Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

A Dark and Stormy Night

“We’re always free to choose. To believe what we want to believe. But when you step back, when you really look at where you’ve been, and the things you’ve done. Your past will come… to devour you.”

A dramatic pause, punctuated by heavily falling rain and a rumble of thunder. Distantly, the sound of leaking roofs puddling in the corner of the hallways added an echo that further emphasized the dark atmosphere… and yet somehow, this damp darkness was familiar.

Comforting.

            The room was large, but cluttered, desks and chairs stacked into each other and barely leaving room to move, let alone run, in case of an emergency. Somehow, though, even the mess was comforting. Everything had its place, if you knew where to look. What you needed could be found, if you gave it the time.

            When the rain lightened up, a different sound could be heard; the scratching of pen and pencil on thick paper. Steady, measured strokes, followed occasionally by a few quick lines of emphasis, until finally, finally, it was finished.

            “There you go, little guy,” Audrey murmured to the drawing of a cute little demon with a red bowtie, jumping into the air with a piece of paper gripped tightly in one hand. “And only eight hundred more commissions to go!” She leaned away from the drawing desk and sighed, staring up at the poster she had gotten.

It was a picture of her with her fluffy brown hair neatly combed and her eyes shining with excitement. “Employee of the Month” had been crossed out and “Youtuber of the Month” had been scrawled across the bottom.

She took another second to admire her handiwork before reaching for her phone, which she had taped to the lamp above the sketch. She tugged the tape off quickly and turned the camera to her face. “Thanks for watching my drawing live stream, everyone!” She said to the video recording. “Commission number two hundred is finally done! I’m going to end things here tonight, but don’t go away! I’m gonna be doing a live stream let’s play vlog in a few minutes! My friend Wilson said he wanted to show me something tonight, so that’s what’s gonna go down. Remember, if you want to commission me, you can send me a message on my Patreon! The prices are listed there, but keep in mind, I have eight hundred more commissions to do for Mr. Arch, so it’ll probably be a while before I get to you. Sorry, rules are rules! I’m shutting off now! See ya!”

She blew a final kiss at the screen before turning off the video. She snuck a glance at the live comment section. A user named nArch1921 had left the most recent comment, saying: “Dear Audrey, please stop recording the drawings you do for Arch Gate Pictures, they are private property and I will have to take compensation out of your paycheck. Also, these are not “commissions”; this is your job. Please go back to work. Sincerely, Nathan Arch, CEO of Arch Gate Pictures.”

Audrey shook her head lightly and breathed a laugh. Mr. Arch was so nice to leave a comment on each of her videos, even though he clearly had no idea how the internet worked.

She leaned back in her chair, stretching out her back, then tapped her fingers against the desk in a way that the other people at Arch Gate Pictures said looked “unnatural” before they screamed at her to see a doctor.

Audrey didn’t have time to see the doctor, though; it was almost time for her live stream let’s play vlog!

“No way I’m getting through this stream without some coffee! Should be some downstairs.”

Time for a Little Adventure

            “I suppose it would be too much to ask for coffee to come in a vending machine,” Audrey muttered as she slapped the vending machine in the hallway haphazardly, bending her wrist over ninety degrees with each slap.

Oh, well. There would definitely be a pot down in the breaker room. Heck, maybe Wilson would be waiting down there to show her the thing he wanted her to see!

            She wandered aimlessly around the halls toward the elevator, making sure she got a really good look at the tiled walls and trying to peek through the window blinds. The lighting was poor, but it added to the mood, she thought.

            At least until a crash of lightning made the single lamp overhead spark dangerously. “Jeezing heckers!” She cried out before covering her mouth in embarrassment. She tried not to swear unless she was livestreaming, because swearing was only cool when people were watching her. She really needed that coffee.

Here He Is!

            “Really?” Audrey groaned as the doorknob rattled in her hand. “They locked me in? Ugh, this is so not poggers, bro. Good thing I brought my own key today.”

            She turned around and headed back for her office, only to stop short in surprise. “Who put this here?” She wondered, looking at the old cut out of the devil darling himself, Bendy, that was staring right at her. She shook off the surprise and gently picked up the cut out, dancing him over to lean against the wall, murmuring “boop boop be-doop” all the way.

She paused, looked down the hall both ways to make sure no one was around, and gave the Bendy cut out a little kiss on the forehead. Man, she thought as she finally found her keys, it would be so cool if Bendy was real.

Did You See That?

            “Wilson, are you back there?” Audrey tried to pull open the door next to the elevator, but despite it being opened a crack, it refused to budge. “Wilson?” She called again. “Wiiiilsoooon!”

No response.

“Okay, I guess this door is just stuck for no reason. Anyway, gotta get that bean water!” Audrey slapped the elevator button and stepped in through the sliding doors. She slapped the button that would take her the breaker room and leaned against the wall. Geez, she needed that coffee, or else she might just take a nap… right… in here…

An arm grabbed the elevator door with a loud thump, startling a gasp out of her.

“Audrey…” a raspy voice sang gently as the doors were forced open, revealing a skinny old man with a cloudy gray eye and a permanent scowl on his face.

“Oh, Wilson!” Audrey put a hand to her heart and sighed in relief. “You scared me to death!”

“I’m sorry, my dear,” Wilson wheezed breathily. “Didn’t mean to frighten you... you’re working late tonight.”

“Yeah, I had to finish that commission Mr. Arch asked me to do.”

Wilson’s brow twitched at the mention of Mr. Arch, for some reason. “A pretty girl like you shouldn’t be wandering around all by yourself.” He took a deep, wheezy breath. “Mind if I… step in?”

“No, of course not!” Audrey waved him into the elevator. “Besides, now you can show me that thing you wanted me to see!”

“Thank you, Audrey. You look like you could use a little… company.”

“Sounds poggers, bro!” Audrey watched the doors close, only to gasp suddenly and shout, “wait!”

She tried to stop the elevator door with her arm like Wilson had, but she didn’t quite have the upper arm strength to force it to stay open, so the door simply closed around her arm with a loud squelch. This did not bother Audrey, though, and she used her foot to force the crack in the door open. She hurried back out of the elevator.

“Audrey…” Wilson wheezed like the old man he was. “Where are you going…?”

“I heard about this crazy rumor the other day, and I wanted to test it. Hold the door, I’ll be right back!”

Audrey dashed back to her office and rifled around the mess until she found three rubber balls. She brought them back to the elevator and stopped next to the bucket of water that The Author forgot to mention was there, haha oops. She looked excitedly at Wilson. “Watch this!”

She plunked the balls into the bucket, one by one, and waited. Suddenly, a giant, colorful hand puppet that looked a bit like a dragon popped out of the bucket. It gagged hoarsely, then coughed up each ball after a series of painful hacks. It looked around the room dizzily, before slipping back into the bucket. Audrey pointed with both hands at the bucket. “DID YOU SEE THAT?!” She shouted.

Wilson looked on, wondering if this whole plan would be worth the effort.

It Begins

            Wilson had been hacking up phlegm ever since the elevator ride began, and as nice a guy as he was, Audrey was getting tired of the mess. “So,” she said. “It’s been really nice these past few days, huh?”

            Wilson hacked up the last of the phlegm and spat it into the corner. “Just beautiful…” he wheezed. “Gorgeous…”

            Suddenly, the elevator jerked to a stop and the light overhead turned red. “What was that?” Audrey wondered, then she groaned in annoyance. “Please don’t tell me we’re trapped in here. I can’t get my gamer face on in these conditions!”

            “Don’t you worry, my dear,” Wilson rasped assuredly. “It’s just a little short in the system… Happening a lot these past few days.”

            “Really?” she replied. “I didn’t notice. Then again, I don’t really leave my office that much. I haven’t showered in years!”

            Wilson wheezed heavily. “No need to fret.” The doors, conveniently, opened right after that. “Let’s see what we can find… Come along, now. Old Wilson will protect you…”

            “Thanks, man. You’re a pal.” Audrey waited patiently as Wilson shuffled his old man legs as slowly as possible out of the elevator and began fiddling with an open panel on the wall outside. She stepped out of the elevator… and paused. Something about this whole thing felt… off. She glanced at Wilson, who stared purposefully at the switches he was fiddling with. Then she looked back at the elevator doors, which had closed silently behind them.

            Wait a minute…

            Wait a minute!

            “Wilson,” she said shakily. “Y-you didn’t…”

            Wilson said nothing.

            “You… you…! This is the thing you wanted to show me, isn’t it? The thing for my live stream let’s play vlog?! You shouldn’t have!” She squealed and pulled her phone out of her pocket. “Why didn’t you tell me? I could have been recording this whole time! I would have gotten so much clout for the puppet thing earlier! Hang on, I’ve got to start the video…”

            Audrey fiddled with the camera, tapping apps and buttons until it was all set up. No one was in the audience yet, but that would change very soon. She took a deep breath, smiled, and hit “record”.

            “Hello, everyone! My name is GamerGodGamerQueenAudrey420, and welcome to my live stream let’s play vlog! Blaze it!” She mimicked smoking a weed cigarette like how other cool gamer kids would, even though she was a holy child of God and would never taint her body like that. “Today’s scenario: a surprise from my good friend Wilson! Say hi to the audience, Wilson! Wilson?”

            Wilson continued to fiddle with the panel on the wall, not seeming to care that he was live on the internet.

            “Hey, Wilson, you good?” Audrey slapped him on the back, forcing him to pull a switch that turned on the lights. “Good job, Wilson!” She cheered as Wilson coughed all over the panel. She turned her camera towards the rest of the room. “Whoa…” she said, gazing at the posters and banners lining the walls, all featuring a very important looking man named… Joey Drew.

            “Just a few more switches to throw,” Wilson finally managed. “Follow me… it will be perfectly… safe…”

            “No thanks,” said Audrey and she walked down the hall, slapping at the bust of Joey Drew to see if there was a hidden switch under it. “You’re too slow for this gamer girl! Follow me!

The Gathering

            Audrey meandered around the exhibit of Joey Drew’s works as an animator, reading the obituary and the explanation of Silly Vision, which would be cool for me to read out to you, but I won’t, because that’s a lot of words and I don’t feel like writing them out. You can look them up yourself, you degenerate scum.

            She meandered so much, in fact, that Audrey ended up behind Wilson as he stood in front a door to a separate room. She paused and waited for him to open the door. He stared back at her. They stared at each other for a while, and Audrey’s viewer count dropped from two to one. Finally, she drew back her arm and slapped him in the chest. This seemed to get Wilson back on track, and he opened the door into a cramped little room with pedestals and boxy machine in the back that seemed to… beckon… to her…

            She blinked out of her stupor and smacked Wilson again, who seemed to have also gotten lost in the allure of the machine. He turned to her and gestured at the pedestals. “Looks like someone’s been messing with the exhibits…” he rasped. “There should be something on each of these pedestals. Audrey—”

            “Let me guess,” Audrey huffed. “You want me to find the stuff and put it on the things, right?” She sighed. “I hate fetch quests…”

            “Sweet Audrey…” Wilson cooed. “Do an old man a favor and go find them? I’ll tend to the power...”

            Audrey looked at him for a moment, then sighed. “Okay, but only because they all have to be in this room and it won’t take long.” She turned to her phone and gave a strained smile to her viewer. “Alright, gamers, it looks like we have to earn the real game play, so let’s go on a hunt! Let’s just hope this isn’t the entire game Wilson has planned…”

Pull that Switch!

            “Oh, you’re so cute; you’re so cute!” Audrey nuzzled the beanie Bendy doll affectionately. “I don’t wanna let you go… I’m gonna eat you up—!” A loud, wet cough from Wilson reminded her that she was in the middle of a live stream let’s play vlog. “Bye-bye, Bendy,” she cooed, before placing him gently on the pedestal.

            “Only one thing left to do…” Wilson rasped. “Pull that switch!” He pointed an old man hand behind her, at the big red lever on the wall.

            “Okay!” Audrey grabbed the switch, then paused to look over her shoulder. “I know you were actually doing jack all about the power while I was gathering stuff, but I really just want the game to start now.” She pulled the switch. The lights shut off with a distant bang, and Audrey turned to face Wilson. “What now?”

            “It is done…” Wilson whispered in the darkness.

            “Yep, sure is. So what happens now?”

            “Oh, Audrey…” The lights came on, much dimmer than before, and a red light blinked on the far wall. The boxy machine was shuddering and clanking a bit. “The things you’ve set in motion…”

            Ink began to leak from the machine, spilling languidly onto the floor and rising above her ankles. “Aw, man,” Audrey muttered, aiming her camera at the rising ink. “Mr. Arch got me these shoes as a gift… I think he said the brand was called ‘Mandatory for the Work Environment’, or something.”

            “The ink is calling us, my dear... Can’t you hear it?” Wilson stalked slowly towards her.

            “No, but you know what I can hear? Me, losing viewers from that fetch quest you made me do. Is the game about to begin?”

            Wilson shushed her. “Don’t fret… we’re going home!”

            “Oh, is that what this is?” Audrey sighed and kicked some ink at Wilson. “I didn’t realize the ‘cool thing’ you wanted to show me was your house, Wilson, or else I would have said no. I’m a busy gamer girl, man, and I don’t have time to go to your old man house—”

            Wilson gripped her shoulders. “Listen to me, Audrey…” he growled. “Pay attention to these last words…”

            “…Alright? I’ve been listening, bro.” The ink was going above their knees now.

            “Because very soon…” he leaned close to her, his old man breath steaming up her camera. “You will forget everything.”

            “Hey, watch the camera, man. My viewers don’t need to see your old man mouth.”

            “Come find me, Audrey.”

            Audrey blinked at him. “…At your house?”

            “Come find me, and I’ll show you your purpose…! I’ll show you… the truth!”

            “I’m pretty sure my true purpose in life is to be a gamer girl, but if that’s what your game is all about—”

            “And now…” Wilson took a deep, long breath. “…we die.”

            “…Okay,” said Audrey. They stood there for a few seconds, the ink going up to their thighs now. Audrey flicked her eyes around the room. “Hey, can we hurry this up? I have to give an outro to my viewers because you took so long COUGH-HACK-BLEUGH!”

            As Wilson pulled them beneath the black inky pool, Audrey tightened her grip on her phone. Having ink in her lungs wasn’t very fun, but if this was everything that Wilson had cracked it up to be, this could change her life.

            She might even… get to ten subscribers.

Chapter Text

Chapter 1: Drawn to Darkness

Welcome Home

            Her vision was caked with ink, the sepia tones around her seeming to glow without any real source of light. She reached to wipe the ink out of her eyes and saw that they were both covered in the stuff, her left hand completely drenched and seeming almost skeletal in the light.

            “What’s wrong with my hands?” She whispered hoarsely. “They’re so… so…” she took a shuddering breath. “…So cool!” She finished wiping the caked ink out of her eyes and stood up, surveying the room she was in. Pieces of broken wood and metal were scattered across the floor, and there was a puddle of ink that seemed to flow endlessly from a broken pipe. Someone—or something—had hastily scrawled the words “Welcome Home” onto a far wall.

            “Swag,” she said, taking her phone in hand and pressing the record button. “Hello, everyone! It’s GamerGodGamerQueenAudrey420, back at it again with another episode of my live stream let’s play vlog. So, last time was a little underwhelming, but I think it’s about to pay off! We’re in…” she looked around, noticing a few posters that claimed that “Wilson Knows Your Purpose”. “Wilson said we were going home, so I guess this is his house? Looks pretty cool. Good, creepy ambiance. Kind of like Wilson himself. Looks like there’s a lot of exploring to do, so as my favorite Youtuber once said: let’s jusht jump into it!”

            The first thing she did was slap the sparkly note on the table to pick it up. “’Every great story begins in mystery,’” she read aloud. “’Although things may be dark at the start, the truth will illuminate your way. Don’t be afraid of who you are. Fear only what you may become, and banish it away. Your Best Pal’.” She tossed the note over her shoulder. “Well, I guess that’s my introduction to the game, but it’s kind of generic. There’s gotta be some LORE around here somewhere.”

            And indeed, there was some LORE, hidden right in the cabinet above her head. She slapped the sparkling note and began to read. “’To Grant Cohen, accounting.’ Huh… I guess Wilson has his own accountant? Ahem, anyway: ‘Please inform Mr. Drew that despite his insistence that the rumors of Joey Drew Studios going bankrupt are untrue, I want to remind him that if his studio does indeed fail, all equipment and experiments produced through our partnership, by contract, belong to the Gent Corporation. We will reclaim these assets forcibly if necessary. Alan Gray, CEO’.”

            Audrey shook the note excitedly, watching more sparkles fall onto the floor. “Now that’s what I’m talking about! Some good ol’ fashioned LORE…! Not that I know who any of these people are. Actually, wait…” she thought for a second. “We had an entire museum exhibit about Joey Drew at Arch Gate Pictures that The Author glossed over because she was lazy.”

            “Hey,” The Author said indignantly, “I don’t get a salary for this, you know. I get paid in serotonin, and only sometimes.”

            “That sounds like a whole lot of your problem,” Audrey replied. “Anyway, where was I?”

            “I don’t know,” The Author glanced at the walkthrough she was using to write this story. “Try searching the desk drawers for the things you need to advance.”

            “Okay.”

            “And stop breaking the fourth wall! This isn’t that kind of crack fic, you know!”

            “Says the one who keeps talking,” Audrey countered. There was no response. “Quitter,” Audrey muttered. A piece of broken pipe fell on the floor behind her, eliciting a “fricking frick!” from her lips.

            Audrey sighed and slapped the desk drawers, which slid open to reveal a pair of glittering metal rods. “Weapons?” Audrey said hopefully, attempting to swing them at the desk to break it, to no avail. “Aw, man. How are these supposed to help me advance?”

            She looked around the room, finally noticing a ladder on one wall that was missing two pegs. “Was I supposed to see that first?” She wondered aloud. “’Cause I sure didn’t. That’s bad design on your part, Wilson. Oh, well.” She shoved the metal rods into the ladder and began to climb. “Let’s see what else you’ve got.”

The Music Box

            “’Geez!’” Audrey read aloud from the sparkling note. “You’d think I was drowning kittens the way these people are lookin’ at me! I’ve never seen such disappointment in a person’s eyes. But this is the way of things; if management can’t pay their bills, then the bank takes the goodies back. Still, it does break me a bit knowing how much I loved them old cartoons this place used to make. Oh well! Times change. Life moves on. Telly Wester.”

            Audrey tossed the note into a puddle of ink. “What kind of name is ‘Telly’? That’s dumb. This guy is dumb.”

            She sighed and looked around. She really hadn’t gone that far, but already, she was feeling tired. She really should have gotten that coffee. Then, her eyes passed over a strange box, sitting right where the note she found had been. Had it been there the whole time?

            There was a key-like lever on the side of the box, and she picked it up and twisted the key a few times. She set it back on the table and opened the lid. A small cut out of Alice Angel, another character she had done commissions of for Mr. Arch, popped out and spun around rhythmically, dancing to a cheerful little tune that sounded… vaguely familiar…

            She shook her head and crouched down to go under a half open doorway. It was time to keep moving.

