Warnings: Gore, canon typical violence
A/N: This was originally meant as a goretober thing, but I clearly missed the deadline. I've been debating the past few days whether or not to post it anyway, and since I don't want to wait until next October I decided to just go for it.
If I need to bump up the rating, let me know.
It was a rainy June nineteenth, and a yellow puppet named Doi was bouncing a ball against the living room wall.
He asked his roommates to play, but both of them were far too busy. Duck was struck with a sudden urge to clean, and Red had to take a nap. Doi had been upset at first, but then he realized the wall was as good a playmate as either of them.
Each time the ball bounced against the wall, a blue clock hanging from it shook. At first, the movements made the yellow puppet stop, and he would wait with bated breath for it to start singing or screaming at him. But after a few hits and shakes with no sudden lessons, he started to ignore it entirely.
Doi did not like the clock, and neither did his friends.
Red had tried throwing it out more than once, but it somehow always came back, hanging on their wall as if it was never moved. After the sixth try he finally gave up, and the trio silently agreed not to acknowledge its existence.
Still, there were times when Doi couldn't help but look at the clock. Like when he wanted to see how much longer he had to wait for Craig's Big Day to come on - though he struggled to actually read the time.
Doi could hear his feathered friend rambling in the kitchen as he cleaned, something to do with hunting. Duck loved to talk while doing household chores, even if no one else was there to listen.
He couldn't hear Red snoring, but he hoped the tall puppet was having a good dream, if he ever dreamed at all.
Doi threw the ball again and giggled as it bounced from the floor to the wall, and back into his hands. It didn't matter if his friends weren't in the mood to play, this was fun too.
But still, a voice at the back of his brain nagged, wouldn't it be so much more fun if they joined in?
He shook that thought away. He wasn't going to listen to the voices in his brain, not when there was fun to be had.
For the next try, Doi flung the ball into the floor much harder than before. But instead of hitting the wall, his toy smashed into the clock.
Its glass face shattered and it swung, the nail that normally held it in place loosened from the impact.
Doi stared at the broken object, unsure what to do. He didn't have much time to mull over it though, since in the next moment the clock hit the ground with a loud crash.
From the kitchen Duck's voice faltered, but after a few seconds of silence continued on. However, he now seemed to be griping over the television's volume instead of hunting.
The yellow puppet tiptoed to the broken item and groaned.
The clock was worse off than he'd hoped.
Doi gingerly picked up the remainder of the clock, his mind racing a centimeter a minute. He'd have to do something about it, he knew. But what exactly, he couldn't decide. Perhaps he should throw it away, grab some band-aids, or just hang it back on the wall? Maybe he ought to wait for the clock to tell him.
"Hello?" Doi called.
The clock didn't respond.
He flicked one of the red arrows. It didn't spin, instead only moving a bit before twitching back into place. The clock shuddered.
Doi readjusted his grip. But he felt a flash of pain, and he looked down to see one of his fingertips was red.
He nicked himself on the glass.
One, two, three, dozens of prickling sensations suddenly started to tingle across his hands, and Doi watched, dumbstruck, as small fine lines of red formed across the yellow fabric that made up his skin.
His hands grew warm, then hot, and the prickles were no longer tingly but instead stung as bad as, no, worse than any papercut.
Doi gasped and dropped the clock. Panicked, he shook his hands over and over again in a desperate attempt to relieve the searing pain. Droplets of red were flung across the room with every flick of his wrist, and he dimly thought of Duck scrubbing away at the tiles in the kitchen. The poor bird would hate to clean this up.
But then there was a funny smell in the air, and Doi forgot all about his feathered friend. Instead, his mind conjured up thoughts of scales and bulging eyes and tiny little snacks stuffed in a peelable can.
"Fish?" He looked down and his breath hitched in his throat.
At his feet was the broken, well, more broken clock, and an ugly mess of meat and blood he didn't think was there before.
It was spilling out of the clock's cracks. The jagged edges of broken glass were slick with the blood that slowly sputtered out, and he could see something pink and moist pulsating along the black frame, just under the ticks that were meant to be hours.
Although Doi wasn't as smart as his roommates, even he knew this wasn't right. Broken clocks were supposed to have gears and metal springs and sparkly glass, or at least he thought that's what they had. Not blood and meat.
The gory mess grew quickly around the clock, spreading out onto the blue carpet and wooden floor.
Something else, something hidden in the viscera, was seeping out too, warping the wood and fraying the edges of the carpet. Doi gingerly prodded at it with his foot and watched, fascinated, as his white shoe became grimy gray. It was as if years of wear and tear were being inflicted on it all at once. The toe of the shoe then started to peel away and fall apart, revealing his real toes, which were strangely wrinkly.
