"Mary? Mary, sweetheart, you've gotta wake up now..."

Mary groaned and squeezed her eyes shut even tighter. She curled into herself, tugging the thin blanket over her head. "Fi' m'nutes..." she grumbled.

...though come to think it, was her bed always this hard? Her blanket always this thin? No, no, wait, she was at Uncle Henry's. Except nooo, Uncle Henry had a hide-away bed in his couch that he pulled out come bedtime, and it wasn't as hard as this. This felt more like-

Someone chuckled above her, then shook her again. "Mary, we gotta move. You have to wake up."

That wasn't Uncle Henry...They sounded familiar though, and Mary's first thought was that she was being awoken by the sound of the TV.

That was Bendy's voice, wasn't it? Uncle Henry was playing some Bendy cartoons for her this mo-

Wait.

Mary's eyes opened and she sat up, the blanket falling down to the floor.

No living room. No hide-away bed. No TV playing cartoons. No Uncle Henry.

Instead it was a dimly-lit room with a wooden floor, which she was asleep on. And the real Bendy right in front of her.

And then the events prior to this came flowing back. None of it was a dream.

Something must have shown on her face because Bendy's smile wavered a bit. "Aw, sweetheart, I know, I know," he muttered. "But it's okay – you got me here, remember! C'mon, do I have to show you why I don't have a neck again?" he added in a slight teasing tone. But as he said it, his hands rose to either side of his head.

He meant it; he'd re-do the whole head-basketball routine again if he had to.

But Mary just shook her head, wiping at her nose. "No. No, 'm okay..."

"Let me check your head again, real quick-like."

Mary ducked her head as Bendy came around to look. She winced slightly as he poked at the spot where Sammy had hit her – it didn't hurt much anymore, only if it was touched. That was a good thing, right? Behind her, Bendy spoke: "There's purple now, so you've got a good bruise. But that's about it. You say somethin' if you feel light-headed or sick, okay?"

"Okay." Mary slowly rose to her feet, grabbing her wrench as she did so. It was lucky that Bendy had found it, she couldn't help but think.

(Panicking and struggling to get loose from her bindings, while up ahead the speaker played that man's summon. An ink puddle shifted, and then Bendy – her Bendy – was pulling himself out, the wrench in one hand, eyes wide with fear.

He'd found her wrench on the floor, and knew she was in trouble. He'd looked and seen inky footprints.)

Mary's grip on the wrench tightened. She wasn't going to lose this. If there were any more ink monsters, or creepy former employees, she'd need it.

Wouldn't Uncle Henry laugh, knowing she might be clubbing Mr Drew himself with this thing?

"Okay. I'm ready – huh?" Her attention was briefly torn away by the rows of Bendy dolls in front of her.

"Squeeze one," Bendy said as she hurried over, eyes widening in delight despite the situation. "They squeak!"

"Really?" Mary plucked one off the shelf and gave it an experimental squeeze.

Squee – eee!

Mary'd seen a doll like this before. She'd been five, visiting her uncle for the summer, and he'd seen her watching his Bendy cartoons. "Do you want to see more?" he'd asked, and shown her some of the collectibles he had. A vinyl record. Shirts. A cel he'd managed to nick from the studio. And the doll.

She'd wanted it, but he'd patiently explained to her that this was his doll and he was rather attached to it, sorry.

Her mom had been pretty mad when she'd told her about it later. Mary had overheard them arguing about it – her mom saying it was just a doll, he should have given it to her, her uncle saying it was one of the few decent things he had left from those days and besides, she might not appreciate it.

She'd never said so, but she really wanted a Bendy doll, even now.

So she pocketed it, a broad grin on her face that only got bigger when she heard Bendy snicker behind her. It wasn't stealing if nobody was working here, right?

"What'd ya need the doll for, kiddo?" Bendy asked, clasping Mary's free hand and leading her to the other door on the opposite end of the room. "You've got the real one right here!"

"Yeah, but this one I can keep forever. Uncle Henry's gonna want you, so I won't see you as much," Mary said. "An' I always wanted this doll!"

The other door was atop a tall flight of stairs. Bendy began walking first, but halfway up he paused, looking beneath the banister and staring at something near the far corner. Mary glanced over, a puzzled frown on her face.

"Bendy? Whatcha lookin' at?"

"...nothin'. Well, somethin', but... Don't worry about it," he muttered, resuming his climb. "I'll come back," he said.

Mary stared, waiting for him to elaborate, but he said nothing.

As the two left the room, the door clicking shut behind them, a tall toon shuffled out of hiding, an anxious look on his face. His gaze was focused on part of the banister, where a splotch of wet black ink gleamed in the light.

There was paper everywhere.

Mary stared slack-jawed as she and Bendy crept a few paces into the room. She'd never seen so much paper in all her life! It covered the walls in long rows, sometimes messy but sometimes in neat single-files; the floor was strewn with them; a few desks had several pieces haphazardly clipped together. Most of the paper was no good for drawing, unfortunately, as they were already covered with black and white pictures. Again, the pictures varied; some of them were clean and precise and perfect, like it was straight from the Bendy cartoon itself, while others were more sloppy and messy and barely a few circles stacked atop one another.

Mary ventured closer to one of the many many many walls that had been built into the room. Upon closer inspection, a lot of the papers also had words written beneath them. Under the one at her direct eye-level, she could read 'Bendy: 'ey, how many luimps d'ya want, Boris?'

