Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

His dreams are very strange tonight.

There is a familiar voice beckoning him to his window. A name-- no, a face dances right on the cusp of his mind’s eye, but no matter how hard he tries, he cannot remember.

He goes to his window. There are stairs leading into the sky, bright and shining against the sea of dark colors choking the air.

He takes a step.

And another.

And another.

There is nothing to stop him from falling into the infinite void below him, yet he feels no fear as he continues his ascent.

The stairs become steeper. His body feels heavier.

He begins to crawl, dragging himself closer and closer to the blinding epicenter of the storm that rages around him. Inch by inch, he slowly gets closer, until he can begin to make out something in the light.

It looks like...

Sam shifted slightly. He didn’t want to get out of bed today, but unfortunately the sun shining on his face forced him to open his eyes. He was immediately assaulted by a colorful, blinding light, and quickly shut them again. He reached up to cover his eyes only to hit his mouth.

Huh?

Sam tried reaching higher, but he was met with... another mouth?

What the hell??

He jolted at the sound of several dozen whispers voicing his thoughts, opening his eyes again. His retinas burned from the light, but soon enough, he began to make out bleary shapes, and-- fuck, that didn’t look right. He waved a hand in front his face, only to let out a crowd of surprised shouts when he saw more than one hand appear in his view.

Sam shot up in his bed, sitting up way higher than he anticipated and bracing himself against the wall while his hair grazed the ceiling. How-- how was this happening? Sam wasn’t tall by any standards; hell, he could hardly reach the ceiling when he was standing! His room seemed taller, too, and everything seemed to have elongated like somebody had stretched his apartment ten or so meters wider.

Something had happened to him. Something had happened to his room. Something-- something wasn’t right.

Sam looked down at himself and screamed.

A bloated mass of eyes and hands and mouths screamed back as he looked up at himself.

“What the fuck?!” He yelled, and now that he was paying attention, he could feel all those mouths move simultaneously. He could feel air rushing all up and down his chest, or was it his torso? His body seemed to blend together, making it hard to discern any individual segment of himself.

Sam pushed off the wall and tried to rush to his door, but he ended up tripping on his dozens of arms and legs, slamming into the ground with a deafening thud. Tears welled up in his too-many eyes and he tried to curl up, but he couldn’t bring his knees to his chest(?), instead bringing something new to his attention.

He had a tail?!

Fuck, now that he was aware of it, he could-- see out of it? He had eyes there?? Hot air billowed against the floor as he began to hyperventilate out of what felt like hundreds of mouths

Calm down. Calm down. Maybe-- this wasn’t real. This couldn’t be real.

Of course it wasn’t real---this wasn’t possible! It was a dream, this was clearly a dream. More like a nightmare, actually, but whatever. This wasn’t real. This couldn't be real.

Sam made a conscious effort to reach over with only one clawed hand, pinching the skin of another one of his arms. If this was a dream, he could just wake up! Everything was going to be fine.

He kept applying pressure, waiting for the moment he’d wake up, but it never came. He pinched until his claws pierced through his rough, leathery skin and blood dripped into the eye in his hand. He blinked it away, tearing up from the pain and the blood and the horrifying reality he now found himself in.

What-- what was he going to do now? He couldn’t-- he was a monster!

A sudden voice interrupted his spiral, quiet yet much too loud.

“Look outside... it’s beautiful.”

Sam looked up hesitantly from his spot on the floor, spotting a crack in his wall. He didn’t remember that being there before---had he accidentally damaged his wall? Whatever, he had bigger things to worry about than rent right now.

“H-- hello?” His mouths stuttered nervously, voices stumbling over each other with all the grace of a beached whale. “Who’s there?”

The room was silent for a little while before an eye suddenly popped into the crack in the wall.

“Wait, no... don’t look outside.” The eye swiveled around in the crack before landing on Sam’s curled form.

“Oh.”

Sam held up several pairs of hands. “Hold on-- hold on! It’s not what it looks like!” He stumbled to his dozens of feet, hitting his head(?) on the ceiling with a painful thump and recoiling a little.

“Shit.” He hissed, and with his multitude of voices it really did sound like a hiss. He awkwardly stumbled his way over to the eye in the wall, his upper body teetering precariously before he finally propped himself up against the wall with his hands. Habit had him wanting to lean down and look at the crack head-on, but he was quick to realize that he was already looking at the mystery wall person eye-to-eye.

“You already looked outside, didn’t you?” The voice in the wall sounded... remorseful.

Sam quirked a hundred eyebrows at that (god, that felt really weird), leaning away a little. “Huh? What do you mean?”

“Something’s happening right now. There’s something outside, and-- if you look at it, it changes you.” The eye looked him up and down. “But I think you already figured that out.”

“I-- I really don’t know what you’re talking about.” Sam watched the eye flinch a tad bit, and he realized maybe he was a bit louder than he thought he was. “I-- uh, I just woke up like this.”

The eye blinked, then narrowed. “Did you sleep with your blinds open?”

“...Yeah?”

The wall-eye sighed. “That makes sense.” It looked back up to him, gaze flitting between his various eyes, unnerving him every time he made eye contact with it from a different angle. “You seem sane enough, I guess.”

“I was supposed to go insane?!” Sam reared back from the crack in the wall, upper body twisting almost like a snake as he took a few staggering steps away from it. Some eyes closer to his back caught sight of the open window behind him and widened. “Do-- should I cover my window?!”

“I’d say you’re in the clear now, but it wouldn’t hurt to close ‘em anyway.”

Sam clumsily made his way to the window, doing his best to close all of his eyes as he drew the oddly-resized curtains over the similarly-resized windowframe.

When that was finished, he slowly peeked his eyes open. It felt like a hundred painless cuts were opening all across his body.

“So...” The wall person’s eye flitted away nervously.

The two of them stewed in mutual silence before the voice in the wall finally piped up.

“...By the way, I’m Sybil, your neighbor. I don’t think we talked much before.”

“Yeah.” Sam sat himself down on the floor and tried to get comfortable, eventually settling for coiling up and resting his probably-head on his own back. The position was surprisingly comfortable despite how contorted he was; apparently, his hair had grown along his entire length like some sort of mane, and if he stopped thinking he could pretend that he was petting a dog or something.

“Well, my name’s Sam.” His voices were muffled by his own body---wow, that was a weird sentence. He was suddenly hit with a wave of revulsion at himself, his gut (if he still had that) twisting uncomfortably as he became hyperaware of every minute, inhuman feature.

Nope. Nooooope. Stop thinking about that. Stop thinking about that. Everything was fine. Stop thinking about that.

“Sam, huh?” Sybil smiled---or, at least, Sam assumed that she was smiling, because her eye was kind of narrowed. “It’s nice to meet you! Even if it’s under, uh... less than ideal circumstances.”

Sam actually snorted at that, closing his eyes; it was easier to deal with all the new features when he didn’t have to actually deal with the new features.

“That’s one way to put it. Do you know what’s going on, anyway?”

“Like I said, something’s in the sky right now. I heard it’ll leave in... 15 days, I think. We shouldn’t leave our apartments, though.”

Sam cracked an eye open, forcefully keeping the rest of them shut. “We’re supposed to hunker down for two weeks?”

“More or less.” Sybil said. Sam buried his face into his mane and groaned.

“I don’t have enough food to last me three days, let alone two weeks!” That wasn’t even touching on the fact that he’d definitely be needing more food at his size. He only had---what, a few boxes of frozen pizza bites and pre-made meals? That was nothing.

Sybil coughed, catching his attention. “You could scavenge for something... or maybe ask around?”

“Like anybody would lend food to a monster.” Sam huffed, shoving his face even deeper into his mane as if that would suddenly make him disappear. “I’m going to die here.”

“Look, Sam.” Sybil sighed, but Sam didn’t respond. “I’m... I’ll admit, it’s not going to be pretty out there. I-- I saw some horrible things happen out in the hall.” Her gaze shifted nervously as she continued. “I can’t get out of my apartment, so I can’t help much, but maybe you can.”

At Sam’s continued silence, she said, “You’re not the worst thing I’ve seen, if that makes you feel better.”

That finally got a reaction out of Sam, as the monster peeked over his mane with two eyes opened. “...Really?”

“Yeah.”

Sam took in a shaky breath, slowly unraveling from his coil and slouching to avoid the ceiling. “Okay. Okay. I can... I can do this.” He muttered to himself, but the words became indecipherable in the sea of copied whispers. He balled his hands into fists, letting sharpened claws and impossibly smaller hands dig into his palms. Wait, what?!

Okay, he was not unpacking that right now.

“Anything you need?” He twisted his upper body around to face Sybil even though he could simply open the rest of his eyes and avoid the motion altogether.

“Nah, I’m good.” Sybil said. “You go worry about yourself first, alright? Stay safe!” And with that, Sam’s neighbor disappeared into darkness, leaving him alone in his room.

Okay, okay. Okay. This was... okay. Just-- get out, get some food. Maybe talk to the other people on the floor? Warn them not to look outside? Yeah, yeah, he could do that. He could do that, and he could ignore that he was a horrifying mass of eyes and arms and teeth.

He stumbled over to the door of his room only to find that it had stayed the same size and shape, unlike literally everything else in his apartment so far.

Shit.

Chapter Text

Sam mulled over the doorway, thoroughly confused and a tad bit panicked. He guessed he was almost three times the height of the frame, which... didn’t really bode well. He could probably shove the first couple meters of his head-torso-whatever through, but after that his body was too large to fit through.

How the hell was Sam supposed to do this? Sure, he could probably make a hole large enough to get through, but frankly he liked not having his entire wall destroyed. There wasn’t really a way to get out of his room besides jumping outside, though, and he did not want to think about what would happen if he was exposed to that god-awful thing in the sky again.

Carefully, he lowered his entire body to the floor and stuck his head through the doorway. Like his room, the rest of his apartment had been strangely stretched and deformed, though to his relief he found that his TV and console were both unharmed.

Sam crept through the doorway like a centipede, if the centipede was really fucked up and didn’t actually know how to walk. He expected to feel some resistance from the wall at some point, but as he pulled more of his body through the doorway he realized that the transition between rooms was practically seamless.

Sam awkwardly scrunched up the length of his body into his living room. The couch was about as long as he was, now, but it was still clearly sized for people-sized... well, people.

Fuck, this was going to take some getting used to.

He continued to centipede his way through his room and beelined for the door to his apartment, hesitating just before he could grab the handle. Did he really want to go out there? Did he...?

Well, screw it. Sybil said that the weird thing outside changed everybody who looked at it, so he was bound to meet somebody who would see him as just a chill guy.

Utilizing that same odd cartoon logic to squeeze his way out of his apartment, he instantly noticed a ragged line of what appeared to be blood smeared across the hallway, which probably meant that whatever was out here wasn’t good. Maybe that’s what Sybil meant when she said she’d seen worse things.

Unfortunately, the next thing he figured out was that the hallway had not been strangely stretched to accommodate his size. Luckily, the halls were just big enough for him to move through, though there wasn’t much wiggle room for him to work with and he couldn’t turn around. Suddenly, Sam was almost thankful for having eyes all over him, though he quickly reminded himself that the reason he could hardly fit in this hallway in the first place was because he was a giant fucking monster, and that ruined any sense of relief that he might’ve been feeling.

He followed the blood trail to a nearby apartment, cautiously testing the door. It swung open with no resistance, and Sam swallowed a hundred too many times in his trepidation. Making his way into the apartment, he was met with a shrill droning; a few eyes on his hands caught sight of an abandoned TV spewing static on its screen, undoubtedly the source of the sound. There was also a gaping hole in the floor, for some odd reason.

The trail of blood led through the apartment and below another door. Common sense told Sam that nothing good was waiting for him behind that door, that going there would be such a horror movie thing to do, but he couldn’t stop himself. Maybe he could help, maybe he could talk, maybe he could... Well, Sam wasn’t too sure. But the curiosity gnawed at his conscience, and he slowly crept through the apartment, taking care to steer clear from the hole in case the damaged floorboards couldn’t handle his weight, and opened the door.

A man stood in the center of the bloodied bathroom, holding something that Sam couldn’t quite make out in the darkness. The neighbor was staring at the closed blinds almost obsessively, swaying back and forth as if he was in a trance. Sam cautiously poked his head into the room, unsure of what to do.

Without warning, the neighbor spun around to face Sam, a smile stretched across his face.

“Heyyy...!” The neighbor waved, hiding whatever he was holding behind his back. “You’ve seen it too, haven’t you?”

Sam was a little bit worried about how the guy was acting like having a giant monster poking its head into the bathroom was perfectly fine, but he was much more concerned about the giant bleeding gash in the middle of the guy’s stomach.

“Uh... are you okay?” Obviously a stupid question, considering that the guy was practically holding his guts in.

“Yes... yes... okay... I’m okay.” The wounded man let out a wheezing rasp, a poor attempt at a chuckle. He took a few staggering steps towards Sam, who twisted away in a decidedly snake-like fashion.

“You’ve seen... you’ve seen it. Let me see, too.” The wounded man muttered. Suddenly, he brandished his knife, the object he had been hiding from Sam’s line of sight, and all of Sam’s eyes widened in surprise. It was completely normal to attack a monster in your apartment, sure... but the wounded man was obviously not completely sane. Something was wrong with him.

The man sliced at Sam with the bloodied knife, nicking him on one of his many arms, and Sam snarled at him. The sound was amplified by his many mouths, creating a roar that made Sam pause for a second.

Did he... make that sound?

The brief moment of silent panic was enough for the wounded man to close the gap between them, slashing again. This time, it got Sam right in one of his upper eyes. He screamed, and the sound that escaped him was infinitely more horrifying as hands grabbed at his injured eye; he pulled his head into the living room and reared back in pain, his many legs stumbling back.

The man followed Sam out of the bathroom, grinning horribly. “Help me see...!”

“What the hell are you talking about?!” Sam snapped back, but his words mingled together until they became indistinguishable. He didn’t really care, though; he was pretty sure that the wounded guy wouldn’t have listened to him, anyway.

Sam shifted away from the neighbor’s next swing, then watched as the man turned the knife on himself and plunged the blade into his own stomach.

Well, that explains where the wound came from, at least.

“I can’t... I can’t see anything. It’s in the way!” Spit frothed out of the man’s mouth as he continued to stab at himself; Sam watched in horror as the wounded neighbor’s gash started to pulsate, a giant eye blooming from the injury.

Still clutching his injured eye with a few hands, Sam grabbed the wounded man with several others. Without even thinking, he squeezed tight, and a heart-stopping crack resounded in the room as the man fell limp in his many hands.

He clumsily let go of the man and watched his body fall to the ground. Sam’s wriggling, unnatural fingers were sticky with blood, and he took a few desperate steps away from the newly-made corpse, tripping over himself all the while.

The notion that he had killed somebody didn’t quite sink in yet; he was still reeling from the fight, his own eye still pulsing in agony, and all he could think about was that horrific, bulging eye that had grown in the man’s torso.

That horrific, bulging eye that was still watching him.

Sam crawled forwards a little, tentatively reaching towards the corpse with a hand. The eye followed his movements as he went; he still felt a little intimidated by its gaze, despite that being a bit silly given that he most certainly had several dozen more eyes than it. He pried the corpse’s hands off of the knife, looking it over a little. It would make for a good weapon if everybody was like that wounded guy, but Sam wasn’t too confident that he would be able to use it without stabbing himself. He moved to wipe the bloody blade off on his pants, only to realize that he didn’t really have pants.

...This was a bit awkward.

Dropping the knife, Sam gingerly stepped around the eyeball corpse and ducked back into the bathroom. Inside were a few medical supplies that Sam graciously took---it wasn’t like the former occupant was going to be needing them, after all. There was also a key to the stairwell, which Sam also nabbed; he didn’t exactly know why, only that it felt important.

Sam fumbled to pass the bandages between the multitude of hands he had, having to restart several times when he dropped them. Eventually, he got fed up with it and laid down, rolling the bandages to his face and wrapping them around his injured eye. Testing the bandages and deciding they were enough for now, Sam sat back up, only to bang his head on the ceiling.

Hold on. Hadn’t the ceiling been higher before? Now that he thought about it, he hadn’t even felt a ceiling during the fight. Rubbing his head, he halfheartedly got down on all... well, he didn’t actually know how many limbs he had, now.

Crawling back into the hall, Sam noticed an open door across from him. It looked like it had been forced open from the inside. He nervously wiped his hands on his own hide, flinching when he poked a few of his eyes (both on his body and his hands), and crawled his way into the next apartment.

The whole place looked like a tornado had come through recently; food and trash were littered all across the floor, and the whole place reeked of alcohol. This must’ve been Vincent’s apartment, then---Sam remembered loud music blaring from here the previous night. He gritted his teeth when he spotted dark shapes moving within the shadows, their presence suggesting that it would probably be a bad idea to keep on exploring there.

Which is precisely why Sam continued to explore there.

He nabbed some food out of the fridge, his excessive number of arms coming in handy (pun not intended) when it came to holding everything. There were two almost-human zombie things in here, but Sam opted to ignore them for now, as they didn’t seem to be doing anything worse than staring.

They were probably not a big deal.

Quiet muttering caught his attention, and he turned to the very back of the room to see a giant shape huddled nervously in the corner, hunched over and whispering.

“Hello...?” Sam called out softly, crawling around the two zombie things to get closer to the figure. “I’m not gonna hurt you, I...”

“Come closer.” The figure in the corner, now confirmed to be Vincent, whispered. “I can’t see you.”

Sam hesitantly scuttled closer. “I-- uh, I know things look bad right now, but it’s me, Sam.”

Vincent didn’t respond coherently, staring at Sam almost unnervingly.

“Apartment 33?” Still nothing. “The guy you almost ran over the other day because he was too short to see?”

“Closer...” Vincent muttered, pulling at his night robes even harder. “Get closer.”

Sam leaned in closer, kneading several hands together. “You good?”

Vincent promptly threw his robes out, flashing Sam with the multitude of eyeballs that had taken root in his torso.

Sam screamed, which seemed to momentarily stun Vincent as the former crawled back. One of Sam’s hand-eyes spotted the zombie things shambling over, and he cursed internally, rearing back to put some more space between them only to smack his head on the ceiling for the third time that day.

Oh, so now the ceilings were being normal?

Fuck you, world.

Sam’s tail swept around, knocking down furniture and the two shambling zombie-things that were now looking significantly less human than before. Baring a few sets of clawed hands, he slashed out at Vincent, scoring gashes into the man’s sleeve.

Vincent retaliated with a hefty blow at Sam’s uppermost pair of jaws, making him recoil. Trying to sit up only had him knocking his head on the ceiling again, and Vincent utilized the opportunity to kick at some of Sam’s legs.

One of Sam’s legs buckled, though at this point he had so many that it was practically inconsequential. Sam kicked back at Vincent with his many legs, knocking the eyeball-ridden man to the ground. He tried to shove the man away, but Vincent grabbed one of his arms and jabbed his fingers into Sam’s hand-eye hard . Sam roared, slamming Vincent into the ground again as he swept his tail once more to keep the onlooking monsters at bay.

Vincent’s eyeballs began to twist uncontrollably, and Sam had only half a moment to back away before they burst out from the man’s skin and struck forward like cobras. Vincent’s eyes hit Sam’s own, making a good portion of him flinch away, but before Vincent could follow up the attack Sam made sure to punch the largest eye as hard as he could.

Either the eyeball was deceptively weak or Sam was stronger than he thought, because the thing practically exploded when he punched it, sickening eyeball juices splattering across Sam’s faces. Vincent shouted in pain but was quickly stifled with another couple kicks, finally putting the man down for good.

Sam spared no time to take in the victory, immediately whirling around on dozens of feet to face the onlookers. Whatever sickness they had seemed to have progressed significantly, as their skin had darkened into a night-black color and seemed to be unravelling at the seams.

Not fun.

The onlookers slashed at Sam’s upper faces, barely grazing his bandages, and he returned the favor with a good ol’ backhand. Not that that did much, really, but it was the thought that counted.

He leaned away from another hefty swing, kicking the onlooker with several legs (arms? It was kind of hard to tell), picking up its body to chuck at the other monster. That seemed to finish them off, and Sam shook his hands a little, giving himself a lookover. A few of his lower arms were kind of banged up, but nothing that seemed serious enough to need immediate medical attention. Farther up his torso, one of his hands ached something terrible; leaning to look at it revealed it to be a swollen-shut hand-eye weeping blood, no doubt the one Vincent had jabbed at.

Morbidly curious, Sam peeled the hand’s eyelids open only to recoil in horror; his eye had been... popped, for a lack of a better word. Blood spurted out of the wound at a concerningly fast pace, a hollow socket left of where his eye should have been.

That probably wasn’t good.

Chapter Text

Sam crawled through his door and into his apartment, immediately stumbling for the bathroom. He heard Sybil give a concerned shout but didn’t acknowledge her beyond that, hellbent on staunching the bleeding of his hand-eye.

The bathroom was distorted like the rest of his apartment, something that Sam found didn’t surprise him all that much anymore. There was enough space in here for him to stretch out entirely---which was exactly what he did, sprawling himself across the cold tiles while he dragged his injured hand to the mirror. The mirror itself had been warped significantly to accompany his larger size, which he was oddly thankful for. With uncoordinated movements, he wrapped a bandage around the bloody injury, making sure to make it tight enough to staunch any bleeding; testing it afterwards, he decided he probably shouldn’t strain the injury. He sighed and carded several hands through his mane; the action was surprisingly comforting, and he continued for a little longer before catching his reflection in the mirror.

He’d seen himself before, don’t get him wrong---having eyes all over his body kinda made that hard not to do. Looking in the mirror, however, somehow made things more real. More real than seeing through his own eyes, more real than breathing with his own lungs, more real than living in his own skin.

The thing that stared back at Sam through the reflective surface of the mirror was a beast straight out of a nightmare, with rows upon rows of crooked mouths set between two columns of malformed eyes. Sam reached out to the mirror and the reflection did the same, reaching back with a wrinkled, clawed hand. Sam looked away from the thing in the mirror to stare at his own, horrific hand. Another joined it, then another, then another. Hands upon hands upon hands upon hands stared back at him, horribly inhuman in every way, and it hit him right then and there that this was him.

He took in a shaky breath, watching the mouths---his mouths---repeat the action disjointedly, exposed jaws opening and closing like spiracles across his upper body. He looked back to the mirror; the monster that was him had its eyes wide, its thousand hands trembling as each reached to its many faces.

He was a monster.

He... he had just killed people.

Sam clenched and unclenched his hands, drying blood flaking off.

No... no, it was in self-defense.

He didn’t want to kill them.

He-- he had been checking in on them, like a good neighbor would!

He curled up in front of the mirror, hugging himself pathetically a hundred times at once.

He hadn’t gone out because he was concerned, though.

He went out because he needed food.

He went out with the intention of stealing from his neighbors.

Sam frustratedly tugged at his mane, managing to rip out a few painful clumps. His eyes, all of them, burned as he shoved his uppermost face into his back.

Good people didn’t steal from their neighbors in the apocalypse.

Thieves did that.

Monsters did that.

He was a thief.

He was a monster.

He was a MONSTER.

HE WAS A MONSTER HE WAS A MONSTER HE WAS A MONSTER HE WAS A MONSTER HE WAS A MONSTER HE WAS A MONSTER HE WAS

No. Nononono.

No.

He-- he wasn’t a monster.

He just needed to survive.

He wouldn’t steal from Sybil if he was given the chance, right?

He wouldn’t.

He wasn’t a monster.

He wasn’t a monster.

“I’m not a monster.” Sam muttered, repeating the mantra through a dozen different mouths. “I’m not a monster.”

He clung to himself, feeling his own skin shift and distend beneath his hands. He took in a deep breath and then exhaled, closing his eyes. He breathed again, imagining himself in his bed, tucked under his covers. He imagined closing two eyes, breathing through one mouth, curling with two legs and two arms. For a brief moment, it felt tantalizingly real.

Sam inhaled a little too deeply, and awareness of his body snapped back to him like a rubber band. His eyes flew open, each and every one of them feeling crusted and gross. He habitually tried to rub his eyes, though only a dozen or so hands actually succeeded in the task. Sitting up, he looked at himself in the mirror again.

God, he looked about as awful as he felt.

