Chapter Text
Engel was in a dream, seems to be in his own school, but emptier, soulless, errie. He looks outside and see nothing but eye-straining abstract shapes and colors, like this place was in the middle of nowhere. The lockers and walls seem to be either clawed up or broken through before and repaired hastily.
"Weird..." He looks around and approaches one of the halls cautiously, his footsteps and breathing filling out the silence.
"Ooooh Eennnn!" He heard a familiar voice, to good to be true. Another trick of his nightmares, he knows how to deal with it. He continues walking away.
But this time it didn't work.
Suddenly the person calling out swoops over past Engel to block him, crossing her arms and pouting. "Cmon En that was rude of you!"
So it's not a nightmare... sorta. It's Claire from the way she acts, she looks almost identical to what she used to look like... almost identical. Her lower abdomen is gone, yet you can still see the spine connecting that two part yet about to break down and the intestines hanging in down a bit. it's like seeing a more "clean" corpse, like someone politely took that part away and left everything else untouched.
"Whatcha looking at?" Claire ruffles Engel's hair playfully, like she's oblivious to what is up to her body.
"Your...Um"
"Eh?..."
"N-N-Nevermind..."
"Ok then! By the way where you? we've been wondering where you gone of to"
"Um i was.. sick I guess and couldn't come.." Engel lies through his teeth, scratching the back of his head nervously.
"hm... oh welp- let's go to the pool, Abbie and Lana are waiting us!"
"Uh aren't we supposed to have lessons by now?"
Claire completely ignores his question like he never said it in the first place and grabs Engel by the arm lightly and starts dragging him down the opposite hallway. The warmth she had... it's still there, it's like she was never dead (except for how she looks), never was hurt, never was killed, never was partially eaten. Engel let's Claire drag him off, staring at her face in awe, confusion, wonder and a bit of fear... fear of leaving again. This seems to be a quite nice dream to Engel, maybe he's recovering? if so then that's good.
"Ok so soooo much has happened while you were gone, first Abbie found an abandoned tree house somewhere in the woods outside the town and we made that out hangout place, it is a 3 hour walk to there but you can make it there sometime! And Oliver got killed by Alice and we pranked one of the teachers that i forgot the name already and got bubble to join us in the study group and-" (None of this happened, Claire is making shittu up) Claire starts yapping and yapping catching Engel up in everything that has 'happened', it's obvious none of that happened or has already happened from what Engel remembes.. Engel starts zoned out, still staring at Claire with that same expression as she dragged him off
It was only a matter of time before they hear some hushed talking as they got closer to the pool room or whatever. That snapped Engel out of his trance as he tried to pay attention to the voices, it was hard to tell since he can only pick up Lana speaking a raspy high pitched voice while Abbie is straight up speaking spoke sort of another unknown language, it's warped static sound. They make one last right turn in the long hallway to reach the doors.
Claire kicks down the doors enthusiastically
"HE'S BACK GUYS!"
It was loud enough to snap Engel out of his trance from earlier
"Hey there! silly little idiot :P."
Lana waved at Engel with her sock puppets before going over and hugging him.
Engel is already hit with some slight coldness from Lana. She has those pens still yapped through her head when she died and there are scarring on her lower jaw. Her puppets no longer have those adorable googly eyes and now have those... nothing eyes with it seeming like Lana's claws are going through tuej a bit to replicate teeth, and is her ponytail straight up another puppet?... and just like Claire, she seems to oblivious to how different she could be. But he hugs her back nonetheless.
"Ay it's great to see you, Lana"
They let go of the hug and Engel looks over to Abbie, who's silent, but he seems to be almost completely normal and identical to what he looked like before, even got there scaredy cat face.
"C'mere bud!"
Engel hugs Abbie as well and is immediately hit with coldness, cold as ice. Abbie.is.cold.as.ice. He thought it was gonna be another nightmare again and he's about to hold his dead body before he felt Abbie hugging back before shortly pushing away from the hug.
"H-hi... :<"
Abbie meekly waves hi at Engel.
"Glad to see you bud" Engel pats his head.
"Oh c'mon you already hugged both of them right away while you tried to ignore me??" Claire spoke while chuckling, just a tiny bit sour
"Well sorry I wasn't famili-"
Engel didn't get a chance to finish his sentence before he felt someone hug his back and starts spinning him around before letting him go and putting him down.
