"Underlings" was probably an apt description for what I was, but I didn't like the societal connotation of it.

Crazier than furries, dirtier than cloppers, the Underlings had a freaky kink for Monsters. According to public image, Underlings wanked to the idea of a Monster fucking them to death. The more freaky appendages, the better. If you were lucky, a Monster tore out your eyes and stuck them up your vagina with their tail.

I was pretty convinced that subset of Underlings started in people who had already been into tentacle porn before the Underground emptied and changed our world forever.

Us real life Underlings wanted the world to know that while there was a disturbing subgenre to the Underling fandom, it wasn't representative of all of us. Underlings came in a million degrees of obsession. Some Underlings were little more than Monster rights activists—all they wanted was for Monsters to be equal in society. Some Underlings had an interest in Monsters, but more in a desire for knowledge than anything else—brand new creatures coming up from the earth's crust was certainly a fascinating topic for the scientifically inclined. Then there were Underlings that went out of their way to talk to or even befriend Monsters. And yes, there were Underlings that were attracted to the idea of being non-platonically involved with Monsters, but it was more innocent than the general public seemed to think. It was kind of like people who wrote slash fiction—sure, they had a weird obsession with dudes fucking other dudes, but that didn't mean they wanted said dudes fucking each other to death with unearthly limbs.

A person that was into the whole violent death by sex thing was called a Freaker. And truth be told, I don't really give a shit what someone does in their own bedroom. If some Freaker liked to imagine a giant sea Monster cutting off his dick and feeding it to him, that didn't really affect my quality of life, so whatever.

But the fact that everyone in the world assumed every Underling was a secret Freaker was pretty fucking annoying and caused most Underlings to keep their interest a secret.

Me and my best friend Alex developed as Underlings separately. We casually discussed Monster rights, but our further fascination was private. Then one day, I finally exploded. I had to tell her, and once I did, she laughed for about a minute before telling me that she felt the same way I did. Monsters got infused into more and more of our conversations until we talked about them as often as we talked about our favorite TV shows and comic books.

I don't know what form of Underling I really was. I definitely wasn't as casual as some—usually, when I was into something, I got a bit obsessive. Alex and I ate at Monster friendly restaurants and took long-cuts back from campus through Monster Slums in hopes of running into them. We liked to look at them, because Jesus if they weren't bizarre looking. Their proportions were abnormal, their bodies defied physics, the way they interacted with one another was fascinating. Was I attracted to them above humans? No, I wouldn't say so. Was I casually interested in what sex with a Monster might be like? Sure. Scientific curiosity and all that.

Plus, it was a good place to be an Underling. Thousands of Monsters flooded out of Mt. Ebott that day and a good number of them chose to settle in my town, the town for which the mountain was named. Ebott was both the most Monster populated city in the world and the most racist against them.

Once the Monsters came out of the Underground, provisions were immediately made for them by the government. Propaganda basically told us to act natural for our own safety but to be careful—the higher ups of the U S of A were convinced the Monsters had magic that they could use to destroy anyone at any moment and they did whatever they could to appease them, but people who lived around Monsters knew better. They were clearly non-violent, so my town (and likely many others) started discriminating against them immediately. It was the fifties all over again with segregation in restaurants and neighborhoods. Only some stores accepted their money, only some banks would exchange their money for ours, and almost no places hired Monsters. The discrimination stayed away from bathrooms and public transportation, but it was more than halfway there. The behavior was all illegal, but no feds were coming in to do anything about it, so it didn't stop.

Underlings like Alex and I endeavored to make life easier for them just by being decent.

Monsters were, understandably, not terribly chatty. A lot of humans were around to yell racial slurs, so they didn't go out of their way to talk, but if me and Alex waved to Monsters pleasantly, they'd wave back. We had managed to start a conversation or two, and they'd all been quite nice, but they weren't exactly lining up to be buds. I'd never even learned a Monster's name before, so I wasn't sure what kind of names they had.

That was why the skeletons at Gino's had surprised me so much.

The two skeletons a few booths from Alex and I had definitely caught our attention, but mostly it was the tall skinny one, who wore a cut off tank top, shorts, and a backwards snapback hat. He was almost your typical college frat bro minus the fact that he had no flesh. His vocabulary was like a knight if you ignored the fact that he occasionally said "wowie". By all rights we shouldn't have been able to hear him at all, with how far he was, but his voice carried.

Thanks to him, we knew the names of both he and his companion within minutes.

"I, The Great Papyrus, would like to order your finest spaghetti!" The shorter skeleton he was with must've said something, because he scolded, "Sans, no! No more!" There was some other inaudible response before the tall one, apparently named Papyrus, groaned. "Saaaaans!"

