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The day had been cold and pallid with grey clouds stretching across the sky, the wind a near constant enemy to anyone trying to get anywhere. It was late autumn; the glory of golden leaves and the warm colours of the harvest was now long past. Those same leaves now clogged the gutters, and the grass had turned grey, waiting for snow to cover it. The smiles of carved pumpkins sagged inwards, becoming frowns. A good day to be inside, the doctor reckoned when he first arrived at the hospital, and only a few seconds after thinking it, he knew he shouldn’t have; tt was tempting fate. Sure enough, the most beautiful sunset of the season came in the afternoon, burning away the grey clouds like kindling and stretching the branches of the trees across the sidewalks and empty fields like ink-stained cobwebs. Even the wind had turned to something marvellous in the light, carrying the shadows of migrating birds and whipping the scarves of travellers into flags. Of all these sights, the doctor only saw a small portion of them—through the sliced light of his office window blinds, and through an open window at the other side of the hall when his patient arrived.
When the horrors came that night, the doctor tried to convince himself that he had no regrets. He had lived a good life, and he had been good to those he knew. Yet he still had one regret that he couldn’t chase away: he wished he had been able to see that sunset properly. It would’ve been something to hold.
But that was yet to come.
The appointment was nothing special. No grand revelations or tearful admissions from his patient, not that he'd expected any. It had been routine, and in a field such as his, that was essential. A broken leg can be set, a malfunctioning heart can be replaced, but a mind (especially a misbehaving one, as he would often add), needed a lot of time before any proper progress could be made. He first spent a bit of time with just the patient, long talks about their day, a bit of time with the toys, and a few card games, followed by more talk about their day. Due to the patient’s young age, the stories were highly cyclical, repeating themselves or advancing into strange, meaningless tangents. Most of his training in juvenile psychology had been to prepare for mitigating the intense boredom of these conversations, but the doctor had always found something strangely wonderful in them, especially since the child had barely spoken a full sentence during their first few sessions.
The rest of the appointment involved the patient’s mother in the same room, a once-necessary exercise (the doctor was skilled, but there was only so much he could learn from complete silence) now simply a formality. The patient had spent the first few sessions sitting in their mother’s lap, but now sat in their own chair, a change that was excellent for the patient’s progress but seemed to trigger some minor discomfort in their mother. Burgeoning independence, slight maternal overattachment, nothing unusual, mothers and their children, the old rules still played out… despite the quite obvious physical difference between the two. The patient, Kris, was human, small for their age but healthy, with a mop of brown hair pulled back slightly by a red, horned hairband (the doctor’s idea to begin with; they’d taken well to it, though he worried it might prove to be a crutch). Kris’s mother, Toriel, was a monster, large and covered head-to-toe in thick white fur, crowned with two small horns. During the first few appointments, the doctor had erroneously believed that perhaps the patient’s symptoms were a result of not properly bonding with their adoptive mother, not trusting her as they would another human. This hypothesis was quickly discarded. The bond between the two of them was strong; it was not their mother that the patient mistrusted, but themselves. This part of the appointment was mostly Toriel adding anything that may have been missed, the conversation unfolding as Kris played with their toy, a little plush cat.
With the appointment finished, the doctor opened the door and let Kris out into the hallway. The sunset had faded, the distant window now little more than a square of pure shadow.
“Hold it,” the doctor called, and Kris turned. “Can’t forget your parting gift.”
From a small pocket, the doctor retrieved a wrapped lollipop and knelt to pass it to Kris.
“Butterscotch. Your favourite, right?” he asked, already knowing the answer.
Kris nodded and took the lollipop, whispering a small ‘thank you’ before unwrapping it and popping it in their mouth. The resulting smile was almost as wonderful as the sunset he had missed. Kris bounded down the hall, their plush tucked carefully under their elbow.
“We’re making good progress,” the doctor said, turning to Toriel and successfully intercepting the first of her questions.
“I know, I just…” she sighed, shrugging on her purse. “Kris still doesn’t talk to me much.”
“You’re their mother, they don’t want you to worry about them.”
“Surely they're too young to be aware of that?”
“Children are far more complicated than we might believe, and they know a lot more than they let on. Kris is quiet, yes, but that’s not a bad thing; it’s just a quirk.”
“They’ve still been getting up to mischief,” she said, and flashed a nervous smile.
