#<- tweaking out i showed my friends your animation and started SCREAMING AT THEM /silly /nsrs TO LOOK AT IT BECAUSE IT WAS SO COOL ( i kept | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

beerecordings · 4 years ago

Note

hey!!! i'd love to see more with the favored puppet au, that's always been one of my favorite concepts. maybe at a point where chase feels apathy in the face of anti, his caretaker, being a bad person? or something from before, when anti decided chase was worrying him and he didn't want to play the games anymore? :'D ty ty

Favored Puppet AU (Chase): After stalking, haunting, and toying with Chase for years, Anti eventually realized it was no longer fun to play with him while his suffering was so high. Instead, Anti kidnapped Chase and keeps him away from the world as its companion. Chase has learned to be alright with that. The human world, after all, was never very kind to him.

Triggers for heavy discussions of Chase’s past suicide attempts and depression and Chase trying to cut himself again, though he doesn’t succeed. Also might be considered soft!Anti, though Chase is the only one it’s soft for.

Florence I decided to combine that first prompt (Chase feeling apathy when Anti’s being awful) with another prompt so you will see that later! for this one I decided to do that moment where Anti decided he didn’t want to play games anymore. thank you for sending them my dude!! also this is my first time writing for this au so the mythology is really experimental but I just tried to do something new with Anti :) it’s very inhuman and doesn’t really understand Chase, but it decides it wants him, so...

It sits on top of his refrigerator and watches him have his first meal of the day, a depression snack at nine at night compromised almost entirely of the last crumbs in an old bag of Cheetos. The skinny little human creature – though Anti’s seen him staring at his shirtless torso in the mirror enough times to know he’s only growing more dissatisfied with his softening stomach and arms – throws his head back and dumps the rest of the crisps into his mouth, getting orange dust all over his unkempt beard. Anti giggles at the sight of him. Clown boy with his Cheeto dust and the bags under his eyes. Little human thing. Too small and silly even to be able to die. Goofy, stupid human. Slouching, miserable child.

But if there is one thing Anti enjoys about the human, it is his fierce, hateful courage. At first, the laughter in the edges of his hearing sent chills up the boy’s spine and made him turn around with wild eyes, spitting and gnashing his blunt mortal teeth, but now, after months of being haunted, he does nothing except turn around and glare.

Anti is invisible on his refrigerator, but the human – what is his name? Charles, Casey, something – he still tries to find it. He has eyes made to burn, blue as flame, though, to be perfectly fair, fire can be as much a source of life as the bitter weapon Casey makes with his gaze now.

He used to be warm. Anti remembers. He would stutter when the girl came to see him and he carried those little chips with him, rubbing them in his pocket when he passed the liquor store, and his children were all he thought about. But he’s changed. Anti watched it happen. For whatever reason, the girl stopped bringing the children by at all, and at some point the pain of it must have overwhelmed the man, and Anti watched him embrace old habits with a ferocity only describable as self-harm. After his second suicide attempt – that was the only time Anti let Casey see it, standing over him and staring at the crimson of his blood in the bathtub while the man screamed for it to kill him already, shrieking in despair as Anti picked up his phone from the bathroom counter and dialed 911, giggling at the thought of just how powerful his despair would be when he woke up in the hospital – he removed his children from the background of that phone and replaced it with a stock image of the ocean provided to him by Apple’s recommendation.

The light slid out of his eyes at some point. Anti was there. It watched the whole thing.

It enjoyed the whole thing. Mostly.

“Fucking kill me, then, bitch,” hisses Casey, slinking through his own kitchen like he’s being hunted. He is. “Playing games with me, always, well, I’m tired of playing, you know that, I’m tired… fucking kill me then, not afraid of you, not afraid…”

This is also true. Anti’s pretty sure the only reason he moved back to America was to make sure none of his friends would be in the way of the creature who haunts him finally finishing the job. And to stop them from telling him “you need to get help, you’re talking to the voices in your head and seeing things, it’s not real, you need to see a specialist” in an endless carousel of concern and – as Casey always perceived it – condescension.

“Fucking kill me!” he screams, slamming his hand down on his counter. He shatters a pile of unwashed dishes on accident and blood comes pooling up hot and coppery in the lines of his palm, but Casey doesn’t even look down, doesn’t even flinch, just keeps staring straight forward with fire eyes as wild as a horse’s.

But Anti’s bored with him. It hops down from the fridge and wanders through the apartment, whistling. In the kitchen, it hears the man howling as the whistling returns to torment him, the monster’s singing following him for hours and hours every day, never letting him sleep.

Anti used to think it was really funny, that something as simple as a whistled lullaby could make the man shatter in half and sob like his heart was broken open in his hands.

But honestly?

It’s less fun these days.

