOT KNOW SHE WAS PREGNANT?” Edgy Papyrus seemed taken aback. Red shrugged, looking up at Edge. “How Da Fuck am I supposed ta know?” “SANS YOU IMBECILE!!!” There they go again like a lit match, falling into a pool of kerosene. The argument exploded from there.

You had a job interview today. Stretch and Blue had already met the real estate agent and bought a house in a decent neighbourhood two blocks away from Sans and Papyrus’s place. Though it would be a while until the house officially on paper was theirs. Water from the shower sprinkled over your head and cascaded down your back. The heat swirled around the tiled bathroom and hugged you like a sauna. Mist fogged at the bathroom mirror, near the medicine cabinet. Dirt and grime swirled down the drain. You didn’t even know you were that dirty. Your old clothes were dingy. Your body wash made you smell like a Hawaiian flower. And the shampoo smelled like artificial strawberry. Your skin now felt smooth and clean, and you thought when you ran a hand against your arm your skin was so clean you'll could almost hear it squeake. The floor was so clean you could see your reflection staring back at you. You wrung your hair out in the shower and wrapped your body in a fluffy white towel, drying yourself off.

When you were dry enough, you found that they had bought you no bras, though it was understandable as they were guys and it was probably embarrassing to go bra shopping for a stranger, and it would be more embarrassing to ask for a stranger's bra size. You would have to wear your old bra. You peeled it out the mound of dingy clothes that smelled odd from sleeping out on the park bench. Huh that was strange, it felt tighter than usual. Maybe it was because of the water that made it hard to put your clothes on, or it was because the water made your clothes tight against you like a loosely laced corset.

You remembered how it rained during your stay at the park after you’d managed to drift off to sleep. How the water had caused the trash bags to break ans the plastic to erode. The rain soaked through your trash bags, and practically melted the plastic like sugar.

You could still remember the cold, hard bench under your back that felt like sleeping on a brick. You remembered the winter like chill of autumn that whispered through your sleeves and made your back ache. How the cold felt like winter in your thin hoodie. Your thoughts were interrupted by a knock on the door. When you were dressed and opened the door there was a glass pan of lasagna by the door with a note. ‘HUMAN! THIS IS BLUE. EDGE WAS TOO SHY TO GIVE THIS TO YOU. PS. EDGE IS SORRY.’

There was broken glass baked between the layers of cheese and sauce in the lasagna. The glass had broken while it was in the oven. And the corners of the glass pan were missing. Well the thought was nice at least though you were saddened by the meal was ruined because of the glass. Though you had another problem you needed a ride how would you get to your interview? You were scared to face Papyrus, who was already upset at you.

When you got out your hair was still mildly wet and clung to your neck. “HUMAN. YOUR GARBS WERE SO DISGUSTING. WE HAD TO WASH THEM. I THE GREAT AND TERRIBLE PAPYRUS WAS DOING YOU THE FAVOR OF THROWING THOSE FILTHY GARMENTS OUT. THOUGH NY BROTHER’S WRETCHED BLUE CLONE DECIDED OTHERWISE. WE HAD TO BLEACH THEM THREE TIMES. AND BLUE ENDED UP WASHING THEM 12 TIMES TO GET RID OF THE FILTHY SMELL. WE USED 5 BOTTLES OF OXYCLEAN. YOU BETTER BE GRATEFUL HUMAN.” Edge scoffed with a face that looked like he was permanently scowling. He seemed displeased. Strange.

–
Blue agreed to drive you. The pristine leather seats of his sports car were so clean smooth they made you nervous to sit on. The whole car had that new car smell. And a tiny tree air freshener hung from the rear view mirror, swaying side to side as the car headed further down the road and further down the street that held your memories for the past three years. You had been homeless for half a day. Though you don't think anyone noticed. You rubbed your wrists together awkwardly.

Blue was chattering away so fast you couldn’t tell what he was saying, as he swerved to avoid a squirrel on the road and acted like it was nothing while swerving and afterward. “-SO ONE DAY STRETCH AND I WENT OUT AND HE FORGOT TO WEAR UNDERWEAR IN PUBLIC AGAIN, AND HE WAS SO EMBARASSED-” You mind tuned out the rest of what Blue said. Though you felt guilt doing so.