He checked himself over once more for any other injuries before slipping back into his living room.

“Sam!” Sybil shouted from the other end of the room. Right, he had completely ignored her earlier.

“I’m fine.” He opened his fridge, dumping in the food he had gotten.

“Are you?” She shot back at him, and if he focused on watching her from his tail then he could see her eye quirked at his own disbelievingly. “You’re covered in blood.”

“I’m not covered in blood.” Sam muttered and twisted around, though this only caused Sybil to see the bandages wrapped around one his upper eyes.

“What happened to your eye?!”

“Nothing important.” He lowered himself to the ground, pulling a box of pizza bites out of the freezer because dammit, he was starving.

“I don’t think that’s ‘nothing important’.”

“I have other eyes.” Sam waved her off with a few hands while barbarically ripping open the box with a few others, pulling the bag of frozen goodies out. “I’ll be fine.”

Sybil narrowed her eye at him, and Sam made sure to make a show of rolling all of his in return. He was getting used to his new body disturbingly quick; he’d only been like this for---what, two hours? Three?

He tore through the packaging, made all the easier with sharpened claws, and dumped the entire bag into a bowl. He tossed the pizza bites into his microwave and set it for two minutes.

“What are you making?” Sybil suddenly asked, startling Sam enough to make him jolt. Thankfully, however, he didn’t knock anything over, and he swung his head around before responding.

“Pizza bites.”

Sybil smiled at that. “Sounds good. Take care of yourself, Sam.”

“You too.” She was gone by the time his mouths had finished speaking over each other, though, and Sam kneaded his hands together; a few even went to pick uncomfortably at the bandages over his hand-eye as he laid down on the carpeting surrounding his kitchenette.

Today was a lot. Today was still going to be a lot, considering that it was early in the morning, and Sam wasn’t entirely sure that he wanted to spend the next fifteen or so hours cramming through hallways and killing monsters.

Sooner rather than later, the microwave began to beep, and Sam practically attacked the thing as he got his pizza bites out, dumping them into one of his mouths. As expected, the whole bag only amounted to a pitiful bite of food and didn’t really do much except make him hungrier. He was tempted to pull out another bag, but he reminded himself that he still had fifteen days to get through and stayed his hand. Hands. Whatever.

He slinked back into his room and caught sight of the tiny little plant by his door. It hadn’t really been tiny before, but considering that Sam was significantly taller than before, it certainly appeared to be small now. Picking up the potted plant with ease (and wow, wasn’t that odd?), he looked it over a bit. Maybe he could start taking care of it; it wasn’t like he’d be able to get a new plant if this one died, after all.

He set the plant back down and turned around, grabbing a glass and returning to water the plant before drinking the rest. He proceeded to down several more frustratingly tiny glasses before he gave up trying to be normal about it and shoved his head into the sink, drinking directly from the faucet before he felt satisfied. Moving over, he splayed himself in front of the couch; he should probably head out again at some point to grab more supplies, but right now all Sam wanted to do was just take a break and forget about everything for a bit.

He could probably play some games, now that he thought about it. It would definitely be a good way to take his mind off of things---not to mention that it would help with his hand-eye coordination, considering he now had dozens more of both.

His mind made up, Sam crawled over to his games shelf and rummaged around, pulling out Super Jumplad. It’d been a while since he played this one, but there was no time like the apocalypse to revisit an old favorite.

It took him a few minutes of fumbling in order to find a close pair of hands that also had the correct number of fingers, and a few moments more to actually coordinate them into holding the controller before he remembered he had to turn on the console. For a second, Sam wanted to slap himself in the face; it had been such a hassle to pick up the controller, after all, and he didn’t want to let go of it just to press a button. Then Sam actually slapped himself in the face and he realized that he could just use one of his hundred other hands instead of letting go of the controller.

Maybe there were some upsides to turning into a giant monster, after all.

Sam gamed away the next two or so hours; he hadn’t managed to get very far in Super Jumplad despite it being a rather simple game, as it felt like he had to relearn how to use the controller. On top of that, some of his other arms would twitch or jerk if he got too invested in the movements, so he had to make a conscious effort to keep his other hands stilled lest he destroyed anything.

After turning off his setup, he stretched a little. A hundred vertebrae cracked as he arched and twisted his spine, which was a bit unsettling, but he did feel a lot better. It was close to noon now, and Sam figured that he (unfortunately) wouldn’t have enough to do in his own apartment to stay occupied for the rest of the day.

He made himself another bowl of pizza bites, downing those in a single gulp before he crawled out of his apartment and winced; he hadn’t realized how comfortable laying on his rug had been until he was back on the rough wooden floors outside, his sides scraping against everything.

His first order of business was to grab some weapons because frankly losing two eyes was a very unfun experience---Sam did not want a repeat of that, even if he didn’t like being able to see in all directions at all times. He nabbed a baseball bat and the wounded man’s bloodied knife from the aforementioned man’s apartment, curling around to grab anything else he might have missed before moving on to Vincent’s apartment.

There were a few stragglers scattered in the side rooms, though thankfully nothing that was particularly dangerous. A few of the more interesting things that Sam collected were a cartridge for a game called “Wizard’s Hell” (what a pleasant title) and a guinea pig. He had no idea why he’d taken the guinea pig, to be honest, as he wasn’t really a big fan of owning pets---hell, he could hardly keep a plant alive, let alone an animal. Maybe he just felt bad for the poor thing; it was the apocalypse, after all, and it looked like everybody in this apartment was either dead or a mindless monster. Maybe he could give the guinea pig to Sybil, if she wanted it.

Sam opened the bathroom door, intent on raiding everything inside, only to come face-to-face with something that was decidedly not one of those half-mutated onlookers. The thing looked at him with the giant eye in its stomach, brandishing its dangerously long claws, and Sam noped the hell out of there.

Scratch what he'd just said about nothing being particularly dangerous. He could save Vincent’s bathroom for later, it seemed.

Returning to the main hallway, he decided he’d check out the stairwell. The few onlookers standing at the doors were quickly dispatched with a couple good swings of Sam’s baseball bat, and he unlocked the doors and crawled into the stairwell only to come face-to-face with another problem.

How the hell was he supposed to actually use the stairs?

Sam had no idea how to go about this. Ultimately, he could just yeet himself down the steps, but that really didn’t sound like a good idea and he’d rather save that as a last resort. Sam tried awkwardly shimmying down the steps, though that kinda hurt when he banged his eyes and mouths against the rough ridges.

Okay, so that was clearly another last-resort idea. Maybe he could try walking?

Sam managed to get down two steps before his arms tangled together and he crashed down the rest of the flight.

“Fuuuuck.” Several mouths drawled, and-- hey, he wasn’t talking out of all of them at the same time anymore! That was certainly an improvement, even if it wasn’t a big one.

Unfortunately, he still had another flight of steps to clear before he could get to the second floor, and Sam’s very minute elation disappeared in an instant.

A loud thud emanated from the stairwell, followed by a few bouts of overlapped curses. Eventually, the stairwell doors opened, and Sam crawled out, looking significantly more miserable than he had been moments prior.

Note to self: figure out how to use the stairs ASAP.

A nearby gasp snapped Sam out of his misery, and he looked up to see a weird cultist person of some sort. Were they even a person? They certainly looked like they were---but then again, normal people didn’t have glowing eyes.

“Uh... hi?” Sam waved awkwardly with a couple hands, and the odd cultist seemed to decompress a little.

“Ah-- hello there, friend.” He paused for a moment. “You are a friend, right?”

“I’m not going to kill you if that’s what you’re saying, yeah.”

The cultist nodded, taking that information in stride. “Forgive me for asking, but did you by any chance happen to have come from the roof?”

“No.” Sam crossed a few arms together. “I-- uh, live on the third floor.”

The cultist sighed in relief. “That’s good. I was afraid the roof might have been breached for a moment---you are... er, quite a bit... large.”

Sam shifted on the floor a bit, suddenly aware of how small the hallway felt. “You don’t say.”

The cultist guy chuckled a little before sobering up a little, watching Sam intently. “Would you mind if I asked a few questions? We haven’t had the chance to speak with many of the Cursed.”

“‘We?’” Sam lifted a few dozen eyebrows. “Who’s ‘we’?” He didn’t ask what a Cursed was, though; he was afraid he’d know the answer.

The cultist’s eyes widened. “Oh-- my apologies! I forgot to introduce myself. I am Aster, one of four Astronomers working here. And you are...?”

“Uh, I’m Sam.” Sam said awkwardly, and from there the conversation kicked off.

The two of them exchanged questions a bit, with Aster mostly asking Sam about his experience as a Cursed so far (it was very unfun, 0/10, do not recommend looking outside) and Sam asking the Astronomer things about the secret society he belonged to.

Eventually, the two ran out of questions to ask, and Aster graciously gave Sam a small packet of gummy bears before stepping off to the side to give him room to move through.

The first thing Sam did was knock on the doors, starting with the one on the left; after a little while, a panicked, nervous voice answered him.

“Hey-- is somebody out there? Please, come in!”

Sam tried the door and found it was unlocked, peeking his head through. “Hello?”

A bulky shape moved in the darkness, making him tense and clutch his baseball bat a little tighter.

“Oh... you’re not normal...”

His eyes adjusted, and he caught sight of a woman draped in baggy clothing, clutching herself tightly. Sam thought he spotted a few eyes under her robes and exhaled sharply, remembering Vincent.

“You’re not going to attack me, right?” He asked, and the woman fervently shook her head.

“O-of course not! I’m... kinda sick anyway.”

Yeah, Sam could tell.

Unsure of what to do, he slid the rest of the way through and scrunched himself up in front of the door. The woman backed away from him cautiously, undoubtedly intimidated by him, and he raised his arms.

“I’m, uh, I’m friendly.” In case that wasn’t enough, he lowered himself to the ground, inadvertently faceplanting on most of his upper body. Ow. “I’ve been looking around for food, that’s all.”

“You-- you don’t eat people... right?”

Sam’s arms fell down as he recoiled at that, grimacing. “Why the hell would I do that?!”

“I’m conveniently bite-sized for-- uh... you.” The woman deadpanned, and the two of them stared silently at each other for a moment.

Sam laughed, his many mouths making it sound like a laugh track straight out of a sitcom, and the lady nervously laughed along.

“I-- I could make something, if you want.” She said; Sam’s stomach ached at the thought of food, and he curled away to hopefully make himself seem a bit less scary.

“That would be great, yeah.”

The lady nodded. “Just-- just stay there, please.” She said as she hurried to her kitchen---perhaps a tad bit too quickly. Seeing no reason not to, Sam settled down onto the floor and waited.

After a couple of minutes, the woman came back with two bowls of instant ramen.

“It’s not much, but I hope it’s good enough...”

Sam took the bowls from her gently, breathing in deeply. The ramen was probably the crappy cheap stuff that you could find in stores for four or five dollars, but by god it smelled like heaven on earth. He reared back and dumped all the ramen into one of his larger mouths, practically drooling at the taste of food as he set the empty bowls aside.

“This is really good.” A few of his other mouths said, voicing his thoughts as he looked over to the woman.

The woman was staring at him uncomfortably and shuffling away, and Sam realized he really was drooling. Out of several dozen mouths. On her floor.

“Shit-- sorry.” Sam wiped his mouths, though this only proved partially successful as he ended up smearing some onto his many eyes.

“Fuck.” He huffed under his breath, turning to the woman who was currently standing several meters away from him. “Could I borrow a... uh...” Crap, Sam just realized a napkin wouldn’t cut it for this. “...towel, or something?”

The woman nodded slowly, retreating into a room in the back. She returned a few seconds later with a towel in hand and hesitantly tossed it towards him; Sam snagged it off the ground and graciously wiped his faces off, immediately wiping the floor afterwards. He was about to offer the towel back before pausing.

“I can take this down to the laundry room, if you’d like.” He offered. “I’ll probably end up down there anyway, so it won’t be much of a problem for me.”

“Thank you...” The woman said, shuffling awkwardly in place. “I-- If you don’t mind, could you pick up some of my, uh, laundry? I had a load going, but I think I’m... too sick to go out.”

“Sure.” He shrugged, which ended up turning into a weird rippling movement that ran down his body and left him shivering in disgust. When that was over, he smiled a bit halfheartedly.

“I’m sorry for... uh, coming in here. I hope things get better for you.” He scooted back to the door, opening it with one hand while clenching the dirtied towel with another. He was halfway through the door when the woman piped up again.

“Who are you?”

Sam squeezed the rest of the way out before sticking his head back through the door.

“I’m Sam---uh, I live on the third floor.”

The woman smiled a little. “I think I remember that name. You were the short guy that Vincent nearly ran over the other day, right?”

Sam snorted, surprised; he didn’t think anybody else would have remembered that. “Right, that. Yeah, that was me. Not so short anymore, though.”

His eyebrows furrowed a bit as he looked at her face a bit more. “I... are you the biker lady?”

“Jeanne.” She said, and her smile took on a noticeably nervous edge. “How’d you know?”

“You dressed as one for the costume party last year. You were talking about a... gang, I think.”

“You were there?” Jeanne seemed genuinely surprised.

Sam chuckled. “Went for the free food, stayed for the drinks---I could really be using both right now, though.”

Jeanne chuckled a little with him but, as she did, a muffled voice quietly joined her. She froze suddenly, clutching her robes tightly before turning away.

“I-I think you should go, now. I’m-- still sick.” She began to walk briskly, disappearing through a doorway in her apartment.

Sam hesitated by the door for a few moments more before retreating back into the main hall.

Chapter Text

After that interesting exchange with Jeanne, Sam tried the door across the hall only to discover that it was locked. Hesitating a bit, he rapped on the door with a couple sets of knuckles and squeezed to maneuver himself into a slightly better position. He pressed an ear (pretty much the only thing he had a normal amount of anymore) to the wood and tried to listen.

Things were silent for a few moments, and Sam was going to leave the door when a quiet skittering caught his attention. He pulled back suddenly when the handle jiggled, a frustrated grunt coming from the other side of the door.

“Hello?” Sam chorused.

“Hello-- hello, yes, yes.” A muffled voice answered Sam through the door, accompanied by an odd series of clicks and then an exasperated groan. “I--I can’t get the door open. Um, I think I might have left my keys somewhere. Could you maybe find them for me?”

Losing your keys in the middle of the apocalypse. What a smart thing to do.

How could this person not unlock the door from their end, anyway?

...Whatever, he could think about that later.

“Do you know where they might be?” Sam asked as he shifted a little, eyes rubbing uncomfortably against the floorboards; crawling through the halls was starting to get really old, now.

“Um, I don’t think I would’ve left them far... Yes, I haven’t gone around in a bit.” The person on the other side clicked. “Try searching the hall. Uh, if you don’t find it there, it might be upstairs.”

“Alright.” So whoever this guy was had probably been at that party, then; Sam noted Vincent’s apartment as an area of interest in case he didn’t find the keys here.

Shuffling, he began the long and arduous task of pulling himself through the hall. It was relatively uneventful for the most part, though a boarded door growled as he walked by and Sam decided that maybe he should start hustling it.

The key was indeed at the very end of the hall, surrounded by a mountain of rubble. Sam was hesitant to approach, worried that the floor wasn’t entirely stable, but it proved stable enough to handle his weight. Key in hand, he began to awkwardly shuffle backwards through the corridor. As he passed the boarded up door, though, it banged aggressively, making Sam let out an undignified yelp and begin to crawl faster.

The wall suddenly crashed open in a burst of plaster and wood and a horrifying amalgamation of grinning mouths and eyes crawled out from the wreckage. It caught sight of Sam and its grin became impossibly wider before it started barreling down the hallway after him.

Sam screamed, the sound escaping him as a symphony straight from hell. Rearing back, he tried to run, but his hands and feet caught on each other and he ended up slamming into the ground. The grinning beast laughed menacingly, its guttural voice shaking the ground as it caught up and clawed at him. He shrieked and barely managed to slither out of the way, crawling to his feet and rearing up again.

Like this, he realized that the creature wasn’t much bigger than him, and that made him feel a smidgen less terrified. Passing the baseball bat to his uppermost pair of arms, he adjusted his footing and swung at one of the creature’s faces with all his might, cracking it right by one of its eyes. The grinning beast snarled, though the sound quickly trailed back into a maniacal laugh as it lunged and bit his side.

Sam yelled something that might have been a swear, though it ended up sounding more like the dying screams of a rabid animal. He dropped everything he had been holding as he writhed out of the beast’s teeth, smacking it with his tail and kicking it several dozen times for good measure. He scampered off to the side, hands clutching his injury as he put some more distance between them. His blood was roaring in his ears, his injury pulsing in tandem with his heartbeat; terror and adrenaline seemed to flow through his veins, yet Sam found himself oddly thrilled.

The grinning beast seemed to catch onto Sam’s growing enthusiasm as it let out another cackle, leaping after him with its tongues lolling out like the world’s most fucked up dog. He twisted and scored the creature’s side as it just barely missed him, a feral sound escaping him when he caught the sight of blood welling up in its scratches.

In his distraction, the beast managed to crush his tail underfoot, eliciting a synchronized snarl from him. He lashed out in return, hooking innumerable claws and fingers into its skin and swinging himself around the grinning creature like a snake, the sting of his injuries drowned out by the rush of the fight.

How could he have ever been scared? This was the most alive he had felt in years! For the first time that day, his body seemed to move flawlessly; limbs flowed around each other without tangling, eyes locked on a single target without confusion, mouths grinned with an excitement paralleled only by that of his opponent.

He dodged the gnashing teeth of the beast and tightened his grip when it tried to throw him off, his own teeth grinding together impatiently as he got the impulsive urge to bite. He didn’t think twice about it, sinking his teeth into the grinning beast’s flesh with a hundred mouths; the creature shrieked and finally dislodged him with a wicked thrash of its body, slamming him into the ground with a small spray of blood. He twisted onto his feet in a second, ready to retaliate, but the beast didn’t move in for another strike. Instead, it backed away, its grin never faltering as it gave one more nasty chuckle and disappeared into the darkness. He stood there dumbly for a moment, not quite processing what had happened, until...

“Holy shit, I did it.”

It was a whisper at first, overlapping and echoing.

“I did it!”

Sam pumped several free arms---the rest were busy holding his injuries---and did a little jump, which ended up causing him to stumble. He managed to catch himself, albeit clumsily, and pumped his arms again, a little more tiredly.

“I did it...!”

The hall seemed to shrink around him---when had it even gotten so spacious in the first place? Sam’s wondering was for naught, as sooner rather than later he found himself boxed in between claustrophobic walls once more. The high he had gotten from chasing off the monster quickly wore off with that, and he slumped to the floor with a long exhale, utterly exhausted.

He faintly registered the feeling of something tapping his back... or was it his leg? He shuffled, trying to adjust his position, only to realize that he was trapped. He pushed against his confines, panicked, but they didn’t budge.

The tapping on his leg became more frantic---no, wait, that wasn’t his leg, that was his tail. Awareness shot through his body at that realization, and a hundred limbs flailed blindly for a moment before he wrangled himself in.

Sam’s eyes shot open.

The overwhelming silence slowly faded into the sound of Aster’s voice worriedly asking him if he was alright, and Sam’s eyes swiveled to look back at the astronomer from his tail. Aster seemed a little taken aback by the eye contact, though he quickly got over his surprise and stood back.

“How are you feeling?”

“Like shit.” Sam’s voices muttered as he forced himself to his feet. Everything either stung or ached, and all of his mouths had a bad taste lingering in them. He rubbed his head, running several hands through his mane; it felt oily and gross, and he grimaced. “Might want to get out of the way.” He warned, waiting for Aster to move.

Once the astronomer was in the clear, Sam began to shimmy backwards, picking up any items he’d dropped during the fight as he went along. Passing by the locked door, Sam contemplated unlocking it before ultimately deciding against that; he was in no shape to handle another attack, and he wasn’t going to be taking any chances.

There was a pistol and some bullets lying around here, and Sam picked them up tiredly. He had no idea how these had gotten here nor did he really know how to use a gun, but he figured it would be better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it.

He took the opportunity to twist around in front of the stairwell doors and painfully lugged himself up to the third floor, ducking into his apartment as soon as he could. He gave Sybil some smiles and exchanged words, mostly telling her about what he had seen down on the second floor. He checked the time as he crawled into his bathroom, surprised to see that it was already 17:00. Time really flies, huh? 

Well, it was that or he had been passed out for a while, but whatever.

Sam pulled himself to his mirror, assessing his new injuries. The worst ones he had were from his skirmish with the grinning beast, and those would be harder to dress due to their size.

He groaned frustratedly, resisting the urge to smack his forehead into the sink. Why did everything have to be so inconvenient? Actually, better question: why did he have to be turned into an inconveniently giant monster?

He should probably take a shower before trying to put anything on his wounds, though. That would be smart.

If he could even take a shower at all, that is.

Sam hissed and made his way to the shower in the corner; as was the norm for his apartment, it had been supernaturally stretched into a conveniently monster-Sam-sized shape, which was... well, convenient.

He took a moment to unwrap his bandages, which was thankfully a lot easier to do than it had been to wrap them in the first place, and checked in on his eye injuries. The blood had coagulated and scabbed for the most part, looking overall not too bad, especially considering his recent fight. Ideally, he would still have eyes in those sockets, but he supposed that this was good at least; neither eye socket looked infected, after all, and Sam was certain that that would have been a pain to try and treat (given the current circumstances).

He stepped into the shower carefully, paying extra attention to keep his legs coordinated as he walked in and sort of curled up in the middle of the space. He leaned down and reached for the water valves only to pause, looking up at the shower head.

The showerhead, despite everything that had happened, was still very human sized, and there was absolutely no way he’d be able to use it as easily as he had before.

Well, that was just great.

Showering, unsurprisingly, ended up being a lot of work. It had been hard to clean himself, considering that he was a lot longer than he was used to, and he learned the hard way that he’d have to be extra careful about getting soap in his eyes. His mane, thankfully, was a lot easier to wash than the rest of him, though it felt uncomfortably heavy with it soaked through.

Well, he supposed he now knew why cats didn’t like getting wet, at least.

Drying off also proved to be a challenge, and in the end Sam begrudgingly gave up trying to use towels for his mane, settling for shaking some of the water off like a dog. It only partially worked, but it was better than having to go through all of his towels in one sitting.

Though... his bathroom was covered in water because of that. He should probably clean that up or something.

...Nah, that would be a problem for future Sam.

He crawled back over to his now-comically-large medicine cabinet, feeling a little more rejuvenated than before, and got to work distributing his meagre medicinal supplies across his injuries, wrapping the worst of them with the bandages he had left.

He ate some dinner, which ended up being some of the frozen fish and vegetables he had found during his scavenging escapades, finishing it off with the packet of gummies Aster handed him earlier. It was still practically nothing, but Sam couldn’t afford to eat his entire stock of food in one sitting when he still had 14 days left of this... apocalypse.

This really was the apocalypse, huh?

Everybody who looked outside was turned into a monster. Hell, Sam hadn’t even looked out there---he’d just left his curtains open, and apparently being exposed to the thing in the sky was enough to turn him into whatever the hell he was now. And from what he’s seen in the apartment, not every monster-Cursed-whatever was sane. There was no way for anyone to know not to look outside, after all; Sam himself would have probably done it at some point if Sybil hadn’t warned him, even if her warning had come a little bit too late.

Sam pulled Super Jumplad off of the game shelf and plugged it into his console, booting it up again. This time, his hands managed to coordinate better, and he made a little more progress than he had earlier in the day. A couple of times he swore something brushed against his sides, though he quickly chalked it up to his arms' continued twitching as he gamed.

A few hours later, he stopped playing, halfheartedly standing up from the floor to brush his... teeth...

Oh fuck.

Sam looked up and down himself, watching his mouths curl into a multitude of frowns. He probably had a thousand more teeth now---was he going to have to brush all of them?! Well, he could just not brush them, but he didn’t want to figure out what getting a cavity was like in the middle of the apocalypse. He briefly imagined an oral surgeon operating on several of his mouths at once, and Sam chuckled a little hysterically at the sheer nonsensicality of the image.

Well, there weren’t going to be any dentists in the apocalypse, and even if there were, none would be used to operating on... uh, a monster. It’d be better to just play it safe.