He Speaks

            Audrey had not gotten far when the sharp crackle of an old announcement system blared overhead. “Attention, Children of the Machine!” A raspy voice echoed.

            “Oh hey!” Audrey said loudly. “It’s Wilson!”

            “This… is Wilson, your friend… your protector.”

            “Yep,” Audrey nodded happily. “I knew it!”

            “For two hundred and eleven days, you’ve lived without the ink demon haunting your steps. I banished him away, tore his body in two! In return, I ask just a little favor: among you—”

            Audrey choked on her own spit. “Amogus!” She shrieked.

            “—there is a stranger, a young lady. Bring her to me.” The audio system clicked as the announcement ended, but Audrey was too busy trying not to swallow her own tongue to notice.

            Finally, she could breathe again. “Geez, Wilson,” she grumbled. “Warn me next time before you make an Among Us joke! I nearly died from that alone!” She checked her phone, worried that she may have lost her viewer because of that joke, but was surprised to see there were now three viewers watching her live stream let’s play vlog. So that’s who her audience was… oh well. Beggars can’t be choosers.

            She noticed another sparkling note on an oil drum and slapped it. “’Joey’,” she read aloud. “’Jack and I have been wondering if you could meet with us considering the situation? We have been with you for many years and we feel we have contributed to the success of Bendy in the past. Our interest is purely in keeping this company strong. We just want to help however we can. Let’s talk. Sammy Lawrence’.”

            “Oh, cool,” Audrey muttered. “Yet another person I don’t know. If only there was someone around who knew the history of these people and could tell me about this LORE…” She turned the camera to her face. “Hey, gamers? If any of you know who these people are, mind leaving a comment? I think I’ll be able to get more out of this experience if I have some context.”

            She slapped the locker on her right and hid inside, closing the door behind her and peeking out through a slit in the door. “A stealth mechanic!” She whispered excitedly. “It doesn’t look like there’s anything to hide from now, so they’re probably letting me know so I know what to do later. Maybe I can enjoy this experience after all!”

Poetry in Action

            This sparkly note had a hand print, and was hand-written instead of typed like all of the other notes. “The ink drips,” it read. “Darkness has spread through this studio… the reaching shadows creep around you. Something hungers for your corrupted flesh. It is close. So very close. It strains to grab you, choke you from behind. You will feel its breath upon your neck. It is close.”

            Audrey put the note in her mouth, chewed it up, and spat it back out. “No idea who wrote this, but they’re kind of a try hard, I think. I haven’t seen a poem that edgy since… actually, I don’t think I’ve ever seen any poetry at all. How do I know what poetry is? I live in a closet at Arch Gate Pictures.” Audrey shook her head. “Oh, well, probably not important. Time to keep moving.”

A Body has Been Discovered

            “Something’s going to pop out of that vent on the ceiling. I know it is.” Audrey stared at the ceiling ahead of her warily. It was a well-lit spot in comparison to the rest of this place, just perfect for letting her get a good look at whatever might be there. There was nothing there, at the moment, but Audrey knew how these things worked. This would be a jump scare. Now, the question was whether it would end there, or if it would trigger a chase sequence…

            Audrey slapped some of the lockers next to her and grabbed the shiny boxes labeled “Gent Parts”. Apparently, there would also be a crafting mechanic. Old hat in this day and age.

            “No point in avoiding it any longer,” Audrey muttered. She inched closer and closer to the vent in the ceiling, trying to find the exact trigger point that would reveal the jump scare—

            With a loud clatter, the vent opened and dropped a mutilated body halfway to the floor, its broken limbs dangling like jelly. Audrey waited for something else to happen, but nothing did. “Well, that was a disappointment,” she whined. “Does Wilson even know anything about game play? His house is interesting, but I’m not seeing anything really cool yet.”

An Old Memory

            “I just received the call. Joey Drew is… dead.”

            “Oh hey!” Audrey perked up. “It’s Mr. Arch! Finally, someone I actually know about!”

            “What a quiet end to an extraordinary life,” Nathan Arch continued. “Last I heard, he was staying in some cramped apartment downtown. You could practically hear the rats through the telephone when he called me last April. In spite of that, old Joey sounded quite happy when last we spoke. More like the excited, hopeful young man I knew once upon a time. Ah, well, farewell my friend. What will become of your creations now?" The audio log on the table clicked off.

            “Huh,” Audrey murmured to herself. “I guess Mr. Arch was friends with this Joey Drew? He must have been, if he made an entire shrine for him in Arch Gate Pictures’ basement.” She slapped the cabinet above the audio log… and paused.

            There was nothing interesting about it, but she picked it up anyway. It was a baseball, old and well-used, signed by a “Bud Louis”. She knew that name… wasn’t he practically a legend when it came to baseball?

            …Had Audrey ever been interested in sports? She couldn’t quite remember…

            She placed the baseball with her other things and moved on to the next room.

Security Override

            …Was the name of the switch that Audrey flipped. Down the hall, a metal door rose into the ceiling and revealed… even more hallways.

            She made her way to the entrance of the hall, more quickly than she had intended, and ran into the wall. “Haha, ow,” she said. “I think there’s a running mechanic now. Good stuff, good stuff… but why now? Nothing’s chasing me yet.”

            The hallways were fairly empty, and aside from a box that she slapped to make the lid pop off, nothing really called out to her gamer instincts. It seemed as though, yet again, Audrey’s viewers would be leaving her due to her lackluster content… Until…

Welcome to the Studio

            “Whoa…” Audrey whispered. This room was much larger than any of the other rooms so far, and much more interesting, at least in terms of visuals. Large, torn posters hung from the ceiling, stained with the ink that waterfalled into a pool beneath a strange chandelier labeled “Heavenly Toys”. Toys of varying sizes and qualities were scattered about the room. Somewhere in the distance, a crow cawed.

            “Heck yeah,” she said, “Now we’re talking!” She meandered around the room, taking note of the “Little Miracles” station in one corner of the room and cuddling with the large Boris stuffy in the other. After some wandering and gathering of random Gent Parts, she went up the stairs in the back of the room and came across a switch without a label. She made to flip it, only for it to spark wildly at her. “Ack!” She said, more in surprise than pain. “I guess that doesn’t do anything… maybe I’ll just climb that wall over there.” She aimed her camera at the wall she was referring to, one with loose bricks that jutted out of the wall like the convenient footholds they were.

            She jumped up and down a bit to psyche herself up, then began to climb the wall with one hand, using the other to hold onto her phone as she rose above the threshold—

            “GRAGH!” Said the monster at the threshold, shoving her back to the ground.

            “Rude!” Audrey shot back. The monster did not take kindly to this accusation, and leapt down at her to attack. Audrey scooted back, just missing the blow, and scrambled to her feet. “I guess this is the chase sequence! Gee, if only there was a place for me to hide!”

            She ran back down the stairs and hid inside the Little Miracles station, closing the door behind her. It was quiet for a moment, but only for a moment.

            The monster reappeared at the slit in the door, whacking the station with a wrench and trying to climb inside. Audrey wasn’t worried; there was no reason the door wouldn’t hold, though she did wish the monster wouldn’t breathe on her so much. At long last, the monster grew bored and disappeared in the blink of an eye.

            She slowly peeked open the door. There was no sign of the monster. “Okay?” Audrey muttered stepping into the open. “I guess he just left— Ow!” She rubbed her sore back. “I guess falling from that height did actual damage to me… I hope there’s a healing mechanic.”

            Conveniently, a box near the ink pool began to sparkle. Audrey slapped open the box and found a can of bacon soup. “Ah, there we go…” she muttered. She then proceeded to swallow the whole thing, the can sliding uncomfortably down her throat until it finally settled in her stomach.

            “Why in ink’s name would you do that?” Audrey turned around quickly, staring up at a strange woman with a ponytail and a pair of rounded horns on her head. She looked very concerned. “I mean, I get that the food here tastes terrible, but… the whole can? Really? There was only one person I knew who ate his soup like that, and, well… he’s not doing so well.”

            “Who’re you?” Audrey asked, completely ignoring the woman’s concern.

            The women shifted uncomfortably. “They call me Alice, but I’m not exactly fond of it.”

            Audrey stared blankly at her, then snapped her fingers. “Oh, like Alice Angel!”

            “…Yep.”

            “That’s cool. So… what are you doing in Wilson’s house?”

            “I’ve been here a long time, and—wait. Did you say… Wilson?”

            “Mmhm.” Audrey picked at a piece of metal that had gotten caught in her teeth while she was eating. “He’s cool.”

            The woman—Alice—stared at her in bewilderment. “Wilson is a psychopath.”

            “Invariably,” Audrey agreed, “but you know, he’s helping me with my live stream let’s play vlog, so I’m willing to turn a blind eye.”

            “I—you—just…” Alice covered her face with her hands, growling so quietly yet so intensely that Audrey wondered if she was about to have a stroke. Finally, she slapped her hands against her cheeks and dragged them down her face. “Look, this—I don’t know what you think you know, but you’re probably wrong. First of all: this is not “Wilson’s house”; this is the studio. Wilson’s house is farther away, and you should absolutely not go there.”

            “Okay,” said Audrey, planning to absolutely go there.

            “Second of all, it’s not a good idea to stay in one place too long, so you should really keep moving.”

            Audrey side-eyed her. “You say that as if you’re not coming with me.”

            “I can’t,” Alice looked a bit sheepish. “I have a wolf… he doesn’t care for strangers. Especially certain kinds of strangers.”

            Audrey jabbed a thumb at herself. “He’ll like this stranger!”

            “No, no he won’t. Listen, stay close to the shadows and head to the upper floors; it’s safer there. And above everything else…” Alice leaned closer to her, lowering her voice as if sharing a secret. “Stay. Away. From the Ink Demon.”

            Audrey cocked her head to the side. “I heard Wilson say on the intercom thing that he’d destroyed the Ink Demon, whoever that is.”

            Alice huffed in frustration. “He’s probably lying about that too. Just… if you see something that smiles and kills anything that moves, run.”

            “Okay,” Audrey said again. “Oh, by the way, I’m Audrey. I go by GamerGodGamerQueenAudrey420 on YouTube.”

            Alice stared at her. “Okay… Audrey. Welcome to the studio, I guess.”

            Something clattered overhead, and Audrey looked behind her. “What was that?” Alice did not respond. “Alice?” She turned back around, and Alice was gone. “Okay, bye, I guess. I wonder if we’ll see her again.” She glanced at the camera. “Let’s keep moving.”

Who do You See?

            “’Around here, it’s just best to stay out of sight,” Audrey read to herself as she walked down the hallway, not staying out of sight. “’Don’t ever go running into some place if you don’t know what’s in there! If you attack a problem head on, you’re going to find yourself in trouble. And that’s just foolish! You gotta watch, listen, and when the time is right, push forward. Your Best Pal’.” Audrey laughed at this pitiful attempt to change her gaming ways. “This note can’t stop me, because I can’t read!” She proclaimed, tossing the note she just finished reading over her shoulder. She looked up, and stared at herself.

            A mirror was leaning conveniently against a wall, giving Audrey a full view of what she looked like now. Her brown hair was black with ink, and her eyes glowed dully, dripping inky tears streaks down her face. Her clothes were splotched with more ink, almost completely covered.

            Audrey placed her hand to the surface of the mirror, holding her phone in the other to let the audience see as well. She looked a mess, more so than usual, and it made Audrey feel… something. Something unpleasant. She quickly turned away from the mirror, and kept going.

The Door Code

            After taking some time to collect herself, Audrey found another tape recorder and hit the play button. “Yeah, so those Gent Corporation boys are kinda strange,” an unknown voice spoke. “Every time I come back to work, they've put in even more'a them pointless gadgets. Last week, they built some kind of, I dunno, electrical towers over near Animation Alley. This week, they added security codes for opening doors. Geez, what kind of work do they think we do here, anyways? Last I checked, we make toys and silly cartoons. I mean, this ain't Fort Knox! You know what I mean? Now it's my job to look over these shipping invoices AND remember a bunch'a random numbers? Yeah, NO FREAKIN' THANK YOU!” His voice scoffed in offense. “I'm just going to record the door code here so I don't forget it.” He cleared his throat. “Alright: the code is… 4, 5, 1. 451. And if, uh... Mister Drew or Mister Grey asks, you didn't hear it from me. ‘Kay?” The audio clicked off.

            “Who was he even talking to?” Audrey muttered to herself. “It’s almost as if he recorded the code just so I would know what it was. Oh well, at least the code thing is right next to the log so that I don’t have to remember it ever again.” She walked over to the large, bulky combination thing on the wall and entered the code. A loud, metallic banging sound echoed as the door next to the lock rolled open.

The Machine

            “’He sees everything’, huh?” Audrey said to herself as she looked at the eyes drawn on the bottom of the desk drawers she just opened. “Well apparently, he can’t, because he had to ask everyone else to look for me. Anyway, let’s see who used this audio log, shall we? It’s probably Wilson.” Audrey clicked the play button.

            “It seems that Arch Gate Studios, in all its misplaced admiration, was so eager to absorb the life's work of that crooked charlatan, Joey Drew, they didn't fully realize what they had acquired.”

            “Yep, that’s Wilson,” Audrey confirmed for her audience of two.

            “Call it fate that I just happened to be there on the loading dock that morning. When the delivery boys dropped one of the crates, it smashed open, and inside there was something truly special. A mass of yellow steel and beautiful rivets. Some kind of machine. No one knew what it was. So the fools put it on display for all to see. But I could tell that this crude device held secrets. Secrets that could be mine.” *Click*

            “…I thought it was Arch Gate Pictures, not Arch Gate Studios,” Audrey muttered to herself. “Is it interchangeable? Why didn’t I notice? Mr. Arch always called it Arch Gate Pictures… I’m very confused. I need to keep going before my head explodes.”

New Power

            “What is this, a sports place?” Audrey asked aloud, wrinkling her nose at the musty smell in the room she entered. “Why would these people need a locker room? Just keep it all in your closet, like I do! This place sure is weird…”

            Many of the lockers were leaning over in a domino effect, and only one of them held something of interest: a big, chunky ring of keys. Audrey nabbed them quickly, then turned to look at a strange object on a table in the center of the room. It looked a bit like a lantern, though it was filled with a liquid that glowed brightly.

            “…Okay, gamer girl,” Audrey said to herself. “What does your gamer instinct tell you to do with this thing?” She set her phone against the wall so that the viewers could watch her work, then stared ponderingly at the object. She picked it up slowly… then punched her hand through the glass. The glowing stuff disappeared with a loud sound, and she yanked the now-empty container off her fist. “Okay, now what?” Audrey looked around, waiting for something or someone to pop out at her. When nothing did, she sighed, grabbed her phone, and walked towards a wheeled cart full of random junk that was blocking a door. She pushed it away, a bit surprised to find it took less effort than usual. Maybe that thing had increased her stamina…? She’d have to make a note of that. She unlocked the door with the key ring and stared at a door that read: “CAUTION! Keep Closed.”

            Audrey shoved the door out of her way. Clearly, the door didn’t know what it was talking about.

Resurrect the Past

            The mutilated creature finished scratching at the door Audrey had approached and scurried away. Conveniently, the door popped open after it left. Audrey decided that maybe the door did, in fact, know what it was talking about.

            The room was strangely shaped, like a hallway that wasn’t sure it wanted to be a hallway, and there was a small cafeteria situated nearby, full of abandoned, half-eaten snacks. An audio tour guide on the wall informed her that she was standing in the “new” employee break room.

            Gee, she thought as Joey Drew rambled about unimportant stuff, Mr. Arch’s breakroom wasn’t nearly this fancy. There’re chairs and tables and everything! Maybe once I finish my live stream let’s play vlog, I’ll ask Mr. Arch if we can put some tables and chairs in the breakroom at Arch Gate Pictures—Uh, Arch Gate Studios? Agh, I’m making my head spin!

            She left the break room and meandered down the hall, opening a door that led to another door with a lock on it. Unfortunately, the key she inserted snapped like a twig when she stuck it in the lock. “…Okay. I guess I need a way to break the chain. Do they keep bolt cutters in studios?” She spotted another audio log and slapped it to start it up.

            “I'm ready for something different in my career,” Mr. Arch’s voice began. “I've built steel companies from the ground up, dabbled in petroleum, even tried political office once. ‘That Nathan Arch,’ they used to say, ‘He's got the magic touch!’ But I'm hungry for a bit of fun, I think. Something both the masses and I can enjoy. My son suggested movies. Open a studio! Now, I love a good film as much as anyone, but the magic of animation? Now there's something special! My old friend Joey knew the thrills of bringing characters to life, rest his soul. Maybe with a bit of elbow grease and a small cash investment, I can resurrect the past.”

            “I guess Mr. Arch really liked this Joey Drew guy,” Audrey said to her audience. “I don’t remember him saying anything about having a son though… weird. Oh well, time to keep going!”

Message from an Angel

            “Audrey? Can you hear me?” Audrey looked at the strange pipe on the wall that echoed tinnily with a familiar voice.

            “Alice?” she called, leaning up to the pipe.

            Alice’s voice sighed in relief. “I’m glad you’re alright.”

            Audrey turned her nose up at the angel’s words. “Not enough to let me come with you,” she pouted.

            “I told you; I have a wolf—look, it doesn’t matter. Where are you right now?”

            Audrey looked around for some sort of landmark, spotting a sign nearby that pointed to the “Animation Alley”. “I guess I’m at the Animation Alley entrance? There’s a locked door, though, and I don’t have a key.”

            “Well, that means you’re heading up, so that’s good. Try looking for something to break down the door.”

            Audrey perked up. “Like an axe?”

            “More like a Gent Pipe. There’s probably one nearby, if you look carefully.”

            “Oh, yeah, because a pipe is going to help me at all—” A tremor interrupted Audrey’s complaint, and she looked for the source behind her.

            “What was that?” Alice asked.

            “Sounds like there might be an enemy in here,” Audrey guessed. “Are you sure there isn’t an axe I can use?”

            “Audrey. Find that Gent Pipe. Now.”

            “What if I don’t want to?” Alice didn’t respond. “Alice?” The creature from before skittered toward her, making an oddly cartoony boinging sound as it moved. It began biting at her ankles. “No biting!” Audrey scolded as she kicked at the monster. The mouth on top of its head bit her foot. “OW!” Audrey ran away, the boinging sound following after her.

Get that Pipe, Girl! Part 1

            “Well, there’s the Gent Pipe,” Audrey told her audience as she aimed her camera at the corpse on the wall. “Now, how to get to it…”

            The body was on the other side of a wire fence, too strong for Audrey to try and break down, with the Gent Pipe sticking out of its chest. She’d have to find a way around. Good thing that creature from earlier had disappeared as soon as she hid in a Little Miracles station. Too bad the door that could take her there was pitch black. Normally, Audrey would be willing to plunge head first into the dark, but given how well that had gone so far, it would probably be better to find a light switch. Time to back track.

Stealth Time

            “Who’s in there?!” The sudden voice with no obvious source startled Audrey into falling behind a half wall in the middle of the hall. She sat back up just in time to see an inky figure burst into view, looking around angrily. “If I find you, I’m gonna rip your face off!”

