#bindertales

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Last one before the update, Elka High School: Finals Week!

This is the official, canonical ending to the original Binder! I've shared the pdf of the original story, and this here is a Toyhouse listing of the end written in modern day! I did my best to wrap everything up neatly (with a little retconning) to make this into a somewhat-competent ending to a terribly beautiful mess of a middle school fanfiction.

I'm quite proud of this, so please enjoy!!

Next, an aside with Ben (Ben Drowned the creepypasta, yes) with his creepypasta buddies! Set in the background of Issue 4 and a whole lot of self-serving fun of finally writing my own equivalent of those classic Slender Mansion fics!

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It had been a while since Ben was real. Not in the sense that he faked a persona or lied or anything like that. No, real as in the most literal sense of the word. A real, tangible, living breathing walking person. He could feel the flesh beneath his clothing, smell the cloud of sweat and teenage angst in the halls. It was too much. It wasn’t enough.

Life as a computer virus was awesome. He could do whatever he wanted with a wave of the mouse. The entire internet was at his (metaphorical) fingertips. He could learn everything there is to know about motherboards and crime happening across the world and what breed of dog is the softest. He knew every tip and trick in the book when it came to modding the average smart phone (The key was to be a pro like him and, less importantly, a sentient piece of malware with the face of a video game icon.) He knew how every single aspect of every single game worked, including the lost easter eggs that devs forgot how to access and the comments left in the code bitching about deadlines. He even knew about Luigi being in the source code of Super Mario 64 years before the general internet ever had access to them. The only thing he didn’t know was how it felt to execute the perfect hand movements on an N64 remote to perform a BLJ. How satisfying it’d be to smash a keyboard to bits after a particularly frustrating loss. How soft a Samoyed dog actually is.

There were few (Many.) things that Ben didn’t know, but he wanted to learn now. A school would technically be the best place for that, even if the regular courses would bore him to bits. At the very least, his teacher did seem interested in Ben’s placement. Maybe he could convince the old guy to let him skip. Either way, enrolling at Elka High School gave him the link to the outside world that he’d always thought (dreamed) about. He could move, he could breathe, he could eat, but most importantly he could play video games in person! With his (Friends!!!) teammates!

EJ and Exe were always happy to have someone on their LAN Minecraft world, in-person or in their computers, but Ben knows that Jeff was the most excited. The guy was a sore loser at best and was on a 278-streak of losses against Ben. Now, it was actually sort of a challenge. He’s not quite used to having actual hands, let alone precise finger movements, so Jeff had finally got a couple of wins under his belt. Ben’s sure he cheated, though.

Jeff wasn’t at school, the second day of classes. He spent half the day fiddling with everything (Paper is so thin and paperclips are so bendable!!) and the other half playing Switch under the desk, so he hadn’t really noticed until lunch. Exe was already at the table, poking at his food with a pout whilst scrolling mindlessly on his phone. Ben was pretty sure he saw EJ slink off to its dorm to eat but he hadn’t remembered seeing Jeff on his way over. With only a slight stumble (where he almost ate utter shit stepping on his own feet) Ben plopped down across from Exe who, surprisingly, put his phone down to face him.

“Greetings, Ben,” Exe said tersely, “have you seen Jeffery today?”

Hiding a smirk at his formality (God, it was so much funnier in person.) Ben shook his head. The idea of playing a Sonic the Hedgehog game in front of the edgy facsimile of the character popped into his head and he began to root through his bag for the cartridge.

“He’s probably skipping, dude,” Ben said. “The dude’s chill like that. You wanna join him after lunch?”

Exe clicked his tongue.

“I would not ask was it not of concern, Ben. The teenagers have been spreading rumors.”

“We are teens, Exe.”

The hedgehog fiddled with something on his phone, scrolling with stiff paws. He paused on a post that made him scrunch up his nose (Ben wondered how Exe would react to being booped in this state. He stowed the idea away for another day.) before turning the screen to face Ben. He didn’t know how the internet worked here, but he knew it was mostly filled with losers and jocks he had no interest in seeing photos from. The post was no different, sent from some random girl’s page with far too much pink around the borders and nigh unreadable text amid the flurry of cringe-inducing emojis. What he could understand, though, was interesting.