From the pristine windows, you could see a faded hopscotch grid washed away from tears of rain in the neighbour's driveway, along with scratchy chalk drawings of a watermelon and some odd children’s drawings of animals. You could even see one of your neighbours sitting on her porch as she read the novel you’d had since 14. You knew you were getting your stuff back any time soon, though it still hurt to see the people you used to know flaunt your stolen belongings without shame. They weren’t even discreet about it, they weren’t even trying. They didn’t even attempt to spare your feelings.

The rest of the ride was bathed in silence on your part as Blue attempted to make conversation, and you did your best to answer him despite you not being in the mood to talk. Blue didn’t seem to notice. “IS THIS THE PLACE, HUMAN?” Blue had asked as you both passed a billboard advertising for some seafood restaurant. He had parked in the plaza for one of the nicer cities on the north end of town. It was a small close knit city. That was more of a tourist destination with trinket shops, than somewhere people lived. It was more of a place that looked pretty, than a place to live. It was a Mexican town with bakeries that sold conchas and pumpkin empanadas, and cinnamon dusted churros stuffed with butter cream. You could see the tortilla factory near the river. The factory had been painted over with a vibrant shape mural. And some of the old abandoned shops like the old leather shop, and the abandoned locksmith store were painted over with colorful murals. There were orange Day of the Dead skull banners strung and festooned across the buildings like a clothes line. You opened the car door and tried not to slam it too loudly shut, though hard enough so the door would actually close. “FAREWELL, HUMAN.” “Thanks, Blue.” Blue’s grin widened. “ANYTHING FOR STRETCH’S DATE MATE.” You just forgot, you didn’t tell him what time to pick you up.

There was a flower shop in the plaza, with the shops squeezed together like matryoshka dolls huddled away from the cold.Building tall and rectangular pressed together like dominos. The shop was a normal brownstone shop. With flower planters outside that were slightly wilted from the October cold.

The bricks in the plaza were a time faded orange, with an alder tree being the centerpiece of the plaza that stood proudly and majestic overlooking the square. The bricks ran around in a circular pattern around the tree. You saw the flower shop. Frosted letters in white were written on the smudged glass of the flower shop. ‘Casa Florez.’ Inside, you saw a monster cleaning the window with an old wash rag vigorously trying to clean out the fingerprint smudges, only to create more smudges with the rag. It was a never ending cycle. You pushed open the door gingerly not expecting your employer to be already Inside and expecting you. Inside was a chinchilla monster. “Ah, so you must been Marcy. I’ve been expecting you.” Her smile was lopsided, though there was a glimmer of kindness in her eyes that were as pale as silver. “I’m Carlitas. As you could guess, this is my store. Here you will be making funerary arrangements.” Wait what? Funeral arrangements? You thought this was a flower shop not a morgue. You stopped and felt confused was this the wrong place? You knew Florez meant flowers. Though was this even the right place. You were lucky that you got an interview in a city with a monster who didn’t look at you like you were a human cockroach.

“Ah, I get the look all the time, chiquita. Flower stores aren’t some dreamy thing with star-struck lovers buying flowers.” She said shaking her head like she was disappointed, with her hand rested high on her hips. She gave you a look of pity. “It's rare I see those kinda customers here. Usually we’re too booked making flower arrangements and flower wreaths for the deceased, or for that one furneral home Brownstone. It’s hard work with only Lita and me. Though occasionally we get calls to do flower arches for weddings though its rarely and the work for wedding so, so and doesn’t happen often. Usually when were done arranging the flowers for the dearly departed then our delivery boy Demacio comes and delivers them to the funeral home.” She seemed to shake her head as she laid a hand on her forehead. “It’s hard dealing with greving humans, and trying to do business with them at the same time. You have to have empathy when talking to them over the phone and taking their order. And it can be hard to hear what they’re all saying through all the crying. That’s why Lita’s sometimes on the phone though she’s usually way too busy. She’s good with that kinda stuff. I see tears on a human and I just have no idea what i’m doing. And whenever I try to say something they just start crying harder till they can’t breathe.” She looked away stubbornly with her arms crossed over her chest.