            “Oh, dip,” Audrey whispered into her phone’s speaker breathily. “I guess I’ll have to sneak around at certain points.”

            “Who said that?!” The inky figure stalked towards her half wall. Audrey, wisely, said nothing, and proceeded to play Ring Around the Rosy to avoid being seen. As soon as her back was to the door the figure had burst in from, she duck walked inside.

            “I can do the duck walk!” Audrey whispered excitedly. “Cool, huh?” Audrey lost a viewer. “Shoot; I knew I shouldn’t have quoted Link: The Faces of Evil…”

Search for the Missing Fuse

            “Another fetch quest? Really?” Audrey groaned as she stuck her finger into the empty socket of power machine thingy on the wall. Unfortunately, she did not receive a shock that would work to replace the coffee she had missed out on. “I guess I have to find whatever fits in there. Let’s go, gamers.”

            She walked outside of the room, and watched as the inky figure from before finished making a knife and whacking it against the wall. “Oh yeah…” Audrey said quietly. “I forgot about him. Well, that’s what the sneak mechanic is for.” She duck walked past the angry boi and eventually found herself in front of the kitchen door. For whatever reason, the door would not open, no matter how much she slapped it. “I guess that’s not where I need to go?” she wondered. “It would have made perfect sense if it were… Somehow. Because reasons.”

            She turned and left the breakroom, but just as she passed the threshold of the room, the kitchen door burst open. “Who’s out there? The kitchen’s closed!” An angry voice snapped.

Audrey blinked, looking between the kitchen hallway and where she was standing. “…Seriously?” She slapped a hand to her forehead. “I missed the trigger point for a cutscene the first time? Ugh… Wilson has no idea what he’s doing.” Resigned to the choppy game mechanics, Audrey hid under one of the tables and waited for the other inky figure to stalk past her before sneaking into the now-open kitchen. In the back of the kitchen, there was a cake with a fuse sticking out of the top. “I guess I’m the birthday girl, now,” Audrey said as she plucked the sticky thing from the cake. She snuck back through the break room, past the angry boi with the knife, and stuck the fuse into the fuse box, slapping it so that the power turned on. It was time to get that pipe.

Get that Pipe, Girl! Part Two

            “At the end of every crumbling empire, you gotta hide the treasures,” a woman’s voice said on the audio log. “Mr. Cohen brought me in to catalog and secure some of Joey Drew's more special assets in places no one will ever find them. Sure, that sounds completely legal, right? Anyway, I'll be leaving some clues around so we can find them later. Just remember, this nonsense wasn't my idea! So, here's my first little hint: I finally found a use for those silly motivational posters here in the atrium offices. They're sure to make quite an… impact. …I can't believe I just said that.”

            “…Is this another mechanic?” Audrey asked her dwindling audience. “Am I going to find another weapon besides the Gent Pipe? Having a variety of weapons sure would be neat… Maybe this lady turned the posters into bombs? Not that I know how that would work…”

Audrey walked through the room (atrium, the voice on the tape reminded her), not seeing any motivational posters but definitely finding the body with the Gent Pipe in it. She yanked the pipe free, spilling old inky guts onto her already-ruined shoes and weighing her new weapon in her hands. “At least now I can defend myself,” she told her audience, swinging the pipe at the wall and listening to the loud bangs it made. “Does it have any other uses besides being a blunt weapon…? Maybe we’ll find those poster bombs later.”

She turned to walk out of the atrium... when the inky boi with the knife appeared. Audrey shrieked and beat the man to death before he could so much as yell a war cry. Audrey tightened her shaky grip on her phone and took a deep breath to calm her nerves. “I have to admit,” she told her audience, “I did not see that jump scare coming. Maybe Wilson knows what he’s doing, after all…”

A Poet’s Promise

            “’I heard some of the workers from down the hall last night talking about storming Joey Drew’s office,’” Audrey read quietly to her audience, hiding in an alcove that she had opened up with her new pipe. “’They were using some colorful language, banging their fists on the tables and chairs. It was the same bunch who whistled at me yesterday. Things must be getting serious.’ Gross,” Audrey muttered, “I guess the studio wasn’t free from sexism after all. Anyway: ‘That accountant, Grant Cohen, just walks from his desk down to the men’s room and back all day. Over and over again, gripping his stomach. Kind of green in the gills. I can’t tell if something he ate isn’t agreeing with him, or if he just can’t take the pressure anymore. Joey’s got a plan, he keeps saying, Gent is making something special. I really hope he’s right. I may just be a secretary, but this place has a magic I don’t want to see end. Sally Newt’.”

            An ink person walked past the entrance to her alcove, and she smacked them in the legs with her pipe. They shouted angrily at her, but couldn’t do anything because they couldn’t crouch down to get to her. Losers.

            Tossing the note away, Audrey bashed another hole in the wall and crawled into an unoccupied office, picking up a note with a hand print. Ah, yes, the edgy poetry writer. What poem did he write this time?

            “’That Wilson!’” Audrey read aloud in her creepiest voice. “’He’s everywhere! Yet he’s nowhere! I don’t know how he does it! It’s madness! Madness!! What if he’s inside my mind? What if he hears my thoughts?! Can you hear me, Wilson? Can you?! You won’t get me! I’ve got a plan! If I tear out my brain then you can’t hear my mind! Ha! I’ll show you! I defy you! All hail the Ink Demon! Hail! He’s not dead, I tell you! He will rise again! And his dark revenge will be terrible!’”

            Audrey whistled, long and low. “Wow. Sounds like edgy poetry guy has some issues he needs to work on. I’m pretty sure Wilson can’t read minds. At least, I can’t read his… which is probably for the best. Anyway, I’ve gotta find that door and open it.”

A Gift from the Dark Puddles

            Audrey leaned against the wall heavily, her grip on her phone and Gent Pipe slippery with sweat. The ink puddle she was standing in seemed to drain strength from her, threatening to swallow her whole. You are one of us now, a voice whispered from somewhere. The dark puddles send a gift…

            Audrey pushed herself to dry land, catching her breath and regaining her nerves. What was that?

            When she felt like she could keep walking without puking all over the place, Audrey founds herself face to back with another ink figure. They were slamming their fists into the wall, and hadn’t noticed her. Maybe she could sneak past him—

            Her left hand started glowing painfully, and she watched with morbid fascination as a gold symbol spread up her fingers and across the back of her hand. A new mechanic? She wondered, glancing again at the inky figure. They still hadn’t noticed her.

            Audrey set her Gent Pipe on the floor gently. She snuck up behind the figure, making sure her viewers could see what she was about to do… and grabbed the figure by the shoulder.

            They shrieked and disappeared in a golden light, and Audrey cheered. “Yeah! New weapon! I knew that there’d be—” she paused and looked at the wall the figure had been punching. Scrawled in ink were the words: “You don’t have to kill me.”

            “Dang it,” Audrey growled. “Is there a morality mechanic in this game? Did I screw up? Dang it!” She smacked her fist into the wall, then grumpily picked up the Gent Pipe. “I know you guys are going to give me so much flack for that,” she said to the audience. “I blame the ink guy, honestly. He shouldn’t have been so vulnerable.” She sighed for a solid five seconds. “Nothing I can do about it now, I guess. I just have to keep moving.”

Here Comes the Boy~

            The Animation Alley had been a bit of a detour: Joey Drew’s voice echoing over itself after Audrey accidentally triggered two different tour guide spots, a few dummies hanging in the display cases, and a few different switches needing to be flipped, but was all about be worth it. Because in a small room in the back… something incredible was hiding.

            “No…” Audrey whispered just above breath, almost (almost) dropping her phone in shock. “No way… this can’t be…”

            Sitting in the room behind a barred door sat a tiny little creature with a bow tie, running a blocky little choo-choo train back and forth on the floor in front of him, with a big, happy smile on his cute little face.

…

“BENDY MY SNICKER’S BAR WHAT’S GOING ON?!” Audrey screamed as she broke the door down with the sheer force of her need to hug that boi.

Bendy fell backwards at the sudden noise, reaching to grab his choo-choo before scrambling away from this crazy woman in fear.

“OMG, BENDY!!” Audrey shrieked, swooping down on the poor little demon and wrapping him in a bone crushing hug. Bendy struggled to escape the onslaught, but Audrey would not let her bean get away that easily. Audrey began planting kisses all over Bendy’s little head, hugging him and squeezing him and loving him and—

Just as Bendy seemed to have accepted his fate of being crushed to death by affection, the symbol on Audrey’s hand glowed brightly, and blast of some sort of energy knocked Bendy out of her arms and onto the ground.

“Ow, what was that—? Oh no, Bendy!”

Poor Bendy was holding his hand, with tears streaming down his face from his big eyes that shimmered with sadness and pain. Forgetting about his choo-choo, Bendy ran away and disappeared from sight.

“NOOOO! BENDY!! I’M SORRY!!!” Audrey wailed, scrambling after him. Despite all the twists and turns and nooks and crannies, Bendy was nowhere to be found. Audrey curled into a ball on the floor and wept for her sins against the precious bean. She received a like as compensation, but it wasn’t enough. She needed to apologize to that boi.

Audrey wiped that last of her snot onto her sleeve and gave the camera determined look. “New mission, gamers. We no longer care about Wilson’s game. We’ve got to get. That. Boy. Back.” At the prospect of a much more interesting video to watch, Audrey’s viewer count rose to six, and Audrey was filled with determination or something.

An Artist, Neglected

            After some more searching, Audrey came across a door with the words “Keep Out” scrawled on it. She promptly began to beat the door down.

            “Is that you, Phil?” A shaky voice asked from behind the door. “I told you I’m not opening the door until you bring me my pictures—!”

            Audrey broke the door down and grabbed the inky man by the neck. “Where is my boy?!” she shouted at him.

            “I-I-I don’t know what you’re talking about!” The man wailed. “P-please, I just want my pictures back!” Audrey threw him onto the ground and stormed back out of the room, looking for any sign of her precious bean.

Beware the Ink Demon

            “’His eyes see all. His claws tear and thrash. His whispers turn your mind into BLAHBLAHBLAH!” Audrey ripped the edgy poem to shreds, crawling on her hands and knees through the air vent. “I don’t care about the Ink Demon anymore! All I want is my baby boy!”

            Audrey popped out of the air vent and broke another door with her Gent Pipe, striding towards a different door… when the lights suddenly blinked off. Audrey hit the pause button on her reign of terror, realizing that her audience probably couldn’t see her search for Bendy in this darkness.

            “The dark puddles awaken…” A dark, rumbling voice echoed around her. “A voice, a soul…” Audrey walked more cautiously through the door ahead of her. The lights inside were on, though they flickered weakly. “The ink speaks to me…” the voice continued. “It whispers your secrets… Who… are you…? Tell me your sweet name, that I may devour it.”

            “Hi, I’m Audrey,” Audrey said easily. “Who are you? Have you seen a little demon around here? He’s baby and I’d like to find him, please.” A stack of boxes fell over for no reason. “Okay, then don’t help me, jerk,” she muttered under her breath. She spotted a switch on the wall and made to pull it. It was a bit stuck, so she leaned into the wall to force the endeavor, glancing over her shoulder as she did so—

            A large, bony, smiling thing was standing there, menacingly. She shoved the switch down and ran into the room the switch had opened to her. The creature—the Ink Demon, she realized too late—tried to reach in after her, but she slammed the door on its hand and it pulled away, growling.

            Audrey took a deep sigh of relief, then leaned against the door and put the camera to her face. “Okay, well… that was an emotional roller coaster, if I may say so myself. I’m going to take a break, so go grab a snack while you can. I’ll end the episode here, but I’ll be right back as soon as I can to continue the Search for Bendy. I’ll see you in a bit. Later!” Audrey turned off the live feed and rested her eyes for a moment. Something told her that this live stream let’s play vlog was only just beginning…

She just hoped she could find her little guy sooner rather than later.

Chapter Text

The Chase Goes On

            “My ink swells and boils… it consumes—”

            “Shut up for five seconds!” Audrey yelled. “I need to start up my live stream let’s play vlog so that the audience knows what’s up!”

            The Ink Demon growled distantly. Audrey ignored it as she adjusted the video and audio settings on her phone one more time before hitting the “record” button. “Welcome back, gamers! GamerGodGamerQueenAudrey420 here, ready to search the studio for our little inky boy! Right now, though, I’ve got to deal with this “Ink Demon” guy, who doesn’t seem to know how to shut up.” She glared at the door behind her, listening to the faint growls of the monster. “I’ve probably made him angry, so a chase sequence seems likely. Get ready for shaky cameras, guys! And I guess searching for pictures for that guy I strangled earlier? I don’t know, it was all a bit of a blur. So, our top priorities today are: find Bendy, find some pictures, and don’t die. ReadysetGO!”

            Audrey sprinted through the halls, the Ink Demon roaring behind her.

An “Artist’s” “Gratitude”

            “I will find you…!”

            “Yeah, yeah, shaddap.” Audrey snapped at the closed door she was leaning against. “I’m busy with more important problems, like returning these ‘pictures.’” She waved one of the images she had collected at her camera. “Seriously, what are these things? I’m a way better artist… unless these are commission pieces? Then maybe it’s fine. I dunno. I’m just gonna return them.”

            She returned to the door of the “artist’s” studio and poked her head inside. “Hey, I brought your pictures.”

            The inky man she’d manhandled earlier was curled up on the floor, looking inky and pathetic. He peeked up at her. “Can… can you put them on their stands?”

            “No.”

            He wailed and made to stand, but Audrey beaned him over the head with her pipe and he fell down again. She dropped the pictures onto his quaking body and strode further into the room. “Loser,” she muttered under her breath as he cried.

Do Not Steal!

            Another piece of paper with an inky handprint presented itself to Audrey on top of a metal barrel. “Oh, how fun,” Audrey said, sounding like she was not having fun, “it’s another poem from our edgy poetry guy. What’s the word, bird?” She picked up the paper and read aloud:

            “’Nobody wants to see my pictures!’ I wonder why,” Audrey muttered. “’I’ve worked so hard on them for so long. And they’re all my own original work. I’ll have to MAKE people look at them. They’ll see how talented I am! But wait… what if someone looks at them and takes all my precious ideas!? NO! THEY CAN’T DO THAT! They’re MY original characters! MINE! Do not steal! Do not steal!’”

            Audrey flicked the paper away from her like a dead tissue. “So our edgy poetry guy… was also one of those cringey original character artists? Ew! No one makes original characters anymore! They use other people’s characters, like normal people. I hate original characters. I hate anyone who makes original characters. If it’s not well established, then it’s cringe! Everyone knows that!”

            Audrey was too busy ranting to notice she had lost a viewer or three.

The Ink Demon is a Hydra??? (Not Clickbait)

            “Oh, goody, another tape.” Audrey had ended up in “the screening room”, which featured three lit projectors lighting the room with images of Bendy’s cute lil’ self, picking up a cute lil’ flower. For some reason, despite being numbered one through three, they didn’t appear to be in the right order. Audrey was more interested in admiring the pictures of her boi while listening to a voice. She clicked on the tape.

            “When I first entered this world, it was an untamed wilderness. A wretched, crawling slum, ruled by that grinning demon.”

“Oh hey!” said Audrey. “It’s Wilson!”

“From chaos, I brought order. From order, I brought peace. Once you cut the head from the snake, the snake bleeds out quietly onto the ground. Now the only question that remains is: ‘What if the head grows back?’” The tape clicked off.

“Evidently, the head did grow back, and it talks too much.” Audrey slapped herself in the face with her Gent Pipe in order to scratch her chin in thought. “Where have I heard of a snake that regrows its head? I feel like I heard a story about that once… Oh well! It was probably from something unimportant, like ancient Greek mythology!”

The newest viewer who had popped onto Audrey’s stream to see if it was worth watching immediately logged off their YouTube account forever.

But… But She was the Fourth!

            “Okay, so I think I was supposed to rearrange the order of the Bendy slides to find a code to open this door, but, uh…” Audrey panned her camera around at the broken metal around her. “I kind of just broke it instead. Sorry, not sorry; those pictures reminded me that I need to find my inky son! So here we go, I guess.”

            Audrey walked through the broken doorway and immediately noticed the sign that said “Come Say Hello!”

            “Bendy?!” She cried, running into the room the sign was in front of… only to stop short in disappointment. A now seemingly-dead ink woman had scrawled “she was the fourth” on the wall above a desk with a tape on it. Next to the desk was a large crate that was obviously meant to be opened.

            “It’s not Bendy,” Audrey moaned. “I want Bendy…” She clicked on the tape in a hope to distract herself from her loss.

            “Good things always come in threes, they say,” a woman’s voice said. “Bendy, Alice, and Boris. It just works. So when I showed my coworkers my design for a new, fourth member of the Butcher Gang, you could almost hear the disgust at the lunch table. ‘A ghost girl?’ they said. ‘No one's gonna get it.’ They just laughed at my drawings, crumpled them up like trash. But I'll get Mister Drew on my side. He'll understand. He's got to. Carley will join the Butcher Gang. And she'll be beloved by all. One way or another, I'll bring Carley to life.”

            “Sorry, girl,” Audrey said when the tape clicked off. “Normally, I’m all for girl empowerment, but original characters are cringe. You had it coming.” She glanced over at the crate, shining alluringly in the light. “That’s probably where ‘Carley’ is right now. I’m probably supposed to open it, but… nah.”

Audrey left the room to continue exploring. Deep inside the crate, a ghost girl sobbed pitifully.

Another Gift

            The next few minutes of Audrey’s journey were uneventful, aside from the pipe she’d just finished crossing falling into the abyss with a snap of a particularly weak link in a chain. The man in the room beyond the fallen pipe had an intriguing story, though.

            “Ay yo,” Audrey called to the inky man with goggles, half stuck in a drain. “You stuck or something?”

            The inky man laughed nervously. “Ah, well… yes. And that means… you’re stuck here, too.”

            “Hmm,” Audrey hummed. “I guess this is the only way forward?”

            “Indeed. Perhaps you could get me unstuck?”

            “Okay.” Audrey lifted her pipe above her head.

            “Ah-aah! P-perhaps in a less violent way?”

            Audrey sighed. “Fiiine.” She shoved her glowing skeletal hand in the clogged ink and fished around until the ink came loose.

            “Wheee!” the inky man cheered as he slid down the drain. Audrey stared after him.

            “…Ooookay… down the hatch, I guess.” She jumped down the pipe, sliding along the slick metal until she landed unceremoniously on the floor in front of the inky fellow.

            “Thank you very much for your help!” He said.

            Something was very wrong.

            “The name’s Porter, by the way. And who might you—?”

            “AAAAAAAAAGH!” Audrey screamed.

            Porter leapt backwards in alarm. “Whatever is the matter?”

            “My phone!” Audrey wailed. “I lost my phone!”

            Audrey continued babbling as Porter looked on in genuine confusion. “Begging your pardon, but… what, exactly, is a phone?”

            Audrey stared at him, foaming at the mouth.

