I am alive!
Immortalized
You're the creator
You traitor
Hey!
There's no vaccine
To cure our dirty needs
For now you must
Build up our machine
You die tonight
Sammy blinked as his fingers left the keyboard. He looked around him, half-expecting to see a Bendy cutout slipping from behind him. Instead, his eyes met the four corners of the recording studio, and rather than wood, he felt his bare feet touch the cool linoleum of the room.
Sammy sighed, breathing in and out as he tried to reassert himself. Earlier on, perhaps out of nostalgia or merely because of muscle memory, he had started playing one of the tunes he had played while composing for Bendy's cartoon. However, he must have unconsciously started playing something else instead, because what he had been singing was disturbing to say the least.
Luckily, the recording studio was sound-proof, and far apart from the rest of where Henry and his workers were at, so he was comfortably sure that no one had heard this lapse. Still, he suspected that Henry, the worrywart that he was, would be beset with anxiety. Sammy did not wish to be dependent on Henry for support, and playing by himself in the recording studio was one way of coping with the voices in his head. Bendy could not tell him to do things if music was drowning him out.
Sammy was just about done with listening to that damn demon's orders. Talking to the shrink had been uncomfortable at first, but the non-disclosure agreement had helped Sammy in being able to talk to Dr. Andrew about his experience within the studio. To his credit, the good man had not changed his poker expression even as Sammy talked about his 'god' in detail, listing the things he had done. Even now, Sammy felt ashamed at having cut his palm and blending the cans of bacon soup together with his blood in the hopes of pleasing Bendy. It was Dr. Andrew who had suggested writing this down in a personal journal along with what he had experienced in order to...unearth the source of his fears.
Sammy frowned as he thought about Henry. Henry was nearing his seventies, but was still working on animation. The industry, according to Jeanne whilst they were having breakfast, was experiencing a slow down, and in order to cope with this, the bigger studios were retrenching a large portion of their workers. While this meant that they were receiving more projects due to their perceived competitivity, it also meant enlisting members of their staff on lower pay in a bid to keep the studio open. Henry was supposed to retire, but instead of relaxing, he had rejoined the studio as back-up staff when meeting deadlines. Jeanne had tried to persuade Henry off this course of action, but it looked like Henry was planning to draw cels until the day he decided to rest for eternity.
Sammy recognized that Henry was devoted, but rather than being impressed, he felt pressured instead. Sammy wrote songs for the opening themes to some of the emerging singers who had no gift for recognizing tunes, but he knew that he was out of date with current trends and was trying alleviate this by listening to new tunes. In his heart, Sammy knew that he was more suited to songs sung by characters, and Jeanne was also looking for contract work for him while handing some of her managerial duties over to Jeffrey, her assistant manager.
If only they were bigger, then maybe some of the manuscripts that the interns were planning to sell to the big companies could be done by them, and the studio would benefit from some of the profits rather than being on contract-
A wave of nausea and cold tingling signalled Sammy to jerk away from the piano immediately. He hurtled through the door of the studio and marched up the stairs, taking two steps at a time before heading into the first door on the right. Closing the door behind him, his vision blurred, and he groped for the handle bars that Jeanne had installed for the benefit of both he and Henry as he bent down over the toilet bowl.
Bile crept up his throat as he vomited his breakfast down the bog, feeling saliva coating the roof of his mouth even as his surrounding seemed to spin and warp around him. He grasped the handles more firmly as his fingers tapped in what he distantly recognized in 3/4 time. Sammy's stomach felt like butterflies were squirming in and out rhythmically as he attempted to brace himself against the next wave, and liquid ran out of his mouth as he heaved again.
This new round of medications was supposed to help him deal with his god-no Sammy, stop, he isn't your god-with Bendy's and with Joey's voices, but Sammy did not appreciate the side effects of constant mal de mer or the tremors that crept at odd hours of the day. Thankfully, not once had it interrupted his recordings. Small mercies, he supposed.
Turning away from the toilet bowl, Sammy flushed it as he headed towards the sink, intending in washing his face before resuming his work. He inspected himself in the mirror, noticing to his pleasure that he had filled in somewhat despite being barely able to keep down his meals due to the new drugs.
Humming a tune to himself as he emerged out of his bathroom, he turned towards the animation studio, hoping to chat with Henry before heading back to the recording studio. Sammy entered the room, trying to catch Henry's eyes-
"Henry, I was thinking-"
Bendy. Bendy. BENDY.
"Oh Sammy! I was planning on tell you..." Sammy shut his eyes. Turned away. Counted to three. Turned back, and opened his eyes once more.