“Someone died?” Ben read. “Big whoop. I know you of all people don’t get squeamish. We all have secret hobbies, right?”

“Yes, of course, but it is the implications, Ben,” Exe huffed. His claws rapped against his dinky plastic lunch tray. Ben sighed (dramatically) and rolled his eyes, he really didn’t like it when Exe got all philosophical with it. He sucked at just saying things without making it some kind of performance or game. Not that he was much better.

“You know that this is definitely the doing of Jeffery, correct?”

“Yeah, I guess,” Ben said, “it sounds like his usual M.O., dead in bed with no one the wiser. But that doesn’t mean he’d come to class today.”

“He is my roommate, Ben,” Exe said, “Jeffery was gone when I awoke.”

Ben’s brain paused as the situation buffered in his head. It wasn’t wildly weird, in his opinion. He knew Jeff had a wacked-out sleep schedule that was only partially due to his homicidal hobbies. It wasn’t beyond belief that he just got caught up in the crime and is wandering campus or back in the dorm by now. But… the principal said something about life-sustaining technology in the school’s weird (incredibly interesting in its impossibility and he really wanted to know how it worked) force field, something like a respawning system straight out of a video game. Sure, Jeff could’ve forgotten about the victim coming back (Which is dumb, that moron was going to get caught for killing in such a confined environment.) and was hiding out somewhere around here, but why wouldn’t he just-

“Did he text you? Leave a note?”

“Not a word,” Exe said.

Ben grimaced. He shot Jeff a text just in case. He crammed one more bite of food into his mouth (A waste of taste, sadge.) and grabbed both his and Exe’s trays. The hedgehog jumped to his feet to follow as Ben tossed their disposal out.

“We’ll check the dorm one more time,” Ben said, “then start a search. He couldn’t have gone far.”

Exe chuffed in agreement, a spark in his eyes at the task.

“Hide and seek, perhaps?”

Ben laughed.

This time, a rewrite from the original Binder! This is from chapter 9, set just after Cas suddenly has his own body and based on the older Venturiantale lore of Sally and Casket having known each other from prior attacks. Whispy is Sally's roommate here and Cas was invited to their dorm out of the blue. TW for blood I suppose, though that's just about everywhere in this series lol

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‘Go socialize,’ he said.

‘It’ll be good for you,’ he said.

In Cas’ opinion, John just wanted some time alone with Ghost. That loser probably knew the demon would be stuck in the middle of a meaningless argument over the superior between pancakes and waffles. This is exactly why he didn’t want to come to college with them. Being in a mortal body of his very own for the first time in a decade, Cas had expected more out of life. Maybe he’d try a new food that Ghost -and therefore the demon stuck to him- never ate, have the experience of playing video games, or be able to go on a jog without being tailed by John’s paranoid ass. Anything but sitting in Sally Accachalla’s dorm while she and her prissy wolf roommate bicker about breakfast foods. Cas doesn’t even get why he was invited! Last he checked, Sally didn’t exactly like him, and he’d never met Whispy prior to walking into her dorm. With both being the chattiest gossip girls he’s ever met, Cas really doesn’t think his edgy ass fits in among the cutesy pillows and show posters. Maybe it was pity, or maybe John bribed them into it.

Cas doesn’t blame him. He wouldn’t want someone like himself around Ghost either.

“How ‘bout this,” Sally says. Her voice drags the demon from his thoughts with its grating high pitch as her feline ears flick backwards. “Whispy, you go buy some pancake mix, and I’ll make some waffle batter here with Cas. Then, he’ll judge which tastes best! It’s been too long since we’ve chatted, anyways.”

Squinting at her, Cas feels annoyance bubbling up in his chest; what the hell is she doing? He absolutely refuses to allow her to drag him into their stupid debate. Before he can voice his opposition, however, Whispy shoots up from her seat, a determined glint in her eyes. Fuck.

“Bet!” She barks. “It’ll be a bit, though. That okay?”