By the time he’d finished brushing all 33 of his mouths (yes, he counted them), he was pretty sure his water bill was somewhere in the hundreds. He really hoped that he wouldn’t have to pay for rent or utilities, but, knowing his landlord, he would probably end up doing exactly that---the old man took no excuses, even if the world was ending. Which it was, probably, but he didn’t like to think about that.

Rent was just another issue for future Sam, though, so he shelved that worry for some other day and made his way back into his room, only to very belatedly realize that his bed was in shambles.

Really, he shouldn’t be surprised. He’d turned into a giant fucking monster sometime in the middle of the night---of course his bed was going to be destroyed. That didn’t stop him from facepalming several times at once, though.

Sam grumbled to himself, using his tail and some arms to shovel the remains of his bed into an unused corner of the room before curling up where his bed used to be, draping himself over his mane and closing all of his eyes.

Chapter Text

Sam woke up the next morning contorted into one of, if not the most uncomfortable position known to mankind. Monsterkind. Cursedkind. Whatever.

Of course, he’d also woken up thinking he was still human, and proceeded to have a freak out similar to (albeit much smaller than) yesterday’s after realizing he was anything but.

A muffled groan came from his shared wall and Sybil’s eye appeared in the crack, looking very disgruntled.

“You sound like you’re dying in here.” She mumbled, her exhaustion evident; she’d probably just woken up.

“Look, I’m not used to waking up as a fuckass monster every morning!” Sam shot back frustratedly, though his ire wasn’t directed at Sybil. He clumsily made his way to his feet, swaying precariously for a moment before he steadied himself against the ceiling; he moved to pinch his nose only to belatedly realize he didn't have one to speak of, and ended up accidentally smacking himself in the mouth a dozen times. He huffed in exasperation and switched to dragging his eyelids down instead.

“Sorry for waking you up.”

Sybil’s gaze softened a little. “It’s alright. I can’t really expect you to get used to things immediately---I’m still trying to adjust, too.”

Sam calmed down a little more, taking deep breaths through his mouths. After that was said and done, he stretched, making sure to not strain any injuries; his spine made a couple satisfying cracks, and several dozen arms and legs popped in their sockets.

“So, how’ve you been holding up?” Sam asked once he didn’t feel like he’d been put through a hydraulic press. “Any luck opening your door?”

“I’ve been hanging on for now.” Sybil responded. “It’s nothing too bad, but nothing really good, either. Still no luck with my door.”

“Wait, hold on.” Sam suddenly remembered something, scuttling out of his room. His everything ached terribly, but he had to get used to it; he didn’t really have a choice, given his current situation.

Centipeding his way through his living room, he grabbed a cage by the door and held it up to Sybil, who had already moved to the crack in this room.

“I found a guinea pig yesterday, when I was out. I thought maybe you’d want to have it?”

Sybil narrowed her eye suspiciously at the rodent. “Is it...? You know...”

“I found it in a room with no windows, so I think it’s safe.” Sam said, bringing the guinea pig closer to her. Sybil shot it another suspicious look before eventually relenting, her gaze softening.

“What’s its name?”

“Uhhhhhhhhh...” Sam turned the cage around. He spotted a word scrawled in permanent marker on the feeder, and continued. “...I think its name is Cinnamon?”

“That’s a cute name.” Sybil smiled, but it quickly disappeared. “I don’t think you’ll be able to get it through the wall, though.”

“Yeah,” Sam scratched the back of his head, inadvertently scratching the back of his back with several other hands at the same time---not that he really minded, anyway. “When you get your door opened, I can give it to you, if you want.”

“That’d be nice.” Sybil said. “I’m gonna go grab some breakfast now, but I’ll let you know if anything happens.”

Sam nodded, and she retreated back into her wall. Setting the guinea pig down on the living room coffee table, he decided he should probably do the same and crawled over to his fridge. Nabbing some pizza bites, he tossed the whole thing into the microwave before devouring them in a single bite, as was becoming the norm for him. His already meagre supply of food was quickly dwindling, and Sam knew that he would have to go out on another run again today.

He was lying on his carpet, stewing in existential dread and definitely not procrastinating on leaving his apartment when Sybil came back.

“I-- I saw something outside.” She sounded rattled, which in turn alarmed Sam.

“What was it?” He sat up the best he could in his apartment, struggling to his feet.

“I didn’t get a good look, but... it looked like a person?” Sybil narrowed her eye contemplatively. “It couldn’t have been, though---it was... growling, like an animal.”

“I’ll check it out.” Sam said, already heading to the door, but Sybil stopped him.

“Wait, at least bring a baseball bat with you! I don’t know what that thing is capable of, so... be careful out there, alright?”

Sam backtracked to grab his baseball bat and bloodied knife (he’d forgotten to clean the blood off, go figure) and looked back to Sybil with several eyes along his body.

“Don’t worry, I’ll be okay.” He said, and then squeezed out of his apartment.

The blood from yesterday was still splattered all across the floor, though all of it had dried up at this point. Sam crammed into the hallway and aimed himself left, where he could see a person-shaped shadow move about in the dim light.

He gave his injuries a quick look-over, deeming them to have been healed up enough before starting to approach the figure.

“Hello...?” He brought his bat to his uppermost pair of arms and scooched closer to the figure, wary of what it might have in store for him.

“They’re spreading...” The figure responded in a hushed voice, staggering towards him. “The teeth... they’re spreading...”

That was definitely not ominous in the slightest.

Despite better judgement, Sam continued to slide his way forwards, adjusting his grip on the bat, and the figure stepped into one of the hall’s dying lights to reveal a rabid man frothing at the mouth. His right arm seemed to have been completely overtaken by-- oh, those must be the teeth the guy was talking about.

“I need to bite... g-grow the teeth... on YOU!” Saliva flew from the man’s mouth with every word spoken, and he suddenly broke out into a dash. Sam let out a yelp and reared back as much as he could, hands and feet scrabbling to retreat as fast as possible---he already had enough teeth as he was, thank you very much.

His attempt at backing up wasn’t enough, however; the man caught up to him, maw opened wide, and bit down on one of Sam’s lower arms.

“Shit!” Sam snarled out of his thirty mouths, immediately retaliating with a nasty swing of his baseball bat; the blow struck the man’s skull head-on, stunning him for a moment. Sam got a better look at the man’s face, and--

“Clint?” Sam lowered his guard for a brief moment, which was enough time for the man to recover from Sam’s attack and lunge once more.

“She was in her crib...” Clint made a horrible choking sound as he swung his arm like a club, solidly nailing Sam in the side. “...out by the window when it happened...”

Sam grunted as his upper body was forced into the wall, pushing off the floor to swing at Clint again.

“Snap out of it!” Sam roared at the tooth-ridden man, twisting to the side just in time to dodge another rabid bite.

“I have her smile... her beautiful smile...!”

Clint rushed at Sam head-on, biting on Sam’s already-injured arm, but Sam wasn’t going to take this lying down. He managed to bite down on Clint’s non-infested arm with his lower mouths, his jaws nearly aching from the force he put behind it. A combination of jerking his mouths and pushing with his other hands was enough to dislodge the rabid man, though not without grievous injuries on Sam’s behalf.

“She b-bit me on the arm...” Clint stood up again, though Sam could see that he was beginning to slow down, his injured arm hindering his movements. “...now I... I’m growing her teeth! Her beautiful baby teeth!”

Sam would be hard pressed to call the near-cancerous mass of teeth on Clint’s arm beautiful, but to each their own.

“Clint, please!” Sam chorused one more time; he didn’t want to kill another person, not now. “What about your family?”

“Family...?” Clint muttered, stumbling towards Sam---this was the most coherent he’d seen the tooth-ridden man for the entire fight. “F-family?”

More teeth sprouted from the horrific bite marks Sam had left behind, bursting from his damaged skin in a gush of blood. “...I have... to k-keep... my...”

He lashed out suddenly, his club-like arm smacking Sam square across some of his lower faces. Teeth clattered to the floor in a bloody mess, but Sam couldn’t tell whose they were. With a grimace, he wound up his bat and swung it with every bit of strength he could muster, smashing it directly into Clint’s face.

Immediately, the rabid man collapsed to the ground, his face pulverized. Teeth sprouted from his wounds at an increasingly slower rate, sluggishly taking over the man’s bloodied face.

“...family...”

Clint’s final words were burbled through the pool of blood that had formed on his face, and then he moved no more.

Sam stood solemnly for a long while, looking down at Clint’s mangled body. The teeth had stopped budding at this point, their growth finally ending with Clint’s life.

“...I’m sorry.”

Sam didn’t know Clint and his family too well, but he had been friendly with them in the past. God-- Sam had gotten a gift for their oldest son on his birthday a few years back, when everybody on the floor had agreed to help Clint and his wife set up the kid’s birthday party. He’d exchanged friendly words with them, said hello, said goodbye, and now--

Clint was dead.

He looked down to the mass of teeth and blood that had once been his neighbor, dread pooling in his gut. Sam hoped that Clint’s family was alright, but already he was getting a really bad feeling about this.

He bandaged his injured arm tightly before he crept closer to Clint’s apartment; the door was broken down from the inside, similar to how Sam had found Vincent’s apartment, and he inhaled sharply.

Not good.

The floorboards inside the apartment were horribly damaged, and Sam wasn’t confident that they would hold his weight fully. The eerie wails of a baby echoed faintly from the gaping holes in the ground, unnerving him.

Two teeth-things tried to attack him soon after he entered, though both were easily swept into the pit with a few batted hands. Besides those, however, there wasn’t much else; the leftmost door was missing its handle entirely, and what appeared to be the kitchen was separated from the rest of the room by the pit. Backtracking, Sam opened the first door to his right, entering a bathroom. The quiet sound of brushing teeth echoed through the area.

“Hello?” Sam did his best to wrangle in his mouths as he whispered, succeeding in speaking with few enough to be intelligible.

“Hrold onn,” A young voice gurgled back, and Sam’s heart, wherever it was in his body, sank. “‘m brshhing mrry trth.”

Sam inched his way forwards and saw a child in front of the sink, furiously scrubbing at his teeth with a toothbrush. The child spotted Sam through the mirror, spat out his toothpaste, and turned around slightly.

“Hi!” The child seemed oddly cheerful. “Are you a monster?”

The question caught Sam off guard and he twisted back a little, a nervous chuckle escaping his mouths.

“Um... well...” Sam averted his eyes, scratching his mane awkwardly---he had no idea how to handle this question tactfully. “What do you think?”

The child turned around to continue brushing his teeth, mumbling, “‘thnk yrr kndrr funnny!”

Sam chuckled again, a little less nervously this time. “So... I’m not a monster?”

“Nah,” The kid spat into the sink again. “You’re a funny monster! Were you bitten by her too?”

“By who?”

“Hol’ on.” The kid got more toothpaste and started brushing again. “Gotta get the third row...”

A few moments of awkward silence followed before the kid continued.

“My sister! She bit everybody. Mom and Ben got bit pretty bad. Me and Dad were lucky, ‘cause she only bit us once.” The kid finally swished his mouth and spat, turning around to reveal a gaping maw spanning half of his face. “You got a lotta teeth, so I thought maybe she bit you, too.”

Sam tried not to wince, backing away slightly. “I think I have something a little bit different than you.”

“Really?” The kid sounded almost incredulous. “Then how did you get so much teeth?”

Uhhhh. “I’m... not quite sure.” Sam very deliberately shrugged with only his uppermost pair of arms. “I don’t remember getting bit by anybody, though.”

That was a lie, but none of those bites were what turned him into a giant monster, so he could leave out the technicalities.

“I think I’m growing more teeth.” The kid said suddenly, and-- yeah, Sam could see the edge of the his mouth begin to split upwards. Suddenly, the kid didn’t look so happy anymore. “I wish they’d stop growing. It hurts.”

Sam frowned; he hadn’t been awake for his own mutation, but he couldn’t imagine that it would have been a particularly pleasant experience.

“Is there... anything I can do for you?” He asked, fiddling a few arms as he looked over to the kid.

“...” The kid was silent, his little hands clenching into tight fists. “...I want Fuzzy.”

Sam had no idea what that was, but he nodded and smiled anyway. “Alright, I’ll get Fuzzy. You stay here, okay?”

The kid nodded, sliding to the floor and hugging himself as his mouth fissured even farther, teeth growing dangerously close to his eye. Sam awkwardly shuffled backwards and out of the bathroom, making sure to stay away from the giant hole in the floor as he moved to the next door over.

The other room was infested with more of those teeth-things, and Sam had to fumble for his baseball bat before hitting the nearest one over the top of its head-body. The bat cracked ominously in his hands, and Sam grimaced.

Right, he couldn’t expect his weapons to last forever.

He whacked the rest of the teethlings away, and each of the tumorous growths died on impact. There was another thing in here, however, and Sam reared back his bat for another swing before pausing.

It... didn’t seem to be paying attention to him. The blobby mess of teeth and flesh looked to be rooted in place, and... was it playing with toys?

Sam slowly lowered his bat and crossed the room. The creature paid him no mind as he went about, collecting anything that might prove to be useful later. Surprisingly enough, Sam found Fuzzy---or, at least, a teddy bear that Sam figured might be Fuzzy, considering that it had the aforementioned name scrawled on its tag.

Sam picked up the bear and backed out of the room, keeping an eye on the creature before closing the door behind him. He scurried back into the bathroom, teddy in hand, and approached the kid.

“Hey... uh...” He curled into view, offering the toy in his uppermost hands. “I got Fuzzy for you.”

The kid looked up, and-- holy shit, his face was already gone. “Hhh-- Fuzzy...?”

Sam couldn’t read the kid’s expression considering that there wasn’t much left to read, but he could still almost feel the child’s happiness at seeing(?) the stuffed animal. Sam gently plopped it into the child’s hands and retreated, smiling bittersweetly thirty times over as he watched the kid hug his toy tightly.

“Thank you-- hhh-- Mr. Handy!” The kid huffed happily. Sam had to do a double take at the name.

“...Mister Handy?”

“Yeah, ‘cause you have a lotta hands.”

Fair point. “Well, you can call me Sam.” Sam said. He awkwardly tacked on, “Because that’s my name. Yeah.”

“Oh! Like the Mr. Sam who lives across the hall?” The kid huffed; Sam was pretty sure his name started with a J, now that he was thinking about it.

“Yeah. Um, that’s me.” Sam shuffled uncomfortably, once again reminded of the inhuman abomination he had become. “I’m the Sam from across the hall.”

“Really?” The kid sounded a bit incredulous. What was the kid’s name... “‘cause Dad said he never comes out of his apartment.”

Ouch. Way to call him out on that, Joe. No, no, Joe wasn’t quite right. Sam was getting there, though.

“Well, I’m out here now, yeah?” Sam chuckled to relieve some of his stress---why was he so awkward? Joel was like 6 or something.

Wait.

“You’re Joel, right?”

The kid perked up and nodded. “Yeah.”

Sam scanned outside the room with an eye on his tail, thankfully finding nothing. Still...

“Joel, I don’t think it’s safe here.” Sam laid down on the ground.

“Why?” Joel asked, cheerfulness fading into something a little more somber.

“...Something bad’s happening outside right now. It’s hurting people, and... they aren’t the same.” Sam didn’t want to lie to the kid, but the truth was hard to admit, too. “Your family... aren’t themselves. Not anymore. If you stay here, you might get hurt.”

Joel seemed to contemplate that for a little while. “Can we help them?”

Sam winced, unsure of what to say to the kid. “I...”

Joel clambered over Sam, prompting him to hiss a few times when the kid accidentally kicked some of his eyes.

“Ow-- ow, careful!” Sam called back to the kid, who huffed out an apology as he finally made it back into the main room. Sam backed out after Joel, who ran up to the door that was missing its handle. He tried to stick something into the hole where the handle had been in, but it didn’t seem to work.

“What are you doing?” Sam called after the kid.

“I’m-- hhh-- going to help Mom!”

Sam caught up to Joel, dragging himself over with a grimace. “I’m not sure if that’s a good idea...”

“But Mom was-- hhh-- really hurt.”

That sounded very bad. “She might need a bit of time for herself, y’know?”

“But we gotta take her to the nurse!” Joel exclaimed. The doorknob he was trying to get in slipped from its socket, eliciting a quiet huff from the kid. 

Despite himself, Sam asked, “...You need help?”

Joel looked up at him (how could that kid still see??) and held out a doorknob.

“I can’t get it in.” He huffed. This seemed like a bad idea, going deeper into the apartment, but Sam was still running low on food---not to mention that he’d feel pretty bad leaving anybody behind.

Sam gingerly took the metal handle from the kid and leaned towards the door, trying to figure out how he was going to do this. With a little bit of fiddling and some help from his claws he managed to fix the screws back in place, and he tested the knob.

The door swung open without any issue, the room beyond almost too dark to see. Sam spotted movement, though, and leaned down to tell Joel to be careful.

Only to discover that Joel was no longer there.

Dammit.

Chapter Text

Sam hurried through the doorway, trampling several teethlings in the process. A half-hearted swipe of his tail knocked them into the chasm in the middle of the room, ensuring that they wouldn’t be a problem later as he rushed after the boy.

“Joel!” Sam chorused into the room. “Joel, hold on!”

A pair of quiet voices from the other side of the room caught Sam’s ear, and he immediately beelined to their source.

“It’s okay, honey. It’s me.” A gangly woman whispered, hugging her cardigan like her life depended on it; previous encounters told Sam that there was probably something nasty hiding under there.

Joel stood a few paces away from the woman---Madison, Sam thought that was her name. The kid looked a little hesitant.

“Mom...?” Joel’s voice was quiet, and he reached out a hand.

Madison snatched Joel’s wrist aggressively, her smile shifting into something a little more deranged. The kid yelped as he was tugged forth into Madison’s arms, and something glinted in the dim light as her jacket parted slightly.

“It’s okay, honey. I’ll keep you safe... I’ll keep you safe.”

“Hey!” Sam snarled, his crowd of voices shouting over each other as he came to a stop. A few floorboards snapped and fell into the chasm, but he hardly noticed. 

Madison’s smile turned to Sam. “Oh, my baby’s here...” He caught a glimpse of a few teeth on her neck as she took a step closer. “You’re so beautiful... Come here.”

Sam’s gusto left him as he took a few steps back; okay, this was getting really weird.  He was starting to feel uncomfortable, and it seemed that Joel was in a similar boat.

“Mom...? That’s-- hhh-- Mr. Sam...” Joel tried to squirm away from Madison, but she kept him tight under her arm. He thrashed a little more, his mouth twisting into something resembling a frown. “Mom, that-- hhhurts...!”

“You’ve grown so much in just a few days.” The woman lilted, walking towards Sam. He reared up to avoid her, though he could only go so high with the low ceiling of the apartment. Several arms shot out and grabbed at everything he could reach to steady himself, his legs stumbling back as he readjusted his grip on the baseball bat.

The situation was beginning to escalate. Not good.

“You must be so hungry...” The woman cooed at Sam like he was a child---though, to be fair, she apparently thought he was one, so...

“Come, let mama nurse you...!” Madison let go of Joel and her cardigan fell open, revealing a myriad of vicious jaws gnashing where her torso used to be. 

Sam let out a startled yelp, which was ironic considering he had just as many mouths as she did. Joel took the opportunity to scramble away from his mom and cornered himself at the edge of the room right as his mother lunged for Sam.

Sam took a swing at Madison, striking her ribs and sending her flying towards the crib with a resounding crack. Joel let out a horrified scream, stepping out of his corner to grab some of Sam’s lower arms.

“STOP IT!”

“She’s not okay!” Sam snapped back, but he didn’t follow up his attack. “We need to go!”

Without waiting for a reply, he snagged Joel and scrambled backwards, holding the baseball bat out at Madison threateningly. This didn’t seem to deter her in the slightest as she stood back up and advanced, her teary eyes and unsettling smile never wavering.

“It’s okay, honey... mama’s here.”

Sam reached the door and set Joel down, quickly ushering the boy through the doorway. He snarled at Madison when the woman came too close, shoving her away with a few hands. This had the unfortunate effect of shredding his fingers on her teeth, but Sam could hardly care less.

“Come on, sweetie... it’s alright... I’m alright...”

“Stop it!” Joel shrieked; at this point, it was unclear who he was screaming at. The boy desperately tried to push past Sam and wailed. “Mom!”

Sam finally made it through the door and slammed it shut before the woman could follow him through. Madison banged the door aggressively, muttering feverishly all the while.

“I’m so sorry I scared you... Please come back...!”

In the spur of the moment, Sam barricaded the door using the largest thing in the room: himself.

The door came dangerously close to buckling several times before the pounding came to a stop. Sam held the door a little longer---probably longer than he needed to, if he was going to be honest---before hesitantly backing away. 

The door did not open.

Breathing out a sigh of relief, Sam turned to Joel; the boy was curled up in a corner, shaking as he took in stuttered, gasping breaths.

“Joel...?” Sam whispered and reached out, taking care to not use one of his bloodied hands. The boy shrank away from him in turn.

“Go-- hhh-- away!”

“I’m sorry--” Sam flinched and pulled back, frowning. His heart sank like a lead weight, guilt gnawing at his conscience more than what Madison’s teeth had done to his fingers.

“Leave me-- hhh-- alone!” Joel shouted again, turning his back to Sam.

“I-I can’t. It’s dangerous here.” He’d feel horrible if something happened to Joel.   

“You-- hhh-hit Mom!” Joel spat, refusing to look at Sam. He thought he could see drool drip down the kid’s face---no, wait, were those tears?

Sam was finding it harder to keep it together. “I-I know.” He chorused. Something horrible welled up in his chest at the sight of Joel, and he begrudgingly let it spill out.

“I’m sorry.” 

“I d-didn’t want to--” “--hurt her.”

“I’m s-sorry.”

“She was hurting you.”

Sam spoke over himself, a constant flood of apologies gushing from his mouths, and he didn’t know how to stop himself. He wasn’t sure he wanted to stop.

“--She attacked us.” “I’m sorry.” 

“I’m sorry.” 

“I don’t want--” 

“--you to get hurt.” 

“--to leave you behind.” 

“--to be here anymore.”

Distantly, he realized that he was using his mouths individually---for once, his words could keep up with his thoughts, and it was almost cathartic in a way. 

One mouth laughed bitterly for him at this realization.

“So much for not being a monster, huh?” It hissed, the bitter acid of self deprecation slicing through the other words like a hot knife through butter.

It may have been his quietest thought, but it rippled towards the surface and cut off the rest. Sam snapped his mouths shut the moment the words left him, leaving the room in an eerie silence. 

Joel was staring at him with an indiscernible expression (which wasn’t hard, given his face was a giant mouth), though his jaws seemed tense. 

Eventually, the distant wails of an infant quietly echoed from the massive hole in the floor, and Sam hesitantly opened his mouths, his voices thankfully speaking in unison.

“S-sorry for that.”

He made his way to the apartment door, guilt gnawing in his gut as he banished himself from the teeth family’s residence. He headed straight for his own apartment and managed to duck into his bathroom just when his eyes started to burn.

Dammit, Sam, get it together! He was a man, not a-- a...

...

He wasn’t a man though, was he?

He was a monster.

It was obvious. He should have known. Nothing he did would have helped.

A monster couldn’t be a hero.

Shit, Sam couldn’t be a hero, monster or not. He was never a hero.

He never was a good guy. He never would be a good guy.

He was--

--stupid--

--pathetic--

--horrible--

--weak--

--a fucking piece of shit!

Sam snarled and halfheartedly slammed his shredded fingers into the sink, smearing blood on the stained porcelain as he looked into the mirror.

He saw himself a thousand times over, through the mirror and through his reflection’s eyes.

Maybe this was what he was all along.

A bloated monster that took and killed and--

“Shut up.” He growled animalistically.

...God, he sounded like a monster--

“SHUT UP.”

Here he was, in the middle of the apocalypse, and all he could do was feel miserable about himself.

“Get your shit together.”

Sam averted his gaze from the mirror, looking down at his hands. Right, they’d been chewed horribly---he should probably get that fixed.

Sam grabbed some ointment from his medicine cabinet, barely using enough to cover his bleeding fingers. Dammit, the bottle was almost empty. Actually, scratch that; his cabinet as a whole was almost empty. He’d need to stock up on more medical supplies if he wanted to go out and get more food. 

