Wonders of Heresy (Bendy and the Ink Machine)

7- Shape, Sound, and Sincerity

Author's Note: The art for this chapter is by MetallicArtist on Tumblr.

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"You are my hiding place; You preserve me from trouble; You surround me with songs of deliverance." - Psalm 32:7

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You get in a car accident. Metal and wire and glass everywhere- horrible, horrific, terrible, terrifying. Alone. Let's assume you're lucky enough to make it out physically unscathed, not even a cut; you'll still never forget how it makes you feel. There's a chance every time you get behind the wheel again, pass by the spot on the highway where your car split the guard rail in two, or even if you see a car- there's a roll of the dice how tight your chest will clench this time and how much your heart physically aches like the time it happened. Once again, the car is spinning and the same debris from before flies into your face in hopes of destroying you, onslaughts of the phantom of your past.

Swirling in anxiety, drowning in doubt. Someone can only take it for so long. There's only so many times someone can live through it over and over again, and the first time alone could have killed you. This is the time where beings find how powerful they truly are. This is when they find their souls- their joys, their fears, their traits, their wounds.

There's only so long before you become human again.

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The water traced down her fingers after it was thrown gently to her skin. The sound it made echoed in the porcelain, staining the old yellow basin with a trickle of black among the otherwise clear liquid. Its presence forced a sigh of dismay, beridding her of the consolations of truly clean drinking water. As the layer of dust and ink the studio painted onto her washed away little by little, Sammy saw there were some things that wouldn't abandon her. The folds under her eyes remained darkened, and a row of brown dots lined from her jaw to her forehead. She was a constellation of heavens he hadn't the blessing to see...

...Yet. Looking upon her was a reminder that dreams do come true, and they certainly will with Bendy's gracious hand.

The man took great care standing next to the mirror rather than in front of it; maybe he was vulnerable in her full view, unable to hide how carefully he watched, but it was preferred over the slashing stare of his own melting body before him if he had stood behind her instead. He uncrossed his arms as she lifted her head to breathe in once more, and suddenly black fingers were obstructing his view.

Sammy hadn't touched her yet, thankfully, before he discovered what he was doing. As the back of his hand obstructed the dots on her face and their accompanying eye, the other eye looked upon him. She was too tired, too numb to flinch yet again, but the man eventually pulled back all the same. Even in her acceptance of him- of his upsetting existence, his unholy form- he still felt unsuited to touch her again, at least not so soon.

"You...you have some left on your face, my friend," was his excuse. A true one, but it was an excuse.

After a second of blank silence, the woman minutely shifted her head to look in the mirror again. It was clear now there were still definitely stains left, and to his concern they didn't fuzz a bit when she smoothed her fingertips over them. Shoulders lifted and dropped with a blink, and she somehow looked more tired than before.

"I think I got everything I can, Sammy." He didn't blame her in this moment for some reason, for her casual reference to him by a name he hardly knew. It brought things upon him- things that were certainly his- and so came the admission of his ownership of a "Sammy." How truly terrible was it that he knew it? The answer was "very," of course, but as the woman's look rested upon him again, it somehow drowned in the deafening noise her mortality blared around him. How could such a solemn face make him feel...so, so much?