Sally waves a paw flippantly and a stretched grin splits her face. The fur on the back of Cas’ neck begins to prickle. He doesn’t like her when she gets like this. Even when it happens with Ghost and John around, she just looks at Cas and it feels so wrong.

“No worries! Go ahead, we’ll keep ourselves busy.” Sally says with saccharine sweetness.

It’s fine, she just wants to bake waffles, boring shit. Whispy will be back. She throws us a farewell as she bustles out the door. Cas feels Sally’s burning gaze as his fur stands on end.

“Hey, Cas?”

Just waffles, they’re gonna bake waffles.

“Yeah?” His voice cracks.

“We’ve known each other a while, yeah? So of course, you remember that time you dumped ‘Lare on her birthday?”

He doesn’t, actually. He’s done a lot of bad things that all blur together the harder he tries to think about it. Dumped? Like, a girlfriend? He can’t remember most of his past partners. Demons aren’t exactly built with mortal life in mind, let alone memories spanning several years. As far as he knows the relationships all ended pretty quickly until Ghost and John came around.

“Who?” Cas says. It slips out of his mouth before he can stop himself.

“’Course not.”

Just baking. Just baking. Sally drums her claws.

“How ‘bout somethin’ easier. What about when we fought? When you possessed Ghost and broke my arm?” She says. Venom drips from every word.

He can’t remember. Why can’t he remember­­­­­—

“Probably not.” As though chatting about the weather, she eyes the chipped paint of her nails whilst speaking. “I’m not too happy ‘bout that, or your new body.”

Sally languidly stands from her seat. Her ears flick backward and her tail curls behind her in one smooth motion.

“Pretending to be a real person. Don’t be stupid! I’ve been waiting for a chance to shred you without Ghost stuck as collateral for years. So,” she preens with malicious joy. “Time’s up!”

In a flash, she strikes out at the chair legs beneath Cas, tossing him backwards as he instinctually lurches away. Like the flip of a switch, the demon moves, mind diving into the familiar headspace of battle. The girl responds with a spine-chilling giggle as she evades Cas’ swipe. He cackles in turn as the first blood is shed with a graze on her muzzle. He will not let himself lose this fight. She manages to pin him for a moment, claws tearing at the skin of his shoulders, as Cas snaps serrated teeth up at her. In a tangle of fur and claws, they tumble into a wild scrap. They fight dirty, no honor in each strike. But he needs to win this time.

In a single strike Cas is suddenly in agony. Everything blurs and no amount of blinking resolves it, though the stickiness running over one eye gives him an idea of the problem. He stumbles back and paws for the source of the wetness: blood. It drains from mangled flaps of skin around Cas’ ear that scream when touched. Jesus Christ, the crazy cat just tore his ear to shreds! Blood rushes in what remains of his ears as his chest heaves. Through the haze, he vaguely hears Sally’s sick cackling as he wipes the blood from his eye. It smears across Cas’ snout. The coppery scent makes him cringe.

God, is Cas glad he’s not using Ghost’s body for this anymore.

Any proper thought is swiftly thrown aside to make way for situational awareness and pure instinct as Cas has to drop, letting Sally sail past. Without him to stop her path, she slams into the flimsy dorm door, crashing through wood that splinters, to land heavily on the groaning metal of the second-floor platform. She yowls in alarm, shaking herself back and forth to dislodge the wood shards. Cas barely has time to breathe before he throws himself back into combat. He feels his body fatigue. Please, he has to win this time. He has something to lose now. Face-to-face against Sally again, their scratching and biting morphs into desperate jabs. The metal groans beneath them with every swing. The world spins, blood sticks to Cas’ fur, and he can’t get enough air in his lungs. Please, just let him win.

Then, he’s floating. Wind breezes past before Cas realizes that they’re both falling. The platform snaps inward as the metal splinters. Wood, metal, and flesh collapse the short distance to the ground in a horrid cacophony of sound. Cas falls with it. Noise, light, colors overwhelming every sense. He can’t breathe. He can’t fucking breathe. He can hear a whistle with every stutter of his chest. Is there something in his throat? It feels wet. The ground is wet, too. His head is still spinning, and he doesn’t know where Sally is. He can’t hear her.