Speaking of which, he hadn’t gotten anything earlier; he’d been a bit sidetracked with Joel.

He should probably go talk to Joel.

Sam wiped his uppermost eyes, only then realizing he had been crying.

All of him had been crying.

He tried to wipe his eyes on his arms, though he didn’t end up getting them all. The cold air bit at his teartracks and stung his eyes.

God, he felt stupid.

Eventually, he slunk out of his bathroom, exchanged a few words with Sybil to distract himself, and left his apartment once again. He made his way to the teeth apartment, where he was unsurprised to find that Joel was no longer huddled in the corner Sam had left him at. Instead, after a quick search, Sam found the boy curled up in the bathroom where they had first met.

“Hey, Joel. It’s... it’s me.” Sam slid himself in, making sure to keep near the door to give the kid some distance.

Joel didn't show any sign of acknowledging Sam's presence, so he continued. “I’m sorry... uh, about your family.” He winced at his own words; why did he have to be so bad at this?

Joel shifted but still didn’t say anything. Sam opted to lay down, tail curling around the corner to watch for if anything came along.

“...Why are-- hhh-- you here?” Joel’s voice cracked and he hugged his stuffed animal harder, one of Fluffy’s ears resting on his second jaw.

Sam’s eyes slowly moved to meet with where Joel’s had once been and he sighed.

“I didn’t want to leave you alone.”

For a moment, the only sound in the bathroom was their breathing. 

Then, Joel shifted again.

“...I’m scared.” The boy admitted. “Everyone’s-- hhh-- acting weird. Ben c-can’t-- hhh-- move. Mom and Dad are-- hhh-- scary.” 

Some more tears formed where Joel’s eyes should have been. “I w-wish-- hhh-- that things would go b-back to-- hhh-- normal.”

Joel suddenly stood up from his spot and ran over. The boy hugged Sam, squishing some of the latter’s eyes.

“‘m sorry.” The kid mumbled into Sam’s uppermost shoulder. Sam gently hugged back, unsure of what to do or say.

He just wanted to make sure Joel was okay.

“I-- hhh-- I wanna go...”

“How about we stay at my place for a bit?” Sam tried to keep his voices quiet as he felt Joel nod. 

Picking up the kid, Sam was about to exit the apartment when Joel squirmed in his arms.

“Wait... I wanna-- hhh-- say goodbye to Ben.”

He reluctantly set Joel down and followed the kid into the childrens’ bedroom. 

Joel walked over to the tumorous lump of teeth and tissue, and Sam watched as the thing---Ben---perked up slightly, letting out a gurgle that vaguely sounded like Joel’s name.

The two of them played together while Sam silently kept watch. 

As the siblings messed around however, Ben’s condition seemed to worsen. After a while, the boy's face split open, and he shakily handed his older brother a bag of goodies before becoming unresponsive.

“Bye, Ben.” Joel whispered, setting down his army figurine and wiping his face on a sleeve. He turned to Sam, who was awkwardly half-squeezed into the room.

“We can-- hhh-- go now.”

The atmosphere in Sam’s apartment was surprisingly cheery despite the somberness of their situation. 

Joel was playing Kill to Shoot on Sam’s console; the kid was pretty good at the game, even if he seemed a bit distracted. Sybil was watching Joel play, getting herself a bit invested in the game and trying to cheer up Joel by asking him questions about the plot.

Sam, on the other hand, was crouched at his fridge trying to decide what he’d do. He should probably save the better food for Joel, since anything Sam made for himself ended up disappearing in one bite. With that in mind, Sam pulled out some fish and tomatoes for Joel, unboxing one of his frozen meals for himself.

The tomato fish wasn’t all that hard to prepare, and Sam only had to wait two minutes for his own meal to finish microwaving. Checking the time, he noted that it was a little past noon; he’d definitely have to head back out after this.

Sam couldn’t say they both ate in silence, considering that his rather shitty meal had been devoured in a second, but he could say that they both stewed in mutual silence. 

Once Joel was finished, Sam tried to cough into his hand, though he failed to account for the fact that he had more than one mouth to cover and ended up making more of a choked noise.

“Sorry.” Sam muttered. “Uh, Joel. I’m going to head out for some more supplies, alright? I need you to stay here.” He didn’t want to see the kid get hurt---not after he’d seen so many others die.

Joel very obviously frowned at Sam. “I don’t wanna-- hhh-- be alone.” The kid wheezed.

“You won’t be alone---Sybil’s just nextdoor.”

“But I wanna go with you-- hhh!”

“You might get hurt out there.” Sam said, and Joel seemed to consider that for a bit before pointing at Sam’s various bandages.

“You’re getting hurt too, though.”

Damn kids and their ability to point out hypocrisies.

“I can take it. I’m an adult.” Also he was a four-and-a-half-meter-tall monster, but Sam didn’t want to talk about that.

Joel huffed and crossed his arms. “I can do it too! I’m 8!”

Yeeeeeeeaaaaaahhhhhhh... there was no way Sam was letting an eight-year-old experience the horrors with him. “You’re going to stay here. You can talk with Sybil while I’m gone, alright?”

The two of them had an impromptu staring contest, though considering that Sam had several hundred eyes and Joel had none it was kind of awkward. 

The boy eventually crossed his arms and plopped down onto the couch, presumably glaring angrily at the wall. Sam was pretty sure this was the best he was going to be getting for now, so he crawled over to the crack in the wall and knocked several times.

He hears some shuffling before his neighbor’s eye showed up through the gap in the wall.  “Hey, what’s up?” Sybil sounded like she was talking with her mouth full---Sam had probably interrupted her lunch. Whoops.

“Sorry for this but, uh, I need you to watch Joel while I go get more stuff. I don’t want him to get hurt.”

Sybil’s eye narrowed. “I don’t think I can do much to stop him if he tries to leave, but sure.”

Sam grinned with thirty sets of teeth and nodded. “Thanks, Sybil.”

“It’s no problem.” She responded, and he gave her a little wave before he ducked out into the hall.

Sam pulled himself out of the stairwell looking a little worse for wear; bits of trash were stuck in his mane from his trip to Floor 2 (in the most literal sense), and frankly he didn’t have the patience to pick it all out.

He gave Aster a small wave as he passed by, staring down the hallway. It looked completely normal, nothing like the dark void he remembered fighting that monster in; hell, the wall wasn’t even broken anymore! The previously boarded door was now missing entirely to reveal a dark abyss beyond, though, and Sam wasn’t entirely sure if that was a good thing.

Well, whatever. He’d need to check there eventually, may as well do it now.

Sam shuffled down the hallway and stuck his head into the empty doorway, coming face-to-face with a grinning woman.

“Heh heh heh.” The woman wheezed a chuckle. “You back for a round two?”

“What?” Sam retracted his head a little, but the woman stepped closer.

“You were fun to fight. Heh heh heh.” The woman’s grin became eerily wider. “You bite back.”

What the hell was this lady talking about?

“Don’t tell me you don’t recognize me... heh heh heh.” The woman’s unsettling chuckles were starting to grind on Sam’s nerves, now. “You gotta remember when I did THIS!”

The moment she finished talking, she snapped her jaws at him---jaws that suddenly had way too many teeth for a normal person to have. A blue tongue lolled out of her mouth, and Sam’s eyes widened in recognition.

“That thing was you?!”

“Yup! Heh heh heh...” The grinning beast-woman-person-thing seemed to enjoy Sam’s reaction, making a show of her teeth and tongues and eyes before letting her monstrous features fade back into an almost-unassuming human face. 

That must be really convenient for her, not having to cram herself through every hallway.

Wait.

Hmmm...

“...How do you do that?” Sam asked bluntly.

“Do what? Heh heh heh...”

Sam bit back a hiss; that woman knew damn well what he was talking about. “How do you turn back into a human?”

The woman cackled, loud and boisterous. “HAHAHA! Human?! HahaHA!”

“What?” Sam was slowly retreating back into the hallway, intimidated by the sudden outburst.

“I’m not a human! Heh heh heh.” The woman’s laughter died down, though she still kept chuckling to herself.

“Well, yeah, that’s kind of obvious with the whole ‘giant monster’ thing you did yesterday.” Sam deadpanned. “What I mean is... how do you look like a person?”

The woman regarded him with that same, eerie smile. “It’s a secret! Heh heh heh.”

“Just tell me.” Sam snarled, and the woman grinned almost ferally at him.

“Heh heh heh... I’ll tell you... if you do a rematch with me. Heh heh.”

Sam very nearly accepted her offer, desperate as he was to return to a form that was even remotely human, but stopped himself at the very last second. He was in no shape to fight this grinning woman again; he’d probably be able to do it if she stayed human, but Sam severely doubted that.

“Uhh... no.”

The woman’s grin faltered for the first time since he’d met her, turning into something that almost looked like a frown. “Heh heh... what?”

“I’m not fighting you.” Sam ducked out of the doorway, and the grinning woman followed him out.

“Oh, come on. You know you wanna fight!”

“You bit me.” Sam reached over to try the door across from the woman’s place, but the door was locked.

“Heh heh... you bit me, too. Heh.”

That was a good point, but Sam wasn’t going to acknowledge that---he wasn’t insane, unlike this woman. He began to crawl backwards, but the woman wouldn’t stop following him.

“Stop running away and fight me already!”

Annoyed at her persistence, Sam huffed loudly. “We can fight later, then.” He groaned. “But not right now.”

That seemed to satisfy the woman. “...Alright then, heh heh...”

Sam almost sighed in relief at finally getting this woman off his tail (or head, as he was at the moment), but as he continued down the hall he realized that she wasn’t going back.

“Uhhh... you can go back, now.” Please go back, he really didn’t want to fight her right now, please please please please--

“Heh heh heh... but I want to hang out. Heh heh.” The woman rasped, and Sam did his best to plaster some smiles on his faces.

“...Haha, uh...” He should say no. He should definitely say no. He was pretty sure this monster woman was going to kill him. 

Just say no. 

She probably won’t care, anyway. 

…

“...ssssssssure.”

Why did he say that.

“Heh heh heh... great! Let’s hang out... heh heh.” The woman’s grin stretched so wide that Sam briefly worried that her face would split. “I’m Leigh. Heh heh.”

“...Nice to meet you, uh, Leigh. I’m... Sam...” Several of Sam’s smiles faltered a bit as he came to a stop in front of Apartment 21; Leigh watched his every move hungrily as he pulled out the key and squeezed past the door frame.

God, what had he gotten himself into?

Chapter Text

Sam swallowed and steeled himself, working up the courage to call out into the apartment.

“Hey. I got your key.”

“O-okay!” A voice accompanied by a mechanical click answered from the darkness. “Just-- just give me a second!”

Sam nodded to himself, spying Leigh shooting him a nasty smile from the other side of the door. Right, he should move.

He shifted his tail and moved up; however, the moment there was enough space for her to enter, she pounced on him. He let out a couple surprised shouts as Leigh scurried up his back, tugging painfully on his mane until she stood right behind his neck like he was some steed. She adjusted herself on her perch---which was him---and chuckled to herself before cackling maniacally.

“What the hell?!” Sam managed to twist himself around to glare indignantly at the grinning woman, but she just poked one of his eyes and kept laughing when he hissed in pain.

He gave up trying to turn around and maneuvered a few of his hand-eyes to watch her instead, grabbing at her with some eyeless hands. Leigh simply bit them, not hard enough to cause any lasting damage but enough for it to hurt a whole damn lot.

Sam yowled in pain, slamming himself against the opposite wall while Leigh kept laughing when a panicked, shrill voice interrupted them.

“WHAT IS GOING ON IN HERE?!”

The two of them stopped their fighting and slowly turned to the voice; standing at the end of the entrance hall was a hunched, cloaked figure with glowing eyes and bright teeth. Sam thought he saw a couple little feet shuffle underneath the figure’s cloak and took half a step back.

“You-- both of you! What are you doing in here?!” The figure scuttled to Sam, puffed up with rage, but seemed to register just how much bigger the latter was than him and backtracked a little. “I’m working on a very important project, can’t you see?! You’re-- you’re...”

The figure looked at the key in one of Sam’s hands and trailed off.

“O-oh.” The figure looked up to Sam. “Th-that was you?”

Sam nodded very slowly. Leigh chuckled sinisterly from his back.

“I-- I didn’t think you’d be... so...” Though the figure never let go of his cloak, Sam got the feeling that he was gesturing at Sam himself.

He sighed. “...I get that a lot.”

Leigh howled with laughter, and Sam took the opportunity to finally rip her (and a few clumps of his hair, ouch) off. She landed with a hiss and a thump, shooting Sam a nasty glare but, to his relief, not attempting to rescale his back.

“So... hi.” The figure said. “I’m glad you opened my door, but... why are you in here?”

“I just need some food.” Sam chorused.

“We need to get to the first floor, heh.” Leigh huffed at the same time, and Sam shot her a confused look.

“What?”

“Stairwell’s locked... heh heh... from the other side.” Leigh smiled, and it wasn’t friendly. “He’s got a shortcut. Heh.”

The figure looked at Leigh weirdly. “...How did you know that?”

Leigh shot the figure a wicked grin and they promptly shrank back.

Sam raised his eyebrows. “No, he’s got a point. How did you know that?”

Leigh shot Sam a wicked grin and he also promptly shrank back.

Eventually, the figure took a few steps back towards their kitchen. “Well, uh, if you’re hungry, I probably have something in my fridge.” The cloaked figure scuttled over to his fridge and opened it, clearing out everything. “You-- you can take all of it. I don’t think I’ll... uh, need it anymore.”

Sam lumbered over with Leigh in tow and picked up some of the groceries. “You sure?” He asked, and the apartment’s resident nodded, grinning. Shrugging (and shuddering when he forgot that he had more than two shoulders), Sam gathered the rest of the food and stuffed it into a bag. Leigh tried to grab the bag, but he made sure to hold it out of her reach.

“So...” Sam looked the person over. “What’s with the getup?”

Leigh gave a menacing chuckle and the figure clutched his cloak tightly, suddenly looking a lot more nervous. “Uh-- I just-- I’m sensitive to light, heh.” He flashed a grin; in the darkness, it was almost intimidating.

Sam’s lower faces flinched away while his upper ones gave an awkward smile. “Yeah...”

The door to the apartment suddenly creaked open, and everybody in the room whipped around to look. Leigh even began to run towards the door before one of Sam’s hands caught her shirt.

“Uh, hello?” Aster peeked his head in. “I found this boy in the stairwell. He said he was looking for you, Sam.”

Joel shoved his way past Aster while the apartment’s occupant turned a distinct shade of red.

“Mr. Sam!” Joel ran to him before spotting Leigh and the figure, slowing to a stop in the middle of the room. “Uh, who’re they?”

“Heh heh, I’m Leigh.” Leigh chuckled, her grin the same as ever.

The bright-eyed, cloaked figure who wasn’t Aster seemed to be malfunctioning; Sam was pretty sure he could smell smoke.

“I-- uh, I... I’m... I...” The figure shot a glance at Sam before quickly averting his eyes again. “I’m-- Ly... Lyle. Yes.” The figure, Lyle, shrank back, and Sam had to wonder what his deal was.

“Joel, I told you to stay at the apartment.” Sam scuttled over to the boy, and the teeth child’s face twisted into a frown. Aster awkwardly retreated from the room, closing the door with a click.

“I wanna go with you-- hhh--! Your place is boring.” The child said matter-of-factly, and Leigh chuckled at that. Sam shot her a nasty glare from some of his eyes, and she laughed harder.

“It’s safe, though.” Sam frowned. “You should go back.”

Joel very obviously frowned and crossed his arms around his plushie. “I don’t-- hhh-- wanna.”

“Look, uh...” Sam spared another glance to Leigh; the woman grinned unstably at him, and he quickly averted his gaze back to Joel. “Not all of the people here are safe. You shouldn’t come with me.”

Lyle sputtered indignantly in the background while Joel sighed.

“Okay...”

The kid began to trudge slowly to the door while Sam nearly melted in relief. However, this relief was short-lived; Sam made the mistake of turning his back on the teeth child, and Joel immediately spun around on his and leapt onto Sam’s tail.

“What the--?!” Sam tried to grab at Joel, but the kid was already clinging onto his mane. “Again?!” He screeched, Leigh cackling maniacally at him all the while.

“Joel-- Joel, you have to go back! You can’t come with me.” He tried to tug the boy off of his back, but Joel clung to him like a tick.

“Nuh-uh! Hhh!”

Sam tried pulling at the kid again, but when that failed he finally gave up and slumped to the floor, unwilling to risk hurting the kid.

“...Fine.”

Joel pumped his hands into the air with a small cheer while Leigh laughed at Sam’s misfortune. Lyle hesitantly scuttled up to Sam’s faces, clutching his cloak tightly.

“So... you’re Sam...?”

Sam defeatedly hummed his confirmation, and Lyle’s face began to turn redder.

“A-as in... Sam from the-- the third floor?”

“Yeah. How’d you know?” Please don’t tell him it was from when Vincent nearly ran him over. At this rate, he was never going to live that down.

Joel climbed up to Sam’s neck while Leigh took her turn to scramble up Sam’s mane, keeping her distance from the kid. Lyle’s red face turned into an almost cartoonish shade of pink as he tried to continue the conversation.

“Well-- uh... we-- we worked together, in the convenience store. Heh. Heheh. I’m-- I’m Lyle... the Lyle you worked with, remember?”

“I think I do remember, yeah.” Sam did not, in fact, remember Lyle, but he’d feel kind of bad if he told the cloaked man that. “I guess I just didn’t recognize you with the... whole thing you have going on.”

“Heh, yeah. Haha, uh, I u-understand.” Lyle smiled nervously. “I-- I couldn’t really-- uh, recognize you either.” Lyle’s eyes widened as he frantically added, “Not that I didn’t remember you or anything! I-- I just didn’t know you were... like that.”

Okayyyyy... Sam could see actual smoke coming off of Lyle, so he should probably skedaddle before the cloaked man accidentally set the whole place on fire.

“Uh, yeah. Okay. Uh, I need to get going now. Still need to get some more food and all, yeah. Bye.” Sam very gracefully exited the conversation by leaping into Lyle’s bathroom.

As he tried to regain his bearings, he heard a gurgling growl from across the room; he barely managed to catch sight of an eyeball thing at the other end before Leigh leaped off of his back and attacked it.

“HEH HEH HEH...!” Leigh bit down on one of the creature’s eyeballs, releasing a torrent of acid onto the floor and her face. The grinner snarled and recoiled in pain, and Sam decided to follow up her attack with his own. He slithered across the room and gave the thing a good whack with his bat; the creature’s acid dribbled onto the impromptu weapon and ate away holes into the wood, however, and Sam knew it probably wouldn’t last much longer.

Leigh recovered from the shock of the acid just as Sam dodged a slash from the thing; the grinner snatched Sam’s knife from one of his other hands and stabbed the eyeball creature several times. She danced out of the way of another of its attacks, a feral smile making its way onto her face as the eyecluster went flying past her.

Sam reared his bat back and slammed it into the mutant’s main eye, snapping the wood clean in half but still managing to stun the eyecluster. Tossing the handle at it as well, Sam was sizing up the monster when he spotted Joel darting behind it.

“Joel--!”

The eyecluster turned around to face Joel, another grotesque, burbling howl escaping it as it lunged at the boy, and Sam dove around just a moment too late.

The cluster made contact with Joel’s open maw, and Sam watched in horror as the boy was mauled by the-- no, wait, what?

What the...?

HOLY SHIT.

The boy’s teeth began to pull the creature into his mouth. Bit by sickening bit, the eyecluster was devoured until nothing was left except for a few bloodstains and acid burns on the floor.

“See, Mr. Sam?” Joel turned to Sam as if he hadn’t just eaten an entire monster in one bite. “I can fight!”

Sam couldn’t bring himself to move a muscle, suddenly terrified of the boy who was standing proudly before him. Sam was pretty sure all 33 of his mouths were slack-jawed, as Joel gave him something akin to a confused look.

“Mr. Sam...?”

“HAHAHA! You fight good for a kiddo, heh heh!” Leigh gave a boisterous laugh and wrapped an arm around the kid’s shoulder. Joel squirmed out of the grinner’s grasp and stumbled to Sam, who had gotten over his initial shock and was beginning to move again.

“Joel?”

The kid’s head snapped up at his name. “Yeah?”

“Are you... okay?”

Joel furrowed his eyebrow equivalents a bit and nodded, and Sam forced himself to relax a little.

Everybody here was a Cursed. Of course everybody would be a bit weird. That was okay.

...Well, Leigh wasn’t okay, but Sam knew he was okay and he was pretty sure that Joel was okay too, so that counted for something.

“Just making sure.” Sam stepped around an acid puddle and reluctantly pulled out a bottle of tonic for Leigh. The deranged woman snatched it from Sam’s claws and chugged the entire thing, leaving behind a twice-stunned Sam.

“...”

The two of them stared at each other. Sam considered being confused about the entire situation, but he decided he was a little too tired to be confused again and let it go.

“Come on.” He trudged towards the end of the bathroom and squeezed past a blood-stained door. He felt Joel snag onto his tail and did his best to help the boy onto his back while Leigh skittered past them, her bare feet slapping on the floor almost comically. She jumped down the entirety of a narrow staircase at the end of the convoluted hallway, and Sam winced.

“Joel, you should probably go down first.” Sam plucked the teeth child from his mane and set him in front of the staircase. Joel seemed confused, giving Sam an odd look before he turned around and hopped down the steps.

Sam stood at the entrance to the steps, hesitant on going through. He was able to fit through doorways through some bullshittery, sure, but could he fit in a narrow staircase? How would he get out if he got stuck?

“Heh heh heh...” A sinister chuckle alerted Sam to Leigh’s presence. “You scared of some stairs, heh?”

“Shut up.” He snarled at her, and she laughed in return.

“Heh heh heh.” She shouldered past Sam’s countless arms; Sam was going to ask her what she was doing, but it became evident two seconds later when the Grinning Beast was suddenly snapping at his tail.

“HAHAHA! MOVE IT!”

Sam shrieked, weaving out of the way of another attack, and panickedly threw himself into the staircase. Darkness engulfed him, and he could hear the snapping of jaws getting closer, and closer, and--

Sam suddenly found himself hurtling out of the staircase and painfully faceplanted onto the floor; soon after, a human-er Leigh crawled up his mane and threw her hands up.

“YES! YES! I WIN! HAHAHA! I WIN!”

Sam halfheartedly batted her off of his back, sending her faceplanting onto the floor next him. Joel cautiously walked up to them, hugging his bear tight.

“Mr. Sam...?”

“I’m alive.” Sam grumbled, heaving himself up and bracing against the ceiling. Some of his upper faces were covered in blood (that thankfully wasn't his own), and he lazily shook his head a bit in an attempt to dry himself a little. Leigh came to life soon after, leaping up from the floor and licking the blood off her own lips hungrily.

“Heh heh, that was fun! Heh...”

Sam huffed, about to retort, but he was cut off.

“...Hello?” An unfamiliar, feminine voice seemingly echoed out from the nearby broken tube. “I-is somebody out there?”

Leigh pattered up to the pipe and stuck her eye to the aperture; the moment she was in sight, the voice went off on a spiel.

“Oh, thank goodness, another normal person!” Leigh was anything but normal, in Sam’s humble opinion.

“O-oh, my name’s Rafta!” The voice, Rafta, continued on without regard for any sort of response. “You’re the second normal person I’ve seen so far. Everyone else was either crazy or turned into some sort of monster! Usually both.”

Leigh opened her mouth to speak, but Rafta just plowed right over her words.

“L-listen. Uh, the guy before you. Uh, his name is Nestor, and I kind of... uh...” Rafta chuckled a little bit nervously. “...he was kinda cute. I’m stuck in here right now, though, so I can’t really tell him that myself. Could you maybe get some stationery and a pen for me? I-I won’t be much trouble after, I swear.”

Rafta finally shut up for longer than two seconds, which was enough time for Leigh to regain her bearings and retort.

“Why don’t you get out and do it yourself?” She snapped. While there was no physical reaction from the pipe (given the fact that it was a pipe), Rafta’s voice carried a tone of disgruntledness.

“If I could, I would! I’ve been trying to get through, but this tunnel just seems to go on forever and it keeps getting smaller. I’m not sure how I’ll look coming out...” Rafta’s over dramatic sigh echoed through the small tunnel. “I suppose if you don’t want to do it, I can’t really make you...”

