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“ Can’t wait to meet you, so join the animatronic family~ ” Charlie sang softly as he scrolled through his emails. It was a rather slow day for the musician, enjoying the fact that his most recent song had gotten positive reception from his fans. His eyes quickly glanced over all the emails he’d gotten from YouTube saying that his video got comments, a small smile on his face.
A flash of a familiar name caught his eye and Charlie stopped scrolling. The name where it said the sender read “Lewis Dawkins” and the subject name read “A Gift :)” Charlie slightly raised his eyebrow at the message. It wasn’t like he wasn’t friends with Dawko and him emailing something to Charlie was odd, but… he couldn’t put his finger on what but something about the email’s subject name was off putting.
Clicking on the email, he could see it was also shared with Will and DHeusta. Maybe this was going to end up being some sort of secret group collab project, sort of like how Charlie did a big collab for Labyrinth? The actual email wasn’t much, just a single video. The same odd feeling Charlie got first looking at the email came back. He tried to shake it off.
It was just a video, how bad could it be?
He clicked on the video and put it into full screen mode before pressing play. The screen was dark before the familiar face of Dawko was there smiling. “ Hey, to all you listening,” Dawko said, in a sing-song voice for some unknown reason, “ Hey, I got a gift to bring. Listen up now, give me your time now. Look into my soul you three~ ”
With that, the screen changed to an odd pink and purple spiral. Furrowing his brows, Charlie leaned closer to examine it. It didn’t seem particularly special, simply just spinning around repeatedly, over and over and over-
Charlie realized he had gotten even closer to his computer screen when his nose gently bumped into it. Rubbing his nose, he tried to make sense of what was going on, but his brain almost felt like it was in some sort of fog. Maybe it was enough screen time for him. He should probably take a break, possibly get something for his head while he was up.
He tried moving to get up from his chair, but his body stayed still. Charlie tried pushing himself up off the chair, sliding down and off, even trying to push his chair away from the desk, but nothing seemed to work. All he could do was sit and look straight ahead at the computer. “What’s up on my screen?” Charlie muttered to himself. That had to be the cause of this problem, right? He was perfectly fine up until he started watching this video from Dawko. Why did he even send it in the first place?
“ So that I can come in of course ! ”
If Charlie could still move his body, he would have jumped up a few inches out of his seat. “Who-?!” he exclaimed before he heard a glitchy laugh. “ Don’t worry Charlie, I’m a friend of Dawko’s as well and I’m not here to hurt you. Intentionally, that is. ” the voice attempted to reassure him but to no real avail. “Wh-What did you do to me? Why can’t I move?” Charlie asked. “ Haven’t you ever heard of brainwashing? Or mind control, this probably falls more into that category. Really, this is on you for not figuring out that you were looking at a classic brainwashing spiral, albeit it’s aesthetically different. ”
“But why would- But why would Dawko send something like that? That doesn’t-”
“ Make any sense? Honestly, it’s nothing for you to worry your little head about. Not like you’ll be worrying about anything anytime soon though. ”
Charlie opened his mouth to ask what he meant but the words died in his mouth as he felt the fog in his head grow even more. He couldn’t think clearly, scrunching his face in pain as he drifted away.
“ I’m your friend and I don’t lie! So give into me in a blink of an eye~ ”
As he kept staring at the spiral, he began to wonder why he was worried in the first place. All Dawko did was use his trust to do whatever this was, Charlie had no idea- try to share this nice video with him. Why didn’t he fight back, that’s what he should be doing right now but he couldn’t- realize that sooner?
“ Now that I got your soul… ”
With a few blinks, his head cleared. His head felt completely and utterly cleared for the first time in ages. A small smile formed on his face as he finally stood up.
“ Let’s work together to take o̶̢͔͖̣͓̖̳̔̚v̶̟̅̿́̓̈́͝͝è̶̛̱̟͇̪̈́̓̀́r̵͎̼̥̳͒͌ ̶̤̒́̕t̴̙͈͔̗̉̓̈h̸̬̺̼͌ẻ̸̳́̓̄̊͘͠ ̷̢͉͈͔̘̪͐̃̈́ͅw̸̭͗̿̀̓̎o̵̜̠͖͂̍́͋̌̐r̵̜͕̐͊͒͑̏̈l̴̜̤͐̍̒̉͜ď̵̩̓͌̽̂!̵̠̎̿̑̕”
Laughing uproariously, Charlie’s eyes glowed pink.