19- In the Presence of Monsters

"Show hospitality to one another without grumbling." – 1 Peter 4:9

It was so strange how she was playing the role of hostess in this world Sammy led her to.

They sat across each other at the small table, each with a small cup of water in front of them. God knows how relieved she was earlier to find that at least one of the three faucets in the bathroom supplied clean water, at least by purely visual standards. However, it was not a shared delight- sort of like offering a hamburger to a vegetarian, it seemed, because he hadn't touched it once.

"You require things I don't; I recall that much."

At the time this fact was revealed, the exhaustion of arguing and- well- entirely giving up to her fate had whisked away critical thinking. But now? She started to see it. Even as his head bobbed slightly up and down so humanly as he stared at the table, observing its many chips and scratches, he still held his glossy form. Sammy was a man- she assumed by now with only slight doubt- but to say he was fully so would mock his existence.

They both seemed content to be silent, even as the discomfort of it all started to pile with a weight capable of breaking the table between them. And so she resumed what she was doing before, a flat pattern of roses rising to face her companion- the back panel of an opening into the rest of the universe.

There was a change here. She glanced up from her phone once she saw in her peripheral that he sharply raised his whole body upward. Like a pulley, it made her heart sink.

"Sammy?"

She didn't know what to say. He just seemed…eternally anxious, agonized; she selfishly wished it didn't make her feel the same way. Heck, saying his name- something he didn't know until he met her- probably made it worse. Her phone went face down on the table, the window of light covered by wooden drapes.

He was standing up now, limbs outstretched as if…as if there was something in the room with them. She spun around to try to see it, but it was just them. It took her a full minute of looking wall to wall to realize the thing clawing at him must be within rather than around them.

She had panic attacks before herself, and one almost overcame her then with the wisdom that her experience gave no valid proficiency in helping another.

Just as she began to approach, hands in front of her but unsure what she'd even do with them, she saw he was looking down at the table. Maybe something was with them after all.

"My sheep…!"

He regressed in his vernacular, overcome with the memories and sensations of seeing her bathed in luminescence the last time he left her alone. …That…thing. That thing was there before, and it was the source of that capturing radiance.

The knot in his chest was indescribable seeing her reach over to pick it up; it didn't lift with her gentle consolation.

"Sammy, Sammy…it's okay." She turned the thing to face him; she did her best to do so slowly, and so seeing him flinch in response was heart-wrenching. She tried to ignore how the line between calming him for her own sake and truly for his sake was beginning to blur, how she did feel so sorry for him.

"…It's okay," she insisted.

It was a rectangle, smooth like glass and black like the pipes sewn through the maze of halls. There was a ridge around it where she gripped the thing in her fingers. It faced him like it had faced her, and so he shrunk back, expecting to be taken by the light as she had been before.

…But nothing came.

It was almost funny how quickly he dipped his head down to inspect it, bent at the stomach and craning his neck so his mask was parallel with its black wall. Finally, some words:

"What…is this? What did it do to you?" A voice that shook with terror and amazement.

She scoffed. "What?!"

His chin tilted upward to look at her, but the angle was sharp enough that she could see his mouth through the hole of his mask, how it gaped and quivered. "It…enveloped you, my sheep. I saw…I saw…"

For once he didn't have words to describe the unnatural visions the studio. Little did he know that it was because it was not of the studio at all, but she started to grasp that in his place.

It was a good call to save the long-winded explanation for later. Ah, how foolish she was to assume he wouldn't at least be inquisitive about a smartphone in a world that seemed like it was frozen in place long past, that in the darkness of the halls it looked like an angel glowing in her hands. Of course, her first reaction- the one he saw- was to notice how ridiculous such a belief was, but the more she thought…the more it made sense for him to feel that way.

It made her feel guilty. This was the emotion left with her after assuring him that her phone was indeed safe, letting him hold it in his hands to inspect- oh so grateful none of him seemed to smear through the cracks.

"Is it…under your control?" he asked in wonder without lifting his mask to face her, still very much enraptured with the object.

"Uh-…" She didn't really know how to react when you put it like that. "-I suppose you could say that."

Sammy finally looked her in the eye; she could almost sense him blink quizzically- if he could at all. And then, right in front of her, he pinched a corner of the phone to dangle it between the tips of his thumb and index finger. That made her frown in worry, but when he started to lightly toss it in the air was certainly much worse to watch.

"HEY!"

He was so startled that his catch faltered, and his arms swung fruitlessly as a clunk! came from their feet. The forearms that failed their purpose stayed still in front of him, crossed, and his waist stayed hunched towards the ground. His head, however, began to lift with an agonizingly slow curve; Sammy stared at her in total silence.

Now it was her turn to recoil back, suddenly remembering who this was in front of her. Sure, maybe things had gotten better- that kind of happens when you have no one else- but she still very much remembered the animosity; she was so hypnotized in flashbacks of the past day or two that she didn't perceive what he was doing until it was in front of her nose.

"I am…deeply sorry, my friend. Forgive my childishness," he murmured quietly, seeming to ache with embarrassment. The phone delicately lay onto his palms as he cradled it momentarily and then hesitantly offered it to her. She'd be lying if she tried to say the way he held her stuff was totally normal.

"It's…it's fine," the woman said in a low voice as she took her pink phone back, "I overreacted for sure. No- no worries." They both were so taken aback by the flinch of their hands touching once again that neither of them noticed it was a shared experience.

Awkward yet again, as seemed to be their way. The woman decided it was her responsibility in this particular situation, as she was the most recent aggressor; she exhaled, lips slightly puckered with reluctance. Maybe it wasn't the best time, but they finally appeared to have an opportunity for some long-awaited discussion.

"Let's-…let's sit down, Sammy." She pulled her lower lip in between her rows of teeth in contemplation briefly before addressing a lingering problem. "Is it alright that I call you 'Sammy,' by the way?"

He didn't say anything, but his body language was once again mastering the art of communication without conscious attempt, titling slightly downward in a clear admission: he wasn't sure. Honestly, she couldn't blame him.

"You, uh, can decide in the future. I'm guessing its all-…it's all a lot right now- a lot to think about." There was temptation to include that she was experiencing the exact same thing, plausibly worse. But for sure, Sammy was fucked up in every way imaginable; the same vindictive sentiment of her tough times here reminded her that he surely had them too…partially if not fully because of her as of late.

Relief soaked her skin when he finally nodded, saying in a haunted drawl in that icy voice of his, "I have experienced…much revelation since we've met."

The man of shadow looked down at his arms. He was always fixated on them from the second they met. At first it was perplexing to her- a sign of instability- but now…it seemed to be an action of remorse. Sammy had to recognize his monstrous nature day after day, and so he would never cease to be enraptured by this gruesome reality. The presence of flesh and blood tore him apart, extinguishing the patience he maintained for years of merely waiting for his salvation- transmuting his distress at her sight into unbearable yearning.

The woman was so unsure now of his nature and origins, but at least now there might be a reason the bathroom mirrors seemed to show him a ghost. He continued before she could ascend fully into the revelation of what his body did to him.

"Time may be the only remedy Bendy will grant his prophet, no matter what works I perform in his name."

The woman nodded too in agreement, although the mention of his "lord" was enough the curdle alleviation into dismay.

Finally, they once again sat across each other, not with the readiness but the awareness of the demons they had to face.

"Time and your assistance," he didn't risk adding as she rested her hand on the table; it was a casual, unthinking gesture that seemed to beckon him… He didn't know what for.

How surprised was he to find himself desiring it all the same, how ghastly he felt as he allowed it refuge within his soul.