Sanscest Spooktober Prompts

Distort

He doesn't have long left, he thinks. Not in the hollowed out remains of his universe.

Rooting around the glitched ruins of his home is pointless. Most of the time nothing is there. But sometimes there are; maybe a bottle of ketchup or a blurred picture, but never for long. Every flickered in and out of existence now as reality warped and pulled apart like wet tissue.

Pure void licked at the edges of his universe.

It crept closer every day. First starting in what had been left of the Capital, it slowly began to consume everything in its path. When he'd gone out exploring just yesterday (Had it been last week? Or last month? Time simply doesn't work here at all anymore) he'd discovered that Waterfall is gone. He thinks it might have been gone for a while now. Snowdin is all that's left.

It had been scary when it first happened. When Error first came hurtling into his world. The chaos that had ensued had been terrifying as the glitch his torn his world asunder and ripped up portions of his world's coding into confetti before being chased off by Ink halfway through. And he had possessed the stupidity to be glad when it was over. Glad that he had survived.

Now he was wise enough to be jealous of those who had the privilege of a swift death. His world, having not been properly destroyed, was left to slowly become corrupted. It didn't take long fo the programming to become distorted with such large chunks of code missing or scrambled. And a empty world that was halfway between a hospice and a prison was the outcome.

He had tried to kill himself of course, in his situation who wouldn't? But of course it wasn't that easy.

Everytime he tried he almost succeeded. There wad splintering pain and before his world would go wonderfully black for a moment. And then the taste of static would fill his mouth. It was hard to describe exactly what happened next- but then he'd be right back where he started. Knife or rope in hand as if nothing ever happened.

Time is impossible to tell. In the same time it could take for a coffee mug to reach the floor and shatter, the clock would show that two days had past. Physics bent this way and that way and every way except the way it was supposed to. A reasonable part of him argues that not much time could have passed since he was left alone, or he surely would have starved by now. But a wiser part of him realizes that not much is reasonable now.

He doesn't want to be here. His universe is distorted and empty and he's just tired and scared. He wants it to end.

He comforts himself with the knowledge that it'll all be over soon. The glitches have gotten worse. The pain was only comparable being rubbed pushed through a cheese grater, before being molded back into shape only for it to happen again. It's an odd type of pain that isn't entirely physical, but he wishes it were. Maybe then it would be more bearable if it didn't bear down onto the very fabric of his being. Even once the pain recedes, a dull yet constant ache lingers, a reminder of fractured code that makes up his very body.

He's already lost parts of himself. He can't remember if his favorite condiment is ketchup or mustard or who's sock on the floor that is. Was his brother a Sans or Papyrus? It hurt to think too much.

He floats through what's left of his diminishing universe like a ghost, not truly present himself. Some vain, wishful part of him expects to be saved, to be taken out of this hellhole. There were people that could help him right? He distantly remembers their names. Ink, Dream, and who else? It doesn't matter. They aren't coming. Even if they did it would be too late to save him.

Soon, he hopes uselessly, soon it'll all be gone as it should. Soon he'll be blessed with the bliss of oblivion. Soon, when the glitches finally bad enough that they completely rip him from part of any tangliable existence. But that's only if only the void doesn't get to him sooner.

Still, being eaten by the nothingness of the void could be tolerable. Drifting in the abyss for all of eternity isn't too bad of a fate. Especially not compared to those unlucky survivors stuck in vacant universes, left to wait idly until the end of time.

Hopefully they went insane a long time ago.

A/N: This is an old drabble I managed to dig up since I couldn't figure out what to do for this prompt, so excuse the weird writing style. It was meant to explore the idea of what happens to the people left alive in the universes that Error destroys- or at least the ones that he doesn't destroy properly. Afterall, everyone knows about the tragic survivors of his destruction, but only from the perspective of the ones that are saved.

It really makes Error's character seem a lot more evil and serious when you realize that, for every AU that he casually tears apart, this is what happens to the people inside of them as their universe slowly sinks into entropy.