Work Text:
Stanley had always been a pretty one-dimensional person, more of a blank slate than a guy. Nothing much going on upstairs. A tired stereotype of an eleven year old. A real milktoast human. Boring. You get the picture. Indeed, there was nothing special about Stanley; if they were a Sim they’d be the default setting, as if God had given up on his birth.
Now, it’s at this point in the intro where the narrator would be like: “Then one day that all changed for Stanley, transforming him into the greatest hero this world’s ever seen,” and other shit like that. Nope. This isn’t that kind of story. In fact things just sorta kept getting worse for Stanley. What was once an emotionally flat person, would soon end up being a physically flat person.
That’s right. This is a Flat Stanley fan-fiction.
He awoke on a cold September morning, not unlike many other school days for Stanley. Little did he know, him and the whole country would soon be getting a BIG surprise. Now one thing you need to understand about Stanley; he got the full protagonist bundle of character traits: morally upstanding, always wanting to do the right thing, never backing down in the face of danger, yadda yadda yadda. For most people this naivete can be chalked up to inexperience in the world, but Stanley wasn’t graced with that excuse. He’d already been through Columbine after all. Now now, these traits aren’t bad in and of themselves, in fact they’re really quite admirable. But we’re dealing with a large terrorist organization today, what in the world is a flat eleven-year-old going to do?
It was this question Stanley was forced to ask himself when his school got news of the first tower being hit. Now, incase you didn’t read the title, it would be a good time to mention what day it is.
That cold September day was none other the ninth of September, 2001.
Stanley rushed out of his classroom and began folding his arm into a thin blade. When that failed to cut even a piece of paper he was forced to improvise. Stanley bolted to the janitor’s office, whacking away security guards attempting to get everyone into a safe location (as if rural Montana was ever gonna be a target). He slaps the janitor right on the jaw, bruising himself more than anyone. The janitor, Mr. Cooper, looks Stanley right in the eyes and does his best to console the clearly distraught child,
“Why Stanley, is everything alright? If you need any help, you just need to ask.” Stanley can barely be understood with how fast he’s talking,
“Mr. Cooper I need to get to the roof so I can fly myself to New York and help everyone!” Mr. Cooper nods his head in understanding, grabs his keys, and walks Stanley and himself up to the roof. Mr. Cooper pulls a map out of his pocket, looks it over, hands it to Stanley and sets to work. “Work” being the folding up of a student into the shape of a paper airplane. The two look into each other’s eyes, nod slowly, and launches Stanley with full force towards New York.
And…
Oh dear God…
Yep.
There’s a lawsuit against the school right there.
Stanley was torn up by a crow like five feet away from the school building. Now a normal person might be able to survive a crow attack, but Stanley is paper. He’s not coming back from this. Neither is Mr. Cooper. He’s serving life for second degree murder. He won’t see another free day in his life. And this was right before torture started. Mr. Cooper spends the rest of his life in immense pain and suffering at the hands of the US government.
Way to go Flat Stanley.
You prick.