"There we go much better!" Claire said mischievously, the one who just did that.
That spin had Engel stumbling a little bit, and honestly a bit flustered. It was slike he felt more alive in this dream than the real life...
"Soooo buddyyyy Did Claire told you about the treehouse we found????" Lana, or rather one of her sock puppets asked Engel.
"Um yeah she did tell me that (i think) while dragging me here"
"I uhhhhhh blew it up becuz there was a parasite :P" Lana said throw the puppet hand, feelin a lil guilty (where do you even get bombs!?)
"Ugh are you serious Lana? and why can you just say what it was? and it was a cool tree house for apple's sake!" Claire said in an annoyed tone, holding her forehead.
"It was more Abbie told me-" Lana gets interuped by Abbie before she finishes speaking.
"A Millipede... there was a millipede and I shrieked" Abbie said with his voice cracking.
"I... Ok Lana just take Abbie somewhere to calm down before he starts crying again... me and Engel with repair the tree house if we can" Claire said, looking over at Engel when she mentions his name
That, got Engel to look away since he was just standing there awkwardly until now
"Alright! c'mon little apple" ( T_T)＼(^-^ )
She starts pushing Abbie away to somewhere probably more quiet than here, even if it's already very quiet.
A second goes by,
then two,
then three.
"Well what are you waiting for!? let's go!"
Claire spoke enthusiastically before grabbing Engel's arm again and dragging him off out the area, and it seems the layout change, what was supposed to be a left turn and then a long hallway is now a right turn with what seems to be a maze.
"It is just me or....did the place change a bit?..." Engel asked, looking around as he's being dragged.
And yet again Claire didn't respond to his question again like he never spoke it out loud. She takes a series of turns dragging Engel with her, seeming like she knows exactly where to go. This will be a nightmare for Engel to get used with but he will eventually, hopefully.
This dream is very odd, so out of place, so weird... yet it is so comforting to Engel, just seeing his friends one last time and maybe sending more time that he has lost with his best friend Claire. He's not complaining at all, actually appreciates it even.
Engel's not even paying attention anymore, he's back to zoning out staring at Claire as she talked on and on some random topic, but he didn't pick up on anything nor did any of it made sense...
although he can't help but notice a timer saying 3:45am at the top of his vision... probably some weird dream thing that's happening...
How long was it already? can't tell, the time didn't move either...
...
While Claire was yapping off making stuff up as they go(seri how gullible is Engel) as she drags him along, she hears a voice nearby.
"Parasite... you forgot to heal up your wound..."
The voice was broken, robotic, eerie, but Claire only responded to that with annoyance as she whispers out
"Yeah yeah I was about to do that, not like you warned me before bringing him here."
"I did... 12 times... this night... and before it..."
"Well I don't remember" ತ_ತ
"just... cover up..."
"Fine."
She looks back at Engel who she's still dragging along, yeah he's still zoning out, perfect.
and in what seems like a second, the exposed intestines and spine are gone, she looks normal now.
"Hey! are you even listening?" ʘ‿ʘ
Engel was snapped into reality (Or dream??) the Claire's voice.
"Eh... y-yeah..."
"Well just gotta let you know we're almost out!"
"...yay?"
"YAY!"
The reach the school gate and exit the school, Engel expected to see the weird stuff he saw out the window earlier but everything seemed normal and seemed identical to reality other than being no one else and everything being almost pitch quiet.
Claire let's go of Engel's arm and takes out a map, reading it upside down
"... aren't you-"
"Shshshshshshshsh"
Claire shushes Engel quickly before looking back at the map before throwing it away
"Eh, I can just use my memory, keep up!"
She starts running off down the street and toward the forest that's pretty far away...
Engel blinks in confusion, still processing in what hell just happened. He looks towards the forest, at Claire's retreating figure, and around the quiet town...
Now he has two options...
1- Follow Claire
2- Stay behind
Choice no 1 completed. (chosen by TWAG)
"FOLLOW."
Engel looks over at the path where Claire went and sighs before straightening himself up. Takes a few steps before starting to walk through the path, the dream's oddly peaceful... emphasis on odd. but it's fine-
"THAT'S NOT CLAIRE, ENGEL! RUN.AWAY-" Inhale "RUN.AWAY!------"
An eerie silence follows...
"Was that Oliver..."
