#mobhorror

“h-hey...” He mumbled, aware that he’d been staring at you for far too long after you opened the door. He had a box of lovingly decorated valentine’s cupcakes in his giant hands, afternoon sun warm on his face. “sorry i’m... l-late...”

... He glared at himself in the mirror, leaning on the sink, body illuminated weakly by his own constricted eyelight and the early morning sky leaking through the window. Crooked tie, undone jacket buttons... a fucking mess. There was blood across his hands and skull- ugly maroon red standing out against his weathered bones, smeared from mouth to socket where he’d wiped his face. It had already absorbed into his suit in thick, crusty dark patches- at its worst around his sleeves, where his halfhearted attempt at rolling up his shirt to avoid it getting stained had completely failed and the once-white material was now crimson.

“...Sans... you’re only five minutes late.” You said, in that lovely voice that sent shivers up his spine... combined with your sympathetic smile that seemed to beam ‘I’m happy to see you’, he was already melting, the stresses of his life that he carried all day long just falling away.

He had to duck to get through your door. The house was small, but wonderful and bright; light streaming in from the windows caught the leaves of well-tended flowering houseplants. Adorable photos adorned the walls, pillows and blankets and overflowing bookcases and your sweet scent lingering in the air. He towered over everything in your tiny abode, but... he towered over you, too, so it just made him think endlessly of you, and want to spend his whole life in there. He was barely on the couch before you’d placed a cup of fresh coffee on the flat ottoman in front of him... the aroma was borderline cathartic.

He stripped off the expensive soiled shirt and waistcoat and tie, he washed his hands, he washed his face... splashes of diluted blood decorated the sink. He could still hear the man’s voice in his head despite the dull silence in the bathroom- begging for his life, apologising endlessly, promising to never be seen in the skeleton gang’s territory again, promising to dissolve his whole ‘business’, willing to give anything to live.

It took a broken jaw for him to finally shut up.

You sat next to him, and he offered you his favourite of the four cupcakes he’d bought, taking a smaller one for himself. Each was decorated to look like its own individual bouquet of flowers- yours was an open lily, made with painstakingly thin curled pieces of ruby chocolate, and his was a mock bouquet of red icing roses. When he was with you, the front of his ‘family’ owning a cake store didn’t feel like a front; for a few beautiful hours he was living in that peaceful fantasy. Cakes, coffee, light, warmth... when he was with you, he was in a dream.

You had icing on your nose from biting the cake too eagerly. It made both of you laugh. You were his dream.

... A new shirt. Softer and better quality, he’d even gone through the trouble of ironing it earlier. Slowly, but surely, his clean shaking phalanges did up every button, one by one... this was the one occasion when the little details mattered to him. And this time, when he looked in the mirror above the bloodstained sink... his head was empty of the screams he’d caused, and his shattered face bore a crooked smile.