Undertale belongs to Toby Fox. Horrortale belongs to Sour-Apple-Studios.
You awaken from sleep without warning. You know something is different, and a familiar icy thrill of terror races down your spine.
Eyes clamped shut, you try to feign sleep while assessing your surroundings. It's cold and quiet, as usual. You're lying on a lumpy, vaguely squishy surface. You feel the threadbare cloth of your lavender dress under your fingers and bunched up around your calves. Nothing's immediately standing out to you…
...until you feel the surface you're on shift from another person's weight. Well-worn dread settles in your stomach and you open your eyes, knowing full well what you'll see.
You're in their house, a rickety construction of wood that looks like it had once been warm and welcoming but now just seems old and neglected. You're on their couch, a broken down piece of furniture that's ever so slightly easier to sleep on than the floor. And sitting on the far end of the couch, staring at you, was him.
You quickly take in his appearance and look for any changes, a habit formed out of necessity. His permanent grin is wide today. Amused, not strained. He's stretched out on the couch, his shin bones crossed. The hole at the top of his skull hasn't gotten any worse. It even seems cleaner than usual. His eye sockets are focused on you, the small black pupil swimming in the red iris of his left eye is almost the width of a dime. His axe is nowhere in sight.
It looks like he's in a good mood. You hold back a sigh of relief. You're probably not going to be horribly murdered today.
Though, from the way his long, skinless fingers are worrying at his empty right socket, you suspect you'll end up wishing you were.
He lets out a small chuckle. "you're finally awake. i was getting pretty bonely, aliza."
"S-sorry, Sans," you stammer out quietly, voice hoarse from disuse. You really wish you could go back to sleep, it feels as though you only got a couple hours' worth of rest, but if Sans wants you awake…
Keep him entertained. Keep him happy.
"s'okay, kiddo." He winks with his blood-red eye. "you were sleeping like the dead."
He looks at you expectantly, and you force out a weak giggle.
"anyway. i, ah…" The skeleton's grin twitches, and his fingers scrape against the inside of his eye socket. "i got somethin' for ya."
The dread in your gut grows, reaching up into your lungs and making it hard to breathe. The feeling must have reached your face too, because Sans' pupil shrinks and he laughs again.
His free hand gestures to a box you hadn't noticed on the floor. Hesitantly, you readjust your position on the couch and lean down to grab it, casting furtive glances back at the skeleton sitting next to you. He doesn't move to stop you, so you carefully bring it up to rest on your lap. The box is a simple brown rectangle with a loose lid, maybe a foot wide and a foot and a half long. When you picked it up you could tell that whatever is inside has a bit of weight to it.
It sits on your lap innocently.
But nothing involving Sans is ever innocent.
Feeling his eyes on you, you gently lift the lid with shaking hands. Inside is…
...a pair of shoes.
They're simple black flats, with a stretchy back and high topline. The soles are slightly singed but intact. There's even cute little string bows on top, though the left one has been torn a bit.
You barely manage to not squeak when Sans suddenly speaks up. "i noticed, last time i was chasing ya, you don't have any shoes. and i figured, hey," he leans toward you, eyes wide, "we don't want ya gettin' cold feet on us now, huh?"
You shake your head mutely.
"riiight. now," he relaxes against the couch again, his eyelids drooping, "put'em on."
You don't want to. You really, really don't want to.
They're good shoes, all things considered. And being barefoot in the snow as long as you have hasn't done wonders for your health. But you know him.
You don't want to put the shoes on.
Sensing your hesitance, Sans cocks his head to the side and shoots you a curious look. "what's stoppin' ya? c'mon aliza… they won't-" he cuts himself off, chortling. "-they won't bite."
Sans wants you to put the shoes on.
Keep him happy.
Slowly, you put the box on the ground, pull out the flats and place them down below your feet. Your hands are shaking again. You force yourself to take a deep breath, squeeze your eyes shut, and shove your foot into the right shoe.
There's pain. So much pain.
"heh, whaddya know? they can bite!" Sans starts to laugh hysterically, but his voice is far away.
You're gasping, trying not to scream out. Your right foot is in agony, like it's been stabbed a dozen times. Panicked, you open your eyes and try to pull your foot out of the shoe. Something catches the inside of it, and it just hurts so much worse. Every movement makes whatever is in the flesh of your foot dig in deeper. You're whimpering, terrified. Tears are building up in your eyes.
What if you can't get it off?
What if your foot's stuck in there?
Will you have to walk around with it on, cutting your foot to shreds?
With quivering hands, you widen the mouth of the flats and gingerly move your foot. It still hurts, but maybe if you just yank…?
You grit your teeth, suck in a few short breaths through your nose and forcefully pull your foot out of the shoe. It comes off and tumbles to the ground. You gape at your foot.