“Music, music, music,” rants the human in the kitchen, slamming his palm down again and again, cutting open his palm again, again. There’s banging on the walls and muffled yelling. The neighbors are sick of his screaming. He’ll be evicted soon, Anti reckons. Humans used to travel in packs, making it harder to pick them off, but these days ones like Casey often find themselves alone, and no one is around to stand up for him. “I’ll make you stop, I’ll make you shut up, shut up, shut up….”

Anti lets the human sprint past it and retreat to his bedroom, crawling under the bed and taking his laptop with him. He puts on big earphones and presses them hard against his ears, and he rocks himself as his music plays, turned up to one hundred on his computer, mumbling to himself, laughing sometimes, if Anti listens closely enough.

Anti crouches down to look at him. It hums to itself and touches Casey’s face, and he shrivels in on himself and whimpers, but he does not fight or push it away. Not anymore.

He used to be so much more fun before he started to crumble instead of break.

And yet, Anti has not killed him.

It does not know why.

---------------------

When bored – these days, it often is – Anti likes to wander through the other apartments that surround its own. Watching the human sleep can only be entertaining for so long, even if it does like to hear his sleepy, thick breathing and see his peaceful, dopey face, and it’s nice to just roam sometimes. Anyway, the people nearby can be interesting, though Anti doesn’t mess with them the way it does Casey. No one else has ever been that entertaining.

A young couple lives to their right, newly-married with a little rat of a dog they call Barkley. Anti’s human likes most dogs, but he grew tired a long time ago of the shrieking yips through the walls. Anti itself doesn’t mind it so much. One more thing to annoy the human on his slow road to madness.

“Who’s the best boy in the world?”

It passes by their door and hears them cooing and praising the yelping thing. “Are you a good boy, Barkley? Who’s my good little boy? Yes, you are! Yes, you are!”

Barkley has been sick for a few days and their fussing over him has been endless as they clean the nasty little animal up after every time it vomits, carefully feeding it vet-recommended dog food and plenty of healthy human snacks whenever Barkley shows an interest. How anyone could care to look after a creature so pathetic and useless is well beyond Anti, but it thinks it’s funny, really. Humans will bow down to pet the lowest of creatures.

I am not like that, it thinks to itself, drifting through the door, invisible. It is important for me to not be like that.

Anti had never had an interest in pets before this year, but, increasingly, it likes to come over and watch them look after Barkley. Constantly it reminds itself – I am not like that. It is important for me to not be like that.

But it doesn’t understand why this is important or why it should not be like that. Truthfully, it has never been skilled with its own emotions. It does as it pleases and what makes it happy makes it happy. If there is depth to that, it isn’t interested.

“Okay, Barkley baby, mommy and daddy are going to go for a walk and be right back in a few.”

“Aww, poor baby, we know. You wanna come on our walk and see all the other puppies along the way, but you can’t go while your belly’s all grumpy!”

“Yeah, little Barkley can’t come today, but mommy and daddy will be right back.”

“Mommy and daddy will be right back, we promise.”

They shower the dog in pets and belly rubs as they baby-talk their way towards the door, blowing it kisses as they head out and lock the door behind them.

“Do you think we should check on this guy here who’s so loud sometime?”

“What, that Chase guy? Are you kidding me? What a creep. He’s so fucking loud. We’re going to have to complain to the landlord again. Guy’s out of his mind.”

Ah, yes, Chase, that’s his name. Slipping into their apartment like a ghost, Anti laughs at the human fickleness and leans down to tweak the little dog’s tail, making it yelp in alarm and start running in circles around the apartment. It giggles and spends some time chasing it and leading it around with its chew toys and such. It likes the way it can make the dog do anything. It likes the cute little dog even if it is such a disgusting, purposeless, stupid little animal. It coos and picks the puppy up, tickling its skinny little ribs and rubbing between its ears.

“Stupid puppy,” it manages to say, in its painful, broken voice. Human language has always been difficult for it, but it prides itself on understanding it well. One day maybe it will speak it clearly too, though for now it knows it would sound like a struggling, glitching machine to a real human. “Stupid baby doggy.”

Faint laughter reaches its sharp ears and it quiets, setting the dog back down. For a moment, only silence, and it crouches in the living room with its black eyes boring into the universe, motionless.

Then it hears raucous laughter as the window in the back of the apartment is pried open and a pair of much, much more pathetic creatures than itself or even this little dog crash their way into the couple’s home. It straightens up, shaking its head, and heads back towards the back room, where a baby’s nursery is beginning to develop. Above the cradle, a pair of imps stop short, staring at Anti as they hover, startled, in mid-air.

Wearing its human’s form, it puts its hands on its hips and waits for them to speak.

They begin to laugh again, loud and boisterous, spit flying out of the one’s mouth while the second’s eyes bulge with hilarity.

“A fairy in California?” The imp rolls in circles in the air, shrieking with laughter. “Who would have thought?”

“Little far from home, Mr. Potatohead,” quips the second, floating up to the ceiling, sneering and sticking out its little purple tongue. Anti’s mouth curls distastefully. “Why don’t you go back to your hunts and your parades, your highness?”

