BeanBagBooks

the eye: 🧠✨ baguette download initiated

jon: “bonjour la malédiction”

✨prepared but also not✨

✨emotionally fortified but actually raw chicken✨

✨brain says “we’ve trained for this” but heart says “we die like men”✨

i’m sitting here like “i know NOTHING will prepare me for what’s coming” and yet i’m still like “let me just emotionally preheat the oven real quick”

FOR WHAT. THE OVEN IS ON FIRE. JON IS IN THE OVEN. I’M IN THE OVEN.

every new episode is like:

“anyway here’s a new fear you didn’t know existed, you’re welcome”

🤔 “Hmm. Odd. Anyway, Elias told me she died in the line of duty, which I assume means like… at her desk? Doing paperwork? Heart attack, perhaps? Nothing to worry about.”

SIR?!

you are literally investigating people being EATEN BY BUILDINGS and VANISHING INTO DRAWINGS and your *predecessor* has a gun in her desk, burnt files in the archive, multiple aliases, and an entire graveyard of cursed objects

and you're still like “nooo she probably just… forgot to file this properly. lol classic gertrude 😅 guess I’ll just put it back in the murder drawer!“

he’s like the human embodiment of “surely this has a rational explanation” even as reality crumbles in real time around him. the tapes are hissing. the lights are flickering. his coworkers are screaming in the walls.

but john’s just sipping his tea like:

like. right this moment. drag me down into that creaking, haunted basement and hand me a mildewed statement about someone who got swallowed by their own reflection. i’ll read it aloud in a trembling voice while the pipes whisper my name. bliss.

do you understand how tired i am. how thoroughly customer service has ground my soul into a fine paste. at least in the archives when something tries to kill you it doesn’t ask if you have a rewards card first. i don’t want peace. i want to sort through cursed wax cylinders while a bloodstained man in a trench coat tells me my aura smells wrong. i want to hear skittering in the ceiling and know it’s the worms, and i want to THANK them.

Not the 12-hour shift. Not the aching feet. Not the customer who made eye contact as they sneezed *into* their hand before handing you their cash.

No.

I’m talking about the real horror:

💩 Holding in a dump for *seven* hours.

I am clenching.

I am sweating.

I am praying to gods I don’t believe in.

What if I go and someone walks in?

There’s no one else here. I am the front of house. I am the barista. I am the dishwasher. I am the prisoner.

They’ll come in and be like “hello?”

And I’ll be in the staff toilet—mid-relief—drenched in shame and espresso sweat, whispering: “please don’t leave... I’ll be out in a minute...” as my soul escapes my body. (I with that was the case)

I have an hour left.

Sixty minutes of cheek clench cardio.

I am barely holding on bro. But I’m holding it.