“Mischief isn’t bad either,” the doctor smiled in turn, hoping to bolster hers. “Mischief isn't always ‘trouble.’ They can look similar sometimes, but Kris’s pranks appear innocuous.”
“I’m not so sure little Noelle would agree. I worry they’ve been tormenting her recently.”
“Tormenting is a strong word; it’s just another form of play for the two of them. They like to scare, she likes to be scared. Perfectly healthy, no boundaries are being overstepped”
“She likes to be scared? Oh, doctor, I’m not so sure about—” The doctor gave her a slight look, and she smiled, “...far more complicated than we might believe.”
“Precisely.”
“I don’t know, I just worry that it’s… my fault, that I’m failing them somehow.”
“I have met very few mothers who have thought otherwise.”
“But you said yourself I’ve made mistakes in the past.”
“To err is as monster as it is human. Just keep up what you’re doing and be a stabilising force for them, don’t try and overstep or push too far, or they won’t be as forthcoming with problems going forward. Overreaction and overprotection only push them further inwards. Still, as I said, we’re making good progress.”
“Thank you, doctor,” and this time the smile was full, “You’ve been such a help recently.”
“It’s all part of the job.”
“You know, it’s a bit short notice, but we could have you over for dinner tonight. Asriel’s staying over with the Holiday’s tonight and we have an extra seat.” Toriel’s eyes narrowed slightly, “I was young once too, you know, and I don’t like the idea of you holed up in that house surviving entirely on fast food and noodle cups.”
“I’m not a hypocrite, Toriel,” the doctor laughed, “I keep myself healthy. Though maybe I have been putting on weight recently,” he lifted his arm and let his sleeve fold into itself, taking a measurement of his exposed bone with his fingers, “Maybe an inch or two.”
“The offer still stands,” Toriel laughed as she began to walk down the hallway, an impatient Kris tapping their little shoe at her. The two waved, and the doctor waved back. Maybe dinner would be nice, if it didn’t seem like overstepping.
As they stepped down into the entrance hall, the doctor caught himself in the window on the far side of the hall. The light had made a ghost of his reflection, turning his eye holes into black pits and his smile into a shadowed sliver. He shivered at the sight of it, flinching as if he had noticed a stranger staring back at him. The distant stranger made the same movement, and he let out a slightly nervous laugh.
“Just you, Gaster,” he said to himself. “Just you.” And as he stepped back into the office, he failed to notice the reflection did not follow him there.
Back at university, Gaster had kept an almost legendarily messy desk. He knew that such a sight wouldn’t inspire confidence amongst his patients, so he made an effort to keep this one clean, allowing only one discrepancy: sticky notes. Pink and yellow sticky notes (Gaster had a suspicion that such things were never actually ordered but rather spawned in supply closets) dotted spots throughout the office, on cabinet drawers, in folders and lining the frame of his monitor. Nothing as innocuous as a shopping list (or as dangerous as a password) graced the notes; in fact, to the bafflement of both his patients and the cleaning staff, seemingly no decipherable language was present on any of them. Instead, there were symbols. Smiling faces, crosses, bells, pointing hands, snowflakes, and a thousand other strange items that would have been disregarded as idle doodles had they not been arranged in lines and spots so as to suggest some unusual logic. If pressed, even Gaster’s own brothers could not hope to decipher any of them. It was a language he had fashioned for himself.
He sat in his office chair and began typing up some reflections on the appointment. For a while, he had conducted even these notes in his own ‘language’, but relented once he realised that if something awful were to happen to him or if he was required to share his notes with some other medical professional, it would be best for it to be in plain language. As he typed, he found his eyes drifting to the other sticky notes that surrounded the monitor. These were special; each was a person, either one his patients or someone he believed ought to become a patient with some encouragement. One note was for Gerson Boom and his son; the two were somewhat estranged, brief interactions with both suggested that the two had flawed perspectives on what the other seemed to believe. Reconciliation possible, elder Boom’s health continues to deteriorate, better sooner than later. Another note was for one of Kris’s school friends, a young bluebird by the name of Berdly. Quiet, withdrawn, and seemingly self-isolating. Possible emotional neglect from parents and the rest of the family, may or may not be a conscious act.
There were two separate notes for the Holidays.
