Summary: Henry never imagined his creation Bendy could turn into such a twisted monster – and despite everything he's been through, a part of him still doesn't want to believe it.
Shape of You
"God, what happened to you…?"
The words pound in his skull as a black void of ink rushes forth from the floor, obscuring the grinning face that had reached out for him. Completely divorced from the joyous memories he spent animating, bringing cartoons to life, the creature before him now is twisted and disfigured, a shadow of the character Henry envisioned.
Faced with the fear that he could actually die, drown in the ink clinging to his clothes like a mass of arms reaching out for deliverance, Henry stands. He runs, not believing. This has to be Joey's idea of a prank, a hoax – he knows his old friend had gotten into some shady business since he left the studio thirty years ago, but the mutation of a living, breathing, animated creature that looked like his cartoon creation, Bendy?! It had to be fake! A lie!
…As much as Henry hopes whatever he saw was just a worker in a bodysuit, a trick of the light, Joey's characteristic self-aggrandizing confidence going too far with his "There's something I need to show you" biz, Henry knows what he saw: Shimmering black skin sweating ink, decomposed, a body trembling with the growly breaths of a long-caged animal, erratic gestures ready to snatch up anything in sight…
If what he saw was just an actor in a suit, they were damn good, and performing the near-impossible.
Though, what got Henry the most was that smile. The strain clenching those straight, pearly barred teeth – the grin Joey plastered on Henry's own creation, after rejecting Bendy's original design.
"Bendy, what happened to you?"
Oh good, the door. It was so close now, the outline of his everlasting escape that, once crossed, would allow him to let go of the past for good, never to think of Joey and all that went wrong between them ever again. It was time to get out of this sticky, inky nightmare –
. . .
Darkness binds him. An autochthony of voices roves aimlessly on the edge of his senses, muddling his mind, inching him ever closer to the Ink. Faint lights circle around his knees and the corners of the room, illuminating the ground and distant walls, as chains have suspended his arms above his head. The mores of this underground Hell have entrapped him, crushing him, body and soul, in the deepest dungeons beneath the former Joey Drew Studios – and he is not alone.
Somewhere down the hall, a voice begins to croon.
A humanoid figure, one that had taken a strange liking to him, appears. Lumbering down the hallway, his rough black body slowly reveals itself in the dim firelight, dirty white corduroy pants trailing ink across the wooden floor.
"My Lord," intones the dark swollen figure, bowing his head before as he steps one foot back in a smallish curtsy. When Sammy lifts his head again, only his own face stares back at him. "The time is near now," Sammy professes. "I can feel it. My Lord, soon, you will be free of this burdensome material form, granted the ability to prowl the halls and cleanse them to your every whim. My Lord, you will be eternal, our undying savior in this infinite abyss!"
The chained creature, in the shape of a demon, had heard this spiel many times. Every time, it made less sense, and drove him further toward the Ink.
How long had it been since he was locked down here?
We don't know.
No one knows, echo the voices stabbing prickles into the periphery of his thoughts. Only through immense effort can he shut them out, crystal clear as they pierce the thick silence. Gloved fingers stained with ink curl slightly as he forces them to become mere whispers in the back of his mind, chains clinking.
Sammy places a hand over his heart, dropping to one knee as he once again bows deeply. He wasn't much shorter than him, this way. "My Lord Bendy, I only pray that you will not forget who your true believers are when the time comes that you are free from your bounds – whom you will grant endless bliss!"
The toothless mask bearing Bendy's face rises slowly out of the candlelight and into shadow as Sammy stands up again, towering over the little demon. "My Lord," he says again, shuffling out without turning his back. Then he's gone.
How many months has it been? He doesn't know.
It isn't long before he's alone again, any evidence of Sammy's presence having disappeared in the hallway darkness. All he has are the flickering candles to keep him company, and the increasingly loud whispers of the pipes in the walls, their clangs like knells in the gloom. Circling all around him, the voices caress him in their dysphoria, beseeching their dark desires of him, cursing his non-replies.
He used to beg for forgiveness, for liberation, imploring the creators and these voices to tell him what it was he did wrong – but his cries were never heard on the upper floors of the studio. He'd been left to rot here, safely kept and out of the way, where he could bother no one no more.
It wasn't until recently that Sammy began visiting him. A little while ago, his devout servant – at least, that's what Sammy called himself – informed him that everyone else had either hightailed outta the studio, or had transformed into an ink monster themselves. When Sammy first appeared as a nonthreatening figure at the end of the hall, he'd begged Sammy to release him, but the pleas fell on closed ears. It was Sammy's belief that he would rise up and free everyone from the studio, enacting divine punishment on those who were unworthy. Try as he might to reason with the man, Sammy assured him that he didn't understand simply because he had yet to fulfill his purpose.
The chains holding him up embed in his palms, drilling holes through the white gloves. As a cartoon, he was expected to be able to slip in and out of normal bonds freely, so they resorted to such drastic measures – but not in this body. The inky structure holding him up didn't even make sense. He wouldn't be able to get away without the cost of losing one or both of his hands. He didn't know if it was even possible to escape and retain this body in the first place; he could be like a balloon just waiting to pop, and judging from how much residue he'd already collected on the ground overtime… that hypothesis didn't seem far off.
