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youllallriseintheink · 4 years

Text

What have I done?

This is chapter two of the body swap to the death au. I really like this one and hope you do, too.

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It was day two, and now was Henry’s time to begin implementing his plan. As far as confidence went, he felt good. Physically, he felt as weak as a man thirty years older; like his legs were struggling to handle his weight. He’d felt kind of off the day before, but not like this. Joey’s note hadn’t mentioned anything about physical illness.

Well, hopefully it wasn’t anything that would need attention. Henry burst into the recording studio and announced, “Good morning, everyone! I trust that you’re all doing an efficient job? Well, that’s great, because I have lots of changes to make and they need to be made by the deadline. Essentially, scrap the whole episode. We’re doing the next episode in our queue instead this week!”

An almost goofily large on his face, Henry approached Jack, trying not to limp, and trying to read everyone’s expressions. “Jack, we’re going to need you to write a new song. Something... 4th of July based.” The puffy-faced pout was very Bertrum Piedmont-like, but that could have just been because they had somewhat similar faces.

“Sammy, you’ll be collaborating with Jack,” Henry had expected at least a little annoyance that Sammy, an award-winning and (in Sammy’s mind, at least) chronically under-appreciated composer, was being treated as less important than Jack. Instead, Sammy just nodded indifferently. Not much of a hint.

“Allison, you can stay where you are. The new lines are ready for you to start recording, and I’m sure the song won’t take long.” Indifference. No hints. Darn.

“And Alice? Well, there’s no bit parts for you in the new episode, so I’ve put your shows and meet-and-greets back on the table. Your first show is this afternoon.”

Oh, Thomas did not like the sound of that. “Oh, I’m sorry,” he cooed in an exaggeratedly girly voice. “I’m going to have to go home sick. I could handle recording some lines, but shows are just too much for me right now. I have a fever.” Goddamnit, of all illnesses to fake, he had to go with the body producing too much heat. Still, he walked out, keeping his temper under control until he was just outside their view and could finally slip out of this idiotic persona. Maybe he’d stay home for the rest of the week. He sure as hell wasn’t singing. Even disregarding his desires, Susie seemed like a nice girl and it would probably ruin Susie’s reputation.

“And if anyone thinks there will be any trouble meeting the deadline, arrange to meet in my office,” “Joey” finished. Of course, they all would. And then Henry could test them further.

One person even took him up on the offer that day: “Sammy,” who had asked to meet him in his last available time slot that day.

When “Sammy” entered, he closed the door and smiled as though he’d barricaded them in. Henry’s pulse quickened.

“Alright, I’ll make this quick. I’m not here about the deadline, and I’m not here to figure out your identity, either. In fact, I’ll tell you mine if you can do one little thing for me.” Sammy walked over and sat on Joey desk.

Henry was flustered. “What? What do you want?”

“Take me to “your” home. I know “you” have secrets you’re hiding.”

Henry had some ideas, but didn’t feel sure of a single identity yet. He needed that identity to stay alive. “Sure,” he answered.

“Sammy” smiled. “Wonderful. But no identity until I’m satisfied, understood?” Allison leaned over and stroked “Joey” under the chin. She loved this. She was getting high on this. Getting the upper hand on Joey, flustering him by letting her seductive side out to play, and getting to learn his secrets? Impulsive and stupid this might be, but she must have been dreaming.

“Please don’t touch me,” Henry said, brushing her hand away. “I suppose we can leave now, since you’re the last one I’m meeting with.”

They set off. On the way there, Allison was tempted to make fun of Joey’s limp, as she’d wanted to do for ages. She figured she ought to dial back the meanness, though. As fun as this was, this wasn’t actually Joey. For all she knew, she could have been bullying Jack, or Susie, or Tom. Yes, from then on, she’d be kind to “Joey.”

Joey lived in the penthouse of one of the apartment buildings downtown, and surprisingly enough, Henry hadn’t found anything out of the ordinary there. Then again, he hadn’t exactly been looking, let alone hunting like “Sammy” was. The first thing he did was to go through every room, quickly checking every door until he came upon one that was locked. “Your keys,” she demanded, putting out her hand for them. Henry handed them over. After every key had been tried, “Sammy” handed them back and immediately marched to Joey’s bedroom and began going through the drawers.

“Uh... can you have a little respect for his privacy?” Henry requested.

“Sorry. Not until I have a key.”

Resigned, Henry obeyed his aching legs and sat down on the bed as “Sammy” continued to turn the room inside out.

“Aha! This drawer has a false bottom! Lemme just unscrew this, and...”

How on earth was Henry going to explain to Joey why his furniture was dismantled? He was pretty sure that “Sammy” had either lost it or was up to something, but he was too tired to stop him.