The first concerned Carol and her eldest daughter, December. Most was hearsay (in such a small town, all things in some way were hearsay), but what he had heard did not paint a very healthy picture. The two appeared to be locked in an unhealthy cycle; townsfolk had mentioned that December had a habit of ‘running away’, starting with simply walking to the neighbour's house with a backpack, to far more concerning stints where she would disappear for a day or two. He’d made some inroads with Mrs Holiday (her pride and ego required more than a few chats to assuage any concerns about treatment, signs of the scars of emotional abuse herself, perhaps a subtle distrust of medical professionals in general), and it seemed soon enough he might be able to offer December some real help.
The second note concerned Carol’s husband, Rudy. Gaster had detected no signs of immediate mental health concerns, but recent sluggish behaviour and some red flags in his medical history seemed to point to some very concerning possible developments. Like his wife (albeit in a far more polite fashion), Rudy himself had a suspicion of getting checked in for medical examinations. A few more talks and Gaster figured he may be able to wear him down enough to agree to a thorough checkup. Routine; the surgeon may swear by their scalpel but to a therapist routine is the greatest tool in the box.
With his notes finished for the day, Gaster saved his progress, logged off the computer and shut off the monitor. In the low light of his office, he could see a reflection of himself, as he had in the hallway window. As he looked, he thought of that other reflection again. The one before him now was as it always was, the white of his bone dimly visible and his twin green eyes like match lights in the computer screen. His reflection in the hallway had shown the white of his grin more clearly than usual, but had been entirely absent of his eyes. Bone can disappear and shift under light and shadow, but even in an entirely dark room I have never not seen my eyes reflected back at me.
He thought idly about it as he packed his briefcase, and upon finishing, he found himself wishing he hadn’t begun the thought process at all. It spooked me, he thought, is there some great shame in that? Someone can live with a housecat for a decade, but a leaping shadow in the night can still turn the blood cold. As much as he tried to rationalise, he couldn't shake the feeling that something was deeply wrong. Something he couldn’t explain, or rather something he didn’t want to explain beyond some simple shock. When he finished getting his briefcase together and slipped on his coat, he stepped out into the hallway. He didn’t look to the window.
At the front desk sat the receptionist, a magazine stashed next to the keyboard of her desk. How exactly she read the magazine or her own computer screen, considering her entire face was one great grimacing mouth, was one of life’s medical mysteries.
“Heading off, doctor?” she asked.
“Yes, have a good night!” Gaster turned to her and offered up a small wave.
“I still need to ask you where you got that coat,” she smiled (a hard to miss gesture), “It’s quite dashing.”
“It’s a favourite of mine,” Gaster said, tugging at one of the lapels.
It had been a graduation present from his brothers. They’ll give you the white one when you sign on, but you need a proper one when you’re out and about. It wasn’t some stuffy old tweed jacket with patches in the elbow, but a grand sweeping dark green trench coat so long that it nearly brushed against the tiles beneath him. It looked vaguely like something an assassin would wear, perhaps concealing in its myriad pockets the pieces of a sniper rifle or a snub-nosed pistol in case of trouble. It didn’t really fit him, either in a literal or a more metaphical sense, and perhaps that’s why it was a favourite of his.
As the hospital doors slipped open, the wind pressing against his bones alerted him to one final strange inconsistency with the reflection he had seen in the hallway. The one that simultaneously made him the most doubtful of his own memory, and the one that unsettled him the most. It wasn’t my doctor’s coat, he thought as he stepped out into the darkness, my reflection was already wearing this coat.
A nothing fall, that was what Gaster thought of when he first stepped out into the night air. The thought had a voice, but it took a moment of walking to remember who it had belonged to. Gerson had said it, leaning back in an old lawn chair as the two of them watched people from his porch. A nothing fall, that’s what we got this time. Sometimes you get pretty falls, ones that seem to be bursting with life and colour, those are the ones we think of when the word ‘autumn’ comes to mind. Sometimes you get miserable falls where the leaves go down before the tourists get a chance to photograph them and folks like me can’t even sit outside, that’s just an early winter. Nothing falls are just that, nothing. It’s not cold, it’s not warm, it’s not anything. Gaster had not quite understood what he meant until he began walking home that night. It was dark, the sky filled with stars yet absent of moonlight. The wind from earlier in the evening had subsided, and now nothing seemed to move or settle in the woods that loomed over the sidewalks. Nothing at all seemed to exist save for the rhythmic patter of his shoes on the stone, echoing forever.