There's blood, so much blood, but you're almost used to the sight of your own blood by now. The sight of the razor blades buried in your flesh is nauseatingly new. There's at least five or six of them, each a half inch long, puncturing your foot. One is in the soft tissue between your pinkie toe and the one next to it. Another is jammed partway under your big toenail, blood visibly welling up underneath the nail. And there's a third cutting into the fleshy underside.
Your foot is throbbing. Each new wave of pain paints an excruciating picture of the damage not evident to your eyes. Your whole body is shuddering by this point, and tears are rolling down your cheeks.
You've had worse, you remind yourself. How many times have you died? How many times have you wished you had died?
You try to steady your breathing.
You've been through worse.
You reach out and softly grab one of the blades. The slight tremor still running through your fingers causes the razor to move inside you, drawing out a pained whine, but you swiftly jerk it out of your flesh. You stare at the bloodied metal in between your thumb and forefinger for a long moment in dull horror.
Suddenly a bony hand comes into your view and plucks the razor blade from your grasp. Turning your head sharply to follow the hand, you watch as Sans brings the small instrument close to his face. He's not laughing now, though you can't remember when he stopped. He gives you a lazy smirk before opening his mouth and running the magical, ghostly appendage he uses to taste along the blades' surface, licking the blood away. "hm. you been doing something differently aliza? 'cause you taste great today."
You gulp, feeling a perverse mixture of disgust and embarrassment, and turn back to your bleeding foot. Best get this over quickly, before he decides he doesn't want just a sample. You grab another blade, but in your haste you accidentally twist it in deeper. You involuntarily wail in pain and draw your hand back.
You don't know if you can do this.
You choke back a fresh wave of tears.
How are you going to do this?
Over your muffled sobs, you hear a low sigh. "here, kiddo." The bony hand appears again and, without warning, pulls the blade out. You swallow a yelp. It hurt but… it was over quickly.
The hand goes for another razor. That one's removed too.
You hold still and quiet as Sans takes the razors out. Soon you are looking at a bloody and torn but razor blade free foot.
"T-thank you," you murmur.
You shouldn't be thanking him. He did this to you in the first place.
But you're still bizarrely, sickeningly grateful.
"it's nothin'," Sans replies with a shrug.
Tentatively, you attempt to stand. It hurts, of course it does. But you can handle it. You take a step away from the couch, intending to find something to bandage your foot.
Sans' voice stops you. The relatively friendly tone he had before is gone, replaced with one you know well. One that is low and gravelly, promising pain.
"where do you think you're going, aliza?"
You freeze, the blood in your veins turning to ice.
"sit down."
You shuffle backward into the couch, sit down on the very edge with your back ramrod straight, clasp your hands together and try to stop crying.
"you forgot to try on the other one." His voice is relaxed again.
Oh no.
Of course. You forgot. He leaves lots of things unfinished. His chores, his patrols, his puzzles. But this? He always sees these games he plays with you to their end.
You don't want to do this. You really don't want to do this.
But you know you're not going anywhere until you do it.
You quickly thrust your undamaged foot into the left shoe, hoping you can get it over with just as quickly.
Somehow it hurts worse the second time.
You feel each and every razor as they cut through your skin. There's less, you think, in this shoe than there was in the other one. But with every pulse the pain makes a perfect outline of how each blade has torn the flesh of your foot. Pained noises escape you as you carefully stretch the flat and yank your foot out. The blades drag against the insides of the shoe, exacerbating the damage, but it eventually comes off.
You gaze unblinkingly at your bloody left foot, unsure of where to start.
After a long moment, Sans reaches over and begins plucking them out for you. "heh. 'they won't bite'," he mutters to himself. "i gotta wit that'll cut ya right down to the bone!"
You give a practiced, shaky giggle.
Keep him happy.
He takes out another blade, flippantly tossing it aside. "i swear, sometimes i crack myself up."
Your eyes drift to the hole in his skull. You wonder, not for the first time, if it still hurt.
Once he's done, he turns to you and grins. "c'mon, we should go get you somethin' to stop the bleeding. i think there's still paper in the library." He points to the discarded flats. "put on your shoes."
Your eyes bounce between him and the shoes, hoping he isn't serious. Please, no.
He pauses, watching your face, and then gives you another smile. One you don't see very often, that's slightly gentler around the edges. "don't worry, they're defanged."
You pick up one of the shoes and cautiously slide a hand inside. He's right. There's no razor blades left inside. You do the same with the other one, with similar results. Barely daring to believe, you put the flats on.
"do they fit?" Sans asks, sounding uncharacteristically concerned. "you're so small, i wasn't sure they'd fit you right."
You nod, staring at the shoes wonderingly. They fit you just fine.
When you saw the box, you expected some sort of painful, terrifying joke. You didn't expect an honest gift afterwards.
You look up at Sans, who is looking back at you with something almost resembling fondness.
These moments are few and very far between, but… they're the moments you think that he might actually, in his own twisted way, care about you.
They're the moments you think you might care about him.
You feel your blood seeping into the material of the flats, staining them.