“How’d it get here without getting stuck behind all that running water?”

“Careful, pure-blood, this spoon looks like it might be made out of iron!”

They dissolve into maniacal impling laughter, rocking through the air, shape-shifting in the limited ways they can to make themselves look uglier. If it were the sort of fairy who gave a fuck, Anti supposes it would feel disrespected, but it doesn’t much care. They’re little annoyances who have clearly mistaken it for a much less powerful creature than it really is. They break the monotony for a moment. It’ll kill them in a second. Anti supposes they just came here to make trouble. Imps love break into human homes and stealing their food or making their milk go rotten. They may well have been the ones who made Barkley sick, just to watch the humans take care of the dumb little thing for their entertainment. They’re common in this part of the city because the mountains are close, and imps are snuffling, stupid little creatures of the earth.

“Ew, what’s that?” squawks the first imp, floating closer to it. “Do you smell it?”

“Yuck. His majesty stinks like a human.”

“Just like a fairy to keep a pet.”

“Aw, do you have a widdle human to look after?”

“Maybe we should pay a visit to your stinky little human.”

“Yeah, maybe it needs some company.”

“Some friends.”

“Someone to play a couple fun games with.”

“And then we can find out what it is that made Tinkerbell here go all soft in the middle, like a rotten – ”

But they never get to find out exactly what rotted thing Anti resembles. It snatches the imp out of the air in one snapping motion like the bite of a snake and crushes its body between its fingers, its eyes turning black as the juices run down its wrist.

In its fear, the other imp does not even scream. Its eyes bulge in alarm and it scrambles for the window, but it never makes it. Barkley yelps in victory, chasing his own tail around as Anti’s teeth come down around the meaty little imp and tear it to pieces, silencing the both of the little monsters, leaving nothing behind.

It’ll be picking that out of its teeth for a week, it muses, wandering back out of the apartment and towards its own. But that’s what they get for talking about Chase like that.

It’s odd, though, how it makes it pause and think. That is something other spirits do sometimes, isn’t it? Take a human and keep it as a pet.

The couple with the dog are returning from their walk, holding slushies and each other’s hands.

“Barkley!” they coo, greeting their excited dog at the door. “Are you a good boy? Oh, why are you shaking, baby boy? What a silly little puppy you are. Who’s a cutie? Are you a good boy? You just want a big hug, huh, you just want to be looked after. Mwah, mwah.”

It’s kind of a cute dog, in the end.

--------------------

It liked the way Chase looked up at it, that one day it allowed him to see it.

It liked the way his eyes changed. He was not afraid – Chase is a creature of courage and despair, and these, in Anti’s experience, are both flowers from the same root – but he was distressed. Anti would say that this was because the form he takes is such a disturbingly odd impression of a human that it scared the human, but, truthfully, he thinks he saw a sort of awe in Chase’s eyes that day as well.

He loves fiction. This is one thing it learned about Chase early on. He does not have a reputation for intelligence but he does love his fantasy escapism, or he did back when he still had the energy for things like interests and hobbies. He liked Gravity Falls and Doctor Who and anything with sci-fi or dragons and he would get stuck at bookstores every now and then just walking through the YA section and wishing he was still young enough to enjoy them as much as he used to. In the old days, human storytellers were vital parts of their social structure. Anti thinks Chase would have been a storyteller, in his own way, if this were a few hundred years ago. Maybe he would be happier then.

It does not know when it began wondering about Chase’s happiness. Do not ask it.

The point is that Anti liked the way Chase looked up at it, that one day it allowed him to see it, that day he tried to kill himself.

“No,” he shook his head as Anti took his phone and called for an ambulance. “No.”

But his eyes were looking at something beyond life and death, something he had only read about in books, and Anti did not understand it.

It thinks, now, that Chase was looking at something he had longed for when he was younger. But Anti does not know what. There are fairytales about prophetic heroes and novels about chosen ones and tv shows where fantastical creatures whisk people away on great adventures, but Anti is not a fantasy. Anti is a nightmare. This is something Chase has always known, and Anti has always known, and there should be no misunderstanding between them.

But it liked the way Chase looked at him, that one time it allowed him to see it. That’s all. That’s all it’s saying. It doesn’t mean anything. It is not like that. It’s important that it’s not like that.

Anti touches the human’s face. He has fallen asleep beneath his bed, and his breathing is clear and deep, rhythmic as the song of a bird.

----------------------

Chase sleeps for fourteen hours and then gets up to make a Cup-o’-Noodles. Beef flavored. It’s the only thing left in the pantry except half a jar of strawberry jam and some milk he was too drunk to put in the fridge a couple days ago, spoiled completely by now. Even the cheap rum he’s been buying is out on the table beside the stove. He hasn’t bothered to get dressed and he cuts a pathetically small figure standing over the stove in nothing but some gym shorts and rolled-up Christmas socks because everything else needs to be washed.

