Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Published in part by the Ebott Media Association on December 25th, 2020 as a collective collaboration against the maltreatment of all monsters across the United States, especially when it comes to drawing awareness on the Ebott Genocide of 2014.
Learn more at www.ebott.usaoutpost.org.

Foreword by William Douglas Gaster:
When I published my son and I’s narratives under the Ebott Media Association in 2019, I found myself swept in the cataclysm of both publishing books and advocating for my species. This includes no dearth of surprise political imbroglios, the songs and dances of publishers and deadlines-as well as hopping from one publisher to the next in hopes of any sort of financial or success-founded reprieve-and, last but not least, the psychological strain of attempting to essentially initiate a new beginning into your entire life, attempting to balance spending time with my wife, Fraeoda, and my two children, Sans Jr. and Papyrus Jr., respectively (especially considering that the former is a toddler and the latter is an infant-two of the most trying age demographics for any sort of parent).
However, through it all, although I did mention Anna at the end of the narrative during even its original draft, the sheer ineptitude of my ability to recognize Anna’s efforts especially disconcerted me to the point of almost literal tears on my office table. Because of this, I almost immediately contacted Anna-who, by that time, was in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who, in conjunction with Harvard University, was hosting a psychology program that Ana happened to be studying under (it consistently fails me to find the words to describe how proud I am of that achievement), and by now, she was in her senior year, on the verge of receiving her Bachelor’s and pursuing graduate school. I asked her if she’d happened to keep her journals from that year. Of course, she-and you-knew immediately what I was referring to. After multitudes of tear-filled nights and thrilling days of submitting this narrative to publishers, she-with my aid-finally showed her certificate of acceptance with as much pride as I extended towards her in her studies. And of course, her mother is no doubt proud of her as well. The public was far from ineffective in playing its role, either, as I received further requests of more narratives from Anna’s perspective; many rightly perceived her as an interesting player in the events of not only my narrative, but the narrative of my son.
The following narratives are far from uncut from her original entries, and have rather been reworked in order to fit a typed narrative rather than the handwritten one she was impressed to write when she first experienced the eleventh grade at Ebott High School, a site which continues to be visited by everyone from those who would simply like to pay tribute to the events of the past to those who would like to prove whatever points they would like via rioting. My compassion extends to every single student who continues to attend that school, and, most especially, those inhabiting the monster-oriented classrooms (which I heartily applaud). Much of the private information that she chose to disclose into this journal will remain private as well, and names have been changed on nearly every part in order to decrease any so-called “witch hunts” that may have occurred (I heartily applaud Anna’s efforts for teaching me how to utilize social media in a better manner for my advocacy as well).
I’d like to extend a thanks towards any purchases made towards this book, whether physical or digital, as half of all proceeds will be extended towards charities other than the Ebott Media Association in order to mitigate maltreatment towards monsters across the globe; such charities include ChangeLogic, Monsters but Not Monstrous, and the Human-Monster Equality Council. Links towards these-and many other-charities can be easily found at www.ebott.globaloutpost.org/other-charities.
Without further ado, let us reflect upon this narrative in a mindful manner, not dismissing it as a mere complaint or even outcry, but as a call upon all of us for action in the often tortuous and chaotic waves of this world.

Anna Etilcoise
Ms. Sanchez
Honors English 11-8
15 Sept. 2014
My Song: The Journal of I, Anna Etilcoise, Resident Monster and Investigator for Hire
Entry #1

At times, I ask myself which is better: if we’d stayed in the mountain-where my sense of self, my independence, everything that I even thought I’d held dear would rot and decay-or if I continue living here. Here, where my place in society, my dependence on my intrapersonal relationships with humans, and everything else that I know I hold dear will rot and decay.
Sometimes, my friends and family ask me why I am here and writing this entry; sometimes, I ask myself that question. On a surface-level answer, it is because my English teacher, Ms. Sanchez, assigned this to us out of her wanting us to be “full-fledged students, all ready for the working world”. But on an answer that’s a little more in-depth, it’s to give me a means of self-expression and a means to tell all that’s in my life; while I find that prospect a little disconcerting, I nevertheless welcome self-expression as much as I would anything else, even if that’s not necessarily my first priority.
Another priority, as my good friend and I Gabriel discuss as the period wraps up, is to form a response to essay prompts from specific colleges he and I would like to apply to. To apply to. How it gives breath in my lungs that him and I-and all of my friends, and all in the cadre of monsters so viciously entitled the “Flood”-that I will have a postsecondary education. And how I wish it could be a reality for those who need it.
“I dunno,” I say, starting off the conversation before he gets a chance to. “There is Bay Path and all, but don’t you want something a little more...comprehensive when it comes to your major?”
“What are you talking about, comprehensive?” he replies, hunching over a little further over his paper. “Bay Path has the most highly-rated digital marketing major in the state, and-might I add-one of the only ones.”
“I mean, don’t you want something a little more...holistic when it comes to what you want to do after we all get out of here? Online tends to get a little...lonely, at least for me. Okay, a lot lonely.”
You-Ms. Sanchez-look at the both of us and feign a glare, but I know you’re pleased with the prospect of us empowering ourselves for something beyond this high-school toil and silliness. Something beyond our narrow-minded view of not only the present but also the future. And I admire that about you.
“I suppose you’re right,” Gabriel adds before the bell rings. But I’ve been in two many conversations with him to know there’s not one air of truth in there.
I also admire, although most likely not as much, the frenzy of students leaving, huddling in one mass, yearning for freedom from the doldrums of spending eight hours doing, mostly, one monotonous task. The way one human gives me a glint in her eyes of excitement, even if she ultimately walks away from me. The way a monster practically dances for joy as she grabs her skateboard and galumphs her way down to the end of the sidewalk. The way another human looks back at me before putting me behind him...as if we monsters are hindering them.
Of course, that isn’t true. I know it. And so does Gabriel, or any of the friends from this side of the school who tend to join me through the east wing. Namely Caleb and Susanna.
“Wait up!” Susanna exclaims as she, as least clumsily as can be for a monster based on an orangutan, can practically bound over the crowds. Caleb approaches behind her, tottering somewhat; he’s never been one for physicality. But he’s more of a gracious host than I am, has a much bigger circle than I do, and I’m not going to be the one to invalidate him at any point.
Susanna catches up to me, and I wave her a discreet hello before we return to our regular bitching (thank you, Ms. Sanchez, for bending the rules). Nothing remarkable on the surface, but I try to see in each person how they’re doing in life from these two short minutes. And no one can hear us in the crowds.
Caleb, as he usually does, begins. “Fuck me sideways, man.”
“Why?” I ask. “Is it your girlfriend again?” (Of which I never hear of other than his complaints and the scary amount of influence his parents have in the relationship.)
“Surprisingly, no. Not this time.” He laughs enough to show a gold-plated tooth that his family could’ve definitely afforded in their suburbia. “Nah; this time, it’s something monster-related, actually.”
“Monster-related?” I ask, almost immediately, practically feeling the fact that my ears and smile perked up practically to the point of Susanna rolling her eyes had she have seen me. “This is so not like you.”
“I know, I know. Yeeeeeah.” He rubs his neck, and I submit to the tension in the air.
“I guess my dad couldn’t sleep because overnight, he’d sent me a link to a video. And apparently, there was some monster from work that he’d marked up his car with.”
“Marked up-” immediately, my fury begins, and I can tell it’s piqued Susanna’s, as well, which has by this time been quiet.
Honestly, I could’ve described the entire reaction as something instinctual, something planned, something...predatory, even, but I don’t necessarily think none of those incredibly diverse choices of words was anything close to what the reaction was. Something...routine; not quite exhausting. Something closer to a habit than anything. And I know I need that reaction, need it more than any other feeling or sensation in the world, but the fact that it’s routine eats at me more than I’d care to admit.
“Oh no no no no no, Anna! Not like that. Not...really, just sort of...took a Sharpie and wrote his name on there. I’m not even sure if it was my dad or a coworker’s. I asked this morning which one it was, but…he was on his way to work again.
“Well, it’s definitely…” I pause for the word. Look for those around me. Look into the eyes of a random human and see the reaction (ending with a normal amount of confusion mixed with a, “Who do you think you are, a random Flood kid?!”). Confirm that it’s far from ideal, but still altogether fine and dandy. Altogether safe.
“..disconcerting.” Susanna fills in the word and smiles. I smile back, pat her on the back. Dyslexia tends to rob those sorts of words from you.
“Exactly,” replies Caleb, finishing the rant. “Not...right. Not right. But is there anything I can do-”
“I’ll text you later,” I tell him. “For now, though-”
Seeing as we’re nearing the end of the hallway, I look to the right at Gabriel, seeing as he hasn’t chipped into the conversation at all. Thinking that we’ve excluded him, I can’t help but give off a toothless smile when I find out he’s on his 3DS, playing with some sort of bullet hell game or another. Susanna glances over his shoulder- with a clear intent to get on and smash into as many obstacles as she can out of the sheer joy of it- but isn’t spacially inept enough not to look in front of her.
We then say goodbye and go our separate ways; naturally, the humans to the bus stop and the monsters to walk with the rest towards the monster neighborhood two or so miles away. Surprisingly, some monsters have bus access, but not without quite a few concessions; for example, I occasionally witness one freshman-looking guy with an outdated Nirvana beanie sneaking a few dollars directly into the bus driver’s hand. But for the rest of us-who aren’t quite willing to sell our souls like that-we steel ourselves and walk home via the sidewalk.
Interestingly enough, we’re silent. I try and start conversations here and there, but it repudiates its way back in my face (dammit I hope I used that word in the right context Ms. Sanchez), and it seems that most of us have become much more mindful in our trips back home. Wondering. Wondering about our families. Wondering about the vandalized sign outside. Wondering about some remark a human said to us earlier that day, or a threat, even the week earlier.
And supporting each other thoroughly.
I live, to my mother’s chagrin, with her and my little brother near the east end of the monster sect, so aptly named Mountainfoot. To give some background, it’s a neighborhood of about a hundred of us, wanting some way, some indescribable way, to escape. Sure, we’ve escaped the confines of homelessness. The brutality of the stop-and-frisks, mocked so effortlessly upon their learning of Frisk’s name. And we’ve escaped negotiations that would have led us into more disenfranchised parts of town. But overall, there are...flaws. Scratches. Marks.
Gunshot noises outside at 10:30 at night, as a dog howls and howls and...stops. Ambulances being eerily silent around this neighborhood, but entering so clearly and so speedily into Royal Chateau, the human neighborhood. The homeowner’s association suddenly saying we can only put up one Halloween decoration this fall. Scratches. Marks. And so on.
But where my father is…
I tiptoe my way to the front door, some part of me wondering if my mother will open it, before muttering a “fuck it” and opening it with my keys. My mother sits in front of the TV, the exhaustion of her mayorly (now pseudo-mayorly after we left the mountain) duties already cascading down her face like tears. Meanwhile, my little brother, who recently started middle school, won’t come home for around fifteen minutes or so, so I go ahead and lump my backpack on the bench-not too hard, as my all-too precious laptop hides within.
“How’s work, Mom?”
“How’d you think it was?”
Should I interpret that as her being too harsh on me? I think I’ll give her a chance, at least for now. “Was it Smith and Wesson again?”
She smiled. “I don’t call you a prodigy for nothing, Anna.” She turns off the TV, gestures for me to sit down by sharply pointing a finger. So I don’t appear to be her pet dog, I ask a slightly muffled,
“Do you want me to-” before she does it again and I sit down, with some of my dignity kept.
“Smith and Wesson will absolutely not give me a clear response on this. They say they’re going to build in Springfield, then to Chicopee, then to Springfield, then to Agawam... God, the whole of Massachusetts has got to be practically screaming their name before I get an answer on this. And I know why they’re doing it...pandering. Do they want their firearms exposed to or kept away from monsters? It’s just all a matter of pandering, Anne.”
I’m not sure if I ever consented to be called that nickname, but I keep my mouth shut for now. Not the topic I want to get into at the moment. And neither is the topic Smith and Wesson. After briefly texting Gabriel about links that he’s asked me to provide of Bay Path’s information sessions (I’d even ask my mom to help him pay for college, but there’s only so much we can do with Dad, and…), I pop the question.
“Mom. I haven’t seen Dad in almost a month.”
Silence as, this time, it’s mom’s turn to look up from whatever emails she’s answering on her phone. Complete and utter silence; at least she doesn’t turn off the TV. That would be a symbol of ultimate catastrophe.
“Anna. You know I don’t want you in that hospital.”
“Why not?” I’m genuinely confused. “I-I’d get a lot of experience in the medical field should I want to pursue that. And that’s one of the fastest-growing industries in the entire East Coast-”
I release the tension I’ve been holding in my throat and vocal cords all day, and my voice lowers, something I think I do at least subconsciously in order to protect my mother at times. Soften her to certain things I say.
“You know why I don’t want you in the hospital. I don’t want you…” she tenses, grips her phone slightly tighter. “I don’t want you getting those ideas planted into your head.”
My mother is one of the most highly-educated women in the entirety of Springfield, and knowing her, she would like me to follow in her stead; she would even be openly supportive of me even if I chose to educate myself in an entirely different field other than public administration or political science; she even convinced my father to obtain his Bachelor’s when his learning disability told him to stop at the Underground’s only community college. She’s not the type to dismiss ideas willy-nilly, even if I am a woman.
Even if I am a woman.
I almost immediately shoot up, almost drop my phone into the area between the arm and the couch cushion. “What are you talking about?!” Tears fly to the forefront of my eyes. “Mom, they don’t even make ads about the sort of thing. And the legal age for the surgery is eighteen in the state of Massachusetts. I just turned seventeen a month ago! I was barely old enough to even go into the eleventh grade!”
And I take one breath. Two. All strategy. All strategy here. Only strategy matters-and a hint of empathy-when discussing this topic, especially with my mother. A topic. So this is what what I am, what I’ve wished to fully be boils down to.
Out of this strategy, and out of this empathy, I let her speak.
“Anna...I just think you haven’t researched everything there is to know about this yet.” She detects a sharp inhale that I don’t. “Don’t speak yet, please, Anna, I’m not finished. I want you to know that there’s consequences. Your actions, they...have consequences. For example, you’ll be forever infertile should you choose to do this. If you do this, and somehow regret it, you’ll never have the chance to go back, at least not completely. And Anna-God, do you know how much it exhausts me to call you that? Ananias…”
With that, I stand up. She doesn’t say a word. She and I have established boundaries, and that’s all there is to it. Something I ultimately don’t want to do, something I don’t want to boil down our relationship to, yet something I have to should she treat me like this. Even if all she is is frightened.
Because nobody should be treating me like this.
And without further ado, I say a lowered, “thank you for your opinion, Mom,” walk to my room, close the door, and begin my study session on Skype with Gabriel, Sans, and my best girl friend Ramona; Suzanne and Caleb usually like to keep to themselves-and maybe smoke some of Suzanne’s pot-around this hour.
Nobody should be treating me like this.
Midway through the session as my little brother comes off the school bus, I notice a note underneath the door, along with the telltale scent of cocoa. This implies that my mother tried to make reparations to me by making me a cup of hot chocolate. Whether or not I want to accept it immediately is something I don’t know if I’m going to resolve tonight.
As Sans hops onto the videocall and shows us his tangled mess of notes for that day, I look outside. A group of humans. I know all three from my high school. Showing up in monster costumes that are borderline effigies, blood pouring down their paper mache eyes. God knows what conspiracy theories they believe.
Nobody should be treating us like this.

Chapter Text

Anna Etilcoise
Ms. Sanchez
Honors English 11-8
17 Sept. 2014
My Song: The Journal of I, Anna Etilcoise, Resident Monster and Investigator for Hire
Entry #2
I apologize for any inconsistencies that may arise in this part of the journal. But this day is at least ten times more important than usual.
We now deviate from the day this entry was written to about two days ago; the scenario I wrote in the last chapter was a decoy for what took place about a week ago. With assignments such as these, concessions have to be made.
God.
I vow I will change this.
Change this for the sake of every man, every woman, every monster, every child in this city. In Hampden County. In the state of Massachusetts. In the entire nation, God willing, should we have fled to those parts. Wherever the consequences of this day have landed.
Because nobody can treat us like this.
__
I’ve neglected to tell you about a best friend yet.
Best friends are a fickle thing; society only expects you to pick one, and then expects you to put as much emphasis on that relationship as you would a romantic one, yet giving you none of the rewards. And best friends, says the patriarchy, should be exclusively of the same gender. Because fuck intersex and non-binary people, right? I guess they can’t have friends.
Suzanne would probably be my best friend of the same gender. With Suzanne, we’re neighbors. We’ve been so since childhood. We attend the same after-school clubs. At one point, we even tried the MBTI table and scored polar opposites on everything, which is, supposedly, an indicator of friendship. We’ve created an entire mural once in her bedroom before we left the underground. I even left the underground with her, holding hands and practically screaming in triumph as we felt the sun on our bodies for the first time. I’ve even tried smoking some of her pot...and, to my distress, hated it. CBD-only for me, thank you.
But this one is of the opposite gender-I refuse to say anything otherwise. For him, it’s strange, all things considered; we only share one class together, we sit together at church, and we don’t have any other associations with each other. We don’t eat lunch together. He hasn’t served as an altar boy at the church yet (not that the all-human hierarchy there would allow him to). And under no circumstances have we ever, or have we ever planned to, have (heteronormative) sex. My mom would hate that, anyway. And so would his dad. He knows his son. Like me, he’s asexual; losing our virginities may very well be equivalent to selling our souls at this point.
But trust me; I have tried to lump him under the more common label of “one of my friends”. And it’s failed.
I think you’ll see why in a moment.
Let me give some background: on Day 1s, rather than starting class in Algebra II (my brain just cannot, under any circumstances, wrap itself around Honors Math Analysis), I start class in Monster-Oriented APUSH. Why it’s Monster-Oriented is more than the root of the problem. It’s the fucking foundation, and I say that with conviction.
Of course-Sans was labeled as “gifted” as a child by the doctors in the Underground-he teleported there, which means he, not I, is sitting there in his seat, dumbfounded, having just read a piece of crimson-red paper on the front of Mr. Hunt’s trailer.
The tears well up. Oh, God, I’m crying. Not that I’m going to whine for crying in front of my best friend; I’ve done that multiple times.
But I never cry.
“FOLLOWING A NEW IMPLEMENTATION STARTING ON THE 6TH OF OCTOBER, ALL MONSTERS IN NINTH TO TWELFTH GRADE IN EBOTT HIGH SCHOOL SHALL BE PARTITIONED FROM THE REMAINDER OF THE STUDENTS IN THE ACCOMMODATIONS THE EBOTT HIGH SCHOOL TRAILERS PROVIDE DURING ALL HOURS OF CLASS TIME UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE.”
I never cry.
So I act like I’m not in order to convince myself that there has to be some sort of inkling of change I can make. Some sort of positivity, hell, some sort of shade of numbness at this point to make me feel some sort of happy. So many “sort”s, and all I say is this:
“I’ve saw this coming, Sans, saw it coming for such a long time, it all started when we came up here, and everyone just started treating us like we were just dirt and now we can’t even be together at school and why did we ever come up here and…”
Sans widens his eyes, says an inaudible, “I-”, and falls silent, slumped into his seat.
Holy shit, Anna. I’m not asking myself why I opened up in front of him-I’m perfectly valid when it comes to doing that-but I’m asking myself why I acted like a maniac in front of him. In front of everyone. Everyone has their own problems, and the last thing I want to be is a burden.
I’m done.
Done with shitting on myself.
In. Out.
In.
Out.
I’m better. But it’s not enough. I still need someone-and while I appreciate Sans’ company, he’s not exactly the most skilled when it comes to emotional support. I sit next to him, decide not to say another word, and take out my phone to begin messaging the friends who can handle my emotional state right now.
During times like this, I’ve attempted to teach myself the right positive affirmations to say, when to say them, recommend them to other people. The affirmations that spring to mind at the moment entail platitudes such as, “I’m safe”, “I’m calm”, “I’m loved,” “I have one of my best friends beside me”, “I’m grateful…”
No. Not that. Never that.
And as Sans locks eyes with me, I know he knows. I know he knows I’m not grateful, and neither will I ever be. He continues to shame himself for his lack of empathy, continues to embolden himself in his lack of empathy, in his status in life in whatever he’s supposed to be. But he has it in him. Not that I’m about to bring it out or encourage it with my *quirkiness* (ick upon ick with that), but he has it in him.
So-rather than retreating to my phone- I choose him for company.
And I choose not to be grateful with him.
___
Of course, I don’t dissuade the massive amounts of students pouring in. “The Flood”, so aptly named, because of course we monsters are flooding into the human economies, into the human churches. Of course the “flood” of our existence is destroying the tenets of human Roman Catholicism in the “sunny banks of New England”, or whatever rhetoric the humans want to spew this time.
But of course, Suzanna and a few acquaintances I’ve made over the years that I can at least vent to come in, and soon, I’m flooded with all sorts of “damn, I’m...so sorry this had to happen”s or “what a violation of who we are, what we’re supposed to be”s. I’m taken to the corner of the trailer, away from where my ever-bigoted, predatory APUSH teacher is, and I’m entangled in Susanna’s conversation.
“You okay?” Like Sans, she’s never been relatively too skilled at emotional support, but throughout the decades of learning to deal with me, she’s at least learned the basics. And I applaud her for that. But that doesn’t stop me, at least in the initial stages, from overloading her.
“Are we going to be okay?” I ask her, and she immediately strips herself away from me. But replacing that is Jackie Sasta, a small bear monster, another monster who was, with the rest, displaced to here at the best and deported to here at the worst. So I ask the same question to her, but I add it with a, “Please tell me you have some intel about this,” given her research skills and general disdain for institutional bullshit.
“Uh...no, sadly,” she replies, with a shrug on her shoulders that makes her resemble a falling shower curtain. “Although I wish I could. This was sort of...slammed on me.”
“Slammed on all of us, more like,” I retort. I look to the left. Look to the right. In the metaphorical sea of Flood members, I’ve lost any of my other friends, any other research candidates. “Dammit. You’re going to at least try and do some research with me about it, right?”
“Right,” she says.
I then advance my way to Suzanna and ask her to scope out any of our mutual friends who are more skilled in research-Suzanna knows more about cars than I could ever care to learn, Suzanna could fix any household woe before I could say “parcheesi”, but under no circumstances can Suzanna grasp the research skills my other friends and I could. Still, I don’t intend to exclude her in any way.
By the time three minutes have passed, Suzanna has managed to gather at least three of our mutual friends...Albert, Elizabeth, Naomi...and, much to Suzanna’s delight, we’re not taking to our laptops to research first. First, we’re taking to the windows next to where Sans and his friends are, doing the best to scope the situation out.
Elizabeth is the first one to spot something. “Two teachers are coming out. Not just one.”
Wait. That’s different. There’s Mr. Hunt, the ever-loving piece of shit that he is-a bulging potbelly, a mind who thinks he’s better than everyone else because he happens to have a dick, a dick that’s probably 2 inches long-but it looks like his proverbial hound dog is there with him, too. Of course, I only assume that’s his proverbial hound dog, as he’s repulsive enough to where I almost never see anyone else with him.
And then the proverbial hound dog goes to the other trailer.
But it’s still Mr. Hunt that conducts the overall shouting. And, considering the fact that he’s from Georgia, I don’t believe the following is an exaggeration:
“What do y’guys think yer doing here?! Ya Flooders! Git out! Git out!”
Of course, he begins clapping his hands at each “git”, and, of course, I cringe. Suzanne and Jackie say goodbye to me, as well as Albert, Elizabeth, and Naomi, and soon, the forty monsters who’d previously crammed this trailer to the brim have divided themselves, for the most part, into the remaining two trailers. Meanwhile, I’m left with Sans and about ten other monsters, none of which I know beyond the basic “yeah, we all lived in the same general area, were raised in the same religious heritage, and are attending the same church” precepts. So I settle myself in and keep to myself.
From there, though, Mr. Hunt nags me his usual misogynistic tune, even making a petty uphook towards me on how if they’d built any sort of bathrooms out here, they’d build a urinal. Of course, I’m pissed, but I’m also a little confused as to why he’s emphasizing building bathrooms outside. After thirty minutes of furiously looking up on my laptop what the hell is going on-and thirty minutes of Sans napping (I’m convinced the guy has undiagnosed depression at this point)-I have an inkling as to what is going on.
Ms. Sanchez, any board of supervisors personnel who happens to come across this journal, anyone who gets their hands on it really, please...please try and do something. I’m absolutely begging you. This can’t be right. In what moral standing would this ever be right?
What’s happening is that none of us monsters are allowed to go to core classes indoors, and need to be segregated-yes, I am using that word-via the trailers. Only in between classes, in classes that are impossible to have in the trailers, and during lunch are we allowed to return inside the school. The five-minute bell time still applies. And no bathrooms...hence Mr. Hunt’s joke. There’s no information about it. No bureaucracies you can call, no FAQ pages, not even a story on the local news or even some guy’s YouTube page like usual.
How does this make sense? Of course, it can’t make sense. I can’t help but be a little impressed, although I’m at least ten times as devastated, ten times as infuriated as I am impressed.
Of course, then Sans and I play around slightly, teleporting inside to use the bathrooms once the both of us can’t hold it any longer. Aside from the normal, transphobic looks of horror when I come in, nothing happens, and soon, the period ends.
I rejoin Suzanne and Jackie in the intersection between the three trailers. We all bitch about what hapened for a few minutes, and Suzanne and I go into math class in the second trailer. Of course, I’m ecstatic when the both of us are partnered for some sort of project or another, and when Suzanne and I are paired, her excitement grows a little as well. But she withdraws, for lack of a better word. And just when she thinks I don’t catch onto it-just when her eyes dart away-I do.
“Are you okay, Suzanne?”
“Yeah, why wouldn’t I be?” She looks at my feet, as if she had a reason to. Takes a pencil and starts chewing it. “It’s just that...why I’ve gotta be separated from my human friends, I have no idea…”
That isn’t it; I know that is. But, for the sake of the class-and not to risk provoking her into further silence-I go ahead and begin the project. Later, though, as I’m heading home and sending my usual flurry of texts to anyone and everyone who will be sympathetic to my cause, I make my rounds and make my way around to Suzanne:
“Hey, are you sure you’re okay? You were a little bit...distant during math. Is everything alright?”
“...yeah, it’s just...home troubles. let’s just say that.”
I’m genuinely confused. I’ve known her for five years, ten, fifteen, and not once have I ever seen her parents abuse her in any way, and neither has anyone in her social circle reported that. And not once has she ever acted this way. So I try to drag out the conversation with a simple, “Is there anything I can do to fix that?”, which is met with radio silence from her.
Of course, I stop, and instead text Jackie and her human friend Ramona, asking them to meet up at the local coffee shop. I shoot my mom a text, and she replies, “Alright. But we agreed that you were going to search for scholarships around that time, so as soon as you come back, you know what to do.”
I order a double-whiped frappucino with salted caramel and a few traces of boba. Not surprisingly at al, the time at the coffee shop is surprisingly...manic.
Even Ramona admits it at some point. “God, I’d...hate to be a monster right now. Being stuck in a trailer all day…”
“It’s not just that,” I say, fully knowing that I’ve opened a can of worms.
“What do you mean?” replies Ramona.
Jackie and I explode with indignation, with explanations, with everything we’ve contained since the beginning of the Flood. The monsters who say goodbye to their parents in the morning and don’t show up when they’re supposed to leave the bus that afternoon. The claims, perpetually-ignored, of some of us monsters that have had our utilities cut off, and the utility companies claiming that no, they don’t service that area, and if they ever did, then the families have had to be the ones to cut them off. The occasional piles of dust that turn up by the sign in front of our neighborhood, and us having to be relieved when we discover that it’s “only” a prank by a group of students from Bay Path instead of a far more sinister murder. And that’s only scratching the fucking surface.
Of course, Ramona lets out an, “oh,” and goes on her phone.
I stand up from my seat, open my mouth, even let in a sharp intake to let her know she’s about to have the full two barrels of Anna Etilcoise, without the slightest hint of restraint, and Jackie taps her shoulder. For years, the code for, “Ramona is my best friend, and you’d bet to hell that we’d like to be mutual friends. So if you’d like to continue your relationship with me, then you’d best stay off her tracks.” I silently roll my eyes, because I hate being this dependent. But I can’t seem to rip myself away from her, or any of my other friends for that matter; where would I be in life then? Who would I be in life then? Sometimes, I’m actually glad to be aromantic.
But I suppose I couldn’t have expected anything more from Ramona, even if I wasn’t.
She’s a human, isn’t she?

