Just a Happy Ending

Morning

The exhausted party slept through the night and most of the day. It was early afternoon by the time Henry awoke.

He sat up and stretched, joints satisfyingly popping as he yawned. He felt good for once. There was no creeping fear of imminent danger, his body barely ached, and he no longer had a headache from breathing ink fumes and stale air.

His stomach growled. He remembered having real food sometime last night, but he'd been so overwhelmed from the call home that tasting anything had been an afterthought. Maybe this morning he could enjoy something without bacon or soup.

He carefully got out of bed so as to not disturb Bendy. The nightmare from the night before had tired him out and he was still deeply asleep. Not even his tail twitched.

Henry draped the blanket over Bendy's shoulders and quietly slipped out of the room.

Janet looked up at him from the living room where she lounged with a book. "Afternoon," she greeted.

"Is it?" Henry asked, looking for a clock.

"That it is," said a familiar voice.

Henry smiled at Norman, who sat at the table with a mug of steaming water. "Hey. How are you doing?"

"Rather decent. Check this out." He set his palm under the projector lens and pushed upward. His chin slid out from under the metal and his lower jaw opened to expose a bottom layer of teeth and a tongue. He set the mug against his mouth and tipped water in before lowering the projector and swallowing the mouthful.

Henry laughed with disbelief. "Your head is intact? You can take off the projector?"

"Oh yeah, I never told you 'bout that," Norman chuckled. "I had a little mental meeting with the Projectionist. It lives up here" —he tapped the projector— "and we agreed to a mutually beneficial partnership. Because of that my head's back together and I can throw lightning."

Henry's jaw dropped. "Throw... lightning?"

"Yee-up," Norman enunciated, popping the 'p'. "And I reckon not too long from now I could actually take off this darn thing. Though the reel head up top says I'd need to do somethin' about the spotlights that are my eyeballs if I wanna take it off and still see."

"Your eyes are the projector light?"

"And the lens is the only thing keepin' me from blindin' everyone I look at."

Henry sighed and rubbed his forehead. "I guess I did miss a lot. You and Sammy will have to fill me in on the whole Demon King thing."

"Yeah.... Hey, how are your hands?"

"Oh. Fine, I guess." Henry rubbed at the marbled ink gloves. "Doesn't hurt but Bendy insisted I keep the ink on for now."

Norman's gaze lowered to the table. "About the Demon King. Do you... remember anythin'? From when you were gone? Bendy did his best to explain but he couldn't get through much of it. I'm still not entirely sure what happened to you."

"Uh... it's... blurry." Henry sat down across from Norman. "Most of it was trying to keep myself together. Sanity-wise, I mean. That thing had control of a piece of my soul as well as my mind. It talked to me a lot, that I remember. And it kept making me see things. Other than that, I was tired and cold and... and I wasn't sure what was real until Bendy came along."

Henry fell silent, his mind drifting back to endless sand and that horrible voice constantly shouting in his ears.

He brought himself back before he went too far. "Uh... what about you? I caught mention of 'trials' or something."