Chapter Text
Roman woke with a start.
He was sitting up in a chair, rope digging painfully into his arms and legs. Someone’s back was against his. The air smelled rancid, but he couldn’t see why.
He groaned, screwing his eyes shut. He breathed for a minute, listening for any sounds in the room.
He heard humming.
Humming that sent chills down Roman’s spine. It was slow and creepy.
His head snapped up, which he immediately regretted as his head swam.
“Virgil. Virgil!” Roman squirmed against him, jabbing his elbows
He heard Virgil groan in pain. “Virgil!”
“What?” He answered back groggily.
“Oh, thank god. There’s someone here.” Roman whispered loudly.
“What?? Where are we?!” Virgil looked around frantically.
They heard a horrible cracking sound.
Their eyes snapped to the noise. It was hard to make anything out of the inky darkness, but Roman could barely trace the outline of a hunched figure.
His eyes widened.
They were still humming.
He could tell Virgil had seen it too, as he tensed up as well.
The figure’s arm swung back, like they had ripped a piece off of something, and a long object fell in front of them with a loud thud.
It was a human arm.
Roman screamed, and Virgil echoed.
The humming stopped.
“Oooo, you’re awake!” A high-pitched voice sounded through the room. It was slightly scratchy and.. weird. Roman couldn’t place it.
The figure stood up, running to the corner of the room and flipping on some lights above Virgil and Roman.
Roman squeezed his eyes shut at the sudden light. His partner whimpered behind him.
He squinted them open again to see the person from before limping up to them, their form slowly coming into view of the light.
Roman had to stifle a gasp at—his? Her? Roman’s going to go with their—appearance.
This person was small, about the height of an average twelve-year-old, or maybe even smaller. They had incredibly long, very greasy, fairly curly, jet black hair. It was half tied up in a bun, looking like it used to all be tied up, but over time, it has fallen out. Their bun was decently sized, and the hair flowing down their back looked like it could be by itself without the bun. This person had a lot of hair. It was unbelievably messy, and Roman wondered when the last time it was washed.
Their skin was so pale, they looked dead. There was dirt and blood smeared on their face, but Roman could still see some freckles peeking out from behind the grime. They had colorful stickers adorning their face. All the color, hearts, stars, and happy faces looked out of place. Their expression was crazed, their smile was unnaturally wide, and there were a few gaps in it, a few teeth missing. Their right eye was bright blue, just as wide open as their smile. Despite the dark room, their pupil was so small that Roman could barely see it.
Where their left eye should’ve been was a bloody hole. There were heavily bloodstained bandages messily wrapped around their head, but it seemed they were so old that they had slipped off their eye, leaving it exposed for all to see. Roman couldn’t see much detail of the actual eye socket; it was just a dried clump of blood in and around the socket. It looked like a black hole in their face. Their under-eyes were extremely dark, especially under their damaged eye.
They were wearing a stained jacket that fell off their shoulders, revealing more freckles and a black turtle-neck tank top. They were much too skinny to be healthy—their small, baggy clothes were practically hanging off of them. More blood was splattered all over their body. There were many small injuries covering their skin, as well as scars, painting an unpleasant picture. Roman almost felt bad for them.
They had a bloody knife tightly clutched in one of their hands.
“Hello there!” They somehow smiled even wider.
“W-who are you? Where are we?” Roman asked, his voice sounding less confident than he would have liked.
Virgil was shaking with fear.
“Oh, right! I nee’ ta do a proper introduction!” The mysterious person moved in a way that a person should not be able to, slinking around the room with ease. “You can call me Morality! An’ you are here because my dad is going to kill you.” They said cheerfully, kicking some stray body parts that were on the floor.
One more thing about having light, Roman could now see that there were human limbs and organs strewn all around the room, with puddles of blood accompanying them.
So that’s why the room smelled so bad.
“What?” Virgil choked out.
“You heard me!” Morality’s voice was teasing. “He’s a hyper-religious wacko that kills anyone who sinned! And oh boy, you guys are gay and he doesn’t like that.” They shook their head.