He thought of taking Toriel up on her offer for dinner, thinking less of the food or even exactly the company, but more the noise of it. The sound of chairs shifting, of a TV brought down to a whisper, of conversation in between bites and more cyclical stories. Not talk saved for strangers in reflections. Of eyes that had no pupils. Perhaps he should’ve saved his notes for tomorrow and accompanied the two of them home when Toriel had first offered. Maybe I should have cut it short, and we could’ve walked in the light of that sunset. That would’ve been good. In that silent moment, it felt like it would’ve been heaven.
“Doctor!” a familiar voice yelled, full of snot and fear.
Gaster swung his head to the other side of the sidewalk, and saw nobody.
“Doctor, please!” the voice repeated, and this time he heard it better. He turned his head again, a small patch of grass separating the sidewalk from the forest. At the edge of the treeline stood Asriel, Kris’s older brother, waving and hollering.
“Asriel?” Gaster asked, one shoe already on the grass.
“Please! I need you to help me! Kris fell down from a branch, they’re hurt really bad! Please!” he yelled. His voice wavered haphazardly into high pitches in that way that children did only when they were truly afraid. Gaster leapt from the sidewalk and ran after Asriel. The woods quickly closed in around the two, slowing Gaster as he batted branches and bramble, yet Asriel's form remained ever ahead of him. Asriel should've been home, Gaster thought as he pressed through a stubborn bush, they both should've been home.
Asriel’s sprint finally slowed once he reached a small clearing in the forest, in the centre of which stood a large tree, it’s branches reaching high. Perhaps in the spring, when the branches were full of leaves, it would cloak the entire clearing in its own shadow, keeping the space for itself. Gaster stepped forward, looking for Kris’s sweater contrasted against the grass or the remnants of a broken branch. He found nothing.
“Where are they, Asriel?” he asked, out of breath. “Is this it?”
“I’m sorry,” Asriel said.
“What?” Gaster tried to say, but before he could finish, he felt something crash against his chest. It pushed him back against the trunk of the old tree and brought him down into the grass. There had been a sound with the impact, a warbling wail that had cut through the silence of the night.
Gaster sat in the grass, His hand clutched cautiously over where he had been struck. A bullet? But there’s no pain? Nothing seeped through his bony fingers, nor did anything surge out when he dared enough to remove the hand. There was only a hole, barely more than a pinprick that had drilled through his shirt and pressed deep, though there still was no pain.
“Asriel, did you-”
But it was not Asriel. The sight was like watching a bird moult, or a snake slip out of its old skin, but it happened all at once. All that was Asriel, his sweater, his glasses, his white fur, seemed to break apart and flake away. Once it was gone, all that was there was black, a shadow that seemed to somehow have form, black tufts surging outward like fur. Eyes as white as stars filled with tears, and a floating mouth quivered. The only part of the strange creature he could see clearly was a red scarf, wrapped around its neck.
A shapeshifter, Gaster’s eyes grew wide, like the old stories.
Did he shoot me? What with?
“I’m so sorry, sir,” the shadow whimpered, “I didn’t mean to-”
And then there was laughter.
It seemed to come from two different sources. One was shrill and maniacal, and the other seemed as if it were a dozen different people all laughing out of the same mouth. The shadow clutched at his scarf and looked from side to side, and by tracing his eyes, Gaster saw them: two smiles floating in the darkness between the trees. One was a maw that glowed like a furnace, flanked by the shadows of fangs, flickering as it cackled. The other had a set of pure white teeth and eyes of bright pink and yellow. As the white-toothed smile laughed, Gaster swore he could hear some of the townfolks laughs within it’s bellow; the cracking cackle of Gerson, the deep booming chortle of Toriel's husband Asgore, even Kris’s giggle seemed to be somewhere in that horrid cacophony. They were kin of the scarfed shadow, perhaps the toothed one had mimicked Asriel’s voice while the scarfed one approximated his body. A trap.
“Little Ralsei finally proves himself useful, and what does he do first?” the glowing smile yelled, the words infused with the cackling, “He whines like a little baby!” The voice shifted to mimic a baby’s whine, approximating the cry of an infant so well that even Gaster began to wonder if one was truly there or not.
“Stop it!” the scarfed one yelled, the tears still staining his voice.
