AN: This is one of the other more upsetting chapters. To quote the phone guy; "Things are gettin' real tonight". This involves body horror and general gore. This is probably the only majorly intense chapter remaining in this story, and you can skip to the next chapter after this. If you're like me and enjoy some self-indulgent uncle-related gore, then let the show go on!)
Dollface was finally positioned in the cramped space of the vent, legs coiled back. It had been hard enough sliding by the elbows through the vent, but finding a dead end and turning around with no clearance was downright nightmarish.
At one point, Dollface had gotten trapped on her back and started panic-panting, barely able to hold in tears and snot. She'd eventually righted herself when Michael talked her through the blind panic and wiped her face on a brown-and-blue sleeve, Dry Cleaning be damned.
Lying on her back, she sucked in a breath, stomach twinging painfully as she slammed her booted feet against the grate.
Bang!
Again!
Crash!
Once more!
Bam!
The rusted grate rattled to the floor with a sharp breath of pain. She smiled triumphantly, wiggling out of the confined vent.
It's showtime.
Dollface wobbled herself upright, finding herself in the office.
Did she have food poisoning or something?
She'd never had it before, she honestly couldn't tell.
In front of her was a desk filled with flickering, half-functioning monitors and a chair on wheels.
Dollface could smell something awful, like a dead rat left in the sun.
Times a million.
Maybe more.
Against Michael's warnings, Dollface stumbled to the chair in hopes of monitoring the cameras for a hopeful sign of life.
She gagged on rancid air, flipping through the only viewable monitor with a remote, the other cameras too full of static to use. Useless. How did Uncle Mike even use these? She licked her dried up lips, the remains of her messy lipstick smeared all over her face from her interrupted face washing.
The phone rang, making her jump.
Michael soothed her and led her hands to answer the phone, placing it on speaker.
A burst of static chased by distorted speaking greeted them.
She stepped back from the phone, a golden bear staring at her through the monitors with empty eye sockets.
Dollface's heart raced faster than before, and what little she could make out from the garbled, deep voice of her caller between interruptions of screaming machinery and clicking locks was: "...To know the joy of creation…."
'The joy of creation'… Michael quoted, pondering the only intelligible phrase as the phone was cut out by what could've been a scream.
Dollface couldn't tell though, she was too busy staring at the monitor set to camera 2b, the face of the golden bear staring her down as words, plain and simple, flickered, "Follow Me".
She leaned over the screen, delicately reaching with a slim fingertip to touch the bear's vinyl face, mesmerized by it.
Dollface! Stop! Michael snapped at her, making her jump, Can't you hear it?
"Hear… what?" Dollface mumbled, sounding daft and high pitched like a little girl in a movie about poltergeists possessing a television set.
That!
Dollface listened closely to where she was.
The only thing she could hear was a fan, buzzing static and thumping pipes. Maybe a groan or pounding in a vent somewhere in the building, but there was nothing. She could see a pile of parts flash onto a monitor, seemingly hanging from the ceiling. Its battered, peach-flesh faced fox mask housing a singular, glowing yellow eye leered at her through the camera.
She glared at it, not even noticing it for more than a millisecond.
Dollface switched cameras
And then she heard the moans and gurgles.
Step lightly, Dollface.
Dollface put a knee on the wheeled chair, craning over its torn padding to see a vent, opposite to the one she'd entered in.
Another moan, one deeper than the one on the monitor, followed by ragged, wheezing breaths.
Her hands tightened their grip on the armrest patched with duct tape without her noticing, chair groaning under her seventy-eight pound body.
She could smell that awful rotting odor again, this time more obvious and harder to ignore, stomach turning, flies buzzing louder.
A monitor beeped as she dropped onto her hands and knees on the checkered tiles, slowly baby-crawling like her grandfather would've when he still coached Elmore High's wrestling team towards the grated vent. The one she'd entered gaped like an empty maw.
Dollface got onto her knees and took a deep breath, sure that the moaning was from inside this exact vent.
Are we really gonna do this, Dollie-Gurl? Michael asked her.
Dollface nodded, shaking hand reaching for the vent light button.
The vent light button buzzed to life, the rattling grate pulling up as she screamed and scrambled across the floor, a limp, bloody, oversized arm flopped out from the opening. Her breath came loud and hard, heart too fast to keep up with her racing brain.
Inside the vent was a bloody, toothless, eyeless, and limbless Uncle Mike, wheezing.
He had no legs and only an arm left, a few crooked teeth left in his dried, panting mouth, a back-alley tracheo shooting from his gaping neck, made from a plastic straw, the same kind Dollface and friends would happily use to suck down Chica's Magic Drink graveyards.
He was covered in blood, and feces, and God knew what else, wires and tubing tangled all around him, some jutting from his ragged torso.
How long has he been like this here?
Barely able to move or speak, Mike wheezed in the vent.
He's been gone since the tenth. Dollface absently answered, noting the symmetrical scabs and wounds up and down what little was left of Mike's body.
No eyes, no mouth, no tongue… How is he still alive? Michael wondered, for once as agape and speechless as Dollface.
"What do I do with him?" Dollface said allowed, to scared to even use the shine, "I can't just leave him here like this…"
Dollface…
The tears Dollface was previously able to hold back began flowing freely, like maggots on meat.
Dollface, no…
Dollface began choking on the rotting air, the sight of her beloved cousin eaten alive by rats becoming too much for her to handle.
Dollface, no, it's not your fault. Ya didn't know.
Dollface began sobbing harder as flies buzzed louder, practically throwing up for real this time.
With a pained moan, Mike's hand twitched, trying to reach for her, unable to see but able to hear her sobs.
"Waugh!" Dollface skittered further back, horrified at the small signs of life left in him.
Dollface… He's gonna have t'die.
Dollface didn't calm herself, but became manageable again, finding a broken piece of furniture to stuff Mike's arm back into the vent. She slammed the vent light button, feeling satisfaction when the vent came down again. She stumbled to a trashcan and hurled up what little was left of her lunch and sat, leaning against the desk, numb for now as a monitor bleeped.
What's that?
Dollface managed to get to her feet and stared, eyes red and weary.
'3% Power Remaining'.