"The storyboard room," came Bendy's voice. He sounded both awed and proud, and when Mary looked he was standing straighter, with her hands planted on his hips. He looked around the room with a broad smile, bigger than his normal one. "How much d'you know about animation, kiddo?"

"Not a lot," Mary admitted.

"Well, this is where your uncle and other folks decided what things would look like. Like when you have a book, and there's a picture to match the words, see?"

"Ohhhh! I get it!"

Bendy stepped closer to take her hand, and she let him. As he guided her down the long, narrow passage, Mary kept looking around at the papers – storyboards, right right. It was amazing; the difference in quality from paper to paper, being surrounded by Bendy and Boris, seeing something that her uncle might have worked on... She didn't know which drawings were his, but she guessed it might be the more detailed drawings. Her uncle always was a bit detail-oriented.

Their path was narrow, as the room had been converted into a huge mass of rooms – a bunch of cubicles and walls had been put up to show as many storyboards as possible, so it felt as if they were walking through a maze. There wasn't much room for the two of them to walk between two of the walls of paper, so their movements made the paper stir and flap, filling the air with the faint sound of rustling.

It was narrow, cramped, and the walls towered over the two of them like skyscrapers. Once in a while there would be a wider space – just a tiny, make-shift room with a desk, ink and paper, and some clear bottle that Bendy identified as acetone.

("For when they made a mistake or needed thinner ink, ya see.")

If it was this cramped for a little girl and a little toon, she couldn't imagine what it must have been like for a group of adults.

Bendy led her around a corner, and Mary saw a Bendy cutout propped up against one wall. Her hand squeezed Bendy's in fear.

"Don't worry," he said, knowing what the problem was. "They won't hurt us."

"Are they alive, too?" Mary asked, gripping her wrench tighter. "They keep poppin' up and-"

"You know," Bendy interrupted, sounding thoughtful. "I really don't know." His pace slowed as he began to lose himself in thought. "A little after the Ink Machine came, the cutouts started doin' this. Movin' around when we couldn't see, being in a different place than they were five minutes ago... A few people said they saw them peeking around corners at them, but when they looked nobody was there to move 'em.

But they'd never hurt anyone, and they never did either. I think they're on our side, in their own way."

"I found the wrench in front of one of 'em," Mary said. "When you asked me to get you outta the pipe. It just dropped from nowhere."

"Hmm..." Bendy frowned for a moment, then shook his head. "Like I said," he said. "I think they're on our side. They won't hurt you."

"M-hm." Mary looked away from the cutout as they kept moving, and looked at the storyboards instead. The detailed and inked-in pictures were decreasing in number, with more rough-looking pictures instead. Some papers were even blank altogether.

"You know," Bendy said again, interrupting her thoughts. "Your uncle Henry never liked the cutouts very much. Said he felt uneasy, like they were watching him all the time. I used to surprise him by moving a cutout into his room when he wasn't looking," Bendy's tone sounded a bit wistful then, even as he laughed. But even the laugh sounded mostly joyless. "Oooh, he used to scream so loud and jump so high... How is he?" His laughter was gone now, his tone serious. He pointedly avoided looking over his shoulder at Mary. "How's he been since he left?"

His tone made Mary feel bad for him. He really missed Uncle Henry, didn't he?

"He...he liked you a lot, Bendy," she said, rather than answer his question. "He's got some stuff from the studio – he stole a cel from here, one with you on it!"

"...he did?" Bendy whispered, sounding...hopeful.

"Uh-huh." Mary nodded brightly. "And he's got a doll of you, and a record with one of your songs on it, and he has all your cartoons...He doesn't like to talk about when he worked here, but he always likes to talk about you and Boris and Alice!"

Alice...where was Alice? Mary glanced around the narrow hall again, as if expecting Alice to appear. But there was nothing but rows upon rows of blank paper.

She hoped Alice hadn't met the same fate as Boris.

"He liked you a lot. He really misses you, I think."

drip

Mary leaned sideways to try and see Bendy's face. Was he crying?

Drip drip

No. No tears, no ink. He looked a little sad, but he was smiling at the same time.

But no tears.

"I'm glad to hear that, kiddo," he said at last, looking up at her. "Haha – Henry'll be real glad to see me again, huh?"

"You bet he will, Bendy!" Mary laughed.

Drip...drip...

flappa...crsh...

"Hey, Bendy?" Mary asked, looking around the walls again. "Did you guys not use this part?"

"Huh? Nah, we used all this paper! Sometimes it'd be a pain to find the boards we were s'posed to be looking at because the drawings were everywhere. Why?"

He looked around.

And then he realized.

Where they were standing, all the papers were blank.

"What the...?" he whispered, frowning. "That's-"

krsshhhhhh

There was a sound like a snake slithering on tissue paper.

Bendy and Mary slowly turned around, expecting to see the monster-Bendy.

What they didn't expect was to see hundreds of thick rivulets of ink bleeding out of the papers. The drawings far, far behind them were bleeding out onto the floor, the rivulets all slithering together into one spot ten feet behind them. Bubbling, churning, writhing ink was spreading across the floor like a growing whirpool, steadily and quickly expanding as all those drawings were sucked dry to-

"Run," Bendy whispered.

He didn't want for a response. He held Mary's hand even tighter and bolted down the narrow hall, the two of them kicking up loose papers and making the ones on the walls flap furiously.

The ink behind them actually roared, a sound like water draining too fast from an old, rusty drain – and the water was gravely and full of sewage.

"RUN!" Bendy screamed.

The ink reared up; that awful roar filled the air.

And it surged after them.