Virgil scoffed, losing his scared face immediately. Now he just looked annoyed. “Excuse me?”
Roman felt anger pool in his stomach. “Oh, so you’re going to murder us because we like men? And we’re the ones who are horrible people??”
“Hey, I never said I agreed with him!” Morality put their hands up in a surrender gesture. “I’m just the one who cleans up the mess. He doesn’t know what I am! Of course, I don’t either.” They giggled, throwing the knife in between the pair’s heads, landing with a loud thunk into the back wall.
Roman and Virgil both flinched, staring with wide, horrified eyes at the knife.
This person was creepy.
Were they even a person??
“So you’re just going to let us d-die?” Virgil said angrily.
“Mmmmm, yeh. Can’t really do anything abou’ it!” Morality shrugged, their jacket falling further down their shoulders. “I’ve tried. Never ends well. I always have to clean up the mess either way. It just makes it worse if I try to save them. I hafta watch.” They said it so casually, like it was a completely normal conversation.
However.. Roman didn’t miss the hint of sadness in their voice.
“You.. have to… watch?” Virgil asked quietly, horrified.
“Heh, yup.” Morality sat on the floor in front of them, picking at the discarded arm. “I’ve seen… a lot.”
“How old are you?” Roman asked them.
They shrugged. “I dunno. Been so long since my birthday was celebrated that I forgot when. My memories are a little fuzzy these days.” Morality ripped the bone out of the arm, splattering more blood on themself.
Roman and Virgil flinched, the former resisting the urge to throw up.
“Anyway!” Morality suddenly jumped up, all of the pieces of the dismembered arm in their arms. “I should get going before I’m caught interacting with you. Goodbye! I’ll be baaackkk..!” They said in the most deranged, creepy voice Roman had ever heard. They slinked out of the room, moving their body in odd ways, slamming the door closed behind them.
Roman felt Virgil shiver. “That person scares me. They’re creepy as fuck.”
“I think you would be too if you were stuck here and forced to dismember people.”
“Well, yeah! But– God, they’re insane!” Virgil cried.
Roman sighed. “Yeah, well… we’re stuck with them. They might be the only person we get to talk to before we die.”
“God, I can’t believe we’re going to die because of our sexuality.” Virgil huffed.
“Well, we knew we would eat shit all our lives for it, right? I guess I just never expected to be sacrificed for it…”
Virgil laughed. “Yeah, I don’t think I ever would’ve guessed that. Well… at least we’ll die together, right?” Virgil nudged him with his elbow. Roman could tell he was trying to smile.
And well, Roman couldn’t help but try to smile too. A few tears escaped from his eyes. “Yeah… We have each other, and that’s all that matters.”
— — —
Morality comes in the cell for the next couple of days at varying levels of lucidity.
Some days, they are somewhere in between “oh, this person is completely gone” and “there’s… something there...”
Like, on Roman and Virgil’s second day.
(The door slammed open, making both Virgil and Roman jump.
“HHEEEYY!! GUESS WHAT I BROUGHT??” Morality jumped into their cell, dropping something on the ground with a loud CLANG.
Roman looked down at it to see that it was a metal platter with various kinds of food on it.
It was all basic prison food. Bread, apples, and something else Roman couldn’t name, but it was food.
“Food?” Roman asked hopefully.
“FOOD!!” Morality shouted excitedly. Roman winced.
“Uhm, we can’t exactly reach it?” Virgil said in an vaguely annoyed tone.
“Oh! Duh!” Morality smacked themself in the head with so much force that Roman was worried they might have given themself a concussion.
Morality walked up to them and started messing with their ropes. Roman flinched away, and he felt Virgil do the same.
“Stay still.” Morality ordered, which effectively stopped the squirming.
Eventually, the ropes fell loose around Roman’s wrists and stomach. They still couldn’t get away even if they tried, as their ankles were chained to the floor. “Wha–”
“There ya go! Now eat.” Roman felt the platter being shoved into his hands forcefully, the edge hitting his stomach and making him double over.
