#side note: nobody's muses had to have said or done anything - dooms suffers heavily from depression

[the-haunted-office]

Doomsday has had enough. Just. Enough. Of everything. Of everybody. That's why she had to leave. What is there for her to stay? Nobody wants her around. She doesn't do any good. All she does is hurt people and annoy people and cause trouble.

Things are better off this way.

At least she has time to think.

Her home Office is just as ruined as it ever was. The way she left it, in shambles. The way she left so many other Offices. Everybody knows that now, since Oleander saw fit to tell everybody. It wasn't their place to tell her Story, but they did it anyway. Well. If everybody wants to hear and believe their version of her life, then so be it. If they'd rather believe a total stranger about her, then fuck them. Fuck them all. She doesn't need any of them.

Then why does it hurt so much...?

They don't understand. They don't need to understand. And neither does she. She'd rather be alone right now anyway.

Except she's not alone. There's somebody else here, and it isn't her Cyrus and Aurora either. They vacated again at some point, after she chased them off last time. Where they went is anybody's guess, but it's not for her to care right now, because the person she finds here with her now is-

"...Stanley?" she says, her voice suddenly sounding so small.

How is this possible? Her Stanley died. He died. Permanently. The mist got him. Killed him. Consumed and digested his soul, destroying it forever. Worse than what happened to her.

And yet here he is. Except... as he approaches, she also realizes that's not Stanley. Whatever this is used to be Stanley, but it isn't anymore. Not quite.

The towering specter looks like Stanley, except like hers his eyes are missing. Instead there are two holes in his face filled with an eerie yellow light. His skin looks like wet paper too, and looks like it could just be pulled right off his bones. And perhaps most concerning, his business attire is stained with what has to be blood. Doom has seen too much of it to believe otherwise.

"Stanley?" she says again. "That's you, isn't it? My Stanley?"

Fuck, he's huge. As tall as the ceiling. He stoops to examine her. Doom just stands there, awed by his presence. "Thursday," he says, his voice raspy and low, although still unmistakably Stanley. "But more than one. You are many."

"Er- Yeah. I take it you can see my other souls?" Doom says, trying not to feel utterly freaked out right now. This is Stanley. Her Stanley. Back from nothing. And he is seeing her souls. He must be a Reaper too. "But, Stanley, how did you-?"

"I don't know how this happened, my dear," he says, pulling back, and for a moment Doom relaxes. Dear. He called her dear. Just like old times. She almost starts to cry. "But I'm hungry. I need to eat. And you have many souls."

Doom is silent for several beats as it sinks in, both the realization and the horror. Stanley's a Reaper, all right. But not the good kind.

Shit.