Chapter Text

Anna Etilcoise
Ms. Sanchez
Honors English 11-8
1 Oct. 2014
My Song: The Journal of I, Anna Etilcoise, Resident Monster and Investigator for Hire
Entry #3

If you’re dying to know what happened the rest of that day, I had my regular study session (which I love because I always walk away with a sense of empowerment, and a fulfilled goal knowing that I helped at least one person accomplish one sort of goal), did my scholarship hour (which I love because so far, I’ve received $500 in scholarships since I’ve started looking my freshman year), and going to bed (which I love because...hell, I shouldn’t have to explain).
And if you’re dying to know what happened the rest of September, they were essentially repeats of those days.
Of course, there was some novelty in there (let me personally inform you that I would have died without that). Gabriel began selling some of his works of art on Facebook, and I, of course, was his first client, even if I didn’t necessarily have any space left to hang his art that I could think of. I didn’t have the heart to do anything else but astick the cactus painting up there, let it collect dust as a testimony to his support. My mom chipped in too, and began intensifying her soap-making hobby.
I associate that with her probing into in-depth conversations with me and calling me “Ananias” at the end of it all, so I only help her until the mixture is added to the mold. Even if that didn’t do much of anything; all that needed to be done after that was to wait 24 hours for the mixture to set.
The last person to have something new in their lives was Ramona. A new boyfriend, more like.
And that is where it all began falling apart (more or less. I mean, I’m here writing this journal, and all of my friends are still alive, so I have almost nothing to complain about).
“He goes to my church!” was the first hyperpeppy sentence she mentioned to me as her and I had our biweekly videocall. “Oh, my gosh, I felt so lonely there. But I suppose I’ve known him for awhile, so that means he...made me feel lonely? It’s weird.”
I instinctively nod. “No, no. I get you. I’m happy you’re in a relationship, that’s all.” A few flashbacks of Gabriel and his “relationship”, though, lead me to add a, “you and him are the ones who want to start the relationship, right? Nothing suspicious going on between you and your parents?”. They’re not home around this time, so I sprinkle in a, “whatever you tell me is completely confidential.”
“Oh, no, no. And not with his parents, either. We’ve been going to the same church together for years!”
Still, I furrow a brow on my part. And then I grow pensive; “uncharacteristically pensive”, as my mother puts it.
“Wait…” I half-stammer.
I look to the left. Look to the right. Make sure neither my brother nor my mother are there, not because I’m planning on saying anything inappropriate, but because whatever processing I’ll have to go through in the moment, I’ll need the space. Need a little bit of solitude; at least until the videocall ends and I can tell my mother and brother (almost; as long it’s not gender-related) all the woes in my heart.
“Which church do you go to again?”
“Vox Church. It’s on Main Street, though, so if you want to visit, traffic is a little congested. Although there is a parking lot in the back-”
Why is she employing classic manipulation tactics? Even if she wanted to recruit me, we’ve known each other ever since we've came up to the surface. She even helped my family and I sort.out our luggage when the Massachusetts National Guard attempted to snatch my laptop, my drawing notebook, my pen…she's not one to stand for institutional bullshit.
I know for a fact that traffic is absolute hell on Main Street. My family and I have visited New York City once. She must be upset about something, that's all. Before I can deliberate any more, I decide to interrupt her.
Fuck it.
“I’m...maybe next week. I’m a little busy this Sunday, what with me having to visit my dad in the hospital like I do once a month.” I still haven’t confirmed with my mom whether or not that’s actually happening, considering the fiasco that happened two weeks ago with me asking if I could visit him. But it’s still something that will make Ramona look like a total dipshit if she rejects nonetheless.
And then it’s her turn to grow pensive.
Uncharacteristically pensive.
“That’s okay, Anna. But I’ve got...I’ve got a little problem. I need your help.”
Our dynamic now completely flipped over its head, I exhale a muffled sigh of relief over the video call.
“What is it?” I ask her, only slightly too pepper for the situation. I almost wipe away the smile beguiling my cheeks, as my mother would have put it.
“It’s...bad. It’s awful. I don’t even know if I want to tell it to you now…”
Now I wipe off the smile from my cheeks more quickly than the Republicans must have wiped off Obama’s validity and potential from their radar back in 2012, or at least from what I’ve heard of it. I would, at first glance, say she’s being uncharacteristic, but the way I can see the circles under her eyes from the first time, the invisible heaviness and dampness that’s apparent in her chest, the way she breathes as if she’s both in the early stages of asthma and she just swallowed a handful of water...I tell her I’ll be right over right away and end the video call.
After I tell my mother there’s an emergency with Ramona, catch the keys that my mother tosses into my hand as she tells me to hurry and not to waste my time gassing up, and, in a few minutes, am over right away, I’m given an overview of the details.
A murder. A monster was murdered. A murder, of all things.
___
Nobody asked me to be a vigilante. Nobody asked if I was qualified. And of course, I wasn’t.
So I recruited the help of Caleb (who happens to be in the yearbook club), Gabriel and Sans (who know, more than anyone, how to research the hell out of how to contact a certain place), and Suzanne’s professional camera (along with a, “Watch out for my camera, you twerp” that was stated as kindly and jovially as it could be), and followed the trail that Ramona had started.
Jackie, of all people, was the one who formed the initial plan; it was supposed to be a project on Gabriel’s part (which was only a white lie, as his yearbook advisor did say that he could technically submit his midterm interview early), and that, if anything went wrong, it was Caleb’s house we could retreat to, as he was the one we knew who lived closest to the lead. Although Jackie was friends with Ramona and knew her situation and what she knew about the murder inside and out, there wasn’t any way she’d be allowed into our lead, as it was an exclusively human-run business...and, at that, one of the worst places in the city to all to be a monster. Because of that, the original plan was that I would be held back; however, we also didn’t want Gabriel and Ramona to be going there without me, as I was the stronger speaker, and their relative shyness and social compliance would get them little to nowhere in the investigation. In short, unless we could find someone professional or more qualified, it was either me or no investigation.
Don’t get me wrong, though; I did deliberate this on my part quite thoroughly. Of course, I did tell my mother, and after two or three interludes of, “Is this what you really want to do?”, she spent that night pondering the situation. Generating alternatives. To our frustration, none of the human-run media in the city was sympathetic to our cause. And don’t even think we reported this to law enforcement. I’ve heard enough bullshit about the human police force as it is; hell, I wonder how anyone black lives in this city and functions with the cops we have running around. Which resulted in this attempt being amateur as hell. But I couldn’t see any way to evade it.
And I couldn’t leave it quiet.
I will not leave it quiet.
Now, we’re stepping into the entrance of the barn. Our lead.
I can practically smell the hint of our denigration, and I ask everyone if they’re comfortable with the experience we’re about to have. They both nod, but I couldn’t help but notice a slight shadow of Gabriel’s head turning to the left. Noticing how dark it’s getting, I resort to turning on my flashlight.
And that’s when I see the comics.
My first impression, other than yikes yuck ew yuck why AUGH, is that these workers must have collected these comics from the Internet. I know this from the splashes of watermarks from websites that have physically led me to tears to look through, the frog icons plastered on each poster (I’m still not sure what his name is, but he’s essentially ravaged every minority demographic there is?), the mostly low-quality Google images, but occasional caricatures of us that look like they were made by a 4th-grader on Paint. Which may not be that far off from how they were actually made. Everywhere. Everywhere on their designated shelf. Top. Bottom. All caricatures, all impersonations. One caricature saying, “My mommy says I’ll grow up to be normal!”. Another saying, “We can settle here, we din’ do nothin’ to the humans, right?”. Another. Humans this time. Not caricatures. “Stop persecuting us! We just want to disagree and feel normal!” Another. Another. “The Earth was made for humans, not monsters. Not magic. The natural order.” Another, another, another-
At first instinct, I point my flashlight away. No no no, don’t want to look, don’t want to even think about what insults, what rhetoric may be plastered across them. Don’t want to think about the way these caricatures seethe and sink their teeth, writhe and corkscrew their way down my spine-
His voice is a bandsaw. “Aigh! What the hell, do you guys even know-”
Five people. All men, by the looks of them-at least what I can see from my flashlight, which is blinding my view of them as much as they’re being blinded. Now, they look like extraterrestrial beings. Beings of pure light. I look at them, and know, I know they’re behind how we’re being treated, behind how we’re going to be treated sometime in the future, and behind the murder.
So I don’t give them a break. I choke. I feel the physical sensation of choking, and I audibly gasp before making my way closer to them. Obscured by a stack of hay, I trip. I hear the chuckles, their laughter, the insanity ripping in the back of their throats, and I yell, I’m choked, and I stand on the hay. Shine the light into their faces…
All five of them. All five of them terrified, young men. Cishet, white men. They look terribly impoverished. Stains on their clothing. Brown. White. Yellow-I notice a red one. My muscles seize and clench...
“WHOA! Whoa, whoa, whoawhoawhoawhoawhoa, calm DOWN! Everyone, please! There’s been a huge misunderstanding-”
Five seconds. Five seconds of tensing, holding, tensing, holding. Five seconds of men, stained men, men with tattered overalls, men with scars and dirt on heir faces, men who’d all want to sink their penises into me if I was a human, terrified, staring at me. Rightly so. I notice a rifle down one of their sides. My teeth clench, my stomach spasms, and I feel a painful tug telling them to retreat. Almost. But I don’t. As painful as it is, I stay. Five men, tattered overalls, twisted lust, staring at me.
And then I feel something different.
Relish.
Brief. Painful.
Even a little beautiful.
I shudder. And shudder some more.
Then, my brain registers something.
That was Caleb’s voice.
That was Caleb’s voice-and I collapse, I fall apart, and I smell a verge of something...noxious. Toxic, to say the least. Oily. Or is that just a hallucination?
I shudder some more.
And then, as I walk away from the sad scene of the disturbed hay, as my legs shudder and shake, as I mutter out an apology to the five terrified men, the symptoms start.
They start just as I’ve calmed down.
They begin as burning, itching, burning in my eyes; at the corner of them, the last thing I see is what I believe is a sheepskin before I croak out a, “What’s-”, and the burning worsens. I gasp, and it goes into my nose; I cough, and it goes into my throat. I hear a more soothing voice this time, the voice of a, “hey, hey, girl, it’s okay, it’s gonna be alright”. No malice, no touching, and the silence of my friends confirms that not only is it the voice of one of the men I accidentally terrorized.
Of course, I’m terrorized now. I can only rely on my ears. It doesn’t help that the burning sensation is starting to reach them as well.
Some quiet rustling and a, “No, no, it’s fine. I’ll pick her up” from Ramona, and then a, “oh, God, what’d you get into?” as she dips the palm of her hand into my hoodie, and I realize that whatever got on me is some sort of fluid gel. I shake my head at the futility of it all. Goddamnit, why am I not able to talk?
I feel the jaggedness of the rocks underneath me and immediately know that I’m back on the gravel road leading to the barn. Immediately know that I’m safe.
As I continue to be silently taken care of over the next half an hour or so, Ramona takes my hoodie off...without my consent, but I know it’s for a better cause, and besides, I have a shirt underneath, so I keep my mouth shut for now. The cold autumn air biting my now-exposed...well, fur...she proceeds to pour her bottle of water onto that area. “My eyes,” I eventually beg. “My nose. My throat.” Eventually, she leaves to get another bottle of water, and then she pours it into my eyes, nose, throat, until they’re flooded with the water. I almost choke, having forgotten how to swallow, but I eventually begin breathing. Thank God. And I eventually open my eyes.
From there, she just lets me...rest.
And from there, almost a half an hour later, she simply escorts me back. No pomp. No circumstance.
The sight is almost repulsive to my eyes. These five men-who’d gathered the comics, who’d viewed them, who somehow concluded that this was somehow justifiable-are now sitting perfectly still, perfectly relaxed in front of Gabriel. Ramona shouts out a, “She’s fine; I still don’t know what exactly she got into,” and when one of the men stands up, I jerk back my knees reflexively. They’ve got a kicking power of two hundred and thirty pounds, and that has to count for at least something for us monsters. I sneer at him, at least more than halfway meaning to.
“Woah, woah, woah,” he says, putting up his hands as if slowing down a horse. “Woah, take it easy, Anna.” So Gabriel told him my name.
Gabriel told him my name.
That at least establishes the slightest ounce of credibility on his part, although I know that they’re still the same bigoted bastards that they were when we all walked into this barn. So I do my best to keep my legs from kicking, but I don’t sit down at my seat until Gabriel physically gestures me over and Ramona gives me a wordless nod.
He takes a breath. Only the one who treated me like I was a horse, a fucking horse, actually sits near us, with the rest of them being grouped at the far end of the table-I can almost feel their beady eyes on my ass as I make my way to my seat.
And he begins.
“Hey, so...there’s been at least a bit of confusion.”
I let out a “yeah, no shit,” but that leads Gabriel to glare at me and grip his pencil as if he were intent on choking it to death, his laptop and pen in hand, indicating we’ve already gotten to the stage where the erratic behavior of Anna Etilcoise was already resolved and he actually began doing what he needed it to do.
Leave it to me. Always supporting others, but sometimes slowing them down.
“No, no, it’s okay,” the guy says. He chuckles slightly, although I’m unsure if that’s supposed to establish some sort of credibility by my book or if that’s supposed to send chills down my spine. “I would’ve said that too if you wasn’t so shook up like that.”
Okay. At least he sounds uneducated enough for me to start gathering my wherewithal without him demanding anything out of me. He’s proved himself well with his bigotry. C’mon, Anna, where are your arguments? Where’s the robustness you normally have for your advocacy?
“I...thank you.” The first words that would have slipped out regardless of who it was. If I can give him common courtesy, then I can burrow some sort of avenue into his ignorance. Not to mention that asking for some personal information would be nice. “What’s your name?”
“Sorry about that.” No extra gestures of kindness from him. His arms are sticking parallel to the ceiling, two scarecrows from the fields outside. He looks at the table-not quite into my eyes-and drags his chair away from the table away slightly before sitting down. He’s restraining himself. “Name’s Harper. I’m not the boss here, though. Nah, that’s McCartney over there. McCartney farms, yeah, like the sign outside” “Harper” throws up his hands slightly, and I flinch. Only a few seconds later does it occur to me that it was to gesture towards whoever McCartney is.
I take a breath and cough slightly. I’d rather not show weakness right now. “So...what’ve you been doing with Gabriel?” Nothing of note, but nothing really educated either. Only later, when he lets something slip that has to do with the comics or whatever the hell I reacted to earlier, will I take the academic and moral high ground. Or at least that’s my general plan at the moment.
A swash of ichor runs through my nose. I hope to God that’s not the fucktard’s body odor.
“Gab-oh, glasses at the front?” There. My cue, but it looks like “Harper”, or whoever the hell he thinks he is, is going to launch into a monologue that won’t let me speak. “Oh, him and I have been talking a lot. A helluva lot. Let me just give you a recap.
So...he wanted to interview us for a project, or something along those lines. Something about what happened to Arnold. And what happened to Arnold is there was a fire at one of the adjacent barns.” (I personally cringe at the use of his “adjacent”.) “‘f you noticed, sweetheart, right before you passed out and all, there was a sheepskin. Actually, it was a charred sheepskin. If you haven’t caught on, the barn caught on fire.” He pauses to slap his knee slightly, and it’s then that I notice the fresh fly guts sprawled across his leg. He wipes his mouth. “A damn...severe one.
Of course, all five of us came a’sprinting, and in a matter of a half an hour, we notice Arnold lobbin’ over buckets and buckets of water, just like the rest of us. No fire extinguishers on hand, considerin’ we’re not here for too long, and we don’t think about that sort of thing.” He cringes slightly, as if he didn’t want to disclose the fact that he was a migrant. I notice a missing molar. “And Arnold was standing there, and standing there, and just...he began...twitchin’. Twitchin’ like a frog’s legs, like a frog’s hair split four ways. We wanted to go over to help him...I swear…”
Harper pulls a few remnants of threads on his jeans.
“Didn’t work out. We saw him just...turn into a pillar of dust. I coughed some bits of him up…”
Another pause. Harper shudders slightly; I refuse to extend further sympathy towards him. McCartney-whoever he is-seeps his way out of the shadows and gropes hold on Harper’s shoulders before nodding and taking his place.
“Heya.” How dare he remind me of Sans. “So, we...we thought it was the lanolin. The...stuff in the sheep.”
I raise a brow immediately. “The stuff in the sheep? The oil?”
He nodded. “Lanolin, that’s what it’s called. Girls use it for their tits sometimes, ‘specially my bitch.” My raised brow turns into a furrow, my fist clenches, and I make it clear to this bastard that if he shits on women-women, never bitches, and especially not his bitches- anymore, he’ll meet the practical hand of death. He lets out a muffled “well, sorry” before continuing.
“But that’s a lot less...concentrated when it’s sold like that. That the right word? That’s the right word. The lanolin. That made you...that made you react like that. Here…” his bluish eyes dart up towards Ramona. “Did you do what I told you to? With the water bottle and all?” Ramona must have nodded, because his eyes dart towards mine again, and I do nothing but stare at my crotch and wish my penis would wither away so I wouldn’t have to worry about myself nearly as much as I do. “Then that settles it. We...I swear we didn’t kill him. I swear we didn’t.”
It takes another ten minutes for Gabriel and I to finish clarifying more details with the story. When was the last time any of them used their rifles-they seem to be offended by that question. What about the comics-they seem to be offended by that even more, except for McCartney, who lets out a nonchalant “didn’t mean anything by it. Arnold didn’t even know about it ‘fore he died”. Once it seems they’ll be offended by anything further, they ask if I’m sure I alright, I nod-with vindication-and, without further ado, we set out on the road.
And I’m still no closer to finding answers.

Chapter Text

Anna Etilcoise
Ms. Sanchez
Honors English 11-8
13 Oct. 2014
My Song: The Journal of I, Anna Etilcoise, Resident Monster and Investigator for Hire
Entry #5

Of course, I didn’t let this go unaddressed.
I practically burst out in tears to my mother and brother that night, and, in a cacophony of genuine care that I’m still not quite sure how to reconcile, she embraced me. She embraced me, and she let us be like that for nearly thirty seconds before we both started launching into the details of it all. And from there, I mean that I essentially vented to her all that I’d liked to. When I was finished, she pursed her lips, let them draw taut like a tablecloth.
“Well…” she eventually said thirty seconds later, “I’m just glad that your project turned out nicely.”
Still, that didn’t mean she didn’t investigate. That night, she spent at least thirty minutes calling authorities upon authorities-a tactic she’d bestowed to Dr. Gaster at one point or another. So her ulterior motivations-everyone has those-don’t crop up until the texts that night.
“Ani, are you okay?”
So I responded with an, “Are you okay, Anna?”, half-hoping I’ve gotten the pop culture reference right.
There was another thirty-minute pause-where I texted Ramona and made sure she was alright from that night, that she’d managed to reconcile everything with her parents as least as well as I have. I remembered she lives in one of the more suburban, upper-middle-class neighborhoods on the upper side of town and shuddered a little at the possibility that her parents may be snooping on her texts despite us both being seventeen.
One more text came in.
“Just make sure this doesn’t get in the way of your...gender fluidity issues, alright?”
She didn’t even care to mention my name.
_
Two weeks passed by. Of course, almost nothing resulted from my mother’s investigations. I have a feeling that only one or two policemen would’ve even gotten their asses off their seats and made their way over to the barn had she even been the mayor.
In those two weeks, the usual novelty came about again. With some not-so-needed approval from Gabriel, I opened up a small partnership with the science department in Bay Path University, the same university Dr. Gaster is a quantum physics professor in to investigate the effects of lanolin, although that was quickly shut down by the dean. Ramona, after saying a few quick “sorries” to me about the fate of the partnership, proceeded to open up a Twitch account, start streaming, and immediately treated the incident as if it’d never happened. That is with the exception of a few texts over a few days.
But it was Susanna who had the most going on.
She invited me over to her house twice in a week-which was amazing, considering how little she usually invites me. Once to give her back the camera, and twice to take her to the urgent care clinic when nobody else was there after dropping a particularly heavy lug wrench on her pinkie toe.
But it was after it was healed-and after I give her one of the longest hugs I think I’ve ever given her- she announces that she’s coming to the Our Lady of Sorrows festival at Sans’ house.
On the surface, many assume that the Our Lady of Sorrows festival isn’t anything more than a proverbial “Christmas in September”. I mean, it is altogether true that we celebrate the nativity of Jesus. But we celebrate so much more to emphasize the Roman Catholic culture, from the prophecy of Simeon to the flight into Egypt to many other biblical stories (and no, I don’t view them as any more than stories; you can’t prove Harry Potter is real by citing the Harry Potter series) to family and neighborhood karaokes, story-telling, and, of course, food. Not to say that we don’t have at least twenty or so festivals throughout the year.
I may not attend them all, but I love them thoroughly all the same.
We don’t necessarily schedule entire festivals for them, either, but this is an exception; schedules happened to be cleared, and Dr. Gaster thought it would be best to schedule a pan-festival throughout the next two months to float us over until Christmas.
My mother tosses me the keys-none of us monsters have had practically any experience with driving considering we only came up a month ago-and tells me to have fun. As soon as I drive to Susanna’s house on the other side of the neighborhood (wishing I’d walked), I immediately begin shaking, swerving slightly, and I almost hit a poor squirrel. The entire time, I sketch out some sort of distorted fantasy of the squirrel having been hit, with me being the only one available to help it…
Susanna seems like she is overprepared. Sure, her carrot-orange dress (and no, our family does not eat carrots more than the average human family) and her Burberry perfume-most definitely looks and smells great on her, but it isn’t like she’s actually hosting the party. Unless she’s planning to-
I ask her if she’s willing to drive, and the first thing she does is wink and say, “Sure,” before she loads her way into the driver's seat. She asks me if I’m okay, I retort a short, “Yeah, are you okay?”, and-a feat that I couldn’t ever do-holds my shaking left hand to confirm that I’m lying. I brush it off as the drive, but she-in an almost uncharacteristic move-asks if there’s anything else.
I can only lie for so long. But I manage a third, “No, there’s nothing” before one of my legs tenses, kicks the dashboard, she hears, and she offers an almost sympathetic look before we pull into Sans’ driveway.
Sans and I share a hug, and, strangely, Susanna is missing. After briefly looking for her, I find that she’s popped the hood open, and I vaguely remember me saying in the car that I’ve been having some troubles with the low oil light even when I’ve clearly had the oil change done. I shout out a quick, “I’ll be inside!” to her and head in.
I almost immediately feel every trace of invalidation from the humans practically being sloughed off. His living room has been recently cleaned. Normally, he complains to me that his father habitually stacks his papers, but they’re not here, although I see a remnant of one scientific essay or two. I breathe in the incense, used halfway as tradition, halfway as a casual fragrance. Like the way humans put clips on their walls for their rooms to smell like waterfalls (as far as I know, waterfalls don’t have a scent). The extra crucifixes, with full renditions of the Body of Christ (and hidden from the children as much as can be so), and adorned with semi-precious jewels have been scattered here and there. And the Mary statues have been impeccably maintained, the silk and cotton being draped ever so perfectly over the Madonna’s arms…
I’ll never understand how humans can think this way. Alright, I may be able to understand how, but I never think I’ll be able to understand why.
And even if I do, I never think I’ll be able to truly understand the fact that I do understand it.
Complicated, I know.
Since Susanna has decided to busy herself with my car for the next five minutes, I shoot her a quick, “Hey, don’t work yourself too hard; you need any help?” and cringe slightly as she leaves it on read. So I decide to leave her a brief, “we’re inside whenever you need us”, turn off my phone, take a quick exhale, and let her go.
The next hour is a slight blur, with some brief breaks for prayers (which I participate in culturally, and please don’t ask me to actually justify these beliefs, because they’re problematic as hell), some interludes of watching “Dragon Ball Z” with Sans and his family, realizing he’s fallen asleep, and writing funny Post-it notes on him and sticking it on indiscriminate places all over his body before he wakes up. I spend half an hour with Papyrus-as far away from my mother as possible- putting together jigsaw puzzles together, discussing which elements we are, and taking quizzes online. I love watching Papyrus laugh, the way his smile lights up the room as if the sunshine had condensed itself to a lightbulb.
He really is the coolest.
And it’s only when we find out that Papyrus’ celebrity lookalike is Britney Spears (who, from my experience, is an absolute queen even if I’ve only put in a few days doing any solid research about her) that Susanna comes into the door, a few remaining grease marks atop her buttery-yellow dress that she clearly tried to rub off, but made much worse.
Surprisingly, all she does is chuckle slightly-probably thinking of some sort of funny story in her head that she couldn’t quite brush off as she ambled her way into the door-say a quick “hello” to me, and then start talking to Dr. Gaster. I look back at her-not that I’m quite jealous of her, as we did exchange quite a lot of conversation on the way over, and besides, I’m glad that she’s having something a little more intellectually stimulating in her life than usual. In fact, a warm feeling rushes over me. She needs that sort of conversation.
So Papyrus and I wait for Sans to wake up, laugh our tail ends off, and then, after a few rounds of Super Smash Bros: Brawl (which actually may be one of my favorite videogames of all time now that we’ve been out of the mountain for these past few months), I hear a signature shook-shook-clatter-clatter-shake sound and know almost immediately that it’s some sort of Christmas present, Susanna in tow and practically grinning her ears off. I first ask if they need any help-which they respond to by attempting not to fall down the stairs- and then ask why Dr. Gaster brought down these Christmas presents.
He grimaces, clutches his lower back, and says a brief, “The attic… it’s going to be unmistakably full if I don’t give them out now. And who knows when we’re going to get back together again…”
Of course, Sans and Papyrus go first, and I feel almost a wave of guilt that I got them-and Dr. Gaster and Susanna, for that matter-almost nothing save for the carrageenan pudding I brought here. To compensate, I go on my phone, perusing whatever social media can fulfill that; I normally tend to feel better after congratulating someone’s effort on a post or two. Before I know it, I’ve retreated further back towards the far end of the dining room. Why must I be such a ruminator in these sorts of things, I wonder...
All of this is interrupted by Susanna’s left hand touching me, still feeling the few traces of grease.
“Hey, can I…? Dear Jesus, Anna, I’ve been wanting to ask this for so long, how do I word this...can I…?”
One of Susanna’s straps has slipped off her shoulder; she doesn’t react. I resort to my default, partially not knowing what I’m saying. “Whatever it is, Susanna, you can tell me. Whatever you tell me is completely confidential. No judgement...no judgment here.” I notice she’s shaking to the point of falling over, and my ruminations start to...change direction. Ever so slightly. I look to the right and make sure no one is looking, although I don’t quite know why.
There’s a new skittishness to her eyes that I didn’t quite notice before. “That’s alright and all, but...Anna, we’ve known each other since we were kids, since we were lil’ kids… I don’t know if I…”
So the both of us sit together without saying a word for moments upon moments, and I hear her taking breaths deep enough for the quietest groan to come out of her. I have half a mind to ask her what the matter is, but knowing Susanna for this long, I know that doing this will only cause her to double back. She’s my polar opposite, after all. Anything that I’d employ on myself I have to completely avoid when it comes to her. And that’s one of the things I love-that whatever mystery that I use has to, by its nature, be useful on her.
So we simply sit before I pat her shoulder.
Immediately, terror spikes into her eyes, the skittishness having been provoked. One of her hands-much stronger than mine-grips my forearm. But I’ve known her for far too long to interpret that as fear. I’ve known her far too long to interpret almost anything coming from her as fear. After a few fraught moments of panting, and a few moments of us locking eyes with each other, something further comes out of her mouth.
“I don’t understand. Anna, I don’t...I don’t think I can understand. I think the only thing I can do at this point is ask.
Anna, can I...can I kiss you?”
Kiss me? I’m dumbfounded at this point, not because of the request-I’ve known for a long while that she’s been wanting to do something with me, something that she sees this barrier of asexuality over, but, unlike the mountain, can’t quite penetrate. I’m dumbfounded at this point because no one has ever asked me to kiss them before. At least not in a romantic way.
So I ask myself, in a millisecond, that question.
Am I asexual? Really?
Because sexuality is one of the most damn fluid things there is. And if kissing Suzanne can awaken that I do, in fact, feel...something instead of nothing...if it can counteract all of the attempted fantasies, all the failed tries in front of porn sites, then I can discover something about both myself and her. And I’m not about to dismiss that.
A teen’s first kiss isn’t something dramatic. Isn’t something earth-shattering, something that redefines the makeup of planets upon planets and reshapes the life course of every monster and human being that exists. At least mine isn’t.
Mine is incredibly gentle. And incredibly quick. And incredibly slow.
And that’s all there is to it.
Its simplicity is almost...unnerving. There’s simply nothing else to describe it, and I’m unsure if that makes it mundane or if that makes it one of the best things that have ever happened to me. I would say I feel betrayed, but when our lips separate, I don’t say I feel anything lasting. Suzanne asks me how it was, how did it feel, and I simply take a breath for a second before I say a short, “nothing. Nothing, like I expected.” Suzanne looks pulverized, reduced to fine particles...and then-
My penis hardens.
No, no, no, no. This isn’t what’s supposed to happen. I’m supposed to apologize to her. To say, as eloquently as I possibly can, that I’m flattered, but I can’t accept the fact that I’m her girlfriend. To reaffirm to her that she is bisexual, that this incidence and the incidence with a boy she claims she’s “messing around with” at school confirms it, and that she’s not straight just because I’m-I’m a-I’m-I’m-
The world distorts around me. Just as I break from Suzanne completely and half-scoot, half-sprint backward, Dr. Gaster looks with a withered smile past the both of us, offering us our early Christmas presents. I yell, being too exhausted for a scream. I kick my legs almost quickly enough for them to hit Susie, and Susie-oh, God, she looks so betrayed by it-
__