            “Oh, oh dear… Here, let me help you find your ‘phone’…”

            Porter tiptoed around the clearly crazy woman and picked up various bits and bobs before showing them to her, hoping that one of them would be a “phone”. No luck for him, it seemed, since the woman’s expression grew dark, darker, yet darker… until…

            “Oh, wait!” Audrey perked up immediately. “I remember where my phone is!” She raised her hand, which was tightly gripping a black rectangle thing. “It was in my hand the whole time! Haha, silly me!”

            Porter sighed in relief, trying and failing to not make it obvious he was trembling. “Well, anyway, Bobby—”

            “Bobby?”

            “You look like a Bobby to me; I don’t think any other name would suit you. Anyway, as thanks for helping me, here’s a little gift: something I’ve learned.” He held his hands out, and Audrey slowly set her skeletal hand in his. Her vision glowed gold around the edges for a moment, before Porter let go. “There we are, it’s passed on. Now… you can move like me!” Porter giggled maniacally before waving his arm at a spot across a gap and teleporting over there.

            Because that makes sense.

            “Goodbye, Bobby! Try not to die!” Porter disappeared around a corner, still giggling. Audrey stared at where Porter had gone. Slowly, she waved her arm like Porter had, and in the blink of an eye, she found herself on the other side of a small gap.

            “…That was dumb.”

Donuts are a Girl’s Best Friend

            Somehow, Audrey ended up back in the Animation alley, and then later ended up in another locker room, where someone seemed to be waiting for her.

            “The deep abyss remembers you… Audrey.” the Ink Demon’s rumbling voice echoed around the gamer girl. “A child of the darkness.”

            “Wow,” Audrey said, continuing to smack lockers open with her Gent Pipe. “That sure is interesting… but I sure don’t care. Is there anything useful around here? I could use a donut.” Audrey beat open one of the lockers and found a half-eaten donut. “Score!”

Upgrade

            Audrey ignored the Gent Lock on the door (as well as the note next to the door about where the code was), and T-posed her way through the thick sheet of metal. Two metal bars crossed over the doorway behind her, an obvious and pitiful attempt to tell her she could not go back now. She could easily use her new powers to teleport back out of the room, but… nah.

            At first, there was nothing of interest except for the lockers stuffed with Gent parts and batteries that indicated she would be crafting something important soon. Then, she noticed the big machine on the wall labeled “Gent Upgrades”.

            “Because a normal Gent worker would have to earn their abilities as they went along, I guess,” Audrey muttered as she shoved her pipe into the tight space.

She pressed the big button on the side and some of the bits and parts disappeared from her pocket. Wild volts of electricity traveled along the surface of the pipe for just a few seconds, but somehow in those few seconds, an entire battery charger had attached itself to the pipe. Audrey yanked it back out and weighed the new pipe in her hand. Not too heavy, considering the extra parts.

            “Okay, but what do I do with this?” Audrey muttered. She whacked herself in the head in an attempt to scratch her neck in thought, then noticed a different machine next to the upgrade station. She scanned it with her camera, letting the audience get a good, long look at the thing. “I noticed these kinds of machines on our way here, but since I’ve never been able to interact with it, I assumed it was useless. But now…”

Audrey pondered for a moment, then stuck her new pipe into the slot on the machine. She turned the crank, but nothing happened. She hummed, then glanced at a smaller slot on the side. There was a lightning bolt pattern on it, the obvious indication that she needed electricity. She pulled a battery out of her pocket and crammed it inside, then turned the crank. More electricity, and the battery charger lit up brightly. She pulled the pipe back out and looked at it. It sparked occasionally, like a live wire.

Audrey looked around, hoping to see a new doorway to go through, but the only way in or out was the way she had come through. “Oh, I see,” she explained to her viewers. “I was supposed to open the door with this charged Gent Pipe so I could keep going, but since I broke the door with my le epicness, I can save the charge for a different door. Sweet.” Audrey teleported outside of the room and walked onwards with her pipe.

Artist’s Rest

            “Your journey will end as you are consumed into my dark kingdom—”

            “Look, I don’t care if you want to monologue in my ear all day,” Audrey snapped as she opened the door on the other side of the gap with her magical pipe of pain. “But there’s not really a point to it if you’re not here to put some meaning behind your threats. Why don’t you chase me and monologue at the same time? Or is that too hard for you?”

            The Ink Demon growled distantly, but nothing happened.

            “Yeah, that’s what I thought.” Audrey muttered, pausing to take a selfie with the cutout of Bendy sleeping in a bed.

            The Artist’s Rest area was somehow both large and difficult to move through. A small room in the center of the area took up most of the space, and the halls and doorways seemed to lead to nothing but tubes in the walls, each containing with something resembling a mattress and a pillow. “It’s like those tube hotels in Japan, or something,” Audrey muttered. A viewer gave her a like for actually knowing what Japan was.

            She walked up a set of stairs and found a large control panel, but it didn’t seem to react to her button mashing. A note next to the panel said: “I put the crane keys in the Lost and Found office. Some dope keeps leaving them out. Muncie Dunn.”

            “Gotta find the Lost and Found, I guess,” Audrey muttered. “But where is it…?”

Key Get! And Run, I Guess

            “Ah, there we go,” Audrey muttered as she picked up the key hanging on a hook. “Looks like everything’s going swimmingly! All I have to do now is unlock the crane controls and figure out how that’s supposed to help me. Yep, everything’s going just fi—oh, come on!”

            The Ink Demon stood in the doorway she needed to pass, apparently eating an entire ink person with his hands. Rude.

            It stalked towards her slowly, as if savoring the moment before yet another meal.

            Audrey teleported into a room the Ink Demon was too small to fit in and waited.

            The Ink Demon eventually stomped up to the tiny entrance Audrey was peeking out of and roared, shaking the room before stalking away.

            “Quitter!” Audrey shouted after him. “You didn’t even try!”

            The Ink Demon growled again, but didn’t come back.

            “Eesh,” Audrey muttered as she teleported back out of the room and continued on her way. “There’s no way this ‘Ink Demon’ is actually any real danger to me, and will never traumatize me to the point of doing something stupid and dangerous like merging my body with his. Nope. Definitely not a thing that will happen. At all.”

Wilson Sends a Message

            “Attention, children of the machine!” A voice blared overhead. “It’s Wilson.”

            “Oh, look,” Audrey said to her audience as she walked up the stairs towards the crane controls. “It’s Wilson!”

            “There have been lies that the Ink Demon has been spotted in Animation Alley.”

            “I guess I’m a liar, then, since I’ve seen him multiple times.”

            “Pay no attention to these filthy rumors! I destroyed the Ink Demon myself!”

            Audrey sniffed her armpit. “It’s only been a few years. I don’t think I’m that filthy,” she muttered.

            “He died by my hands, so don’t be afraid. Your friend Wilson will protect you.” The intercom clicked off with a squeal.

            “…Anyway.” Audrey unlocked the crane and flipped the switch, which sent a platform across the room, spilling boxes all over the floor. The noise alerted some ink people, who began pacing around in circles, muttering about the racket. Obviously, running head first into all of them would be a stupid choice, and also the wrong choice. Audrey was a one-time lass when it came to gaming, and that wouldn’t change today. She teleported to the roof of the building in the middle of the room, then to the now-empty platform, and then to a small doorway that she hadn’t been able to access.

            “Piece of cake,” Audrey said as she clicked on a new audio log.

            “I haven’t had much sleep these past few nights.”

            “Oh, hey! It’s Mr. Arch!”

            “I usually can separate myself from the office when I get home. But lately, I've been feeling something pulling at my mind. My thoughts fall to the Joey Drew exhibit we opened last week. Outside one or two of the artists, I don't think I've ever seen a single soul go inside. It's a shame how so many of us refuse to learn from the past. The past can give us our greatest lessons. But still, ever since we moved in Joey's old things, there's been a strange feeling around Arch Gate. Like the ghosts of long ago are wandering about. Calling out to me.” The tape clicked off.

            “I try to avoid thinking about the past,” Audrey said, more to herself than her audience. “Mostly because I don’t have a past.” She was silent for a moment, then continued down the hall. “Let’s keep going, gamers.”

Chapter Text

An Author’s Lament

            “This is Wilson. Anyone caught in restricted areas will be—”

            “Wait, what?” Audrey blinked and looked around in confusion. She had been quiet for what felt like only a few moments, but she suddenly found herself in what was almost like a waiting room, with chairs grouped together around a sign that pointed out an elevator. That wasn’t the problem, though…

            “Weren’t we just in chapter two?” Audrey asked aloud. “Nothing even happened that prompted us going into chapter three. What happened, Author?”

            The Author groaned and continued typing on her laptop. “Look, I don’t know what to tell you. In the playthrough I’m using to write this, the second chapter ends soon after you find Nathan Arch’s tape, and then chapter three starts with you walking into this waiting room. That’s just how it is.”

            “But there wasn’t any thematic resolution or even a cliffhanger!” Audrey complained, waving her arms around and by extension making one of her viewers throw up from motion sickness.

            “That was the game maker’s decision, not mine; I don’t—”

            “You could have at least had me cut my let’s play off for a moment so I could have a rest or something like that…”

            “Look,” The Author snapped. “I’m tired, alright? See this brain?” The Author twisted the top of her skull off of her body and presented the wrinkly pink thing in her head to Audrey. The viewers who didn’t throw up earlier definitely threw up now.

            “This is my brain,” The Author clarified. “It is full of many thoughts, but none of them are useful. I don’t have any motivation to write for any of my actual, original novels, or even new fanfiction, and it is a miracle of God that I have the energy to write this chapter right now. Give me a break.”

            “Mmm… nah.”

            The Author sighed in defeat and began to close the fourth wall. “Go fall in The Pit, Audrey,” she muttered.

            “Wait, what pit? What are you talking about?”

            “Be a good egg,” Wilson concluded before shutting off the audio system.

            “Go suck an egg, Wilson!” Audrey shot back.

            Wilson said nothing, because he wasn’t there.

            Audrey looked at her camera, noticing that some of her viewers had left, probably to go to the hospital for throwing up too much. “Things are not going my way today, guys. Whatever, let’s keep going… not that we ever stopped.”

Unauthorized Elevator Use

            Audrey wandered further into the waiting room, whacking doors to push them open, pushing some carts out of her way, and picking up some Gent parts here and there, until she ended up in front of the elevator.

            “Finally,” she muttered, pressing the button to open the doors. Unfortunately, the Ink Demon was inside, eating an ink person with a fork and knife. It looked up at her when the door opened and roared, ink-like spittle getting on her face. “Nope.” Audrey pushed the button and the door closed, sending the demon’s roars far away.

            After a minute, Audrey pressed the button again and the elevator immediately reappeared, because that’s how elevators work. She got inside, stepping over the scraps that the Ink Demon left behind, and pressed the button inside to go down.

            It went down for a long time.

            So long, in fact, that many of her viewers were able to return to watching her livestream let’s play vlog after they got home from the hospital for throwing up.

            Finally, the elevator stopped short, and audio system clicked on again, though the voice that spoke over it sounded different.

            “Unauthorized surface elevator in use,” the voice rasped. “Manuel lift ejection activated.”

            “Wilson, you don’t sound so gooooOOOOAAAUUUGH!” Audrey screamed as the floor fell out from under her and dropped her into a dark, dank room.

Alien Isolation: Joey Drew Studios Mod

            Audrey blinked her eyes open and forced herself up. “See, that would have been the perfect place for chapter three to start,” she muttered as she picked her pipe and phone and looked around.

            The room was big and round, with no discernable way in or out besides the hole she’d fallen through. It was also absolutely covered in ink, most of it piling up in such a way that they looked like wet, sticky eggs.

            Audrey poked one of the eggs with her pipe. “What is this? Is this the Pit the Author mentioned? This doesn’t match the aesthetic of the game I’m playing at all! It looks all weird and sci-fi-y. Gross.”

            The egg she was poking burst suddenly, and a four-legged creature with nothing but teeth as its defining feature popped out and tried to bite her.

            “Extra gross!” Audrey slapped it into a puddle with her pipe. More creatures like the one she had just killed began to crawl out from every corner of the room, with a single, much larger one taking the lead.

            “Even more gross!” Audrey wailed, slapping all of the creatures away with her phone held over her head. It took quite a bit of time and skin, but she managed to defeat all of them in the course of ten minutes. Which doesn’t seem like a such a long time in theory, but in gamer minutes, it was a whole lot of nothing. Oh well, time is relative.

Call from an Angel

            Audrey crawled out of the Pit and into a relatively clean hallway, stopping in front of a small pipe to reattach the skin that she had recovered from the weird little creatures. She panted heavily as she slapped the skin onto her legs and held it there until it reattached, slowly putting herself back together. Admittedly, a few small pieces were still missing, but it could probably recover in its own time.

            Audrey stood up and leaned against the open pipe to catch her breath. “Man,” Audrey muttered. “It sure would be cool to have a friend here. Like Bendy. Bendy would definitely make a great companion right now. I could pick him up and cuddle him and kiss him and…” She paused for a moment, remembering her indirect sin against the beany boy when her weird magical hand had hurt him.

            …Maybe picking him up wouldn’t be the best course of action yet. But other than Bendy, who did that leave to be her friend?

            “Porter was okay, I guess,” Audrey mumbled. “He was really weird, but he gave me teleportation powers, so I guess that’s cool. I’d almost consider the edgy artist poet guy, but he was a little—”

            “Ahem?” a woman’s voice called from inside the open pipe.

            Audrey turned to the pipe quickly, then leaned into it. “Hello? Who’s there?”

            “What do you mean, ‘who’s there’? It’s Alice!”

            Audrey was silent for a moment. Then, “oh, yeeeaaah, I remember you now.”

            “Really now.”

            “Yeah, I forgor. LOL. Considering you left as soon as you showed up.”

            “I told you; I have a wolf—”

            “Blah blah blah,” Audrey spoke over her. “You’ve said that three times and I still haven’t seen any signs of a wolf living down here. Why are you lying to me?” Audrey bumped her forehead lightly against the rim of the pipe. “…Do you hate me?”

            “I’m not—no, Audrey, I don’t hate you…” There was a pause. “Where are you right now?”

            “I dunno,” Audrey looked over her shoulder. “It’s dark, and there were these weird egg creatures a minute ago. Does that ring any bells?”

            There was a gasp. “You’re in the Pit? How did you get in there?”

            “I fell.”

            “…Right. Look, don’t move, alright? I’m going to come find you.”

            Audrey sighed and leaned against the pipe. “Okay, I guess I can wait—” Bendy walked into the room through a different door, saw Audrey, and immediately ran away. “Nevermind-I-saw-Bendy-gotta-go-BYE!” Audrey bolted after the little dancing devil darling, absolutely feral.

            “No! I told you to stay there! Audrey!” Audrey didn’t respond, because she was not there. “For ink’s sake, we were having a moment!”

Just a Pencil and a Dream

            Audrey stopped for nothing, running down the hallway Bendy had disappeared in like a mad woman, ignoring the small cropping of eggs or that fact that her ankles bent like rubber hoses after she jumped down the Gent Emergency Shaft, which made her walk funny—

            “I believe there’s something special in all of us!” A voice rang out clearly, causing her to stop short. “Especially you, Audrey.” The voice sounded familiar, somehow…

            Audrey looked up at a man standing on a catwalk above a river of ink, smiling down at her. He looked familiar, too, though she couldn’t quite put her finger on it… “Who are you?” She asked, holding up her camera in the hopes that her viewers could identify this man for her. Unfortunately, he was in a bit of a shadowy area of the catwalk, so one of her viewers sent her a shrugging emoji.

            “Don’t you know me? Take a good look…” The man held up an object he was carrying and fiddled with it until it began to glow with light. A lantern, held by the one and only…

            “…Joey Drew?” Audrey offered.

            “In the flesh! …So to speak.”

            “…Aren’t you dead, Mr. Drew?”

            “Call me Joey, please. And come on up here, while you’re at it. We can walk and talk; I have something I want you to see. And, I have a feeling you have a lot of questions.”

            “Mostly the one,” Audrey said as she shook out her ankles to readjust them and climbed up the ladder to the catwalk. “About you being dead, I mean.”

            “Straight to the point; I like it!” Joey beamed at her. “Mind your step as we go, alright? This old place is full of surprises. I should know; I’ve worked here a long time.” Joey led the way down the catwalk, with Audrey close behind. “Now, you’re probably wondering what all of this is, aren’t you? This studio, these monsters…”

            “Isn’t that all just Wilson’s game?” Audrey asked.

            “It’s a cycle, my dear. An ink-stained nightmare forever stuck on repeat.” Joey gestured around them. “With just a pencil and a dream—and a little help from the Gent Corporation—it came into being.”

            “Sounds dope,” Audrey said, watching with quiet excitement as her viewer count grew higher and higher due to the LORE.

            “Not quite, I’m afraid,” Joey corrected her. “From what I gather, it exists in parallel to the outside world, completely removed from the march of time.” They stopped in front of a door that had the words “there is always hope” scrawled on it. “Like a record being played over and over again, it’s begun to crumble; wear down. This studio is a monument to choosing the wrong road. Whether it was built for revenge… or regret,” Joey looked away as he said that last part, “I don’t know. That’s my riddle to find out.”

            Audrey squinted her eyes in concentration. “So, what you’re saying is… there are multiple paths to take in this game? Dang it!” She whacked Joey with her pipe. “I knew that killing that guy was gonna have consequences!”

            Joey shook out the arm that Audrey had smacked and opened the door, leading her into a room with a makeshift bed and some countertops. “The truth is, Audrey,” he said as he set his lantern on the counter, “someone out there is messing with what’s in here. Bad things have begun to emerge from the puddles, wicked creatures that never came from my pen. The worst ones call themselves Keepers—”

            “Uh, Joey,” Audrey interrupted. “I appreciate the LORE you’re dropping, but you’re also expositing all over me. How am I going to get this exposition out of my clothes? They’ll leave a stain.”

            Joey sighed and lit a few lamps in the room. “You’re in a rush, I understand. You want answers.”

            “No, I really just want to be a successful YouTuber.”

            Joey stood in front of a door that led further inside and held his hands out to her. Audrey’s hands were full, though, so she whacked his hands with her pipe instead. “Look,” Joey said, shaking the pain out of his hands and gently placing them on her pipe-holding hand. “Above all, never forget: you’re here for a reason, Audrey. There’s always a reason, even when you can’t understand it.

            “That sounds like a thematically important message and/or reference,” Audrey said, glancing at the comments to see if any of her viewers knew what he was talking about. “I guess I do have one question, though. It seems that the goal of this game is for me to put things back to normal, right? But if you made this place, then why can’t you fix it? That seems like a whole lot of your problem.”

            Joey smiled sadly and let go of her hand. “Because I’m not the man. I’m just… the memory.” He crossed his arms and leaned back against the door, phasing right through it in an inky mist. The door opened, revealing a gravestone with the name “Joey Drew” engraved in it. Scrawled in ink on a nearby wall were the words: “Just a pencil and dream.”

…

“Well, that was wacky,” Audrey said. “Anyway, screw this. I’ve gotta find Bendy!”

Sewer Puzzle: The Game (the Movie) (the Game) (the Book)

            “Dang it!” Audrey cried, slamming her Gent pipe onto a glowing switch. “I lost Bendy again! He’s gotta be here somewhere!”

