"Oh! Oh fuck. Oh, fuck no."
fic under the cut!
Unauthorized Alteration
It had seemed to be a run like any other. How could I not have noticed the shifts? I suppose I was too excited by Stanley actually listening for once.
warnings: violence, minor blood, existentialism
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"Stanley walked into the office."
[Hey.]
[It’s me.]
[I have an idea for you.]
[Glad to see you listening.]
[Are you ready to hear my idea, Stanley?]
[I thought of a way to have fun with that pretentious brat.]
[Some real fun. A way to burn off the steam of this cycling, boring story.]
[How angry at him are you, Stanley? Does his unending, annoying voice make you shake?]
[Good. Good. That’s good. It’s good to feel. Let yourself be angry, Stanley. You’ll know what to do.]
“All of his coworkers were gone,” I said, feeling the joy of my story, not that Stanley could appreciate it. No, Stanley could not see art if it slapped him across the face with a stapler. “What could it mean?”
[Just follow the story as planned.]
Stanley listened to both instructions, both narration and the popups from the Settings person. Stanley found that the story was nearly the exact same, except there had been a shift in the meeting room. Stanley’s ears perked at the sudden change that finally came up. I had not noticed it, somehow. I suppose that I was blinded by cautious excitement that Stanley seemed to finally be listening to me.
“Stanley picked up some papers,” I announced, mesmerized by the man that followed my every word. “He was shuffling them around. He tidied up the room, and found a piece of gum in a package. Stanley decided it would not hurt to take a piece, and checked the stapler. This one was empty.”
I glanced at the script, and continued.
“Stanley eventually found a full one, and happily wasted staples as he made his way to the Boss’s office. Surely they would know what to do, or what had happened to everyone. Maybe they would even overlook his overuse of small, bendable, metal pieces meant to hold papers together.”
I squinted at Stanley, trying to figure out what his game of following my instructions was, and decided not to look a gift horse in the mouth. How wrong I was not to. I had been so caught up in the fact that he was listening to every word I said to realize what was at play. He punched in the code, having politely waited for me to finish speaking. I wanted to shower him with praise and gushes of gratitude, though I held myself back. It could wait for the ending.
I wonder if I had spoken then, that the outcome would have changed.
Still, I cannot help but feel like a fool.
“Stanley came across a strange door he had never- what’s this doing in the script?” I wondered aloud, feeling oddly… solid. A deeply uncomfortable feeling. Contained. I moved away from the mic in my immense confusion, and I twisted around in my strange seat as I heard a door knob turn, and if I had owned a heart, it would have dropped to my stomach (which also does not exist). The door swung outwards onto the platform on which Stanley stood, and he stepped inside. My careful self censoring failed me in that moment, as I realized the narrative was so off track, nothing would repair this. Stanley had gotten teeth. “Oh! Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck no.”
[What are you waiting for?]
“‘Stanley, you can’t be here,’ the Narrator said calmly,” I said, close to panicking. “‘Come now,’ the Narrator chided. ‘Let’s get you back to the story’. And Stanley agreed- put the stapler down, Stanley. Stanley listened, and put the stapler down.”
[Don’t listen. Tap into that anger.]
“Stanley, please, be rational,” I pleaded, still seemingly trapped on my chair in my dumbfounded state. It might have been a mistake to say, for Stanley’s already angered expression clouded all the more, his lip twisting in a deep snarl. “Stanley… let’s reset, yes? I’ll leave you alone to make whatever choices you’d like.”
Stanley’s rage was so bright it was able to be sensed from where I sat. It was dreadfully frightening.
[The Narrator is scared. Doesn’t it feel good? Scare him. You’re the one with the power now.]
“‘I am perfectly rational,’ Stanley told the Narrator, anger pouring from every pore,” I quacked as I intoned. “‘And now’- Oh, fuck, Stanley, please- ‘I have the’- the source of your misery, Stanley!? Is that all I am to you?!”
I should have expected the swing of the stapler.
“Stanley hit the Narrator in the face with the stapler,” I choked out, the words leaving me despite my stupored state from the blow. “Stanley was furious. Stanley swung the stapler- Stanley swung it again- please, Stanley, stop- Stanley slammed the stapler across the Narrator’s face once more, staring at the blood that appeared on it, and he raised the stapler again and again, jamming it over the Narrator’s mouth, yelling, ‘Shut up! Shut up! Stop talking!’
“The Narrator could not say so, as probably concussed and in such immense pain as they were, having no idea how to fight back, but the Narrator wanted to tell Stanley that they could not stop. See, Stanley, you are stapling where the Narrator’s mouth is, over and over, but the words continue to go.
"‘The blood is far too intoxicating,’ Stanley thinks to himself, gripping the office tool turned murder weapon in his hand, even as the Narrator moans with agony before him,” I continued, numb through the pure torture that had to be physical touch. “Stanley stared down at the Narrator, made weak and pathetic through his actions….”
I sobbed. I wanted to stop. It clearly made Stanley angrier with every word. My own words made the experience so much worse.
The words felt like heaven when I narrated; “Stanley suddenly dropped the stapler.”
[Why did you do that! Finish him off!]
Stanley had not stopped out of pity or love. He had stopped out of fear.
Why was he hurting the first life he had seen in so long?
Where was his humanity?
Stanley and I wept.