The white-toothed smile roared with the borrowed laughter of a hundred people, and then began to whine as well. Their smiles turned to the moonless sky, and they howled in pretend pain. Someone must be able to hear them, Gaster thought, clutching the tree for balance; someone will come looking. Or would they? He didn’t know how far he had run when he went into the woods; with a shiver, he realised he had no idea which direction he would even need to go were he to run. Yet he knew he had to run.
As Gaster stepped on one leg, the pain became too unbearable, and he slid back down. No, it wasn’t pain exactly, it was something cold and electric. Like when a limb is not moved for long enough that it begins to fall asleep. Is it shock? Did I fracture my tibia in the impact? I still can't— the hole had grown bigger. What had once been a pinprick had now expanded wide enough that he could place his finger in it. There was still no pain, but cold seemed to emanate from it, as if a winter’s wind was funnelling, into him. This is impossible, I don’t even have skin or organs to pierce, the hole should be touching nothing but a rib.
The cacophony continued, the scarved shadow commanding the other two to stop, not realising that it was those very words that encouraged them onwards.
“Enough,” a familiar voice boomed from the forest beyond, and all three of them—previously lost in their own self-perpetuating cycle—grew deathly quiet in the echo of that voice. Gaster looked to where the voice had come from, and through the darkness of the forest stepped a man. Or perhaps not a man exactly, but something man-shaped.
Looking at the shadowed creatures before him he found himself confused and fascinated by their forms, but they had some living sense. Though born of some more fantastical form of life, it was clear that they had been born. Fashioned by nature. The man… the stranger, did not have any of that sense. He wore a long dark cloak that seemed to be composed of the same shadow that they were, but as he moved, he made no sound. No twigs snapped underfoot, no grass swayed in his passing. In his sprint through the forest, Gaster had marked his coat with pine needles and stained it with sap and dirt, yet the stranger’s coat was immaculate. His face was as white and brilliant as the moon, and on it was a smile. The smile gave Gaster the impression that it had somehow been drawn directly onto the face itself. Carved like the pumpkins when they were still healthy.
“Doctor, I-” the scarved shadow whispered to him.
“Calm yourself,” the stranger spoke, resting a brilliant white hand on the shadow’s shoulder, “It is not your fault, little one.”
The stranger’s voice sounded as odd as his body looked. The voice itself seemed maddingly familiar, but the way he spoke the words was… wrong. Syllables folded in on themselves, pausing in unusual spaces, and stretching out certain words. It was as if the stranger was speaking in an accent originating from a language that didn't exist.
“But I led him here,” the scarved shadow whined, extending a hand towards Gaster’s crumpled form, “Surely some of the blame is-”
“It is not your hand that has undone him, little one,” the stranger spoke, and he presented one of his white hands. Resting in its palm was what looked to be a small device. A grey cube of metal sheets and pipework, interspersed with buttons and switches. From Gaster’s distance, it looked simultaneously like some child’s toy, yet far too complicated.
“It was I who pressed the button; it is I who shall bear the sin. Now back to the shelter with you.”
The voice of the stranger still sounded wrong, but hidden in his odd, broken speech was a trace of comfort. Some genuine concern, or perhaps even some love for this strange fur-covered shadow. Or perhaps that too was another approximation; at his core, the stranger reminded Gaster most of the white-toothed shadow’s laughter, something composed of others, nothing of its own.
“I want to stay,” the scarved shadow said after a moment of silence, “I should see this, shouldn’t I?”
“No, even in a moonless night such as this, the light will start working on you soon enough. Back to the shelter with you, with all of you. I will see this to the end.”
The shadow opened its white mouth as if to speak, but said nothing, and closed it again a few seconds later. Then, as if flattened by some unseen force, the furred shadow dived into the grass below. It spread across the floor of the forest as a shadow would, retaining the shape of the boy for a moment longer before twisting into that of a bat and shifting away at great speed. The two other shadows, their forms previously obscured by the tree canopy, followed. They didn’t shift into the ground, but danced between the trunks of the trees. One seemed to fly like the scarved one, the other sprinted forward with what looked to be a dozen limbs.
Gaster was alone now. He sat in the dirt beside the tree, a hand over the hole to keep the cold from shifting in—a pointless endeavour, the feeling worsened all the same—and the stranger stared at him with those featureless black eyes of his. Long black lines like scars marked either of its eyes, connecting the right eye to its toothless grin.
