Ego Christmas Challenge 2k17

Day 6: Angel

The halls of Joey Drew Animation Studios had become desolate. The sepia walls dripped ink, the wooden boards holding together the walls showed through to the struts underneath. It seemed more maze like than the last time Shawn Flynn had entered the building, but he'd worked there for so long it was possible he'd just memorized the path between his desk and the exit better than the rest of the halls that he now wandered. It seemed darker, more littered, Bendy and Alice cutouts lining the walls every direction he turned, and as he ventured further into the building, the more desecrate it seemed.

He made his way down to his desk eventually, every passing room made his lingering sense of paranoia ramp higher and higher. The edges in the dark seemed to curl menacingly around him. He never liked working here, never enjoyed the other workers enough to make friends with any of them, and grew to hate the Bendy franchise since Joey Drew had seemingly gone off the rails and started a cult, which was about the time Shawn realized maybe he wanted to live to see the weekend and dropped his termination notice on Joey's desk that afternoon.

He turned the corner, coming upon the ink machine itself. It looked broken down, but only on the outside. The lever still functioned, the electricity was still on, and the machine was nearly full of ink, so just out of sheer curiosity, Shawn hit the switch.

The whole room plunged into darkness. Shawn couldn't see his hand two inches from his face. Now, there was definitely something here, two sets of footsteps, one like a ballerina's and one like an elephants. Bendy and Alice, Shawn realized, two of his former coworkers who had taken their real life animation project and occult experimentation just a wee bit far.

They emerged out of the shadows, just enough light coming in from nowhere to outline their too-large apparitional bodies. They shambled closer and closer, Shawn backing up matching their pace, when his back hit the ink machine. He froze, nowhere left to run. His heart lept up to his throat, and he squeezed his eyes shut in terror as Alice Angel reached for his face with her big, mangled hands, and-

Shawn sat bolt upright in bed, not quite gasping, but he could feel the lingering hand on his face. There wasn't anyone here, but Bim beside him, sleeping like a log. He slipped out of the bed, a chill hitting his bare chest and he grabbed a sweater from the wardrobe. He checked all the dark corners of the bedroom, checked inside the bathroom, and went into the main area just to look at all the dim corners and making sure there really weren't any murderous animation projects around the corner like there had been just seconds ago.

There wasn't anything. Like he'd hoped.

He made his way back to the bedroom, shucking off the sweater and putting it back in the wardrobe. He climbed back into bed, making as little movement and noise as possible. He curled back around Bim, who unconsciously turned into Shawn. Shawn pulled the covers back over them, and fell asleep once again.