Work Text:
SWISH!
A little girl in a yellow raincoat was running for her dear life.
That permanent smile carved on the floating man’s face was sure to leave a mentally scarring image now engraved on her mind, as he chases her down. Statues of various hands were attempting to block out her exit, only for her to easily avoid each crushing stones. She sees another girl a bit younger than her, trying her best to barge open the large metal gate. Their gazes meet, wordlessly agreeing to temporarily work with each other to escape this menace.
One, two, three!
She boosts her up. The switch is flipped. They run again. A bridge snaps in two.
A shed?
The girl in the yellow raincoat looks back, and makes haste for the shed’s door, locking it in place. The girl in white desperately attempts to get the yellow raincoat to open the door for her.
She does not comply.
She makes her way down, down, down, to the mysterious rocky path. Natural light presents itself upon her presence, and there she makes her way out. It was... a slightly peaceful scene. She takes her time as she walks, and from there, sees the little white haired brat that runs the mansion. Distorted sobs emits from her direction.
There, as if having a sixth sense of some sorts, the white haired mistress turns her head to the girl in the yellow raincoat’s figure. Distressed about seeing her condition, She SCREAMS.
The girl could only bring herself to cover her ears, as she makes a mad dash towards the way she made out of. Only to realize, it was a mistake doing so.
The mistress had caught up to her, and there her body disappears in a trail of mist at a touch, leaving only the yellow raincoat.
The Flesh blinks.
‘NOT YET.’
⚋▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬⚋
A little boy with a paper bag walked hand in hand with a girl in a grey cardigan.
They were traversing the hallways of an old, worn out hallways of the school. Small steps filled the once empty path they took. Various clanking noises from glass bodies, and buckets filled with assortments of tools were heard.
Sneaking, running, chattering, laughing.
They make their way into a hallway, a toy duck lies in the middle of the spotlight.
Curiosity got the best of the boy.
He approaches, as a floorboard makes a sound of activation. The girl in the grey cardigan ducks in realization only for it to be too late.
A light fixture goes swaying down, and hits the boy head on, who barely even turned his head to observe what he had just done.
The Flesh blinks.
‘NOT YET.’
⚋▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬⚋
A little boy in a blue sweater flicked his flashlight on.
He observes, and observes the depths. There are many platforms to hop on and give him a breather, which was such a blessing as he could not keep swimming for so long. He turns his head, and in an instant the barrel he’s standing on is pushed upward with such brute force, knocking him out of it. He makes a mad dash for the other platform with a large tub, and reeks the smell of fish.
To his surprise that shouldn’t have been, it did contain some fish on it. He wonders...
He grabs a half, and throws it into the water to test something. The half was there, and for a moment...
SWOOP!
It’s gone as a munching noise emitted from the murky waters down below –How he can hear it, he does not know— but nonetheless... His theory was indeed correct.
He throws another for good measure. As soon as the bubbles made it’s way to the bait, he has already made it halfway into the other side.
Just a little bit more...
He outstretches his hand. But dread fills him as a large silhouette of a giant hand covers his entirety.
He feels himself being pulled down... down... down.
His hand stretches into the surface desperately reaching for it. His breath doesn’t last.
Soon, he is pulled into an embrace by a wrinkly old figure, his lungs now filled with water as he lets out his last breath to bubble up into the surface.
The Flesh blinks.
‘NOT YET.’
⚋▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬⚋
A little girl in a yellow raincoat who previously wore a grey cardigan made her way into the kitchen.
Underneath the shelves of utensils she ducks, and tries to avoid the bulking figure of a chef, that was slicing a piece of meat from unidentifiable sources. They are in the middle of the sea, She thinks, Where would meat as huge of an amount as such come from? They are certainly not belonging of a child like her.
She halts her thoughts, as she sneaks through and makes her way into the main room of the place. Various ingredients scattered in a way that could cause such a health hazard. Upon observing, she hears the gross coughing emitting from the Chef she had just recently avoided.
‘Gross.’
She remembers the memory of a rat with a torn neck just from the other side of the storage. She instantly flinches with disgust at the thought.
'Why can’t I never control myself whenever that happens...’
She silently apologizes to who might think to be the ghost of the dead rat she had consumed into the air, hoping to give it a bit of peace in a way. A nome hits the partially open oven, alerting the Chef, who sounded like a wheezing elephant, and SCREAMED.
The girl swears she could hear the FAT of the Chef’s body as it makes a mad dash towards her. She ducks underneath a table, hoping it would keep her safe.
Only for the hope of safety to be false, as the Chef ducks and sticks his slimy disgusting hands to take ahold of her. She squirms repeatedly, as she is brought into the other room, where the questionable meat was previously in.
The Chef pins her entire body down, and grabs a knife...
Aiming for the neck as he raises.
The knife goes down a swishing manner.
The Flesh blinks.
‘NOT YET.’
⚋▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬⚋
The Flesh blinks it’s many eyes upon the observation, in The Tower where the rules of Time, Dimensions and Physics simply do not exist. The sight of the children’s dead bodies from different timelines fills it with both amusement and frustration, as they have met their untimely demise. Clearly, this was not how The Flesh had planned things to go. So it had to do what it does best again.
‘NOT YET.’ They spoke. They turned to the man in the middle, snapping him out of his trance.
‘Broadcaster. Rewind time for us, and we will give you your greatest desire of peaceful dreams once more.’ The Flesh offers.
The man in the middle complies. Time seemed to turn into a halt for everywhere around the world. And for a moment, everything went backwards.
Mirrors smashed by a distressed woman in a brown kimono went unbroken.
The girl who previously wore a grey cardigan had her bones repaired and reattached, as the knife raises again and again.
The boy who had a paper bag had his skull shattered by a light fixture suddenly raises from his position all the while clutching toy duck bait, as the fixture makes it’s way to the top once more.
The one in the blue sweater begins to be pulled back into the surface, as the water leaves his lungs.
The girl in the yellow raincoat and a long braid begins to reappear, as the black mist that once surrounded her body returns to the Mistress of the Nest.
The Flesh smiled internally. Broken bodies, now fully repaired once more. The rewinding stops, and soon the four children from different timelines lay in a dreamless sleep. The Flesh closes it’s eyes, as it sends a reminder for the children to not make the same mistake again.
GASP!
They all wake up in cold sweat.
⚋▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬⚋
The Flesh smiled.
A little boy was now sitting in the man’s chair, sobbing.
A little girl in a yellow raincoat collapses to her knees at the outside of the watercraft, tears and hopes threatening to spill out.
A strange little conehead creature who had been previously the boy in a blue sweater lay in a pool of blood, unmoving.
A yellow raincoat floated in the murky green waters of the cliffside, with no sign of it’s owner anywhere.
The Flesh offered the little boy a worn out fedora. The boy wordlessly takes it, and puts it on his head, shutting his eyes close as he is then pulled into a dream.
The girl walks back into the quarters of the woman she had conquered. There, a white mask lay on the vanity. The girl looks at the fragments of the vanity’s mirror, only to see a grotesque figure as similar as those that had had once tried to consume her while wearing her yellow raincoat. She stumbles back in fear.
She slips on the mask –a thought that suddenly crossed her, the words ’when I hide my face, I feel safe’ from her former friend during their travels together peeking from her head-- , and she looks back, she sees an ordinary figure with a yellow raincoat. A tear slipped from the girls cheeks as the thought, ‘I’m a monster, I’m no different’ echoed through her mind. She hugs her knees tightly, as if making herself smaller than she already is would make the thoughts disappear.
This is just what The Flesh had wanted.
‘PERFECT.’