Leigh opened her mouth, assumedly to say something either stupid or homicidal or both, and Sam quickly pushed her away from the pipe.

“Hey, Rafta. I’m, uh, sorry about her.” Shit, the echoes from all his voices were making him hard to hear. He coughed into his hands and gritted his teeth, very slowly and deliberately speaking with only the mouth closest to the pipe.

“Shit, sorry. I didn’t-- realize I’d echo.” He chuckled between his teeth nervously. “I just wanted to say-- I’m sorry about her. She’s kind of...” Some of Sam’s eyes swiveled to look at Leigh. His gaze was met with a deathly glare of her own and he awkwardly averted them. “...special.”

Rafta laughed a little nervously. “Oh?”

“Yeah.” Sam took in a sharp breath. “She’s not really normal---she’s kinda like me, actually.” He made sure to duck in front of the pipe for a few moments to give Rafta a quick look of his unnatural number of eyes; while doing so, however, he thought he spotted something inhuman twitch deeper in the pipe, sparking a feeling of dread in his gut.

Well, at least Rafta was friendly.

“I’m not like you!” Leigh hissed, butting in. “You’re weak!”

Sam... couldn’t really disagree with that, but he wasn’t going to say that aloud.

“Aaaaaanyway,” He shoved Leigh away. “I’ll see what I can do for you, alright?”

“Oh-- thank you! Thank you!” Rafta sounded elated. “Make sure to say hi to Nestor for me!”

“Will do.” Sam finally relaxed his other mouths in a harmonious sigh of relief and stepped away from the pipe. “Come on, let’s go.”

He let Leigh and Joel go through the narrow doorway first, squeezing through after the two of them were in the clear. A couple rabid rats leapt out at them, but they were quickly dispatched---Joel accidentally ate his rat while Leigh very purposefully ate hers. It was disgusting to watch, but it also made Sam painfully aware of his empty stomach; Leigh seemed to catch on to this and took a slow, horrible bite out of hers, grinning and staring him down all the while.

“You want some?” She offered Sam the bloody remains, and he vigorously shook his head.

“Um... no, I’m fine.”

Leigh shrugged and devoured the rest of her rat, leaving her with blood stains all over her face. Sam discreetly took a step away from her, gently nudging Joel behind a few of his arms.

The trio trudged uncertainly through the hallways of the first floor; however, it quickly became obvious that something was amiss when they passed by the same pulsating glob of flesh for the fifth time while walking in a straight line.

After the realization that the floor was a giant loop, they began to take more erratic turns in an attempt to find the stairwell. Several times, Sam thought he heard something massive walking through the halls (and no, it wasn’t him, shut up), and he made sure to get himself and the team out of the way quickly before whatever was there caught up with them.

Joel eventually noticed that there were signs for the stairwell doors, and the three Cursed finally ended their non-euclidean journey for the day as they made their way to Floor 3.

Chapter Text

It was 15:00 by the time they got to Sam’s apartment. Sybil looked horrified at the blood covering all three of them (and, understandably, horrified of Leigh in general), though she did express relief at seeing Joel safe. Sam sorted away his loot and quickly excused himself to take a shower because there was no way in hell he was going to keep walking around crusted with blood.

The process went about fairly similarly to the first time, though Sam spent a few extra minutes moping underneath the showerhead before hunger finally forced him to get up and replace the bandages on his healing injuries.

“Shower’s open.” Sam huffed as he slipped out of his bathroom. His mane was annoyingly wet, but, again, there wasn’t really much he could do about it without having a lifetime’s supply of towels. Joel was the next one in, and Sam decided to make something in the meantime.

He dragged himself to his kitchen and browsed through his fridge; it was far from empty, but Sam’s stomach curled at the realization that it wasn’t going to be nearly enough to live off of for the next two weeks, especially if he was sharing his apartment with others.

He hissed in annoyance and grabbed some chicken and instant noodles; looks like soupless chicken noodle soup was on the menu tonight.

Halfway through his cooking, he had to fend off Leigh with a few hands.

“Dinner isn’t ready.” He grumbled to her, and she laughed.

“I like my food raw, heh heh.”

“Well the rest of us don’t, so you’re just going to have to deal with it.”

Leigh curled her lips back and moved for the couch, but Sam grabbed her shirt.

“You are not going to get my couch bloody.” He growled, and the grinner sized him up, meeting him with a sneer of her own.

“Make me.”

Sam gritted his teeth. “Oh, I will.”

Right at that moment, the bathroom door swung open, and a significantly less bloody Joel walked out. The teeth child looked at the two of them, his mouth curling into something that was probably supposed to be a quizzical look.

“Are you guys fighting?” The poor kid asked, and Sam smiled at him with a few mouths.

“No, no, we’re good. Right, Leigh?”

Leigh snapped her teeth at one of Sam’s faces and he tossed her into the bathroom, quickly barricading it with his body. The door, unsurprisingly, began to shake violently while Leigh yelled something, and Sam snarled.

“Just take a goddamn shower, Leigh!”

The door stopped shaking, and Sam’s heart dropped when he remembered that Leigh was also the Grinning Beast.

Thankfully, Leigh did not come barrelling through the wall in the form of a giant frog monster thing, instead muttering something to herself before her footsteps faded away. Sam finally deemed it safe enough to back away from the door and turned to Joel with a few sheepish smiles.

“Sorry about that. I’ll get dinner ready.”

Sam sacrificed his cooked meal to Joel and (begrudgingly) Leigh, settling for a box of Cheez-Stix for himself. He nearly ate it box and all, but managed to talk himself out of eating cardboard at the last second. God, he was starving, but he didn’t want to eat everything in his apartment this soon; there were still 14 days left of this, after all.

There was a convenience store on the ground floor, right? He could go there to gather some extra foodstuffs... and maybe break some vending machines too. It’s not like he was really at risk of getting crushed by one anymore, anyway.

“I’m going to head to the ground floor, guys. I’ll be quick.” Sam said, turning to the crack in the wall. “Sybil, make sure Leigh doesn’t cause any trouble.”

“I’ll try.” Sybil did her best approximation of a nod as Joel booted up the console and began playing Super Jumplad. Sam grabbed a mop, a pitiful excuse for a weapon in his hands, and slid out of his apartment. He’d only had Joel and Leigh with him for less than a day, but already he felt unnerved being out by himself.

In and out. In and out. Just be quick. He’d be quick.

Sam crashed down the stairwell and landed on the ground floor. He groaned miserably and dragged himself to the doors, pushing only to realize it was locked.

No.

No. No, no no, nonononononNONO

Calm down. This wasn’t the end of the world. He could just break through the doors or the wall or something like that; he wasn’t the tiny dude who nearly got run over by Vincent for being too short, anymore. He was a giant monster with, like, a hundred arms. He could do this. He could do this.

Sam spotted an electronic lock on the door and tried pulling at it, first with one pair of hands and then, when that didn’t work, with several others. At one point he got desperate enough to try and figure out how to use his finger-hand things, though this was to little success. He awkwardly squished himself in the stairwell and pushed against the door, but that didn’t work, either.

Starting to become even more frantic, Sam curled around the next set of steps and tried to kick the doors open to no avail. How were the doors even this strong? Were they made out of titanium or something?! He tried to backtrack only to find that he had contorted himself in a way that made it so he couldn’t really move backwards.

Shit.

SHIT.

He panicked, countless hands scrabbling against concrete walls as he tried to unspool himself. He thrashed and swore he felt one of the walls give a little, but besides that nothing happened.

SHITCRAPCRAPCRAPCRAPCRAP--

Nonononononononono, no, no, no. Don’t panic. Don’t panic. This would be okay. He would be fine. He could-- he could-- the basement stairwell was pretty spacious, right? He could turn around there. Yeah, yeah, he could do that.

Painstakingly, Sam pulled himself forwards, scraping against the floor and stairs and ceiling. Arms and legs were forced into unnatural positions as he crawled along and eventually filed most of himself into the basement area. Slowly, he turned around and shimmied his way back up, feeling gross as he slithered past his own wretched body.

After a little while, he was freed enough to begin moving more, and Sam wasted no time in scrambling up the steps. Being trapped like that wasn’t worth getting to the convenience store, not yet.

Hunger still gnawed in his stomach, though. He needed to eat something, else he might just lose his nerve and devour his fridge in its entirety. He slowed to a stop by the doorway for Floor 1 and contemplated it for a bit.

They hadn’t searched through this floor at all, desperate as they were to find the stairwell doorway. There was bound to be something in here, right?

He pushed the door open and crawled through. The vast labyrinth of Floor 1 spanned before him, daunting and intimidating yet oddly welcoming. Sam slipped into the halls and began to search for any unlocked doors. The more twists and turns that he made, however, the closer he could hear something get, and it eventually got to a point where he could see a massive shadow tailing him. Sam tried to hustle it, but the hallways almost seemed to constrict the farther he went, and the thing that was following him finally caught up.

It was a massive, multi-headed rat thing that was about as large as him. It was draped in matted fur, within which countless red eyes stared back at him, and bore a rusted crown on the top of one of its heads. Sam barely managed to flick his tail out of the way when it slammed its many paws down, snarling.

Sam couldn’t outrun this thing---he’d already tried. He would have to fight it, or at least fend it off for long enough to buy himself some time to escape.

The world around him seemed to expand as he spun around, brandishing his weapon--

Wait, shit. He only brought a mop.

Suddenly, he didn’t feel very capable of fighting this thing.

The Rat King gazed at Sam as it began to circle him, licking its lips hungrily. Sam attempted to match its circling, his hands tucked close to his body as he watched the thing back. The standoff seemed like it would go on forever, and Sam eventually caved by attacking first, lunging forwards with surprising speed and slamming the mop into the Rat King’s rightmost head.

The stick immediately snapped in half, and Sam almost screamed in frustration. He wasn’t given a chance to, though, as the creature retaliated with several nasty scratches in quick succession and tore the newly-replaced bandages around his lower eye. Sam snarled and dropped the remains of his mop as he covered his lower faces and retreated a bit. All he had now were his claws and his teeth, so he bared them at the Rat King in an attempt to intimidate it while he tried to figure out what to do.

The creature seemed to back off slightly at the display; it probably didn’t have experience with hunting something as large as himself. Some of Sam’s upper faces grinned, his lower ones opening their jaws as he kept all of his eyes locked on the Rat King.

The massive rodent monstrosity struck out at Sam, but he just barely managed to avoid the attack and grabbed the creature’s arm with several of his own, yanking it towards himself. He impulsively bit down anywhere his mouths could gain purchase as he curled his body around the Rat King’s, sending both of them crashing to the floor.

It writhed in his grasp, kicking and clawing and screeching, but Sam couldn’t afford to let it get away. He tightened his curl as all of his hands swung out to grab at anything he could in an effort to restrain it, biting down even harder. A few of his smaller mouths managed to tear off entire chunks of the thing’s flesh, his larger ones digging until they found bone.

The Rat King snapped at Sam’s back, only managing to get itself a few mouthfuls of his mane. He squeezed tighter, bit harder, grabbed at the floor as the mutant rodent rolled the both of them around; it was obviously weakening, which only made him redouble his efforts. More mouths tore off more flesh that in turn bled more blood, and his stomach ached.

...Hungry.

Yes... that’s why he was here.

He was hungry.

He needed food.

Several arms wrapped around the Rat King’s many heads into chokeholds as his jaws descended on the creature’s flesh. It writhed below him for a little longer, gradually weakening as he tore more and more off of its bones. After some point, it stilled entirely, and he unwound himself from the Rat King’s body as he ravenously devoured it.

Something slammed into his side just as he began to relax, sending him crashing into a nearby wall. He twisted back onto his feet with a vicious snarl, his many eyes having already found his attacker. The offending beast lunged at him again and he tried to slip away, but it managed to snap its teeth down on his tail.

He yowled in pain and slashed back, but the beast seemed to care little for that; it thrashed its head from side to side, knocking him into plastered walls as he scrabbled at its hide. He eventually managed to get a good grip on its flesh and painfully wrenched his tail from its mouth as he attempted to constrict the beast; it must have caught on to what he was doing, however, as it quickly flipped him off of its back and pinned him to the floor with one of its massive, clawed hands.

“I WIN! HAHAHA!” The Grinning Beast cheered, bearing down on Sam’s chest a little more before she reluctantly stepped off. Sam frowned; a more competitive part of him wanted to snap at her, but he was a bit too tired to fight with her for what would probably be the fifth time.

“Okay, sure.” He brushed the Grinning Beast off as she reverted back into human-ish Leigh, giving Sam the space to roll over and drag himself to his feet. He looked back over to his abandoned prey and--

Wait.

...No. That wasn’t right.

That thing wasn’t prey. Sure, he’d killed it, he’d eaten it, but that didn’t mean it was--

He’d... eaten it.

He ATE that.

Sam heaved suddenly, hands flying to as many bloodied mouths as he could reach. He was suddenly all-too-aware of the metallic tang on his tongues and heaved again; something burned as it was forced out of his lowest mouth, and spitting it out revealed it to be a chunk of torn spine, meat and matted fur still stuck to the bone.

“Mr. Sam?”

Several of Sam’s eyes whipped to Joel. How long had the kid been there? How much of this had he seen?

Oh god.

“G-give me a moment.”

He’d bitten before. He bit Leigh yesterday, he bit Clint this morning. He’d never eaten , though.

What if that was a person? It had been wearing a crown--

DON’T.

THINK.

ABOUT IT.

“I-I think we should-- head back.” Bloody spit dripped down his throat, making him gag and forcing him to swallow. His stomach churned in disgust, but he couldn’t force anything else up. “Now. R-right now.”

He stumbled for the stairwell, averting all of his eyes from the thing he had just killed as he searched for the green sign. Joel followed closely behind and hesitantly grabbed one of Sam’s hands, squeezing it.

“Are you sick?” The teeth child asked innocently, and Sam looked down at Joel.

He was so little.

He would be so easy to crush --

“I’m... I just need a second.” Sam let go of Joel’s hand as he shakily ascended the stairwell and forced his way into the third floor’s hall.

His room was the same as it had been since yesterday, but somehow the atmosphere felt cloying and the ceiling felt more claustrophobic.

“Welcome back, Sa-- OH MY GOD.” Sybil’s eye was wide with concern. “Are you okay?! That-- that’s not your blood, right?”

Sam ducked into his bedroom. He could hear Joel ask him something, but he couldn’t pay attention to the boy’s words. He stumbled over to the hole in his wall and leaned next to it just as Sybil appeared.

“Sam, Sam? Are you okay?!” Sybil sounded concerned for him. She shouldn’t be.

“I--” Sam’s throat choked up. “I just did something. Really, really bad.”

He could practically hear the questioning look that Sybil gave him.

“I-I just...”

Just say it.

Get it over with.

Let her know that he was a monster.

“I ate a rat... thing.”

Stop stalling.

“It-- It might have been... a person.” Sam slumped to the ground, laying on his back.

“Sam...?”

“I-I’m a monster! I-- I ate it, and I-- I ate while it was still fucking alive!” He was gesturing with his hands, though once he noticed he forced himself to stop. Too many hands, all of them covered in blood.

“Sam--”

“Why did I do that?! I-- I was like-- a-an animal!” He snarled the words, teeth bared in self-hatred.

“SAM!” Sybil shouted. “Sam, please. You’re not a monster. You’re not .”

“Then what am I...?” His voices were quiet, and she responded without hesitation.

“You’re my friend.”

Sam looked up and down at himself simultaneously. He resisted the urge to slam his head on the floor, or punch himself, or claw his faces off, or... something, anything.

“H-how can you say that to a-- to me? I just-- I just ate somebody!”

“Maybe it wasn’t a person. You said it was a rat monster---it was probably just some mutated rat.” Sybil frantically offered up, trying to deescalate things.

Several of Sam’s mouths laughed bitterly while the rest spat harshly, “It was wearing a crown! Rats don’t wear crowns--- people do!”

“W-well,” Sybil sounded a little unsure, now. Good. “Sam-- was the rat... talking to you?”

He was tempted to say yes just to make her hate him even more.

“...No.”

“Was it attacking you?”

“Yeah...” Sam took a shaky breath out of thirty mouths. “B-but that doesn’t-- that doesn’t mean anything!”

“Nothing means anything!” Sybil practically pleaded with him. “Sam---we’re... it’s different. Things are different, now.” She took a deep breath, and Sam assumed she was closing her eye. “What matters is that you’re alive, and you’re sane.”

“But what if I’m not?!” His hands reached for his faces, fingers eager to claw at himself. “Sane people don’t eat each other!”

“Sam, you’re talking to me right now! You’re not trying to kill me or-- or Joel, or even Leigh! The fact that you feel bad about this means you’re not evil! You’re not a monster.”

Sam claws fell away from his faces, arms slumping down again. “I-I wish everything could just-- go back to normal.”

“Me too.”

If he closed his eyes, he could visualize Sybil as a person, not just an eye in the wall. She was nodding in his imagination.

“...I-- fuck. Good night...” The words were awkward and steeped in self-loathing misery, but that was the best Sam could conjure.

“Good night.” Sybil agreed, and Sam let his tormented mind drift into blissful darkness.

Chapter Text

Sam woke up feeling sick and gross, which wasn’t unexpected considering that he was still covered in crusted blood. He avoided looking at himself and trudged out of his room; Joel was sleeping on the couch, and despite himself Sam smiled.

He ducked into his bathroom and got to work showering off all the blood and dirt from... yesterday. Moping in the shower wasn’t the same as before; he couldn’t forget what he had done, the horrible levels he’d stooped to just to survive. Still, he tried, parking his head under the shower head and letting the water soak his mane while he silently screamed into the floor.

He simply sat there for a while, waiting for the water to run cold. Eventually, he got tired of feeling sorry for himself, and dragged his body out of the shower to dry off.

Sam’s stomach twinged uncomfortably in a small bout of nausea as he gave himself a quick once-over. His eye injuries seemed to be healing along nicely, with a layer of skin having already grown over the wounds.

Blinking with his formerly-injured eyes felt funny but not painful, so Sam would take that as a win. The scratches and bites he had gotten from Leigh ached horribly, though they too seemed to be healing well.

Nothing was infected, and everything seemed to be fine---up until he unexpectedly hacked and heaved in the middle of the bathroom.

A disgusting mass of something rolled off of his tongue, leaving a foul taste in his lowest mouth, and he hacked and spat several times. Bits of what felt like hair still lingered uncomfortably in his mouth, and Sam found himself rushing back into the shower to wash it out.

After that was said and done, he trudged out of the shower (again) to address whatever the hell it was that he had thrown up.

It was a dark, fibrous mass pocked with bits of lighter shards. Sam got a bad feeling as he leaned in closer and cautiously poked at it; the mass gave way easily under his claw, and he curiously pried off a small bit.

Fur. It was fur. The fibrous mass was made of fur, and Sam had no doubt now that the lighter shards were bone. The realization made him flinch away from it, nearly kicking it before thinking better of that.

Disgusting. Absolutely disgusting.

Sam was forced to remember what he had done, what sort of monster he was, and the worst part?

Thinking about it made him hungry.

Not that famished, bone-deep hunger from yesterday, no; more like how he usually felt in the morning: eager for breakfast.

Sam cowed away from the remains of his... of the monster. Now that he knew what he was capable of, he felt even more disgusted with his body; the way he writhed and slithered and shuddered, the way his eyes were always watching something, the way all of his teeth were sharpened into dangerous points that he now knew were capable of killing, the way that his hundreds of arms tried to curl around himself in a facsimile of a hug.

Stop thinking about it.

Stop thinking about it.

Stop.

Thinking.

About.

It.

He closed his eyes. The bitter taste of bile was still strong on his tongue. He smacked his lips, swallowed, and took a deep breath.

Everything was fine.

Everything was going to be fine.

He just had to calm down. Stop thinking about it.

Just-- focus. Calm down.

Sam opened his eyes and grit his teeth, looking over to the disgusting blob in the middle of the bathroom.

He should... probably get rid of that.

Sam ended up shoveling the indigestible mass out of the bathroom window, keeping his eyes closed all the while. Afterwards, he did his best to wipe down the area with the few cleaning products he had, scrubbing until he couldn’t smell the stench anymore.

Once he was satisfied, he painstakingly washed all of his hands and opened the door, coming face-to-face with a grinning Leigh.

Joy, he was just beginning to think she’d left, too.

“Heyyyy there, Leigh.” Sam nervously chuckled, noticing the abnormal amount of blood covering her. “What have you been up to?”

“Breakfast.” Leigh grinned ominously.

“O-oh.”

That wasn’t comforting.

“Uh, Leigh... we have food here, you know. You don’t need to...” Kill some poor soul who was unfortunate enough to cross paths with the crazed lady. “...run off.”

She tilts her head upwards in what might be a wink. “Heh heh heh... not for me.”

She gave him a knowing look, and Sam cringed---he had a nagging suspicion of what she meant, and it wasn’t anything he liked.

He pushed her away to exit the room, much to her chagrin, before he threw her into the bathroom to wash herself off. Once that had been done, he slithered over to the kitchen to start making breakfast. He settled for some eggs and toast, opting to go for something simpler to start off the day, and after painstakingly setting three plates at the table Sam nudged Joel awake.

“Breakfast’s ready.”

“Hhh-- ddda?” Joel yawned and rolled over. Sam frowned a little, stomach twisting at what had happened yesterday.

“No, uh... it’s your neighbor, Sam.”

Joel reached up to rub his nonexistent eyes; once his hands made contact with teeth, however, the boy paused, looking unsure before lowering them again.

“Mr. Sam...?”

Sam twisted back to give Joel some space, moving over to the table to set down three disappointingly small plates of their breakfast.

Leigh busted down the bathroom door and let out a feral snarl as she pounced on her plate, shaking the table when she landed. Meanwhile, Joel was going to town on the eggs, practically (or maybe literally, as it was) inhaling the toast in a few seconds. Sam was tempted to do something similar, already preparing to scrape his plate into one of his larger mouths, but he stopped halfway.

This wasn’t going to cut it, Sam knew. He could eat as much food from his fridge as he’d like, but unless he was making a banquet’s worth of food he knew it would do little more than stimulate his appetite.

Sam looked down at the plate. He wanted to eat it, wanted to maintain some sense of normalcy, but at the same time he didn’t want to take food from the others; Joel needed to eat way more than Sam did, after all. He was a young boy, just eight, and he was still growing---he meant that in the normal sense of the word, of course, not the teeth-mutant sense of the word.

“Heh heh... are you going to eat that?” Leigh licked her lips hungrily, eying his food.

Sam shot her a glare from a few of his eyes, set down his plate, and, much to the madwoman’s dismay, slid it to Joel.

Leigh let out an indignant snarl, startling Joel; the kid seemed to recover quickly from the little scare, however, as he looked over to Sam.

“Mr. Sam...? Are— hhh— you okay?”

“I’m fine.” Sam tried to smile, but only a few mouths followed through. “‘m just not hungry, that’s all.”

“Are you sick?”

“No, I’m fine.” Sam sighed.

They’d probably have to head out again soon; he wasn’t confident that the meager supplies they had would be enough to tide them over for long, and it was better to gather the resources as soon as possible rather than risk letting anything spoil.

His stomach twisted at the thought of food, the hunger hitting him so hard he almost felt sick. He grimaced and immediately tried to divert his thoughts——it was getting harder to focus on anything but the longer this went on.

“Sam..?”

Sybil’s voice managed to snap him back to reality, and he twisted around. “Yeah?”

“I... I heard something in the hall last night, a little bit after you fell asleep.” She looked down nervously, probably still a bit stressed from last night’s conversation. “I looked out but I couldn’t see anything.”

That... was a bit unnerving. “Maybe it was invisible?” Sam offered up half-jokingly, but even as the words left his mouths he already found himself frowning. He chuckled a little nervously.

Sybil chuckled along with him, equally as unnerved. “I-I’m sure it wasn’t an invisible monster!” She half-laughed. “That... that would be kind of silly.”

“Yeah...” Almost as silly as meeting somebody stuck in an absurdly small pipe. Almost as silly as talking to an astronomer dressed up as a cultist.

Almost as silly as waking up and realizing that he’s been turned into a monster.