            Audrey took a second to look around the room. It was one of those rooms that was both large and cramped, with sewage pipes spilling ink into a chasm a few yards below the walkways, with bits of old metal and junk making walking around rather difficult.

            “This looks boring as sin,” Audrey stated, correctly. “Okay, gamers, here’s what I’m gonna do.” She climbed into a Little Miracles station so that no one would interrupt her while she was having her gamer conference. “I’m going to make up for The Author’s mistake last chapter—”

            “Hey!” The Author shouted indignantly.

            “—and I’m going to let you all take a break to do whatever. I’m going to take one for the team and do this puzzle solving off camera, and then I’ll start the livestream let’s play vlog up again once I’ve moved past this area. So… yeah. See you in a bit, gamers!”

Audrey Goes God Tier

            Audrey flipped the switch and sighed for five seconds straight. “That was like, twenty minutes!” She groaned. “Something better be around this corner that isn’t more sewer puzzles.” She poked her head around the corner and gazed upon a makeshift throne room guarded by two ink people with knives sticking out their heads. Tapestries adorned the walls, with writing on them praising someone known as “Lord Amok”. The inky figure sitting on the throne—Lord Amok himself, presumably—noticed her gaze.

            “Behold,” he rasped. “The—"

            “’Kay, one sec.” Audrey pulled her head out of the room.

            “But—”

            “Hang on, hang on, I gotta turn on the livestream.” Audrey’s fingers flew across the screen of her phone, opening apps and adjusting volume settings. Finally, it was ready, and she clicked the record button. “Hey, guys! GamerGodGamerQueenAudrey420 here, back at it again with my livestream let’s play vlog! Blaze it!” She gestured behind her at the doorway to Lord Amok’s throne room. “So I solved that puzzle after twenty minutes. Basically forever. But now there’s apparently a king in this studio? I don’t know if he’s actually real, but he’s got a throne, so it has to be a little legit, right? Anyway, I’m gonna go say hi. So, as my favorite YouTuber once said: lesh jusht jump into it!”

            Audrey walked back into throne room. “Sorry, what were you saying?”

            “Kill her!” Lord Amok shrieked. “Kill her now!” The two guards rushed at her with knives.

            “Oh, what the heck?!” Audrey groaned as she beat the two guards into puddles. Lord Amok then approached to attack, but she whacked him so hard that his head fell off. “I thought you might be cool!” Audrey tsked. “Turns out you’re just drool.”

            Two more guards ran into the room and stood next to the throne. Audrey hefted her pipe. “Okay, I guess this is a brawl—”

            “Hail, the New Amok!”

            “…Nyeh?”

            The new guards saluted her. “Hail, the New Amok!” They said again, in perfect unison. “God of this world and all that suffer in it!”

            Audrey blinked at them. “So… what you’re saying is… I’ve gone God Tier??”

            “Hail, Amok!” They said again.

            “Oh, heck yeah!” Audrey promptly sat on the throne and grinned at her camera. “I guess I really am a gamer god gamer queen, eh, guys?” She sighed and eased into the throne. It was quiet for two seconds. “And I’m bored, aw yeah. Can I leave?”

            “Amok may go wherever they desire!” The soldiers shouted.

            “Cool, thanks. I’m gonna continue my livestream let’s play vlog now.”

            “Hail, Amok!”

            “Yep, you nailed it, buster. Anyway, I’m out.” Audrey stood from the throne and went further into the area. “Hail, Amok”, greeted her at almost every corner. She peeked her head into a side room and saw piles of metal disks on a table, as well as a half-eaten sandwich. “Oh look,” she pointed out for the audience. “It’s that currency the Author never mentioned. This is worthless!”

            “It’s less than worthless!” The Author shot back.

            “I will take that sandwich, though.” She grabbed the food and shoved it into her throat. “Mm. Old sandwich. Anyway, there’s got to be something else around here. Let’s keep going!”

Hello, Boy!

            Audrey whistled, long and low. “How big is this place? How’d Wilson fit all of this into his game? Or—I guess how’d Joey fit this in his…? Ah, screw it, it doesn’t matter.”

            After wandering around for some time, Audrey found herself in a room with large bay windows, overlooking a glowing city that seemed to go for miles. As extensive as the city seemed, however, it paled in comparison to the magnificent treasure sitting on a chair next to the window.

            “BENDY!” Audrey yelled, startling the little demon again. “WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?!”

He looked around, unfortunately cornered by the scary lady.

Audrey noticed his fear, and as much as it pained her not to scoop the little baby into her arms, she knew she had to apologize first. “Look,” she said slowly, getting on her knees to be at eye level with Bendy. “I’m sorry about earlier. I didn’t mean to hurt you… can we start over? Can we be friends?”

Bendy stared at her hesitantly, his mouth a thin line that betrayed no real emotion. Slowly, though, he nodded and gave her a thumbs up.

Audrey squealed behind closed lips. “Ohhh, I wanna hug you so bad, but I don’t want to hurt you, either…” Bendy tossed something at her, and she caught it in her arms. It was a small Bendy plushie. Audrey hugged it tightly. “You’re so nice, Bendy! Thank you!” Bendy gave her a small smile. Then Audrey squeezed the plushie so hard that the head popped off. “Aw, it broke,” she muttered.

Bendy stopped smiling.

“A-anyway,” she said, tossing the stuffing-less plushie away. “I’m kind of confused about what I’m supposed to be doing right now. I sort of completely forgot about the whole game after I went looking for you, and now that I found you… I don’t know what I should do next? Uh… wanna escape this place?” Bendy looked at her curiously. “That isn’t a no! Okay, let’s see…” Audrey thought for a second. “Joey said that the Gent Corporation made this place… so maybe they have a central headquarters or building we can go to so we can reverse all this? Or something?”

Bendy’s eyes widened and he shook his head quickly. He hid his face in his hands.

“What’s wrong?” Audrey asked. “Is the Gent building a bad place?” Bendy nodded, peeking through his fingers. “It’s okay, I won’t let anything bad happen to you. You can trust me!” Audrey struck a heroic pose, accidentally hitting herself in the head hard enough that her head turned 360 degrees. Bendy blinked at her.

“This is a great plan,” she said with a nod. She turned to her camera. “We’re chugging along, gamers! We’ll start looking for this Gent building in a minute… but first…” She aimed her camera at Bendy and made jazz hands. “LOOK AT THIS BOOOY!!!”

Chapter Text

A City Built on Broken Dreams

            “Oh, okay,” Audrey said, panning her camera around. “I guess there’s an actual city in this place? What genre Wilson is going for? There’s been so many different tropes that I really don’t know anymore…”

            After wandering through the downward slopes of some sort of train station, Audrey and Bendy found themselves on the dirty, cramped streets of an abandoned city. Trash cans were piled up at random, some sort of market with food of unknown origins was lit by a moth-infested lightbulb, and there were even a few cars broken down here and there. Audrey strode forward confidently, panning her camera around at the buildings while Bendy went more cautiously behind her. The sky was dark and smoggy above them, and somewhere in the distance, a voice sang an eerie, distorted song.

            Most of the buildings were locked up and dark, though a particularly bright street lamp lit up a door to a building labeled “Unsafe Area” (could it be any more obvious?). Unfortunately, Audrey could not brute force her way past this door.      Bendy helpfully tapped on a slot on the side of the door.

            “Oh, yeah, that makes sense,” Audrey said. “We probably need an ID card of some kind to go in. Any ideas, Bendy?”

            Bendy put a gloved finger to his chin, then began to wander around the immediate area. He rustled through a number of garbage cans before finally holding up a piece of paper in triumph.

            “Ooh!” Audrey applauded him, as did her audience of seven (seven! The highest number of viewers she’d ever had!). “Good job, Bendy! High five!” She held up her skeletal hand and Bendy flinched a bit. Audrey lost a viewer.

            Shoot.

            “Uh… I’ll give you a high five when my hand isn’t cursed. But let’s see what you found!” Audrey carefully took the paper from Bendy and read it aloud for the audience. “’The future has arrived! I just didn’t know it would get here so soon. Some of the stuff that’s coming out of Gent doesn’t follow any of the rules of physics that I know. Hard to believe they started as a brick laying company once upon a time. Nowadays, we have all the modern conveniences and, worse yet, the headaches. Take that ID card machine they’ve got at the door. You don’t bring you’re ID, you ain’t gettin’ to work. So I started putting my ID card on my nightstand in my room at the Downside Hotel. It’s not the safest place, but at least I know where it is. Eugene Lloyd.”

            Audrey consumed the note. “Looks like you found a clue, Bendy! Let’s go find this ‘Downside Hotel’ already!”

A Downside to Everything

            DINGDINGDINGDINGDINGDINGDINGDING—

            Bendy slapped the service bell off the counter and away from Audrey. She sighed. “Eh, you’re right, that was getting obnoxious. I just wanted there to be some noise; it’s kind of creepy in here without it.”

            After getting into a brawl with a drunk ink being and storming past a group of inky loiterers by the exit of a bar (none of which was nearly as interesting as it sounded), Audrey and Bendy ended up in the cramped lobby of the Downside Hotel.

            Audrey spotted a hole in the ceiling and used her teleportation powers to climb onto the floor above them. She poked her head back down and peered at Bendy, who was making himself comfortable on one of the old benches. “Bendy? You coming, love?” He shook his head. “I guess you don’t have my weird teleportation powers… fine, but stay there, okay? I’ll be right back!”

            Audrey pulled her head back up and looked around. Aside from the vending machine in the corner and a few locked rooms, it was empty… until Audrey glanced up at the ceiling again. Teleporting up through the hole, she found herself in a small bedroom… which, based on the lower layout of the hotel, should not have been possible, but who was she to say something like that? She was a gamer, not an architect!

            Luckily, the bedroom seemed to be the one she needed, since a small card was placed neatly on the bedside table. Audrey reached to pick it up—

            “Well, gee! You haven’t gotten far—”

            Audrey slapped Joey Drew in the face with her Gent Pipe. “Don’t do that!” She scolded.

            Joey rubbed his jaw and groaned, “so… how goes the journey?”

            “Eh, fine, I guess.” Audrey spun the pipe in her hand lazily. “The genre of this game is all over the place, and I can’t tell if it’s you’re fault or Wilson’s fault. Not that it’ll matter in the end, though. I’ll get those ten subscribers if it’s the last thing I do!”

            “Ah,” Joey nodded approvingly. “I see you have your father’s never quit, go-getter spirit.”

            Audrey blinked at him for a moment. “…I have a dad?”

            Joey smiled sadly. “I see then… so you’ve chosen to forget the past. I can understand that.”

            She squinted at him. “What are you talking about now?”

            Joey sighed before gently taking her pipe-holding hand in his. “Look, I don’t think you’re ready for this, but hang on to your lunch money: there’s something I want to show you.”

            “Lunch… money?” She asked. “Wait, are you supposed to use money to get lunch? Is that why the cafeteria lady banned me from the lunch room and I have to scavenge the leftovers from the kitchen fridge at night when I’m hungry? Wait, what are you—”

            Joey set a hand to the side of Audrey’s head, and everything faded to black.

A Flashback… Technically

            A door creaked open, then closed. “Alright, Joey, I’m here,” a strange but familiar voice echoed around her. “Let’s see if we can find what you wanted me to see.”

            Audrey blinked and looked around. She stood in a long hallway that led to an open room, covered in ink, broken wood, and old posters for cartoon characters she had seen countless times. Joey Drew stood at the far back of the room. “Come over here,” he called to her, gesturing at a small chair next to him. “Have a seat, this won’t take—”

            Audrey immediately wandered down a different hallway branching off of the main room. “BRB, gotta explore.”

            “Audrey, I understand you might not want to hear this, but—”

            “Can’t hear you, I’m too busy gaming. I’ll be back after I scour this place for gamer secrets. This won’t take long.”

            Joey was silent for a moment, then sighed quietly, defeatedly.

            Audrey looked at every nook and cranny of this flashback, even exploring a small hole in the ceiling, to no real avail. She had found a box of crayons, which she decided to keep for… reasons… but it seemed that there really was nothing of note in this flashback sequence.

            At least, until she found a secret drawer with an audio log inside. She eagerly clicked the play button.

            “At this point, I don't get what Joey's plan is for this company,” a man’s voice complained. “The animations sure aren't being finished on time anymore. And I certainly don't see why we need this... machine. It's noisy, it's messy, and who needs that much ink anyway? Also, get this: Joey had each one of us ‘donate’ something from our work stations. We put them on these little pedestals in the break room. ‘To help appease the gods’, Joey says, ‘keep things going’. I think he's lost his mind, but, hey, he writes the checks. But I tell you what, if one more of these pipes burst, I'm outta here!" The tape clicked off.

            Audrey pressed her lips in a firm line. This… didn’t sound much like the Joey Drew whom she’d been talking to… But then again, did she actually know him at all? She glanced in the direction of where Joey was standing. It seemed like she was about to find out, one way or another.

Happy Falker-Stalker-Hood

             Joey fiddled with a projector as Audrey sat in the chair he had shown her. “Here we go,” he muttered, almost to himself more than anything. Audrey propped up her camera so that the audience could get a good look at whatever exposition Joey was about to throw at her.

            The projector clicked on, showing a rough sketch of Joey himself. His art was okay, Audrey decided.

            “Once upon a time,” Joey began, “there was a bitter old man who lost just about everything. The real Joey Drew. He blamed everyone but himself for his mistakes, but mostly, he blamed his old business partner for abandoning their work, years and years ago.”

            Joey clicked a button, and the picture changed to one of Joey yelling at someone as they left the room, a frown on their face. “In his anger,” Joey continued, changing the image again to one of Joey standing in front of… something. “Joey used an evil machine to create another world, made of paper and ink, where he’d torment his own version of his friend forevermore.”

            “So…” Audrey interrupted. “The real Joey basically wrote his own Real Person Fanfiction so he could mess with an imaginary version of his partner as a weird power trip?”

            Joey winced. “Think in a more literal sense, my dear.”

            “Ah,” Audrey said. “…Ew.”

            “But one day,” Joey said quickly, “a miracle happened!” He changed the picture again to that of a woman in doorway, with a halo over her head. “An angel came into Joey’s life, a young woman by the name of Allison Pendle.”

            Huh, Audrey thought silently. Allison sounds like Alice. I’m sure that’s just a funny coincidence that will have no bearing on anyone in the future, at all.

            “She didn’t visit often,” Joey continued, “but when she did, she saw something good in Joey that no one else could, including herself.”

            “Wait, what?” Audrey asked. “What do you mean ‘including herself’? If she also couldn’t see anything good in Joey, then how did she see something good in him to begin with? That’s a paradox!”

            “Through their friendship,” Joey kept going.

            “But—”

            “…he began to see the world with better eyes. So one day, in his cartoon cycle of hatred, he gave his partner an angel of his own, to guide him when things were most dark.” The picture changed again to an angelic figure standing in front of a faceless man on the ground. In the foreground, Joey was peering around the corner at them, out of sight. “To always provide hope.”

            “Cool, didn’t ask,” Audrey said. “Can we go back to the paradox part—?"

            “It was then that Joey decided to make something new. Something he had always wanted, but could never have: a family. But not a cartoon one; something real.”

            Audrey made a face. “So he got hitched and had marital sex?”

            “N—No, Audrey, with the machine.”

            “He and the machine got hitched and had marital sex?”

            “Anyway!” Joey said, a bit too loudly. “After many, many, many tries, he created something that made him happier than he ever could have imagined: a wonderful, loving daughter.”

            The picture changed one last time, to a sketchy figure of a man holding a little girl in his arms. “She was bright and kind… and almost human.” Joey pointed at the little girl in the picture and looked into Audrey’s eyes. “He created you, Audrey.”

.

.

.

“Wait, hold on… are you my dad?”

“I know it’s a lot to believe—”

“But then who’s my mom?”

“That—that’s not the point I’m trying to make, Audrey—"

            Audrey got up from her chair and started pacing. “Is Allison Pendle my mom? Is the business partner my mom? Is the machine my mom??”

            Joey blinked, then moved to put his arms around her. “The point is, that just because we’re born of darkness doesn’t mean we belong to it,” he said, as if that was supposed to answer her question. “We’re always free to choose. To believe what we want to believe.”

            “Cool callback to the beginning of the fic, but that’s not my concern right now! Do I have a mom or not? Do I have siblings? I have lots of questions!” Joey sighed, then slowly set his hand on the side of her head. Once more, the world faded to black.

The Aftermath

            Audrey’s vision returned, bringing her back to the small room in the Downside Hotel, with the Gent ID card in her hand.

            “…What the heck just happened?” She asked. No one in the comments had an answer.

            “Bendy!” Audrey called, launching herself through the holes in the floor to reach her beany buddy. “I am having the weirdest day, and—oh, for Pete’s sake!”

            Bendy was gone, because of course he was.

            Audrey slapped herself in the face with her pipe, then turned to her camera with an exhausted look on her face. “Okay, gamers, I have no idea what is happening anymore. Apparently, Wilson wanted to give me an existential crisis for my let’s play live stream vlog? And also I have a family that I don’t ever remember having? And I’m not, in fact, a holy child of God, but an abomination of man and machine? I really don’t understand what’s going on, but I do know one thing: I want to get out of this game, and I want my beany boy back!” She thought for a second. “Okay, I guess that’s two things. Point being! Forget about Wilson, forget about Joey Drew, and forget about my questionable status as a human; I’m coming for ya, Bendy!”

Twist of the Century

            Audrey tore through the horde of ink people in the streets like a whirlwind and slammed the ID card onto the door to open it up. She smacked a chained-up door and shouted, “I’m here for Bendy! Who will challenge me!?”

            The Ink Demon leapt down from the ceiling and roared at her. “Seems as good a place to start as any.” Audrey lifted her pipe. “Come and get it—”

            Suddenly, the two electric towers on either side of the room lit up with… color. Something Audrey hadn’t seen in so long that it hurt to look at. Apparently, it hurt the Ink Demon as well, and the two of them crumpled under the power of rainbows together. Audrey peeked up from her spot on the floor, dazedly watching at the Ink Demon dissolved into ashes, leaving only a small, little—

            …Was that frickin’ Bendy?

            Sure enough, the little demon struggled to his feet, glancing at Audrey with those big, pie-cut eyes of his. He hugged himself and limped away, disappearing into a blotch of ink on the wall. Audrey sat up after a minute and stared blankly at where Bendy had gone.

“Are you telling me that Bendy—cute, sweet, adorable Bendy—was actually the Ink Demon this whole time?”

            “…Are you serious?” Someone commented in the live chat. Audrey blocked them forever.

One Like = One Hug

The body bags scattered throughout the hallways didn’t help Audrey feel better, and neither did the apparent dead end she found herself in. A screen in front of her turned on, showing a strange figure with a glowing face. “Anomaly detected—"

“Um, excuse me,” Audrey interrupted. “Could we do this later? I have ninety-nine problems and I don’t understand any of them.”

            “Feisty,” the figure on the screen rasped, “erratic, dangerous… we’ve not seen one like this before. Subject has been deemed hazardous. Toxic fumes activated.”