Chapter Text

Anna Etilcoise
Ms. Sanchez
Honors English 11-8
18 Dec. 2014
My Song: The Journal of I, Anna Etilcoise, Resident Monster and Investigator for Hire
Entry #6

a/n: delayed because of more finger injuries. Blahhhh.
Also, I think it’s safe to say that you guys should expect a new chapter once every four days at this point.
I’m incredibly sorry for this new status quo; however, the rest of my life essentially demands I use my fingers to some extent, which means that they need to rest every once in a while.

There’s been a profound-to say the very least-amount of time wherein I didn’t have any additions to this journal. Honestly, 90% of that is because Ms. Sanchez moved on, and instead of checking our journals for completeness, she began reading The Scarlet Letter, which ended up causing enough delays among the ridiculously slow of us students (why did they sign up for an AP class in the first place??), and she completely set the journals off to the wayside. Although I have heard from Sans and a few other of my friends that one of the more genuine reasons why she didn’t was that, whether or not Ms. Sanchez and the other English teachers actually know this, continuing the journal assignments would mean having to hand out some bullshit xenophobic anti-monster rhetoic Sans is receiving. And by no means am I for that. (In fact, he and I may have accidentally-very-ceremoniously-and-fastidiously ripped one of those papers into shreds.)
In terms of my home life, a general recap of things would be that Mom and I still haven’t gotten into any major discussions.
Although she did stand her ground when I was interviewed (hint: coerced) by a creepy guy who looked like he was in his sixties who showed up at our church. He handed me some sort of piece of paper about virginity being THE COOLEST THING ASDL;FKJADSFJ and how pretty much the only two things that can make anyone worthy of hell was having the audacity to not be straight or having the audacity to not be cisgender. My mom was immediately set off, exploding at . Considering the fact that he was a human, my mom had leverage and power that few other monsters had the privilege to bear. And she used it widely. I don’t necessarily want her to know I said this, but, y’know...you go, girl.
To say I wanted to hug my mom after that would be an understatement.
Of course, the normal things characteristic of family life happened.
At the beginning of November, Mom finally apologized for holding me back from visiting Dad, and promised to keep our visits regular to once a month. So far, we’re two for two. Normally, I tend not to trust anyone particularly close to me until we’ve hit three for three, so we’ll wait until January until I say anything more about it.
The only other major anything that happened in my family is my dad having another heart attack.
Before anyone frantically asks about him having another heart attack, I think I’d better clarify on what condition he has.
It was due to genetics at first-hell, my brother and I could easily have inherited the condition ourselves-but, although we didn’t know it in the first five years we lived in Snowdin, the cold environment triggered a few of the genetics he’d already had.
He developed a condition called cryoglobulinemia, where his blood habitually goes below body temperature. This means bouts of intense pain at some points and-if it’s severe enough, and blocked in the right blood vessels-he can have a heart attack, which is one of the dozens of reasons why he has to stay in the hospital.
Of course, like his other two heart attacks, we rushed over; he looked pale and clammy from the shock, but dismissed it with a faint smile and a quiet kind of, “hey, I’m alright. If I can survive the first two, I can survive this one, right? Don’t worry about me” about him. Still, that doesn’t mean I stopped myself from playing Chrono Trigger with him, our usual routine. And-as per usual routine-he fell asleep with his hand on my arm, lulled by the sprites walking across the screen, fighting each other over and over, an endless cycle, an endless cycle of death, inevitable...
__
People do tend to call me avoidant at times. But only the most observant of them do.
I try not to be avoidant. “Avoidant” is a scathing, borderline dirty word, the only attachments of avoidant being one that could only be attributed to those who are practically the opposite of me-fathers who come home after work, but leave their families to revolve around him, those who claim to be active on their Instagram accounts but leave your DM to them unaddressed for at least a week, for those who claim to be dutiful towards their political beliefs, but shy away at the slightest confrontation.
But, as for everyone else, it’s something that needs to be for a while. Something that, like me, in my worthy, imperfect, female form, needs to exist. And last but not least, something that, at least my mother asserts, is something that only tends to occur when I’m under a horrific degree of stress.
And it was how I acted towards Suzanne.
So other than a few apologies-other than a few “I’m glad we’ve got that sorted out”s before realizing that she probably has schoolwork and work with her mechanic dad to attend to-I’m silent when it comes to even attempting to address her.
And that’s perfect, in every genuine, non-sarcastic version of the word.
Because without the ever-encroaching emotional turmoil that comes with addressing Suzanne, I can have all the wherewithal I need to address Jackie.
And I can have all the wherewithal I need to reattach myself to the hospital cases.
Essentially, no actual investigation was done besides a few paltry pictures from the local law enforcement (and I thank my lucky fucking stars I wasn’t involvd in any of that shit) and the conclusion that there was a fire. Which meant a cause could be addressed towards the monster’s death-which led to various “thank you” cards to everyone who was involved in the yearbook project, myself included, and just a little more notoriety for Ebott High School, and of course, the yearbook team happened to be predominantly human-but not any further analysis could be obtained.
Of course, that doesn’t mean we tried. That doesn’t mean I furiously tried getting together with that group of friends involved in the yearbook project for the various months (and it infuriates me that it took this long) afterward to attempt to gain something from it. We contacted every local organization having to do with murder (because God knows that local organizations having to do with monsters were right around the number of nil), attempted some sort of boycott at the wool the farm was eventually producing (because God knows we at least tried to get some sort of financial injury catapulted towards them for their utter neglect towards the monster’s death)...and hell, we even attempted making a physical petition (because God knows that a digital version would have impeached us to personal oblivion).
But the one factor that still went unaddressed was how Ramona managed to get the information.
So I ask her that again-as usual, in the dead of night, my phone still on at half-volume despite me knowing full well it should be on mute during the night-and knowing full well that Jackie had just about the amount of luck going to sleep the average night as I normally do.
I yawn before flipping up the Messaging app. “So, Ramona...I had a question.”
“About what?”
“About the case.”
“I know that, silly. What about it lol?”
“You know, just...how’d you end up getting that information?
I mean, I’m not questioning you, I’m just...wondering if the church has any connections.”
This is about the most amount of restraint I can muster at this hour. Of course, I’m about to launch a tirade towards her at how the church may have connections to the more upper-middle class, suburban human neighborhoods, the white human neighborhoods, the species supremacist human neighborhoods (it absolutely pisses me off that this needs to be said now), and every other monster-endangering demographic under the sun.
“Connections? I’m not sure about that! Haha”
Immediately, I cringe. Of course; she goes to the church too. She’s just about as devoted as her new relationship-
“Okay, but didn’t your bf tell you about this whole thing??”
“Ohhhhh. Those connections. Yeah, he did tell me. And he told me his mom told me, just in case you wanted to Nancy-Drew your way into that side of things. But how his mom knows...I have no idea.”
This is halfway what I hate about texting. Of course, anything louder would wake and stir the ire of my mom, my little brother, and, God willing, my dad in the hospital, but I’d much rather have a bleary in-person meeting where I can read the gestures of everyone involved so I don’t fuck things up.
“Y’know...you could come with me. To the church. Vox Church. It’s on Main Street, though, so if you want to visit, traffic is a little congested. Although there is a parking lot in the back. We have services at 10 AM on Sundays, so honestly, that would be the best way to meet us-”
God. I’m much more bleary-eyed than usual.
I’ve been in the ringer with her over and over again, to put it in simple terms. Over and over again, she’s tried to recruit me, for lack of a better word, for her church services. If she absolutely refuses to give me her boyfriend’s phone number, or set up a Zoom meeting with me, her, and her boyfriend (whom I don’t even know the name of yet), or have us meet somewhere in-person in literally anywhere besides her church, I essentially have to choose between acquiescing to what she wants me to do and not getting the information I need. And irritates me to hell and back-
Sleep. I need sleep.
And with that, I mutter a “fuck it”, turn my phone off, and vow to keep my eyes closed until I can at least see sunlight through my window.
____
My mother, of course-and even my little brother-asked me not to go. On the surface, that may have been because I was technically raised a cradle Catholic, and, if we were asked by literally any other monster why, that would have been the answer we would’ve given. But our religiosity was limited to our Christmas and Easter visits, and the most that any of us acknowledged on a familial level about monotheism was that, in my father’s words, “well...if he existed at all, then we have no way to confirm it for sure”.
And they worked to some extent; I’ll give them that. They worked, at least to the point that I paused to sit down, reopen my messages, and reaffirm to myself why I’m doing this. In order to track down any more information I can find. So I can see Jackie again. And so I can inquire about her situation with her new boyfriend.
Still, I can’t help but notice my mother looked a little...not quite angered, not quite disappointed...but above crestfallen before tossing the keys to me, and I’m off. Half-wishing that Suzanne was here-
I almost instantly turn on the radio.
Ironically, in the almost one and a half minutes that I spend outside of Vox Church attempting to squeeze my way into street parking without parallel parking (because no way, no way in hell am I parking in the back, with a mob of people surrounding me and potentially being hostile towards me), an ad on the radio blares about a sexy cheetah pattern on women's lingerie.
I chuckle. Nothing the sexually-repressive society of the church will approve of. But I’ll still tell Ramona about it once I get inside.
Once I get in, I consider going inside the building, but end up waiting outside the door, frantically calling Ramona and seeing where she’ll be and I can meet her and her boyfriend.
Through the five minutes I try to pass time on my phone then, I can’t help but notice the whitewashed outdoor walls, contrasted with the rest of the buildings on this street. The way that one or two teenagers who appear to be my age walk out, laughing about their trip to Puerto Rico this summer. The way that one girl corrects what must have been her boyfriend at this point with a, “Nono, my house is at Royal Chateau”, and I instantly know that she automatically has more of a chance of making it ahead in life systematically than 95% of the monsters I know.
Eerily enough, what actually draws me into the church is not Ramona’s text back (Lord knows she’s talking with her boyfriend), but the sight of a monster. A skittish one, by the look of it, and I recognize her as living at one of the Fairfield Inns at the other side of town, where they’re holding a decent chunk of the monster population until they can eventually “get settled”. So we spend ten minutes talking about what it’s like living here, what she’s doing with her life, what I’m doing with my life, and by the time she goes, I’m trapped.
I’m trapped, because if I leave, word may spread to Ramona, and she may very well give a “what-the-hell” Skype call and leave me on read for the rest of the week. I’m trapped, because if I leave, the humans will have had their victory-driving every single monster out of their church. I’m still not sure about the number of monsters in the church, but it’s still a possibility I have to keep in check, and the fact that it’s a possibility I have to keep it in check is something I fucking resent.
I’m trapped.
Trapped in these white walls, this suffocating verticality. Trapped in the entities of possibilities, growing monsters of their own, trapped in flinching whenever someone-especially someone who happens to be white-opens the door and walks in my direction.
Except for that, though, I actually pass those five minutes quite uneventfully. And when I do, and when Ramona finally messages to me that she’s right outside the church’s childcare center (I can’t believe that their church even has a fucking childcare center for a moment), I nearly run from my seat.
True to form, Ramona is still there with her boyfriend. True to my own form, I almost immediately dismiss him, letting out a simultaneous “Heyyyyy!” with Ramona, and giving her an embrace.
“Isn’t it great?” asked Ramona, the youth still clearly in her eyes, while I let out a too-excited, “Yeah!”. I notice that in some people, and I notice the fact that her boyfriend has now smiled slightly, stuffed his hands in his pockets, and looked down-I decide not to look anymore after letting out a too-excited.
“Anna, are you alright? You look a bit scared. Like a…” she looks to her boyfriend, while I look to my own pockets, and laughs. “Like a rabbit, isn’t she?!”.
I nod, but I make sure to calm the intrusive thoughts of me still having a penis and looking up before she can turn back.
“It’s okay. I understand that you don’t exactly come from the most...traditional background. And that’s okay! We welcome everybody here.”
I almost want to say, “Are you sure about that? 100% sure about that? Because I’m sure that, as soon as I step into the nave, one thousand beady eyes will be fixed on me whether I like it or not. I’m sure that, whether I want to or not, somebody will ask something about whether or not I’m really here to take their jobs from them, which I’ll resent more than you can fucking ever imagine. And I’m sure that, after I step out of the church, I’ll have at least one person sending a hate message to my phone.”
But I don’t say that, because she’s Ramona, her boyfriend is standing right next to her and me, and Jackie’s tied into this mutually.
Instead, I nod, and I notice, with a little disdain, how satisfied Ramona looks. And I immediately shift to how dissatisfied her boyfriend looks.
“So, what’s your name?” I add, spewing out an entire default paragraph. “I’ve heard a lot of good things about you from Ramona. How’s life been going for you?”
He shrugs, almost identically to the way that Susanna shrugs, with a tiny shudder on the top as if his muscles are hurting him and he just made his way out of the human-exclusive gym (yes; they have those now, at least from the rumors I’ve been hearing). I almost instantly clock out of the conversation mentally, but I at least hear a, “Yeeeah...yeah, it’s been alright. Looking for colleges, the football team, my parents, Ramona. That’s basically been what it is. And I don’t think I’d know who I’d be if it was just all those four, right?”
I at least feel myself shudder, about to address all the discrepancies and inadequacies what he’s said entails, but am distracted by a group of what look to be twenty-somethings in the corner, swearing and laughing and letting out an occasional, “Oh, shit!” when one of them locks eyes on specifically me. Still, I only slightly flinch, and Ramona lets out one more joke about me being a rabbit. I hear her say something...what was it? I’m practically fixated on the fact that another is locking eyes on me, and one of them nudges the other one’s arm, as if they’re egging the other one on, and the choker bracelet on the other one’s arm dangles as she points towards me. I frantically look at the rest of them-not really in a position to do anything else socially-before I finally, in one moment of clarity, perceive what Ramona was supposed to be saying.
“His name’s Dan, by the way.”
And with that, I issue a, “We have to leave. We have to leave now.”
Ramona laughs, letting one hand cross over her arm. “What do you mean, leave? You guys haven’t even seen the…”
Their voices overpower us, and in that moment, the air stops.
And then we’re quiet. Dead quiet.
The first one. The person that I can’t quite discern their gender, the one with the hoodie featuring some sort of anime character or another. “You know they’re the ones spreading Ebola, right?”
The woman with the choker bracelet nods. “This has gotta be some zoonotic shit or something. That bitch in the corner…”
Dan’s jaw drops. Ramona-I’ve no idea what Ramona’s doing; all I know is that she’s not attending to Dan, not asking him the usual, “what’s wrong?”s that would’ve been afforded to him even in a good friendship. And I…
I shake my head at the futility of it all, put my phone to the side rather than record them, and walk to my car.
And afterwards-when we all agree to meet at the local McDonald’s in order to share some junk food and vent about all the shit we’ve collectively been through-when they both ask me if I’m alright, if I need anything else besides a Quarter Pounder and a small strawberry milkshake, and when they offer to even smuggle me over to one of their houses and steal one of their parents’ beers that they apparently leave unattended, I shake my head.
Because, if anything, I’m at peace.
Because it’s not in my head.
If it’s in my head, I’m trapped in my own psychological agony, unconvinced by the majority. If it’s in my head, then I’m nothing more than an isolated visionary at best and a demeaned deviant at the fucking worst. If it’s in my head, there is no treatment, no alleviation that doesn’t involve at least a kernel of resentment. If it’s in my head, I’m less of me, less of the kernel of my own being...and more like them.
More like them.
And that’s when a tear slips down my cheek, Dan almost immediately offers comfort, and I swap his hand away.
What the hell is wrong with me?

Chapter Text

Anna Etilcoise
Ms. Sanchez
Honors English 11-8
25 Dec. 2014
My Song: The Journal of I, Anna Etilcoise, Resident Monster and Investigator for Hire
Entry #7
Okay...what the hell is wrong with me?
Moreover, what the hell is wrong with Ebott High School, and, moreover, the city of Springfield, and, moreover, the entire fucking United States?
First, though, some backstory: the story the two were referring to in the church was the story of a doctor named Criag Spencer who’d had a positive case of Ebola. Putting two and two together with some of my friends, they must have known one monster or another who were visiting there. Hell, they may have even known about my family and I’s trip to the city (and I asked; she shook her head and said that even if they did know, we would’ve gone on the other side of the city that the subway happened to be on).
The Ebola incident (which, thank God, was contained entirely in New York City and didn’t cross the border to the state of Massachusetts) was found to be, over and over again, a product of the original patient having been in a crowded subway train with someone from Washington, D.C., who happened to also have Ebola. After a weekend of frantic research, I also found that at any one subway, you could find a whole host of diseases, including viral pneumonia, meningitis, and even the fucking plague.
So why are we being treated as such?
I used the words “systemic oppression” when talking about this with Suzanne (it was Christmas; why the hell not?), and when Sans decided that since we’d all received our Christmas presents from his dad early on, we might as well all gather during study hall and open it together. All in all, there were a cacophony of students- there was obviously Sans and Suzanne, and then Jackie and Caleb as our mutual friends, but then there are a few students who are affiliated with Sans that I don’t know. And while normally, I’d love to get to know them, there’s little else that I’d like to do but open my presents-my favorite being the funniest body pillow, with Sans’ permission, of him-and all three of us laughed so hard I almost drowned myself in the water fountain at the end of the hall.
While Sans was busy exercising self-care in the form of making sure there were no loose threads on the pillow before he hauled the thing over to my car, Suzanne and I were left alone in the hall.
She waited for me to stop laughing. How could I have not known she was waiting for me to stop laughing?
How could I have been such an idiot?
I kept on laughing until the thought of having Sans stare at me from the other side of my bedroom for all eternity dissipated-and that, as you can imagine, didn’t happen for at least a half a minute.
And then I did what my default told me to do.
“Suzanne? Are you okay?”
Of course, she’s not. And I know that. We haven’t resolved what happened when we got the Christmas presents in the first place, or at least the ones from Dr. Gaster. But we continued.
“Look,” she started. Heaved a sigh, like she usually did before she was about to say anything of importance- and never when she was about to say anything else. “I didn’t know if you’d gotten this from when it happened, but I...didn’t like it. And...I’m sorry if that ruined any hopes or dreams you might have had about, y’know...doing anything with me. Being my girlfriend or something. I dunno, it’s just…”
Another sigh. “God. Jesus, I...I don’t even know if I’m straight or bi, I’m just a mess. I don’t know. I don’t even know how I can react when I see you, or any of my girl friends, for that matter. Jesus, I don’t even know if I’d like to have a girlfriend! I just...the only thing I can confirm is that I like guys.”
I furrowed a brow. “That doesn’t really give a clue as to whether or not you liked it or not. I mean, I-”
She dilated her eyes. Reflexively. Maybe she’s more emotionally perceptive than I thought.
“No, no, not at all! I…” she grits her teeth and sucks in air, and immediately, I see a line of weapons, an entire armory. “Anna, of course I don’t see you as a guy! Come on! You have never been a guy to me beyond, y’know...age two! And even if you were never...transgender, or anything like that, I still would’ve thought something was wrong! I would’ve asked if you were okay so often…”
Silence. I know this is taking everything from her, and I know sure as hell this knowledge is, at some point, going to take everything from me. So I don’t do anything else but glance outside and make sure that Sans is still struggling to stuff the present he gave me into my car.
And I hear a heaved sigh.
“But what about you? Are you okay?”
And I go through another period of silence. Only a group of teenagers bellowing something intelligible in the distance and then laughing silences it.
“I mean, Anna...you never really...said yes, or...what’s that word for it? God, I can barely think of it, everybody talks of it nowadays, it starts with a ‘c’, ‘con’... ‘converge’, or...no…”
I take a breath myself. “No, no, Anna, that’s not...you’ve done enough here. I consented; I know I did. I was the one to lean into the kiss. I was the one to brush up my hand against your back, remember that? I only pulled away because it...my…” my throat is encaged. “My dick got hard, okay? So I felt...I felt like shit.” I don’t think she can quite stomach the words “gender dysphoria” yet.
We nod. Bask in another period of silence.
Smile into that silence.
Wait until Sans finally walks back into the school, and when he asks what’s wrong, we mutter something about it being five minutes until study hall ends and that we should get ready to go back into the trailers (because yes, as shitty as is is, as monsters, we still have to go to the trailers for our core classes).
And we finally opened our presents from Dr. Gaster and smiled.
She’d gotten a hoodie with the words that said, without any preamble, “Fuck it. I hate school,” and I immediately knew it wasn’t Dr. Gaster who’d bought it directly.
And I’d gotten the compensation for that: one of the most elaborate marble sets I’ve ever seen in my life.
So, one might beg to ask: what made me mention the words “systemic oppression” to her?
For one thing, Suzanne was practically stupefied when I mentioned it, although whether it was due to the fact that she had an inkling as to what systemic oppression was and was horrified by it or that she didn’t have that inkling, I didn’t know. And based on her expression, I didn’t think it was wise to reveal my supposition (I do not want to say it’s a theory quite yet) to everybody, or to at least everybody except Sans, who by now was using the bathroom before his next class.
Or at least I didn’t think it wise had I had my rathers.
But it was related to a monster-a monster that I barely knew his name of, a monster who had nothing to do with us-who had wanted to draw a human for his midterm project in his art class. And it wasn’t related to a group of humans who had interfered, either; that didn’t stop us from seeing the shards, the shreds, the colors of his former painting on the ground.
He’d looked at us, looked at us with a tear on the verge of his eyes, looked at the room where the art teacher was, and looked back at the painting.
It was so sudden. So unrelated.
So potent.
“She shredded it. The art teacher. The substitute. I saw her do it in front of me. I only went now to clean it up. I’m so stupid. I realized that I’d never get anything more than a failing grade from it…”
And it was then that I felt my entire body, soul, mind start to scream. That my mind summoned up the articles I would read, the papers I would write, the organizations my mother and I would contact. The privilege that I had. The privilege that I lost. The oppression I gained, and the oppression I felt. That I looked to my friends before they distorted into dust.
Just like that.
Just like that, it's no longer in my head.
No longer anything I can contain to an anecdote to tell my friends.
No longer only a concept.
___
But that was all in the past. All things we experienced before Christmas break, before I was shoved into a wall, seemingly by accident, and it was only hours later, after some scheming on Ramona’s part, that it was actually deliberate, and that the girl who shoved me in had plenty of room to walk to her class from lunch normally.
Now, I’m experiencing my first Christmas-at least, that’s what I’m supposed to be experiencing. All and all, it’s a fun holiday, even though a lot of what’s on my mind is carrying out our traditions that the humans aren’t necessarily privy to (e.g. keeping our doors open and letting people from our neighborhood straight-up come in and have a hot snack, performing Christmas pageants in Latin, and going to the foot of Mt. Ebott and saying prayers that winter will be short and spring will come early). Definitely neat stuff that I’ve formed handfuls of childhood memories upon, but more grounds for oppression.
Oppression. What a wonderful, distasteful, horrific word to own.
___
Onto another topic-although I think I’d like to go to first my mother, and then to a therapist (my mother and I have been desperately trying to find one on the Surface for my gender dysphoria) afterwards to vent about this-I received a text in the middle of the night. From Frisk, of all people. A fucking ten-year-old child. I have no idea if this is a hack, or a prank, or if this is genuine. But it’s terrifying all the same.
“Hey, i saw what you did with suzanne during the christmas party!
Do it to me, mama!
(or daddy, if you prefer >:) )”