“I’ll-- keep an eye out.” Sam laughed joylessly. “Heh... because I’ve enough of those to go around, right?”

“Yeah... yeah.” Sybil’s eye seemed narrowed in what appeared to be something akin to worry. “I’ll-- I’m going to get breakfast, now. I hope... I hope you guys stay safe out there.”

She retreated from the wall, taking any modicum of serenity with her and leaving Sam to turn around with a sigh.

“Alright, guys.” He clapped several hands and twisted around to face Leigh and Joel. “We’re gonna head out real soon, alright? Get-- uh, get your stuff together.”

Joel nodded and Leigh grinned menacingly, brandishing the knife she had taken from Sam while nabbing his pistol.

Sam very deliberately tried not to worry too hard about Leigh having a firearm and weakly smiled back, flashing a couple thumbs up before backing up to his couch to pack anything they may need.

Sam ended up letting Joel and Leigh go first, crawling through the hallway carrying extra equipment like he was a beast of burden. In a way, he kind of was one, but Sam quickly shut down that train of thought before it could spiral into something more depressing than it already was.

The door to apartment 31 had been busted down similarly to Joel’s apartment, though this time there was a bright, unnaturally blue paint slathered onto the wall that spelled out ‘HELP YOU’ with a giant arrow pointing into the doorway.

Leigh giggled at the message and eagerly pattered into the apartment, leaving Joel to stand nervously at the doorway.

“Mr. Sam...?”

Sam snaked his head over to Joel. “Yeah?”

The kid fidgeted nervously. “This is-- hhh-- scary.”

“You can go back to my apartment, if you want.” Sam offered. “You don’t have to come with us.”

Joel fervently shook his head at that. “No-- hhh! I want to go!” He looked down a little, shuffling a bit. “I jus’ don’t wanna go-- hhh-- alone.”

Sam hesitantly reached for the kid’s hand before pausing.

“...Do you want to hold my hand?”

Joel didn’t say a word as he grabbed Sam’s hand, holding it tightly. Sam walked the teeth child into apartment before squeezing through himself, doing his best to hold Joel’s hand all the while.

The apartment was brightly lit and surprisingly untouched, given that Leigh had been left in there unchecked for a whole thirty seconds. She seemed to be scrounging around for any weapons, rifling through cabinets indiscriminately. Sam joined in on the searching, towing Joel along as he raided anything that wasn’t nailed down.

By the time all the rooms had been cleared out, Sam had gotten himself a brand new baseball bat to arm himself with; this time, it was made of metal, which meant that it would definitely be lasting longer than the previous wooden one had. Nice. Sam turned around to head out, but Leigh stopped him.

“We’re not finished, heh heh.” She grinned up at him. “There’s something else here... I know it!”

“Huh?” Sam said very intelligently.

“We’re being watched.” Right as she said that, the same eerie blue paint from the hall spattered itself across the floor, forming into an eerie message and a crudely drawn heart similar to the one outside.

‘HELLO’

Blue footprints scattered across the ground along with hastily painted arrows, both leading to the unassuming light switch on the wall.

...Okay. So Leigh was right, then.

“Maybe we should save this for later?” Sam offered up as Joel gripped his hand tighter, but Leigh was already walking up to the light switch. He could feel the air shift as she smugly sauntered past him, stopping right next to where the arrows pointed to.

“Wait, Leigh, no--” Sam reached out to stop her, but right at that moment, she flicked the switch off with the biggest shit-eating grin imaginable, plunging everything into darkness; he could practically feel his stomach drop from how quickly the geometry of the room shifted around them, a guttural growl sounding from behind the three of them.

Sam didn’t have to turn around to see the mass of hands and legs shrouded in starry darkness, staring them down with scope-like eyes.

“Shit!” Sam pushed Joel behind him as the thing kicked out, striking Sam in several of his faces. He winced at the impacts and snarled, smashing his bat into one of his star-flecked foe’s eyes.

The glass of its lens cracked and the creature roared, stumbling back.

Leigh seized the opportunity to fire several shots at the creature whilst cackling, sliding out of the way of a brutal jab of one of its telescopes. The Stargazer followed up its jab with several more kicks; Sam managed to brunt the force of the few that hit him, but Leigh was bruised pretty badly from the impact.

Joel slid out from behind and bit down on a retreating leg while Sam lunged at the Stargazer at the same moment, trying to pin it to the ground.

Leigh recovered from the Stargazer’s attacks just in time to roll out of the way of the two snarling beasts, quickly reloading her pistol before holstering it in favor of her bloodied knife.

The Stargazer writhed in Sam’s grasp as his multitude of hands became occupied with trying to keep its kicking feet away from himself. He couldn’t get a good enough grip on the monster to constrict it, and it jabbed at his eyes with its lenses when he tried.

Leigh finally dove in between them and tore through the Stargazer’s flesh with a couple furious slashes, narrowly missing Sam’s body as he desperately smacked the amalgamation with his bat.

Joel seemed to be trying to figure out what to do when he suddenly froze, staring at the Stargazer before he slumped to the floor with little warning——the kid was dead asleep.

Sam shouted the teeth child’s name in alarm as he watched the Stargazer haphazardly slash at the incapacitated boy. The momentary distraction was enough for the Stargazer to kick Sam off of itself, jabbing his faces with a telescope, and Sam snarled as he backed off.

Fuck, that hurt.

Leigh’s human shape fell apart in an instant and the Grinning Beast barreled into the Stargazer. Sam curled defensively around Joel’s sleeping form as the two flew past, hurriedly picking up the boy to move him out of the way.

She finished off the Stargazer with a vicious bite, thrashing her head around until the starry beast fell still in her maw.

“HEH HEH HEH!” She snickered as she tore into one of the Stargazer’s legs like a famished beast. Sam ignored how the sound of it made his stomach ache.

“YOU’RE MISSING OUT, DORK!”

Not. Helping.

Sam averted his eyes from the Grinning Beast and swallowed the saliva pooling in his mouth, instead focusing on trying to wake up Joel.

“Hey, Joel?” He shook the kid gently but got no response. “Joel?”

The kid shifted a little before yawning. “Mr. Sam? Wuh— hhh— what happened?”

“We won.” Sam smiled before pulling out a tonic. “Are you hurt?

“I’m— hhh— I’m good.”

Sam looked at Joel dubiously and the kid frowned, standing up unsteadily.

“I’m okay, see?”

“Alright, little man.” Sam muttered dubiously, putting the tonic away. “But if anything hurts, just let me know, alright?"

Joel nodded and Sam was satisfied, rearing back up.

“I’m gonna turn the lights on.” Sam announced, mostly for Leigh’s sake, and flicked the switch back on.

His head was immediately conked by a suddenly much lower ceiling, and Sam snarled; he could hear the Grinning Beast make a similar sound before he heard the telltale crunching of her compressing back into her human skin.

Showoff.

“One day you’ll have to tell me how to do that.” Sam muttered as Leigh pattered past him, and together the trio headed back into Sam’s apartment, wherein Sam immediately got to work making Joel and Leigh a meal consisting of fried rice and veggies.

Ignoring the pit in his stomach, Sam sat down on the carpet in his little living room area, leaning over the elongated coffee table to find a game on his shelf that intrigued him.

He settled back on the old classic, Super Jumplad, and got to work booting up the game. Joel seemed to take interest in this, and after Sam had set up the console the boy piped up from the back of the couch.

“Mr. Sam? Can I play Super Jumplad?”

Some of Sam’s eyes swiveled around to look at Joel. He almost turned the kid down, but then he remembered what had happened to his family.

“...Sure.” Sam pulled himself to his feet and handed the controller to Joel, moving out of the way. He spied Leigh relaxing on the other end of the couch and decided he could try doing something on his own computer.

Sam squeezed into his room and scuttled over to his desk, lying awkwardly on the floor so that he could use his computer with his uppermost pair of arms. It took a bit of work and the position was uncomfortable at best, but Sam was too tired to care at this point.

He flicked the computer on and punched in his password, immediately bee-lining to his usual news websites.

Nothing about the current situation outside was posted; these were probably just scheduled updates, then.

Sam took a short moment to scroll through some news articles and read them. Some were political, some were enjoyable, and some were straight up depressing. All of them made Sam’s eyes sting and his heart ache, wherever it was in his body.

Nothing would be the same. Everything from before was gone, now.

The world as he knew it was over.

These articles had all been rendered moot; everything they had been reporting had been changed in some way by the thing in the sky, like he had been.

Like he had been.

That thought made Sam hyper-aware of his own disgusting body. He suddenly felt bloated and gross, his skin feeling too large for him.

This wasn’t him. This wasn’t him.

Sam made eye contact with himself a hundred times over, watching too many eyes blink and stare, flexing too many hands in a bout of morbid curiosity.

He could feel it. He could feel all of it.

He hated it.

His tail lashed in frustration, and Sam gritted thirty pairs of sharpened teeth upon acknowledging the offending limb’s existence.

He hated himself.

He hated that he was this thing, this monster that killed people.

He hated all the hands.

All the arms.

All the eyes.

All the teeth.

He hated everything.

Sam dug his claws into the wood of his floor with disturbing ease, the hands of his hands curled into tiny fists that punched the ground as he drummed his fingers.

Maybe he should do something that wasn’t reading the news.

Sam deleted the news tabs with a little more force than necessary, accidentally scratching his keyboard as he logged into his social media account to check his feed.

He was immediately jump scared with several pictures of the outside, and boy did it not look good at all.

The pictures showed a rainbow hellscape with derelict and mutated cars scattered along the roads. Forests had been turned into dangerous labyrinths, their inhabitants having been warped and contorted into alien forms. Cities were populated with pulsing masses of flesh and horrific, mutilated monsters, structures warped beyond recognition.

Every single picture he saw showed the sky as a vast expanse of infinite colors that looked too sharp in his eyes, too real for a simple image—

Wait, shit.

He wasn’t supposed to look outside.

…

...Did this even count as looking outside?

Sam scrolled down to the comments section, relieved to see that there were people posting coherently; looking at photos of the outside seemed to be fine, then.

Most of the comments were about how beautiful it looked, and to be quite honest Sam would be hard-pressed to call it otherwise; it was beautiful, in a horrifyingly macabre way.

Near-indescribable colors swirled together and made his head feel clearer than it had ever felt before, as if he was meant to see this, as if this was the world he should be looking at.

Sam spared a glance at his curtains.

A peek couldn’t hurt, right...?

...No, he shouldn’t risk it. He was lucky to have his sanity intact, and he didn’t want to lose it over something as stupid as looking at a sky he could safely view from his computer.

Sam scrolled down a little further; a few commenters were perplexed and mentioned seeing nothing but static, making Sam’s eyebrows furrow in confusion.

Could the Cursed not see the images?

Sam began to read all the comments he could find that mentioned not seeing the sky, trying to figure out what was going on.

What was happening here? Something was definitely up, something had to be going on. There had to be a reason why some people couldn’t see these images.

He found his answer in one particular comment thread.

‘dantheman999: wuts up with peeps commentig on pixel shit?

‘smokedham24: Only the monsters can see the pics, thats why they’re all commenting about it

‘dantheman999: kk how do i become a monster’

Sam stopped reading there.

‘Only the monsters can see the pics’

Only the Cursed can see the pictures.

Only the Cursed can see the pictures.

Sam was a fucking idiot.

He turned off his computer in record time, clumsily scrambling away from his desk and accidentally flipping his chair over in the process. No wonder the images seemed so wrong in the rightest way possible.

Sam was wrong.

He was Cursed.

His limbs curled as he braced himself against the wall and took a deep breath.

Then another.

Then another.

…

Okay.

Maybe he should stay away from the internet as a whole.

Yeah, that seemed like a good idea.

His heart ached at the idea of never seeing that sky again, but Sam clamped down on the feeling and threw it into a bottomless pit to never be seen again.

He was not going to miss that accursed sky.

He wasn’t.

He wouldn't allow himself to.

Sam took a moment to calm down from that whole episode, glancing up at the curtain hungrily several times before forcing himself out of his room.

Joel and Leigh both seemed completely normal, or at least as normal as a tooth-ridden child and a maniacal grinning monster disguised as a human could be. The kid spared a curt glance at Sam before turning back to his game while Leigh grinned at him menacingly.

“So, how was it?” She cackled knowingly, eliciting several frowns from Sam.

“Shut up.” He growled without any real malice behind it. With an exaggerated huff, he flopped down behind the couch and propped his head on the back, watching Joel play.

“You’re pretty good. Bet you like the game, yeah?”

Without looking back, Joel nodded. “Uhuh!”

Sam smiled, adjusting his position to get comfortably. Leigh tried to poke at some of his eyes and he batted her away, accidentally initiating a war between the both of them as they began to tussle.

Joel would occasionally look away from the screen to laugh at their antics, and despite everything that was happening, Sam strangely felt great.

They’d still need to go out for supplies later, he knew, but for now he was content with staying in his apartment, laughing with his impromptu roommates. For the first time in a long time, he felt good about himself.

It was nice.

Chapter Text

The halls of Floor 1 felt much less ominous now that there was no Rat King to patrol them. Leigh gleefully ran through the impossible halls while Sam crawled after her, Joel having hitched a ride on his mane. Leigh stopped to grin back at Sam, and he did his best to shoot a scowl at her as he slowly made his way through.

“Come on, slowpoke! Heh heh...” She taunted, and Sam’s upper jaws halfheartedly snapped at her.

“Maybe I’d be faster if you told me how to do that!” He gestured at her human form, frustrated.

His ire only egged her on as her grin widened. “Then fight me!”

“Later.” He shot back.

Leigh deflated a little, frowning. “Coward...!” She ran off in a flurry.

Sam sighed exasperatedly. He turned to try a nearby door and found it was unlocked, peeking his head inside. A macabre, drooling mouth gaped from the wall and immediately locked eyes with him.

“F E E D    M E    A    C H I L D .”

Some of Sam’s eyes spared a glance at Joel, who seemed unaware of what the wall-mouth had growled, playing with a few tufts of Sam’s hair.

With most of his eyes still looking at the wall-mouth, Sam slowly backed out and closed the door. Turning around, he rushed to catch up with Leigh, who had somehow managed to get her hands on the Rat King’s crown during the brief distraction and was now running around claiming to be the king of rats.

As if she couldn’t get any crazier.

Turns out, Leigh’s claim of becoming the new rat king actually held some merit; the trio had walked into some kind of rat den, and most of the rats there bowed down to her (one cussed her out, but Leigh made sure that it would never challenge her authority again). A kindly giant rat named Edouard had given them a free burrito, which was surprisingly nice for a rodent.

Sam ended up trading with some of the rats for money, selling off some of the valuables that his group had been lugging around and purchasing some cheese wedges with the cash he got in return.

It was a nice change of pace for once.

Walking out slightly more stocked than before, the trio continued to wander the halls aimlessly, running across a few more odd areas. There was a pit passage that Sam had trouble crossing; at the very end was some sort of envelope, but he accidentally knocked it off the ledge before he got to read it---hopefully there wasn’t anything important in that.

There was also an odd apartment belonging to a weird painter named Fredric, who had asked for their help in killing his paint-clone-things. Sam had waved him off, stating that they were busy scavenging and that maybe they’d drop by later.

Sam made a mental note not to drop by later.

It took them a little while to find another room of interest, this time in the form of an abandoned, fly-infested apartment occupied only by a few rats. The crying of an infant pervaded the whole area, the sound hair-raisingly similar to the wails he heard in the teeth apartment.

Was Joel’s sister down here?

“Hhh-- Mr. Sam?” Joel mumbled. “Can I-- hhh-- get off? You’re getting prickly.”

“Huh?” Sam swept his head around and, sure enough, his hair was literally standing on end. Whoops.

“Crap-- Yeah, sorry kiddo.” Sam gently plucked Joel off his back and set the boy onto the ground.

“Thank you, Mr. Sam-- hhh.”

Leigh was already at the other end of the room, shaking the child barrier like a caged animal---now that he thought about it, she really sounded like one, too. Sam gingerly bypassed the grinner and beelined for the kitchen, searching the fridge for food as Joel wandered off into what appeared to be a bedroom. Sam spotted some mutant rats and tensed, but he relaxed when they didn’t attack, only keeping their distance. Turning back to the feral woman, he sighed.

“Leigh? You don’t have to bite it.”

Leigh looked up with a mouthful of unusually strong plastic child barrier. “Wrh?! Nr, Rr gRRRGHR HrrrrRrr HRRGRrrr RAAGHR!!!” She looked away and continued to try to maul the barrier.

Sam blinked.

The rats in the room blinked.

Sam grimaced leaned down to the rats. “Sorry. This... uh... this is normal for her, I think.”

The rats squeaked back, somehow managing to sound defeated and exasperated.

“Mr. Sam! Look what I found!” Joel stepped out of the bedroom, holding some looted items. In his right hand was a bright, shining key that he waved around proudly, making Sam smile.

“Nice job, Joel!” Sam carefully took the key from the boy’s hand and turned his attention to the stack of magazines in Joel's other hand. "What else did you find?"

Joel looked at the magazines and shrugged. "Boring grown-up stuff."

Sam bent down and took the magazines from Joel, flipping through them absentmindedly.

Wait, hold up, was that a--??

Oh.

Oh.

Shit.

"Mr. Sam? Is something wrong? You look funny."

Sam shoved the magazines to the bottom of his loot bag. He could already feel his faces heating up, though he wasn't entirely sure if he could blush.

"It's-- nothing. Nothing." Some of his lower mouths swallowed nervously while his upper ones gave a few shaky smiles. "Just… uh…"

Right at that moment, the telltale cracking and squelching of Leigh transforming filled the room and Sam saw her sprout several more arms, baring her teeth.

"I AM NOT LOSING TO A PATHETIC PLASTIC GATE!"

Sam let out an assortment of worried noises and lunged down, grabbing her by the armpits and yanking her off the child barrier while he simultaneously unlocked the gate. Leigh was snarling and screeching obscenities the entire time, warranting some ear-covering for Joel, and when Sam finally set her back down she pounced back onto the plastic.

The instant she touched it, the barrier crumbled to the ground, and a half-mutated Leigh stood up victoriously. “YES! YES! FALL! AHAHAHAHAHA! I WIN!” She began to destroy the gate, and Sam nervously ducked his upper body around her to investigate the room beyond.

Sam snaked his head over to the writhing crib at the other end of the room, the source of the infantile cries he’d been hearing. Hesitantly, he reached under the covers and gingerly picked up the baby to hopefully comfort i-- OH GOD WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?!

Sam nearly dropped the horrific rat monster thing that he had picked up and only just managed to stop himself from chucking it across the room. He scrounged up some semblance of composure and, smiling and laughing nervously, he slowly tucked the creature back under the covers and gave it a light pat afterwards.

“Heh, heheh, uh... sorry... I’ll-- I’ll be going now.” He muttered, as if the thing could understand him, and then quickly ducked out of the room.

“Alright guys.” Sam huffed, wiping his hands on his arms. “Uh, let’s go--”

Sam felt something scurry up his tail and he shivered, whipping around. The rat thing was giggling, climbing up his spine before diving into his bristled mane. He shouted in surprise, several hands grasping at his back desperately as he tried to catch that thing, accidentally crashing into several walls and knocking his head on the ceiling. He heard several surprised shouts and squeaks as he thrashed around and finally grabbed it; he held the thing at an arm’s length, frowning in disgust at the babbling, drooling rat creature.

“Aww, it likes you... heh heh.” Leigh taunted, and Sam shifted some of his gazes to glare at her.

“Shut up, Leigh.” He growled, which only made her cackle.

“Can I-- hhh-- pet it?” Joel asked innocently. Immediately, visions of Joel getting hurt filled his mind, and Sam curled his lips at the the thought of the kid getting hurt.

"No. I'm not sure if it's safe."

Joel visibly frowned at that. "It's just a baby, though."

"I said no."

Joel seemed to relent at that, looking at the ground dejectedly. Leigh's eerie smile only grew, the grinner immediately seizing the opportunity to pester Sam some more.

"Oh come on, heh, it'll be fine!"

Sam curled his tail around to give the grinner several glares while he sucked a breath between his teeth. "I don't want to risk it, alright?"

"Or are you just afraid?" Leigh's words suddenly gained a sinister edge to them as she continued. "Are you afraid of it? Afraid of what you might do?"

She locked eyes with Sam's lowest face and took a step forward, prompting a low warning growl from Sam.

"Leigh, I'm not in the mood for this right now. Stop it."

Joel shrank back, hugging Fuzzy tightly to his chest as Leigh's grin became more manic.

"Are you afraid of yourself? Of your nature? Come on, Sam, just give u--"

"SHUT. UP."

Sam's voices overlayed into one massive roar, bouncing around the room and sending the smaller rats to flight. He loomed over Leigh with a snarl written into his face----Leigh looked almost smug at that, which only made him want to wipe it off even more. A thousand words scrambled in his mind, desperate for release, and he--

"…Mr. Sam…?" Joel whimpered as he cowered away from Sam. "You're-- you're scaring me."

All of the frustration fled Sam at that, his heart dropping into the floor. He immediately backed off and gave the two other Cursed some space.

"I--" "I'm sorry." He stuttered. "I didn't mean--" "--to scare you." Leigh had just… hit a nerve, he supposed. "I shouldn't--" "--have snapped like that."

Leigh's expression fell at his change of demeanor, and she huffed and crossed her arms while muttering something to herself; Sam was almost entirely sure it was some sort of insult directed at himself.

On the other hand, Joel still seemed a little afraid. Sam lowered himself to the ground in an effort to seem less imposing, half faceplanting into the wooden boards of the floor.

"…Maybe you guys should go back--" "--to the apartment." It might be for the best the separate himself from the others for a bit. "Leigh…" Sam was a bit hesitant to trust her at the moment, but she seemed to be okay enough with Joel. "…can you get Joel back to the apartment?”

“Huh?” The grinner looked at him indignantly. “We’re going back already?! Things were just getting fun! Heh heh...”

Sam handed Leigh all of their scavenged supplies and shook his head. “No, you guys are gonna head back without me.”

“Hey!” Leigh snarled. “Are you trying to get rid of me?!” Her eyes narrowed, nails sharpening ever so slightly.

“No--” “--Joel needs to get back to safety.” “I’m sorry.” Sam’s mouths stumbled over one another, just barely managing to thread the sentences together coherently. “I’ll meet you guys there soon.” “I just...” “--need a minute.”

Leigh narrowed her eyes at him, and for a brief moment he thought she was going to fight him, but eventually she snorted, turning to Joel.

“Come on, pipsqueak.”

She grabbed the kid’s arm and dragged him out in a surprisingly nonaggressive manner, and soon Sam was left alone, his only company being the rats of Floor 1.

“So...” He muttered and arched his back, cringing when he felt the rat child thing shift around in his mane.

Wait a second.

Rat child thing.

Sam knew what to do with the creature, now.

“F E E D    M E    A    C H I L D .”

The face in the wall boomed. Its demand was absolute, undeniable. It would be fed, and the sacrifice would be a child.

Sam slithered forward, the abomination of an infant in his arms. The door clicked closed behind him, a sense of finality creeping in where the exit once was.

As he neared the face, its eyes gained a predatory glint, mouth widening and drooling expectantly. Sam stood before the wall-mouth and looked down at the thing in his arms.

It babbled nonsensically, its hideous rodent face twisted into a horrendous mockery of a smile as it curled its wiry, greasy tails around his fingers in a pathetic facsimile of trust. It looked up at him with too many beady eyes and giggled. It had no idea what was going to happen to it, naive as it was to the horrific world that it lived in.

“F E E D    M E    T H E    C H I L D .”

The rat kid tucked its ears beneath two pairs of paws at the wall’s loud voice, letting out a quiet grumble of discontent. The mouth watched its every move hungrily, eagerly gnashing its teeth as he brought the kid closer to its waiting maw.

Sam looked upon the rat child with his too-many eyes, held it with his monstrous talons, grimaced at it with his too-many mouths. He kneaded his too-many hands, curled his own inhuman tail, shuffled his too-many legs, and he remembered what he was.

The child was grotesque.

So was he.

Sam pulled the child back from the wall-mouth and took a few stuttering steps away; its hellish gaze never once broke from his own as he turned around and fled from the room. Galloping through an infinite hallway of darkness, he had no idea how long he ran, searching for the exit; Sam only knew that when he turned around, the door back to the wall-mouth was looming a few paces back like he hadn’t gone anywhere at all.

