The Sixth Sense but it's Karlnap

Scrathes

cw fainting / panic attack 🤓

The house was usually quiet, but not this type of quiet. It was coldly quiet. So silent even Sapnap's slow breaths were inaudible. His fingers twitched as he gazed down at the crinkled book page in his hands, scanning carefully the blurred, coffee stained words. His head was spinning slowly and the world was incomprehensible to his deranged mind.

The page sported a few discoloured splashes of the tears he'd wiped away just minutes ago, the black ink swirling and bleeding into them like poison to some blood. Dooming as they may be, he could barely peel his watery eyes from the weery meaning the words held.

'Scratches on the skin may indeed be caused by abuse, but it's important to note that these may, in fact, be self-inflicted.'

Sapnap had been studying psychology for years, but even this shook him. He'd seen kids with marks from abuse, but not themselves; it was a different kind of sickening. Was it even a stretch to say, a great part of him at least, hoped those scratches were his mother?

With the old page now half wet and harshly sandwiches between his sweating fingers, Sapnap drew in a breath and placed it back down on his desk. He pushed his chair back, scraping the legs against the stone floor, and wiped his eyes.

Sometimes he wondered why on earth he decided to make the basement his office, it was cold and often damp, but it fitted the feelings of his work perfectly; dark and unsettling, just like what he read. There was only a thin piece of plastic as a window, propped up against the metal grate that looked out onto the street, always banging on the metal even in the slightest breeze. Boxes of reports, tapes and drawings lined the back wall, there was a slight smell of damp should he stand next to the boxes, some of them probably moulding from the wet. But some part of him liked it.

-----

Karl was at home, as usual, Dream close by and a blue pencil in hand. He was careful to make perfect marks on the page, keeping the blue streaks close together and organised between his light, pencil lines. But his hands shook as he drew. The lines weren't perfect at all, most of them a bit scribbly and loose and they spilled over the graphite in many places. What was once a scribbly scetch of a sweet bird was now a screwed mess of blue and yellow with no distinct shape atall. He placed the pencil down with a deep breath and held Dream close, snuggly rested under his chin, and squeezed his stinging eyes shut.

A familiar feeling of dread was building up inside him, churning around in his stomach and boiling into his throat. Usually he would draw to put the feeling to rest, but today it was fighting back, and it'd won; no matter how much he tried to focus on anything different, it still lingered in his gut, grawing away at his mind.

As he let out another heavy breath, he caught light footsteps coming down the hall and the door creaked open without even a knock. A head of long blonde hair and dark grey eyes peered around the door, smiling sweetly at him.

"Time to go honey, come on." His mother said, smiling again and disappearing down the hall again a moment later. She was a nice woman, often too nice, a people pleaser, if you will. You see, a week previous, Quackity had left an envelope with his mother before school, and, Quackity being Quackity, had of course invited Karl to Wilbur's birthday party, but out of spite, knowing Karl would once again embarrass himself with another panic attack; and his mother being his mother, accepted the invitation without confronting Karl, simply to please Wilbur's parents. And today he went to that party.

Sluggishly, Karl dragged himself from his floor and to the door, holding Dream in one arm as he trudged slowly down the hall. His mother was excitedly waiting in her little red car, seatbelt already fastened and hands on the wheel, grinning. Karl slid into the passenger seat and slammed the door, buying his face into Dream's blob head, dreading the next 4 hours.