Chapter Text

Anna Etilcoise
Ms. Sanchez
Honors English 11-8
13 Jan. 2015
My Song: The Journal of I, Anna Etilcoise, Resident Monster and Investigator for Hire
Entry #8

I…
Goddammit.
After Christmas break, I thought that the advancements from the humans against us, all the xenophobia, even an ounce of the ideology I know they’ve taught themselves would’ve been broken. Don’t ask me why, and don’t ask me an inkling of any plans I would’ve schemed if it hadn’t been this way. I just…
Maybe…
Granted, there are a lot of facets that haven’t necessarily made us the most minoritized of all populations. We’re not being systematically murdered, or have had bouts of violence take place against us, or are restricted from most public places. We still got to visit our relatives and no shortage of culturally-enriching locations for our Christmas vacation. But I’m still struck with the amount of...disappointment at the lack of effort directed towards containing this amount of xenophobia. Especially living in a Democratic state, in one of the most, if not the most Democratic region of the United States, with a Democratic president in office.
Still, there’s an indelible swathe of scratches. Marks.
There have been noticeable changes when it comes to my treatment in my day-to-day activities (alone, but not with humans by our side as vicarious passes for us to trample through town with) compared to when the school year began in September. For example, I can’t so much as walk from our local gas station to our local pharmacy across the street from the gas station without having a group of humans of whatever age or gender ogling me. Once, when I sent out an email I was particularly proud of, not only did a human woman look over my fucking shoulder while the entire thing happened, but also congratulated me on “how well-spoken I was for my, um, nonhumanness”.
Another time, a sign for -and, after checking local regulations, there was seemingly nothing in the local laws of Springfield or the state of Massachusetts in terms of hiring discrimination “against those of extraordinary origin”. And that terrified the hell out of me, namely because not only did it set a new precedent for discrimination against us, but that “extraordinary origin” could be used against anyone that falls outside of the white, third-generation immigrant norm.
But the way in which I heard about the most pressing investigation was-interesting, to say the least.
I was actually going into a discussion with my mother. This one was actually civil-well, that was more than halfway because I’d neglected to talk about anything remotely related to my gender dysphoria. Our time there was actually somewhat blithe, bouncing between the topics of the gubernatorial election that had happened in November to all of the bullshit that my mother faces in her day-to-day actions as a representative mayor for the monsters (more accurately, in-house lobbyist) to when we were going to see my dad again to furtive avoidance of the surgery I was going to be eligible for once I was going to turn eighteen in July.
And then it was my mother’s turn to purse her lips.
Now, when my mother purses her lips, she’s usually either about to say something of importance, about to say something inappropriate, or both. So I hear my brother-who’s been snooping this entire time-running his way to the back of the house towards his bedroom.
And it was time to be more grounded.
“I’ve...Anna, I’ve heard about what you’ve done, what with the sheep farm and the yearbook project and all. And I’m proud of you. I’ve already told you this. But there’s something I ran into at work. Something small. Something…”
Almost immediately, my legs tense. She hasn’t been telling me about all the atrocities she’s come across so far towards the monsters?
“Something that wouldn’t...endanger you. A bit of research is all. Whenever you have the time; I know you’re busy with school and all. But it’s not exactly safe with my position to give you a job, and…”
I nod. Not quite willing to say, “I understand” quite yet. Not because I’m feeling introverted today, but because “I understand” would fling open the door to something I’m not ready to experience yet. Something she’s not ready to experience yet, because if she experienced it, then the doors would be flung in her to put me in therapy for my gender dysphoria to medicalize it away, to force me into boys’ clothing to repress it away, to all but lock me in Vox Church to pray it away.
“...the point is I’d like your help.”
I nod again.
She looks to the left, and instinctively, I look to the right to make sure my brother is tucked away in his room.
“Are you ready? This may come to you as a bit of a shock, especially with you at least wanting to go have your surgery.”
I nod, but immediately, all the hairs on my body tense, and I can feel the hot air seizing, tensing at my neck last-minute, draining, leeching the entirety of any anticipatory cheerfulness I had for the entire conversation-
She brings out the documents. The articles. All articles published by the single, the most local of the most remote of monster-headed media, all gone unnoticed.
I only discern flashes. Flashes of terror. “Uterus” and “perforation” belonging in places next to each other that they shouldn’t. “Grievance”, “unjust”, “patent autonomy”, “consent”...words that I’d never dreamed to be grouped remotely close to each other, let alone in a document. And the final word, “infertility”, leading me to turn away from my mother, to cover my eyes in horror and indignation, and for her to wait.
For her to wait for only a while.
Minutes, five, ten, fifteen, it takes for me to discern what’s happening. Piece by fucking piece.
These are the testimonies of three monster patients of Baystate Medical Center here in Springfield. Daennaegi, Aelaenn, Marcus. Two women, one man. All middle-aged, all born sometime from the late sixties to the early seventies, all in their early forties. Daennaegi, Aelaenn, Marcus. Two from our neighborhood, one from another “settlement house” on the other side of the city. All with their families already planned. All with their families no longer able to be planned, thanks to this fucking...this...fucking...
Daennaegi, Aelaenn, Marcus.
Daennagi had come in to have an abdominal aneurysm repaired and had left with a sharp pain lower down in her belly, and then being told by her doctor that she’d no longer be able to have children due to an apparent tubal ligation she’d clearly have had to order herself.
Aelaenn, with a more gruesome story, one involving her coming into the gynecologist expecting surgery for her PCOS, having horrific pain in the surgery area, and leaving without a uterus or an explanation.
And Marcus. Marcus, who had come into the office for a laser ablation for a mild case of prostate cancer, and had left, as Aelaenn did, without what he needed. The cancer was mild. He could’ve been perfectly able to have children.
Daennagi,
Aelaenn,
and
Marcus.
As my mother leaves me alone and goes to tend to both my brother and the sheer amount of housework both she and I have to do, my first thought is to get my father out of the hospital. Now. I call him, and my mother subconsciously ignores me, knowing that I call him fairly regularly. But it’s only with my panic that she comes to me. He doesn’t answer, and I scream my guts into his voice message.
“Dad...you have to...we have to...they might do something to you, something horrible might happen to you, I...please...we have to…”
“Anna, stop.”
She doesn’t raise her voice. Doesn’t lay a finger on me-thank every God I’ve heard of, neither her nor my father have ever laid hands on my brother and I-even when I told my parents, at the age of three, that I wished a magical fairy would come and turn me into a little girl instead of a little boy- and, as far as I know, don’t plan to lay hands on my brother and I anytime soon.
But she leaves the plate and towel in her hand.
“Anna, please. Stop. You’re not going to do anything calling him like that. I’m sorry.”
I hang up. Why, I have no idea. But I do, and the phone clatters slightly on the table after my hands on it go limp.
“Honey, I wish you could…” I see her tears at the fact that she called me “honey”. “Son, I wish you could call him, wish you could do something more. I wish we could do so many other things. But…”
Calm now. She puts the plates on the table now. Sits down now, and it’s only then that I notice the heaviness in her eyes.
“...there’s so many factors at play. Please, just...listen to me, Anna.”
Silence in her eyes now. Silence, and it’s then that I understand the weight that she must be carrying from her position. The people she drags this way and that, and the agony she feels inside of her that she must do that. Her genuine intentions, and the way she walks away from them when she must in order to attain them. Agonizing silence.
So I nod.
I nod, and I do nothing else remotely threatening.
“Anna...even if he were to be discharged from the hospital, where else would he go? Even if he were to be accepted at a smaller hospital-Mercy Medical Center, Springfield Hospital-they wouldn’t treat him better. They wouldn’t give him an exception just because he moved somewhere different. If he’s a monster...he’s a monster, and that’s something we have to accept. And besides...even if it does happen, he’s had all the children he wants to. And I’m not making excuses, I’m just...working around what is. What can’t be moved. It’s...hard to understand, and it’s something even I don’t think I fully understand.” She chuckles. “Even if I pretend to. And I have to most of the time.”
Because of that, when she gestures to the couch, as if she were offering it to someone, I shift to the side. Even if she doesn’t hug me, or pat my head, or show any other obvious signs of affection, she does sit.
And we do sit for a while in silence.
She has one more thing left to say. She has one more thing left to say, she’s validated me this entire time, and I let her say it entirely.
“It doesn’t matter whether we’re humans or monsters, love.
We all pretend to think we believe in what will have us accepted. Loved. Appreciated. Thought of as someone different, someone special, someone held. Even if it means we don’t even ask ourselves what we believe.”
Complete, utter silence.
And all before she calls my brother down the stairs, and I’m left to stare at the cup of tea, and to wonder if any of my political framework is right at all, and to wonder if anything I’ve ever thought about the world around me, the world about who I am is right at all.
Or if I’m just another monster.

Chapter Text

Anna Etilcoise
Ms. Sanchez
Honors English 11-8
3 Feb. 2015
My Song: The Journal of I, Anna Etilcoise, Resident Monster and Investigator for Hire
Entry #8
Surprisingly-or maybe not-I never investigated the cases any further.
Of course, I’ve shown them support. I’ve reached out to them, I’ve asked if everything was alright, I’ve asked if there was anything I could do. And they said their “yes”s and their “no”s accordingly, and I have managed to do some things of note. Provided meals for Aelaenn, whose debilitating pain caused her to take off time from work. Helped Marcus out in terms of looking for another hospital-related job, as he was, to fucking complicate things further, an employee of the hospital during the time of the surgery. And was just...there for Daennaegi.
But on the whole, I’ve neglected to tell you everything that I’ve discovered.
And originally, I wasn’t going to. Originally, I was going to write some other stupid entry, an entry about how a group of monsters from the other side of town were repeatedly harassed and not allowed to enter their neighborhood’s church for a month. Originally, I was going to write about my time with Suzanna, and that we’re attempting to repair any fallout from the kiss that’s still left over. Originally.
But a thought hit me. The simple thought of me not having everything compiled in one place.
So, instead of writing this entry by hand (SO sorry, Ms. Sanchez), I’ve resorted to instead typing it on a word processor and stapling it to my normal notebook instead before backing it up in at least three ways so I know I’ve had the research done all in one place. If I fail this assignment, so be it. I already have a 97 in this class, to be frank.
Because this needs to be done for the good of my friends.
For the good of monsterkind.
For the sake of everything we’ve been deprived from, for the sake of our oppression, for the sake of everything we are, everything we’re supposed to be.
___
(Note: For each part, write 666 words. For now, Vivziepop’s got your back ;) )
Part I: The Barn Investigations/The Yearbook Project
Compiling both the investigation on our part and the minimal amount of investigation conducted by law enforcement opened on October 5th, 2014 and closed, with official police recognition, on November 25th, 2014, the barn investigation detailed the death of a monster, and warranting whether or not the monster in question, Arnold Thiar, an employee of McCartney farms on the address of 25 Tinkham Road, Springfield, MA, located next to Sampson’s Chapel of the Acres. As there was no bodily evidence left behind-as monsters turn into dust upon death-, it is unknown as to whether he died from burns or smoke inhalation; however, as death via smoke inhalation in fires is much more common than the former, that is most likely what happened. While foul play was suspected upon the collection of many newspapers from white supremacist websites (which may have led to some harassment on Thiar’s part, which his family did ultimately confide to me), it was not identified to be the cause of Thiar’s death, and neither did the harrassment lead into suicide, or even suicidal urges, on Thiar’s part, which otherwise may have caused him to either directly commit suicide with the firearms that each employee of McCartney Farms was provided with or run into the burning barn deliberately.
A group of students from Ebott High School, myself included, on October 1st, 2014, found that, upon arriving there and hearing the testimonies of the farmers there, including the titular McCartney, Arnold Thiar was not subject to foul play, and neither was there evidence of such, and was in fact the victim of a recent barn fire. As such, and upon a lack of evidence found by the police force, no evidence was found of Thiar having been murdered, and the investigation was quickly closed. In addition, no charges were pressed against EZ Building Co., who was responsible for the poor construction that had caused the barn fire. Upon further investigation, it was asserted by McCartney Farms, and confirmed by police and fire department investigation, that the fire itself had been caused by a mixture of unseasonably hot, dry weather and dry kindling being collected relatively near the barn in question. McCartney farms, therefore, assumed full responsibility for the fire, although charges have been pressed, but not pursued, for the death of Arnold Thiar (which...why the fuck?)...
Thiar was an otherwise relatively healthy man, born in 1996 (only a year older than I am...it makes me infuriated that I could’ve known him, could’ve been a friend to him, could’ve had a life with him beyond his death), having been a fresh high school graduate from Mt. Ebott at the time of his death in the fire. Only having relatively few health complications, and being a social, outgoing, and overall mentally and socially healthy man at that, he would have had no other reason to have died at the hands of the farm other than some sort of violent means.
He’d entered into employment a month earlier, having looked for a job as soon as he and his family had settled into the Springfield area. Being in the lower-middle class, he decided to, instead of vie for postsecondary education, find a job and offer himself and his high school diploma to whoever would take him. McCartney Farms had happened to be the first of these companies, and had offered him $19 an hour for his efforts. Because of this, Thiar jumped at the opportunity to support himself, his parents, and his little sister. His father was struggling to find employment after being fired from his position as a tattoo artist, as tattooing of monsters was recently banned for some sort of bullshit about “promoting acts of monster-induced vandalism” when that only fucking happened once, and people wonder if that was even staged.
No official summarization has been provided by the Springfield City Police on the results of the investigation, and I am, at least for now, not willing to provide this to them.
Still…
I had an allergic reaction (at least I think) to a pile of lanolin there from the sheepskins. And while I think he genuinely did die in the fire, I still haven’t ruled out the possibility of lanolin having at least some sort of factor in his death. And with whatever I tried to begin in the university’s lab, I’m not going to find out anytime soon, either.
Still fucking tragic. And I’m going to mourn him all the same.
Part II: The Church (Pseudo)Investigations
First of all, I don’t consider this an investigation of any sort of decent proportions, mainly because there was no actual harm involved. Some may consider the group of teenagers harassing me because of the monsters’ alleged role in the Ebola epidemic in New York City (and, admittedly, it was my family who had visited in October, and there are no other families that we know of in our relatively tight-knit community who went there). However, there are quite a few in my friendship circle-the first and foremost including Tammy Harvey*, and, most recently, her boyfriend Robert Christensen*. Ultimately, this should be considered more of an analysis of the ties of human religion, its interplays into whatever political imbroiglios we’re fucking forced into left and right, and ultimately, how it affects us all.
Conveniently enough, the church I went to was Vox Church, the most prominent of the human churches either downtown or in the Mt. Ebott communities. I suppose, though, that I should first clarify that this church was nothing more and nothing less than evangelical, nondenominational Christianity (even though many of the people I talked to there refused to even identify it with the label of “nondenominational”). Nothing more and nothing less than Protestant Christianity. Meanwhile, the denomination we identify as happens to be Roman Catholicism (for those of you who aren’t in the know, Roman Catholicism was Christianity. Protestantism essentially separated from Roman Catholicism to form its own branch near the Renaissance).
That being said, I’ve noticed some distressing changes in Springfield’s religious demographics. From what I can find on the Internet, in 2010, four years before we left the mountain, 52.5% of all humans were Roman Catholic. Now, that number has dwindled to 25.1%, meaning half of all humans no longer identify as Roman Catholic. And considering the sheer initial amount of Catholic charities, decorations, and overall monuments I saw that made me think they were going to fucking welcome us, I don’t think that’s a coincidence at all. Rather, what I’ve been seeing is a shift in the number of people who identify as Protestant, skyrocketing from 11.5% in 2010 to 37.4% in 2015. I’m not 100% sure about this personally, but my personal theory is that Roman Catholic humans have been, in an attempt to distance themselves from us, slowly altered their beliefs and/or practices about Catholicism. Cut off one belief that priests have to be unmarried men here. Cut off one practice of Marian statues there. Cut off one All Souls’ Day celebration and replace it with some sort of bullshit “Post-Halloween Celebration” like I’ve been seeing. Ugh, it’s like they’re not even trying anymore.
Something else distressing that I’ve seen is that those in Vox Church were almost exclusively white. I must have seen nearly five hundred people in that location (and a poster at the front claimed there were nine damn locations), and I literally only saw about ten people in the group of five hundred who happened to be a different race. Ten. Out of five hundred.
Which leads me to say that there are way more than inherent racial biases in terms of not only evangelical Christianity, but the whole population shift I mentioned above. There’s no official data on this-and with the attitude of this locality so far, there won’t ever be-but from what I’ve personally seen, I’m willing to bet that the shifts from Roman Catholicism to evangelical Christianity are almost completely white. Not to mention that many of those attending Vox Church live in Royal Chateau, the mostly upper-middle class neighborhood across from our substantially poorer, borderline working-class, Mt. Ebott community. Therefore, Royal Chateau is probably predominantly white.
In conclusion? It’s bullshit.
But a more analytic conclusion from this is that there are most likely strong correlations with distancing from us monsters and whiteness. Don’t get me wrong-there are almost certainly cases of human minority races being disdainful against us, but being white, for all the reasons mentioned above, widens the distance between us and them (I HATE, I fucking HATE the fact that I have to use this terminology now. Jesus, I wish we didn’t have to reach this point, almost six damn months into us leaving the mountain).
Why is this the case? I could speculate all day long, and if I did, I wouldn’t have time to tell about the hospital cases (not to mention run out of paper in my journal, and I don’t think we’re allowed to buy another one). It could be that we’re having an extraordinary amount of trouble gaining wealth or settling into homes, and whites want to confirm their status as being wealthy homeowners without the slightest hint of an additional possibility. It could be that we’re simply going through another process, the same that human minorities do, when it comes to “taking away jobs” rhetoric (which is just another synonym for racial dominance), and other such bullshit. It could be that the Irish, who eventually settled into the New England area, underwent a vast amount of persecution, and then proceeded to give Jewish, Russian, and Chinese immigrants the same treatment. (Not to mention that it doesn’t help that we’re from Ireland, which could lead to more of this distancing.)
But in conclusion?
Bullshit.
Complete and utter bullshit.
Part III: The Hospital Investigations
(Note: Only write 400 words for this.)
I know my mother’s been asking me to pursue these investigations, and in most households, my mother would’ve punished me for pursuing the first two, especially considering the fact that I’m transgender. But my mother did say this wasn’t mandatory, and for that, I thank her.
Still, this may have been the one that, had I been older, had I had more experience, had I had more psychological wherewithal about me, I would’ve pursued.
But I’m in the eleventh grade. I already have the discrimination and the past two investigations to stomach. Hell, even now, I’m voluntarily searching for a therapist on my own that takes our fucking insurance under the “those of extraordinary origin” clause.
This wasn’t my investigation to put forth, and if someone would like to do so, they may contact me at (413)-224-3447, [email protected], or Anna Etilcoise, 940 Mountainview Lane, Springfield, MA 01028.
But here are the basic details.
Three monster patients, all hospitalized in Baystate Medical Center, Springfield, MA around December 2014-January 2015, suddenly found themselves infertile. The three monsters-their names being Daennaegi, Aelaenn, and Marcus-were all in their middle age, the youngest being Daennaegi at 36 and the oldest being Marcus at 47. It was ensured, from the documents I was exposed to, that all three of the patients disclosed the fact that their families had already been fully planned, and they were not planning on having more children (it should also be noted that the documents I was exposed to were technically released to the public, and published under the Ebott Roar, the monster-oriented newspaper for the 1,000 of us settled into the community).
The youngest, Daennagi, had woken one night with sharp, severe abdominal pain that had radiated to both her arms and even down to her hands. Her daughter, Eva*, had called 911, and within minutes, they’d had her in the operating room to have the aneurysm drained. She awoke, was told to expect some pain post-surgery, and, that following night, had an episode of abdominal pain even worse than during the initial episode. Eva called 911 again, and this time, the hospital seemed at a loss, giving her pain medications while seemingly having no idea of the source of her pain. She’d made an appointment with her gynecologist after a failed appointment with both her gastroenterologist and her primary care physician, and was finally told by her gynecologist that she’d no longer be able to have children due to an apparent tubal ligation she’d clearly have had to ordered herself.
Aelaenn had a far more horrific tale. She had suffered from PCOS for nearly two decades, and suffered from routine irregular periods, bloating, and abdominal pain and cramping on a near-constant basis. On some days, the pain had debilitated her to the point of having to miss all of her planned obligations, including school, work, and relational obligations, and the irregular periods had made her fertility subpar, at best. Because of this, her wife, Mionn*, was the one to have their two children, Reese* and Kayleigh*, on Aelaenn’s behalf. Finally, after three years of scheduling, Aelaenn had a laparoscopic ovarian surgery to at least drain the cysts on her ovaries and provide her with symptom relief. She’d confided to her gynecologist that not only had she finished her plans for a family-she’d also confided to him that her wife was the one giving birth to the children. After the surgery, she’d left without a uterus...or an explanation.
Marcus, being a cisgender male, had his surgery be relatively obvious. He’d come in due to a case of mild prostate cancer, relatively normal among middle-aged men, human or monster. He was scheduled to have a laser ablation done to remove the cancerous tissue from his prostate without affecting his ability to have children; not that he hadn’t had any, as he had produced three children with his wife before the onset of his cancer.
Daennaegi, Aelaenn, and Marcus weren’t only names. They weren’t only tools. They shouldn’t have been treated like cattle. They had autonomy, autonomy that should’ve been fully addressed. And neither did they deserve to have their futures ripped from them, even if they did confide at the time they were finished having children. What if their minds changed? They were plunged into a hell, a hell that could’ve been just as preventable as humans’ desires for (even possibly) one less monster in the world.
One less monster who could possibly prove the slightest thing they thought wrong.
*Unless the person’s identity is key to the investigation/has already been disclosed to the public, I have changed their names for privacy.
__
I’ve said my piece.
I’ve exhaled it from my bones now and found my piece.
So regardless of what happens in the future-regardless of the rhetoric that’s made against us, regardless of the street harassment, regardless of if this journal is shredded and torn to utter pieces, regardless of what may happen to my family, to my friends, to even a stranger that I may barely know, but who may be striding along on their way to their death…
I’ve said my piece.
And on even my grave, at least it can be said that I’ve done my part.

