I posted this on twitter, but I think I’ll share it here, too.
I don't think I've ever written Stretch while he's still working in the lab. I was thinking of him as an assistant for the Royal Scientist, a brilliant but kinda creepy guy, he tells his little brother, and the job pays pretty well, even if it's a little, uh, disturbing, sometimes. Or a lot.
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Mostly my job is to keep the lab clean and to record the daily findings from all the experiments. Not bad work for the pay. Downstairs is where the really weird shit is, seriously, bro, if Gaster is a creepazoid, I dunno what you’d call his little collection. He says they’re replicants and they look like actual Monsters floating in this goo inside these big glass tubes.
Artificially reproduced, he said, whatever the hell that means. I looked at the data, but I'll have to finish my PhD to understand it. No souls, all they’re good for is producing magic that’s harnessed to try to break the barrier.
The scientists are doing good work, but I dunno, it’s creepy as fuck being around those things all the time. Mostly, they look like they’re sleeping and that’s bad enough, but sometimes I’ll be cleaning up and when I turn around, their eyes are open. It feels like they’re watching me, even though I know there’s no lights on upstairs.
Or at least, that’s what I thought until yesterday.
One of them looks like a skeleton Monster or maybe the nightmare of one. They all look like that, you know, the replicants. Sharp teeth and claws, like the way Humans picture us in those old books we found at the dump. I’ve been noticing that one’s eye sockets are open more often lately and I didn’t really think anything of it. It happens, I just wash the glass and move on to the next one. But, last night, everyone was already gone for the day and I was finishing up, doc hates it if there’s any fingerprints leftover when he comes to check on them in the morning. Its sockets were open again, staring out with those red eye lights, and I was trying not to look at them, so I was looking down and…I saw it. I saw its hands move.
Scared the ever-loving fuck out of me. I dropped the spray bottle and started to run. I was ready to beat ass out of that place all the way home to Snowdin. So, I don’t know why I stopped and looked back, but I did, and, bro.
It…he was looking right at me and his hands were moving. He was signing to me, signing words that I could understand. Gaster was the one who told me they weren’t cognizant, he told me they were only fleshy batteries and I believed him, why wouldn’t I? What kind of person would keep a sentient being as an experiment? Now I don’t know what I’m supposed to do, because if he lied about that, what else was he lying about? What kind of person, bro, what kind of monster—
Anyway, you know what happened after that. I grabbed my shit and ran all the way home. Crawled into the corner of my room and smoked a whole pack before I stopped shaking. Been sitting here for hours now, trying to figure out what to do, but I know one thing. I’m gonna have to go back. I have to do something, I dunno what, but that skeleton signed ‘help me.’ And I’m gonna try.
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