Work Text:
Every nook and cranny searched, from the ceiling of a very dangerous climb to an almost claustrophobic crawlspace in the floors or on the walls.
Everything has been thrown and scattered top and bottom, everything has been cleaned top to bottom.
Searching everywhere, everything, every desk, every paper yet no sign of where he's gone.
The story cannot continue without a Narrator, did he possibly tip him off the edge? 'No no of course not!' But the lonely man's thoughts were not interrupted by a single note of Narry.
Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.
How long has it been now? Hours? Days? Months? Years? He could not tell.
The parable did not reset; he could tell from the blood here and there from biting his fingers.
Employee 427 wandered and wandered as he grew less and less hopeful and more desperate for his Narrator's return.
Messed up hair was being slightly pulled out as Stanley tried to think clearly, his thoughts ramped up ten fold blocking out any outside sounds. How long was he here? Was this his hell? His internal punishment? What has he done to deserve this torcher?
He liked seeing the red. The red that trickled down his arms and stained his shirt, watching the process of the red drying and turning darker shades before going brown.
Picking at old scabs always brought the red back, it was the only thing that seemed to come back to him for who knows how long.
Wandering the halls he clutched a remnant of the bucket close, dull slightly jagged metal adorned with torn stickers was held tightly in the mumbling man's arms, his voice now hoarse from all this time.
Narrator grew quite bored, he's written a multitude of stories and some best selling books yet it hasn't brought much joy like his game, his creation made all by himself that he loved dearly. Deciding he needed a refresher Narrator happily started to boot up his game though wondered how much of a mess the office would be, after all he did leave Stanley alone for quite a long time.
Humming a soft tune Narrator looked through the monitors but he didn't see Stanley in his office, nor the lounge, or almost anywhere else but one suspicion was clear: the place was trashed and was that part of the bucket? Quickly he flipped through the cameras until he spotted Stanley or the man he knew as such.
Blood coated his clothes and some splatters were apparent on the floor beside him, the small trickle of red leaving more in his wake as he strolled to the Meeting Room and a patch of curly locks was missing from his scalp. And something was off about that walk about that body language and why was he hearing strangled words?
"Stanley?" The older gentleman piped concern washing over his entire being but the disheveled being didn't stop, only continued walking. Narrator was becoming more anxious by the second trying desperately to get Stanley to hear him.
Yelling, shouting, screaming, flinging things in the office didn't work for a few minutes until it finally did. Stanley noticed a flipped over chair and the desperate cry of the Narrator. This caused a hoarse laugh to come from the man gripping his hair and dropping the broken bucket piece. The laughing grew as Stanley thought he finally snapped when in actuality he snapped long ago.
Narrator didn't know what to do, he tried desperately to get him to stop as blood started dripping from the other's mouth from being so raw.
He knew what he had to do and reset hoping it would fix whatever had happened.
'The End Is Never The End' the white text always flashed on screen after a reset and seeing Stanley good as new made him relieved but as soon as Stanley gained control a blood curdling scream came out of the man, he wondered why the hell decided to reset finally, why he had to relive through the shrieking silence that followed him now, why-
Narrator closed the program and started to cry, there was no point in piecing together this broken man and so he restarted.
"This is a story of a man named Stanley." Again the story continues as he saw the slightly terrified man get up and head out the office door.