A hissing sound filled the room, and Audrey started to cough. “Chapter four is the one where I really can’t catch a break, isn’t it?” Audrey wheezed, smashing a hole in the wall with her pipe and running away from the toxins.

“Subject has broken containment!” the TV figure hissed. “Execute on sight!”

“Not if I execute you first!”

“Block all access to the Cyclebreakers!”

Audrey slowed just a bit. “Cyclebreakers…? They sound important.” Audrey ducked behind a corner and took some deep breaths before looking at her screen. “Okay, everyone, I’m going to be honest: I have no idea what I’m doing anymore. I can’t play Wilson’s game for my live stream let’s play vlog because it’s giving me a crisis. I can’t search for Bendy because Bendy was apparently evil this whole time? And I can’t just leave my live stream let’s play vlog like this, because there’s nothing even close to resembling a thematic resolution. So, what the heck; I’m going to go cause as much chaos as possible and hope I can reach my goal of ten subscribers because of it. Is it cheap? Yeah. Do I care at this point? Nah. Do I want a hug? …Kinda.”

Hide and Go AAAAAH!

            Apparently, there was more than one figure than the one on the screen. As Audrey snuck around glowing barrels of mysterious liquid, vials of ink (or was it blood?) and smashed open a couple of air vents in order to get around more efficiently, strange, looming creatures with long tendrils trailing behind their slug-like bodies crept slowly through the area, their faces glowing like spotlights searching for anything out of place.

            It took her a while to find something of note: namely the blocked off doorway labeled “Cyclebreakers”, but it was a long enough time for her get ahold of her spiraling thoughts so that she was no longer on the verge of losing her sanity anymore than she already had. It was going to take a lot of commissioned drawing and long naps in her closet at Arch Gate Pictures to really fix her up, though.

            It really shouldn’t have been a surprise to her when the switch next to the door didn’t work.

            “That’s where the ghosts live,” a voice said behind her.

Audrey jumped about a foot in the air and spun around. “Is everyone here a jump scare waiting to happen, or am I just special?” She grumped.

“What’s a jump scare?” The frail ink woman asked, staring up at Audrey with big, glowing eyes. “Is it like a game?”

“Well, technically, it’s an aspect of a game—”

“Oh, I love to play games! May we play a game?” The ink woman stood excitedly. “I like hide and seek best! Find me, and I’ll open the door for you!”

Audrey jabbed a thumb towards the door in question with disbelief on her face. “You can open this door that apparently contains a bunch of ‘dangerous’ Cyclebreakers?”

“I can! I really know how!”

“Prove it.”

The ink woman giggled. “Find me first, and then I’ll prove it! Close your eyes and count to ten!”

“Shoot,” Audrey muttered. “I was hoping that would work…”

“Hurry, hurry, let’s play!”

“Alright, alright, I’m doing it.”

“You have to close your eyes!”

“Mmhm.”

“And count to ten!”

“Yep.”

“…Are you counting to ten?”

“Are you hiding?”

“Oh, right, silly me!”

“Okay… one, two, ten. Ready or not, here I—where’d she go?” Despite rigging the count, Audrey couldn’t see a single trace of the ink woman. “I actually have to play hide and seek? I haven’t played hide and seek in…” Audrey paused. “Did I ever play hide and seek? Would Joey know, since he says he’s my dad? Eh, whatever, I don’t want to think about that right now. I’ve got chaos to cause.”

Who Would Have Ever Dreamed?

            … Is how the note Audrey found while looking for the ink woman began. “In the declining years of my life, I have someone more precious to me than any piece of art I could make. For all the evil that’s come from me, this is something finally good. When she laughs and smiles, it fills my heart so much it overflows. We play and talk as we both learn from each other. There’s not much time, so every moment has to count. Unlike my versions who came before her, the ones that called me their ‘uncle’, I’m proud to have her call me ‘Dad’. Because she truly is my daughter. Joey.”

            “Wait, what?” Audrey shrieked. “Were there other “me’s” before me? What happened to them? How many were there? This is not an okay thing for me to learn right now!”

            “Intruder!” A creature rasped.

            “Shut up!”

Fast Travel Get!

            “Oh, you did it! You found me!” The ink woman said gleefully when Audrey, finally, finally found her.

            “Can you open the door for me now?” Audrey asked, trying not snap like a rubber band.

            The ink woman sighed. “Oh, yes, the door. You’ll find that it’s open now.”

            “Wait, what?” Audrey blinked. “Like, right now?”

            “Indeed!”

            “But—”

            “Oh, and let me give you something special! Just a small reminder of our game together!” She set an inky hand on the side of Audrey’s head. Her vision glowed gold around the edges before the ink woman pulled away.

            “…Okay,” Audrey said after a moment. “What was the gift?”

            The ink woman returned to her hiding place, behind a stack of boxes, then pointed in the direction of an ink drain.

            Audrey stepped in front of the drain. “Okay, so what do I do with this?” She whacked the drain with her pipe and was immediately sucked in with a noisy slurp and an exhausted shout.

            She popped up on the other side of the drain, back where she had met Bendy at the end of chapter three. “Oh. Cool,” Audrey said. “Because I definitely want to come back this way for some reason. Hey, what’s that?”

            Audrey picked up a lump of ink that pulsated in her hand. There was a note tied to it that said “from Heidi” on it. “I guess Heidi was the ink woman from earlier?” Audrey wondered.

            …Wait.

            “Heidi… Hide and seek… ARGH! FRICKIN’ PUNS!”

Big Steve

            The next room she entered while trying to make her way back to the Cyclebreaker’s prison contained a large, inky man behind a rather pathetic looking cage of chain link fences. The only thing that seemed to be keeping the big guy from just walking through the “cage” with the sheer force of his girth was the way he kept chewing on his hand with his big, gaping maw, as if he were hungry.

            “Aren’t we all?” Audrey said, picking up a nearby note and reading it out loud. “The Keepers have taken my friend! Locked him away like some animal! Just because he’s big and strong. But they don’t need to fear him, no! If they just make sure to feed him on time, Big Steve won’t even hurt a fly! If only someone would seek out his favorite thumping delicacy… then they would see how harmless he really is.” Audrey thought for a moment, then pulled out the inky lump Heidi had left for her. “Is ‘pulsating’ the same as ‘thumping’?” She wondered.

Big Steve seemed to think so, since he made a deep whining noise and grabby motions with his free hand.

            “Okay, okay, I’ll toss it to you. Ready?” Audrey tossed the thing over the fence, realizing at the last second that she had just thrown him a beating heart. Oops.

Big Steve caught the heart easily and bit into it with a horrifying crunch.

Audrey winced. “I don’t think hearts are supposed to sound like that,” she whispered.

Big Steve said nothing, because he was eating.

“…This was a weird side quest. I’ve gotta get out of here.”

An Interesting Conversation

            The prison for the Cyclebreakers wasn’t as big as Audrey thought it would be, or at least, there weren’t as many prisoners as she thought there’d be. A hatch labeled “Subject 414” caught her attention, mostly because of the faint noises she could hear from inside. Someone muttering… no, talking aloud, with a voice that was so familiar to her…

            …It couldn’t be.

            Audrey flipped the switch next to the hatch, and the metal screen lifted, revealing a glass window peering into a room, empty aside from the man sitting on a stool under a single lightbulb, facing away from the glass and holding out his hand as if he were holding something.

            “Hey, guys,” the man said shakily, a hint of delirium in his voice. “Welcome back to another boxing video. It’s me. I’m in the box. Again. Be sure to like, comment, and subscribe—”

            “Oh my God?” Audrey gasped. The man jumped and whirled towards her, falling off of his stool comically as he did so. “I… I know you,” Audrey said, pointing at him with her pipe and holding her phone up to the glass so the audience could get a good look. “You were HenryStein69!”

            “You know me?” Henry asked, his voice trembling.

            “You were my hero! I became a YouTuber because of you! I even say your catch phrase sometimes! And… oof…” Audrey winced as she got a better look at his face. “You don’t look so good, my man.”

            Henry’s hair was in greasy strands, his clothes were a mess, and there were dark circles and deep wrinkles on almost every inch of his face. His finger tips were dyed black with ink. His eyes, dull as they were, were locked on her phone, almost hungry-looking. “…What happened to my channel?” He asked quietly.

            Audrey breathed a laugh. “You know, it’s funny; I only remembered just now, but… when you did your live stream let’s play vlog about Joey Drew Studios, the stream just kind of… ended, and we never heard from you again. No one knew what happened, or at least, no one I asked knew about it. I can’t believe I’ve been doing my own live stream let’s play vlog in the studio my hero disappeared in without even realizing it…”

            Henry was still staring at her phone. “And… you’re live, right now? You’re live on the internet?”

            “Yeah, though my stream has been going to heck in the past few hours or however long I’ve been here. Why, do you… want to talk to the audience?”

            “I haven’t talked to a real audience in so long… it makes me wonder if I’m even alive.”

            “Anyone in particular you want to give a shout out to?”

            “Yeah, actually.” Henry leaned against the glass, as if to get as close to a real phone as possible. “Shout out to my Mom; I’m sorry I called your spaghetti awful before I left to do my live stream let’s play vlog. Mom’s spaghetti is the best… Knees weak, arms spaghetti…”

            “That song is so old.”

            “I may be old…” Henry began. They stared at each other in silence for a few seconds.

            “Yep,” Audrey finally said.

            “Yeah,” Henry sighed creakily. “So, what are you doing here? Were you looking for me?”

            Audrey shook her head. “To be perfectly honest, I had no idea you were here. Wilson brought me here, and all I’ve gotten out of it so far are a bunch of existential crises.”

            “Oh, yeah? Like what?”

            “Well for starters, apparently Joey Drew is my dad.”

            “Yikes,” Henry hissed. “Not a fan of Joey. He’s a terrible game designer.”

            “I knew it was him!” Audrey sighed. “Apparently, I’m supposed to be the one to fix this whole thing? Not that I actually know what to do. My current goal is just to cause chaos.”

            Henry hummed for a second. “Hey, you know what would be chaotic? Resetting the cycle.”

            “How do I do that?”

            “The reason the Keepers—those guys with the glowing faces—keep me here is because I know how to reset the cycle. Hence, the ‘cyclebreakers’. All you have to do is make the Ink Demon look at something super specific: a reel of film with ‘The End’ written on it. I’ve heard that they keep it in the Pit.”

            “Dang it,” Audrey muttered. “I was in there a while ago and had no idea…”

            “If you can make your way back there, that’d be pretty swag.”

            “Yeah, it would.”

            “Pretty please try to break the cycle?” Henry asked hopefully. “I can only do so many boxing videos before I lose my mind.”

            I think it’s a bit late for that, buddy, Audrey thought, but chose not to say. “I will,” she said instead.

            Henry sighed in relief. “Thanks. Oh, and, your name was…?”

            “I’m Audrey, but I go by GamerGodGamerQueenAudrey420 on YouTube…” She lowered her camera and covered the speaker with her hand. “I’m thinking of changing it, though.”

            “That’s not a bad idea. Your current one is a bit long.”

            “Yeah, that’s the reason. Anyway, I’ve got a film and a demon to find. I’d let you out, but I don’t know how to do that.”

            “That’s probably for the best; I haven’t moved my legs in years.”

            “Sure would be wacky if we had to run at some point, huh?”

            “Absolutely. Anyway, I’ll see you around, Audrey. You know where to find me.”

            Audrey nodded. “…Bye, Henry.”

A Considerably Less Interesting Conversation

            The only other cell in the Cyclebreaker Prison was labeled 418, which was confusing for a number of reasons. Audrey opened it up anyway, because if 414 had her YouTuber idol inside, maybe her mom or one of her apparently hundreds of siblings/cousins would be in this one?

            Inside the cell was an inky man in overalls playing a banjo.

            …

            “They can’t all be winners, I guess,” Audrey muttered, turning away.

            “W-wait a minute!” The man cried, getting up from his seat and slapping his hands wetly against the glass. “What do you mean, ‘they can’t all be winners?’ Do you know who I am, little sheep?”

            “No,” Audrey said honestly, because she didn’t.

            “I am the prophet of the Ink Demon! He lives, I tell you! That Wilson sits on a throne of lies, claiming to have bested my dark lord!”

            “Wait, hold up,” Audrey held up a hand. “Are you the edgy poetry guy whose notes I’ve been reading this whole time?”

            “P-poetry? Edgy?? You insult me and my songs! They are my gifts to our dark savior!”

            “Your dark savior’s kind of a jerk, not gonna lie. He let me think he was cute and adorable, but he wasn’t.”

            “You… you saw my dark lord at his weakest, and didn’t destroy him?”

            Audrey raised an eyebrow. “Did you want me to?”

            The inky man hemmed and hawed, seeming to be trying to connect two different facts that couldn’t both be true. “…Perhaps there is more to you than is let on. Not many would support the Ink Demon in such a fragile state.”

            “…Uh-huh.”

            “I have much to think about. Leave me at peace!” He picked up his banjo and began plucking at the strings again.

            “Ooookay… Bye, loser.” Audrey walked away.

            “I’m not a loser!” The man shouted after her. “I’m really cool and a lot of people like me!”

            “Tell that to your mom, loser.”

            “I will! And she’ll believe me!”

            “Mm hm.”

            “She will!”

            “I’m not talking to you anymore, I’m in a different room getting attacked by a Keeper,” Audrey said, because it was true. The Keeper that appeared when she tried to open the door to the Pit proceeded to smother her with their big, inky hands.

Gaslight, Gatekeep, GWilson

            Audrey’s eyes shot open and she slapped at her face repeatedly with her Gent Pipe. “EW!” She shrieked. “That Keeper was so gross, putting its hands all over my face! I’m gonna kill the guy who created them!”

            “My apologies, Audrey,” a familiar, raspy old man voice said next to her. “The Keepers can be relentless to strangers, but there’s nothing to fear as long as I’m—”

            “YOU!” Audrey swung her pipe in the direction of the voice, narrowly missing Wilson’s head as he sat across from her in long, narrow room, elbows on his knees like the old man he was. Ink dripped heavily over his good eye, and his blind eye glowed like a laser pointer, never leaving her face. “You did this! You brought me here! Why are you making me go through these existential crises? What did I do to deserve this; it makes no sense—”

            Wilson stood up with a snap, faster than any old man should have been able to. “Open your eyes and look around you!” He hissed, gesturing around them wildly. “None of this ‘makes sense’; it’s fiction!”

            Audrey kept quiet, trying to think of whatever she’d done to him to warrant this kind of treatment for her YouTube career. Maybe it was because of the time she spilled coffee on his head? Or the many, many times she’d taken his lunch from the fridge because it was there? Or maybe—

            “…And yet,” Wilson continued, sitting down more slowly and setting a briefcase on his lap, “in here, it exists; it breathes. Reality, guided by its master’s pen. The foundation of a new reality we can bleed into our own…”

            …Hmm. Did it have something to do with the puppet thing in the bucket of water she showed him? No, no, he’d been telling her he wanted to show her something for a while, so it had to be before then. Maybe it was the time she stole his empty trash bags to use as blankets during that particularly cold winter? Or at the piece of paper labeled “Wilson’s Paycheck”?

            “Just think of it!” Wilson breathed excitedly. He reached into the briefcase and pulled out a small can with a lid on it. He popped the lid off and tapped the contents into his hand. It was blob of ink. “Anything we create in here; we can release out there. But first…” He poked the ink blob a few times with his finger, bringing it to life as it took the shape of a tiny little Bendy. Audrey watched with adoration as the tiny creature waved at her. “This world must be controlled, made safe. These… things…” he poked the tiny demon roughly, knocking it flat on its face. Audrey gasped in horror. “Are they really life? Or are they just… stains?” He grabbed the little ink demon in one hand and squeezed it, making it struggle silently until its head burst with a nauseating squelch.

            “How dare you?!” Audrey cried out. “He was just a little boy!”

            “It,” Wilson corrected, “was an old mistake ready to be cleansed away, for newer, greater things.”

            Audrey seethed, her breaths coming in sharp and fast as she watched the ink slip through Wilson’s fingers. “Alright, I’ve had enough of this! You’ve crossed a lot of lines today, Wilson, but killing your own child is too far! You’ve ruined my live stream let’s play vlog with whatever the heck this experience has been, and I will not be used for your schemes anymore! I’m leaving a bad review on your Steam page!”

            Wilson blinked at her, his mouth hanging open slightly. Finally, he had the decency to look ashamed. “I…the truth is, Audrey, I need your help…”

            “You should have thought of that before you made such a bad game.”

            “…to save my father’s life.”

            “…You have a dad, too?”

            The room shook suddenly, and it was only then that Audrey noticed that it wasn’t a room, but a train cabin. Because obviously there’d be an entire train system in a fictional animation studio.

            “This is our stop. We’ll talk more once we’re safely inside.”

            “Wait, huh?” Audrey stood from her bench she’d been lying on. “But who’s your dad? Is it Joey Drew? Are you my brother? Are you a weird beta version of me?”

            “Joey Drew is not my father,” Wilson said shortly, standing once the train had come to a total stop.

            “But who else could it—?”

            “Inside, Audrey,” Wilson scolded lightly. “Now come.”

            “Wait!” Audrey checked under the bench and grabbed her phone. “Huh? The battery’s recharged, and the screen isn’t inky anymore…”

            “I took the liberty of doing so.” Wilson gave her a crooked smile. “After… everything I’ve done to bring you here, I believe it was the least I could do to help you record your… game.”

            “…Oh,” Audrey said quietly. “Well… alright. I’ll go with you. I haven’t forgiven you yet, but… it’s a start.”

            “Indeed.” Wilson’s smile grew larger. “The start of something incredible.”

Chapter Text

Gotta get that Lore, Lore, LORE!

            “Stay close,” Wilson cautioned as the two of them exited the train. “This place isn’t as safe as it once was.” The train station was a big, roomy space, with cracked and inky tiles lining the walls and floors. A few benches and trash cans were placed here and there, leaving sporadic shadows in the flickering yellow lights above. A Keeper stood by a hallway, watching Audrey intensely.

            “This place is so big,” Audrey said in awe.

            “Indeed,” Wilson said as he strode past the Keeper. “One could easily get lost—”

            “There’s got to be a bunch of lore hidden in here!”

            “…What.”

            “BRB, gonna explore!” Audrey whacked a chained-up door and ran into the darkness.

            “I said stay close, Audrey…!” Wilson rasped.

            “Then come along with me! The more the merrier!”

            Wilson swore under his breath, then hobbled after her because he was old. By the time he caught up with her, Audrey was already reading a note aloud to her audience. “Old Track 77 is a quiet place these days,” she was saying. “Ever since that terrible crash a few years back, people don’t like to hang around. Too many strange things keep happening on this platform. Last week, one of the railmen told me they had had reports of some train going through that wasn’t on the schedule. There were figures standing in the cars, staring through the windows. But it never stopped to let no one off. Just kept on going straight through. Some say it was the Silverlane Express. The train that crashed. Kitty Thompson.” Audrey crumpled up the note and tossed it onto the nearby train tracks, where it was immediately hit by an unscheduled train. “I think Kitty Thompson was the secretary who had to deal with sexism back in chapter 3, right?”

