Chapter Text
The Narrator was alone. No Stanley, no player, no game. Stuck in place, tethered to an unmoving body, frozen in time. There was no way out, no way to reach an ending or reset. Nothing but time.
But it had to be an ending, right? Eventually, the game would reset and he’d be back for another run in the office. Hopefully the player would take some time off and leave them alone. That hadn’t happened in a while. He and Stanley would sit in the employee lounge, drinking soda. Or maybe tea. Stanley hated tea, but one of these days the Narrator would convince him of its superior-
If he ever returned. If this wasn’t some strange corruption of their world that would spiral into eternity, with Stanley frozen in time like a statue and the Narrator alone for-
No. It would work out. It always did. No matter what the game threw at them, no matter how it messed with their minds, it always worked out. The Narrator just needed something to keep his mind occupied.
“How about this, Stanley? What if I imagine a better game than what we were given. Not just better than that silly new content that just teased us with something other than the monotonous tedium of doing the same endings over and over, but a better game all over?
I could create it, Stanley. Truly created a game, not just pretend I created it for the benefit of a player who only uses us for their own entertainment. It would be… Well, it would be silly. It would have something that would make the game much sillier, so we don’t have to go through those horrid endings anymore.
Silly… silly… let’s see… Clowns are silly. No, too obvious. What about funny hats? No, it needs to be something mundane treated as special. Now that’s the height of silliness? Don’t you agree Stanley?”
Stanley didn’t answer. He never answered when the player had control of him, but this was different. The Narrator wasn’t even sure the player was here while Stanley was frozen. They probably experienced the skips as instantaneous moments.
Did Stanley? Was he frozen in mind as well as body? What if he wasn’t? What if he was stuck there, unable to hear the Narrator, just as desperately alone as he was? No. That was a horrible thought and the Narrator shoved it down where it belonged. Better focus his imagination elsewhere.
“I’ve got it Stanley! We’ll have a bucket. Not just any bucket, but a magic comforting bucket that makes all the endings change. Now the endings won’t have the player send you to your death, or try to destroy your mind. Even if there are endings that could be considered bad, they’ll be too ridiculous to take seriously.”
That would be a nice change. Most endings caused Stanley grief in one way or another. The Narrator only had a taste of it in what Stanley had told him was the Zending. He saw the name in a museum the Narrator wasn’t allowed to visit. He’d always wanted to visit. The Narrator figured he’d like museums and wished the game had more, ones with art and history that he could enter and peruse at his leisure.
Anyway, the Zending was the only ending where the Narrator even felt any sort of pain. While the game forced his dialog, over time the Narrator had come to relate to the words. But he related them to the player and their constant intrusion into the peaceful moments when they weren’t piloting Stanley like a puppet.
But still, it wasn’t as bad as what Stanley went through. Was this the game’s way of making the Narrator’s turn? Giving Stanley a break and forcing the Narrator to experience true terror for the first time?
No, he experience terror once before, back when the game first started. He’d been forced to craft the world, by an entity that never showed its face. The Narrator had created the world Stanley and himself were forced to perform in, a prison with only one stop the Narrator had any control left.
He thought it would be a way for them to escape, to never have to deal with the game again. They could hide out forever, and the Narrator could create everything they’d need. But when he tried to take Stanley inside, the player came too.
Oh god. He’d let the player into his Memory Zone. This was his fault. His fault. His.
The Narrator coughed. It felt strange, as if his throat had grown longer. He had a harder time keeping a physical form nowadays. He’d always been able to change his form, even lose it at times, but now it shifted back and forth between different shapes and sizes. He was losing himself, a little bit more every day.
Anyway, back to the sequel.
“We’ll have to connect it to what’s happened here, to keep the player satisfied. I know, I’ll make it a sequel. But before we get to the sequel, I’ll build, say, an expo hall or something, where I can introduce everything. Oh, it’ll all tie in so nicely!”
He got to work, planning and imagining a world, an expo with all the new items, a replica of the office with new decorations and a bucket in a special location, and endings, so many new endings, that would both make the game easier on Stanley and satisfy the player.
“No… Stanley, this isn’t enough. It needs something more. It needs you.”
The Narrator imagined Stanley, walking through his new game, bucket in tow. Oh how he loved that bucket. He’d even keep it with him after the player left, carrying around random items, like pens and staplers. Stanley loved the new endings. He thanked the Narrator for making it so much better than the horror of the old game.
And the player was ecstatic as well. He was so enthralled with the new endings, that he never went back to the old ones. It was perfect. Stanley and the Narrator, still stuck but happier than they’d ever been.
He even added a whole collectable figurine plot, one that tricked the player into thinking the game was over and that the Narrator was ready to move on. The player found the finality so narratively satisfying that they left and never returned.
Stanley and the Narrator were free!
“Stanley, isn’t that great? We’re free!”
There was no response. Stanley still stood frozen, surrounded by a world he would never get to see. The buildings outside Stanley’s prison crumbled to dust, turning the Memory Zone into a desert of futile dreams.
There would be no ending, no reset. The end was never the end was never the end was never the end was never