“- And here we work closely with the funeral homes to set up arrangements for the human’s death ceremonies. Human funerals are strange like that ya’know?” She looked at you like she didn’t expect you to stay. Though you needed the job. You thought you would have a cute happy experience watering flowers, and selling flowers to guys wanting to surprise their girlfriends or wives. Not this. It was a little morbid. Though you didn’t have a choice. That was if you got the job that is.

“This is your final chance to back out kid. We mostly deal with funeral homes. Once though I got a woman who came here to buy flowers for her niece with lukemia, said it was to ‘brighten up the room’ because no child should spend their final days in some dreary hospital room. Though I heard the girl passed away, we handled her flower arrangements for her funeral too. Mostly Sunflowers, we did a big wreath and arch of those. Expensive as hell, though we gave them a big discount. The kid loved those flowers I heard. And dandelions though we don’t sell weeds here.” She seemed lost in thought.

“Usually, people they just get cheap flowers from Walmart or the plastic crap because they don’t like stuff that wilts.” The chinchilla seemed to wrinkle her nose at the mention of fake flowers. “We take in all our orders from the phone my sister Hazel manages them at the front desk.” “Half sister.” The squirrel at the front desk said rudely. “We’re only related by marriage Carlitas.” The squirrel at the receptionist desk didn’t even lift her eyes as said that to Carlitas while she scrolled on her phone doomscrolling some weird dance on Tiktok. The squirrel said it such a shrewd manner you didn’t think that Hazel liked her that much. “Hazel is good at pretending to understand emotions, she’s good at pretending and talking to others. While my sister Lita goes to the funeral home and sets up all the flowers and makes them look nice an’ pretty around the caskets before everyone arrives usually we go there before the casket is placed.”

Carlitas gestured to her hands a room in the back filled with a lot of plastic watering cans and gardening supplies. There was even a open bag of potting soil and a bag Miracle-Gro, as well as pesticide and orange flower pots. You both sat down at the little desk and table in the cramped back room. “Alright so do you have any prior experience working?” She got out a clip board with a job application on it. You almost forgot she called you kid. Well that was awkward how old did she think you were? “I worked at my job for a few years.” You answered honestly. “I helped my friend start a bakery though its going bankrupt after she made some bad decisions with money.“

“Ah, I understand so a profligate huh?” She seemed to think for a moment.“Though if your here clearly they let you go. So do you wanna work part time? Or full time. Can you handle weekends? Honestly I don’t really care what you have to say kid you’re hired. I’ve been needing more hands for this job since business has gotten busy over the past five months. And after two weeks here most run away when they learn this job isn’t cut out to what it is. Everyone who comes here all want some dream job fantasy waterin the posies. Or they come here thinking its some glorified Barbie dreamhouse job. And as soon as they hear the word morgue they run like we’re the Addams family.” She reached her paw out for you to shake. Her paw was soft in your hand. “It’s great having you here kid. I’m sure you’ll do well here. You’ll be the one gathering the flowers we need to weave the flower wreaths, and flower arches. Hazel’ll give you the list of the flowers we need and you bring them to us got it? Though if that’s not enough I’ll send you with Lita in the family van to help set up flowers before the funerals. See you next Tuesday, kid don’t be late. And if you do good we’ll decide to add more days from there.”

It was nice having someone who wasn’t mean, she even helped guide you through the endless paperwork you had to sign for the job application. Why did job applications have so much signing? And the pamphlet was like lawyers contract in garbled jargon you didn’t understand. This whole thing felt binding somehow, like a bad deal at a casino where you didn’t control the cards that were handed to you. The pen even shook in your hand each time you had to sign and print your name on the stapled packet of paper. At the end when you were finally done signing all the paperwork. Your now boss merely smiled. “That’s all the papers signed. Good job kid.” She had the kind of face that was harsh yet shrewd, yet there was kindness behind her face. She was kind despite the illusion her face told.

