Chapter Text
Voice of: Joey Drew (|)
[Play]
The Demon gave me a few of these tapes. Guess it got tired of me begging for conversation. One becomes desperate for anyone to talk to when alone for so long. But, uh, the Demon doesn’t want me talking to it, so it gave me these. Told me to tell a story into them so I can listen to my own voice when I’m bored.
But I’ve been listening to my own voice, my own mind , for so long…
I don’t even know how long, exactly…
The Demon just told me to put thirty years on the letter…
Uh… I need to back up. Start over.
I used to be good at this sort of thing, telling stories, putting things in order. But things lately have started blending together. Time is funny down here, see. You never really know how long you’ve been here.
The Demon probably knows. Does time even mean anything to it?
…
Back up, Joey. Put things in order. These tapes don’t have that much space.
…
If you’re hearing this… rather, if you’re someone who’s not me and you’re hearing this… I hope this can help you understand a bit more of what’s happening here.
And… if it’s you, Henry, that happens to be listening… I hope there’s still enough mercy left in you to at least hear me out. Because if you know half of what the Demon’s painted me to be… I’d have a hard time listening. Manipulators and sadists don’t really elicit the kind of feelings that would prompt a person to listen.
But I suppose that should be the first point. Nothing in this studio is real. Only me, the Demon, and Henry are. Everything is all the Demon’s illusion. It painted an image, a fake portrait of pretty much everything that happened. Even me, it made me the… the bad guy.
As for anything or anyone you interact with, everything, and I mean everything else, is just ink. There are no human souls in the Well of voices, no corpses rotting in the coffins, no former employees turned into ink-beings. The only humanity is me and Henry.
The Machine is real, too. The Demon used it to make the Studio into what it is. It controls the Ink. But, uh, I can get to that later.
Next is… well… if I’m starting at the beginning… I guess I ought go all the way back.
Back to when it was just me, Henry, and an idea.
I was an aspiring entrepreneur, Henry was a talented artist. Still is, by all means, I just meant-...
Uh… back on track.
We started what would become Joey Drew Studios. Yes, I put my name on it. What, do you want to sue Walt for plastering his name on his company?
… Sorry.
Something the general public doesn’t know is that I’m not the one who created the toons my company was known for. Everything came from Henry. Concepts, designs, names. He came up with everything for Bendy, Boris, and Alice. I, erm, changed a few things here and there, but that was all I contributed.
Henry Stein created the toons. Not me.
… Not like I corrected anyone when they assumed. It was my name on the studio door, after all.
… I should have given him more credit. When he left, I just… dropped him out of company knowledge. I never forbade anyone talk about him, but I gave the impression his name was taboo. I never talked about him, never mentioned him, never contributed to conversation if someone found his name in the records and asked about the former Head of Animation.
But his name wasn’t taboo to me, it was sacred.
…
This tape is almost full, so I’ll have to put Henry’s story on the next one. But there’s something else I should include here. Something about me.
I’m bad at making decisions on my own. My common sense tends to lack and I’m hardly ever able to see the bigger consequences of my decisions. Inevitably, if I’m left to make a decision without good people giving me grounded advice and pushing me toward the best decision, I end up making the worst one.
Like driving my best friend to quit because I was demanding him be kept from his family.
I don’t try to make the worst decision, I just… do. It’s one of my many… many failings. And it takes a drastic push to get me on the right track.
[Stop]