“O-oh, uhm.. thank you..?” Roman said, trying to give Morality his best smile. He got a blinding one in return, showing off the gaps in his smile. Some mysterious blood dribbled down Morality’s chin from out of their mouth.
Roman’s face screwed up in concern and disgust.
Virgil very carefully found a spot on the ground that wasn’t covered in blood and sat down, hugging his knees close to his chest. Roman slipped past Morality and sat down next to him, handing him a piece of bread.
They sat in relative silence for a while, the only sound being some humming and miscellaneous noises from Morality.
They seemed to dislike silence. Though they didn’t seem to particularly like talking all that much either. Their speech was always a bit… broken. Forgetting some words, stumbling over certain ones, mumbling and slurring their speech together. It was odd. They were hard to understand sometimes.
Roman decided to ask a question that had been burning in his mind ever since they got their food. “How often do you get fed?”
Morality snapped their head up to stare at Roman with their wide eyes that always seemed filled with… pain. “Uuhhhhh… sometimes!”
“Wha– what do you mean sometimes??” Roman asked, worry clear in his voice.
Morality shrugged. “I get fed when I’m remembered.”
Roman and Virgil gaped at them.
Morality’s eyebrows scrunched up. “What? Not normal?”
“No! You’re supposed to eat three meals a day!” Virgil cried.
“Oh.” Morality blinked. “Yeah, that’s not how it works ‘round here!” They hopped up, pacing the room with a limp, picking up random body parts and moving them around the room. Roman had no idea why there was a need for that, but he decided not to question it. They inspected each one closely, like they couldn’t see it from afar. Not for the first time, Roman wondered if they needed glasses. Their vision didn’t seem the best… They were also missing an entire eye.
That probably didn’t help their vision any.
“Prisoners get fed once a day, or two days if Dad is mad. Employees can eat whenever, as long as they’re not hoggin’ up all food! And I,” They gestured to themself with a leg that they had picked up, “get fed when someone realizes it’s been a while since that’s happened. It’s not like I get hungry, anyway.”
“You.. don’t?”
“Nope! After being starved for so long, you just feel… sick at the thought of food.” Morality lifted up their shirt to show off their stomach, which was unnaturally sunken in, and their ribcage, which could clearly be seen. They were practically skin and bone. “Maybe that just me, but that’s how it feels!”
“Oh my god…” Virgil put his hand up to his mouth, staring at Morality with horror.
Roman was pretty sure he had a similar reaction. “Y-you’re dying…”
Morality scoffed. “Uh, yeah. That’s nothing new.” They put their shirt back down, dropped all of the parts they had picked up back on the floor, and jumped up, disappearing into the ceiling.
Virgil squeaked. “Where the hell—!?”
“I don’t… what??” Roman stood up—wow, his legs are sore—and searched the ceiling.
He quickly found a glowing blue eye, the other one invisible. It looked like a cat’s eye. It was shining bright in the dark. They looked like a ghost.
“What the fuck??” Roman called up to them.
Morality laughed hysterically. Or, at least it sounded hysterical. That’s just how their laugh sounded sometimes. “It’s fun! Climbing in the ceiling, waiting JUMP OUT AT SOMEONE!” At the word jump, they lunged forward, almost landing on top of Roman but missing by a few inches. They landed face-first on the ground.
“OH MY GOD—” Roman quickly kneeled by them, scanning them over for any serious injuries. “Are you okay??”
All he got in response was goofy laughter. Morality rolled over, continuing to laugh like they didn’t face-plant from several feet.
Their face was a little scraped up, but they seemed okay other than that. Roman honestly couldn’t tell if the scrapes were there before or if they were new.
Roman had never been this close to their eye before, and it looked even grosser up close. The bandages made him want to gag.
He started laughing hysterically along with them, because how was this person alive??
He heard Virgil start awkwardly laughing from the corner.
