Charley And The Swap Machine: Re-Ink'd

CHAPTER 3: Part 4 - Sing A Song Of Angels, For Me

The Voice Of Susie Campbell

Who would have thought?

Me having lunch with Joey Drew!

Apparently times are tougher than I thought. For a moment there, I thought I'd be stuck with the check.

But I gotta say, he wasn't at all what I expected. Quite the charmer.

He even called me Edgar.

I liked it.

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The elevator went to a halt, the intercoms coming to life again. "Go on, step out of your cage. There's a whole twisted world out there."

The duo quietly made their way to the steel doors, Barley still fidgeting and Henry wondering what to expect.

Making their way down the long hallway, they both turned the corner to a....gruesome sight.

Everywhere were what appeared to be copies of.....Barley? And what he could assume was that imp he saw earlier. Of course, the copies of Barley were..imperfect. Some had missing arms, some had extra arms, some were missing facial features, but the one things they all had in common was being gutted like a fish, hollow and lifeless on surgical tables. Henry could even see that a few corpses were floating down in the inky lake in front of them.

"Oh, I do apologize for the mess. But...beauty comes with a price, doesn't it?" The angel asked from the speakers.

Henry looked down at Barley, who was staring at one of the dead copies of him with wide eyes. "Hey, bud?"

The sailor jumped and looked up at Henry in surprise. "H-Huh?"

He nodded his head to the steel doors on the other side. "Cmon."

Henry and Barley balanced their way across the boards creating a path to the other side, Henry making an attempt not to look at the cadavers everywhere.

After coming to the other side, yet another set of steel doors opened for the two.

Henry followed the muffled sound of whirring, listening to it get clearer as the duo soon found themselves standing before a window.

On the other side, Edgar stood there, sending volts of electricity through one of those imps with a strange contraption. Upon noticing Henry and Barley, he immediately shut off the machine, the creature relaxing.

"Barley! And...Henry. I'm so glad you two could come." The angel chimed, acting as if there wasn't some strange monster next to him. "...You know, it's rude to stare, creator." He chided to Henry, placing one of his four hands to the left side of his face, which was notably being taken over by the ink everywhere in the studio.

Henry stopped staring at his face, and Barley gave an awkward wave. "...Hi."

"Barley, I do apologize that this isn't very....date-like. I just had to deal with a little PEST that crawled in here." Edgar apologized, glaring at the imp on the surgical table. "I consider this payback for all the times Bendy tried cutting off my wings. Would you like some wine? Or, um.....food? We have...s-soup? Soup, yeah, soup."

"I'm alright, tha-"

"Can we get to the point, please?" Henry cut off Barley with a hint of annoyance in his voice.

Edgar gave a frown. "Fine. You know, I've been wondering what to do with you.....I simply can't decide, Henry. What's an angel to do? I could cut you up, just like I did with all those failed copies..." The angel looked away from them. "..I had to do it.....she made me..."

He grabbed a mirror from the side, looking at it and nodding his head as if someone was talking to him. "Uh huh. Uh huh- Oh, a wonderful idea! I- ....Alright, Susie."

He looked back over at Henry. "Susie says to spare you. She thinks I could help you get out of here, but....she wants some eensy weensy widdle favors done for us, first."

"You named a mirror Susie?-"

"BACK TO THE LIFT, ERRAND BOY!" Edgar exclaimed, cutting off Henry immediately before he could say anything else. "You have a lot of work to do..."

He flipped the electric contraption back on, and the blinds on the window shut as he continued torturing 'Bendy'.

All our duo could do at that point was stand there, dazed and confused.....

"...Well, looks like I'm getting groceries."