Chapter Text

Anna Etilcoise
Ms. Sanchez
Honors English 11-8
26 Feb. 2015
Entry #10
I know some may call me crazy, but, yes, I am involved in at least some sort of spirituality. Even though I may not believe the infinite amounts of fuckery Roman Catholic ideology has to offer, I do believe there is at least something higher than ourselves, and at least some sort of higher power.
And nowhere is this more prominent than in my dreams.
Falling asleep last night after a few rounds of playing Chrono Cross with my little brother, I felt my entire environment physically slip into oblivion. I then went into a dream-void. Nothing but more-than-blackness, negative space. Nothing less than comforting more-than-blackness.
As I dove further into this embrace, I saw hell.
It was almost like it was ripped out of the fucking Revelations.
I saw two baskets-one basket that looked like it was made of almost metallic memory foam, one that was more crowded, yet one with luxury. Entire movie theaters, bowling alleys, country clubs being built on that basket. A peek into the back, though, revealed that this basket could very well expand, but I had an instinct that only those who first joined the first basket would be able to grant it to everyone else if they wanted to.
And the second basket looked like it was made out of wheat, like the standard wheat of the Middle Ages, sagging, falling apart. Almost nothing was there. Only one piddly church stood in the middle-I had a second instinct, this time telling me that those who first joined the first basket stole it from the second one, or at least damaged it until it was this piddly state.
Suddenly, my body was in a vice-grip. Standing with my friends, I felt their hands gripping onto me, onto my back, onto my chest, onto my stomach. Reconciling all of this as perfectly normal. Ramona, Dan, Caleb, and Gabriel. Suzanna, Sans, and Jackie. My brain immediately made that distinction.
And almost as quickly, my body was ripped in two. Nothing more, nothing less. My brain reconciling this as normal, something expected. Only feeling a slight burning sensation, it’s replaced with dissociation. Ramona, Dan, Caleb, Gabriel, and my left half. Suzanna, Sans, and Jackie on my right half.
Without warning, I feel the same agony of the lanolin. Piercing, all-encompassing, agony so acute that I can even taste my spinal fluid-I don’t know how that tastes, but I’ve at least watched the movies. The agony builds and builds, and German Shepherd puppies rip and tear into both halves of my body. I begin hearing Ramona scream, look to the left, and only then do I realize it’s me that’s screaming.
The last thing I see before waking up in a cold sweat, facing my bedroom drawer is one of the puppies tearing into Sans’ chest.
_____
I don’t scream when I wake up. I don’t cry, don’t call out for my mother, my father, hell, even for my little brother. I don’t question where I am, question who I am like in the most severe of my nightmares, don’t even consider jumping out of bed and walking around the upstairs as quickly as possible so I can chase every single memory of the nightmare out of my head.
All I do is accommodate for the slow, steady, agonizing throb of the one sentence that I’ve chosen to burrow myself with.
It’s here.
What’s here? Come on, Anna. I check the time. It’s here. It’s here. God, my head hurts. Is this a migraine? It’s here, Anna. It’s here. 6:15 AM. 45 minutes before I have to wake up. Almost 2 hours until school actually starts. Should I fall asleep again? If I do, I’ll just have the nightmare again...It’s here, Anna. What are you doing? It’s here. Should I get up? If I do, I won’t be able to go back to sleep again, and I have some time before I actually have to wake up. It’s here.
What are you doing?!
What am I doing?
I sit up in my bed so quickly that the springs make a high-pitched SQUEerrr sound. I get out of my bed. Turn on my phone. Wait so anxiously for it to finish booting up that I mutter a “Fuck it”, low enough for my brother sleeping in the bedroom beside me not to hear, and go on the computer. Search on the local news to see if my dreams have tried to tell me anything else. Someone’s idea in Springfield Technical Community College for a Monster Hall of Fame got shot down. Some sort of statistics published about how the median poverty rate in Springfield has risen by 5%-phenomenal for the size of our city-in a single year. Some article about the history of minorities in America. I lose about an hour to that, as I usually do after school, and before I know it, I hear the sounds of my mother waking up, and I lock my door in order to give off the impression to her that I’m getting dressed. And as I do-trying with all my might not to look at anything below my navel-I check my newly-booted phone.
And that’s when I get the text message from Sans.
Anna.
It’s here. It’s here!
“anna.
it’s my locker.
please come early.”
____
I arrive there at 7:30. Eating maybe a bowl of applesauce in five minutes, but spending the rest of that time frantically texting Sans, trying to call him, even trying to begin a Skype call before I realize he’s at school, the most he has is his cellphone, and his choices were to either leave his laptop at home or to risk expulsion (and yes, I’ve heard of that happening to at least one monster, but I’m too fucking tired to investigate it).
Whatever image I’ve had of the ten-minute, white-knuckle, brake-gripping drive from my home to here I’ve preserved in my head…
It’s gone. All fucking gone.
I maybe expected to see a repeat of the prank where a group of humans stuffed his locker with dirty gym clothes (how they got the code for the lock, I have absolutely no idea). A lipstick stain from the four girls who’ve been sexually harassing him all year long (and yes, I’ve been begging him to report it to at least someone, even if I know the school won’t do shit). And maybe-just maybe, if I was lucky, if all of monsterkind were lucky-just requesting me for help carrying items from his locker to his classroom, or if he could store it in my homeroom because Mr. Hunt will barely let us breathe, let alone store our stuff in the trailer.
All of it’s obliterated.
Dead.
Gone.
The first thing I notice are the crowds. I count them-ten, twenty, thirty. Even forty, or maybe even fifty if some of them are hidden in the office and peering out the door. I look frantically to the left and the right, ensuring there wasn’t anything that caught my attention the same as it did the crowd’s besides Sans’ locker. Nothing. Dead. Gone. The second thing I notice is that most of the crowds are monsters, which, for a reason I can’t explain, doesn’t satisfy any of the questions I have. As if it were just as horrific as a human crowd, although I know, know for fucking sure that that’s not the case.
And the third thing I notice, as I double back to the point where my back nearly hits the glass door to the library, is his locker.
Dead
and
gone.
The letter M-”monster”- composed of tiny dots, as if Impressionism had fucked the Devil and made a child out of it. Not lipstick, as I’d anticipated a group of horny 15-18-year-old girls to be using as their weapon of choice. They’d sprayed it. They’d fucking gone to WalMart, spent their hard-earned money on a can of spray paint, and fucking sprayed my friend’s locker with an insignia for our species. To brand us.
To brand us.
To brand us.
To brand us-
I’ve heard of the term “dissociation”, but I don’t think I’ve truly experienced it until now-not even when I’m in the bathtub and have to stare at the ceiling almost the entire time in order to avoid looking at my penis. And for those of you who haven’t experienced it, you fucking will at some point in your life.
But until then, here’s what dissociation is like, at least from my understanding of it.
A cord. A cord, cutting any ties I had, except for the most remote ones, between me and the world around me.
Sans? I can’t find him, and I couldn’t find him even if he were to come up to my right, tap me on the shoulder, and then slap me in the ass. I’m not even sure if he came to school yet. I’m not even sure where he is. I’m not even sure who he is. Who is he? Who am I? The cord moves deeper, deeper. I’m cut off from my body now. Thank God, I’m cut off from my body now. Can I stay? Can I simply be, be a girl, be whatever I want without some fucking chromosomes determining what I look like, what hormones circulate through the body I left behind? But I’m still here. Still here in the hallway. I know where I am. I don’t know where I am. I know who I am. I don’t know who-
He taps my left shoulder, and the cord tightens, drops. I’m Anna Etilcoise. I was born a male, but I’ve desperately wanted to be, knew I was a girl ever since I was a toddler. I’m in the eleventh grade.
Back in an instant.
The cord tightens around my neck now, and it’s only then that I realize my nose has been flaring, almost twitching, almost without my volition. And that tears have been drizzling their way to the edges of my eyes.
And that there’s a symbol of the capital letter “M”, with a circle surrounding it, directly nine feet in front of me.
I breathe. I breathe, but it’s too quick. It’s too quick-I know how to do this. Make the exhale longer than the inhale. I do this three times, and then, only then, do I know when to speak.
Do I know how to speak.
“My God,” I begin. The tears threaten me, and I let out a gasp only loud enough for Sans to have heard. “My God, my God. I’m so sorry, Sans. If I knew this was coming, I...I would’ve done something, I would’ve made an essay, organized a protest… something. I don’t know…”
I don’t know. I’ve never known. And just like that, I retreat. I knew it. I knew I was too disoriented to speak, and my hand slips down, involuntarily, to Sans’ shoulder; standing at barely four feet tall due to spondyloepiphyseal dysplasia, he makes an instinctive armrest.
He takes his own breath, loud enough for me to hear-and then some. ”It’s alright, Anna. Besides, I don’t even have to use my locker anymore. I can just bring all of my stuff to and from school.”
I cringe slightly-he’s always been the type to repress his emotions, but he must have been feeling at least something if this was his first reaction to this most recent horror. But for the sake of being among a crowd that’s slowly beginning to amass more humans, I play along.
”No. No, I don’t mean that.”
And then I delve deeper into my own thoughts despite any of Sans’ interventions. Should I take the picture? And if so, what will that do to my mother’s status? Have I done enough to investigate? And even if I do, what the hell is the school going to do with this-
Without further ado, my subconscious detects the picking up of a pen by Principal Miley, and the self-satisfied look in her eyes.

And everything inside of me falls apart.
“Sans,” I say, my voice trembling. Almost falling down to a male pitch, and when Sans hears this, he most definitely notices.
And he most definitely turns to the right. Falls over slightly-could’ve been for any reason at all-before I half-whisper an, “are you okay?”, not capable of much else coherent speech. Not able to be there. He trembles almost as badly as my voice, but he eventually stands. And it’s then that I let my voice climb, although ever so slightly.
“Look. Call me a conspiracy theorist, but I think I’ve got something real now. I...I think they’re starting something.” I wait for him to lock eyes with me.
“I read the clipboard, too. And whatever they’re starting, they’re going off of your locker. Or whatever those fuckin’ ‘f girls’ did to it.” The F-Girls are what he calls the trio who habitually sexually harass him. “And by the look on their faces, they’re starting something...horrible.”
He looks to the right, as if both Principal Miley and Vice-Principal Fresno are going to attack the both of us, one for each. And I wouldn’t be entirely wrong about that possibility, either-systemic violence against monsters is being encouraged, to put it incredibly broadly, and to put to rest any and all of the articles, all of the stories, all of the testimonies I’ve read this week alone.
And he doesn’t hesitate to lock eyes with me again.
“Yeah,” is all he can manage to say. He lets a slight pause take this space for a few moments. “Yeah, they’re starting something.”
And without further ado, the crowds dissipate slightly; it’s been at least ten minutes since we’ve stood here, and while this is certainly another atrocity, it’s not as if they’ve abolished the penalty for being at class ten minutes late-in fact, they’ve most likely made it worse for the monsters who happen to be this late. But Sans and I don’t move. In fact, we sit here.
I dismiss one monster I know from one of my classes, saying to her that we’re going to be late because I’m going to see if I can help Sans clean his locker, neglecting to tell her that I don’t have the slightest fucking idea how to clean spray paint stains off already-painted metal. And it’s not like I’ll actually ask one of the teachers, seeing as there’s a complete lack of monster faculty in the building. So we sit here.
And we sit here.
We sit here.
And, for lack of a more appropriate way of saying it, not be grateful.

Chapter Text

a/n: so sorry about this chapter being a day late, as I had a bout of the stomach flu. Yay :)

Anna Etilcoise
Ms. Sanchez
Honors English 11-8
9 March 2015
Entry #11
I didn’t think it would be this soon. Couldn’t ever fathom that it would be this soon.
This soon that the humans began ignoring reports of a dead monster in one of the motels down the street, along with the reports of a group of humans beating her husband until he couldn’t tell what color shirt she was wearing. This soon that Dan would text me, telling me about the incident, and asking why his pastor told him to take it as an act of God, and to be grateful that he, along with all the other humans in the church, was still alive.
This soon that the announcement would be pouring over the speakers.
I remember the moments beforehand as vividly as I’m writing this entry. My mother is looming over my shoulder, taking a break from a batch of soap she’s planning on selling this weekend, giving me a blanket and a cup of jasmine green tea to comfort me, and overseeing every single word I write, at a loss of what else to do. She stares off into the painting of our entire family, posed next to Mt. Ebott, with all the resignation that could ever accompany one person.
With both her and I knowing it would be useless to make a single phone call.
When the day began, I was in the math trailer. Suzanne sitting next to me. Me twirling a forgotten strand of my hair in my hand, wondering if I could invite her over for a videogame, and to talk about either what would become of our relationship or anything besides what would become of our relationship. Complaining about Mr. Hunt, and her saying, just before the PA resounded, “I don’t think there could be any teacher worse than my Ag one, though. One time, he said that our entire species should-”
The announcement, word for fucking word, still sticks in my mind, refusing, regardless of how much I negotiate with it, to even consider letting go...
“Students of Springfield High School, this is an executive announcement from Hampden County Public Schools that, from now on, all children of extraordinary origin must report to the auditorium at exactly 9:15 A.M. today to be identified to improve school efficiency during special events. This identification will serve as a red card carried in students’ wallets, bearing the uppercase letter ‘M’- hey, hey, what the FUCK-”
They can’t do this to us.
Why did they swear? Why swear on a school announcement? I’m too confused for words, too full of words for confusion. The dissociation comes, rampant, quickly enough for my next snapshot of reality to be a simple, horrible picture of everyone else gathering their items to go and Suzanne tapping my shoulder, saying, “Hey. Hey, we gotta go. Anna. Anna, we gotta go.”
They can’t do this to us.
So I dig in my heels. Whether it’s literally or figuratively, I haven’t the foggiest idea. I haven’t the foggiest idea about anything. Don’t have the slightest amount of words to voice in protest. Have too many, too many fucking words to say in protest.
They can’t do this to us.
____
And I met Sans there, you know. In the auditorium, after we first came up from the mountain. Before then, I hadn’t talked to him for three years. And now. Met Jackie, kept to Suzanne. Now, I even attempted to text some of my monster friends. Some subconscious part of my brain even went for calling my mom, which, in hindsight, is exactly what she should have done; she still holds at least some institutional power within the school system. But none of what I did, none of what I attempted to do, none of what I even aspired to paved the way for any of my salvation. Any of our salvation from a demonic shade of laughter, an adulterer’s mark, the species of the letter “M”.
Suzanne, Sans, Jackie, and I. They allow each other to sit together-heh, when will they ever allow for any other extra accommodations? Sans makes a joke about summoning a bone. I say that they’d probably kill him on the spot for it. Nobody disagrees. Suzanne, Sans, Jackie, and I.
“Johnny Aegbaem.” Johnny Aegbaem walks onstage, as if he were about to graduate, and takes his M badge. I can almost see tears in his eyes from where we’re sitting. “Jaiden Aelfraeb.” She goes onstage. Legs shaking, explicitly crying now. Resigns to the badge. To the yoke, as if she were nothing more than cattle.
It goes on. And on. 38 monsters.
I’m about the eighth. “Anna Etilcoise”, far more ahead than “Sansone-Merryweather Gaster”, “Jackie Tate”, or “Suzanne Williams”. Needless to say, Sans, Jackie, and Suzanne all look at me with a differentiated look of horror; they’ve only had to reconcile the others, but have yet to deal with “one of their own” being onstage. When will they learn? When will they learn that we all are one, that there is no “one of their own”? When will we all learn?
What will our descendants learn from this?
What it was like being the first one to cross that stage was something that I’d like to tell my children. Something I’d like to tell my grandchildren. Something I’d like to tell, if it’s the will of any deity that’s actually able and willing to help us, my great-grandchildren.
But the most frustrating, exasperating, agonizing part of it all is the fact that I almost lack the words.
The most that I can say is that I went on the stage…
Received the M badge from the assistant there…
And went down the stairs.
Like that.
Just like that.
No other details.
Just…
like that.
Overwhelming in its simplicity. Simply overwhelming.
The world throbs around me in various shades of anger.
Something I’d like to tell my children about, my grandchildren about, my great-grandchildren about.
But the most infuriating part is that I lack the words.
____
I had almost complete amnesia when it comes to what happened in between the time where I came off the stage to the time I finally settled home, broke down in tears that lasted for nearly half an hour to my mother, and spent the rest of that evening frantically Googling and ritually following grounding exercises, only thinking to text Sans, Jackie, and Suzanne about what happened, reach them out via videocall-something to at least try and vocalize my pain, something I couldn’t even try to do on paper.
At first, my mother and I’s first instinct was to try to find out what happened, and in that little invincibility period psychologically that I had, I raced to find out what happened as well, and was actually pretty successful in that regard. The first was a source from Ebott High School’s actual fucking website, which said:
“While it may seem to be an unconventional move, administering ID cards to students of extraordinary origin is crucial to their success as students. Without a specialized student badge, we cannot make important managerial decisions pertaining to including, but not limited to, student purchases, student clubs, extracurricular student activities such as football games, etc. Parents who are concerned about this should call the school with any questions, as well as keep in mind that-”
I’m finished.
I’m finished, because whatever educational institution-related bullshit they’re trying to pander, they’re barely doing shit to mask the actual problems involved. “Student purchases” only means they can decide not to sell a certain item to one of us, or to require one of us to buy an item. “Student clubs” and whatever other fuckery they have on there that I didn’t care to read means that they can exclude us from whatever the fuck that they want to.
So I bury my head in my hands.
I did try and reach out to my friends, though. I pulled up the Messaging app. Exited back, took a break to cry, and let the smuggled mascara from this morning to prevent any potential retaliation from my mother run down my cheeks. Pulled up the Messaging app again. Exited it again to, with all the deliberation intended, rip the entire fucking M badge in halves. In thirds. In fourths, and when I’m finally satisfied and can’t fully read a single word on any of the pieces on the floor, I pull up the Messaging app again.
The first person I think to message is Ramona.
“What do you think about the new implementation?”
God. Stupid. Stupid, and I take a break, muttering a definitely-audible “Fuck it all” to nobody in particular as I grab an espresso shot, spend an agonizing fifteen seconds in front of the microwave, and take it in a single sip. I don’t react to the spasms in my throat.
My mother doesn’t even try to stop me. She’s most likely busy doing her own research...and seeing if there’s anything she can foreseeably do as the monster-representative deputy mayor. She'll probably be out of town in an hour or so appealing to those humans are in power, seeing as she actually has some, or at least as much as she can get.
She’s texted back while I was gone.
“See, I…”
“I dunno, man. I honestly think you guys deserve it. Not to be derogatory or anything, I just think that you guys need to be put...in check. Nothing against you personally. And I swear I’m not bigoted or anything, I just...I’ve heard from everywhere that you guys are driving the median poverty rate up in Springfield. Any more economic entanglement would be horrible.
Again...nothing against you, personally. Just Google ‘economic entanglement springfield ma monsters’.
I’m worried about all of us, that’s all. I don’t want to do anything selfish.
And I don’t want you to do anything selfish, either.
That being said, feel free to reach out to me, alright? I’m here for me whenever and if you need me. Even if you need somewhere else to stay. I know your neighborhood isn’t all that great. ^_^ ”
So I do. I do Google “economic entanglement Springfield ma monsters”. I get nothing but former alt-right websites, and even current ones, if you want to take it that far. Breitbart, Fox, several websites under Free Speech System. Not the actual articles, but mainstream websites, local websites, that have simply piggybacked and piggybacked and piggybacked from other news websites to other news websites without any actual facts or details. The fucking gall of her.
I reopen the Messaging app. Put my thumb over the three dots to the right. Paving my way to the “Block” button. Paving my way to set myself free from her.
What am I doing?
Me? Anna Etilcoise? The Anna Etilcoise who’s had to overcome both the psychological agony of gender dysphoria itself and the psychological agony of people, including your own mother, refusing to understand your needs? The Anna Etilcoise who’s been on the asexual spectrum in the LGBT+ community for five years and counting, and who’s had to resist all of the intrapersonal tensions and relational infractions that have accompanied that? Most importantly, the Anna Etilcoise who’s been able to withstand bigoted remark after bigoted remark after bigoted remark, and the person-the woman-who’s been able to withstand investigation after investigation, and who’s been able to even, God fucking willing, lead a few people to become less xenophobic towards us in the process?
And I’m going to cut my friend, one of my best human friends, out of my life simply for misunderstanding an issue?
What am I doing?
Me? Anna Etilcoise? The Anna Etilcoise who’s had to overcome both the psychological agony of gender dysphoria itself and the psychological agony of people, including your own mother, refusing to understand your needs? The Anna Etilcoise who’s been on the asexual spectrum in the LGBT+ community for five years and counting, and who’s had to resist all of the intrapersonal tensions and relational infractions that have accompanied that?
Most importantly, the Anna Etilcoise who’s been able to withstand bigoted remark after bigoted remark after bigoted remark, and the person-the woman-who’s been able to withstand investigation after investigation, and who’s been able to even, God fucking willing, lead a few people to become less xenophobic towards us in the process?
And I’m going to cut my friend, one of my best human friends, out of my life simply for misunderstanding an issue?
I’m Anna Etilcoise. It even says so on my M-badge, even as fucking delusional as the reasoning for it is. I am Anna Etilcoise. Monster. And I’m going to embrace it, embrace it until those around me, the strangers who administered it, my friends, even the friends I’ve embraced so closely that I’ve called them my chosen family until our entire species stops.
I’m Anna Etiloicse.
And I move my finger off the phone, move towards the power button, and turn it off instead.
The badge in my pocket seems to dwindle.
____
It’s not until the night that I finally reach out to my friends after a long conversation with my mother about all the initiatives she was planning to take. To her, I say, “Godspeed”, although that was more because it would take an act of God for anyone in the human species to even remotely take her seriously at this point rather than actually wishing her luck.
And it’s not until then that I form a group chat on Skype. Not on the messaging app. Not even on Facebook, which I refuse to become active on regularly due to the massive amounts of human supremacists flocking there; it irritates me to no end that the second most active social media platform, Instagram, is not even a fourth as active as Facebook is. Faltering thoughts spring up in my brain about there possibly being monster communities all over Instagram because of the laughability that Facebook has to offer, even if Instagram was created by Facebook it-fucking-self.
And when I form the chat, it takes no more than fifteen minutes for every single one of my monster friends to join.
I invited not only the trio I sat with, but three others who are more like acquaintances of mind that I invited for the sake of strength in numbers, even if there might be some tension with the trio: Eva, a boy named Chara (basically “buddy” in our language, not to mention the name of a badass human historical figure in our culture who fell down the mountain, was adopted by the monarchy, and sacrificed themselves to try and free us from the mountain early all at the age of fucking ten), and Paul.
It was Paul, out of all people, who I talked with first, who at first unloaded his panic onto me, as he was one of the more vocal ones in the school, even daring to run to the student government association while including the phrase “I will try to address the issues plaguing the monsters in our school by an increasingly xenophobic human administration and climate”. He then submitted to silence before I showed him a detailed report of a loophole I learned from Sans on how one can announce their dropping out of school and then cancel that announcement, leaving them a period where they’re basically absolved from any actions they did in a certain period of time without having to actually drop out of school.
Looking back on it, I don’t have the slightest idea why I decided to invest all of my energy towards him. The most we’d done together is a project in one class or another before deciding to exchange numbers for the hell of it. Maybe because I needed a therapist. Or maybe I just needed someone who was more detached from my personal life. Something Dan from the church needs, and is probably deprived of thanks to Ramona and his parents. Someone I could help that was more impersonal than the rest.
All I know is I needed that. And I probably need it much more regularly than I’m willing to do in the future.
By the time I finished with that, everyone else, except for Suzanne, showed up to the call with little else but that same look of silence. And I would’ve admitted that I had, frankly, nothing left in me but a few platitudes towards everyone, but I asked everyone to share what they thought of this with the following:
“Guys....what the hell just happened to us?”
___

For however bad I ever thought, ever anticipated, ever comprehended things could be, things have only ever gotten worse.
The news came this morning, just as the morning paper circulated to our front yard and the coffee became just cool enough to drink without having to blow on it more than three times first. It came as my mother and I were desperately attempting to contact school officials by email, knowing for fucking sure that they weren’t going to answer their phones. It came as Ramona only now answered my “what the hell just happened to us” query, responding with a nondescript “idk. All I know is that it’s bad.”
But she couldn’t understand, couldn’t even begin to comprehend for shit…
All monsters.
It’d happened this morning.
And the morning beforehand.
And two mornings beforehand.
This morning, it was a woman who’d just started her career. Just graduated from college with her Master’s. And who’d had a seven-year-old to take care of.
The morning beforehand, it was an old woman. It’d taken her months to even build up the courage to drive to the park, hobble her way out of it, and make her way to sit down on a park bench.
And two mornings beforehand, it was a mother and a child in a car. All too deliberate. All too swept under the rug.
They all died.
The woman who started her career.
The old woman.
The mother and child.
All dead.
No, no, nobody can even begin to understand, yet alone live though...

Chapter Text

Please don't expect me to release another chapter until at least November 27th in order to recover. Depending on how this illness pans out, I may publish one even later.
As you can probably tell, my energy is next to nothing right now; in fact, I may even be double-whammied with both COVID and the flu, according to my most recent symptoms. I'll still make some supplemental stuff just so I don't lose touch with the story (character exercises, etc.), but an entire chapter would probably be too draining as of now.
Thank you for your time and patience, and I'll see you on the 27th :)

Chapter Text

Note to author: Replace with text when ready

Chapter Text

Anna Etilcoise

Ms. Sanchez

Honors English 11-8

16 May 2015

Entry #12

Normality.

That was the word, the concept that drove me out of bed, that drove me to go to my phone and start a group chat with a group of acquaintances to distract myself from my thoughts, to finally go to the bathroom and heave in the toilet.

Normality.

That previous day, one of my teachers-not you, Ms. Sanchez-and not the bigoted dickwad of a history teacher that Mr. Hunter is, either-began unleashing assignments, one after the other. His excuse was that the quarter was nearly over, and he hadn’t given us anything in terms of college prep: in his words, “the way all teachers should address eleventh-graders at this ponit”. It was in Spanish, which I took instead of French unlike many of my fellow monster students. Frankly, Spanish is more useful if I’m going to serve any of the sociocultural aspects of the United States. Who gives a shit about a “cultural heritage” dictating what classes I’ll take, even if it relates to us monsters?

Fuck, did I just type that?

Talking (ranting) to Suzanne about how Roman Catholicism handles homosexuality before realizing what had happened the past week and quickly shutting up, we finally paid attention to what Mr. Caldwell had written on the chalkboard:

“¿Qué predices tu sucederá en el futuro?

What do you predict will happen in the future?

So I keep it brief. Look at Suzanne. Look at Mr. Caldwell. Feign looking back on the chalkboard immediately after he looks at me.

And put pencil to paper.

He accepts us, doesn’t he? Of course he does. He was one of the three individuals to advocate for a monster student union at the beginning of the year. And all our submissions are anonymous.

Of course he won’t give me a failing grade.

And of course he’ll-

And I put pencil to paper.

“Predigo que habrá asesinatos en masa de mi especie. Más de que hemos estado experimentando. Más organizado por el estado de Massachusetts también.”

I hesitate slightly.

My hands are shaking. I feel the urge to heave in the toilet again.

I realize I have to put the last sentence down.

“Tengo miedo por mi vida.”

____

Was it impulsive? Yes, wholeheartedly. Should Suzanne have understood what the hell I wrote down, she would’ve most likely chastised me. Her, of all people. And there’s no way in hell, unless my other friends somehow have access to this journal, that I’m telling others. All I know is that I got the message to Mr. Caldwell, he’ll keep me anonymous, and he’ll give me a grade of 100% for completion.

And that’s all that matters, isn’t it?

That was, indeed, all that mattered for that day, and, for that matter, the majority of the next day. Only that night did Mr. Caldwell call my cellphone-I’d prefer it if he used my landline for security purposes, but for that same reason, I didn’t exactly want to disclose my life story to him at the beginning of the school year.

“Are you okay? Do you want us to speak in Spanish so your parents don’t find out?”

Immediately, I classify him as, potentially, one of the smartest people I know in school. I give a toothed smile to no one.

“No, that’s fine. We can speak in English.”

“Alright.”

He pauses.

“I was suspicious something would happen. This was just a sign. I...Anna, I know we haven’t talked for the majority of the year except for something about the monster student union, and you’ve always been a good student, but...this is concerning. Not for you specifically.”

