Reaching Out

My Choice, Not Mine In The First Place

Horror groans and bangs his head against the cool wall, relishing in the pulse it sent through him. He let his eye sockets droop with a sigh.

"You should get up."

He pushes himself further into the wall, his skull now tilted uncomfortably.

"You're hungry. There's food downstairs."

Another sigh escaped his teeth, and he pushed himself up with an annoyed grumble, words unidentifiable even to him.

His eye sockets opened to be face to face with Killer, face almost covered in their black tears. He stared at them for a moment, savouring the familiar image.

"Downstairs," they reminded him, and as if on cue, his stomach groaned. He nodded and pushed open the door to whatever room he had ended up in.

The sound of his slippers against the wooden floors was as grating as ever, although Killer's joyful whistling helped to make the halls feel less lonely.

In a building full of strangers, he feels like the only monster he can trust is Killer. He's not sure when that happened, but he feels closer to them than he used to.

Instead of their presence being annoying, it seemed comforting, maybe because they spoke less than they used to.

He couldn't help but wonder why, though he certainly wasn't complaining.

The floorboards creaked occasionally underneath him, moulding from disuse, Horror’s pretty sure they were covered in stains, too, but every time he tried to pick one out, his vision blurred.

The only other skeleton that comes to the second floor of his bosses weird building is Murder. Cross doesn't come up, even if the boss does, preferring to stick to the exit even if he can't leave through it.

Now that he's thinking about it, he hasn't seen Murder in a while. He turns to look at Killer, "Have you seen Murder lately?"

Killer laughs and shrugs, "Who?"

Horror groans, "You know who Murder is. I'm not in the mood for your games."

"Suit yourself," they saunter forwards, easily making it to the bottom of the stairs.

He rolled his eye and shuffled to the first step, suddenly hit by a wave of nausea. His eye sockets closed on impulse, leading him to hang closely to the wall.

A shuddering breath slipped in through his teeth, and he pushed himself down the steps, making it down in just enough time to see Killer slip through an open door.

As he got closer to the room, voices became less indistinguishable, "-ssy. Yer seriously doin' nothin' about this?"

"I don't know what you expect me to do. If you can't do anything, then how do you -"

He pushed the door open with a lazy nudge, silencing the far too loud voices almost instantly.

Impulsively, fingers were brought up to his eye sockets, something he began to do a while ago and never stopped. He was almost at the kitchen when a voice started again.

"Uh, Horror? Are you okay? You look tired."

Horror glances and scowls, "Fuck off."

Fell pushes past Cross and snarls at him, "You got a problem with him?"

Horror stares down at the shorter skeleton, his finger twitching to summon his axe, "Fuck. Off."

"What the hell’s yer problem? Why're you such a dickhead?"

His magic flickers and instead of his axe like he had wanted, a star appears.

Fell's red eyelights drift down to it almost instantly, and he backs away with a growl, summoning a sharp bone.