At least Sammy's arrival meant there were now candles down here. The man even went through the trouble of changing them out and scraping them off the floor once the wax had burned down. But that didn't change the fact that he was alone, and had been for who-knows-how-long now.
At least, he wished he was.
Sometimes, the flickering candlelight makes him think he saw shifting figures in the dark, whispery ambience – figures that bleed through something like a past life of his. Surrounded by his friends and jolliness, it's a place where the sun is nearly always bright, and if not, the rainclouds fade quickly. Yet these images are instead interrupted by shadows reflecting a twisted side of his, and the ceaseless voices of the Ink.
You were the first of us to arrive here.
Why didn't you stop them?
You were too weak, too weak.
You're the one who let this happen to us.
How could you…?
HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO US?!
Traitor.
Save us!
I want to see my family again!
You're not even the real Bendy!
This is all your fault!
If he'd just been the perfect cartoon, none of this would have happened.
Save me!
I'll show you Hell if you ever break free of those chains, that's for sure.
Help…
Bendy…!
Bendy!
BENDY!
"Are you even Bendy?"
Before he knows it, the voices have taken him over and he doesn't know whether he's conscious or unconscious – he's lost himself entirely to the point of not knowing where reality ends and the dream starts. He doesn't have much time to ponder the conundrum when the gears of the mechanism above roars to life. Head aching, he crooks his face up, though he can hardly see, blinking back inky liquid from his eyes.
There's the sound of clinking metal and rotating cogs that climb high into the sky. He squints to try to see what's happening, but it's no use. It's too dark. The spinning gears above him scream something awful as he searches, delirious, in the darkness all around him, when he hears metal warp and a sharp snap and the splintering of wood and stone. Before he knows it, a great wave of Ink is drowning him, splashing forth from all sides, and all he knows are the Voices.
Help us!
What's happening?!
Get us out of here!
HELP!
Bendy realizes what's happening: the Ink has devoured him, and it isn't long before their arms are reaching out to him, both in reverence and in anguish. Smooth touches and violent jabs. He tries to resist their pull, but he can't move with the sheer amount of hands. He's lost in the tempest of lost and depraved souls.
Bendy…
KILL HIM!
Bendy…
Save us!
Bendy…
SPILL HIS GUTS OUT!
"Are you even Bendy?"
Metal tinkles against the ground the chains snap from their sockets, and candlelight melts into a pool of dark ink. Blackness soon retracts from the ceiling, floor, and walls, sucked into the center of the place he'd been trapped for so long, where an etched pentagram remains. Guttural screams rip his throat as his vision blurs, memories of the times he spent in 2D, then torn from oblivion and into this world: a succession of infrared images dipped in black ink, twisted by his ignorance, at the trust he placed into those who brought about his accursed being.
His hands grip into fists, one gloved, one not. The Ink Demon trudges forth, the souls within him now silent. Finally. Silent. Exactly what he wanted all this time, so he could drift away into the empty nothingness that created him. Ink trickles down the sides of his body, making tracks on the floor – much larger than and painting over Sammy's.
He'd get his revenge and enact divine punishment, all right. On all those who betrayed him and more. Every single one of them, starting with the one who created him, he'd destroy them all. No matter how long or how many times it takes, commanding the sea of voices inside him, there's no way he can be stopped.
When he hears that voice up above, turning his stuck-grinning face upward, toward the fading light, the inky heart inside him wavers.
"Alright. How do I get this to work?"
. . .
Faced with his creation, Henry can't help but stare.
His arms shake, his lips tremble. The axe at his side drops to the floor with a clank, and suddenly he's walking forward, arms outstretched and shaking.
The Ink Demon in the vault in front of him remains motionless, continuing to make that ungodly noise – the one that sounds like seething, hissing animal, trying to act fierce and dangerous, though it's backed into a wall.
Hands covered in blisters and calluses, clothes splattered with Ink and clearly sleep-deprived, here before him is his creator, defenseless and alone.
Yet it isn't hatred or fear he sees bending the shape of those aged grey-blue eyes.
He's about to raise a hand – or more like a claw, actually – to ward off the smaller being coming closer to him, but the glint in his eyes stops him. As his hands touch and are stained by the ink dripping down his face, firm from the unsteady wheezing beneath that grin… there's a liquid running down Henry's face too.
"Bendy…? What happened to you…?"
The wheezing stops. Replaced with a quiet shivering, Henry smiles.
Pulling the wounded creature into a tight embrace, Bendy shrinks down to size, all the negative voices slowly fading away, until all that's left is a small, devilish figure sobbing onto his shoulder.
Though his shape may have changed, Henry knew beneath all those layers of ink was the lil' dancing demon he'd animated all those years ago.
I became completely smitten with Bendy and the Ink Machine at the beginning of the year completely by chance (more like damn the accuracy of the YouTube algorithm), and now I own it on Switch! *\(^o^)/* The concept of the game enraptured me more than anything else (as I think it does for everyone, haha), so I just had to explore it in fanfic form. I can't wait for the next game! (Note: I know the satanic circles aren't actually pentagrams anymore but I can DREAM, Harold!)
Please tell me your thoughts so I can improve! I'm very tempted to write a crossover for BatIM and Cuphead next (because I guess I'm into that niche of indie gaming now, oh god).