“Yeah, I know that.” I bite my lip slightly.

A pause. And in between, my eyes tear up, almost involuntarily.

I should’ve told someone. Not everyone in my life necessarily-or even all of the people in my inner social circle, for that matter-but at least someone. Keeping it a secret from my immediate family would’ve been stupid, but would’ve been far less so than disclosing it to even a friend or two. Was that too much to ask from me? Was that too much to demand from me in the six months since we arrived from the Underground? I had investigations going on. I had scholarships, I had a few colleges’ advisors contacting me, even, which is unheard of for a monster in this fucking sociocultural climate. And out of everyone to contact me seriously about this, it was my Spanish teacher, whom I haven’t even spoken to in months about anything other than what pertained to class.

“I’m not going to ask if there’s anything I can do to help, but if you’re like any of my other students…” My blood pressure immediately rises. “...then you’ll say ‘nothing’ and that’s that. So I’m going to ask you how I can help you. You have to name something. Preferably, at least three things. I’ll wait.”

C’mon, Anna. Think. Think, god fucking dammit. You can do this. You can identify what you need, what others need. And you’ve had so many times in the past. You can do this. Just say the first thing that comes to mind, then.

“I...I guess I need...I’ll get you in touch with my mom.”

My first instinct is to consider berating myself, but I realize this is a decent move. And even if he were someone who was even the most vocal of anti-monster extremists, my mother has enough power, enough privilege, that she can not only fight him off relatively easily, but forgive me at the end of it all for doing so and not seriously have a discussion with me about it until I do it again. So I leave it alone.

“That sounds like a good idea. She’s the mayor, isn’t she? I’ve heard a lot of good things about her.”

I nod. “Yeah, she’s awesome, I guess.”

What am I saying? I burst headlong into what I’ve actually been planning to say.

“I’d actually like you to see if it’s worth getting some of the monster population to consider evacuating, or at least for us to discuss it together. Maybe you could be a contact for some of the monsters? I’m not too sure about it.”

I still can’t believe the words fucking slipped from my mouth.

But I can almost hear Mr. Caldwell at least taking upon the load of what I just said, can almost hear the gravity of those words settle into those shoulders and age him, break him slightly from before he’d picked up the phone.

And I consider the fact that both he and I may very well hang up at any time, and sit down to absorb the gravity of at least that.

“Actually, relating to the first point, I was going to ask if I could talk to your mom on speaker, but considering your position, that may not be the safest thing for you to do, even with your mom as the mayor. I may just contact her by email-you can email that to me after we’re done. And since we’re here…” he lets out a deep inhale, one that signifies that same load on his shoulders, one that practically tells me his entire life story. “...we can talk evacuation.”

That evening at eight, I let it all out to my mother. Every single facet of it, from my initial apprehension to my prediction in my Spanish class to the details for evacuation. The entire time, I’m not thinking in the slightest of any of my friends, and neither do I want to. If it’s something this catastrophic-and this impulsive-then it’s something that should only be on a need-to-know basis. And I do bring up the fact that this may be impulsive to my mother, who responds with a simple, slight hiss of her teeth, more in disdain to our situation than anything else, and a, “No….no, Anna. It’s not you. It’s never been you, and I’m so sorry you, of all people, had to be dragged into this and make this conclusion…”

“But first...Anna, do you think this is going to be something serious? Beyond what we've seen? A mass killing? Do you...for God’s sakes, do you have any evidence? I know you do, but please...explain it to me.”

And a tear slips out of my eye. Two.

They do, because how the fuck do you explain this shit to anyone with the verbal word?

How can you?

How can you, when you know your entire species will be extinguished, that members of your species have died, will continue to die? When you’ve cemented your existence into those around you?

How can you, when you know your entire existence, everything you fundamentally are, will continue to die?

My mom does nothing else but sit at the table and wait, cupping her hands around either side of her coffee. Patiently, she waits, silently, slowly advocating for me, and I love her wholeheartedly for it. I love her...and with that realization, I’m finally goaded into explaining myself.

“Everything…” I gasp, the weight of the tears still gripping my throat, my voice, so primal… “everything and everyone’s gone to shit…”

And I tell her everything.

I begin surprisingly methodically, not quite having the lack of wherewithal to where my emotions will drag me, will immerse me in a whiplash this way and that into an infinite amount of tangents. It only having been six months, I start in September. I start at the first incident that I can ever remember that a human in 2014 ever felt so much as a suggestion of prejudice...when I stepped not one hundred feet out of the mountain and a woman who looked to be in about her fifties, complete with reddened eyes from either cocaine or marijuana, hurled a Christmas ornament at me. It missed, but it hit the ground in front of me by barely two inches. I left that beautiful procession out of what had confined me for the past two decades not in blissful anticipation of my new life, but with blood trickling down my leg and Suzanne having to act as a crutch to my right side.

And it continues from there.

Into oblivion.

The red letter on the trailer door. The initial yearbook case. So fucking long ago. The comics online-at first relatively fringe, but then gaining more and more followers. Vox Church. Ebola. “Those of extraordinary origin”, the first Christmas, the hospital cases, the final investigations, the M badges, the murders…

The murders.

My mother closes the blinds, but I have a feeling that it’s more to shield me from my own mental agony than to protect me from anyone who may actually have any intent at all of murdering me. She instinctively takes me into her embrace, and, with the same instincts, I cry into her shoulder. Sobbing. Heaving, wracking sobs for one or two minutes...and then nothing.

Almost nothing but a few drops, and I’m worn. Finished. An old sheepskin being thrown out, burned, sold, choking Arnold Thiar and having his dust-riddled corpse fall to the floor. Torn, a piece of decades-old tapestry…

My mother instinctively takes me into her embrace.

_____

Together, we made an evacuation plan, piece upon piece upon piece in this tapestry of mine. Drumming up the impressive list of contacts that my mother sports, and it’s only when we have the list exposed in front of the both of us that we realize we’ve never considered ourselves evacuating. But I immediately realize that we’re easily more privileged than over ninety percent of the monsters we know, and I’m spurred onward.

However, because of this power, it’s one of the most difficult things I can imagine to find those in need of contacting. It’s my mother who says I need to look no further than the monsters who the humans stationed in Motel Six, or, even worse, the monsters who’ve had nowhere to go, whose socioeconomic statuses were low in the Underground to begin with. If they hadn’t died, they'd tried their best to establish some sort of territory surrounding Motel Six on 1st Avenue, Burnett Road, and the junction between I-90 and I-281...overall, a whopping half a mile.

So I do the inevitable. Do the unthinkable. And, with my mom’s permission, I reach out under a proxy Google account-there’s no way in hell they’ll be equipped enough in terms of time or staff to track down my IP address-and contact Motel 6 to let them know we’ll be staying.

By “we”, I mean a few of my mother’s friends...a human couple named Mark and Hilda Haywood. The story is they’re undergoing an outreach from their philanthropic side to their businesses-an agglomeration of small factories near our side of town. Of course, though, they won’t go to the human-operated Worthington House as announced-a few of their subordinates will take care of that. And of course, I’d never put them in any actual danger, meaning that I wouldn’t have resorted to using their accounts.

But no matter how-and even if, even if all I can do is smuggle a few conversations while in school-we relay the information, the general plan is for them to first evacuate to New York. It's only a half an hour of a drive from Springfield, as the state legislations haven’t been impacted at all due to the simple fact that all of the monsters thus far have been economically sequestered into Springfield. As far as which towns, we’re mainly examining rural areas, areas where the news of a monster population will be much more difficult to propagate, such as in Hannacroix, New Baltimore, and Kinderhook, nestled strategically between the urban areas of Albany and Poughkeepsie. We’re choosing those three areas specifically because of the lack of surveillance into acres they could settle into, or perhaps even find some sort of stable housing.

Beyond this, we’ve attempted to contact a few relatively obscure politicians in the more urban areas of Albany and Poughkeepsie, although we’ve disguised our species to them as “minorities”; hopefully, that will help to influence the media and the spread of rhetoric in the area. Maybe contact some of the more popular individuals from those areas on social media. The content they can produce can help to bolster “acceptance of minorities”...

That isn’t to say we haven’t tried it here.

God, that isn’t to say we haven’t tried any of that here.

My night is filled with alternations between disturbing dreams and staying up in the middle of the night, on my phone, wondering if-and if so, how the fuck-I’m going to address any of my friends again.

____

And the week after that, they’re gone.

Gone. One hundred who we saved from what I perceive as a mixture of an impending crisis and simple impulsivity on my part.

Gone. Only a precaution.

Only a precaution, I tell myself.

And only a precaution, we all collectively make attempts to convince ourselves of.

Gone, I tell myself, as the story comes in of another pile of dust found on a main road and a missing monster living five minutes away, as my friends message me, asking me why I’ve been so preoccupied, as the announcement comes in of soldiers, fully armed, fully hostile and antisocial, being stationed at the school entrances…

Chapter Text

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1R1WKuy1EE6WC8qlQwB7HonyI4vULK8DW/view?usp=sharing

Chapter Text

END OF THE JUNIOR YEAR OF ANNA ETILCOISE
Introit by William Douglas Gaster and Anna Etilcoise:
As with my son, Sans, the events taking place between the time we came out of the mountain and the period of the genocide spanned across two, not one, school years. This was because journaling was simply not required during the summer, and my son, suffering from the stress of being sexually harassed during that period of time, required some sort of outlet. Looking back, I heartily wish I could have participated in some sort of intervention sooner. However, this is not the story of Sans. This is the story of Anna, as beautifully different, in my personal opinion, as my son’s was. As you will read further, she had her varying host of difficulties, joys, and sorrows that contributed to her development into a well-rounded individual.
Unlike Sans, as Anna did not write in her journal during the summer, I will let her relay, in her own words, what happened then:
___
First of all, I’d like to thank everyone who’s stuck around, reading my account of what took place during my final years in high school. The more I read it, the more I realize just how traumatized I was, and how much it contributed to who I am today. It’s been an, to say the absolute least, surreal experience diving back into my high school years, reviewing just how naive I was, how mean-spirited and divisive I was, even when I thought I was the “good guy/girl”-then again, I’ll probably say the same thing about this very passage when I’m thirty.
For those of you wondering how I’m doing now, I’m doing...okay. And I’m not saying that in any terms of mediocrity, or that I’m doing any worse than the possibly manic? life that I lived through from around ages 16-18. I’m 23 now, and so many varying things have changed that it’s not funny, and it should go without saying that I’m not going to elaborate on all of them now. I’m going to college at MIT’s psych program in a partnership with Harvard, and have been since 2016. That’s definitely exciting, to say the least. I graduated with my Bachelor’s just this past summer, and I’m going into graduate school now. In fact, I’m writing this during the first month of my first year in grad school, although I want to pursue a Doctorate at the end of it all.
But most of all...I accepted myself. Especially after I turned about 18 and a half. Once shit (yes, I can curse even now, haha) blew over and the hospitals started to accept monster patients again, I looked my mom very firmly in the eye, told her I was an adult, was going to do what I wanted, and I was looking for no validation from her. And then, I...I went and got the surgery. I started hormone therapy. And she stuck around through it all-taking care of me, making sure I took all the hormones I needed, even bought some when I was strapped for cash once. She never said she approved of my surgery, or at least never said it out loud. But I know she’s there for me. She always has been-especially since we’re without my dad now. (Oops, spoilers! Haha.) Things did get better, especially the further and further along I got into my transition…although it was an agonizing journey, since no one told me that in order to gradually take the hormones so I wouldn’t suffer from any adverse effects from the estrogen and progesterone, the transition would take not a few months, and not even a few years, but three long, weary, even agonizing-at-times years. And when I did finally reach that point of complete transition at the age of 22, my mother and I celebrated, although my mother claimed that the celebration was because I’d graduated with my Bachelor’s (although to be fair, I did at that point).
And because I’ve accepted myself, I’m doing...okay. It’s the most random things in life that stick in one’s psyche…one day, a computer salesman at Best Buy told me, out of the blue, that once I’d accept myself, everything else would come easy. And relatively speaking, they did.
I’ll always be okay, no matter what happens.
If I can be reconciled with myself, then I’ll always be okay.
2014… was a very different year from 2020. I’m not going to say it was an objectively better year besides the fact that we’re now in a pandemic, but I’m going to say it was very...different. People in even the state of Massachusetts have now had about six years of resentment against Barack Obama, especially because 2014 was the year that the state of Massachusetts-the first in the entirety of the United States-legalized gay marriage. The first lesbian couple to be married in the state, Marcia and Tanya Kadish, were practically turned into the entire state’s scapegoats (not to mention they still had two children living with them who had to grow up with this monumental amount of oppression). Those with conservative ideologies felt like they were being quashed-had been for years-and when we came along, they took to us like lanolin did to fire. (Oh my gosh, you guys finally understand the reference!!! That makes me so happy. :) ) There were differentiating relationships between our species and specifically the white race. Now, I’m not trying to discount the fact that minorities also were perpetrators of the mass killing… they were. But the perpetrators were disproportionately white for the state of Massachusetts. And I think, after all this time, I can finally tell you why. (You can skip the following two paragraphs if you really don’t want the history lesson, but I feel like it’s something that needs to be said, especially to give the mass killing some needed context.)
I’m trying to approach this with as little offense as possible, but, as I continue to form distance chronologically between what happened and now, I understand the main dynamic to be as follows: whites have had a fundamental history of distancing themselves from other races in the United States. The British who settled here wanted to distance themselves as far away from the Irish as much as possible, and, when minorities began emigrating here near the beginning of the 20h century, the Irish and the British essentially joined forces to become, along with other ethnicities, what we now know as the white race. The white race then separated themselves from minorities-and even today, with the anti-Asian racism coming along with the pandemic, I can see that. And when we settled into the mountain, whites were-at least, from what I theorize-so used to separating themselves from other races as a fundamental part of their history that it wasn’t difficult at all for them to separate themselves from us.
And on a level of religion, another huge dynamic was that Roman Catholics were, funnily enough, the vast majority of adherents when we came up the mountain. Uncomfortable as it was for whites to hold that level of similarity to us, many of them-and again, some Catholic minorities did participate in this phenomenon, but it was so disproportionate that, statistically, some examination is needed-began identifying as evangelical in name only. They began joining some of the more Catholic-esque churches that identified as Protestant, such as Episcopalian, Lutheran, and, interestingly enough, Eastern Orthodox Catholic churches (although some were so sickened by even the resemblance to Roman Catholicism in the end that they fled to the previous two anyway). At first, we were relieved-that meant we could essentially establish home rule in our own churches in theory. But, as a few of us predicted, the priests eventually fled to other churches, other dioceses, other states, even, and, within a few weeks, the vast majority of Roman Catholic churches were shut down. Humans who wanted to stay Roman Catholic, meanwhile, resorted to more alternate, exclusionary methods-basement churches, home meetings, even Facebook groups. Meanwhile, we did the same...and languished. Culturally we couldn’t flee to Protestant churches like they could while still being safe.
Alright. History lesson over. Although I’d appreciate it if you’d go back and read it; it gives the rest of the journal, and the events surrounding it, more cohesion and depth.
So, you might ask, what happened to me in the summer?
Well, (write about Susanna and friends, as well as driving)
I began visiting my dad more often, which came a few months after I subconsciously began avoiding the subject of the surgery-or, for that matter, any sort of other medical topics. In fact, looking back, that avoidance came after my eighteenth birthday, which was hallmarked by my mother essentially laying out all of the legal freedoms that I had, and that I’d only be barred from a select few until I was twenty-one. Of course, I rejoiced.
My little brother, Obadiah (I just realized I didn’t write down his name yet), had something happen to him as well. He turned out to be a petulant soul-someone you could never quite steer in the right direction-so I never quite had a good relationship with him. But turns out, as he turned eleven, he got his first girlfriend. But I wasn’t invested in that.
Frisk...even now, I get dissociated whenever I think of Frisk. Something was...wrong with them. Seriously wrong. Being a Psych major, people continually press me on what sort of mental illness they had. I can think of a whole host-generalized anxiety disorder, clinical depression, and possibly a tinge of schizophrenia-but none of them caused what they did. It was more accurate to label it as social isolation. Pure, unequivocal social isolation. And I’m sure Toriel did all she did to try and help them, but I’m aware she was battling her psychological woes as well-eight dead children can do that to a person. She could only ever give them what she had.
They began messaging me over the summer. At first, I thought their phone was hacked...more accurately, I wish their phone was hacked.
“Hey, u single?”
“I really want to show u my ****! Lemme know when’s a good time for u.”
“What makes u jorny? Monster **ut.” (sic)
I wouldn’t like to display their messages here, but I can at least display a few of what I remembered in censored form to maintain accuracy. So my mother and I did the next logical course of action and contacted Toriel. Toriel replied saying that she’d confiscated their phone, but hadn’t found the texts on it. The most infuriating part of the entire endeavor was that essentially everyone except Toriel knew that Frisk could’ve very well deleted the texts before Toriel’d had a chance to confiscate their phone...and from there, the only way to reach the texts was if Frisk had actually committed a crime. The sheer lunacy was-and is-that it was a minor sending these texts to someone at legal age, and I was simply asked to put up with it.
Just as I suspected with most things, then, I couldn’t rely on law enforcement, and, as we recognized, we couldn’t rely on Toriel for much of the problem, either, who refused to believe that the texts were being sent. When we presented her with the possibility of the phone being hacked, she simply took the phone and sent it to Asriel in university, who sent it back to her with the overall conclusion that no, the phone was not hacked (she’d failed to tell Asriel what exactly Frisk was doing that made her believe the phone was hacked).
So I did the polite thing, as I normally do, and simply asked Frisk to stop. And with a deep breath and a final, unceremonious, “you’ve been out of the surface for this long and i haven’t seen ur pen is?!” (sic), I blocked their number.
To make things worse, the tension peaked when Frisk, who somehow had access to our address, sent me a green, plastic ring with a frog with a dopey expression on it. Why, they didn’t say. It was most likely to hammer in the delusion that they had some sort of sexual or romantic relationship with me.
I kept the damn thing on my finger because it looked cute.
Overall, at a glance, I had a good summer. Since it was the summer between eleventh and twelfth grade-the moment to strike the iron while it was hot, so to speak (and it never ceases to amaze me how educational institutions think they can get away with putting this much stress on seventeen-year-olds), and to begin applying for colleges. In short, if you were simply looking for colleges, you were one step behind.
It was possibly a stroke of luck from God, even if I don’t necessarily believe in Him, that I considered applying to MIT or Harvard too bold of a move for my perceived level of smarts (looking back on it, I most likely could’ve applied if I wanted to, but if I did, I have no idea where I’d be attending college today). I set my sights on more realistic places-Smith College, Mt. Holyoke College, and even some more faraway pastures like the University of Notre Dame (seriously banking on the fact that they’re Catholic), Tufts University, and Carnegie Mellon University. All in all, I applied to twenty. (The application fees were $860, but it wasn’t anything my family couldn’t stomach-we were incredibly lucky financially.)
All in all, I was rejected by all but one. Either they were part of the state of Massachusetts or they were trying to maintain some sort of cultural capital. Worst of all, even my one acceptance was only on the condition that I would be both fully recovered from surgery and begin hormone therapy by the time I came in.
Barnard College.
Looking back, I should’ve taken it as a sign.
As luck has it, it was in the state of New York.
Why that’s significant, you’ll find out later.
______

Chapter Text

BEGINNING OF THE SENIOR YEAR OF ANNA ETILCOISE

Anna Etilcoise

Tracy McCarthy (with Teaching Assistant Ida Casey)

Honors English 12-2

23 August 2015

Entry #1
There’s a simpler time, a sacred, holier time at the beginning of the year, that often goes unaddressed. The blistering thrum of the sum has finally abated, the cacophonous noise of the crickets finally subsiding in lieu of little more than an occasional Canadian goose making its way north. There’s a time when one tends to emphasize what is known in popular culture as “the beginning of the end”, and all that I have described only contributes to this.
Upon the end of this year, all of us will have obtained our diplomas. All of us will have loosed ourselves from the bonds of secondary education, will have our wings flutter and flit this way and that, and will have entered into our universities. Many of us will have obtained different paths, with many options forking in the road of our educational lives. As for me, my paths include the likes of Notre Dame, Carnegie Mellon University, Mt. Hoyolke College, but for others, their paths may call them towards places farther, yet farther. Two of my acquaintances from the upper grades-Naomi Horton and Albert Oliver-have left on their own, with Naomi having decided to pursue her postsecondary education further south and Albert having decided to pursue his closer to home at Bay Path University. Meanwhile, I continue to counsel my friends on their own paths, not the least including my dear friend Gabriel, who has decided to commit to his own development at the University of Maine.
Beyond this, I have an all-encroaching, terrifying, yet possibly invigorating sense that this is in fact the beginning of the end.
Firstly, Suzanne has, by all means and beyond all surprise, managed to move on. Following some pseudoromantic relations with me in the previous school year, she has instead decided to seek out another love, and finally found one in form of a human man, a fellow classmate that I sit next to occasionally; while they keep each other at arms’ length, it is far better than isolation on both of their parts.
Secondly, it seems my friends have had their own advancements as well.
For one, my friend Caleb has had his own successes in his home life; for example, once, he confided to me that, when he felt one night in a sudden revolution that he felt as if he were trapped under his parents, he decided to finally take a deep breath, approach his parents, and address the issue. The night ended with apologies and genuine changes.
Next is Sans. Always a character. He did his own deep breathing and approaching, but this time, it was me. Finally deciding he wanted to report the sexual harrassment, him and I sent a few emails and scheduled more than a few in-person meetings to the school counselor, then to the school district when the counselor told him “he could take it”. Immediately grasping the patriarchy of it all, we had a (maybe) few sips of beer when the district announced Sans would be moved out of the frying pan of his English class, where the harassers were, and into the fire of my class (Mrs. McCarthy, that’d be you).
Next is Jackie-I’ll get her out of the way before I progress into the special hell that is the ongoing relationship between Dan and Ramona. As for her, she’d been struggling for quite a while with some relatively excessive religiosity, which is why she was particularly timid around me-as well as why, after a year of us being friends, she never asked me to spend time with her anywhere else besides school. Almost entirely on her lonesome, she fought the issue, and later, she would tell me that it took a rant from me out of the blue on the human Catholics’ neglect to its sexual abuse survivors for her to come to her senses.
Then came Dan and Ramona.
Ramona, as agonizingly liberating as it was, began distancing herself from me. We only texted once or twice over the entire summer, and even any mention of us doing so much as getting a few snacks at JFK Chicken and Burritos went subsequently ignored. Because of this, I mainly gained info to her from Dan.
Dan was the most…disorganized out of all of them. He was, overall, skittish towards me, asking if I could come to his church at least three times a day some days and avoiding me for a week some other days (during which I began frantically texting Ramona, hoping at least she could give me some relief). His hands were always nonexpressive, but were now rigid, deliberate, even in pain rather than tranquil at his sides.
“There’s something I need to tell you,” he finally said one day as Ramona, him, and I went for a joyless double date one August morning for brunch.
He broke down in tears.
He never told me.
Never.
What he was going to tell me, I could never decipher, but that could’ve been halfway because I found myself shuddering about it every time I thought of it incessantly, repeatedly, thought about it to the point of the only thing grounding me being my little brother asking me to play a round of Super Smash Bros. with him. Never the same as Chrono Trigger, but I suppose it’s a good thing to form new memories.
All at the beginning of the twelfth grade.
All at the end of how we’d been living our lives for the past twelve years.
“Penultimate” is the word meaning “the event before the end”, with the prefix “pen-” meaning “nearly” and “ultimate” meaning “ending”.
Perhaps, then, I can coin a new word.
“Inultimate”, a word with double meaning: “in-” being the Latin prefix for “something which is not”, and “in-” being the first syllable in “initium”, leading to a more cohesive progression of the word.
Inultimate.
The beginning of the end.

Chapter Text

Anna Etilcoise

Tracy McCarthy (with Teaching Assistant Ida Casey)

Honors English 12-2

23 September 2015

Entry #2

I’m barely cognizant enough to write in this journal.

Head throbbing. Hands tingling. But, at the very least, I’m not as reactive as the others. I’ve had to drag my mom inside, and I nearly even had to drive my little brother to the emergency room.

But I suppose I’ll start at the beginning.

___

This afternoon is when it began. What happened at school, I’m having complete, dissociative amnesia over. But I suppose what I can discern about the events of today is enough, even if it’s only a matter of writing it in a school journal. Whether or not you’ll be able to grade it because of the contents, Mrs. McCarthy, I have no idea. Whether or not anything resembling normality will ever happen again, I have no idea.

But this afternoon, after I drove home from school, forgoing riding the bus, is when I first saw my little brother, when I first helped him with his homework, when I first explained to him what an ecosystem was for his third-grade science class.

The exact words. If I can remember nothing else from today-nothing at all-then I can at least remember these exact words:

“These people…they’re not in balance, are they?”

The van comes.

What a merciful demon from the heights.

_____

The first thing I remember is my mother emitting a yell. Never a scream. She’s never, not in the eighteen years that I’ve existed, uttered something even resembling a scream. After decades of terror for herself, for her father, for me, by me, she never screams. It’s only then that my brother and I only know to run, and it’s only then that we not only realize that we’re trapped, practically incarcerated inside our own home, but the logo. Indiscriminate. Unchallenged.

Anti-Monster Department.

It’s my turn to emit a slight, sharp yell this time, bordering on a scream, before I tell my brother to “run, run and hide in the crawl space!” that we haven’t gotten to fucking around with since we admitted my father to Baystate Medical Center.

My brother nods and obeys me without further question. Ordinarily, I would’ve said no. Ordinarily, I would’ve said it was nothing more and nothing less than an assessment, that he’d failed, and that he’d have to learn to develop a mind of his own and foster a sense of independence if I were to ever ensure that he became a well-adjusted adult. Ordinarily, he would’ve been that well-adjusted adult, and no fucking doses of trauma would even dare to interfere with that.

Ordinarily.

Now, with my brother hidden in the crawl space, I’m alone. Alone with nothing more than a few seconds, a few yardsticks’ worth of distance between me and the driveway that the van has parked in, and nothing more than a heart beating at least twice a second. Completely alone.

My mother comes down the stairs, but I’m still completely alone. Nevertheless, I latch onto her, latch on to her just-stewed, sweet orange-and-vanilla evening dress, the way that her ears lump onto the top of her head just large enough to make her more dominant, but just small enough to hear whatever those in the van have to say. Every detail.

I get up-

Without further ado, they unlock the door.

