Chapter Text
If anything, Mae believed that going back to Dr. Hank would help her.
At the very least, she thought it would get her parents off of her back for sleeping all day or intentionally setting off the neighbors. Not that it wasn’t something she would normally do; it was just a little offputting now that pissing off everyone in her immediate vicinity became a top priority.
Not that any of the dangerous, uncanny events leading up to this appointment were helping her at all in the first place. Not surprisingly, it did the exact opposite. Hell, maybe almost dying several times all at once in the midst of a mental fallout all in the span of a couple of days wasn’t actually good for your health?
Mae briefly pondered this thought as she twirled the bat around her feet, stomping towards the abandoned Food Donkey seething and unforgiving, gritting her teeth along the way.
Only briefly though, because soon, everything would become shapes, and there would be no thoughts. Just fear, and anger, and sadness.
The last time this had happened, it was at the donut place on the highway with Gregg and Angus. Luckily, Angus wasn’t actually aware that Mae tore up the bathroom; and thankfully, Gregg was there to talk her down from her rage stupor.
But this wasn’t like any of her typical “rage stupors”. This was something different entirely. This was something that couldn’t be talked out of, and Mae ultimately believed that surrendering and allowing herself to just “see shapes” one more time might have been a good way to let off some steam.
(Of course, this, too, was very different from what had happened six years ago. The Food Donkey was abandoned and housed no unknowing shoppers and towngoers that definitely would not have left unscathed. To see shapes, there would have to have been people in there; because in the end, that’s what the shapes derived from. Dense, hollow, unfamiliar corpses, no personalities, no thoughts, no anything, just nothing and that was it. Zombies. And that’s honestly the only reason why Mae would end up swinging the bat. Self defense, really, from empty shapes filling the air and surrounding her. Self defense, really.)
The door was locked. Mae didn’t understand why she even tried opening it at the time, because she still would have broken the windows anyways.
Stumbling through the shattered glass in a haze of unbridled anger and confusion, she eyed everything that she knew could be destroyed. An abandoned register (why would they leave this here in the first place?), a couple of empty boxes, some carts loitering in the corner, the windows that lined the building, and- ah.
The two remaining robot heads from the crime fun with Gregg.
When Mae realized this, a twinge of guilt rattled through her veins.
And then it was replaced with a bitter euphoria as she let out a holler and tore through the building like a tornado, bashing the bat recklessly at anything that would give or shatter.
And thoughts raced through her head, and none of them stayed at all.
Thoughts like, “You pathetic trash. Only when you’re fucking things up, you feel good about yourself.”
Thoughts like, “At least you were smart enough to choose an abandoned place over an innocent kid.”
Thoughts like, “Doesn’t matter. You don’t matter. Nothing matters. Nothing stays.”
Thoughts like, “I missed this, and I hate myself for it.”
Mae stepped back briefly when she felt a brief burst of pain shoot up her foot. Oh. The glass. You’re barefoot, you’ve only got socks on. The red trail was extensive and the cut was deep but there was a screaming in her head and an urgency to her movements now as she thwacked at the miscellaneous items scattered around the empty supermarket.
The sound of destruction echoed throughout the building.
Eventually, after about ten minutes of just beating the shit out of everything in the room, it was time to move on to the next; and yeah, she knew the door was locked, but there was a screaming in her head and an urgency to run from it, ruthlessly throwing and slamming herself into the door until it gave and she went tumbling down the steps.
You’re not normal. This isn’t normal. Fuck, why can’t you be normal? Why can’t you at least pretend to be somewhat normal?
She hadn’t realized that she was saying these things out loud until the voices echoed off of the two hulking robotic forms before her. They looked like they were talking back. “Nightmare eyes,” they said in unison.
I hate this, I hate this, I hate this.
Mae!?
Well, that voice certainly sounded familiar.
They flew through one ear and out the other and she found that she had only one objective; not to destroy everything in the Food Donkey (not that there was much left to begin with), but to hurt something that wasn’t herself for a change, until she couldn’t lift the bat above her head anymore, until her knees gave out and she passed out in her trail of blood and glass and self-hatred.
Euphoria.