He can’t hear anything.

Where’s John? He’s supposed to be with Ghost right now, back at their dorm. Sally and Cas fought at her dorm; did they get caught in the crossfire? Cas’ paws twitch with a bolt of pain. He needs to get back to them. John would know what to do. He always does, even when Cas was stuck possessing Ghost. Ghost—he’s probably worrying about Cas, though he doesn’t know why he does. Ghost is too nice. Blades of grass scrape down Cas’ arm as it agonizingly stretches out. He’s so tired; his eyes drag closed, drag open.

“Johnny?” Cas says.

The word is gravel from his throat that falls out as nothing more than a wheeze. Is he breathing? Muscles burn as Cas tries to drag himself with an arm that’s damp and blurry. It’s red. The grass is, too, as is the debris around him. Oh, it fell on him. Did it fall on Sally, too? Cas can’t hear her voice. He can’t hear anything. He should get help; John would know what to do.

“Cas!”

Did Cas say that? It feels like it, with his lungs so empty. Is he breathing? ‘Cause he doesn’t think so. His arm drags forward again. Grass must really be made of blades ‘cause he feels the blood that seeps from his arm every time it moves through. The ground is shaking. Or maybe it’s just him.

“Cas, please! Wake up!”

Oh, when did Cas close his eyes? Sound is dull, draining to understand from the static in his head. Dragging his eyes open is harder than he expected. It must be some mortal thing, Cas doesn’t remember breathing being this hard during possession. In fact, he doesn’t think he even needed to breathe. Is he breathing? Cas is tired.

“Cas!” Ghost says in his ear.

Next up for my Pi(e) Day celebration, a fic from Whispy's POV! This is seet between Issues 3 and 4. As she's just a side character here, allow me to extrapolate! She's an old character that started as a FNAF fursona of my one friend, and later reused as a full-fledged FNAF character, Alpha from Venture Adventure! Here, though, she's carrying on her original intent as a shy bookworm with ties to FNAF lore.

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You’re overthinking things again.

Whispy snuffles, pawing at the sleepies in her eyes as she flips onto her other side in bed once again. The dorm’s bedframe squeals unhappily, the sound barely muffled by the thin mattress. Considering the incredible technology on display on Elka High’s campus, she would’ve expected better from their living quarters. Room 12B, they said, a premium single room experience. Yet there she laid, stiff neck and cold paws clutched to her chest. She could feel her heart thudding beneath her paws. The air conditioning shuffled the curtains by the window, the quiet tapping made Whispy swallow the lump in her throat.

The first night somewhere new always brought some level of anxiety to her. Sleepless nights led to messy mornings which ended up with awkward afternoons until her entire day was ruined. It was an eternal spiral that was only broken after a week or so and, unfortunately for her, tonight was only the beginning. With a lofty sigh, Whispy tosses and turns at each creak of the walls. She glanced over at her alarm clock for what felt like the fiftieth time that night.

Yup, still late. Maybe it’d be better to say early, at that point.

Time just never seems to pass at the same rate, in Whispy’s experience. Some nights she blinks and it’s suddenly time for school, others the hours drag through molasses. It’s a terrible feeling that she is eternally grateful that her friends don’t experience, according to the dazed looks she gets when lamenting her nighttime escapades. At the very least, it’s given her the time to catch up on old series during the days where even laying down feels like a test of strength. She’d hoped tonight wasn’t going to be one of those nights. She had even gone to bed early that night, hoping to use the extra time to make sure she slept enough, for once. Whispy squeezed her eyes shut in a futile attempt to convince her body it was time for bed.

A shudder ran through the far wall, the barrier between her dorm and the next. A sudden storm? Wild animal run loose? Or something worse, something human? Whispy’s fur stood on end. She dared not move from her position, though her ears strained to hear anything next door, in the dorm, in her room-

It was quiet. The branches outside her window sat straight for the first time all day and the air conditioning powered down. Whatever lay beyond the far wall was silent. Whispy was breathing too loudly. Surely, they’d hear her, they’d know she was awake. If they knew she was awake, they would get her. At a snail’s pace, she pulled a paw over her muzzle, ghosting breath over her hypersensitive paw pads. Surely, they’d notice.