They unlock the door, and, without them alarming her, my mother simply addresses them despite me being able to see the sweat bead in her neck from my seat.

“Good afternoon, all of you.” She even extends her arms slightly, gestures to my couch. “Would you like to sit down? If you’d like something to drink, m-my child here can make you some coffee.”

What is she doing? Not tackling them, not telling me to run the same way I did to my brother, not even discreetly bringing out her phone so she could initiate some sort of contact? Nothing? We’re rabbits, goddammit. Why doesn’t she lay a kick on them, a kick that would’ve been the equivalent of a car hurtling towards them at ninety miles an hour? Elegant, poised, powerful, enough to start a revolution…

My body stays in place.

With a glance I can only describe as clandestine, my mother nods towards me to get off the couch and make the requested cup of coffee, and I do so without hesitation. Shaking, dropping more than a few grounds on the kitchen floor, ignoring them, body enveloped in trembles. They don’t say a word, don’t assume that I’m in any way related to my mother, don’t assume in any way that I've hid anyone directly underneath them…which I thank whatever God may exist for, including none at all.

Five minutes later, after five minutes of dissociation, when the coffee finally brews and I make them a cup, I get to take a glance at them.

I take a glance at one of them…and, oh God, are all of my suspicions true. White skin-creamy white, the shade scattered across the walls to the guest room where my father would’ve stayed, but nowhere else in the house. A man, a man in his prime, adorned with a tattoo on his lower back from what must have been some sort of fraternity, with what must be calloused hands gripping his pistol. I’m far from a gun expert, from what I’ve researched-and from what the chamber looks like- it looks to be semi-automatic. Illegal as fuck, and have been since at least 2012 in our state.
But there’s something else about it-
One of the others-I can’t interpret their gender-gestures for me in a pointer finger to put the coffee down in front of them. Holding my breath to conceal the fact that I’m shaking, I place the coffee in front of them, all the while failing to meet their eyes.
And they do the most miraculous thing I can possibly conceive.
They let me sit.
They let me sit in an office chair facing the living room, with all the confidence that I can muster. Conflicted between the urge to conceal myself and my trembling body and the urge to investigate what they could possibly be doing here, I position myself-awkwardly, looking back on it-in the corner wedged between the living room and the office, and wait for the dissociation to begin serving me instead of obscuring my view.
I can’t discern what they said for the pleasantries. But I can tell what they said next.
“Now, we’ve discussed the identification process for an extensive period of time, Blanche.”
Not “assistant mayor”. Not even “Ms. Etilcoise.” Only “Blanche”, and it’s then that my shoulder tenses in a way I’m not ready to compensate for yet.
My mother seems to tense in a near-identical way before her body withdraws. “Yes. I’m aware of that, Director Grey, I…the ‘M’ badges seem to be implemented nicely, especially in the local high school…”
Betrayal. What a foreign emotion. My body tenses into a coil; my mouth waters, burns with indignation. My head is a fire-
No time. Director Grey says something else. “We’re quite aware of that, Miss Blanche.” My shoulders are still as raised as Sans’ dog’s hackles. “But these only serve to identify students of that high school, as you very clearly have identified. Even a badge implementation program across all schools and workplaces in the city would be costly, as well as only identify the population that either works or goes to school. As you can see, Blanche, not everyone falls under one of those categories. Because of this, we needed something a little more…universal.”
This time, my body goes unhidden. I put my hands on my head, rock back and forth, simultaneously bite my cheeks and the back of my lip to prevent myself from screaming at them, from cursing the living daylights out of them, from ensuring they never, ever dare to cross the paths of my family ever again…
“Anna. You may go.”
Every word deliberate. Every word emphasized. Every word completely uncharacteristic of someone who’s trying to placate someone’s anger.
So I do. I do, and before then, I walk out the back door; when one of the guards accompanying Director Grey why I’ve walked out, the last thing I hear is my mother saying, “She’s only getting some fresh air” before the door shuts and I hear nothing else.
As soon as I walk off of the deck, I sprint when I reach the grass, where I’m nowhere near as audible, sprinting, sprinting, sprinting to the crawl space, tears pouring down my eyes, my vision blurred to the point of my opening the crawl space door being reduced to little more than a few quiet shakes. I curse at myself quietly for making myself heard, but, as my brother and I slowly, slowly evacuate ourselves out of the crawl space, we both know the remaining time that my mother bought for me is running short, and, with one last look at the house and a silent apology towards my mother for having to deal with the Anti-Monster Department on her own…

I’ve never had to run off on my own. Never had to survive. Immediately, I internalize the fact that my family has been privileged. Privileged-what a concept, something that flashes, sears across the fringes of my mind before I shake it off like autumn-leaf tatters and I sprint, sprint, sprint.

My peripheral vision dials down to a slight throb as I take my brother’s hand. Obadiah. Obadiah. Obadiah. My brother’s name replaces the word “privilege”. My brother grasps my hand, asks me what’s happening, and I do little else but gaze in front of me. Encroaching on the end of the street, a horizon I can never reach…

I turn to the right, and it’s not until we reach the intersection to the main road that I realize a van is reaching me. A van, the same color that was outside our house-was it the same make, the same model? I don’t know, I don’t know, and with an almost involuntary kick of my legs, my brother and I run, even with a slight jump to give ourselves more momentum the way our ancestors did, and hide in my neighbor’s boxwoods. From there, all I know is that I’m overwhelmed by the smell of cat piss, but I pull my brother in closer-the boxwood is the only thing that can give either of us a shade of invisibility.

The roar of an engine. The dying of an engine.

I don’t dare move.

“Anna? What’s going on?”

Only now, as I’m writing this journal, do I appreciate the fact that he respected me instead of calling me “Ananias”, indicating that my mother didn’t stop him as soon as I began passing enough as feminine and he began calling me “Anna”.

“Obi…” my nickname for him; I call him “Obi-Wan” when we’re in a particularly nerdy mood. “Obi, there’s some very bad people after us. They want to hurt us, so we have to find a safe place.” For a moment, I feel as if I’ve told him too much of the truth, but when I hear little more from him than a gulp and a small gasp, I’m satisfied.

I look in both directions before making my way out of the bush.

Thank God. My neighbor hasn’t moved. But it’s then that I see the blood on his house.

I hesitate. My morals drag me away from the end of the backyard.

Blood. Blood. What kind of first aid should I apply for that? When my little brother asks what kind of substance is seeping from the side of my neighbor’s wall, I see in an instant that it’s paint. But as I examine the side of the house over the span of little more than a second, the more I realize it doesn’t have the consistency, the shade, the aftereffects of blood-at least what I’ve seen from the pictures of monsters being murdered or beaten within an inch of their lives. Paint. Why the hell would there be…

My suspicions are confirmed that it’s paint when I see the older couple, who’s finally made their way to the front porch. Did they see me in the bushes?

“Nothin’ we can do, sweethearts,” says the grandmother standing next to her husband in traditional Sliabhaenn…Monstertongue. “They came…and then they went. You two the mayor’s kids?”

I nod. “And that’s why we have to get going…”

Her husband nods. “No worries. It’s just…I’d wish they didn’t desecrate…” he hesitates.

Oh, shit. What’d they do? Mark up his car, the way Gabriel’s father did and dismissed as trite for almost a year? Go to the nearest monster-owned Catholic church-the most devastating possibility-and smash the hell of whatever chalices, whatever crucifixes, whatever monstrances they could find?

The blood.

The blood-and I step back, step into one of the thornier, equally-burgundy bushes, and shudder. Look back to the roads-empty, only composed of neighbors looking back at their houses. Why the hell would they be looking back at their houses? The blood, the blood, the blood-a symbol. Oh, God, a fucking symbol. The locker. The locker-no, not the locker. The house. The house…

“M”.

Just as vivid, if not more imposing. I envision a crucifix now. A deity, that’s so hated me, towering over me. Except He’s dead, crucified, yet there’s no Father left to receive him, and so he’s condemned to Hell not for three days after His death, but all eternity…

“M”.

“M”.

The letter “M”.

Without further ado, I let out a gasp that turns into a half-stuttering vomit, take my brother’s hand, and we sprint down the main road.

____

The first thing I divert my mind to, above all other things, is how to conceal ourselves in plain sight. Completely uncharacteristic of me; in fact, the entirety of this behavior is completely uncharacteristic of me. How to conceal myself in plain sight…

I pull down my sleeves, pull up my turtleneck, which is almost standard fashion across the town this time of year. Ask my brother to do the same. Walk in the shadows. Look down on the ground, even as the traffic roars by, only looking every thirty seconds or so when I see something white and somewhat large on the peripherals of my vision. Ask my brother to do the same. Take off my watch, my earrings, my necklace of the Black Lives Matter logo, and put all three of them in my pockets. Muss my hair a little to make myself look a little more human, tuck in my rabbit ears and make them look lower to appear a little more human. Look at the signs, follow them by the book. Look to the right about once a minute to make sure no one else is coming. Ask my brother to do the same. A car swoops by, the driver making a vague yell, the finger she raises to us being less so-

We can’t do this.

The first thing I divert my mind to, above all other things, is how to conceal ourselves in plain sight. Completely uncharacteristic of me; in fact, the entirety of this behavior is completely uncharacteristic of me. How to conceal myself in plain sight…

I pull down my sleeves, pull up my turtleneck, which is almost standard fashion across the town this time of year. Ask my brother to do the same. Walk in the shadows. Look down on the ground, even as the traffic roars by, only looking every thirty seconds or so when I see something white and somewhat large on the peripherals of my vision. Ask my brother to do the same. Take off my watch, my earrings, my necklace of the Black Lives Matter logo, and put all three of them in my pockets. Muss my hair a little to make myself look a little more human, tuck in my rabbit ears and make them look lower to appear a little more human. Look at the signs, follow them by the book. Look to the right about once a minute to make sure no one else is coming. Ask my brother to do the same. A car swoops by, the driver making a vague yell, the finger she raises to us being less so-

We can’t do this.

We can’t do this, and by the time I make this conclusion, we’re just feet away from the intersection approaching the main route towards the highway. And the only thought coursing through my mind, through my hands, shaking, through the mind of even my nine-year-old brother is that, at this point, we can’t go home. And while nothing substantial has happened to us as of yet, something will unless we go somewhere. It fucking will.
Think, Anna. Think. Come on, this is what you’re supposed to do in situations like this, right? Think. Think. Especially when your own family, those you’re supposed to care about, are at stake. Think. What contacts do you have in this area that you could stay with? Family? Friends? God knows you don’t have a romantic partner. And God knows you can’t rely on any humans now, can you? What monster contacts do you have?
I have none besides two, because none live anywhere besides our neighborhood, Motel Six, and the homeless shelter. Do we have to rely on a homeless shelter? No. I rope my brother into the side of the road, walk closer to one of the houses that looks vaguely abandoned enough for either nothing to happen to us or someone with a gun and the usual propaganda stuffed down their throats for them to shoot us. I bank on nothing happening, though, as I do my frantic reasoning and even more frantic Googling. Does the city of Springfield have my phone bugged at this point? I don’t care. I don’t fucking care, and the thought doesn’t even vaguely circulate through my mind that the city most likely didn’t have the brainpower or the funding to track me even if they wanted to.
My heart sinks to the pit of my stomach, to the core of this Earth as I Google the address of the Motel Six they’ve stuck the monsters in. It’s in Chicopee-a neighborhood located near the northern end of Springfield, and we’re near the center-so walking there would take five hours. It’s an option, but it’s most definitely not ideal, so I Google the address of the homeless shelter instead, hoping our appearance wouldn’t denote us as members of the family who’d been involved so heavily with them.
And the first tear drops to the grass.
It does, and I mutter a “no, no, God no, please, oh, fucking hell…” because we were the ones to send them out of the state, to send them to New York, and there’s no way in hell I’m going to even begin to walk there, much less do something more conventional like use someone’s car should we be forced to walk to the Motel Six or even do something as drastic for our species at this point as take a bus? No. That’s all the monster contacts I have, then.
I consider simply walking back to the other end of the neighborhood, at the other entrance, near the area where Suzanne and Sans live. I know for certain that either of them would be completely understanding of our situation, would open their doors, and would let us live there even if we had no situation like this to begin with and we simply wanted to get away from our mother. But that’s quickly foolhardy; those who jeopardized our neighborhood to begin with would most likely still be there. The Motel Six, however, is well-known enough around the human community-and especially the white human community through some propagandic “memes” they created-that it most likely wouldn’t have to be designated with anything.
It wouldn’t have to be designated with anything.
Without any further ado, I stretch my legs. Prepare them for something primal, something they’ve been prepared to do for hundreds of thousands of years, something that they haven’t done in about five. What I’ve done so often as a child, and what my brother does so often, but, because of my size, my parents strictly prohibited me from doing when I was ten.
And I up scoop my brother, because his relatively smaller size means he’ll be much slower even if he does the same.
We’re going to make the entire six miles to Motel Six, and we’re going to do it jumping there the entire time.
_____
How do I describe it? How do I describe it to someone who’s mostly bipedal, who doesn’t have the privilege or the curse of inheriting the features associated with rabbits? Not even my monster counterparts can understand. Although they can jump. They can have the most basic movements when it comes to jumping. And yet something so instinctual that it’s an art form almost can’t be described unless it’s experienced.
Liberating. Liberating to possibly the most extreme extent of the word, the only things restraining me being having to stay as close to the buildings to the side as legally possible and having to take a break whenever I come within obvious eyeshot of any humans around me. But when neither of those happens, I’m nothing but a bird, a bird instead of a rabbit. I’m running now, not jumping, or even, God forbid, hopping, sprinting to my destiny, sprinting to a better destiny for every monster, and even some of the better-quality humans, I know. The world is nothing but a glorified smear as I make my way past it. Becoming slowly exhausted with every move I make, but still liberated enough to want to whoop and cheer and cry out the way I did when I was first prohibited to do so at the age of ten.
And halfway through, at High Point, when my state as a jumping novitiate becomes more apparent, I can’t help but let a laugh almost tear through my throat.
___
The entire journey is six miles long.
A hopping rabbit, even in the human world, can go up to forty-five miles per hour. Of course, I could be capable of it should I try to be as athletic as I possibly could, but as the only representative of someone with my experiences and my exact body, But I’m not, so that dials me down to easily thirty-five miles an hour, at least. And I have my brother on my back, so that exhaustion, even when carrying a slightly underweight 9-year-old, dials down to twenty-five miles an hour. The interruptions cut down that speed even further.
And I make it from that intersection to the building’s property in thirty minutes.
Needless to say, that half an hour felt like what I remember to be the longest in my life. I set my brother down and quickly investigate my physical state. First of all, I’m dehydrated as fuck, and I know for a fact that the Motel Six has stores of water because I and a few other friends have volunteered here once or twice. Secondly, I’m sweating like hell due to the lack of accommodations that the gray hoodie has managed to give me, worsening my dehydration. My brother quickly complains of hunger on his part, which is a bit premature considering that we only left home around an hour ago, but still completely valid. I contact the volunteer coordinator that we met here during the time we helped out some of the monsters in Motel Six.
They-his name is Cogaidh-doesn’t hesitate to borderline interrogate us as to why we’re there. I stutter out our personal information, but eventually break the news to him that we’re in the building’s parking lot, and a rush of hope that I believe was still a little premature makes its way over me when I see one of the residents staring at us from out of the windows. The face is just grotesque enough to be a monster’s.
Immediately, Cogaidh, who has the day off and is currently giving me instructions from his home in our neighborhood, understands our situation, and confesses that he is almost considering going to the motel himself. He redirects me to what can best be described as a back-side entrance, and I find a small line of monsters who’d most likely had the same situation and the same idea as I did. Immediately relieved, I ask one of them for some water. The coughing in my voice convinces them, and they happily oblige. I take it, stifling back something-an emotion, a tear, I’m not quite sure what is, and I’m not immediately able to express it after I realize it’s there-and decide it’s better to down the first half of the bottle between giving the bottle to my brother.
Still, the line takes at least an hour. What they’re doing, I’m quick to discern, and it’s something to do with the amount of people vetting the monsters-not that it’s out of anyone’s volition from the humans, as annoyingly atrocious as that is. Cogaidh still on the line, I ask him if there’s anything we can do to bypass such vetting, and he shakes his head. All he does is reply with how massively underrepresented our demographic is in the city, and that manages to suppress me into being quiet for a few moments.
In five minutes, Cogaidh hangs up. Another five minutes pass after that before we make the horrifying realization that, with enough vetting, they could find out the reason why as to our fleeing from our household. Giving them our names, for one, isn’t necessarily a nail in the coffin, as Motel Six, of all places, being affiliated with the Anti-Monster Department would be all but an act of treason considering the fact that the monsters are the ones to run it, although with the caveats that they essentially have to obey laws from the Anti-Monster Department that haven’t even been disclosed to the public of Massachusetts. So we instead decide to contact Cogaidh immediately, who quickly discerns our situation and tells us that he’ll send the three monsters in charge of running the motel and reporting it to the Anti-Monster Department an email detailing our situation.
So this is what my brother and I’s fate has come down to. An email.
So I come to my brother and tell them a few facets of a few plans. He and I resolve to go out of town. To live on the streets for awhile; as monsters, we’re physically hardened enough to endure that for a few days, although we’ll both most likely have to attend therapy afterwards. And maybe, just maybe, we can-
It’s too late. We’re at the front of the line.
And I decide not to back down now, because sleeping on the streets for tonight is undeniably inferior to staying in a motel. At last minute, though, I look to see if there are any separate entrances. There’s one to the side, but that’s the most unreliable of the four of them the motel has besides the rooms, and the six or so monsters in the line have now almost filled this motel to bursting. As to what the fate of the at least nine monsters behind me will be, I don’t know.
I’m swooped inside to a private room behind the front desk; immediately, I tense my legs in case of a fight. The monster in question-which, in this case, is one of the relatives of the frog community that lives in the Ruins-looks at least a little intimidated by this new development, and at some points, I can’t tell whether he’s genuinely afraid or whether he’s feigning it in lieu of catching a glimpse, having realized I both look like a woman and may have an erection. I cross my legs over my crotch, and, true to form, he looks away.
I almost consider shedding a tear then, but there’s no time to address microaggressions now. No, all there is left for me to do is to give my first and last name, as well as my birth date. Both my brother and I’s eyes dart for a few fraught seconds to the side entrance, but before we can obtain any sense of security now, he goes to his computer and stares at the monitor for a few moments, and it dawns on me that he’s reading the email; without further hesitation, I muster up all the sanity I can and ask if he and Cogaidh had set up the same booth together during the volunteering expo. He chuckles and says yes, and I know immediately that I’ve established enough rapport with him to give him me and my brother’s last name. He even makes the additional step of offering the both of us spare hotel muffins, and I give my brother mine without a word.
Without any further ado, we’re shunted out of the private room and given not a room, not a key, but a share of the room, says the frog relative. Room 3, one of the most obvious. My face reddens out of pure fright, and I ask him whether or not we could possibly get a more conspicuous room.
He nods. “In fact, that was my second option for the two of you. But in order to go there, you’ll have to make room for two other monster clients living there. Understand?”
We nod, and we’re settled into one of the more central rooms in the top of the first floor.
A wave of exhaustion pours over me. After hours of vigorous travel, waiting in lines, and having the possibility of our family being outed and my brother and I possibly being jailed or worse, I’m ready to collapse and go to sleep on even the floor despite the sun not having started to set yet. My brother, although having been supported by me, also looks like he wants to join, and I formulate the question in my head to ask our new hosts.
After knocking on the door, no one answers, but the level of noise already disorients me. Still, I’m too exhausted to care, and when it opens, I find that it’s packed to bursting. The poor, harried patriarch of the entire group takes thirty seconds to open the door, and when I ask his name, I have to yell because of the two children that are in the room, screaming their heads off about one discomfort or another.
“Saebhir”, he mutters as best he can over the noise. “Aehnnm Saebhir”, he adds, aehnnm being “my name is” in our indigenous language. He could very well be in his thirties or forties, but the weariness on him is making him appear at least sixty.
I respond, as rusty as I can; whether he’s too exhausted to use English or doesn’t know it, I’m not sure, and I want to err on the side of caution. I clear my throat-my Slaebhaenn is rusty. “Feidir liom myn daerthaer?” “Can I let in my brother?”
He nods and gestures for me to come in. All I hear is a final, “Baenn aet faeigh aet-”... “try and find somewhere to-”...before I’m bombarded by the number of people there.
A motel room built for two, occupied by five, not counting my brother and I. Saebhir, the husband and wife sitting on the front edge of the bed, and the nine and six-year-old continuing to scream to kingdom come on the other side of the bed for God knows why. The pull-out couch is packed with the essentials-food, extra clothing, winter coats, and the like-so I dare not ask the family to move it. Instead, I scope out the bathroom for a place to sleep, but it seems as if the shower is already taken by the Saebhir for sleeping supplies.
A few hours pass by. Ten minutes of them are occupied by doing nothing but staring at the wall, taking out my phone and considering texting my mother to still my dissociation, becoming more dissociated when I realize that contacting her would mean my brother and I’s detriment. Another ten minutes are spent half-breathing, half-shuddering, not sure as to why my breathing is a half-shudder, as my brother-even seeming to have better luck than I’m having-starts to socialize with the nine-year-old and six-year-old.
And I let out one final cry-a cry that screams as to why there were so many here, why it was my mother who had to be found out, why I had to go into hiding-before I fell, exhausted, to sleep.
I swear I can feel my brother’s hand in mine.

Chapter Text

sup!
today-the 4th will be a very important holiday for me during this time (imbolc/midwinter), so i'm going to take a break from writing until the 5th.
thank you for your time and patience!
if you haven't already concluded this, we're nearing the home stretch with this one.

Chapter Text

After viewing this and noticing that I haven't posted on here since February, I physically cringed. But there's an explanation.
First of all, I AM working on the story. It's just that I hit a huge roadblock in that I'd had to write out a huge chunk of the story (think 20,000 words or so just so far) without publishing it, as publishing it would result in all of you being spoiled massively about the story ahead. I realized the story would better serve its purpose in an entirely different format midway, and essentially, I'm stuck writing and writing essentially the length of this novel and not being productive in terms of my output on here. That and I contracted COVID because I kind of want a decent social life, so I haven't been feeling well for the past few weeks. It's been exhausting to have to deal with the fact that I'm not well enough to write, but rewarding in that I can slow down, take care of myself, and be a better person for the weeks and months ahead.
As to when I'll next work on the story, I personally have to travel for quite a bit after this, so I won't even get an opportunity to sit down and work on the story until tomorrow. From there, unless anything else happens, I should get back to a regular writing schedule.
Hopefully, I SHOULD get a chapter out by March 20th if everything goes well, but if that doesn't happen...rest assured, screenshots will be coming your way.
If it continues, I'll try linking to Google Drive screenshots to prove to everyone that I am indeed working on the story.

Chapter Text

Anna from 2021 reporting for duty again.

The following portion of the journal will entail the actual genocide. As it is one of the most traumatizing and emotionally draining experiences known to man, you will most likely not find me writing for long periods of time. You may notice that most of these entries are brief in nature, and resemble free-verse poetry. This is because I turned to this journal not to detail the actual events of the genocide-I was far too mentally extended for this-but as some sort of coping mechanism. That night in the motel would be the last one in my life to where I would be sane; in fact, as I went to school the following morning-and I’ll detail why before the end of this prelude-I believe my extreme disquietude was the first aspect Sans could discern of the events ahead.

Firstly, let me clarify some aspects of this part of the journal that may leave readers in confusion. What one must understand was that my family was-and is-quite privileged, and this most definitely extended to the genocide. As such, we had a broad and supportive social network of both the few amount of monsters that had managed to escape Massachusetts and the humans that were both politically standing against the genocide and were wealthy enough to have enough influence to protect us from the majority of humanity.

I went to school because, in short, I was in a fugue state. The motel had undergone a shooting in the middle of the night from a human who still remains identified, and who was most likely on the fringes of the paramilitary that was forming at the time. My brother and I ended up migrating to the foot of the mountain, of all places, and sleeping there. By then, we were both exhausted, but, as I didn’t have my wallet, the only place my brother and I could think of where we could get any sort of food for free was the snack cart at both of our schools. Actually, the only environment left where I felt anywhere remotely safe was the school; by then, my mother had still not contacted me, I was too frightened to go back to the human neighborhood, and I decided to focus on my studies full-time instead of seeking out any sort of employment. It was hell separating from my brother. Looking back, I could have relied on Caleb or Ramona-or even Paul-but at the time, I was so terrified of losing my life that I felt as if school was the only place where I could reliably come across and convene with fellow monsters.

After we went to class that morning, as you will most likely be able to discern, a group of the paramilitary rounded us outside and shot at us-it still steals my breath six years from now typing this. The gas that went in my throat sent me in a coughing fit for a few minutes nonstop, but when I got up, I realized I was the only one left.

The first thing I thought of doing then was looking for not my brother, but my father. I knew my brother. He was the most resourceful, most instinctive, even the most ambitious person I knew, so he would be the first person to be suspicious of the teachers ordering the students to round up and walk outside without any of the teachers having announced a fire drill. My father, meanwhile, was completely used to being in private, without any other prying monsters’ eyes, and having the nurses inject him with one chemical or another.

What I saw next I can barely bring my fingers to type, to breathe out of my chest.

After making my way the three miles it took to reach the hospital, I had come quickly enough-and the nurse was generous enough-to watch her sweep my father’s dust off the hospital bed.

What that meant for my life…I can’t put it here. I still don’t know how I could’ve put it down then. I would say it’s a little pathetic, even, that six years of therapy still hasn’t enabled me to do this as quickly as I could’ve years and years ago. But all I know is that seeing my father murdered…it activated something in me. Specifically the fight or flight response, and some part of me has never stopped fighting for the people I love, for the places I love, for the things I love. And while I, by all means, want it gone…the nightmares, the flashbacks, waking up in the middle of the night covered in a cold sweat…I still wouldn’t have exchanged for anything the fact that I much more naturally fight for what I love.

That change was almost immediate. After I ran out of that hospital, I collapsed. I collapsed for a long time.

