His Lady

by reggieswar

Left to die in his own personal nightmare, the Janitor reaches a crisis point. He is alone and frightened, but not for the reason you'd think. (Minor Spoilers as it takes place directly after chapter 2. One-shot unless I decide to take it elsewhere depending on its reception. There is no Little Nightmares category but this is, in fact, a Little Nightmares fanfic.)

He could still feel them.

Between the sharp throbs of pain and pressure shooting through his body, the impossible man could still grasp the phantom presence of his arms flailing about. But he knew better. The nasty, sneaky thing had cut them off somehow. One moment he was feeling around the small room, the next a sharp, piercing strain on his forearms traveled up his shoulders and through every nerve in his body.

He had ran then.

Ran back down the hall way, bumping into tables, knocking down pictures and mountains of novellas. Squealing all the way like the very children he was put in charge of. He had been blind for most of his life in the maw, but this was an entirely different hell. With his arms, he could navigate every nook and cranny of his lair. Feeling his way through, the impossible man had mentally mapped every single follicle of the maw.

Now, he was truly without sight.

Careening down the hallway, he had made it into one of his most coveted yet quizzical room of collectibles. His collection of clocks, big and small, were the impossible man's prized possessions, containing more moving parts and intricate gadgets than any other thing he owned. But he avoided this room like the plague, only returning to add another time piece to the collection. Despite his endless efforts to reset them, the clocks went off simultaneously at fixed intervals throughout the day. They made a deafening crescendo of violent reverberations that clanged against the inside of his head. If he wasn't careful, he could be immobilized in this place for hours at a time until he willed himself to move.

Now he writhed on the ground in his clock room with no palms to cover his ears and steady his head.

He had hit his head on something, probably a bookshelf he had procrastinated in moving, and had fallen to the floor in a loud crash. The cacophony railed against his eardrums time and again, drowning out his whimpers and the thrashing around of the two limbs he had left. The impossible man had begun to do something as well that he had not been forced to do for a long time.

He cried.

But not for all his precious things he had trampled chasing that sneaky little thing through his lair, not for the immeasurable amount of pain he had brushed aside on his rampage back through the halls, but for someone entirely beyond him and his possessions. He cried because of what she would think if she saw him like this.

He cried because of his lady.

The mistress of the maw had taken him in from a world he no longer had a use for and gave him purpose. Her kindness in providing shelter and a task to keep him occupied with had filled him with a growing love for the lady. When he lived above the guest area near his lady during the first few months, her soft singing would lull him to sleep and give him many good dreams through those first hard nights. Though he could not see, he imagined what he thought an angel looked like when she passed by him in the hall. The impossible man's stomach fluttered when she spoke to him softly, telling him of a task she needed done. She had given him so much and trusted him like he was one of her own children.

Now he was useless again, even in the grace of his lady.

The clocks kept ringing and his acute hearing became deafened more and more by the hour. After what had seemed like an eternity, the impossible man had accepted the fact that he could not steady himself back on his feet. Without the use of his arms, the same arms that his lady had found so much use for, he was nothing but a wriggling mess. So here he would lay until the darkness and hunger finally took hold and consumed him. Perhaps his lady would find his body down here one day, but he knew it would not be so for quite some time. His lady rarely ever ventured down here deep into the maw. The impossible man would never make her take such a trip. She respected his privacy and in turn, he scurried through the depths of the maw up to meet his lady in person and spare her the trip when needed. Now he would never make that trip again even if he managed to upright himself somehow, out of fear that his benefactor would be ashamed upon looking at him. For a moment he braced himself during the brief gap between the pounding of the clocks for the next fusillade. It would hurt, but he would take it like so many times before.

But nothing happened.

He waited longer, but still the clocks gave no sign of activity. The assault on his eardrums had halted for the time being and for a moment, his muscles slackened and his breathing returned to normal. Of course, the pain of dismemberment and the pounding in his head had not fully gone away. Curiously, neither had his sharp hearing. Soft footfalls from across the room approached him, but he was not scared. An eternity in the maw had made him paranoid toward any sound but he knew these footsteps.

What have they done to you?

His lady had come to visit.