Who are “they,” though, she scolded herself, you’re overthinking again.

But she couldn’t find it in herself to move, to breathe more steadily, to open her eyes. Some small memory from health class sprung up amid the claxon alarms in her head, something about “prey drives” and its activation when someone runs, and she has to swallow a bout of manic laughter. What she wouldn’t do for her roommate to wander in right then, to awkwardly apologize for the noise with a voice too loud for the closed environment. Sally was brave, outgoing, social – everything Whispy was too afraid to try.

What was she even thinking, going to a remote boarding school all alone? Her sister even knew it was a bad idea, Whispy saw the tense, doubting squint in her eyes when she’d gotten her acceptance letter. But she couldn’t stay at home anymore. Not after the disappearances. She couldn’t hear the doorbell without her heart skipping a beat, expecting to look out the window to Fritz’s big, stupid grin. The playground pavilions were too empty without Susie’s laughter. She barely even knew them that well, they were friendly classmates at best. And yet…

Whispy shivered. The branches by the window rapped against the glass and the air conditioning kicked in. It was quiet next door. She breathed in, then out. If she tried hard enough, she thought she could hear Sally snore across the hall. It was four am when Whispy finally fell asleep.

In the morning, Whispy made breakfast. Sally wasn’t used to paws yet, let alone how long it takes to groom your fur, so Whispy was happy to take point. They walked to class after meeting up with Sally’s partner – Whispy mostly followed behind them, but Sally would swing around to get her opinion of the nonsense they shared. Class carried on in a haze, as expected, until third period rolled around. One of Sally’s friends sat to Whispy’s left and they landed in their chair in a hurry before pulling both she and Sally into a huddle.

They said there was a fight last night. Someone broke into one of the dorms. The only reason they knew it happened was because the victim woke up in a pool of their own blood, having respawned in the night, and the lock to room 11A being carved out of the door.

In honor of Pi(e) Day's rapid approach, I want to share some short fics I wrote for Bindertales/The Binder! Today's is a short aside about Ghost (: TW: Body dysphoria

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With Cas in control, the best Ghost can do against him is pick at his psyche. The demon’s thoughts are hard to get a good grasp on, but he hears everything Cas says like a loudspeaker in his blood. Demonic possession leaves little for the host to do besides listen, and that’s with Ghost’s years of experience with it. At the very least, there are flashes of what Cas is doing with his body, like playing an old first-person video game. They’re muddy and made up of almost entirely flash-feelings, but it’s something. Anything to get a glimpse of the demon in his skin.

As if he didn’t have enough dysphoria to begin with. Ugh…

The possession is as parasitic as it is symbiotic; one cannot exist without the other, who can only do their job with the presence of the one. Cas’ presence in his body gave Ghost the Sight, which both he and Toast depend on for their very career and safety of these around them. While the paranormal tends to notice them, they also are capable of noticing the paranormal, now. Where they once struggled to explain the monsters under the bed, they now can banish them entirely. It’s as though the demonic energy within Ghost is that one last missing link that connects them to the Other Side. When he speaks, the spirits Hear.

All to say, when Ghost first bound that demon to his very soul, it seemed like everything somehow worked out. He kept the remaining pieces of his childhood best friend – the parts that he knew weren’t just a demon tricking him for all those years – and contained the paranormal threat in his basement. Hell, he didn’t even care when he started hearing it talk to him. It seemed obvious – of course the demon would be able to talk to him. It’s a demon owning his soul. That’s supernatural 101. It would whine and hiss in his ear about anything and everything, always hungry and always wanting control. Again, supernatural 101, just never let the demon have control and it’d all be fine. As long as it was stuck in Ghost’s head, it wouldn’t be able to terrorize any innocent people. He even tried to eat a bit more to keep it happy. Yet… as the days went on, it kept shouting the same let me eat let me out let me control. It was incessant, migraine-inducing, taking Ghost out of class to hide in the nurse’s office and calling off social events to scream at the mirror. The thing even had the gall to look like him. An imperfect him. One with a melting face and a too-tight bra.