Anti roams the apartment, humming distantly and checking up on things. It deletes an unread message on Chase’s phone from contact name “Marv” and waters the succulent Chase picked up on an impulse last week. It’s so funny to it how attached the human can get to things, and so quick too. He once found a bee on the windowsill, brought it sugar water, and looked after it for several hours before letting it outside. The human put on his loudest comedy show afterwards to try and keep himself cheerful, but he’d ended up crying about halfway through, and Anti couldn’t tell if it was related to the bee or not. He’s always crying. He didn’t always used to be crying. He used to be less deep in his despair and much more fun to play with.

Anti shakes the thoughts off and decides to prove that Chase is still fun to play games with. There’s nothing deep about their relationship, Chase just happens to be entertaining. That’s the only reason it followed him all the way from Ireland. It floats towards the kitchen, silent and invisible. It’ll give him a quick scare, not enough to put him off his dinner, just enough to remind him he should still be fighting. Anti shape-shifts cleanly into a small boy with black hair and deep onyx eyes and goes to stand behind Chase, silent and still, staring up at the child’s father as he stirs the noodles in silence.

“I know you’re behind me,” he says after a moment. “Looking like Hunter.”

Anti startles and shivers back into invisibility, drawing away. Chase turns blearily to see that it’s gone and he laughs, deep and hollow.

“Yeah,” he mumbles, stumbling a little as he tilts back his rum. Anti knows he’s already drunk from the calmness in his tired voice. “Used to your tricks by now. You been getting to know me, I know. I been getting to know you too.”

He snorts to himself and leans back against the stove, seeming to forget his noodles. He squints blearily around the room, rubbing at his eyes. He hasn’t put his contacts in since the last time he tried to kill himself. Wanted to make sure he cut the veins, but after he survived that night, it didn’t much matter if he could see or not.

“I think I can sort of tell when you’re close, most of the time,” he adds. Anti sits at the dining table across the room, frowning. “Like… I can feel you. Or something. See you, maybe. I think you make things… a different color. Does that make sense?”

He points sluggishly towards the dining table and then shrugs, letting his hand drop again.

“Doesn’t matter, I guess.”

His pot is boiling over. The water will burn his hands in a moment, resting as they are against the edge of the stove. Chase laughs to himself again, shaking his head, and throws back the rum for so long that he’s panting when he’s done with the drink.

“Funny,” he says. “Would have almost liked for you to be there. As Hunter, I mean. See my baby one more time. My baby. Hunter, my son…”

His eyes trail far away. Anti doesn’t think he’s looking at anything at all. There’s nothing left for him to look at.

Water cascades across the stove, boiling. Chase whimpers as it hits his hands, but he doesn’t pull away.

Something yanks him back.

He stumbles away from the stovetop. Drunk, he can’t keep his balance, and he goes crashing to the ground, falling on his back and dropping his bottle, which shatters into pieces of glass and a small flood of rum across the kitchen floor. Chase gasps, grabbing at his bruised elbow, staring around for a sight of the monster that has haunted him for so long.

The pot of noodles goes spinning off its stovetop onto the other side of the stove and stops boiling after a moment, quieting the kitchen. The knob on the oven flicks to ‘off’ and the red light disappears from the stovetop, leaving it dark and silent.

Chase closes his eyes.

Anti stares at him and it knows, in the moment, that the human was not lying.

He can sense it.

He can tell it’s there.

“Why,” croaks Chase. “Did you call 911 that night?”

Anti steps back from him. His movement shifts glass on the floor with a faint clinking noise.

“Was this what you wanted?” Chase whispers. “Just to see me live like this a little while longer? Just to make sure I couldn’t get away that easy? Was killing myself too good for you? Are you ever going to actually finish me off?”

He is crying. He is always crying.

This isn’t fun anymore, Anti realizes. It isn’t funny.

And honestly –

Honestly…

Honestly, it doesn’t know why it called 911.

“I think that’s what I’ve actually been waiting for,” laughs Chase, sobbing as tears run down his reddened cheeks. “Fuck. Not even staying alive waiting for it, that’s not what I mean, I mean… like I haven’t killed myself because I’ve been waiting for you to do it.”

He throws his head back and cries and laughs and hugs himself with his burned hands and scarred wrists, his whole body shuddering with the tears.

“But you won’t,” he sobs into the darkness, as Anti’s presence draws away from him and the sun fades. “You won’t. Will you? No one will give me any mercy. No one wants me to have any fucking peace. So tired… You won’t…”

Anti retreats to his room.

It doesn’t want to face him right now.

He doesn’t want to face him right now.

Chase cries in the kitchen for a long time, until his whole body feels tired and numb and drained. He doesn’t clean up the glass. He doesn’t clean up the rum. He doesn’t clean up the water. He would probably have slept right there on the wooden floor of his kitchen, but the doorbell rings.