"Ha. Haha. Hahaha." A wave of darkness came over Sammy as he felt his knees buckle beneath him, before he decided to give up altogether and fainted on the spot.
"...-ammy, you okay now?" Sammy groaned as he sat up. Feeling the fabric under his hands, he guessed that they were in the lobby. He searched his surroundings fearfully, but the smiling devil did not leap out from behind the furniture or underneath the door. Henry, who had been leaning towards him, hands clasping a bottle of smelling salts, withdrew as Sammy maneuvered to a more comfortable position, arching forward, elbows on his knees.
"He isn't here." Sammy whispered out, heart shaking in relief. "Oh lord," Henry gave a noticable twitch, but Sammy could not bother to correct himself, "Not here..."
"Sammy, were you seeing something?" Henry, to his credit, had made his voice seemed steady and firm. Sammy needed that rock of stability; seeing things that don't exist was always evidence to push mad men to the loony bin. Of course, Sammy knew objectively that he was not insane. But normal people didn't see cartoon characters out of nowhere. Or worship them and try to sacrifice their former work colleagues. In fact, nothing he had done in the studio was in the right mind. Haha. Maybe he was mad then.
"Sammy, you're speaking out loud again." Sammy could have lept out of his skin with the force of his shock. He didn't mean to say what he thought.
"Maybe because back at the studio, you couldn't help doing so? Can you remember how long you were there?" Years and years. Time wasn't a marker when you could feel yourself dripping, staining the wooden boards and the constant feel of ink swirling beneath your skin. Or of sudden unconsciousness, the time between resting (for Sammy could not sleep. That inky dark abyss did not permit it.) and finding yourself in a different location.
"Woah, deep breaths. Deep breaths." Sammy felt a hand on his throat, and he frantically pushed away at it.
"LEAVE ME ALONE!" Sammy shrieked, scrambling to his feet. "I DON'T NEED ANYONE'S PITY!"
"Fuck, sorry." Sammy could make out Henry's distant appologies, and the screeching of chair against the floor. "I'll come back later, okay? Take a break first, I'll send someone to get your things." Sammy was tormented. On one hand, he wanted to apologise, to tell Henry not to leave/abandon him. But an evil voice in his head seemed to hold his tongue tight to his mouth, and Sammy did not let words pass his lips as Henry left the room.
"I'm sorry." He whispered, knowing that Henry could not hear. Why did he shout back? Henry had helped him out, but Sammy just felt so tired, and Henry's concern was like an itch that badly needed scratching. So Sammy had struck back, temper flaring and probably made everything more complicated and his head was filled with agony.
Back at the studio, the only interactions he had were with his lord and with the various ink creatures that dotted the studio. Most of them had been vanquished once Henry destroyed the machine. While Sammy was slightly better than them, his human shape had done little to alleviate the roiling within his soul. Or of the times he had invoked Bendy's name in attempting to escape the studio.
Sammy hated how his body and memories betrayed him. How he couldn't remember much before being made into a cartoon. No, that wasn't right. A parody of a cartoon. Not human, but not two-dimensional either. Merely the boogeyman of a child's nightmare. Sammy wanted to scream and rage and gee golly, wasn't it just fantastic when your meds allow you to blow your top instead of everything feeling dull and grey and blank? And Sammy must have been used to saying his mind because no one heard him; no one other than him and the cartoon and the damn ink machine that screwed his life and mind twice over and Sammy couldn't get over what it had done to him.
The shrink had told him that being angry was natural, but Sammy didn't just want to be angry. He wanted to move straight through all the stages of grief and go back to normal fast and things just weren't going well and he wanted to scream and yell without restraint. If he hadn't been transformed, he might have regretted moving back to the human world where there was more complexity and ambiguity, but retreating from reality was not an option whatsoever.
Maybe it was better he died. Then Henry could move on with his life and Jeanne wouldn't frown at him whenever she caught the two huddling together and Sammy no longer felt that he was betraying anyone by trying to live as normal a life as he could. No. He had to stop thinking about this. Right now, he was going around in circles and he had to make up his mind and Sammy needed to make things right; it was only fair, because Henry didn't deserve his former colleague barging into his life without an explanation, not to mention that it was unreasonable to spite the one who took him in despite the temper flare-ups which he had not missed at all.
It was a set-back. But Sammy's therapist said that most that went through therapy willingly could continue to lead everyday lives and so Sammy was more or less on the road to recovery. Something so small shouldn't hurt so much. But it did.
But it did.