—----

Eyes as cold as granite. A smile that was like a hungry shark, and a hunger for despair, a sadist with a desire for pain, with an appetite for gossip that couldn’t be satiated. She was feeling misery for desert, and she wanted misery that wasn’t her own. She a true gossip at heart. And if she couldn’t find any good rumors she would just make them up. A charismatic liar so believable she could fool the devil. She had a good imagination, and she was good at weaving stories that sounded convincing. She could lie about a cactus being cuddly and soft as cotton and people would believe it. People and monsters were drawn to her like a magnet. And it was a fatal attraction she couldn’t help. Whether it was her beauty or the person they though she was Vaneska didn’t know. All that matters was they fed her need for the spotlight. She needed validation, to feel loved to feel appreciated.

Thousands of stitches, skin grafts, and after many cosmetic surgeries. She was finally beautiful. A victim to her own greed, with an averice for beauty that made her more vain than a peacock. That was Vaneska, She sat at a vanity daintly applying layer upon layer of blush until her cheeks were painted with a heavenly fuchsia. With so much make up on her face she was no better than a clown. Thousands of layers of face paint that hide her true self, a thousand layers that hid the true monster within. A beast that couldn’t be tamed with words alone.

Black mascara, hot pink eyeliner. A beguiling round face that left the crowds starstruck. In high school, she’d even had a face lift to make her face more lovely and less human. Her face made her look like a doll. She was more of a doll than human, from they way she dressed always in pretty outfits and dresses. She even had her jaw shaved by a plastic surgron for her face to look more delicate. Breast implants, Liposuction, tummy tuck, neck lift, countless face lifts, botox, she had it all. She was more plastic than barbie, and was more plastic than human. For anyone who looked at her old photos they would’ve thought she committed identity fraud. Or stole an I.D because the doll like woman with a cinched waist looked nothing like the girl that once was.

She’d bleached her skin, filled a bathtub with bleach, and just jumped in; one day during highschool. And even now, she still thought she still wasn’t white enough. She wanted to be whiter than snow, more pale than a dancing snowflake. Her crush on the school varsity team, years ago only liked pale girls, he was really into vampires. She wasn’t beautiful enough for him, and she wasn’t beautiful enough now. She’d burned off her fingerprints with all the chemicals she bathed in every night, and had to be hospitalized once for blood poisioning.

Her face was painted with white grease paint. The paint gave her a worse than vampire-like complexion. She admired the poreless skin that seemed to sparkle in the vanity lights. Artificial white skin that seemed to reflect light, and reject all color. Next lipstick, one lip black, bottom lip white. The wig she wore was outrageous, large, unnatural. The kind of wig that took up space and demanded she be seen. It was impossible to ignore her, in her wig and that’s what she wanted. Yet that's what Marcy had done. She was an attention whore, and hated being ignored.

Vaneska hated her for being born, for stealing her parents. For embarrassing her all her life by being so awkward, it made her feel volatile and act uncouth. What she hated was not being seen. She was like a star to be admired. That’s what she was to herself. Nail polish bottles and makeup brushes were hoarded across the vanity. With countless brands of cheap lip gloss, and expensive french perfume she’d scammed out of her Twitch followers. She pretended to love them for their money when she thought they were ugly as trolls. Her face illuminated her beauty in the light of a dozen bulbs in the mirror-lit vanity. She remembered the day, when she and Marcy stopped being sisters. The moment disdain festered into hatred. A gnawing hatred, that grew inside her like a weed and florished after the day her life ended and her reputation was ruined. After all, how could she not forget it?

Marcy had destroyed her. Marcy had destroyed her sense of self and destroyed the person she once was.

On the last month of highschool before summer break Vaneska had led her sister into an auditorium for a prank; her friends stood giggling above in the rafters of the gymnasium, holding a bucket of acid. Acid that was meant for Marcy. They were supposed to pour it on her. Instead, they poured it all over Vaneska instead by accident. They didn’t even check to see if it was Marcy; the acid had left chemical burns all over her skull, though thankfully, her face looked untouched. Though that was only because she wore the face of another, surgically grafted upon her. She was like a dead man walking. A live doll with the face of another, the face whose beauty she stole. A face of someone who donated their body to science, donated their body to help someone in need. Though if they knew rhey were donating their face to someone like Vaneska they would have thought twice before becoming an organ donor if she knew the skin on her face would be used to make Vaneska beautiful again.

