TDoomPoet@TDoomPoet Twitter: WRITER PROMPT: One-shot, monsters new to the surface. Sans falls asleep somewhere inconvenient, like an alley. A human finds him while taking out the trash. Police/CSI get called for the random appearance of a fully decomposed ...kid? Sans wakes up to poking. Hilarity ensues.
Jes had hardly started his shift when it all went pear-shaped. His day had started out so nicely, too! Waking up on time to catch the early bus to work, with the driver who smells like a human being rather than an entire grease trap, clocking in five minutes early after eating a nourishing breakfast (thanks, Mom!), and getting assigned to maintenance as his first duty of the day. The poor, poor cashiers were stuck at their stations while he got to empty the office trashes from the night shift and do some light restocking as the customers filtered in. Really, it had all the makings of a perfect work day.
And then, he found the body by the dumpster.
His first thought upon wheeling his garbage cart down the alley was that someone had left a shabbily-clad Halloween decoration outside of the trash; too lazy to throw it in with the rest. Then, as he got closer, he saw that the expected sheen of plastic was absent. The shape was all wrong for a fake skeleton, the proportions were off, the head was too big compared to the body and the arms and legs were too short to belong to an adult anything. The bones were too...porous, was the word he used to describe it later, too porous and worn, and the weight of them tumbled the shape and clothing against the dumpster.
As he backed away, heart rabbiting in his chest, one of the arms slowly slid off the middle of the corpse and landed in a garbage-juice puddle with a hollow smack.
Luckily, a smart onlooker dialed the police. Jes was too busy screaming his teenaged head off and racing back inside.
Officer Bankert was the first to arrive, cordoning off the alley from the onlookers and directing the local triathalon club to run their course along an alternate route. The primarily human group looked confused, but acquiesced willingly enough, leaving behind a member to direct the next group scheduled to arrive in an hour. Bankert watched the humans, and a couple rabbit-monsters…the whole, ‘monsters are real’ ‘they are here’ ‘they are citizens’ ‘they run in the local triathalon’ thing was still so new…jog away, and focused on containing any evidence that may remain of the crime.
The body was lying where that teenager said it was, unmoved by all accounts. The bones were surprisingly clean-looking, aside from the garbage juice staining the clothing and splashed across the…finger bones?...of the left hand, where it lay by its side. It must have died a long time ago, or at least have been lying somewhere the bugs could get at it. No flesh left on it anywhere that he could see.
The kid was right, though. This was definitely the remains of a child. His heart was already breaking for the poor family who would be getting some very bad news today.
Agent Dane had seen a good many gruesome, sad things in her life, but this was definitely one of the most disturbing. Some freak had killed a child, or located a deceased child, dressed it in disgusting clothes, and dropped the fully-decomposed corpse in a filthy alley between a 24-hour mega-mart and a bodega. She crouched carefully next to the body, her team scrounging for clues and investigating the contents of the dumpster.
Her job was the saddest: photographing the remains, and directing the forensic body removal team in the most effective way to lift the delicate form from the congealing grease, rotting fluids, and random scraps of trash that glued it to the asphalt. A skeleton so far advanced in decomposition that no visible putrefying flesh remained would fall apart the second anyone bumped a femur, so each piece had to be bagged, tagged, and filed in the sturdy cardboard box, already marked and lined with a plastic sheet.
Dane set her camera gently aside, nodded to her helpers, and gingerly lifted the first of many small bones.
They did not fall apart. The whole leg moved with the shoe she raised, and in fact, the skeletal corpse itself seemed incredibly determined to stick together- a fact she only remarked upon in the debrief, as she was too busy leaping back and shouting as the dead body started rubbing its empty eye sockets and yawning, oblivious to the instant, screaming chaos.
And at that moment, the second wave of joggers rolled in.
Papyrus was having an excellent day.
He had risen before the sun, had a healthy and nutritious breakfast of oatmeal with dinosaur eggs and milk, had a refreshing shower, and had been able to convince his perpetually-lazy brother to join him on a morning run!
Granted, the agreement was mostly grunts and nodding, but Sans had actually left the house, put on a pair of shoes, and told him he’d meet him on the route to the cycling portion of the race. Doubtless he would simply hitch a ride on Papyrus’ bike rather than put foot to the pedal, but Papyrus would take what he could get, and today, he was getting a cycling partner!
He offered to carry Sans like a backpack for the running portion, but his brother had simply grinned, waved, and vanished. He’d turn up as he usually did, somehow at the perfect spot and in the most indolent way imaginable, Papyrus was sure.
With Undyne at his side and the sun beginning to rise over the 45th morning he had seen in his life, a fresh breeze whistling through his bones and dew falling off the leaves as they sped below them, Papyrus was at peace. What a beautiful day this would be!
He almost ran right past the commotion, not wanting to let unruly humans screaming and shouting ruin his morning, but then he caught sight of the object of their panic, and felt all the goodness dry up faster than Undyne in Hotland.
Sans had been having a great nap. Quiet, secluded, and offensively-smelling enough to drive away rubberneckers, it was the perfect place to wait for Pap to run by. He might have slipped a little in the dumpster sauce, but he’d wash up in the swimming portion of the race. Pap would pedal extra hard to get there and scrub him up, and he’s have the benefit of a fast ride to the local swimming hole to look forward to.
With this comforting thought, he slipped directly from waking to a deep, restful sleep. And didn’t awaken until a human hand gripped his foot and lifted his lower body into the air.
It dropped him immediately, and he slowly became aware of the horrible, loud noises happening around him. He was surrounded by humans in Hazmat suits, some of them in the dumpster, some of them sprinting away from him down either side of the alley, ripping up caution tape as they went. There were police vehicles, a forensic investigations van, and suited officers shouting and making frantic gestures at the screaming onlookers and Hazmat humans. Some of the Hazmat humans jumped into the van and sped away, others were hiding behind the police cars and policemen, and there was entirely too much excitement happening for his taste this early in the morning.
Luckily, Papyrus happened to be jogging by, with Undyne gaping at the scene and punching his arm. Sans took a shortcut to them. Behind them, the screams reached a fever pitch and the humans tumbled over each other like ants from a kicked anthill. Papyrus, displaying his good sense and intelligence, continued to jog quickly forward, schlepping Sans like a filthy backpack and catching up to the main group.
“hey, pap. having a good run?”
“SANS. YOU HAVE TO STOP DOING THAT.”
“THIS IS THE SECOND TIME THIS MONTH.”
“I SWEAR, YOU FIND THE WORST PLACES TO TAKE A NAP!”