“Despite everything,” the stranger spoke, “It is fascinating to look upon you.” The ‘fascinating’ seemed to stretch on for eternity. “All these worlds I have been to, and yet I have never looked upon anyone so alike myself. Perhaps you are a piece of me, one that took root and grew… or perhaps that is vanity.” The stranger laughed at his own words, a laugh that sounded like splitting wood.
“What? What do you mean?”
“Ah, you can still speak!” the stranger marvelled, moving closer. “I wondered if the device had robbed you of that already.”
“Who are you?”
“Who am I? Have the years between worlds been so cruel to me? Has my eye for my own self strayed so far? Look at me, doctor, look closely with that eye to detail that I know you possess.”
Gaster found no sense in the stranger’s words, yet he looked closer all the same. His previous observation held true; the stranger looked to be a constructed thing. From where he sat, it looked as if his head was an oblong orb, yet with how flat his face looked, it seemed that perhaps even that was an illusion. The harsh lines of his black coat, the ink-like structure of that strange smiling face, reminded him of the way children would draw people. No curves or fabric, but shapes stacked on top of one another, always that smile and vacant eyes staring back. They’d raise the paper and say with a pointing hand, look, it’s you! Look, it’s-
No… it couldn’t be. And yet it was. The black coat, the white face, even the voice that had seemed so similar yet had been made alien by coming from a mouth that was not his own. The stranger was the reflection in the mirror. The stranger was not approximating just any man; he was approximating Gaster.
“You’re… me?”
“Yes!” the stranger replied in a manic happiness, and his smile doubled in size. “Oh, what a joy it is to be recognised!”
“What is this?” Gaster made to stand again but found one arm overcome with static and the one he had placed over the hole would not budge at all. “Are you a shapeshifter like them? Is this supposed to be some sick joke?”
“No joke at all, dear doctor. I am just as you said.” The stranger raised his white hands, a black hole nestled in the palm of each. “You are me, and I am you. Not all our traits line up, but there is still so much we share. A name, of course, though I do not speak it… We don’t like to hear it aloud, do we?”
Gaster stared at the stranger. The stranger spoke of an old complex of his, one not shared by either of his brothers. He liked his name enough, but never in the tongue of another, or written down in any form that was not his own made-up language. His brothers joked that he had pursued medicine entirely so that everyone he knew would just call him ‘doctor’.
“I could say more,” the stranger spoke, “But I see in your eyes that you know I'm telling the truth.”
“Why then?” Gaster asked breathlessly, “If you’re truly some shadow of myself, why have you done this to me? What have you done to me?”
“I have done to you what I have already done to myself.” The stranger presented the strange contraption once again, drifting it close enough to Gaster’s face that he could inspect it. It felt like a pointless affair; he still couldn't decipher what the device was. Yet as he looked at the way the pipes intersected and the strange noise it produced deep in the metal, Gaster suspected he did know this device. Perhaps from some old fantasy, or a dream that made no sense until now.
“You're telling me that thing made th-” Gaster looked down to the hole and found himself once more stricken by silence.
The hole had expanded, and quite dramatically. Big enough that a hand could disappear down it, and that was exactly what had happened. The hand he laid over the hole had disappeared into what looked to be a wound constructed of TV static, dancing white and black spots intersecting and flickering in place. The sight was so maddening that Gaster almost screamed, but he felt he could not spare the air.
“Yes, it did make that hole. This device is a miniature recreation of one far greater I constructed in my home. The hope of a desperate people, commissioned by a horned king to bring them warmth and light.” The stranger held the device up, as an actor might hold the skull of poor Yorick. “I perverted that original device, hoping to use it to break free from a prison, or perhaps to resurrect a pair of royal children cut down too young… I am ashamed to say I do not quite remember. All I remember is that the device failed, shattered me into a million pieces, and spread me across a thousand worlds. The sensation was instantaneous for me. I had hoped it would be for you. I am not a good man, not anymore. But know that I am not cruel without purpose; I did not wish for you to suffer so.”
“Shattered? Is that what this is?” Gaster sucked in a painful inhale, his chest was being consumed by the static, and it felt as if most of his arm was already gone.
“Yes, or perhaps unravelling is the better word. You will not be spread across a thousand worlds though. I would not wish such a journey as that upon anyone.”