Vaneska gritted her teeth as she remembered how in the hospital how her hair fell out in clumps like radioactive waste. How under her wig, small patches of her true hair remained, looking like she was a Barbie that a child hacked at with a razor. Her wig hid the ugliness Vaneska felt inside. The wig and makeup held the ugliness she was in the inside, though a dark voice inside whispered otherwise. And it was all her fault. Marcy’s fault. It was her fault that she was hideous now, under the wig. It was just a prank, and all pranks are meant to be taken lightly. Though her vanity sometimes felt like a guise, though she truly was vain about her own personality, and she adored her own personality. In her personality she saw no faults. Fault could only be found in her face and on the chemical burns on her head.

She looked at her room, hoarded with various anime cosplays, and mannequin heads she kept to display her cosplay wigs. She blended the blush with her face paint, remembering how she paid that russian hacker to hack into her sister's savings account to afford her skin graft surgery that was meant to replace the chemical scars on the top of her head. She still wore an old wig she used for a mangle cosplayyears back. Back when FNAF was in its prime, and she was younger. She remembered how she wore it to a fnaf convention, before her Monster High craze, after she jumped into the Monster High fandom way too late. There was a fake rubber pregnancy belly discarded in the corner from back when she faked a pregnancy for attention and to keep her fiancé from splitting and cutting her off from his multi million dollar fortune. She was the reason everyone hated Marcy and was the queen behind the main rumor that caused Marcy to become a pariah in their hometown, sans just added to the fire, and Alphys was the kindling. And the city spiders were lighter fluid, that helped fan the flames of lies until they grew bigger, to big to contain until it wasa wildfire that was untamable by truth that had spread to the forrest.

She kept the rumors alive with charisma and made sure no one forgot what Marcy did to her. She ruined her reputation during her peak and highschool and Marcy would pay with her life, to satisfy the shame Vaneska felt. Her notification sound yelled from her phone. It was an audio recording of Grell Sutcliff from Black Butler horny screaming as Sebastian Michaelis kicked him. A notification sound that disturbed most and caused many strangers to jump in public whenever they heard it. There was a comment under her post. And Vaneska felt her anger boil as she saw what her sister wrote under her old post.

(VaneskaTHeKAwaii47: UPDATED STATUS: (I love it when their singing to the girl in the song. It's what Sans should have told you sooner. Its just something I thought you really needed to hear RN. Just worried about your figure <3 Plz don't get fatter or else we won't be able to fit you through the door of my wedding.'

1 comment.

Marcy. What did that bitch have to say?

Vaneska glowered, her eyes sharpened like daggers.

ChocolateSushi: ‘I would be too worried about your ego being too fat to fit through the door Vaneska.’

It was Marcy’s profile. Since when did this timid, meek little prick have the gall and bravado to stand up for herself? Whatever had changed, Vaneska didn’t like it. She liked being in control, and hated losing her control over others. Especially her playthings.

One comment, then another comment. Only fueled her disgust seeing anything that reminded her even vaguely of Marcy. It was the kind of hatred that made you only feel disgust at the mere mention of them before the hatred came after they were gone.

ChocolateSushi: I’m surprised you can even walk with that ego Vaneska. I bet your wigs so fat it makes you fall with that ego

Another one of her old posts. Only two comments one from Marcy. Another from the bunny monster she had a one night stand with last week as her fiance slept on the floor near the couch and ate cold DiGiorno pizza that had gone stale and tasted like cardboard and freezer burn from being in the freezer too long. She didn’t allow him to sleep on the couch, if he wanted to act like a dog, he had to sleep like a dog. He didn’t deserve to sleep on a bed, he hadn’t earned that privilege from being a liability to her. He didn’t give her his daddy’s allowance that his father gave him every two weeks, to spoil himself rotten. So she’d leave him to rot outside. It was only fair. Once she had even chained his neck to the dog house outside during a rainstorm in november, and made him eat out of a dog bowl until the cops came and she said it was just them getting freaky, and trying something new to spice up their relationship. And they believed her. That man was her walking cash cow, and she’d be damned if she got rid of him.