Too drunk to put himself together, he staggers to the door and throws it open to the cold, red-eyed and stumbling like a zombie.

“Uh,” says the delivery kid, fixing her alarmed expression after a moment. “Here’s your food, sir.”

Chase is too confused even to question. Almost dazed by it, he takes the bag of take-out carefully from her hands, thanks her in a mumble, and shuts the door behind him.

KFC.

Did he order this?

No, he was making ramen before he made a mess of it. But it’s what he always gets. Chicken tenders and mashed potatoes and a couple extra biscuits for the next morning.

In his bedroom, Anti closes out of the delivery app and drops his phone onto the bed, deleting one more message from Marv before it drifts past Chase and goes wandering, thinking, roaming, lost.

It’s not like that… it’s important that it’s not. It’s not like that.

Zayn and Mary are walking Barkley. Anti watches the happy little dog go yipping and dancing in the space between them, happy and safe and recovering, cared for by his masters.

-------------------

The apartment fills with soft light in the evenings. White and gold from the weary sun. When it hits the horizon, the gold pirouettes and falls apart into a dozen different watercolors across the long shoulders of the sky. Pouring patiently through the windows, like syrup from the bark of a great dark tree.

Anti sits beside Chase’s bed and watches him sleep, playing slowly with his hair.

It likes Chase’s hair. It always has. Soft and dark but sometimes golden in the sunlight, and ever-so-slightly curly, so you can wrap it around your finger if you’re gentle, and make it spring back again afterwards.

Anti wants to kill something. It doesn’t know what. A human, probably, but not Chase. Chase, Chase, Chase. It had forgotten how much it likes that name.

You like a lot of things about him, it lets itself realize. When did that happen? When the fuck did that happen? One day you’re making him having a repeated dream where he’s carefully cut into pieces and eaten alive by a sentient crocodile because he always got scared of the one in Peter Pan when he was a child and the next you’re thinking about how soft his hair is. It makes Anti laugh, for a moment, but it thinks it feels… sad. It doesn’t know why.

Chase wakes up and it drifts back into invisibility, leaving him to sit up and look around. Check his phone for the time and stare at the floor for a while. Today he is groggy, but not sad, which strikes Anti as odd. Most days he is groggy and sad. Sad groggy stupid human. Anti’s sad groggy stupid hurting human. It sighs and spins lazily in the air, watching Chase push himself up on his feet, his eyes dead and weary.

Someone slams on their door and Chase groans, rubbing at his forehead. He’s hungover again.

“Brody!” The slamming insists. Chase stutters out a breath, slightly frightened, and totters to the door, pulling it open.

It’s his landlord. Anti’s lips curl up in a snarl. A mean, stupid man, stupider than Chase, even, and he looks angry.

And he starts to shout at Chase, and Anti does not like it. It doesn’t interfere, but it doesn’t like it either, and it knows Chase will do nothing. He stands there shirtless in his Christmas socks and stares at his landlord like he can’t believe any of this is real – not because it’s rare for him to be in trouble, just because his life is an alley puddle full of cigarettes and bathing rats and he’s most likely dissociating – and just nods when he’s told to get his act together and pipe the fuck down before he gets kicked out.

“Yes,” says Chase. “Okay.”

The landlord leaves.

Chase shuts the door behind him and looks directly at Anti, invisible on the ceiling above him.

“Jokes on him,” he says dully. “He’ll have to be the one to clean my blood out of the bathtub.”

Anti blinks. Chase pauses, letting his head rest against the cool wall for a moment before he pushes himself back up and wanders back towards his bedroom.

“What you will do?” asks Anti.

Chase startles so hard he slams into the wall of the hallway, whirling around to look at him. Unnerved by his response, Anti scowls and backs away again.

“Sorry, did you just talk to me?” asks Chase. “It’s a dream, then? Or did you talk to me in real life? Or am I really losing it finally? I mean, worse than I have already.”

Anti grumbles to itself and gets up in the fan, making the blades spin slowly, sulking. Can’t even talk to the human without him freaking out.

“Must still be drunk,” mumbles Chase, retreating back to his room.

Anti gets up and follows him.

“What, are you worried?” snaps Chase, digging under the bed, and Anti grins at the heat he’s showing again. That’s more like it. “Haunt me for, what, eight months and now you’re worried? I know you’re there, asshole.”

Anti lets him hear it giggling. Chase rolls his eyes and then he gives a short laugh, shaking his head.

Anti feels pleased, it thinks. Chase turns to look at him. He can’t see him, but he knows it’s there. Anti likes that.

“You really are a monster,” says Chase softly, smiling at it.

And then Anti sees, in his hand, the little tin where he keeps his razor blades.

Anti’s mouth falls in a frown.

Chase looks up into the sunset. Orange and gold, tonight. Flowing over his hair and into his eyes, making them alight. Fire eyes. Fire Chase.