...He couldn’t run from this.

Sam cradled the rat baby closer as he forced himself to trudge back, swallowing his fear and slipping through the doorway.

“N O    E S C A P E .”

Sam paced across the other side of the room like a cornered animal, eyes locked on the creature in the far wall.

“...I’m not feeding you the kid.”

“W H Y    N O T    F E E D    M E . . . ?”

The rat child wriggled uncomfortably in his arms, clearly uneasy around the wall-mouth. Sam grimaced and lashed his tail.

“I can’t.”

“T H E N    S T A Y    H E R E    F O R E V E R . . .”

Sam’s hands balled into mismatched fists as he curved his body, keeping the rat child away from the mouth.

He refused to be caged here.

Not by this thing.

“If you’re so hungry, then take my arm.” He snarled and thrusted a lower arm towards the mouth. He had more than enough arms to go around, anyway; he could do with one less.

The mouth sized up his offering, eying it hungrily.

“. . . Y E S .”

“F E E D    M E    Y O U R    A R M .”

The writhing fingers of the offered limb clenched as he stepped closer, muscles tensing. Was he really going to do this? Just for a... a rat thing?

The aforementioned rat thing nuzzled into the crook of his arm, its breathing slowing as it began to fall asleep, and his resolve hardened.

Who was he to condemn such a small creature to death?

Sam curved his body around until his flank was before the mouth; with only a moment’s hesitation, he plunged his arm into the orifice in the wall. Its mouth was warm and wet and gross, and Sam could feel the interior pulsate, as if it was swallowing him in. Sam pushed his arm deeper until it was almost shoulder-deep in its jaws.

Just when he was beginning to have second thoughts (or maybe even third thoughts, as it was), the mouth clamped down on his arm. Blunt teeth tore through his flesh remorselessly, and Sam’s fingers and claws dug into his palms as he fell to his knees; he screamed as the agony washed through his body and howled when he felt the sickening crack of his humerus shattering. The wall-mouth let the stump of his arm fall to his side as it continued to chew on what had once been his flesh. The soothing relief of unconsciousness never found him, leaving him to writhe pathetically on the floor, countless hands clutching the open wound in a desperate attempt to alleviate any amount of his suffering.

He curled up into a miserable ball with his faces tucked in the middle and his remaining, unoccupied hands clawing at his mane. His breath billowed against himself and his eyes were squeezed shut as he cried and he cried.

Sam had no idea how long it had been; time had faded into irrelevance, laying there on the floor. As the pain subsided, he felt a small body curl up by him.

Ah, right. The rat child. He’d completely forgotten about it in his agony.

Sam reached over with a shaking hand and hugged it close. He could feel the little critter lean into his touch, making him relax a little more.

Maybe things were going to be okay.

A deafening crash resounded through the room and Sam shot awake---when had he even fallen asleep? He untangled himself as quickly as possible, the stump of his missing arm stinging in pain as he flipped to his feet and came faces-to-faces with the Grinning Beast.

“THERE YOU ARE!” She snarled, though it was obvious she wasn’t angry; if anything, she sounded excited. “I THOUGHT YOU WERE HIDING FROM ME... HEH HEH HEH...”

“...Leigh...?” Sam reached down and scooped the rat child up from the floor, giving it a little pat on the head before plopping it on his back. The thing giggled in delight and scurried into his mane---the sensation of a small creature running in his hair was still unsettling, yet Sam found himself smiling regardless.

“ARE YOU DONE YET?” Leigh somehow managed to sound bored while still yelling at what sounded like the top of her lungs, and Sam gave a little nod.

“Yeah, let-- let’s go.”

She shuffled out of the room and reverted back into her human form as Sam moved to follow.

“W A I T . . .”

Oh no.

“I    H A V E    A    G I F T .”

The face in the wall heaved for a moment and a small disc fell from its maw, hitting the floor with a hefty thump. Sam grimaced a little and hesitantly picked up the mucus-covered disc.

“Th-thanks??”

The mouth in the wall said nothing, merely grinning sinisterly, and Sam turned and promptly scuttled away. He mindlessly wiped the disc on his pants, his brain registering that he wasn’t wearing pants a second too late and smearing the grime on his leg instead.

Eugh.

Maybe he should fix that at some point.

Sam had wrapped the stump of his arm the moment he got back, having waved off Sybil and Joel’s concerns as he dropped off the rat child and ducked into the bathroom. Everything seemed to be healing fine, which was good.

...Maybe a little too fine.

He could feel some movement underneath the layer of skin in his injured eye sockets; if he looked hard enough, he could even see it a little. It was disturbing, the way it almost looked like something was just beneath the surface, writhing and frantic. He couldn’t feel any pain from the healed injuries, only a feeling of tightness that made his eye sockets feel like they would burst. Blinking was still uncomfortable, maybe even moreso now that he realized that something was festering beneath the skin.

Sam wanted to tear open his hand-eye’s socket just to be rid of whatever was underneath, but he wasn’t sure he was in any shape to be losing anymore blood. Maybe tomorrow.

The rat child settled into the apartment with little trouble, both Leigh and Joel taking a liking to the thing. Sam spent some time washing the creature in the sink, doing his best to sanitize everything afterwards, and let the child get used to its new surroundings.

Joel offered his teddy bear, Fuzzy, to the rat child as he played with it, though it quickly became apparent that it didn’t know how to play very nicely with the toy. Unfortunately, neither Sam nor Joel could manage to coax the rat child away from the plushie, and Leigh didn’t even try to help them.

Sybil, understandably, was horrified by both the rat child and the prospect of Sam having sacrificed an arm to save its life, but Sam gestured to his large collection of arms. It wasn’t like he was crippling himself all that much, anyway; he still hadn’t bothered to count how many limbs he had, but he knew he had more than enough. He’d be fine.

After playing a simple game of peekaboo with the rat child, (which Sam had belatedly realized was now thirty times harder to do) he made Leigh and Joel some spaghetti for dinner, sharing what would have been his portion of the meal to the rat child. He wasn’t actually sure if this was safe for it to eat, but he didn’t really have anything short of his own flesh and blood to give to the thing, so he’d have to make do.

...Sam was going to ignore the ache in his stomach at the thought of food.

They each took turns using the shower before Sam and Joel commenced their hour-long brushing session. Once that was done, they settled down for the night, with Leigh and Joel taking opposite ends of the couch while Sam and the rat child curled up in his bedroom.

...

Sam couldn’t sleep.

He needed to eat something, anything.

Carefully, he uncoiled from his spot on the floor, grabbing his old blanket to cover the rat child before he quietly slipped out of the room.

It was almost scary, how silently he could move if he really put his mind to it. He managed to slither through his apartment without waking up Leigh or Joel, and after exiting into the hall Sam opted to go right. A door that had previously been covered in fleshy growths had been torn apart viciously, leaving a mangled frame behind. He could probably search this room for food; even if he couldn’t find anything for himself, he could definitely bring some back to the apartment. Maybe after he was done here, he could have a second go at the convenience store.

Sam pushed the breaking wall to the side and was immediately hit with a blast of cold air and the overwhelming smell of blood.

Oh.

Oh.

That... that was the Rat King’s corpse. In a frozen room.

...

...Was this what Leigh was doing this morning?!

Sam grimaced, mouths watering, and backed out of the room with a hiss to take a second to think. He couldn’t trust himself near the mutilated body, not when hunger gnawed away at his strength. He wouldn’t eat that thing, he wouldn’t.

...It would be convenient, though...

...Wouldn’t it?

There would be no need to worry about taking food from the others, and there was definitely enough for him to eat comfortably. It wasn’t like he was doing anything too horrible; it was a matter of survival, and he’s heard of people doing infinitely worse things to stave off hunger. This was better than...

Don’t think about that.

He crept back into the apartment. His mouths watered the moment he caught sight of the Rat King, and he began to second-guess himself.

Was he really going to do this...?

Sam fell asleep that night with a full stomach and a guilty conscience.

Chapter Text

His dreams tonight were... well, less strange than they were on the first day, but still a bit weirder than normal.

He was in his apartment---his normal, human self in his normal, cozy apartment.

Except, well, his apartment wasn’t really all that cozy right now. The air was humid and reeked of blood, silently screaming masses of flesh writhed around miserably, and everything seemed to be coated in a layer of filmy mucus and blood.

He heard a raspy woman’s voice call his name from behind him. The voice was one he knew he didn’t recognize, yet something still felt unsettlingly familiar about it. A clawed hand tapped on his shoulder just as he turned around, yet saw nothing.

"Wake up, Sam."

The voice said again, sounding a little bit louder. Huh?

"Come on, weakling."

Okay, now the voice was just insulting him. Did it sound a little more familiar?

“WAKE UP, DORK!”

The Grinning Beast rudely kicked Sam back to consciousness. Disoriented, he snarled and lashed out with several hands, managing to nick one of her monstrous faces. His brain snapped into awareness moments later and he registered what he’d done.

“Shit-- Don’t do that.” He quite literally growled. Leigh simply cackled in turn, practically shaking the ground from the sheer volume of her voice as she stepped a few paces back to give him some space.

Sam twisted to his feet and was surprised to see the rat child already out and about, messing around on the pile of junk that had once been his bed. He gently plucked the thing from the wreckage and was surprised to find it rather calm in his hands; if anything, it seemed to be happier, waving its paws while babbling from its mouths. Sam tucked the child by his side as he turned to the Grinning Beast

“Get out of my room.”

Leigh smirked with several mouths, and Sam narrowed his eyes.

“Now.”

“MAKE ME.”

The two of them stared unblinkingly for a few tense seconds before Sam pinched his upper lips in lieu of his absent nose.

“I’m not doing this right now.” He huffed and weaved around Leigh, making sure to lightly smack one of her faces with his tail as he squeezed through the doorway, prompting a halfhearted swipe from the Grinning Beast.

Joel was already awake and fiddling with Sam’s console. He didn’t pay the child much mind; Joel seemed like he knew his way around a console well enough, after all, so it wasn’t like Sam was too worried about the kid breaking it.

He released the rat child from his hold and watched it scamper off into the room right as Leigh, who had compressed back into a human form, walked out of Sam’s room.

Guess that was his cue to start making breakfast.

Breakfast was a simple vegetable soup with some of the leftover spaghetti from last night as a side. Nothing special, but Leigh, Joel, and the rat kid seemed to be enjoying it well enough, so Sam didn’t worry about it. The tight feeling in his healing eye sockets was beginning to become really uncomfortable though, so he ended up excusing himself from the table to duck into the bathroom.

After purging the remnants of last night’s...

Last night.

...After purging the remnants of last night from his stomach and promptly tossing it from the window, he curved his body around the mirror. Quickly, he located the eye sockets in question and carefully brought a knife he had snagged from the kitchen to the stretched skin.

Alright, time to figure out what the fuck was going on with his eye sockets, starting with his hand-eye.

Sam gently lowered the blade’s edge and pressed it against the healed wound. He could still feel something wriggling beneath his skin; was something festering inside him? Were they maggots? Was it some sort of infection?

He did his best to surgically peel the thin flesh away from the writhing mass, gritting his teeth in pain, and--

Bright light flooded into part of Sam’s vision and the palm of his injured hand ached horribly. Dropping the blade, he grasped the hand tightly and teared up; something was in some of his eyes, and he could feel something slimy twist uncontrollably against his skin.

What the hell?

There was definitely something there, and whatever it was was alive.

Sam peeled his hand away from the injured eye socket, immediately being barraged by another flash of light in some of his eyes. He squinted and looked down at his hand-eye, which was also squinted shut.

He suddenly had a bad feeling about what he’d find in his eye socket.

Sam slowly reached over and pried his eyelids open. Some small part of his vision whited out, and he could feel the afflicted eyes water.

He could see it, too.

Clustered together in what had once been a gaping wound were several small eyeballs jammed together uncomfortably, borderline spilling out of his socket. Sam recoiled from the grotesque sight with several simultaneous yelps, feet and hands scrabbling across the tiled floor as if to escape his own body.

What the hell?!

Suddenly, the weird sensations he’d been getting from the eye injuries made sense---Sam had no doubt that his other healing socket was in a similar state. He was half-tempted to gouge out the growing eyes, but stayed his hands at the last second.

Would that just make it worse? This happened because he had lost an eye, so it would stand to reason that losing these eyes might result in more growing in their stead. Frankly, Sam wasn’t very keen on getting even more eyeballs crammed into his hand-eye socket, so he numbly wrapped his lightly-bleeding hand in bandages and let it fall to his side; maybe they would go away if he just left them alone. It was a desperate thought, but one he entertained nonetheless.

He checked over the rest of his injuries in a near-mechanical fashion, dressing any wounds that were still open before crawling out of the bathroom. Joel and Leigh were racing each other in Madwheels, the teeth child with an obvious frown on his face while the grinner was cackling maniacally, as was usual for her. The rat child was on the floor nearby, playing with a small ball while paying no attention to the game nor its players.

Sam scuttled his way over to the rat child, and his gut twisted when it looked up and began making a grabbing motion with its hands, babbling its childish nonsense. It was uncanny, it was disgusting, sure...

...but Sam was in no position to judge. He maneuvered his body until he was half-curled around his elongated couch and plopped down, closing most of his extra eyes and resting his head by the rat child.

“Hey, buddy.” Several of his upper mouths crooned, prompting the rat child to giggle happily in response and paw at the ball it had been playing with. Sam wasn’t entirely sure what to do here. He hadn’t really interacted with kids all that much---not since his younger sister had moved away, at least---and he debated between letting the kid entertain itself or trying to play with it before ultimately deciding on the latter.

He gently took the ball from the rat child and rolled the toy back over to it. It seemed to take a moment for the rat child to figure out what Sam was getting at, but eventually it clumsily kicked the ball back with a warped smile on its face.

He and the rat child played together for a little longer, the sound of Leigh’s mad laughter and Joel’s lighthearted taunting fading into the background. Eventually, the rat child seemed to tire, and it yawned with two sets of tiny jaws before it curled up in Sam’s uppermost arms.

“We really gotta give you a name, huh?” He muttered softly as he scooped up the child with care.

“Wait, are we-- hhh-- naming it?” Joel piped in, sounding excited. Leigh immediately cued in on the conversation, turning to Sam with a grin.

“Oh? Heh heh, what are we naming it?”

“Uh,” Sam... hadn’t really thought that far ahead.

“We should name it Mr. Fluffles!” Joel chimed, and Sam gave the kid a nervous half-smile.

“Uh, maybe.” He was not going to name the rat child Mr. Fluffles.

“I’ve got a better one!” Leigh grinned.

Everybody stared at her for a few moments, awaiting her answer.

“...Death God Beelzebub VII.”

“No.” Sam immediately shot the suggestion down, and her grin gained a challenging edge to it.

“You suuuuuuure?”

Sam scowled. “I’m sure.”

“You wanna wrestle over it...? Heh heh...” Her smile grew wider, almost inhumanly so, and Sam lightly pushed her away.

“I’m not going to fight you over a fuuuuu--” Sam caught himself, glancing at Joel before continuing. “--uuureaking name.”

Leigh finally backed down, scowling. “You’re no fun, heh.”

“Thanks, I try my best not to be.” He deadpanned and adjusted his hold of the rat child a little, trying to cradle it without keeping it uncomfortably close to his mouths. He looked at the child long and hard, trying to think of a name.

What would be a good name for a rat child you sacrificed your arm for?

Patricia? No, no, that didn’t sound right. Patrick? Percy? Milo, Matthew, Morgan...?

“Michael.”

Sam jolted at the sudden suggestion. It took him a moment to realize he had said that, and a few of his eyes turned to glare at the offending mouth.

Just another downside to having thirty mouths: it was thirty times harder to keep them shut.

“That’s lame!” Leigh hissed. “How about Ulcer?”

“Absolutely not.” Sam’s mouth synced.

“Oh-- Come on!”

“What-- hhh-- What’s an ulcer?” Joel asked innocently, and the only adults in the room (granted, counting Leigh as an adult was a bit of a stretch) stopped their bickering.

“Uhh...” Sam’s brain blanked when he tried to figure out how to explain what an ulcer was in a way the kid would understand. Luckily, he didn’t have to do that, as Leigh did the heavy lifting.

“Imagine if there was a hole in your skin, heh heh.”

“Oh. Like a cut?”

“Yes, but it doesn’t scab. Heh heh heh.” Leigh leaned in uncomfortably close to Joel, who backed into some of Sam’s lower arms. Sam shot the grinner a warning glance before redirecting the topic.

“So, I guess it’s named Michael, now.” Sam announced, raising the kid in question. Leigh predictably was not happy about this, but Joel didn’t seem to mind at all.

“Can I-- hhh-- hold him?” The teeth child held his arms out excitedly; Sam debated if he should or not, but, upon giving the newly-christened Michael a glance, ultimately leaned down and gently plopped the rat child into his hands. Joel held Michael with a surprising amount of care, which Sam supposed made sense if he thought about it; the kid almost definitely had experience with handling babies, considering his younger sister had just been born.

...Was she okay? Joel said she’d bitten everyone, and Clint had said she was by the window when this all started. She definitely wasn’t human anymore and was probably somewhere in the pit that had opened up in Joel’s family’s apartment. Was she scared? Was she afraid? Was she alone?

Sam felt a little melancholic as he watched Joel hold the rat child. The poor kid had been robbed of a good life---that might even apply to Michael, too. Sam hadn’t given it much thought before, but Michael did sound startlingly human, not to mention that he found the rat kid in a human crib. Was Michael just another human child twisted into an inhuman form?

He suddenly felt very guilty for having even considered the possibility of killing Michael.

“Mr. Sam?”

Sam snapped out of his mental spiral and looked down at Joel. “Yeah?”

“Is it OK if-- hhh-- Ms. Leigh holds Mikey?”

Leigh was doing her best to give Sam the most innocent look she could conjure---which was to say, she looked like she was going to kill something within the next second. Sam gave her a flat look, which made her giggle a little.

“...Sure.” Sam conceded, and Leigh pumped her fists. Turning to her, he said, “But if you try anything with the kid, I am going to kick you out.”

“Awwwwww... heh heh... You don’t trust li’l ol’ me?” The grinner lilted mockingly, tilting her head up at him.

“No, I really don’t.”

Leigh cackled as she was handed Michael, cradling the rat child with a surprising amount of care. She rubbed Michael’s paws, the tenderness of the action completely contradicting the near-maniacal smile that split her face. She was muttering something to the child, but Sam couldn’t catch what she was saying.

Eventually, Michael woke up, and Leigh let the child wriggle out of her arms and onto the floor. It chirped and cooed, immediately stumbling its way back to Sam and attempting to scale his legs. Sam huffed lightly and picked it up, setting the child on the couch and giving it an affectionate pat on the head.

“We should probably head out again---we’re getting a bit low on medical supplies.” No thanks to Sam’s inadvertent hogging of all their resources.

“Heh heh... Are we going to be killing anything today?” Leigh rubbed her hands together in anticipation, and he grimaced.

“Hopefully not.”

Leigh giggled at that. Sam pointedly chose to ignore her. “Joel?”

“Hhhuh?” The eyeless kid perked up at the sound of his name.

“Could you stay back for now?”

Joel deflated a little. “But--”

“I don’t want to leave Michael home alone, and you’re a big kid. Can you take care of Michael while we’re away?”

The teeth child puffed up again, his wide maw twisted into a smile. “Yeah! I can take care of Mikey!” Joel’s gusto left as quickly as it came, though, and he shrank in on himself. “...Will you-- hhh-- will you come back?”

Sam’s heart shattered in his chest.

“Of course we will! Heh heh heh...” Leigh’s smile was oddly reassuring despite the insanity still etched into her features. “Nothing can kill us... heh heh, except me.”

Sam nodded along in spite of himself. “We’ll be okay, Joel. I promise we’ll be back before dinner at the latest.” He nodded towards the kitchenette, where various snacks were scattered about the elongated countertop. “You can help yourself to lunch if we come back late. If you need anything, go talk to Sybil, alright?”

Joel nodded; Sam smiled and lightly ruffled Joel’s hair before looking to Leigh.

“Let’s head out.”

Ignoring the weird mannequin-statue-thing in the hall, the two of them decided to search through Floor 2 again. And by the two of them, Sam really just meant himself, because Leigh wasn’t really being helpful in the decision-making process.

Leigh casually followed Sam as he crashed down the stairs painfully, expertly dodging his attempts to trip her with his tail. Once Sam made it onto even ground, he growled at the madwoman.

“You’ve gotta teach me how you do that whole ‘human form’ thing.”

Leigh chuckled sinisterly, her body beginning to warp into that of the Grinning Beast’s. “Okay... heh heh heh.”

“Shit-- not right now!” He hissed. “Later! Later!”

She frowned a little, snapping back into her human form so quickly that Sam could feel something in the air crackle. “You’re no fun... for now... heh.”

Sam chose to ignore her, dragging himself along to the floor and stopping right before rooms 20 and 21.

“Oh, hello again, friend.” Aster nodded politely. “I’m afraid I don’t have any food for you today, sorry.”

“It’s alright.” Sam waved the blue-eyed astronomer off. “I’m... I think I...” He closed some eyes, looking away guiltily with the rest. “I’ve got that covered, now.”

Aster nodded agreeably. Sam wondered what the man would think if he learned what Sam had done.

Leigh cackled from behind him, and Sam made sure to shoot her a glare. That only made her laugh more, however, and Sam fought the urge to claw his ears off.

“Fuck you too.” “Shut up.” He huffed under his breath at the same time, not even bothering to celebrate the fact that his control over his mouths was getting better. He tried to gesture with the arms on his flank, one of which was the stump that the mouth-wall had left. It was odd, really; he had so many arms he could hardly tell which was where, yet somehow the absence of one of his arms still left a gaping emptiness in his senses, like his body knew he was missing something.

“Well? What’s the holdup, dork? Heh.”

Sam shook himself out of his introspection and turned to room 20.

“Come on, let’s check in with Jeanne.” Without waiting for an answer, Sam twisted the door handle and ducked inside.

“Hello?” The room was still dark, and his eyes had to adjust. “Sorry-- I don’t have your laundry yet. Ground floor’s locked for some reason.”

“S-Sam...? Is that you?” Jeanne sounded nervous, unsure of herself. Sam thought he could hear something whisper with her.

“Yeah, it’s me.” He maneuvered himself away from the doorway to give Leigh room to enter, and the woman wasted no time trying to dart off; thankfully, Sam managed to grab the collar of her shirt before she could scamper away from him.

“You-- you shouldn’t be here.” Jeanne stuttered, and Sam could make out a significantly bulkier form emerge from the shadows.

“Are you alright?” He asked, leaning most of his faces on the ground as he hesitantly approached her.

“...No.” Jeanne’s reply was subdued. “It’s-- I think my sickness is getting worse.”

Sam could tell from the way several legs poked from beneath her coat, but he figured saying that would be quite rude.

“Could I help?” He asked instead, fiddling his claws and hand-fingers together.

“I... I don’t think so.” She muttered. “I-- it’s bad. Really bad.” She slowly made eye contact with his uppermost pairs of eyes, and he could see her fear. “I-I can show you. Do you-- do you want to see...?”

“Sure.” Sam nodded. “It could help us figure out how to help. Right, Leigh?”

Leigh shot Sam a look, and he rolled all of his eyes, dropping her onto the ground.

Jeanne audibly swallowed, bracing the flaps of her jacket before pulling them back to reveal--

Ooooh, that was bad. Really bad.

She wasn’t kidding, that was for certain.

At least ten grinning faces were pulling away from her body in a grotesque manner; a few were in the process of splitting, while others had already formed into tendril-like extensions. All of them eyed Sam and Leigh hungrily, making the hairs of his mane rise while he stifled a guttural snarl from all his mouths. He could feel Leigh beginning to chuckle next to him.

“It’s... it’s really bad, right?” Jeanne’s original head, which had also begun to elongate, was meek, and Sam quickly fumbled for a way to comfort her.

“I-I’ve seen worse. I mean, look at me!” Sam smiled awkwardly a handful of times as Jeanne snapped her coat around herself again.

“I-- it just... it keeps getting worse! I don’t know what to do!” She hugged herself as she began to shake; the only thing that seemed to keep the poor woman upright was her several new legs.