No matter how useless he acted. He didn’t even try to argue with her, as she had sex with a monster in their bed. He didn’t care that they were so loud, the picture frames on the wall began to shake. He just drank stale coffee, from breakfast that had already gone cold and continued his sad little life. He hadn’t even changed out of his morning robe. He was that depressed.

‘Ugh I can’t believe some people are so ungrateful. I can’t believe I was cut off by my ungrateful sister for no reason over a stupid joke. I can’t believe some people are so petty and sensitive to hold grudges over nothing. Girl you need to learn to when to forgive like I forgave mom when she brought you home from the shit shak you were born in #surviving entitlement)

ChocolateSushi: ‘I don’t know if you’ve forgotten though we were born in the same house???’

It was Marcy.

(Coolfish297: Sucks to be you punk)

(RageRabbit97: Lol)

Ew what was the ugly guy from her one night stand doing here?

Vaneska read another post, though she struggled with her long penicured nails.

(VaneskaTHeKAwaii47: UPDATED STATUS) ( Ps Sans says hi. Just wanted to send you holiday wishes this year <3)

Another comment. ‘Good. You both deserve each other.’

Then another

‘Ps At least I didn’t cheat on my fiancé. <3 - Marcy’

Damn, Marcy. She went from just stalking all the comments to finally adding to the drama.

Vaneska began to type furiously on the pristine screen of her iPhone that she had just unboxed yesterday during her latest Twitch stream she got paid to promote Inzoi on. ‘At least I didn’t get pregnant by a monster without a dick.’ Shit. She deleted everything she’d just written while holding backspace. She’d almost accidentally debunked her own lie, she whispered into the ears of everyone like the devil on everyone’s shoulder. She quickly deleted her comment threw her phone across the room and screamed like a banshee on helium. The phone cracked and the screen glitched with green and white consuming the screen.

If Marcy wanted to fight fire with fire. Two could play at that game. After all revenge was a dish best served cold. And revenge takes patience. Patience Vaneska didn't have. Now she didn't just want attention. Attention alone wasn't enough to satisfy her. She wanted Marcy destroyed the way she felt when she became a pariah. She wanted her gone. Better yet she wanted Marcy and that dumb baby of hers dead. She didn't just want her gone she wanted her erased. Even better yet she wished Marcy was never born. She wanted her sister erased from the story of life, not matter the cost.

Marcy would pay. Her revenge started with rage, then a twisted acceptance that she would had to lie to the police to get what she wanted. Good revenge starts with patience, then you just let the pieces sort themselves and fall into place once the dirty work was done. And play dirty Vaneska would. Vaneska smiled a sardonic wicked grin that twitched at the corners of her mouth. With her hands held behind her back she began to smile knowing what she was about to do would ruin her sister's reputation worse than it had been all she needed to do was make a single post and Marcy’s life would be ruined. After all little lie couldn't hurt could it?

It would be fun watching all her little toys and chess pieces practically do all the dirty work for her while she got to play innocent and bat her eyelashes and watched from the sidelines as chaos unfolded. Her revenge would just be fireworks, and she wouldn't have to work hard to light the fuse. She'd just be adding a lie that truly caused everyone to hate Marcy. No her revenge wouldn't be like a lame flame dancing on the tip of a match head, her revenge would be a blaze of glory, a deadly inferno that consumed all in its back. With her lie the kindling with each lie helping fan the flames of her work with each flame growing higher with each person talking and gossiping would set off each firework that would lead to a roar of an explosion.

She wanted Marcy to fail. To laugh as she struggled to defend herself as the monsters ran her out of town. She wanted Marcy to dig her own grave trying to defend herself until she was so deep in rock bottom she couldn't breathe. All Vaneska would have to do was hand her the shovel, and let her dig her own hole. She needed evidence to falsify evidence, texts. Pay an impersonator to steal Marcy's identity, or some doppelganger who looked like her sister. This plan would be very very interesting once all the pieces clicked into place. Vaneska couldn't wait. She loved games. Especially ones where she got to win and you couldn't look at the cards she dealt. No you'd just have to wait and see what the cards held when you lost at the end of the game. Oh this would be fun.