Allison lifted up the plank, which had been held in place by a single screw. It was a lighter colour than the rest of the desk, and underneath it was a bottom that matched the rest of it. Slowly, she turned the board over to reveal exactly what she’d hoped for: a taped-on key.

The key fit the lock perfectly. What was on the other side of that door was enough that she was almost scared to go in alone. “Joey, you need to come see this!” she called before entering.

The room was about the size of a guest bedroom, and in fact did have a bed shoved into a corner, with a lamp and a few other items of furniture piled onto it. In the other corner, the carpet had been pulled back almost halfway across the room to reveal concrete floor with three pentagrams drawn on it and a few smaller symbols in between them. There was a bookshelf as well, halfway filled with big, black, unlabelled books. The other half of it was occupied by jars, containing dried plants, unidentifiable red and black fluids, and other items that Allison couldn’t identify. On a nearby desk was a cage filled with at least a dozen live rats, many of which were currently feeding on a dead rat. The desk also contained several more jars of indeterminate contents, and a diary with the words “ritual log,” written on the front in Joey’s extravagant handwriting.

“Oh, Joey, what have you been doing...?” “Joey’s” voice came from behind her.

“Sure you don’t want to back out now?” Allison asked, eyes trained forwards. This was more than she ever dreamed of finding.

“No.” Henry said. The note hadn’t said anything about pets, or, as the rats seemed to be, specimens. Henry had heard them squeak, but he’d just assumed that the place had a pest problem. Whatever Joey was hiding, he was willing to let them go without care for a week to keep it hidden.

“Alright. Then let’s find out,” Allison said, making a beeline for the ritual log. “Interesting. It seems like he uses the same spell every day or two.”

“Which one?” Henry asked, but Allison was engrossed, flipping back, looking for a specific date. When she got to it, well, its entry didn’t shock her, but it was upsetting. And it needed to be shared.

“I’m taking this home,” Allison stated, and made her way to the door.

“Sammy, I can’t let you do that! I don’t even know who you are!”

“Are you strong enough to stop me?” Allison nearly snapped, attempting to push her way past him. As it turned out, he was. Barely.

“Can’t you just tell me what this is about?”

“No. I don’t know who you are.”

“It seems to me that this is more important than that. I’m Henry Stein. And you are?”

“Susie Campbell,” Allison replied. Allison had planned on saying that since the walk over. This way, she was not only protecting herself, but as a bonus, she was protecting Susie, should Henry try to find her. Plus, after the fool she’d made of herself in his office, well, no one else would have been believable.

“Can I see the book now?” Henry asked.

Allison opened it to the proper page.

April 20th, 1941.

Ritual: creation of ink creature (soul in forefront, failure)

Details: Sammy Lawrence and I had Susie Campbell meet us in the studio after hours. She had consented beforehand and is a skilled actress, so instead of burying her soul under the essence of a cartoon character like in previous rituals like this, I decided to let her essentially be an ink-skin actress. We used chloroform to get her unconscious and began the ritual in book 3, page 219. However, she woke up before we could complete the ritual as Sammy and I wasted too much time arguing. (Note: next time make much stronger chloroform. Susie is very light, and even she wasn’t out very long.) We had already begun the chant and could not stop until the ritual was complete, so we had to slit her throat while she was awake.

There were further complications when a bit of film was twisted in the machine, and Susie came out as a nondescript ink blob. Her level of consciousness in this form is unclear. I think that the trapped demon in the machine must have had its will entirely extinguished at this point- if it were still conscious, it might have asked what I wanted when the reel made it unclear. It’s just a cog in the machine now, just as planned.

Allison turned the page.

April 20th, 1941.

Ritual: creation of an ink creature (soul in forefront, success.)

After I had fixed the film reel, we repeated the ritual described on the last page. She emerged from the ink machine a perfect Alice Angel, and physically unharmed. Her corpse was embalmed and then disposed of in the sewer. This was highly successful: she should be doing shows within a matter of days. Unfortunately, I cannot foresee anyone else consenting to this ritual, so I will have to continue with the older variant of the spell.

“Oh my God,” was all Henry could think to say. “I mean, I knew he’d killed-“ his eyes fell on “Sammy” with absolute pity for a moment, then fell to the ground, “but I didn’t know that he was killing people who hadn’t agreed to it. The way he’s writing, you’re not the first or the last.”

“You see? We have to turn this in.” Allison forced a tearful tone into her voice, as Susie might have if she were reading about her murder. “We have to give it to the police.”

“Absolutely. But... can we do it at the end of the week? I mean, if they arrest me, I’m going to die. I need to find at least one more identity. But I promise, I’ll hand him over, Susie.”