“I hated you for a long time,” says Chase. “But you’re either a monster or the part of my brain that really wants to hurt me, so I guess either way I shouldn’t blame you for being what you are.”

He stands up, straighter than he has in a long time, still fixated on that sunset.

“I… I’ll miss…”

Anti stares at him, waiting, but Chase never finishes his sentence. After a long moment, he turns and takes his phone off of his bed. A slow, shaky breath escapes him.

He always takes his calls between the hallway and the living room so he can pace. Anti knows. Anti knows everything about him. Anti knows things about him he doesn’t know about himself. Anti likes things about him he doesn’t like about himself.

The human steps into the hallway and opens his contacts, carefully picking a name he hasn’t picked in long months, and he closes his eyes, and he waits.

But no one answers. Chase lets out a soft, miserable laugh, gripping the phone in both hands.

“Ah, damn… ha. Sorry, Schneep, I was really hoping you’d pick up.”

He circles quietly in the hallway, running his hands through his hair, his eyes closed and that phone held up to his ear, trying to breathe even instead of weeping.

“Look, man, um. I know we fell apart. Honestly, I really needed you, and you were just too busy for me, and that stung, it did. Maybe it was selfish, but I just… I needed you, Schneep. And I felt like all you cared about was the research, and…”

He rubs his face, brushing away tears. Anti stands at the end of the hall, staring.

“Well, I didn’t call you to accuse you of anything. I just wanted you to know that, um, even though we both hurt each other… I always loved you, man. And I don’t got the courage to call Jacks or Marv, okay, but I love them too. I love them too. And I’m sorry. Cause I was a coward for running away from them, and… maybe you needed me even more than I needed you, and I couldn’t even see it. So I just want you to know: you were my best friend. And I’m really sorry I couldn’t pull you out of your head and that I couldn’t help, or didn’t try hard enough, or just that I wasn’t what you needed. And I…”

Anti sees Chase close his eyes and breathe.

“And I hope I’m not one more person you spend the rest of your life wishing you could have saved,” he whispers. “It’s not your fault, Henrik. I love you. Good night, buddy. Maybe someday – ”

The voicemail beeps. End of recording.

Chase lets out a hurting breath and sets his phone down. His eyes are fixed on the rising sunlit moon, past his window.

“Maybe someday I’ll see you again,” he says.

He goes into the bathroom and crawls into the tub.

And Anti – Anti is paralyzed in the hallway, staring at him, invisible.

But Chase can sense it. Chase can sense him. He looks back at him, his face – fuck, so familiar now, like Anti knows every line of it, every shadow – and says nothing.

Something in Anti cries out against it.

Don’t let him do this. Don’t let him do this.

But another part – oh, another part recognizes what has happened. It has grown attached to this human despite all odds, despite everything. And attachments are dangerous and stupid and useless, just like this little mortal curled up in his white bathtub, holding a razor, staring at it. This is Anti’s chance to let Chase break the attachment. This is its chance to stop this before it goes too far. Before it actually does decide that it likes Chase, that it wants him, that it should keep him, that he loves him in his own fucked-up way.

So it steps back.

It won’t stop Chase.

Let him go. Let him go. It’s better this way. He was just supposed to be entertainment. There was never supposed to be an attachment. So now Chase can die and Anti can leave and they can go their separate ways, and everything in Anti’s life will return to normal. It will go back to Ireland and find something new to do, someone new to torment. And everything will be okay.

It doesn’t stop Chase.

But Chase –

Chase –

“No,” he whispers to himself, gripping the blade. “Please.”

Chase can’t bring himself to do it.

“No!” he screams, lashing himself once, but it hurts and he hates it and he wants it to stop and it’s not like the other times he’s tried to kill himself, not at all. There’s no numbness. There’s no comfort.

He doesn’t want to die.

“Please!” he howls, gripping his own wrists. “Please!”

He’s begging himself. End it. Finish it. Stop it, let me go.

He’s begging the universe. No more. No more, please.

He’s begging Anti.

He’s begging Anti with everything he has.

He turns his eyes to it and he’s screaming, and there’s blood on his wrists, and the glowing moon is like the eye of a god staring down at them, and Anti is illuminated in its light, visible in the shape of a man, visible in a shape like Chase’s, and Chase is begging him –

“Don’t make me live like this any longer!”

Anti turns and flees.

Chase is howling like a shot dog, holding his own shoulders, unable to kill himself, because he doesn’t want to die, he doesn’t want to die, he doesn’t want Henrik to get that voicemail, he doesn’t want to never see the sun again, he doesn’t want to go, he isn’t ready, but he can’t live like this any longer, and he’s never felt more hopeless in his life, and he still doesn’t want to die, he doesn’t want to die, he doesn’t want to die.

Don’t make me live like this any longer.

Why can’t he end it?