“Hey, hey, it’s gonna be alright.” Sam wasn’t actually sure about that, but he hated seeing Jeanne so terrified. “You’re not feeling any less in control, yeah?”

Jeanne swallowed nervously, “I-I can’t control the other heads, I think. They-- they keep smiling, and-- I can feel them salivating.”

Well. That wasn’t good.

“We’ll figure out a way to fix this, alright?” He resisted the urge to give her a comforting pat on the shoulder, afraid of both the faces growing from Jeanne and of startling the poor woman.

Leigh didn’t seem to have as many qualms, sidling up to the distraught woman with a grin on her face.

“Heh heh heh... I wonder...” She reached towards Jeanne, who seemed to be uncomfortable with the proximity. “Will you--”

“Thaaaaat’s enough, Leigh.” Sam dragged her back, flashing Jeanne a few small smiles. “Sorry. I think we better get going, yeah?”

“Sorry.” The blue woman muttered. “Stay-- Stay safe.”

Sam nodded, shoving Leigh through the door before he followed suit.

The two of them checked the last two doors on the floor together; neither door turned out to be open, however, so they ended up moving their search back to Floor 1. It took a bit of wandering, but eventually the two stumbled upon a new room; it was a bit too small for Sam to fit his entire body, so he ended up just sticking his faces and a few legs after Leigh.

Another one of those hooded cultists was stalking through the room, seemingly unaware of the duo’s entrance. Sam coughed from one of his mouths, hoping to grab the probably-Astronomer’s attention.

“Eh--?” The cloaked person turned around and promptly shrieked upon making eye contact with Sam.

”Wait--! We're friendly!“ Sam shouted, but the figure paid him no mind as they immediately dove for the supply-covered tables. Sam spotted the molotov laying on it moments later and panicked, lunging for the table like a snake as his oversized hands knocked junk off the tabletop. Before either of them could snatch the incendiary weapon, however, Leigh swooped in and nabbed the bottle, grinning maniacally (as was usual for her).

“Heh heh, you’ve got a nice toy...” She shook the bottle tauntingly. The yellow-eyed cultist almost looked ready to chew her out, but quickly took notice of Sam and flinched back.

“D-don’t hurt me...!”

Sam’s gut sank. Of course the cultist would be afraid of him---it seemed like everybody was, now that he was... this.

“Woah, woah, it’s okay.” Sam set down his current weapon---a cleaver---and held his hands up in an attempt to placate the figure. “I’m not gonna hurt you---we’re still sane.”

Leigh laughed in a distinctly insane manner, and the hooded figure shot Sam a worried look.

“I’m still sane. She won’t hurt you though...” Sam trailed off, then muttered, “I think.”

“Not yet, heh heh.”

“I won’t let her hurt you.” He remedied, dragging Leigh back.

“Hey! Put me down!” She hissed, continuing to clutch the molotov tightly. Sam ignored her as he continued.

“Do you know a guy named Aster?”

The cloaked person seemed to give pause at that, their posture relaxing a little as they looked up at Sam, their gaze flicking between his many eyes.

“Aster...? Have you-- have you spoken to him?”

Sam nodded. “He’s been holding up alright on the second floor.”

“I-I’m glad to hear he’s safe.” The person stuttered as the tension left their body.

Sam thought for a moment before his uppermost mouth said, “It’s a lot safer up there, actually. I could, uh, help you there, if you want.” He paused. “If you don’t want me to, though, that’s fine too.”

The cultist waved Sam off shakily. “No, n-no... I appreciate the concern, but-- I feel like I have something I need to do here. I-I don’t think I’m ready to leave yet.”

“Alright... Well, be--” Sam hissed when Leigh bit his hand like an angry cat, letting go of her. He shot her a few angry glares before he resumed. “Be careful for rats, alright?”

The figure nodded silently and Sam shot them a smile.

“Okay, we’ll get out of your hair, now. C’mon, Leigh.”

Before the two of them exited completely, the astronomer piped up. “Could you two pass on a message to Aster?”

Leigh tilted her head, her tone annoyed. “What?”

“Tell him that Aurelius says hello.” Despite it all, the cultist---Aurelius, apparently---seemed to be smiling. Sam nodded to him with a few smiles before pulling himself out of the room, Leigh following soon after.

The two of them continued to raid the floor together, finding a strange room with a large rat freak inside. The rat freak, surprisingly, didn’t attack them, simply bowing to Leigh before shifting out of the way to reveal the Mars planet disc.

They collected the disc and made their rounds one last time; strangely, Sam saw a bright red vending machine that he knew hadn’t been by the elevator before. He opted not to give the occurrence much thought---after all, he’s seen stranger things, but he did make a note for later when he got around to raiding the vending machines.

Sam watched Leigh duck easily through the stairwell doors and began to dread the impending ordeal before he paused.

He was feeling a lot better now, despite it only having been four days. Maybe...

“Hey, Leigh?”

The aforementioned maniac turned to look at him with wide eyes and a wider smile. “Yeah?”

Sam’s clawed hands curled eagerly as he continued.

“Want a rematch?”

Chapter Text

Sam only had a fraction of a second to react before the Grinning Beast was lunging at him, painfully headbutting most of his faces. He recoiled from the blow with a horrid snarl and bared a dozen sets of teeth, prompting Leigh to let out a giddy laugh as she dodged Sam’s bites.

“YOU’LL HAVE TO TRY HARDER THAN THAT, DORK!” She taunted, blue tongues and skinny arms escaping her maws. Sam growled lowly, letting himself get riled up by the comment.

He pounced at the Grinning Beast, slamming into her side and sending the both of them hurtling into a nearby wall. His claws scrabbled at her skin as he tried to gain purchase, but Leigh knew better than to let him do so. With a guttural snarl, she drove her side into the floor, crushing Sam against the ground and making the wood beneath both of their unnatural feet creak ominously.

He paused at the sound, suddenly a little worried. Were they going to--?

His train of thought was interrupted when Leigh painfully stomped on his side, knocking the wind out of several mouths. Immediately, Sam’s common sense took a backseat as he twisted out of the way of another stomp. Flipping himself back onto his feet, he scuttled across the floor to put distance between the two of them, keeping tabs on Leigh as he began to run.

“DON’T TELL ME YOU’RE RUNNING ALREADY, HEH.”

In a spur-of-the-moment action, Sam suddenly whipped back around and tackled her, weaving around her snapping jaws with a snake-like hiss. His tail curled around one of her legs and he began to pull it in an attempt to contort the Grinning Beast; however, another of her arms managed to snag it and viciously yanked him off.

He crashed into the wall and let out several shouts intermingled with pained growls, trying to snake back to his feet, but Leigh’s jaws quickly bore down on half of his faces. The bite was quite gentle by her standards, which meant that Sam felt like his upper body was going to snap in half at any moment.

“L-Leigh...” Sam desperately tapped her lip with his uppermost pair of arms. “You win... you win--!”

Leigh gave him a look that Sam couldn’t parse the meaning behind. She bit down harder, and for a brief moment Sam believed that she was going to kill him, though eventually her grip loosened and he was allowed to slip away.

Sam assessed his injuries while Leigh's booming voice cackled; thankfully, he found that there was nothing serious enough to warrant immediate concern, though he had a feeling that Leigh’s final bite was going to be one nasty bruise tomorrow.

Bringing his attention back to the present, Sam scowled at her. “You didn’t have to try and kill me, y’know.”

The Grinning Beast did what she did best and grinned. “YOU’RE NOT FIGHTING... YOU’RE HOLDING BACK.”

“I am fighting!” Sam exclaimed, though that caused several of his mouths to begin coughing. Fuck, it was gonna take a while to walk off this little tussle. “You just-- you almost snapped my neck!”

Sam paused at that, thinking a little more. Could it be considered his neck if he had faces all over it?

"I'M NOT GONNA KILL YOU… YET… HEH HEH." Leigh's mildly concerning admittance brought Sam back to the present, and he briefly considered kicking the grinner out of his apartment once the words registered---then he remembered that she was his only shot at becoming human again and (very hesitantly) discarded the idea.

None of the Cursed they'd seen so far had shown the ability to return to even a remotely human-shaped form---hell, most of the Cursed that they'd met couldn't or wouldn't even speak. If Sam really thought about it, finding Leigh was a huge stroke of luck for him; she was sane enough to talk, she wasn't necessarily hostile towards him, and she could become human-ish again. What were the chances he'd meet somebody like that?

Sam weakly smacked Leigh with his tail, which earned him a light nip on the offending limb. He halfheartedly snarled at her, shifting his tail away and making sure to give her a good glare.

"Whatever, let's just get back to the apartment."

Their return was disappointing, to say the least. Finding nothing of use on their supply run had certainly demotivated Sam; Leigh, who had shrunk back into her human skin some time before, seemed to be enjoying herself fairly well---no doubt because she beat Sam in their "wrestle" earlier.

Joel and Michael were playing on the floor with Fuzzy when the two returned. The teeth child seemed a bit agitated with Michael's roughhousing as the newly adopted rat-thing attacked the stuffed animal with a certain amount of childish ferocity, though luckily nothing bad happened.

Joel lit up the moment the two of them stepped back into the apartment, momentarily distracted from Michael. "Mr. Sam! Ms. Leigh!"

Mike looked up from Joel's teddy bear at the commotion: upon seeing Sam, the child's face split into a grin, and it bounded up to him, abandoning Joel's stuffed animal in favor of babbling something only it could understand. Sam smiled a little sheepishly, leaning down to pick it up. It giggled and squirmed in his hands, mouths drooling, before eventually getting comfortable. He brought it close to his faces and peered at the child curiously.

It breathed steadily, its sides rising and falling as it nuzzled into his comparatively large fingers. He smiled.

What a small, delicate little thing. It seemed so tiny in his hands, so fragile. He rubbed a thumb over its side gently and found he was able to feel its ribs.

He should probably at least get it some more food, actually.

He ended up grabbing a slice of cheese, which Mike ate with childish enthusiasm. After that was said and done, Sam lumbered his way over to his couch and plopped behind it to begin another gaming session. He tried to reach over the furniture to snag one of his games but quickly thought better of it when he felt the couch creak ominously underneath him.

Instead of testing his luck, he forced himself to his feet and laboriously dragged himself around the couch just enough for him to reach his game shelf. He filed through the cartridges for a moment before picking one up and plugging it into the console.

Madwheels was a game that Sam was, admittedly, not very good at. Even before his life had begun to spiral, Sam hadn't been particularly good with the controls, so it was hardly surprising that he somehow managed to be even worse at the game now that he had a hundred more hands to keep track of.

As was usual, Joel wanted to play too and ended up kicking Sam's ass at the game. This inevitably led to Leigh getting wrapped up in the game, which naturally meant that she and Sam started to dedicate all their time to tormenting each other. Mike entertained itself all the while with trying to catch Sam's tail, letting out a happy squeal every time it managed to pin the twitching limb to the floor. Things continued on like this for a few rounds before the distinctive sound of knocking at the door caused everyone to go quiet.

"You should go check it out, heh heh." Leigh finally broke the silence, excitement lining her features as Sam paused the game and set down his controller.

"Maybe it's the-- hhh-- doctor?" Joel suggested, the hint of hope in his voice making the obscenely large monster's heart twist a little.

"Or it could be something fun..." The grinner added sinisterly.

"I'll go--" "It's probably just a--" Sam spoke over himself, stopped, and let out a dozen frustrated sighs before trying again.

"It's probably just another survivor. I'll go check it out, though, just in case. Uh, don't unpause the game until I'm back, though."

He gently tugged his tail away from Mike, who gave a sad whine at the loss of its impromptu toy, and dragged himself to his feet, making sure to avoid hitting the ceiling as he walked to the door.

"Hello?" Sam called out and peered into the peephole. He couldn't see anything or anyone, which only gave him a feeling of dread. If nobody was out there, then who had been knocki--

"HEYYYY PALLY! You IN THERE? I wanna make FRIENDS!"

A dark figure suddenly popped out in front of the peephole, startling Sam enough to make him jolt.

"Uhhh…" What should Sam say? He wasn't entirely sure of this person's sanity, though the fact they were talking at all did give him some hope. Forcing the rest of his mouths to stay closed, Sam asked, "Are you… are you alright?"

"OF COURSE I am! C'mon, buddy, don't be so WORRIED!" The creep's smile was almost as wide as his eyes, which was certainly offputting; Sam had to remind himself that he was a giant monster and that this person would probably be more afraid of him than Sam was of the creep once he opened the door.

"…Who even are you?"

The creep frowned a little at that. "What?! You don't remember me? Your buddy, your pal, your FRIEND?" He paused as his smile came back in full force. "OHHHH, I get it now! Man, you're such a kidder! It's me, Dan!"

The creep, Dan, seemed a little agitated, shifting around slightly.

"I could really use some grub, dude. I'm STARVING!"

Sam thought about that for a moment. Could he afford to give up some of his food? He'd certainly feel bad about not giving Dan something to eat, but at the same time he didn't know how much they'd all have left when he had to--

He remembered what was in the frozen apartment and grimaced.

Ah. Right.

"I think I could give you something small. Gimme a second." Sam beelined for the kitchen, trying to stay quiet in case Dan realized that he wasn't human.

"Sooooo, heh heh… what's at the door?" Leigh sidled up to him as he snagged the burrito that Edouard the rat had given her the other day---honestly, it was a miracle that she hadn't devoured it yet.

"Some guy named Dan." Sam said, trying to keep his voice low. Leigh noticed the burrito he had taken and scowled.

"Why are you stealing my food?!" She tried to snatch the wrap out of his hands, but he managed to maneuver them just out of reach.

"He said he was hungry, Leigh; I'm not gonna just let him starve!"

The grinner's scowl faded away as she slowly began to smile, the expression almost predatory.

"You really want it, eh?" She chuckled. "Then fIGHT ME FOR IT!"

"OKAY!" "Fine!" "You can keep it!" "Keep your stupid burrito!" Sam shoved the food into her hands before she could completely transform into the Grinning Beast, swinging back to his fridge and grabbing some bread and meat for a quick ham sandwich.

As he threw together the ingredients, Leigh smirked at him and very slowly shoved the entire burrito into her mouth, probably just to taunt him. Sam did his best to ignore her, grabbing the sandwich and hurriedly making his way back to the door, pressing one of his eyes to the peephole.

"He-" Oh shit, he was talking with more than one mouth. "-yyy, sorry about all that. I, uh, got into a bit of a fight with my... roommate..."

"Wait, dude, you have ROOMMATES?!" Dan perked up, looking excited. "You gotta show me them!"

Something about the creep's enthusaism set Sam on edge; was it just him, or did Dan sound a little too excited about that? Whatever, Sam was probably just being paranoid.

"Mmmmmmaybe. By the way, uh, I got you a sandwich." Sam tried to deflect the question. "It's a... um, a ham sandwich."

Dan was silent and looked at the door expectantly, though as the seconds went by his expression fell into a deadpan.

"...Dude, are you gonna open the door or what?"

Right, right. Opening the door---how had Sam forgotten to do that? He was literally staring at it!

"Yeah, sorry." Sam awkwardly chuckled and reached for the doorknob only to pause.

His hand looked no different than it had moments prior, but that didn't change the fact that it was obviously not human. He remembered how nervous Jeanne had been when they first met---she had clearly not been comfortable around him, a monster.

"Well..." A few of Sam's faces cringed at the idea of scaring off some poor guy with no warning. "Um... I'm gonna open the door, alright? Just, uh, please don't freak out."

With that, Sam turned the knob and carefully opened the door.

Dan's expression went through a myriad of changes; at first, he seemed eager, though that eagerness visibly wore off the moment Sam was fully in view. After that, he began to look a little worried.

"Oh..."

"Shit!" Several of Sam's mouths hissed at the same time as he tried to salvage the situation. "I-- I'm not--" "I'm not one of them!" "I-I swear!" "I'm not gonna hurt you." He offered the ham sandwich, which was a little squished at this point.

Dan eyed the food with something akin to... disgust? Suspicion? Sam wasn't entirely sure.

"Heh… y'know, buddy, suddenly I'm not feeling too hungry anymore." Dan rubbed the back of his head nervously. "I think Ima just head out now, bye--"

The man darted away from the doorframe, but Sam stuck his head out to follow and was met with... something a little less than human.

Spiraling around the hall was was a dark, insectoid body akin to that of a centipede; though Sam guessed that the thing's body was about as long as himself, it was infinitely slimmer than his own form, nimbly twisting through the corridor with an ease that Sam could only dream of having.

And attached to the front of the creature was Dan, whose terror seemed to have increased tenfold.

"Uh, heyyyy there, man." The centipede-like cursed smiled nervously---now that Sam knew he wasn't a normal person, he could see all the little things about Dan that just seemed wrong.

His mouth was just a little too big, his eyes a little too wide, and the aura of hunger the cursed exuded was just a touch too animalistic to be anything human.

Not that Sam was judging, of course.

The two long bois stared at each other for a little bit before Dan began to back away.

"I, uh, I think I'll just go now... heheh..."

"Wait!" Sam's upper body struck out of his doorway like a viper would at its prey. Unlike a viper, however, he simply grabbed one of Dan's---arms? Legs? Limbs? Sam was just going to call them limbs---and gently tugged the Cursed back.

"I still have the sandwich, if you want it." He offered the sandwich in question, but Dan shook his head vehemently.

"Nonono, I'm good, bro. I'm really not, uh, hungry anymore." The smaller Cursed wrenched himself out of Sam's grasp and continued for the stairs.

Sam frowned thirty times, retracting the sandwich. "Alright, well..." He paused as a very terrible, absolutely no-good idea popped into his head.

"You wanna crash at my place for a bit?"

Dan stopped in his tracks, the human-ish part of his torso twisting around to look at the other Cursed. "Wuh-- huh...?"

"I mean, my apartment's got a lotta space in it, so... y'know." Sam nodded towards Dan's elongated body. "I know it's not too comfortable being stuck in a small place for a long time. Besides, we'll have a better chance at surviving if we stick together, right?"

"Right, yeah." Dan sounded a little wary. "You sure you're not gonna like... eat me or anything?"

Sam grimaced at the mere thought, but, before he could respond to Dan, he remembered the Rat King.

Was he capable of doing something like that again? Was he capable of killing a living, breathing, talking person like himself?

Was he a danger to the kids?

"...Are you going to answer me, orrrrr...?"

Right, yeah. Staying silent probably wasn't giving Dan the best impression of himself.

"Of course I won't!" Sam hoped his self-doubt didn't bleed into his voice. "I'm not-- I don't eat people. I'm not a monster...!"

"Rrrriggghhhhtt. A monster." For some reason, Dan sounded a little bit off, but Sam couldn't figure out exactly what it was. "You said you have roommates, yeah?"

Sam rubbed the back of his head sheepishly. "Yup. They aren't exactly my roommates per say, but they live here with me for now." He paused, then tacked on, "They're not dangerous, though, I swear."

That was a lie; Leigh was, in fact, very dangerous, but Sam was pretty sure he could stop her from doing anything rash.

Dan seemed to turn that over in his head before hesitantly approaching Sam. The aforementioned Cursed swiftly ducked back into his apartment with Dan soon to follow.

"Wow... you really weren't kidding when you said you had a lotta space, heh."

"Yeah, it's not usually like this." Sam stretched his... back? Neck? Whatever---he stretched his spine. "It just kinda happened when... y'know."

Dan nodded knowingly, scuttling through the space. Now that there weren't walls on all sides, he seemed to be walking a little awkwardly; he couldn't spiral around like he had in the hall.

"Man, that's a big couch!" Dan said, practically diving onto the elongated furniture and startling Joel, who had been playing around with Mike while Sam was AFK.

"Whoa!" Joel stood up and the rat kid squeaked in surprise, scurrying away from Dan as he settled in. "Who's-- hhh-- this?"

Sam's mouths opened to respond, but Dan beat him to the punch. "Heyyy there, kiddo! I'm Dan!"

Joel's mouth curled into something that Sam would call quizzical. "Are you Mr. Sam's friend?"

No, he literally just met this guy--

"HELL YEAH I AM!" Dan exclaimed excitedly, making Sam wince.

Once Dan had successfully sprawled himself across the couch, he doubled back so he was face-to-face with Joel. The teeth child seemed a little put off by this, which was completely understandable.

"Oh, what're you playing?" Dan grabbed Joel's controller, which had been sitting abandoned on the table.

"Hhhhey!" The teeth child reached for his controller, but Dan pulled out of the kid's reach. Sam wanted to step in, but he wasn't entirely sure how, so he opted to watch things unfold for a little longer--

"YOU!"

Or he could do it right now before Leigh inevitably escalated things into a fight.

"Alright, uh, Dan, that's enough." Sam said, albeit a little bit weakly. When that didn't seem to work, Sam leaned down and grabbed the creep's wrists, prying the controller out of Dan's grasp. He was just in time, too; moments later Leigh barreled into Sam's newest roommate, sporting several more arms than before.

"Knock it off, Leigh." Sam chastised, peeling her off of Dan like she was a rabid animal (which, to be completely honest, was a fitting comparison), and the creep shot the grinner a look of disdain before retreating to the far end of the couch.

"Whatever, Madwheels is a lame game, anyway." Dan muttered.

All-in-all, Sam's newest roommate wasn't too bad. Dan certainly had some odd moments, and Sam could admit that he didn't necessarily mesh well with anybody else in the apartment, but he felt a lot better knowing there was another slightly-more-responsible-than-Leigh adult in the residence.

Their prior excursion out of Sam's apartment hadn't really gotten them any good supplies, though, so Sam decided that they'd be going out again later that day. He didn't trust Dan or Leigh at the apartment without his own supervision, and Joel had expressed interest in coming with, so Sam ultimately decided that the entire apartment would be heading out for a quick sweep of the third floor.

"So... uh, are we ready, guys?" Sam cracked his back as best as he could, taking care not to jostle Mike too much---the aforementioned child was currently resting in a small backpack that the larger cursed had snagged at some point. Given his rather... less than human physiology, Sam was of course forced to sling the backpack on one of his shoulders instead of wearing it like a normal person.

"I was born ready!" Leigh giggled, practically vibrating next to the door in her eagerness.

"Yeah, sure." Dan sluggishly rolled off the couch as Joel finished turning the console off.

"I'm ready, Mr. Sam!" The teeth child cheerily added.

"Stay safe out there, guys!" Sybil chimed from the wall before disappearing from sight.

"Alright then." A few of Sam's mouths huffed in unison, smiling a little before opening the door just in time to catch sight of a bulky green Cursed walking by while holding-- were those grocery bags?!

"Hey!" Sam shoved his upper body through the doorway before Leigh could bolt out, curling around just enough to get a better view of the hallway. He saw the Cursed stiffen at the sound of his voices before it slowly turned around.

A few of Sam's mouths smiled a little nervously as he did a little wave with his uppermost arms. "Uhh… hi?"

The Cursed seemed to relax a little at Sam's awkwardness, fumbling with its claws as it shifted its grip on the groceries. "So… I guess you looked outside?"

Sam nodded; something about its voice sounded familiar, but Sam couldn't place it. "Yeah, not on purpose, though." Looking the Cursed up and down, he spotted a zipper and paused. "Wait a second, is that a costume?"

"Yeah, it's a Chococrocs costume." The not-Cursed confirmed, sounding proud of themself. Before the conversation could continue, though, Leigh kicked his side.

"Hey dork! Move it!"

Sam held back several hisses as he glared at Leigh with the eyes that could see her. With his upper body, he grimaced and held up a hand to the costumed person. "Hold on a second."

He ducked back into his apartment, leaving enough space for the rest of the group to file into the hallway. After everybody else was out, Sam stuck his head back through, pressing his upper body against the ceiling so as to not breathe down anybody's necks (literally).

"So… uh, maybe we could talk somewhere with a little more space?" Sam hesitantly suggested.

"Yeaaaaahhh…" The costumed person drawled, taking in the whole group. "Would you guys like to, like, hang out at my place for a bit?" They adjusted their grip on the bags.

"Sure." Sam shrugged, immediately regretting it as the motion rippled across his whole body. Eugh, he wasn't sure he could get used to that.

"Alright then!" The Chococroc guy said, turning around, and the current residents of apartment 33 followed soon after.