Chapter Text
You’d always been the type of person to seek out the macabre; have been your whole life. From collecting pinned butterflies as a child, to harvesting roadkill for bones and wet specimens as a teen, it was safe to say you’ve always been like this.
You have a collection of such things that you’ve built up over the years; and when asked, What’s your favorite? , you reply that you love all of your specimens, especially your teeth jars, just with your butterflies being the most dear of them all.
Specifically, a dainty little Polyommatini is the one that makes you able to say that. Afterall, it was the first specimen your family gave to you when they realized you had a taste for what they presumed to be entomology after seeing you stare at anatomy books on insects.
Oh how wrong they were, as the books were the only thing you could get your little hands on that satisfied your love for such things at the time, but it didn’t stop you from loving it all the same. You considered it to be the crown jewel of your specimens.
Now as an adult, it wasn’t uncommon for you to be gone for hours at a time, searching and scavenging for whatever carcasses came your way.
You couldn’t help it.
Not when there was always a certain joy it gave you, a specific high, a thrill even; like if someone mixed the two beautiful feelings of wonder and ecstasy a child would get at Christmas or Easter as they found eggs or just realized what was underneath all that tacky wrapping paper.
Only your love of puppets and dolls rivaled it, hence why you had a shop back home for both.
The utter euphoria you got outweighed the setting of wherever you got any of them from.
Case in point; your most recent outing for scavenging included going to a ghost town roughly five hours away from your home, abandoned to the point that it didn’t even have a name anymore.
In fact, you’d only found the place due to driving around the area for a client to talk about a doll restoration, and then just kept driving around after; it wasn’t your fault the scenery was just so rich, haunting even.
Despite all of that, you’re sure that if you forgot the way here, you’d never find it again. Couldn’t exactly put it into a GPS or anything, the wooded area that surrounded it certainly not helping.
But nevertheless, you were determined to go and explore this town, and you were happy to say it paid off.
Like an hour ago when you found a whole deer skeleton right next to a diner, the smell of rot strong in the air around the place, a complete specimen sunbleached to a perfect white for the most part, the underside still a slight ivory.
A whole deer skeleton , mind you, that had a wonderful rack of antlers and all of its teeth scattered around the separated jaw and head.
To top it all off however, was what lay behind it all, just a short walk away. You didn’t even notice the building thanks to the tunnel vision you got due to the deer.
It was old and decrepit; the remaining layers of paint still sticking on with whatever strength it had left, the wood beneath being in an even more sorry condition.
From what you could tell, it looked like it was once a vibrant array of colors, if the faded areas of barely there pastels were anything to go by; the remains of what were now lusterless and rotting wooden cutouts of flowers and arches hanging by a thread onto the building or somewhere close.
You think those arches used to be rainbows.
Right above a particularly large arch was a sign, almost blocking the doors behind it from where it fell; you could tell they both used to be on top of the entrance thanks to the metal poles that would hold them up, rusted from the rain and humidity.
It took a couple seconds to make out what it said; the letters that were once on the plank of wood long since came off, excluding a handful that still hung on. But taking a few steps closer, slowly inching forward, you read the spots left behind from the words.
It read;
“PlayFellow Workshop- Home of Welcome Home!”
You froze.
Just what was this place?