They were all losing their minds—well, one of which was already lost, but they were all laughing and crying and Roman could barely breathe, but man, was this the happiest he had been since he and Virgil woke up in this horrible place—)
Some days, they are completely out of their mind.
(Roman woke once again to the sound of something breaking. Of something being squished and ripped apart. Something being tossed across the room and landing with a squelching noise.
He shot up to find the source of the noise.
It didn’t take long.
He had to hold back a scream at the sight before him.
Morality was sitting on the ground, an entire corpse in front of them, though the body wasn’t recognizable in any way. Their face had been torn off.
Morality was now reaching into the body’s chest and abdomen, pulling out various organs, bones, and tissues, blood making a large puddle around them.
Roman tore his eyes away from the sight to see Virgil, his own eyes fixed on the body. It looked like he’d been staring for a while.
“M-Morality..?” Roman called their name quietly, not wanting to spook them.
They didn’t react, their expression completely blank, and their eye was barely moving to see what they were doing. It was glazed over, like they weren’t really there.
“Virge? How long has… this been going on for?” He asked his partner softly, who answered in an equally soft tone.
“I dunno. It’s been a little while. I woke up not that long ago and they were already doing this. I tried to call out to them, but they’re unresponsive.” Virgil watched another organ—Roman thinks it’s a kidney(???)—get thrown against the wall. He scrunched up his face in disgust. “I have no idea why they’re doing this.”
Roman looked back at Morality’s impassive face, looking for any sign of anything that could tell him what was going through their head, but like always, that remained a mystery.
“That is… very gory.” Roman commented after a while of watching the scene unfold before them.
“Yup. It’s fucked up. I’ll process this later and realize just how fucked up it is, but I think I’m in shock right now.” Virgil said, his face almost as blank and placid as Morality’s.
Roman laughed, even though it wasn’t really funny. “Me too, Virge. Me too.”
Suddenly, Morality’s head snapped up to stare at them, the black hole in their face practically swallowing Roman whole. Even their blue eye was starting to freak him out.
No one dared to move for a few long moments, just staring at each other. Then, with no warning, Morality ripped a bone out of the body, maintaining eye contact with the two the entire time, and walked out of the cell, bone in hand.
Neither Roman nor Virgil spoke for at least a couple of minutes after Morality had left. Virgil eventually broke the silence.
“That was weird.”)
On the rarer days, they’re mostly lucid.
(Roman and Virgil were curled up next to each other, trying desperately to get warm. They had to sleep on the cold, hard, dirty concrete floor. It was very difficult to fall asleep.
Just as Roman was about to finally drift off, he felt something soft lay over him, covering his body completely.
Was that a… blanket..?
He opened his eyes and saw one glowing blue one and one black eye dripping something directly above him.
He flinched and squeaked.
“Oh! Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you..” The uncharacteristically soft voice of Morality sounded from above him. They squinted their eyes at them, trying to see them better.
Roman looked at the blanket covering both him and Virgil. The latter was fast asleep. “What?”
“I-I just thought maybe you’d want a blanket? Since it’s so cold down here, I—I brought one. It’s kinda dirty, sorry…” Morality said sheepishly.
“Oh.. that’s alright. Thanks.” Roman curled further next to Virgil, wrapping the blanket around himself with a small smile. “This is way nicer than just the cold hard ground.”
“Yeah?” Morality said excitedly, their voice still at a whisper.
Roman chuckled. “Yeah. Seriously, thank you.”
“Oh, uhm... you’re welcome. I just.. I know what it’s like to sleep in the cold. It sucks.” Roman couldn’t see Morality’s face very well, but if he could, he would bet that they’re blushing.
And with that, Morality left, leaving just Virgil and Roman again. Roman had a much easier time getting to sleep this time around.)
And sometimes they’re a mixture of all of those categories. There are days that they don’t even come into the room. Roman suspects that on those days, they don’t even remember who they are.
Whatever the case, Virgil and Roman actually like Morality’s company. They’re scary, insane, and weird, but.. they’re fun and caring at the same time.
Maybe their last week alive will be okay.