He pressed his foot down onto the carpet. It was damp. He took a few steps toward the kitchen and stopped. There was a squelching sound, the same kind that his shoes made when he jumped in mud puddles.
Duck would be so upset with him for spilling… spilling whatever it was on the carpet! Doi brought up his hands to his head, ready to pull on his hair from the stress of it all when he realized something strange.
He couldn't feel his hair.
There was also a strange sensation in his hands, no longer were they just burning, but there was a new pain there too. Almost as if something was trying to rip him apart.
He pulled his hands down to his eyes.
His fingers were rotting off.
Doi screamed.
A loud clatter came from the kitchen, and Duck swore. But Doi wasn't aware of that, he couldn't hear it over the sound of his own panicked voice.
The tips of his fingers were gone. They were just bloody stumps now, right above his second knuckles, but that too was quickly falling off in small wet chunks. He could see brief glimpses of his bones, between the red and yellow, but as enough flesh dripped away those would crumble off with the rest of him.
The puppet sobbed. This was so much worse than the broken clock. He really had no idea how to fix this.
Doi turned his head in the direction of the kitchen.
Duck was smart, or at least he always said he was, so he'd know what to do.
He took a step forward, lost his balance, and fell to the floor with a squishy thump. He looked back at his feet. His shoes and socks were all but tatters now, and his feet were unrecognizable lumps of meat.
The gory mess was still spilling out of the clock, covering more and more of the floor. Doi reached out to grab it, but most of his hand was gone.
"Stop that," he begged. "No more!"
"Hey!"
Doi looked up.
Duck stood at the door, hands on his hips and an irritated frown across his beak. "What's going on here?" the bird demanded. "Why are you on the floor?"
"Help me!"
"Eh? With what?"
"It hurts!" He tried to wave a bloody stump at Duck, but his friend didn't seem to care. Doi managed to pull himself up into a sitting position, though the pain of pressing what was left of his wrists against the soaked carpet made him wail.
His vision blurred, and a searing pain ripped across his forehead, then his nose, cheeks, and finally chin. He realized with a fresh wave of terror that his face was now rotting as well. "No, make it stop!"
He could feel his face melting, could feel clumps of his nose dripping down and splattering onto his lap.
The bird stomped towards him. Not once did he glance down at the mess, not even when his yellow feet were right in the middle of the pool of red. Though those bright yellow feet were beginning to gray, and Doi could see the scales flaking off of them like dandruff.
Doi shook his head, not wanting to believe his eyes.
Duck was rotting too.
"Don't!" Doi wasn't sure he was screaming at. Duck, the clock, or both? It didn't matter, he just wanted it to end. "Go away, GO AWAY!"
Duck frowned. "Do you want help or not?"
"PLEASE, STOP! I'M SORRY, I'M SORRY!"
Duck was reaching out to him now with withered fingers, grey things that had shed their pretty green feathers into a lice-infested pile on the floor.
Doi reeled back. "STOP IT!"
Duck's face twisted into a scowl, but it didn't stop there. It started to droop, and his eyeballs slowly eased their way out of his sockets, and Doi could see the bird's uneven teeth as his beak shriveled away.
"NO! NO! NO! NO NO NOOoo…"
Duck grabbed Doi by the shoulders, and suddenly the mess was gone.
"What in the world is the matter with you?"
Doi blinked and looked around the room. Neither of them was rotting. Everything was just as it was before, though the clock was still broken. However, there wasn't a speck of blood or flesh to be seen on it, just shards of glass, like it was a regular old clock.
Duck turned his head to see what Doi was looking at and groaned.
"Look at that," Duck griped. "It's all broken and on the floor!"
Doi looked down at his hands. They were covered in tiny little cuts, the only evidence of what had transpired moments ago.
"You did this, didn't you? Well, what do you have to say for yourself?"
"Buh… but my hands-"
"Huh?" The bird grabbed one yellow hand and let out a tsk. "Oh, you cut them." Despite his gruff tone, he was gentle as he examined Doi's hands. "You cut them a lot! We're gonna have to wrap these up like a mummy!"
Doi suddenly felt lightheaded.
"What have I told you about touching broken glass? I've said it's dangerous," the bird chided. "That was very, very stupid of you!"
Doi opened his mouth, but no words came out.
Duck shook his head, exasperated. "Oh, whatever. Go sit down, I'll clean this up."
Doi collapsed into his chair and stared at his hands with wide, unblinking eyes while his friend swept up the mess.
The bird hummed as he gathered the last shards of glass in the dustpan. He picked it up and was about to walk to the bin when he stopped. Duck sniffed the air. His brow wrinkled and he gagged in disgust.
"Why does it smell like fish?"
A/N: Don't worry, Tony's fine. He just wanted to pull a little prank, is all. As an aside, the reason I kept writing him as 'the clock' is because I don't think the trio actually know his name.
Thanks for reading!