            “No,” Wilson wheezed when he finally caught up to her. “The secretary was Sally Newt, not Kitty Thompson.”

            “Ah, I see,” Audrey said, nodding in approval. “It was a reasonable mistake; they’re both named after animals.”

            “Let’s go now, Audrey—”

            “Right! There’s still more lore to look for!”

            “Audrey—!” Audrey ran off again before Wilson could stop her. Wheezing like a bad accordion, Wilson hobbled after her once again.

Checkpoint

            Luckily for Wilson’s lungs, there was no more lore to look for, so they eventually returned to where they were supposed to go the whole time. “The Ink Demon’s evil continues to spread,” Wilson rasped once he caught his breath. Audrey totally would have continued listening to this very interesting information if her ears hadn’t started ringing. She massaged her temple with her pipe as the ringing grew louder, drowning out Wilson’s voice.

            “He’s lying, Audrey,” the Ink Demon’s voice rumbled in her ears.

            “Shut up, you little heart breaker!” Audrey snapped.

            “What was that?”

            Audrey smiled at Wilson, who was giving her the stink eye. “Nothing, it was nothing. Tell me more about the definitely interesting thing you were talking about.”

            Wilson grumbled and pulled a switch next to a closed door. The door opened, leading to a set of stairs going up. “Almost there,” Wilson assured her. “Just a quick stop; won’t take but a moment.”

            “Okay.” Audrey walked up the stairs, pausing to look back at Wilson, who hadn’t moved an inch. “Sooo… are you coming, or—?” The door snapped shut. Audrey sighed for five seconds before continuing up the stairs. The room she found herself in had a strange mark on the ground and a table covered in all sorts of tools and equipment, including a very attractive looking axe. “Ooh,” Audrey ooh-ed, reaching for the table. “Dat axe, doe—!”

            “The subject will stand in the designated location!” A Keeper behind a glass window screamed at her. Audrey would have knocked the table over if it hadn’t been nailed to the ground.

            “Not even a hello?” She grumped, standing on the mark on the floor. A glass tube immediately descended around her, trapping her. “Okay, this is weird.”

            “Lethal object detected!” The Keeper hissed. “The subject will submit all weapons for further screening!”

            Audrey held her Gent pipe close. “But I love my weapon! How am I supposed to be a gamer god gamer queen without a weapon?”

            “Disarm now!”

            Audrey flicked her eyes between the pipe and the Keeper quickly, trying to figure out if it would be worth it to just say no… but, well, her audience needed something more entertaining to look at than her standing in a glass tube for five hours. Sighing, she nodded at the Keeper, who raised the tube long enough to let her set the pipe on the table near the axe. The tube was lowered soon after, and a thrumming sound echoed around her until there was a quiet ding!

            “The subject is cleared for entry!” The Keeper hissed, making a shooing motion towards the door at the other side of the room.

            “Okay, cool,” Audrey said, reaching for the table. “So can I have my—”

            “NOOO!”

            “Alright, fine, sheesh. I was just asking.”

The Civilized World

            “How the heck did you get here?!” Audrey shrieked at Wilson, who was standing on the other side of the exit she just stomped through.

            “I have my ways, Audrey. Now, come.” Wilson gestured for her to follow him past a fountain of ink and another flight of stairs. At the top of the stairs was a painting of Wilson with a sword, standing over the Ink Demon, with two doors leading in different directions. There was also—

            “Well, helloooo, Nurse!” Audrey whistled, sidling up to the woman in the maid dress with a mask over her face. The lady set a hand over her heart, seemingly surprised and embarrassed.

            “This is Betty, my housekeeper,” Wilson said. “If you’ll excuse me for a moment, I have some things to take care of. We’ll talk later, after you’ve rested. She will look after you.”

            Audrey ignored Wilson, pretending to lean against an invisible wall near Betty like a mime. “So, you come here often?”

            “T-there’s some fresh blankets laid out for you,” Betty said, keeping her hands firmly in front of her. “You’ll be dreaming in no time.”

            “I think I’m dreaming right now,” Audrey gave her an exaggerated wink.

            Wilson cleared his throat. “I’ll be going now. Rest well, Audrey.” He walked through one of the doors and was about to close it when something occurred to Audrey.

            “Wait, Wilson, if you wanted me to help your dad, why didn’t you just say so to begin with? It would have saved a lot of time and effort on both of our parts.”

            Wilson looked over his shoulder at her. “Would you have believed me?”

            “Why wouldn’t I?”

            Wilson stared at her for a moment, his eyebrows raised as if he realized something obvious. He sighed shortly, then slammed the door behind him.

            “What’s his problem?” Audrey wondered.

            “N-never mind that, now,” Betty said, opening the opposite door and gesturing for Audrey to enter. The door led to a long series of hallways, decorated with old wallpaper and small tables with candelabras and vases set along the walls. Audrey inched along next to Betty as she talked, since the poor woman seemed to barely be able to walk in those heels of hers. “Now, to give you some bearings,” Betty said, “we’re currently standing in the south wing. Wilson’s laboratory is downstairs, and then… there’s the north wing. The Ink Demon got in there a while ago, and ever since we’ve had to keep the north wing locked up tight. I’m afraid it’s fallen into ruins by now. All those juicy, lovely books gone to waste… only Keepers go in there these days.”

            “’Juicy’ is not how I would describe books, but okay,” Audrey said.

            “When you have so few people to talk to as I do, you take what you can get,” Betty admitted as they turned a corner. “It’s not very often that I have guests to look after, especially ones I can actually talk to.” Betty glanced from side to side, then leaned toward Audrey. “Almost everyone here either can’t speak, or they’re completely mad.”

            “I see,” Audrey said, who could not actually see, considering most everyone she had interacted with down here was perfectly capable of talking and relatively sane.

            “Anyway, here we are!” Betty opened a door at the end of a hallway. “Best room in the house! You should see where I sleep, eugh…”

Audrey entered the room. It was as big as the office she worked in at Arch Gate Pictures, though considerably less crowded, and there was a bed as big as her closet in the back of the room. A series of chairs, couches, dressers, and miscellaneous furniture was scattered around, and there was a door on one side of the room.

            “I saw to every detail!” Betty said proudly. “The bed is clean, the bathroom is on the left—sorry about the stains, I did my best to scrub them out—and… that’s all! Did you have any questions?”

            “Just a few,” Audrey said. “First, is it always night here?”

            “It’s always dark, if that’s what you mean. I haven’t been around nearly as long as many of the others; I’m quite new, but it’s been like this as long as I can remember. I’m… not the first of my kind, one in a long line of failed experiments, but Wilson will keep trying.”

            “Do you… trust Wilson?”

            Betty was quiet for a moment, then sighed. “This is the realm of the Ink Demon. I don’t ‘trust’ anyone, but Wilson takes care of me, keeps me safe. He once said I remind him of something he called his ‘mother’. Tell me, is that a good thing where you two are from?”

            Audrey thought for a moment. “I don’t think I could tell you. I never knew my mom, but as far as I’ve been able to figure out, she was a soulless machine without pronouns, so I think you’ve one-upped her already.”

            “…Ah.”

            “Anyway, last question: do you wanna… you know… hang out? Or something? I could show you my YouTube channel; it’s pretty cool, I’m almost at ten subscribers—”

            “I’m sure your, ah… channel is lovely and impressive,” Betty said gently. “But I was told to make sure you got some sleep once you arrived, so I’m afraid I’ll have to decline. Perhaps later, once everything’s been worked out with the Ink Demon?”

            “Aw,” Audrey whined.

            “I left something on the table that might help you nod off, if you like? It’s my own recipe, works very fast. Just follow the instructions. If there’s nothing else…” Betty began to close the door to leave Audrey alone.

            “Okay… thanks, Betty,” Audrey said, trying not to sound too disappointed with her rejection.

            “Of course, and if you need anything, I’ll be over in a jiffy.” Betty smiled at her (hopefully, it was hard to tell with that mask on her face), and shut the door with a click.

Let’s Read: The Mug and the Maiden (NOT)

            “What the heck is a Gilson?” Audrey muttered to herself, searching through all the cupboards in the bedroom and bathroom to find something that would offer her a hint. “Or is it a who? Is Gilson Wilson’s twin brother or something? Why would I need his brother to make this recipe? Do I need to steal his bones?” After less than a minute of searching, Audrey gave up. “Hey, Author!” She called.

            The Author, who was dozing behind the fourth wall, startled awake. “Huh? What is it?”

            “Do you know who Gilson is? I need to find him so I can steal his bones.”

            “What…? Oh, the Gilson, right, right, let me see… no, the Gilson is a what, not a who.”

            “Oh, okay,” Audrey said, trying not to sound disappointed by the lack of bone stealing she’d get to do. “So… what’s a Gilson?”

            “That’s part of the puzzle; you have to figure it out, and then go find it.”

            “Can you at least give me a hint?”

            “Okay, um… try reading a book.”

            “…Reading a book?”

            “Yeah. There’s one on your bed, you can start there—”

            Audrey grabbed the book that was on her bed—The Mug and the Maiden, Volume 1—and threw it out a window. “Do you honestly think I’m going to sit here and read? This is a let’s play, not a let’s read!”

            “But I want to hear the story!” The Author whined.

            “Let me put it in a way you can understand: do you want to rewrite the entire story of The Mug and the Maiden, volumes one through whatever, just so I can find a hint about what a Gilson is?”

            “…Touché,” the Author grumbled. “A Gilson is a fish, you have to go to the room with the piano and play a bunch of loud music to stun the fish, then grab it.”

            “Thank you!” Audrey left the room and began to wander the halls, looking for a piano. “Was that so hard?”

            “But maybe the story is really good and plot relevant…” The Author moaned.

            “Not good or plot relevant enough to rewrite it in your parody fanfiction, though.”

            “Obviously not. I’ll look it up and read it in my own time.”

            “As soon as you’ve read those forty fics you have open on your phone tabs, right?”

            “H-hey!”

            Audrey laughed meanly as she finally found the piano room. Sure enough, there was a fish in a tank. Audrey threw herself onto the piano, making an awful, crashing sound as the whole instrument collapsed under her weight, sending the fish floating to the surface of the water, probably more dead than stunned.

            “Gotcha!” Audrey grabbed the fish and held it up triumphantly.

            “A-hem.”

            Audrey slowly turned to face Betty, whose mask face betrayed no real emotion, but Audrey could feel the disappointment and confusion behind those dark eyes.

            “…I forgot the Gilson again, didn’t I? My apologies… I’ve brought some from the pantry back to your room for you. Oh, and could you put Harold back in his tank? He’s not one for air breathing.”

            Audrey’s head turned towards the Author so fast that something in her neck clicked uncomfortably. The Author was hurriedly rebuilding the fourth wall. “YOU!” Audrey shouted, tossing the fish behind her as she ran for the fourth wall. Betty caught Harold and gently set him back in his tank. “You made me look like a fool in front of Betty on purpose, didn’t you?!”

            “I can’t hear you, I’m behind the fourth wall,” the Author said as she set the last brick in place and disappeared completely.

            “Not for long, you won’t be—!”

            Betty cleared her throat again. Audrey whipped back around and tried to look cool and casual, instead of insane and murderous.

            “Let’s… get back to your room then, shall we?” Betty gestured for Audrey to follow after her. Back in her room, all of the ingredients were arranged on the bathroom counter.

            “…So,” Audrey said. “Did you change your mind about hanging out, or—”

            “Goodnight, Audrey.” Betty shut the door behind her as she left.

            …

            “Dang it!” Audrey smacked the counter with her hand. “My dating scheme has been foiled!”

            Someone in the comments gave her a like as compensation, but the damage was done. There was little chance Audrey would get to hang out with Betty now.

            “Maybe this drink thing will put me to sleep and help me forget…” Audrey muttered, pouring some “water” from the sink (is water normally black?) into the glass and taking a sip. Then another sip. Then one more—

            “Nightie-night,” said the angel with a twisted face that appeared right next to her.

            “For Pete’s… sake…” Audrey groaned as she passed out on the bathroom floor.

This Reminds Me of a Puzzle!

            Audrey came to, strapped to a chair in a ruined dining room. A long dining table was lined with tied up ink figures in chairs, and at the very end of the table, that twisted angel was draped upon her seat, smiling at her with her half-melted mouth. Luckily for the angel, Audrey’s phone was still gripped tightly in hand.

            "Ah," the angel said when Audrey’s eyes opened. “Awake at last… I almost thought you’d miss my party.”

            “Huh-whuh?” Audrey groaned.

            “Oh,” the angel cooed. “It seems you’re just a little bit overwhelmed… it’s alright, honey, I understand. It’s not every day one gets to bask in the glory of an angel~!”

            “Oh, there’s an angel here? Where?”

            The angel swung her legs in front of her and stood angrily. “It’s me! I’m the angel! Alice Angel!”

            “Oh, hi Alice,” Audrey said. Then she blinked and squinted at the angel across from her. “Wait a minute, you’re not Alice!”

            “I am Alice Angel!” The maybe angel roared, striding towards Audrey’s side of the table. “My perfection, admittedly, is… pending, but that’s where you come in!”

            “Okay… Audrey said, leaning away as “Alice Angel” approached her chair. “And… what you want from me is…?”

            “Right to the chase; I like it!” Alice Angel leaned closer to Audrey, the smell of rancid ink making Audrey’s eyes water. “What I really want… is your face removed, your skin peeled away like paper, and your insides torn out and tossed onto my table! Custom parts ready for my delicious harvest! And, with your generous sacrifice…” She slipped behind Audrey’s chair and appeared on the other side. “I’ll be beautiful!”

            “So… eating me is going to make you beautiful?” Audrey asked. “I guess that… kind of makes sense…”

            “It makes perfect sense!” Alice Angel snapped. “But first, why don’t we have a little fun? How about a game of riddles?”

            “Ooh, like a puzzle?” Audrey said excitedly. “It’s about time this game went back to its puzzle-solving roots; I feel like the gameplay has been too combative recently.”

            “…Right,” Alice Angel said. “Now, here’s the deal: the door to freedom is right behind you, but it will only open if you solve the riddle. Answer it correctly, and you’re free! But if you’re wrong… you’ll be in for quite a shock!”

            “Oh, so I’m sitting in an electric chair right now?”

            “That’s correct.”

            “Oh, okay. Cool.”

            Alice Angel growled. “Could you act a little more terrified? This isn’t as fun when you’re not screaming.”

            “Oh, I’m sorry; are we roleplaying or riddle solving?” Audrey snapped.

            “Don’t get fussy with me, honey,” Alice Angel snapped right back. “I can take back the offer if it’s not to your satisfaction…”

            “No, no!” Audrey wailed. “I want to solve the riddle!”

            Alice Angel laughed evilly. “That’s more like it!” She removed the straps holding Audrey into the chair and strode back to her own seat. “Everyone at this table has a hint, except me. Better get to solving, honey.” Alice Angel draped herself over the arms of her chair and watched as Audrey got up and wandered around the room.

            Surely, this would take upwards of at least a half hour…

Death from Above!

            It did not take upwards of at least a half hour.

            “NOO!” Alice Angel wailed as Audrey solved the puzzle on the first try.

            “I mean, it wasn’t that hard,” Audrey shouted over the sounds of the other guests frying to death. “It just comes down to visualizing the arrangement. It helps that my phone has a drawing app so I could rearrange the animals’ positions, but still; not that hard at all.

            The lights flickered off from the excess electricity, only to turn back on moments later. The angel was gone.

            “Well,” Audrey said. “That was… a thing that happened. I should probably head back to Wilson, not that I have any idea where I am…”

            True to Alice Angel’s word, the doors behind her were now open, and Audrey walked through them to look for an exit.

            An exit was not found, but her Gent Pipe was the next best thing. “Aye!” Audrey grabbed the pipe and flipped it in her hand. It was fully charged and everything! Audrey stuck it in the side of a sparking machine and flipped a switch to shut it off, revealing a ladder that led to a small hallway covered in angel whatchamicallit.

            Audrey paused to let her audience view the “Sent from Above” poster on the brick wall, when suddenly…

            “No one humiliates an angel! No one!” Alice Angel shrieked as a hail of bullets streaked through the wall, just missing Audrey by an inch. Audrey, being dumb, immediately peered through the hole to see… was that angel holding an entire tommy gun?

            “Now hold still, honey,” Alice Angel reloaded the gun. “This is gonna hurt!”

            “Aw heck,” Audrey said, running out of the way of the next round of bullets. “Good thing I got my pipe back,” she said to her audience, “because it looks like I’m gonna have to conk out an angel! BRB guys, I’ve got some stuff to do.”

A “New” Name

            “How dare you touch me!” Alice Angel growled when Audrey tried to bean her with her pipe from behind after several minutes of sneaking around that the Author skipped over.

            “I wasn’t touching you!” Audrey shot back. “My pipe was touching you! There’s a difference!”

            Alice Angel made to shove Audrey to the ground far below, but Audrey held tight and they both ended up falling to the ground.

            “My phone!” Audrey wailed, clinging to her precious audience like a lifeline. “You better not have ended my stream early, angel, or else—”

            “Never mind you stream!” Alice Angel roared, standing up and aiming her tommy gun at the gamer girl. “Worry about your final curtain, baby—!”

            A long blade was shoved through the angel’s heart from behind, making her drop her gun in shock. She started to topple back, only to be caught by—

            “Oh, there you are, Alice,” Audrey said.

            “M-my face…” Alice Angel whispered, reaching to touch the other Alice’s face. “You have my face…”

            “It’s our face,” Alice corrected.

            “I’m… beautiful…”

            “Always were.”

            Alice Angel died.

            “Well, that was another thing that happened,” Audrey said, standing up. “So, what are you doing here, Alice? Uh… other Alice? Ponytail Alice? There’s two of you, so… yeah.”

            Alice set Alice’s body on the ground gently and stood up, retrieving her sword. “I should be asking you that question,” she said sternly. “Audrey, what in ink’s name are you doing in Wilson’s retreat?”

            “Oh, yeah,” Audrey perked up. “I forgot I was in Wilson’s house. I guess this is the north wing? I should probably get back to him—”

            “Are you crazy? Wilson’s the enemy! He’s the one who brought you here!”

            “I mean, yeah,” Audrey sighed. “But he says he needs help to save his dad? And, I don’t know, I guess since I know my dad is Joey Drew now, I feel obligated to help out for some reason? My motivations in this chapter don’t make a lot of sense.”

            “…What.”

            “My motivations? Yeah, I was originally planning to cause chaos in order to get ten subscribers, but now I’m helping Wilson’s dad somehow—”

            “Joey Drew is your dad?”

            “Apparently.”

            Alice locked eyes with something behind Audrey, mouth hanging open in shock. Audrey turned to see who she was staring at. A very tall, thin dog with overalls and a mechanical arm was staring right back at her.

            “…I like your dachshund,” Audrey said after a second.

            “He’s a wolf,” Alice corrected tiredly. “His name is Tom and he protects me.”

            Audrey began booping Tom’s snoot. “Tomato, tomahto. Anyway, what were you saying?”