Sometimes it was harder to tell who was really the one in the mirror.

The last day of middle school was the breaking point.

Ghost had begun to forgo sleep out of fear of the demon breaking out of his ribcage. Toast was sleeping over almost every day, shaken to the core by the red ringing his best friend’s eyes. They were spending day after day in the recesses of the public library, pouring over ancient tomes that may hold the key to keeping the demon on a leash, to the point where they feared they’d fail to graduate. Toast’s parents put their foot down the day before graduation: No sleepover that night. He wasn’t brave enough to go to Ghost’s house anyways, and Ghost sure wasn’t well enough to bust into Toast’s family estate. He didn’t think he could sleep from the nerves of it all anyways. Just to be safe, he was sure to always keep a mug of coffee at his side. It was only when his clumsy hands shattered it on the kitchen floor did he wonder if sleep was even the catalyst for losing control. Maybe a nap would do him good, he thought, as he sluggishly gathered the ceramic shards in his hands. One managed to cleanly slice his thumb, drawing a small bead of blood.

When he woke up, he was standing in an alleyway, scuffed and sore. He didn’t recognize the area; it smelled horrible and the lights from the street barely illuminated his feet. But it was enough to cast a long shadow from the man at the end of the alley, clutching his arm to his chest and stumbling around the corner with a desperate gait. Blood trailed from his disappearing form to a small puddle at Ghost’s left shoe. A drop plopped into the pool and made him aware of the pocketknife limply held in his hand.

He knew, then, that it was the demon’s doing. It wanted Ghost to see what it had done.

That even a caged animal can bite.

It was Toast that found him in the end, wandering dizzily in the streets. Ghost had missed graduation, he said. They both passed. Then, with soft, clumsy assurances, he took Ghost home – not Ghost’s, of course, that hadn’t been a home in years. They’d settled in Toast’s bedroom, now that his parents were reassured their son was moving forward. They gradually parsed through the younger boy’s memories to pinpoint what had happened, Toast jumping on the opportunity to construct an entire system to keep this from happening again whilst Ghost finally got some sleep in Toast’s bed.

It ended up breaking down into one simple thing: stay away from blood. Wounds were immediately treated and covered with as many band aids as it took to hide the stain. Anything big enough to smell called for covering the sleeves of his hoodie in far too much cinnamon-scented hand sanitizer, which was held to his nose while Toast patched things up. Monthly issues were combatted with healthy amounts of sleep and scent pods in his every pocket. His nasty habit of nail-chewing had to be broken before he could bite off a hangnail and taste blood. It was, overall, an efficient and successful scheme.

Unfortunately, they were teenage boys who hunted the paranormal for a living. Scraps against hellhounds were bound to bear injury, haunted buildings had sharp edges and unsound flooring that were sometimes stepped in, and sometimes he just got punched in the nose. It was tempting, at times, to listen to the demon’s reassurances of strength and victory should he just let go, give control over, just like that- Yet his accursed morals – or maybe that was Toast – kept Ghost from the dark side. Sometimes, though, he didn’t have a choice. Opponents with a swift strike or a tumble in the wrong direction were a slippery slope straight into unconsciousness, which the demon would nigh always take advantage of. One whiff of blood and no mental barriers gave it a way out and into trouble.

Trouble being a less heavy way of saying people in the hospital. Collateral damage. Moving towns when the people know his face. Not making connections anymore. He thanks the stars for Toast, who followed him to the ends of the earth and then some. Not to mention how eager he is to spend money on Ghost; it’s hard to keep a phone alive when every monster of the week has it out for you personally. Any friends made along the way were cherished: Ghost and Sally meet once a month for whatever trendy movie is being shown, Toast has a bi-weekly video call with his brother to discuss the books they’ve read and family gossip, and both make routine visits to their hometown faire to chat with the kind old folks whose attic was haunted. It was nice, keeping in touch.

It wasn’t much, but it was their life.

i just remembered i have free will and can post old binder bois art while im working on the next pages