Chapter Text
February 23rd, 1995
It was a cold deary day, the snow that was accumulating for the past couple of months was starting to melt away, leaving everything in a mix of grey and faded brown. It’s chill trying to seep its way into a building that was for an old workshop. There was a single truck in the building behind it, but there didn’t seem to be a lot of workers in sight.
A man named Mathew was in the lounge room of the Gent Corporations, wearing boots, a green beanie hat over his black hair. The color of the beanie matched his coat he was wearing that was accompanied by his jeans.
He had feet up on the table as he watched the old TV play old reruns of Bendy cartoons. He gave a warm smile as he watched the shorts, and the occasional longer episode that would play by through. It’s been a long day and he was finally taking his break from moving things around.
“Man, you still watching those old cartoons?”
Mathew turned his head to see his friend and fellow coworker Brian at the doorway, leaning against the frame with crossed arms.
“Yeah, and?” Mathew said, seemingly unbothered by Brian’s comments, leaving Brian to chuckle.
"Nothing better man? This is all kiddie crap. At least put a football game on.”
“I only watch my team, you know that.”
Mathew started to get up while picking up his satchel and stretched his shoulders in a backwards circle, turning to Brian.
“Are we done for the day? We’ve been here all this time collecting the old museum trinkets and shit.”
Brian had Mathew follow him giving a tired sigh,
“You know we’re told to collect everything before we leave, right? So no, we’re not done.”
“Of course we aren’t.” Mathew gave a silent sigh back, following Brian through the rooms. “It’s cold here, must be a pretty old building.”
Brian didn’t respond, seemingly walking past the pieces of history they were supposed to be collecting, opening a door into another room.
“You know, we’re supposed to not grab this, but I think you should check this out..!”
Brian says with a grin, letting Mathew see what was in front of him.
There was a large machine coated in dried up black… whatever it was, he wasn’t touching it. It looked extremely old, with pipes attached all around it.
Somehow, it seemed to still be all hooked up and still fully installed.
“Uh… what is… this?” Mathew said, kneeling down to the machine. He didn’t dare touch it but he was still rather interested in what it was.
“This was apparently something they had back when Joey Drew Studios was still running.” Brian responded, looking at the tall stands near them, “Think it still works?”
“No.”
Mathew said rather bluntly. He wasn’t fond of his job, but he knew better than to really mess with anything that he had to work with.
“Listen, it’s probably super old and could probably let out some toxic stuff from how… old it is. Seriously when the heck was this thing made?”
Brian seemed to ignore Mathew again, turning to the other room, “Tell you what, why don’t we just put everything together so that when we need to take it all out, we can just put all together in truck, ok? Just get the stuff and put it on these pedestals.”
Mathew gave Brian an unamused stare, but didn’t disagree with what he said. They’ve been here since 7 AM and now it’s almost 8 PM. Without giving a struggle, he turned to see that each pedestal had a picture for what they needed.
“Alright, simple enough, they’re just in the other room.”
He turned around and grabbed every object that was needed. He grabbed an old gear, next to it was a record, then a book, followed by the wrench and ink jar.
He then turned to see the final object he needed, a doll of the same cartoon character he was watching earlier. A plush doll of Bendy. He picked it up, only to see that there was another doll not too far away.
He took a minute to think about what he was going to do, then turned to put the second doll in his satchel, figuring nobody would notice.
“You get ‘em yet?” Brian called out, seemingly rushing Mathew a bit. The man rubbed his face in response.
“Yeah, ease up, I got them right here.” He says, walking right into the room.
“Good, put ‘em down already.”
“You good man?”
“Yeah, I just wanna get home soon.”
Mathew shrugged it off as he saw Brian walk to the right of the machine, placing each object down on their respective place. He finished this off with the plush of the Bendy doll, which he patted it’s head with a smile.
He turned around expecting to see Brian, only to see just the machine in front of him. He bit his lip slightly, walking over to it. “Now what even is this thing… how we gonna get this thing up-“
ker-clunk!
The noise made Mathew jump a little, as he saw Brian walk past the corner, not making eye contact as he looked at the machine.
The machine began to start running, pumping and whirring around much to the surprise of Mathew.
“Holy shit, it’s running… oh it’s ink? Did they used to make their own ink or something?”
SLAM!
Mathew turned to see the door closed behind him, and Brian nowhere to be found. He gave a chuckle before walking over to the door.
“Very funny, for a guy so obsessed by this machine, you sure ran with your tail between your legs the minute it started running!” he called out, grabbing the knob of the door and trying to twist it.
The door rattled, but the knob refused to turn nor did the door open up.
“What the… hey! Brian?”
He rattled the door some more as the machine kept on running.
“This some kinda prank? Cause I decided to take a break?”
He looked down at his feet, the floor was now covered in ink and starting to accumulate upwards.
“Hey man this ain’t funny! The thing’s still running and overflowing!”
It was already up to his knees. Mathew took no time to get away from the door, attempting to make his way to where Brian was earlier, seeing a switch that was activated. He sloshed through as he grabbed at the handle in attempt to pull it back up, but the switch wouldn’t budge in the slightest.
With a growl, he turned back to the door, now the ink was going past his waist.
“BRIAN! HEY! WHAT THE HELL?!”
He kept on trying to push and smack at the door, the ink now nearing his shoulders.
He turned his head up, trying to keep his mouth and nose up towards the ink, but it futile.
Then, it was all black.