Engel says out loud, not really asking himself. That voice is unmistakable, but he has never heard Oliver scream in such a desperate tone so how does... forget it... He let's out a long quiet exhale and continues on the path he's on.
1 second...
10 seconds...
20 seconds...
Maybe it's just a random thing to hear in a dream, right? he... hasn't really woken up yet so that's a good sign.
Seconds turn to minutes and he finally reaches the forest, there's weirdly shaped footsteps on the ground but that's the least of his worries right now.
The forest was vibrant and bright, and there's some sort of sound here too to rid of the silence. The rustling of leaves being blown in the wind. The soft crunches of grass, leaves or twigs each time he took a step. The sounds of birds and little critters going on and about and the chirping of the birds. The whispers among the barks calling out to his name from that red and green path... that's not right-
He stops and takes a few steps back to see at what WAS calling his name, there's an odd part of the forest where the bark is a sick dark green and the leaves are maroon red. The patterns in the barks seem to leave behind eyes that stare right at and through your soul... judging, staring and observing every move you take. The roots that pop out the ground from the trunks intertwine with eachother to leave a dead plant mass all over. The grass is a bright purple, he reaches down to touch at a grass strand and was immediately poked , it's spikey and dug into his finger. He tried to take it out but it spread the pain further, he yanks the strand out before the pain gets worse but the pain still lingers but no longer spreading. He looks back at the area and notices something... the area seems to be increasing more like it's some sort of infection that's spreading.
Obviously freaked out, he takes a few steps back and looked around at the unaffected forest before looking back at the affected only to see it gone... wtf?...
He turns around and wham, there's Claire standing there with her hands behind her back and that little smile and that eerily happy face [like this ---> (o‿o) ]
"Hey best friend, what's taking you so long to get here?"
She asked in an ok-ish happy tone, the type you out in when you mask your mild annoyance.
"Sorry... i took me a while and um... you didn't see any weird areas here, right?"
He vaguely gestures to the area where he had sworn to see it there before but it's clearly gone now.
"... Let's go back to the treehouse and FIX.it.up."
Claire grabs Engel's arm, the grip is hard and almost painful. She roughly drags Engel along and suddenly all the mild sounds that have accompanied the forest are all gone, replaced with the same silence as the last times. Claire too, is very silent.
They walked for what? 30 minutes or 40 minutes in complete silence, before reaching a clearing deep in the forest where you can see some semblance of a tree house, a ruined one atleast.
The tree is blown up and on fire that seems to be stubborn on spreading or putting out. There's some wood planks layed sprawled around the clearing and on some of the trees, clear indication of an explosion.
"Wow they weren't kidding" ⊙.☉
Claire takes out a map out of seemingly nowhere and gives it to Engel
"The place is obviously unusable anymore so go find a better place to build the place at"
She shoos him away, by picking him up and throwing him at a random direction.
He crashes head first onto a tree(ouch) and tries to push himself up despite the dizzy ness. He sits up and looks at the direction of the tree house but his eyes couldn't find any silhouette of her anywhere. He slumps back down with his back against the tree bark and unfolds the map properly to look at it.
Seems easy enough to follow as the town and the treehouse are already marked. He reads through the map for a few minutes before standing up and walking with the map upheld, the closest clearing he could find is closer to the town so that's good.
Going through a few bundles of fallen trees, rotten grass and few dead critters while trying to ignore the silence. He stops in his tracks to find he's walking into the area where the weird phenomenon was there. He walks in there after a few moments of hesitation. He finds a clearing with a tree in the middle that seems to be different than the others, it has an eye symbol carved into it... that's probably not important. He looks at the ground surrounding the three, there's rotten grass, he looks around at the other trees and some of the trees already seem to have been chopped down or seemingly disappeared. it's odd, very odd.
"I'm baaaack!~"
She's already back before he knows it, before YOU know it. She brought some planks and tools from ikea before coming back. She places the planks of wood down nearby and opens the manual to look through it, sticking her tongue out a bit as she processes the instructions.
There's a bit of awkward silence so Engel decides to speak up, voice wavering with uncertainty.
"You... didn't answer my question on about-"
"Shut up"
"Shut up? i was just as-"
"Speak one more time. i dare you."
"..."
Claire throws the manual away.
"Eh we don't need that. i know you're going to ask too many questions anyway so how about you go around and explore?"
...
...
"I said. go."
...
...
"No..."
Then next thing he remembers is a claw slash on his right eye.