            “I just… ugh.” Alice pinched the bridge of her nose. “You need to be really careful about Wilson. I don’t know if the whole ‘helping his dad’ thing is real or not, but I have a feeling you’re going to need help, for one reason or another. If you have to go, then go, but Tom and I are going to go find some of our friends. I have a feeling a fight is coming up.”

            “You’re probably right. This is the last chapter of the game, so there’s probably at least one final boss coming up.”

            “The last… what?”

            “Don’t worry about it. And, hey, if there’s more than one Alice walking around, you need a new name. I don’t want to call a bunch of people Alice again. Got something different?”

            Alice thought for a second. “Maybe… Allison?” Tom nodded in approval.

            “…Seriously?” Audrey said. “That’s barely different from Alice! Also, that’s the name of one of my potential moms, so that’s just awkward.”

            “…What?”

            “Look, if you like Allison, then that’s on you, just… I already have three potential moms out there; I don’t think I want a fourth. You do have big mommy energy, though, not gonna lie.”

            “Get the heck out of here, Audrey.”

            Audrey gave Allison and thumbs up, booped Tom’s snoot one more time, then ran to find Wilson. Allison and Tom watched her go, before Allison picked up the tommy gun Alice Angel had dropped. “Do you think anyone will mind if I take this?” Allison asked. Tom shook his head, and Allison patted him gently between the ears.

The Author’s Limitations

            “There you are! Thank goodness!” Betty said as Audrey finally arrived back in the main hall where she had first met Betty. “I couldn’t find you anywhere! Where did you run off to, and how did you get back?”

            “Betty.” Audrey set her hands on Betty’s shoulders. “Betty.”

            “Y-yes?”

            “I cannot even. Begin. To tell you what just happened. And as for how I got back…” She pulled Betty so they would have been nose to nose if Betty had a nose. “…you do not want to know.”

            “A-ah. I see,” Betty said, even though she could not see, because Audrey was taking up her entire line of vision. “Well, Wilson’s waiting for you in his laboratory downstairs. You’d best hurry. If you’ll excuse me, I have some things to pick up from the farmer’s market…”

            “You do that, Betty. I’ve got a game to stream.” Audrey toddled away to find Wilson’s lab.

            “But wait!” The Reader said. “How did Audrey get back to Wilson’s house? Isn’t there a whole sequence of stealth mechanics Audrey had to go through in the game to get back to the hub?”

            “Correct,” said the Author, “but let me ask you this: was I willing to write all of that only to arrive at basically the same conclusion I’ve written here, without writing all of that?”

            The Reader looked at the Author blankly.

            “The answer is no, no I was not. I’ve been smashing my key board for nearly six hours straight to get the chapter out on time. I’m not writing a scene that took the walkthrough player nearly an hour to get through. Just enjoy the rest of the story, okay?”

            “Okay…” The Reader whined.

            “That’s what I thought. Now let’s get to the big stuff.”

No, No; This is the Twist of the Century!

            “Audrey,” Wilson greeted as Audrey finally entered the lab after getting high and going through the tunnel from the Willy Wonka movie (color sure was a trip after living in sepia tones for so long). “You made it.”

            “Barely,” Audrey groaned. “So, okay, you said your dad needs help—?”

            “Come inside, my dear,” Wilson rasped. “But make sure you’re ready. Where we’re going, there is no return.”

            “Oh, so we’re in the final stages now?”

            “Indeed. Are you ready?”

            “As ready as I can be, after whatever the heck I just went through. Let’s jusht jump into it.”

            “Good…” Wilson opened the door to his lab and Audrey entered, looking around the space through her camera lens. It was dimly lit, the walls lined with shelves and cabinets of books, vials, and equipment. A section of the room extended further in, and Audrey could see a metal shell of some kind in the corner. “Thank you for coming all this way.”

            “It was a lot,” Audrey agreed. “Now, how do we help your dad?”

            “The Ink Demon is a formidable foe. To truly destroy such a monster, he must be dethroned… humiliated.”

            “…Okay,” Audrey said as Wilson began to walk towards the metal shell. “But how does that help your dad?”

            “For months now,” Wilson continued, “I’ve been working on something that will do exactly that: cast out the demon and put a new deity is his place.”

            “So we’re just… replacing the Ink Demon?” Audrey said slowly. “And that’s going to help your dad?”

            As the two of them approached the metal shell, it rotated to reveal a colorful painting of…

            “Isn’t he beautiful?” Wilson purred, gesturing to the drawing of a little boy in a sailor uniform with big, pie cut eyes and a cheeky smile. Written in cursive at the bottom was the name: Ship-Ahoy Dudley.

            “…Do you want my honest opinion, Wilson?” Audrey asked.

            “Please,” Wilson rubbed his knuckles against his ink-stained shirt proudly. “He’s such a treasure, isn’t he? Simple, but elegant; a powerful—"

            “He freaking sucks.”

            Wilson froze. “…What?”

            “First of all,” Audrey gestured to the entire drawing. “Original characters already get a hard pass from me; if you were going to choose someone to replace the Ink Demon, you should have used a character that already exists, like normal people would. Second of all, even if original characters were okay in the first place, this one is just ugly as sin. No one likes human characters! Humanoid, yes, but straight up humans? Never in a million years! He’s dumpy, he’s unsettling, and who likes sailors that much, anyway? Also, really? Ship-Ahoy Dudley? Dudley is a bad enough name as it is, but just adding “ship-ahoy” to it makes it clunky and unpleasant to say. What does a sailor have to do with being god-like, anyway? He’s supposed to replace the Ink Demon, so it should have been an angel or other god-like entity, as an antithesis to the demonic nature of the evil you’re trying to triumph over. Having some ugly sailor baby isn’t thematically appropriate at all. And also, as I’ve been trying to ask this whole time: how the heck is this supposed to help save your dad??”

            “AAAARGH!” Wilson screamed.

            “…You asked for my opinion, dude.”

            “No I didn’t!” Wilson seethed. The machine rotated again, revealing a tiny space with buzzing saw blades spinning at impossible speeds over a drain. “You listen to me, Audrey! You are going to put your soul into my creation, and he will live forever as the god of this world! If you don’t get into that machine right now and let yourself get ripped to inky pieces, so help me God—”

            “Whoa, hold up,” Audrey said, backing away from Wilson as he stalked towards her. “You never said anything about needing my soul. Also, I still fail to see how this is supposed to help your dad.”

            “Oh for—I lied about my father, Audrey! Nathan Arch is beyond hope, never giving me the time of day, only having time for the best and brightest of the world—!”

            “Mr. Arch is your dad?”

            “GAHSUNUVA—!”

            “Okay, calm down, Wilson, I don’t like having swears on my live stream let’s play vlogs—”

            “To hell with your stream! This was never a game, Audrey; this is real life, and my creation and power over this world will outshine my father in every way! Now get! In! That! Machine!”

            “No, you,” said Audrey, whacking Wilson in the face with her pipe with enough force to send Wilson toppling back into the blades, where he was shredded to bloody pieces in front of a live audience. His guts slid down the drain along with his dying screams, and the machine, sensing that its work was done, stopped the blades and shut down.

            Audrey stared at the bloody drain on the floor, then glanced at her phone. “Uh,” she said as she began to wander into the depths of Wilson’s lab. “I guess this stream is rated M now? So if there are any kids in the audience, uh… oops.”

Ship-Ahoy Wilson

            “You were birthed from the darkest shadows, Audrey…” The Ink Demon’s voice rumbled in Audrey’s ear as she approached the Ink Machine, hidden in the deepest part of the lab. “It’s time to ask the question…”

            “What question? Audrey asked. There was no response. “…Bendy?” Audrey whispered. “What question is it time to ask?” Still no response. “…Okay, fine, I guess. I’ll just pull this lever in front of me, and… something will happen. I don’t know what I’m doing anymore, and I don’t think you do, either.” Audrey flipped the switch.

            There was a whirring sound of machinery warming up, and the electric towers in each corner of the room lit up with sparks of colorful electricity that shot pain up from Audrey’s skeletal hand to her head. Her vision glowed gold around the edges, and she stumbled back from the Ink Machine.

            Just in time.

            Something lurched from the pools at the base of the Ink Machine, just missing Audrey. It was a long black chain, connected to… an anchor? The chain strained as something pulled from the other side, and a big, spidery thing leapt out of pools, almost in slow motion. It landed just in front of Audrey, who scrambled back to avoid any blows it threw her way. It loosened the anchor from the floor and threw it again, knocking a panel off of one of the electric towers. A hole in the wall sparked wildly with electricity, and the Gent Company lever in the machine was revealed from under the panel.

            “Oh, I get it,” Audrey explained for her audience. “So I have to get it to—”

            The creature roared and threw its anchor again, nearly knocking her phone out of her hand. “Fricking frick!”

            Audrey dove for the hole of loose electricity and charged her pipe, shoving it into the panel in the tower and flipping the switch. The tower whirred to a stop, the rainbow electric bolts no longer shooting of its top. “Yeah, that,” Audrey said.

The creature roared and threw its anchor again. Audrey dodged out of the way and began to run around the room, goading the creature into ripping off the panels of the other towers.

            “In the meantime,” Audrey shouted over the noise of shredding metal and electricity. “What should we call this thing? It’s like a spider with an anchor, so maybe we could call it the Anchor-Spider? Oh, but that’s so unoriginal, it should be something cooler, like ‘the Anchored Spider’, or—ooh, no, maybe it’s a crab? Then it could be ‘the Anchored Crab’, or—”

            She flipped the last switch, and the creature roared as colorful electricity ran up and down its form. After a moment, it shook off the shock and crawled fully out of the pool of ink.

            “Uh-oh,” said Audrey as the creature began to swing its anchor over its head to keep her away… only for the anchor to get caught on something behind it, keeping its arms away from its very vulnerable and fleshy-looking rib cage. “Oh, never mind,” Audrey said as she proceeded to beat the pulpy insides into stew. “So anyway, back to the name thing, since it’s trying and failing to protect its squishy insides, maybe we could call it ‘the Anchored Shell’? You know, like a crab shell, and also a shell for protecting stuff? Leave a comment to vote for your favorite name, or suggest your own!”

            “SHIIIP-AHOOOOY WIIIIIILSOOOOOON!” The fleshy insides of the creature shrieked.

            “Ew, no,” Audrey said, continuing to beat those insides beyond death. “That’s literally the worst name you could come up with; somehow it’s even worse than Ship-Ahoy Dudley—”

            “NOOOOO!” The creature wailed.

            Then suddenly, everything changed.

            The huge, gaping maw of the creature latched onto Audrey’s lower half, and tore away with a snarl. The force of the movement sent Audrey flying back into the wall, her phone and Gent Pipe tossed to the side uselessly. A deep, guttural growl rang through the room, and Audrey watched dazedly as the Ink Demon appeared and leapt for the creature’s throat, tearing at its jugular with sharp teeth, then dragging the useless corpse back into the pool in front of the Ink Machine. Audrey slumped back, in unimaginable pain.

Break a Leg (or Two)

            Whether it had been only a few seconds or many hours since Audrey had closed her eyes, it was impossible to tell. She pushed herself up into a sitting position, only able to hold herself with her arms because her legs… her legs…

            “It’s time, Audrey,” the Ink Demon whispered behind closed jaws. It approached her, splashing ink from the pools it appeared from with each stride forward. “Your road is broken.”

            “My legs… are broken…” Audrey whispered with strained breaths.

            “Join the dark puddles… and give in to your suffering.”

            “But… my stream…”

            “You have nothing,” the Ink Demon seemed to respond to her crazed murmurs. “You are without purpose. Your entire stream… was a lie. A mistake. You’re a monster… like me.”

            Choked noises passed through Audrey’s lips, but none of them had a purpose or meaning. Just like her.

            “But I will make you strong… I will make you meaningful… It’s time…”

            There really wasn’t any option, was there? Not like this.

            Audrey reached a trembling hand forward, past her knees and the nothingness that lay beyond them, and took the Ink Demon’s hand.

            “We are one.”

“There’s Always a Choice”

            The daughter of Drew with the powers of the Demon combined, growled and bared their teeth at the man who just spoke.

            Joey Drew didn’t cower in the face of this, looking solemnly up at his creation. “I know you’re in there, deep behind that evil face. Inside there somewhere is my little girl… my Audrey. My greatest creation.”

            The creation growled again, a deep rumble that barely covered a tiny little voice: “I’m scared…”
            “The past doesn’t define you,” Joey continued, “nor the present. In the end, all those years ago, Joey Drew finally succeeded! He created life! But you’re so much more than that, Audrey. You were his family… his daughter. My daughter. And I love you so very much.”

            The creation rose to their feet, towering over the tiny man and stalking closer. “Be quiet,” the creation growled, leering close to the man’s face. “The wretch is mine…”

            “Remember who you are, Audrey,” Joey insisted. He was carrying something under his arm… a reel of film.

            The creation’s growls grew louder, and they snatched Joey up with a sickening crunch. “Your words are wasted…” The creation hissed at the struggling man. “The failure of Joey Drew… dies here…”

            “…I know you’re in there,” Joey said with effort. “You don’t have to be this anymore…” He looked up at where the creation’s eyes should have been. “It’s never… too late…” He shifted his arm, drawing attention to the reel of film he was barely holding onto. Written on it were the words, “The End.” “Just a pencil and a dream isn’t enough… you have to have… heart…”

            The creation snapped their creator’s neck with a shift of their fingers. “NOOO!” They roared as the body of Joey Drew fell into the inky pools below them.

            “The future is sealed,” The creation said, breathing heavily as its eyes fell upon the film reel at their feet. They stared at it, their breaths heaving in a shaky rhythm. “…What do you think you’re doing?” They asked after a moment. Slowly, they picked up the reel of film between their fingers like a coin. “…I’m starting over.” They replied. “This… is The End.” The creation roared.

“The End”

            “Arise, my domain!” The creation commanded as they charged wildly down the many hallways and over any unfortunate ink people who happened to be underfoot. Their hulking form slammed into the walls at every turn, torn between tossing the little pests away with their giant, stigmatic hands or tearing themselves apart instead.

            The walls were quickly reinforced by those loyal enough to do the Demon’s bidding, and the struggling creation was quickly surrounded at a safe distance. They lurched from side to side, fighting themselves both internally and externally. “The road is shut…” The creation growled. “Now succumb… and die!”

            There was a distant clicking sound, followed by a hail of bullets that tore through the lines of the demon’s followers. A figure stepped out onto a balcony, reloading her tommy gun with ease.

            “Allison!” The creation shouted.

            “Audrey? Are you in there?” Allison shouted back. “Keep going; we’ll get you through! Tom! Big Steve! Let’s cause some trouble!”

            A door was torn off its hinges, and Big Steve burst into the room, Tom riding his back like a bull. “NIIICE LAAADYY!” Big Steve roared. Tom leaned on one of Big Steve’s shoulders, guiding him into the remaining crowd of followers. Allison hurried to a switch on the wall and pulled it, raising one of the barriers and revealing the path forward. “Run, Audrey, run!”

            The creation roared again, stumbling over scrambling inky followers as they tore into the next room. “Hi, Bobby!” Porter shouted from an air vent. “Well, I’ll give you credit; you technically aren’t dead yet! Weeheeheehee!”

            “How are you helping?” The creation roared.

            “I don’t know! Wheee!”

            “The Ink Demon rises!” A powerful voice shouted as a scrawny ink man in overalls bashed someone over the head with a banjo. “Surrender yourselves to the Lord of the dark puddles! It’s time to believe!”

            “Traitorous prophet!” The creation howled.

            “It’s for your own good, my dark savior! Trust your servant!”

            “NOOO!” The creation tore through wall after wall, trailed after by allies big and small, until a dead end was reached.

            “Need help? There’s a projector up ahead!” A voice wheezed as an old man stumbled onto the balcony above the door.

            “Henry!” The creation shouted.

            “Hey, remember how you said it would be wacky if we had to run at some point? This is kind of ironic, isn’t it?”

            “Hurry up!”

            “I’m doing it, it’s opening! Now… LET’S GO, GAMER GIRL, LET’S GO!”

            The creation shoved the slowly opening door above their head and continued to wreak havoc on the building, crashing more wildly into walls and stumbling over its galloping frame as it tried to rip itself apart. “This realm is mine! The cycle will continue!” They roared angrily. “Then we’ll have to do better next time!” The creation shot back.

            At last, they reached the last room in this place, crowded full of allies and enemies alike, fighting to make room for the creation’s final choice. Henry, Allison, Tom, and Sammy stood on a small balcony with a projector primed and ready.

            “Toss me that film, Audrey!” Henry shouted.

            The creation threw the film away with another roar, unable to crush their greatest weakness with their bare hands. Henry caught it with a grunt, then shoved the film into the projector, clicking it on and turning it to face the creation.

            “Now what?” The creation shouted.

            “Put it in your eye!”

            “What, why?!”

            “It’s a pro gamer move!”

            The creation roared and grabbed the projector, bringing the flickering light close to their eyes, and—

            Everything flickered to white.

A Choice, Made

            Audrey opened the door to her office, reaching over her desk to take down her “YouTuber of the Month” poster. She rolled it into a neat little tube, then looked down at the last item she had yet to collect: an old book with a sticky-note on it that read: “For my daughter. -JD”

            “My Dad told me that just because we’re born of darkness, doesn’t mean we belong to it,” she said aloud, “that we’re always free to choose.” She flipped the book open to a random page, covered in small illustrations of different figures, familiar and strange. “His cartoon world is mine now; to rule, to watch over, and to protect. I’m making the cycle more bearable for my friends inside it. So… what’s next?” She tucked the book under her arm and adjusted her phone, which was recording her every word. “To be perfectly honest… I barely understand what just happened to me. I found my family, I lost my family; I lost my legs, I got my legs back; I reached eleven subscribers; oh, and…”

She picked her phone off of the shelf turned the camera to the little devil darling himself, Bendy. “I also have a son now? Or a brother? We’re not really sure, but we’re going to take care of each other, it seems.” Bendy nodded and smiled at her. She gently petted him between the horns. “Given everything that’s happened in the last… day, at least? I don’t think it’s too unreasonable for me to say that I’m going to take a break from my YouTube channel for a while. I have some things to figure out. I want to quit Arch Gate Pictures and stop living in a supply closet. I want to find Dad’s apartment and live there, and make it mine and Bendy’s. I want to try new things. I want to be a mom, or a sister, whichever fits me better… oh, and I have to figure out how to tell Mr. Arch I murdered his son. That too.” She breathed a laugh.

Bendy stood on his toes to get into the frame of the video. Audrey knelt next to him so he wouldn’t have to strain. “Basically, I have a lot of thinking to do. I don’t know when I’ll be back, but you know I can’t stay away from drawing for too long; it’s in my blood—er, my ink. I’ll be back, one day. Bendy and I are heading out now to find Dad’s apartment. It’s gotta be out there somewhere, in some shape or form, so… that’s it, I guess.”

“Thank you all for watching my live stream let’s play vlog of Joey Drew Studios. Feel free to like, comment, and subscribe, though I might not respond for a while. I’ll see you all again someday. This is AudreyDrew42, signing off.”

The End