He’s so drunk and so tired and he thought he wanted to die, he really thought he did. No, no, not… oh, he needs somebody, he needs something, he needs something to change. Henrik. He wants Henrik, wants Jackie, wants Marv. He’s staggering to his feet, trying to get up, trying to get back to his phone –

He slips in his Christmas socks and in his own blood, and he crashes down hard in his bathtub, and lies still.

------------------

“Oh, no, oh, fuck,” Anti hears him whimpering as he comes awake. “How much did I fucking have? Stupid, stupid…”

It stands in the hallway, pacing, its eyes set on the ground. It is determined now. It has decided.

“Oh, shit! Oh.” There’s a nervous laugh from Chase as he notices the shallow cut on his arm. “Oh, wow, I… I must have tried to… but I didn’t! I didn’t, wow…”

There’s an awe in his voice that hasn’t been there for a long time.

Is it… pride?

“I didn’t kill myself,” Anti hears him whispering. “I didn’t… didn’t kill myself. Or I just passed out before I could, but either way, pretty impressive for a fucking idiot like me.”

Anti retreats back to his room and begins to pack the human’s things up, taking only what’s immediately necessary. It doesn’t care about the personal effects, but there are some things they will need – some clothes, his hygiene products, shoes, medicine. He places the succulent gently on top and zips it into place as an added present.

It can hear Chase wandering around the house, apparently dazed by his own survival, or maybe just still drunk from the night before. Anti shuts his phone down remotely and doesn’t let it turn back on when Chase scrabbles at the power button, mumbling about his friends back in England. Anti doesn’t know where the sudden interest in them after months of deleting pictures and ignoring calls has come from, but it doesn’t care.

Here are the facts, in its mind:

Chase survived last night.

It has grown attached to him.

Because he did not kill himself, it can’t escape the fact that it’s grown… fond of the human.

The human survived one night, but Anti has watched him through a great deal of ups and downs, and it knows that Chase will be suicidal again soon enough, and then he might not survive.

Anti does not want to watch him die.

And so the conclusion it came to last night, watching over the boy as he lay in that tub, gently curling his hair between its fingers, was this –

Chase will be its, and Chase will not die.

It has a great satisfaction with this plan now, more than it thought possible. After months of boredom, finally, finally! Something that makes it excited again, something that makes it feel – well – happy!

Chase is still playing with his phone. Anti steps back into the hallway and sees him frowning down at it, pressing on the power button a few times in a row, looking unhappy.

“Did I call him, or…? Need to tell him I’m okay or he’ll – ahh!”

Chase screams aloud at the sight of Anti standing in the hallway with his backpack on. Anti frowns as he goes tumbling to the floor in his alarm, groaning from the whiplash in an already concussed head.

“You’re – you’re showing yourself to me?” gasps Chase, scrambling away. “What’s – are you going to kill me? What’s going on? Hey, stay away!”

But Anti is moving forward, a smile already on its face. This is perfect! This is perfect! It could howl! It could shout! The man is looking at it again, just like he did that night he tried to kill himself, the night that Anti saved his life, and there is the change in his eyes, the recognition, and Anti feels seen and known and in control all over again, and everything is good, everything is perfect.

“What are you doing?” demands Chase, his hands reaching out to protect himself. A fighter, yes, just like Anti always saw. Small and weak and mortal and foolish, yes, but also courageous, courageous, always something special about him. Anti always knew. It grabs Chase’s wrist and pulls him to his feet, humming to itself, singing the old lullaby it always used to haunt him with.

“No, stop, I hate that!” screams Chase, trying to cover his ears, trying to yank away from him. “Stop it, let me go!”

He’s such a pretty little human, even if he is built so scrawny. Anti likes his dark hair and his fire eyes and his soft stomach and even his stupid tattoos, just because they’re his and he’s so goofy, silly human creature. It’s all familiar to him now. The boredom that it thought it was feeling all this time it now sees was a secret fear of the truth that it was becoming attached to him. But last night woke it up to the realization that it did not want to see the boy die and it’s so pleased that he decided to live. In a way, the human was deciding to stay with it! Everything is good. It wrangles Chase’s other wrist and begins to drag him towards the door, unbothered by the sound of his shouting, which is little more than white noise to Anti after so long spent following Chase.

“No, no! Help me, someone help!” he cries.

Someone pounds on the walls of the apartment. A muffled “can you shut the fuck up for once in your life?” makes its way through the plaster. Chase sobs, tearing at Anti’s hands, his eyes wild and desperate. Anti keeps humming.

It will set him up somewhere just as good as this stupid little apartment. Better even. Bigger and less worn. And it will teach Chase to take better care of it too, so he doesn’t make such a mess like he always does. It will give him things he hasn’t even realized he wants yet. It will give him his little succulent back and he will take care of it. Humans need things to take care of or they get very sad and they die sometimes – that’s the thing about humans, they can get so sad they can die, and it’s no longer fun for Anti to watch, so it will get Chase things to take care of instead. What do humans like to take care of? Cows? Hamsters? Potatoes? Whatever he wants.