“It is… cold”, Gaster spoke, though his voice sounded far smaller and more pitiful than he had intended. The stranger, despite his simplistic smile and eyes, seemed to shudder at his words. Guilt, even on a face as simple as his, it reads the same.
“No… not cold. I know the feeling you speak of, perhaps I am the only other who ever had.”
“What is it then if not that?”
The stranger hesitated, “When one closes both eyes, they see darkness, yet when they just close one, all of the sight is simply… pushed into the other eye. With that one closed eye, you do not see darkness; you just don’t see. The feeling you are experiencing is the same sort of thing as attempting to look through that one closed eye. It is not a chill, it is…”
Nothing. This is what becoming nothing feels like.
“Why do this then?" Gaster pressed. "Why not just stab me when I wasn’t looking, or shoot me or beat me over the head? Why do you have to do this? Why did you have to be so cruel?” Gaster put as much of his strength into the last word as he could muster, he wanted it to sting, and he could tell it had.
“Because this was the only way I could’ve fixed things,” the stranger said, and then repeated it under his breath.
“Fixed things?”
“You have made an impact in this place, dear doctor. Your deeds and words have seeped into the lives of these townsfolk; even dying would not undo those actions, not enough to suit my needs. They must forget you, and as that hole expands and turns you to shattered pieces... they will.”
“No,” Gaster spoke, though he did not believe the stranger’s words to be a lie.
“Yes.”
“My office, my home,” Gaster’s mind flared with the image of all of those sticky notes across his monitor and across his cabinets, a language no one left will understand. “They will find those; they will remember that I was there once.” They will remember that I existed, though those words were too horrible to speak aloud.
“No, they won’t. They will find an empty office and an empty house. They will remember them as empty and wonder why they had not gotten around to filling them. I will remove the items that would cause them confusion, though even if I didn’t, all they would elicit was a profound feeling of deja vu.”
“Why? I’m just one man, what could I have possibly done to deserve this?” Gaster had hoped to yell the words, but found now he could barely manage more than a whisper. The hole had expanded so far across his body, it felt as if if one were to grip the hole and pull then he could be torn asunder like rotted fabric.
“Nothing. Believe me, doctor, what I said to the little one is no lie. It is a sin what I have done to you. You have simply stepped in front of fate. You see, there is a prophecy. I have been to a thousand worlds, and I have seen nothing else like it within any of them. It is writ in the very bones of this place. It speaks of three heroes, of Angels and Lords, and all of it must come to pass. I have removed all other obstacles to the prophecy, all except you.”
Gaster pressed his head against the tree. Everything else was beginning to grow unreal, the grass was gone, the sky felt as if an illusion or a painting, all that was real was the wood behind him. The stranger continued on.
“I have looked into the future your presence has wrought. Your words have touched one of those three heroes, Kris; they trust you in a way they thought they could not trust anyone. A good thing, but the prophecy calls for a cage, a cage made of a human body. One cold and desperate enough to throw themselves away in the pursuit of saving the few they hold dear. Your Kris would not be so rash, and so I must make it so Kris never met you at all.”
“No… please, not them.”
“Not just them. The Holidays as well. You would have brought comfort to dear December, enough that she would not stray so far from home anymore. Enough that the pain in her heart would not lead her to acts that she would regret if she only had more life to live after making them. You would rob me of my knight.”
“Stop…”
“But worst of all, you would’ve brought Rudy to your hospital, ordering tests he ordinarily would have never taken. Tests that in time… just enough time… would’ve found something that could be removed, something that could be healed. Yet it must not be removed. It must be found at a time when there is nothing left to be done. They will say that nothing could have been done. That will be a lie. An unforgivable act, and I take that sin on myself as well.”
“I don’t want to hear it…”
The stranger knelt down. He has to kneel down now. I have become so small.
“No, dear doctor. I must say it. Not to torment you, but to keep the score. You would have done such wonderful things, and it would be so easy for me to pretend that you are as wicked a man as I have become, but you are not. I will remember you. I must remember you, no matter what happens.”
“You don’t have to do this,” Gaster whispered. It felt as if there was only a thimbleful of air left for him to use.
“Perhaps.” The stranger said in a tone that nearly entirely matched his own, “Perhaps… but the prophecy must come to an end, because waiting at the end is the one thing that I have been able to hold for all this time, that I wished for as I pulled the pieces of myself back together. Three heroes will appear… and banish the Angel’s heaven."