“Thank you,” she croaked before turning to leave.

“Oh, uh, one more thing-“

“Yes?”

Henry gently stroked Susie’s arm. “This is only if it won’t be emotionally hard for you. But since you’re in Sammy’s body, could you bring me that picture of your dead body? You know, as evidence?”

“Of course,” Allison said. She was happy to get out of there. To think that just a couple hours ago, she’d been engrossed the mystery of all of the secrets that she’d just sensed beneath Joey’s skin. But none of it was worth it. Not if it required hurting people. But... what if not all of those spells did require hurting people? What if there were some simpler, less violent, but still fantastic spells that she’d just missed her chance at finding? She tried to block out the thought, and the hunger it aroused in her. It was a struggle, at least she had her special revenge plan for Sammy to look forward to.

Henry stayed in Joey’s dungeon for quite a while after “Sammy” had left. The first thing he did was to look for a specific date in the book: the day that he and the others had been forced to watch the memories. He found it:

March 24th, 1941.

Ritual: summoning of a benevolent demon. (failed disastrously) (success?) (status unknown)

I used the spell found in book five, page 34. According to it, a benevolent demon is easier to control than a malicious one, but can only fulfill tasks that don’t require hurting others. Their purpose is apparently to be a more approachable lure into the occult than malicious demons- a gateway drug of sorts. They are not in any way actually benevolent. The demon appeared as a small, purple blob. Thinking up a task for him was difficult, as I am well on my way to having most of what I could want through my own doing. I thought of having it make Bendy cartoons more popular, but that seemed too big and risky. Perhaps when I have had more experience with benevolent demons. I asked him to reignite my friendship with Henry. (It’s not as though he could have made it worse, so it was relatively riskless.) It nodded, then squeezed through this tiny scratch in the pentagram that was meant to contain it, and disappeared. It escaped before I could bind it to me. I can only hope that it leaves me alone, now. It was supposed to just be a trial.

Update: I think it did what I asked. Maybe I did bind it to me? I hope so- that would mean it’s back in Hell.

Henry put down the book, feeling exhausted. He should have felt shocked. He should have felt... well, anything. But it was as though that part of him was used up.

He got up and performed that one spell that Joey was apparently performing every other day. It was a strength spell, and it involved spilling a few drops of his own blood on a rune drawn onto the floor. Henry could feel strength return to his legs, and a fair amount of energy flow into him. So, Joey was sick, and self-medicating with satanic magic. Why not?

Apparently, it hadn’t been a mistake that the rats had been eating a dead rat: that was a planned part of their diet, and many were being kept preserved in a jar. Henry dropped another one in along with some rat food.

Henry just wanted to go to bed after that. His body felt so... wrong. Foreign. He didn’t even want to think about Joey, and he was seeing him every time he looked down at his own, scarred hands.

Maybe he’d feel better once the lights were out.

Henry didn’t sleep at all that night. His mind was too full, mostly of the thought that the whole reason he was back in New York was because of a trick pulled by a demon. Henry had had to fight Linda to get her to agree to moving back to here. The kids were already settled in with their current school, the whole family had friends in Florida, Henry had a good job, and so on. She’d accused him of a mental breakdown for wanting to leave that all behind to work with Joey Drew. But that was after he’d seen those memories that he and Joey had shared, and how he’d almost needed him back then. That was after he and Joey had had their talk, and had offered to make him the co-owner of Joey Drew Studios. “We could even change its name!” he’d said. Most importantly, he’d promised that this time would be different.

Had it been different? Well, Henry wasn’t being overworked like he had been in the 30s, and he wasn’t hearing as many complaints about Joey anymore (Though that was partially because he was the head of a company with hundreds of employees, not the two dozen they’d had in the beginning, he figured). He hadn’t been given any actual management tasks yet, but Henry had only been there for a couple weeks and wasn’t in any rush with that anyhow. He might’ve pressed the issue if it had gone on much longer. Their relationship was also a lot more equal now that Henry was older and more self-assured. And yet, his first thought when doing a Joey impression had been to make an idiotic, selfish, unreasonable decision with a big smile on his face.

Had things really changed? Well, now he supposed it didn’t matter. At the end of the week, he’d take the evidence to the police, and try to keep his own thoughts away from the question.

He hoped that whoever was in his body was doing well by Linda. After all he’d put her through by moving here, their relationship definitely didn’t need more weirdness. She probably really did think he was breaking down right now, unless whoever was playing the role was doing an incredible job of it. Five days. Five days, and hopefully he’d be able to patch things up with her. Hopefully he’d at least get the chance.

#Bendy and the Ink Machine #body swap to the death au #my fanfiction #Henry Stein #joey drew #allison pendle

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