The sound of metal on metal, the sound of breaking and bending and smashing and crushing was euphoria in her mind, because it covered everything else up, because she swore she saw somebody behind her - nothing new, again - and she swore that there were ghosts creeping in her shadow everytime she turned around and that eventually, she would be left alone with it. Just her and her ghost, while her friends up and left her and her family threw Possum Springs and all the memories therein into a vat of molten lava.
I hate this I hate this I hate this-
“Mae!? Dude! What the hell!?”
There it was again, that high pitched, screamy voice screeching through the building like wheels slamming to a halt and she didn’t care. She couldn’t care. She couldn’t think. There were no thoughts in her head, she had become one great big shape, with a fluid motion of lift, swing, repeat. Her feet stung, her arms ached, but she was almost there, she almost couldn’t breathe and it killed her to think she’d kept herself from letting this go for sooo long. Repression, Dr. Hank, called it, you need to repress it. You can’t let it win. Black crept around the edges of her sight and- there it was again, that ghost, right behind her, reaching its hand out to drag her into the elevator, down to the gaping hole in the center of it all, the end of everything and the beginning for everything around it, god, the robots- they almost looked like people.
Maybe that’s what made this so satisfyingly draining - they looked like people. People shapes. Ones that didn’t flinch or bleed or cry, they just broke, they just crumbled into pieces upon impact, the sheer force of the bat colliding with their stupid, condescending expressions and goofy fake grins- everyone she’d met had a fake grin, no one would ever smile willingly at Mae Borowski, that’s just neighborhood polite, kid, it’s all you got-
God, she couldn’t breathe.
“Mae!”
The voice stuck this time, momentarily yanking her back into reality, and her balance faltered, because reality hit hard and it was confusing. She slid down the wall, red streaks painted down when she tried to pull herself back up, and then the sound of someone rapidly approaching dragged her right back down into all-out panic, - it was them, it was them - fear gripping her heaving chest as she pulled the bat back one last time-
“St-stay away from m-me!” She sobbed, inching away from the black ghost that neared her.
It reached for her; the walls became stone, the floor became dirt, and she was so terrified of everything, still or moving, shape or not, the darkness crept up again and she swung as hard as she could.
Which couldn’t have been too hard, since her captor easily caught it and plucked it from her grasp, flinging it away without a care in the world.
Mae tugged at her ears and her fur and sobbed into the closing night sky-
And then there was Gregg, standing before her, with a panicked and worried expression on his face, his eyes watery and his tone of voice warped with an almost calming demeanor. Or was it condescending? Mae didn’t know. Mae didn’t know why he was here or how he got here or if he was mad at her or if the police were here or they were being chased again or-
“Hey, you’re alright, Mae! Fuck, are you okay? It’s just me! It’s just Angus and me!” Gregg spoke, a little softer this time, inching towards her slowly with his hands up. It almost seemed like a gesture of surrender.
Mae bawled. Of course it was a gesture of surrender. Any and everyone who made contact with her surrendered to an outlandish, unsatisfying friendship, like a voluntary slavery that only Mae knew was basically pitiful contact.
The thoughts stopped.
She stopped crying.
Exhaustion hit her like a sack of bricks, as if reality were the bat and she’d become the shapes they were breaking.
And Gregg said something else - she heard him clearly, but they had just become sounds in her head, the shapes of the words and not the actual meaning of them - only to find that she had become despondent of all outside influences, completely absorbed in a loneliness you could only find in Mae Borowski’s head.
Suddenly, she became lightheaded, gradually slumping into the ground as consciousness ebbed from her body and blackness ensnared her vision.
But she could breathe again. She could finally breathe again.
So, that was a good sign, right?
Soft, bulky arms scooped her up from the ground and for a moment, she understood what the God Monster in her dreams meant about flying up and closing the sky. Snippets of conversation stuck in her mind as she continued flying higher and higher.
“Will she be okay…?”
“... Yeah. She’ll wake up in a while and feel bad.”
“So this… has happened before?”
“Oh yeah. Just, not as bad. And not as long. Let’s take her back home, I don’t think going to her parents is a good idea right now.”
Yeah, her parents. The ones that said, ‘We set up an appointment with Dr. Hank. You’ve been down lately, and we want to make sure you’re alright.’
She had a strange dream that night (or was it still day?), about what that God Monster had said about little creatures and hooves. And she thought she might have actually deciphered its meaning.
But she lost it.