I only knew the other Monster, Sans, was also a skeleton because I had gotten a quick glance of his empty eye sockets and prominent teeth as they walked inside before he sat facing away from me in his booth. He could never be heard responding because he presumably had an inside voice, unlike Papyrus. He did laugh a good amount though, and his deep chortle resonated through the diner in a contagious way, making me feel light.

"Skeletor over there clearly likes spaghetti a lot," Alex said.

I smirked. Monsters being loud wasn't uncommon. Presumably, manners were different in the Underground, because they often called attention to themselves without seeming to do it intentionally.

Then again, three years later people were still getting used to seeing Monsters out and about. So even if they were all dead silent, they'd get plenty of stares.

It turned out that listening to Papyrus talk was actually completely enthralling. He ended up talking a little bit about their home in the Underground and how he thought it was silly that it only snowed here a couple months instead of all year round. How was it possible that it snowed down there? How many ecosystems were there? Sans and Papyrus were clearly brothers, from how often Papyrus mentioned it, but if they were made of magic how were any of them more related than others? Monsters hadn't been on the surface for long enough that any of this information was readily available, which meant the only way to learn about it was from Monsters themselves.

Which I was fresh out of.

The two nosiest scholars in the world were anthropologists and journalists, and I happened to be an Anthropology major with a blog.

To say the least, my thirst for knowledge was sometimes unmanageable.

It took a while for Alex and I to tear our attention from the brothers, but we eventually got our food and I started telling Alex about a stupid guy in one of my classes.

It wasn't long before Alex elbowed me a little harder than probably necessary. "Riley," she coughed under her breath.

"What was that for?" I accused.

"Sans. He was staring at you."

I looked at the back of his head, not listening to what Papyrus said as he started fussing with Sans' face.

"No way," I whispered. "You imagined it."

"No, I swear he was," she said. "And…" She went quiet, wringing her hands on the table.

"What?" I asked.

"No, it was just…"

"What is it?"

"Monsters are, like, the least scary thing ever," Alex said. I nodded. Some had a more frightening exterior than others, but they immediately came off as kind. I'd never been the slightest bit scared by one of them—in fact, the Monster Slums were a lot safer than half the human neighborhoods around. Every crime in a Monster Slum was perpetrated by a human. "But something about him…" she murmured. "He…" She shook her head. "You'd have to see for yourself."

I was going to respond, but then I glanced at the time. "Ah shit," I muttered. "I'm gonna be late for class if we don't leave."

At that she stood and we were at the front of the restaurant. And I couldn't help but look at Sans.

I immediately saw what Alex had meant. Papyrus, while looking like a skeleton, was not proportioned anything like a human. He was somewhere around seven feet tall, his leg bones wouldn't hold up his ribs if he weren't made of magic… but Sans wasn't like that. His head, which was the only part of him not covered by clothes, almost looked like a human just had his skin peeled away—it was rounder and smoother than a normal skull and his teeth did look like an honest smile, but it was still a bit eerie that his body was shaped so similarly to a human when most Monsters looked nothing like us. He also had white pupils in his empty eye sockets, ones that glowed with ethereal light. Papyrus' sockets were dark because the light from the ceiling didn't reach inside them from the angle he was sitting, but Sans' seemed an endless sort of darkness, like they couldn't be brightened even if you shined a flashlight in them.

"Ri, oh my god, look at this text Marco sent me."

I took her phone and was laughing at the text when I resumed staring at Sans.

Who, barely a second later, met my eyes.

There was a strange tingle down my spine, like the buzz of a running computer. I'd gotten feelings similar to this around Monsters before—I assumed it was caused by magic—but I'd never felt it so strongly. If I didn't know any better, this guy in the casual blue parka and turtle neck sweater radiated power in a way no other Monster I had met did.

It took me a moment to gain my composure, but once I did, I thought to smile.

And immediately, he stood up and made his way over to me.

Seeing as it was my first ever conversation that a Monster had initiated, I didn't expect it to be full of skeleton-related puns. You'd think he'd want to move away from people looking at him like he was different, but clearly that didn't matter to him in the slightest. He casually joked with me with a perpetually smiling mouth until I knew I had to go.

I made sure to return a pun on my way out.

"Holy shit, he came up and talked to you," Alex said, linking arms with me as we made our way to my truck.

"I know. Did you hear his voice?"

She clearly knew what I meant by the way she exhaled and fanned off her face. It was deep—the lowest string on a bass, lower than a human was probably capable.

And I wasn't sure if saying I would see him again was a lie, but I sure hoped it wasn't.