It takes Chase’s keys and drags him out to his car, opening the door and letting all of Chase’s trash litter onto the street. Its foot crunches on garbage as it pushes its human inside, chirping politely at him when he struggles and gently blocking him from escaping, keeping him pressed inside the car. When Chase tries to lunge forward past it, Anti shoves him against the glass and makes him yelp, clutching at its aching head. Whoops! It pulls back quickly and pats his cheek, checking the bruise and patting Chase’s head. It will take some time to learn the boundaries for touching the human, but it will learn. It keeps him carefully inside until the human has gone breathless and shaky and realizes he can’t get out right now. Satisfied, Anti gets into the car beside him and starts the engine.

Oh, no, wait. One more thing it wants to do.

Anti sets Chase’s apartment on fire, whistling its song to itself as it disables the alarms and leaves a few rags beginning to spread the fire from the oven to the counters. Fuck that landlord who yelled at him. Now the other humans will probably think he died in the fire or something and not come looking for him. Not that they could find him if they tried. Anti leaves the apartment smoking and gets back into the car, chirping and purring to itself, too excited to care that it’s acting like a youngling on its first Samhain.

The human stares at the road as they begin to move, shell-shocked and trembling. Eventually his eyes flicker over to Anti, and it can see that he isn’t sure if he should be angry or terrified or just numb to all of this, numb to everything.

Numb is what he settles on. Numb and a little weepy, anyway. Anti coos and reaches out to touch the human’s neck, rubbing warmly at his soft skin.

Chase curls in on himself, shirtless and shivering in the seat of his own car, kidnapped and alone, and he begins to cry very softly.

There’s blood on his arm. He’s tired. He’s hungover. He’s still struggling with the desire to die despite surviving the night before. He thinks he left Henrik a weird voicemail. The monster that’s been haunting him for years has just appeared in the flesh and thrown him out of his apartment. He doesn’t know what’s happening. He just wants everything to stop.

He just wants this to stop.

The monster repeats its cooing noise at his side, still petting at his neck and throat. Chase shudders and cries, rocking himself gently in the seat, wishing for his headphones. Anti turns on both the heat and the radio. A top-twenties station comes on and plays music familiar to Chase’s ears, and they drive, and they drive, and he begins to go quiet and still, sniffling to himself, hugging his shoulders. Feeling the monster petting him like an animal.

“Okay,” whispers a warbled voice when Chase has finally begun to calm down, and he looks up in shock to see the monster speaking, or trying to. He’d never known it to speak at all – only to watch him, and laugh, and whistle or hum, playing tricks on him or mimicking him in the corner of his vision. They’d never spoken.

“Okay,” it repeats, touching his hair. “Okay.”

Chase swallows and says nothing.

Anti pulls over after a couple hours of driving and hands Chase the backpack, helping him pull out the clothes and put shoes and a shirt on. It leads him inside a gas station and lets him use his bathroom and wash his face, staying beside him the whole time. Chase doesn’t try to protest or call for help. He does not know why.

Anti leads him carefully through the aisles of the gas station, a big truck stop station with rows and rows of snacks and toys and clothes and knick-knacks like phone charges for cars and California-themed snow-globes. It seems interested in everything, but in an amused way, like it’s laughing at everything, and Chase is supposed to be laughing with it.

He doesn’t know what to do. Anti’s arm is around his shoulder.

The monster buys something with Chase’s credit card while Chase shakes beneath his arm and tries to figure out what’s happening, though his brain seems to be shutting down from being so overwhelmed and he really just wants a drink. Anti pulls him back towards the car and this time, he clambers in without protest, sitting down in the passenger seat and buckling in.

Anti sits down beside him and offers him the bag from the gas station. Chase blinks and looks over, taking the bag numbly from its hands.

There are nuts for protein and three bottles of water. Chips and a breakfast sandwich and jerky and chocolate and a small, stuffed lion with the name “Lionel” in its ear.

Anti starts the car again. They drive.

“What are you?” asks Chase in a whisper.

The monster glances over at him and touches his face, stroking a finger down his cheek, down his beard, and, in that struggling, glitching, inhuman voice, it tells him:

“Anti. And you are mine. No more scares. No more slow dying. I look after you. Human. Chase. Mine.”

The monster who’s been haunting him for months wants to keep him as a pet.

The desert is rolling past Chase’s window. Lionel sits patiently on his lap. The radio plays something inane and catchy. Anti is touching his hand.

“Mine,” it says again. “Okay, Chase. It’s okay.”

Chase closes his eyes, and, leaning back against the headrest of the car, he lets himself drift into sleep.

#chase brody #antisepticeye #cutting tw #suicide tw #extreme distress tw #bee writes #2020 prompts #favored puppet #florenceisfalling

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