Murder in the Alley [ Dusttale!Sans x Reader ]

4. How to Not Die Painfully

* There are some mentions of torture within this chapter. I promise that this is the only chapter with such themes and the rest of the novel will not be as graphic. Please be advised. *

You let loose a laugh as the knife danced across the edge of your skin, red flowers blossoming from where the blade of steel laid its seeds. Long since had you become immune to the pain, the fury and growing stillness inside you as the first ounces of death seeded inside your mind. Sometimes Dust would slip up, make a longer gash than normal as he used the knife to carve you into a new person and there would be a fresh wave of pain.

But you were beginning to like that type of pain, the brief distractions from the icy coldness that was making home in your limbs, the way that you often felt light-headed and how every blink, every breath took great strain upon the meager reserves of energy that still pumped in your veins, as if every sigh that left your lungs would be your last.

Because pain was new, something different.

You began to appreciate the work and dedication that Dust was putting into you. At first when he had begun to dig the knife into your skin, you had been too busy screaming your head off to notice anything in particular. But when you had hardened your mind and heart to the pain of mortals, when you were immune to most inflictions upon your skin, then you began to notice the finer, more subtle details that went unnoticed at first.

For instance, there was a beauty in the way that you saw him hold the knife, where his bony fingers clasped the hilt of the knife with the right amount of pressure so that it would not slip from his grasp, the way he knew how to angle the tip of the blade against your flesh so that it would cut with ease as one might with an orange or some other fruit.

You began to wonder why you had even recoiled from the thought of torture in the first place, why you had been so afraid that the pain would remold you into a new person, how desperate you had been to avoid such a fate! But why should you fight against such a thing when it was so obviously destiny? The right steps in the right direction had led you to where you sat now, bound in chain as a knife slowly carved away your former self, leaving behind a new person entirely.

If anything, the torture had made you more alert, more aware of your surroundings. You had begun to notice things that you had never noticed before, like the way that you could make out the millions upon millions of heartbeats that festered within the city of New York a few blocks away. You thought that sometimes you would even catch a glimpse of a red scarf flapping around a floating head from time to time as well in the fits of your hysteria when the pain was especially intense, but then the vision fleeted and faded from existence.

Dust had not bothered speaking to you since he had begun work upon carving into you nor did you mind the silence. You liked sitting alone in your thoughts, sifting apart the new person that you were becoming, silent shivers of gratitude running through you at the thought of what he was doing to you. For he had been merciful, he had been kind to you. He had the opportunity to kill you, could do so any time he wanted. But instead Dust had put aside his own personal desires and took the time to carve into you, to remold your mind into something completely new.

There was a transfixed fascination as Dust worked the knife across your skin. Sometimes it was hard to tell if he was even cutting you at all for the pain had become a universal feeling, something that racked your entire being and thus you had grown immune to. There was a constant smile upon the comedian's features as he worked the knife into your skin as if he was just as aware as you of the person you were becoming, the way that the pain and the knife had reshaped your mind, corrupted the very foundation of your core into a new person entirely.

The truth was, you could remember little of your life before this. Every day felt as if it was a year, every second a month. For all you knew, this had been your life since the moment you had been born. From the birth to death of the night Dust worked into your skin, changed your mind with each passing hour. When the first rays of the sun touched the horizon did he place a cloth upon your mouth, hidden chemicals singing your brain to an eternal slumber.