Gaster recognised the words from the church; the stranger spoke of scripture and called it prophecy.
“The heroes will banish the angel… but to where? Where else? They will banish it back to its home. It's roots. Where it first came into being, birthed in the same flash that shattered me. When it is banished, I will go along with it… I will see my family and my friends again, and they will see me. They will know me, dear doctor.”
His words seemed desperate, as if he needed to convince himself as well.
“I have been the man from another world for too long. I will be a man again. I will be whole.”
The world had gone dark now; nothing existed but the stranger, the tree, and himself. And with every passing moment, he felt less sure of the latter.
“My brothers…” Gaster whispered with the very last bit of his air.
“They will live on… They will feel an emptiness, but they will live without you. Without us. Do not worry... everything will function perfectly.”
There were no more words now. Gaster no longer had the mouth to speak them. Only thoughts, and they too began to disappear one by one. He thought of little Kris and their red headband. Of Toriel and the dinner invitation he would never make. He thought of the Holidays, of his colleagues, of his friends. He thought of his brothers, the trio becomes a duet. When there was no one left to think of, he thought of stars, of clouds shifting across emptying skies. Finally, he thought of the sunset he saw through the hallway window. Though his memory had been robbed of the tiles and the window itself, only a square of sunset remained. It would have been nice to have seen it, he thought, to walk in the warm twilight and see how far my shadow could grow.
And then there was nothing left to think.
The day had been the warmest it had been in months, blue empty skies above and the last breath of winter on the wind. Not yet spring; the snow had melted, but when the children went out to play explorer, they did so in thick sweaters. December led the troop, with Asriel, Noelle and Kris following close behind. Without the benefit of fur, Kris was bundled up the most, a scarf tightened around their face and a hat pressed over their plastic horns. Through the forest they went, overturning stones and remarking upon plants as if they were alien growths. Kris slipped ahead, hurrying between trees until they came across a clearing. A solitary tree stood in the middle, its new leaves stretching far enough that it bathed the entire space in shadow.
They walked around the tree, marvelling at its size. As they walked around one side, they saw something unusual in the bark. Something that they stared at for so long that the others came to look for them.
“There you are!” December remarked, and tapped Kris on the head with their wiffle bat. “Don’t go running off like that.”
“A man.”
“What?” Asriel asked
“A man,” Kris repeated, and they pointed up at the bark.
There, halfway up the tree, was a series of knots and burls. Spirals out of the woodwork that, when looked upon in a very particular way, seemed to form a simplistic image of a man’s face.
“Oh, huh,” December stepped closer, the only one of the four tall enough to look at it eye to eye, “I… guess so.”
“Did somebody carve it?” Noelle asked, following her sister.
“No, no, I don’t think so,” Dess pressed a hand against the bark, “Probably just grew that way, I guess… doesn’t really look like a face this close though.”
“Maybe it doesn’t… but it’s a man.”
“No it’s not, Kris, it’s just lines on an old tree,” Asriel said, mistaking his sibling’s tone for fear.
“Yup, just an old tree,” December tapped against it with her wiffle bat and then stepped away. “C'mon, let’s keep moving.”
The rest of the troop continued onward. Kris intended to follow, but not just yet. They kept staring at the face in the wood. The face you could only see from one side of the tree, the man. They were sure it was a man, or maybe what was left of one. The two spirals in the tree looked down at them, yet they felt no fear. They had talked a long while before, in a quiet room. They had spoken of many things, but of what exactly Kris could not remember; in truth, they could not even remember the room itself. Yet when they looked upon those two eyes in the wood, it felt easier to remember.
“Kris, come on!” Noelle called from the woods beyond.
Kris turned to follow. As they walked, they tried to remember more about the man. They had played cards. He had taught them how to play, and when he was not looking, they had stolen away one of the aces and photocopied it when they got home. They'd hoped to win the next time they met, only to realise that the copies had come out monochrome. The further from the tree they walked, the less they remembered. None of it made sense. Yet just before they forgot the man entirely again, they remembered something he had said, something that had drilled deep into their soul.
“You don’t understand now; that’s okay, you don’t have to just yet. One day you will look back, and everything will make sense.”
Kris smiled, and the smile remained when they caught up with the others, though the exact reason why did not.
The children continued on, leaving the man behind. Under the knots that had become his eyes, a smile formed.
The stranger had been right.
It was a joy to be recognised.