What comes next I don’t remember completely, as the fugue and dissociation set in then, although these free verse entries have since helped me. Sans has since told me that I told him about a story about a group of humans having strangled me, and I suppose I do have a permanently tensed muscle right where my Adam’s apple used to be that proves it. But what I do remember is that afterward, I did end up finally going back to the elementary school, where, with a group of other students there, I found my brother hiding, of all places, in the school’s biggest potted plant, tossed to the corner of one of the library’s study rooms. We then finally contacted my mother, who said that flights were going to and from a place in New York called Gallsop, where a few monsters were building what was essentially a refugee camp. We waited silently in the library for my mother to pick us up. She pretended we didn’t notice, and she still hasn’t discussed this with us in the past six years, but we noticed the bruises on her cheeks, the streaks of what looked like old cafeteria milk dribbling out of her mouth, the way she walked in a lazy, stumbling sort of way towards us and proceeded to have trouble driving later. To this day, she’s still chosen not to report her perpetrators, although I do, at times, wonder what would’ve happened had she carried the pregnancy to term had she not used her, for everything’s sake, God-given right and gotten an abortion.

She practically scooped my little brother up into her left arm before taking me by the hand with her right arm-she hadn’t done that since I was twelve, at the oldest. Needless to say, at that moment, I looked up to her with probably the most authority that I’ve ever looked up to anyone in my life-even, and especially, when compared to the vast majority of global leaders I’ve come across in my life thus far. I’d dissociated to the point where I’d reached the van.

That was the first time I’d felt safe at all that day, and, according to my brother, I fell asleep even as my mother drove past the lines of cars that the humans had ordered to stop-at times, right in the middle of crowded city side roads.

Unfortunately, unlike Sans-requiescat in pace-my mother had never attained the entire distance to the airport. Most likely due to what must have been a massive amount of dissociation on her part as well, she hit the left front and back door of a passenger car in the front, and the sensation was one of the best things I could’ve asked for at the moment; it jerked me awake and sent the whole of us into action for the rest of those hours. As you can predict, however, I never told my mother about the almost certain death of my father, not because I hated either, but because I’d simply never gotten around to it at the time. The sensation of the jolting car wreck hadn’t completely eradicated my dissociation as of yet.
Afterward, after failing to find any method of transportation (and we tried, believe me; I still vividly remember to this day that I’d looked around all sides of the vehicles I was going into until I felt sick should the owners of the car attempt to come back and realize their car was being stolen by monsters), we decided that the best thing to do for all of us was to walk the entirety of the route down to I-95 to the airport. Of course, I suggested hopping to shuttle us over there as quickly as possible, but one attempt by my mother and the injuries to her legs and crotch lead her to collapse, my brother barely not suffering from a head injury. I won’t leave her behind, so I resolve to stay. To let her be my protectress unless she needs me to be hers. And then I slink behind her. And then, from there, I simply need a protectress in those first few seconds, as one human comes up behind us. Then two. Then my mother, too exhausted to fight, looks to me, and I shudder before letting my legs fly in an inhuman dance that I can’t even begin to describe now. According to Sans, the attack was much worse, and I’d shown up to the stronghold the monsters were creating with bruises across my neck. Whether or not it was actually worse, though, or whether the injuries were the result of another attack I was completely unaware of, is something my mind stalls in even when I ask it for the answer now.

Then I see him.

Dan.

Him-I thought I’d only boiled him down to “Ramona’s boyfriend”. “My acquaintance from church”. In short, a survival link from me to the human world. An object, as pathetic as it was for me to admit it.

No. I can attach a name now to my family’s survival. A privileged monster family ultimately bowing low to the whims and desires of someone belonging to a privileged monster family.

Dan.

There could’ve been questions upon questions to have asked him; the foremost of this should’ve been, first, a confirmation that he wouldn’t kill us, and then after that, a thorough probing of him asking all of the particular details of the genocide that we were entitled to-that is, every single painstaking, agonizing, fucking detail.

“Where’s Ramona?”

Dan at first sputtered out little more than gibberish, but he responded with little more than a, “She…she ran away from me, I tried, I tried to warn you that you weren’t bad…”.
It’s then that I notice the stains on his shirt, and then scream, having been reduced to nothing, all of my bravado having been drained in the past attack. He notices almost instantly, and so does my mother, who quickly flies to my side, praying and pleading for some kind of salvation from him, but secretly looking out of the corner of her eye for an escape.

Dan sees through both of our attempts at feinting and almost breaks into a panic. “It wasn’t me. It wasn’t me, I swear! I…I wouldn’t even consider…” his fists clench, but, for the first time in my life, I don’t flinch. I don’t prepare my legs. I don’t even dissociate. I just…watch. Watch as the agony unfolds. His teeth grit; a single shudder wracks down his spine as he adds the whole truth, unguarded, undiluted. “It was Ramona…”

I wouldn’t know until later that Ramona, for all of her technological literacy, had been indoctrinated. By various local Facebook groups, by Instagram stories, by YouTube videos, and, if by nothing else, by the connections that Dan had involuntarily facilitated. She’d been indoctrinated, through all of these factors, to take hold of her parent’s hunting rifle, to say that she was going to an extracurricular, and proceed to murder an unknown amount of monsters before, as I would find out later on from Dan, to turn the gun on her own head. To prevent the possibility of a death sentence. To finally reconcile that pervasive culture of how she had to constantly devote her life towards societal advancement, but simultaneously that, because we’re monsters, we’re unable to advance in the first place. To bring her undiagnosed mental strife to an end.

It’s our turn to become Dan’s protector as his tears incapacitate him. My mother and I look at each other, stunned, but choose not to move; we want to know, in the end, where he’s coming from, where he’s going, and whether he can take us there or whether we’re all better off going to the airport. As the panic makes his body practically writhe, my mother and I take him into the local building. For whatever reason-out of everything that happened that day- I can recall that the exact name of the building was Blue Asian Cuisine. I can’t even recall what the inside of the building looked like, or, for that matter, what specific foods they served.

From there, things toned down quite significantly. The last of the brunt of the dissociation seemed to fade off of me. We do nothing. Nothing but sit and assess the threats outside, sit as I watch over Dan. Eventually, he divulges the information that Ramona had left him and taken Jackie, of all people, along with her; she’d told him that she was going to participate in the “dispatching”, and that was that. She’d even proven it to him by taking her father’s pistol and shooting a monster that was “looking at them strangely enough” in the chest. When he refused, she’d even beat him when he confessed to her that he wasn’t killing the monsters. He’d told it to me so casually, like it was something as commonplace as him going to church every week. Most likely, it was…and that’s when I asked my mother if we could leave then and there. Some days, I still wonder what his past entailed before I met him.

Upon feasting on some sweet and sour chicken that we found in the kitchen of Blue Asian Cuisine, uncaring about how old the provisions may have been, Dan accompanied us in the rest of our journey to the airport. In fact, he proved himself to be quite useful, showing us certain shortcuts to take, certain buildings to walk through that undoubtedly saved us no dearth of time and effort. How he knew those routes, I didn’t know; I can only infer that he knew them simply as a result of having grown up here. Still, the possibility always lingered in the back of my mind that, at any moment, he would betray us, and we were quite distant until finally, after an hour of walking and a painful splinter being lodged in my right foot after walking in a relatively old building, we reached the airport.

I tried contacting Sans a total of five times. Only then, by an ironic stroke of fate, did I receive a cell signal; he finally texted me back saying that he was busy assisting those who were already there-not to mention that he’d already transported enough people there to have the amount of calcium in him drop to the point of him having to rest (I felt slightly guilty afterwards).

From there, it was a matter of waiting half an hour, trying to soothe my little brother’s hunger with some crackers Dan had, and probing any more questions that we could out of him as to what specifically this horrible thing, this fucking genocide had entailed. He was silent, but muttered something about how a number of evangelical churches, including Vox Church and its two adjacent churches, The City Church and Christian Life Center, had suddenly given funding to the Massachusetts National Guard. Nothing that I didn’t know already.

And I didn’t notice the ringing in my ears until we all stepped on the plane flying to Gallsop.

____

They told me I fainted.

Normally, I don’t leave a pause in my journal entries, especially considering the fact that I’ve since had to come back to this journal entry and take a break to clear my head for at least a day before beginning the second part of recounting this horrific ordeal. If you’d like, you may do the same; I wouldn’t blame you. Still, if you’ve decided to progress from one part of the summarization to the next, I will introduce the lull that happened in between the two parts.

I woke up. It was beyond strange, the feeling, beyond terrifying, the notion of having been displaced from one reality and waking up in another. I thought, at first, that I was descending into some sort of psychosis, some sort of differentiating timeline, having fallen asleep somewhere in flight in between Springfield and Tyringham, and waking up somewhere in New York that I hadn’t heard of previously. That wasn’t to say, though, that I’d descended into this sleep alone…the flight was full; including both the stalwart pilot and co-pilot that’d guided us on this hallowed pilgrimage, there were a total of eighty of us. And that was all, oh, God, that was all…

It was…strange, to say the least, how they’d managed to arrange the path there. Of course, Dan’d had no dearth of influence, and I noticed one frightful stage to where he’d begged one of the individuals from Gallsop to provide a rudimentary level of protection in the form of much of their inhabitants in cars surrounding us as we parted the proverbial Red Sea. What made the whole endeavor all the stranger-and all the more ambitious-was that the airport was not an airport, but a small airstrip in one of the inhabitants’ farmyards, away from any and all civilization…especially any and all civilization of predominantly-white, disinhibited, furious human beings.

Another reason why I credit them for their ambition is the path that was led from the airport to the barn itself. Being little more than a hamlet that was just politically liberal enough to take us under their wing like starving puppies, that journey took three miles by rental car…and at that point, I was almost too exhausted to wait. I’d begged my mother to “just let me jump on over!”, but that was met with little more than a shake from her head and her telling me that “we don’t know who’s who here, honey. We don’t know for sure”.

From there, I just…submitted, became so infantilized that I almost don’t know what transcribed over the next hour, even though I wasn’t dissociated. Still, I attempted to look at what surrounded me in Gallsop.

Immediately, waves of relief passed over me as I realized that Gallsop was, without question, a locality so small, so relatively isolated compared to the city that we formerly lived in that nothing would most likely happen to any of us even if the entire area were to stage a rebellion. Because of how few amenities there were, there were most likely only a few hundred people living here, and that-for the first time in history-meant we were finally, in even the most basic way, equal to the humans who had heretofore so cruelly ruled over us. And that…that would have caused me to do something, something that the younger, the naivete-filled Anna Etilcoise would have done. Engage one of the humans ditting aside me in a debate, perhaps, the goal not being to draw a mutual conclusion on the both of our parts, but rather to prove that monsters were, in fact, the dominant beings here. Conduct plans to stage some sort of retaliation or another, almost completely ignorant to the fact that I’d most likely would never come back for any other practical purpose again. But as I was energized enough to consider all of these factors, but tranquilized enough to keep my father’s death always in at least the background of my mind, I did nothing.

Nothing, that is, until I saw the barn in Gallsop. I could tell the immaturities in it, the hastily-constructed infirmaries and sleeping quarters and makeshift kitchens, which were little more than piles of cans with one or two can openers nearby if we were lucky. The ways children, instead of being gathered in a certain area, were wandering around the barn, looking for their parents, or otherwise a compassionate soul, on their part. The ways the walls were almost bent on collapsing, something Suzanne would have been, in her words, pissed about had she been there. Still, I had nothing to complain about-

It couldn’t have been him.

No, I saw him; he’d have to have died somewhere else, had to have gone somewhere and gotten himself killed; if by no one else, then by himself.

Sans.

Still with a slight smile on his face.

Without further hesitation, I give him the embrace we both so deserve.
____

The hours afterwards, I spent in nothing more and nothing less than service. Of course, there was always the search for Suzanne, the search for Dr. Gaster as he made his way to Gallsop with his ambulance, and there was always the search for home. Home. Not that I ever wanted to go back to Springfield, but the culture within the mountain, the respect we all mutually earned for each other, all of the benefits of being indigenous to an untouched land…that was what I wanted to search for. And unfortunately, the only way I could search for it here was to continue to serve Gallsop-and to lead, to some extent-so we could all go home sooner.

I first oriented myself with one of the leaders there; he informed me that there were, so far, about a hundred and sixty monsters there; we had been on the second flight. I don’t know why, but the desperation of the moment led me to ask if any human monsters had helped, and he didn’t even respond with so much as an “I don’t know”. Truth be told, us taking residence there was most likely the only degree of charity the humans were likely to extend towards us.

The leader assigned me the choice of three tasks, and I chose one involving expanding the barn, doing what my optimistic soul thought would be feasible, and trying to attain a goal of at least three hundred. Going to the local stores and buying chairs, buying tables, buying the favor of other monsters-with cash, exclusively, so our activities wouldn’t be disclosed. I committed to this for an hour as my mother, to my slight surprise, began divulging her story to some of those here who could not only support her, but who could possibly be there to help her in gathering evidence for not only her case, but that of the entire monster race. A case-that is what we’d been reduced to. A demographic. An incident. And-if I were particularly unlucky-a “slip up” of human bureaucracy, which, even in the year 2020, is only slightly off from the actual product. To say that this change from being dependent to being a leader was sudden was, to no small degree, an understatement.

Sans came with me, if only to do something else than be distracted by his woes, even if his motivation had been very much suppressed. Still, I’d done what I could to inquire as to what the matter was. Perhaps it was his depression. Perhaps he’d gotten the news of losing someone-

He was alone.

He was alone-and, dear God, he’d only had a conversation with his father.

Papyrus was gone.

Papyrus was gone-and I didn’t think of asking, because had he asked, he would have most likely killed himself, or else his heart may have stopped and he may have died, right at that spot.

___

I wish I could write here that I attempted to comfort him, or that I at least reciprocated to the same degree that he comforted me. I wish I could write here that I led everyone in the barn, that we finished the expansion, that it was anything beyond a little gazebo with chairs, with tables, with plastic that practically tore into the bodies of all who sat there for more than an hour at a time.

I wish I could write here that we were never exterminated.

Exterminated…how dehumanizing it is. Even English fails to accommodate for such a horrific act without it having some sort of connotation as some sort of favor being done, some sort of beneficence that the oppressor utilized on the oppressed. No-there is a better word used in our language, that speaks to the roots, the bones of ours across time. A word that elucidates upon every trauma ever faced by every monster soul who lost their lives to anyone, fellow monster or foil-human alike.

Diaethaeth.

“Forsaken by God”, as it so translates.

___

Dr. Gaster arrived a few hours later. A few hours after attempting to ground those in the barn whose psyches had sent them into oblivion, meeting with a few of my monster acquaintances that had survived and being told of more than a few of my monster acquaintances that the humans have killed, and continuing to hunt for food occasionally. I also devoted some of my time, with Sans’ help, to not only search for Suzanne (who still hadn’t arrived at that point), to physically helping some of the monsters that were suffering from the lanolin gas poisoning from the guns.

My mother and I couldn’t help but hug him, almost as if we were his own children-of course, he was startled by this, but that was overcome by what was no doubt his planning of Sans coming in his time to embrace him.

After giving Sans and them a half an hour to themselves, my mother asked Dr. Gaster what he had been doing, and he responded with what may now be known thanks to many various social media posts and news articles outlining this by telling the story of his Ninth Brigade.

It wasn’t anything military-related-rather, it was a brigade of people in a single ambulance that Dr. Gaster had headed, having chosen not to access the airport. Instead, he had taken five monsters who were in critical condition and, after making his rounds after a perimeter to ensure no other monsters needed help, driven them across the entirety of the state of Massachusetts and crossing into more tolerant pastures, dropping off the handful of them at Columbia Memorial Hospital at Hudson, three miles away from the Massachusetts-New York state border. Dr. Gaster added, biting his lip, that he’d “had to resuscitate one of them”; when I asked if this person was here, he simply looked at me, pretending I’d said nothing.

Of course, the second question I asked was if I could help further, and he responded by saying they’d already established an outpost in the back next to where I’d helped to build the extension to the barn, and where about thirty of us were staying now; I was still sorely disappointed that I couldn’t have extended it further. The both of us, as it turns out, were thoroughly exhausted, but eventually-after a few tries that ended with him being unconscious-I’d managed to drive the ambulance up the relatively steep hill of the Gallsop-barn to where the both of us did first aid on what must have been at least twenty monsters, and then, when the supplies ran out, thirty more before the sun set to an extent that neither of us could see our work.

By then, I hadn’t eaten for at least a day.

I stumbled into the middle of the barn looking for my mother. The landscape shifted. It was then that I tried to clutch the wall. I knew-I knew-

The last thing I’d expected at that point was for Suzanne to be there, for her voice to be the one to say, “woah, woah, are you alright”-, to be the one to catch me.
___

The sun, I noticed the next morning, was red.

Red.

I awoke, the entirety of my bravado being leached from my veins. Of course-I’d gone a journey of a total of eight miles, all with little more than a bottle of water and a few grilled cheese crackers that most likely went stale from someone’s pocket.

Immediately, I’d seen the can of soup next to me and the ready and waiting bowl, and-legs trembling from sheer exhaustion-I poured it into the bowl and scarfed it down, the ichor of the soup dripping down the sides of my mouth, the juice quickly splattering across my then-flat chest. Soaked, I nevertheless chewed on every piece of meat I could possibly tear into, every single speck of a noodle I could-and then I looked for the spices, any vestiges of salt, of fat, of sugar I could possibly have-

“Anna. I-y’know, I can look for a spoon for you if you’d like-”

Of course she was here. Of course she was-how could I not have realized it? She was Suzanne, after all. She must have found some way to survive. Her parents, no doubt, hadn’t; as much as I loved and appreciated them, neither of them had the physical, and perhaps mental, prowess that Suzanne did. And at that knowledge-and with the soup finished, its brothy smell wafting towards my nose, my eyes, to the top of the barn roof-I raced out of the bed as soon as my feet could muster and took her into an embrace.

She shook. She shook into my arms; that embrace was all that she ever needed, all that she ever wanted for her to begin unloading all of the experiences that she’d no doubt catapulted through within her own little Hell. I saw the bruises on her legs-she’d gotten into an altercation with someone. The red smile-was that a knife mark? I saw the marks on her breasts, the indescribable rip in her jeans-someone, most likely a man to whom the narcissism of the entire affair had dug its roots deep within, had violated her. At that, I held her tighter, even clawing her, not wanting to ask for an explanation.

“Anna, it’s okay…after this, I’ll get it looked at after this is all finished, and if something’s there, I’ll get it taken out. It’s not that bad-”

“Suzanne? Suzanne, that’s not even important right now.”

In the moment-and in the year or so afterwards-I spent what must have been hours tossing and turning at night, attempting to find some other explanation, some other sort of method that I could’ve discussed that could’ve resulted in some sort of her emotional reconciliation without dehumanizing her further. But, as I later thought about it shortly before even attempting to process this entire ordeal in therapy, that was one of the most compassionate things I could have said. I’d misdirected her from what must have been what was tearing at her, from something so horrendous that she’d most likely forgotten to eat, to drink, to do everything I’d now had the luxury of doing.

“You are. You are.”

She was more important than I was.

In that time in my life, everyone was more important than I was.

And everyone would continue to be more important than I was unless I wanted something otherwise.

Something changed my tone. It could’ve been anything-a subconscious conversation started by someone else in the barn, a noise from the barn’s rafters, the sight of my little brother finally playing with children his age for the first time in days. “Any more dead? Anyone that you know? That I’d know?”

She paused, biting her lip and reluctantly pulling herself away from me, staying in place. “Well, there’s my parents-that we already know-and there’s also Marcus, which was in one of your investigations; he’s gone, too-but there was-there was-also-”

It was then that I saw the doll in her pocket. A boy, it looked like. An astronaut with a too-transparent, sky-blue helmet, dotted with black and white bee’s stripes across his chest, looking vacantly, but vaguely pleased into the distance. It was from a show. Only afterwards, when I took an effort to research it, did I realize it was a show about Disney’s Tomorrowland airing at the time. But for now, he was just an astronaut doll. Just as lost. Just as unadhered to his original identity as we were from our own.

“I went to a kindergarten, Anna. I dunno why…just wanted to see if I could do anything. Just to…” she took a shuddering breath. “...to see if I could be like you, y’know?” She looked up at me with bright eyes, trembling eyes, refulgent eyes reflecting both admiration and despondency. At the moment-and even now-I didn’t know what to do. Didn’t know what else to do except be intimidated, let the emotion wash over me, and listen.

“I walked into a kindergarten class. Grabbed my dad’s concealed carry just in case, too. Didn’t have to shoot anybody-thank God-and I don’t wanna, either-but I did save a few kids.” She smiled as wavering of a beam as she could in the moment. “I did save ‘em. I did help. But…in that classroom…Anna, I swear, I…they…” The tears began pouring down her face. “All those lil’ piles of…” Choking. Choking on her tears, coughing, gasping, nearly falling on the ground.

It wasn’t until a half an hour later that I would get the evidence from her-in writing, passed in a nearly-crumpled piece of paper; with the hell that she went through, telling me in person would have most likely sent her down into a spiral that would’ve reduced the entire environment around her into little more than dissociation upon dissociation, mere fragments.

Thirty one children. Monster children. Nothing but dust now.

All dead.

Every single one.

During that time, I asked of her a little more of her experience. With another deep shudder, she told me she wouldn’t tell her entire experience, and, in fact, snapped at me with a “Well, figure it out, dammit!” before nearly descending into a heap of sobs. She began her story, then, not in school, but in the middle of the town.

She was attempting to forage, to gather supplies, to live however she could on her own, away from any trace of civilization, in the nearby woods next to the Appalachian Mountains. Near where the mountain was. Damn it all, she thought, she’d live there, and if anyone was going to come close to the place where she called home, she would unload all of her father’s concealed carry on them, and when that failed, her teeth, her brusquely powerful arms, her claws. And if any supplies were there, she’d steal them from the humans who’d attempted the same idea…

This was her plan, and it was a plan that she did indeed execute well in those few hours that passed. In nearly no time, she’d built a small lean-to, amassed a few newspapers for protection from the elements, preparing to face the dead of winter on her own. She had killed, she’d admitted, a small deer by the side of the road, and then admitted to me she had no idea how to process and safely consume it.

It was then-as the individuals there were rescuing her-that she ended up wandering to the elementary school as her reluctant rescuers were amassing supplies of their own. It never occurred to me what could have been found in the other schools-food, water, shelter, first aid supplies- as my brother and I’s situation posed reasons for us to flee from there, never reasons for us to tarry there. And it was as she was wandering that she would relay to me the apex of her own hell.

Thirty monsters. What age there were was no business of mine. All of them dead.

Instead of gathering supplies, she’d counted them all individually, as she collapsed into my arms, and I did nothing to complain about her full body weight.

Thirty little piles of dust.

___

I stayed as much as I could to help her, but her emotional state afforded me, for the first time, distance from her. Distance-it was what she’d lived by, but I’d never heard of it before. My psychological state by then had never heard of anything else that it was now living by before. Compliance. Independence. And patience. Dear God, patience. It’d never heard of sanity, of ambling along life as opposed to scrambling along it, to gather every solution possible. It’d never heard of resignation…or the crying. The hours of my chest heaving, slumping into the straw, my mother doing all she can to comfort me, Dr. Gaster joining as well.

Why I formed such an attachment to him was obvious-my actual father was long dead by that point. Vain hours of searching for him all these years were all but in vain. And to say that he was startled by my entrance into being closer to him than before would have been true, but he has since informed me that if it weren’t for my “stubbornness”, it would be questionable as to whether or not he would have survived his own self after his sons’ deaths.

From there, I collaborated with Dr. Gaster, being his sole companion and one of his sole helpmates, save for Sans, who was now busy tearing at the straw underneath him in our makeshift bunks, expressing whatever he needed to express as much as I did. I say sole companion because Sans with so preoccupied with finding the gunman that had murdered Papyrus-whether in the state of specific deliberation or “only” in the state of exposing his hatred to anyone and everyone that he dared to come across-that he’d failed to point out even relatively basic needs in his father. When his father clearly looked exhausted, Sans was swayed from him with a quiet “it’s alright, son”and nothing more. When his father almost tripped and fell at one point from his exhaustion, Sans would ask if he was alright, and when Dr. Gaster nodded, Sans would walk away after a few moments as if nothing had happened. I would have brought up the topic to him, but I had the feeling that if Sans was close to anyone, it was his father, and I would do nothing. So I extended that same dirty, vile word to him-distance-and began immersing myself with Dr. Gaster.

To have a father figure…it’s something just as strange as it is surprisingly unremarkable. I’ve had many a homophobe lecture the benefits of having a father to me; I’ve had many a year to swallow my pride and accept that, damn it, they were somewhat right, if only for the most misguided reasons imaginable. There was no one to help me through my various biological troubles that I unfortunately had prior to my eighteenth birthday, no parent that I could ask what that red spot here meant or what this swelling there meant without frightening them. There was no one to teach me how to live the more masculine details of life, to supplement whatever the patriarchy took away-how to repair a toilet, how to tie a tie, how to mow the lawn besides being given instructions on how to hire a mower. In short, I never had a man in my life who was with me all hours of the day and who would tell me I wasn’t one.
(And under no circumstances will I ever get a boyfriend, husband, fwb, etc. Sorry-not sorry).

But the reason why I say it’s unremarkable is that, besides all of these…he served just the same as a parental figure as he did my mother, and, believe it or not, it’s one of the predominant factors of the genocide that stays in my mind until this day. There wasn’t any difference in the authority by he extended himself over me as opposed to my mother when he was in charge of me; there wasn’t any difference in the way that he provided for me, either.

But did I consider Sans my brother?

One of the first things that I did with Dr. Gaster was to organize further expansions to the back so that more monsters could come in, even when it was clear at points that fewer and fewer monsters would actually enter into the barn; he obviously tried his hardest at every task he did-sometimes too hard, hard enough to make me laugh for the first time in nearly a day. Part of his jobs, however, was to encourage Sans to participate somewhat, and to at least attempt to distract him from the thoughts that were consuming his head. Fortunately, he failed; clearly, he didn’t share the same relationships with Papyrus that Sans did. Unfortunately, however, he was the one who tasked himself with that job.

Still, brother or no brother (my actual one having gone off to explore in the nearby pond with three of his friends and the supervision of at least ten of the monsters), I bequeathed to him anything and everything I could possibly imagine…up until Suzanne’s story of her having gone to the kindergarten. I looked behind me-had Suzanne really come up behind me, or was it just a figment of my imagination?-and then I noticed that the day was over and that my brother was rushing into my arms.

Just like that.

Just like that, this horrific pouch of time had ceased, the weeping and the whipping of this patch of existence had gone away. Just like that, the red-coated sun, the blood that had arisen over my people, the people that had long since passed away, was shriveled to nothing but the dust that it had overseen. Just like that, the crickets, the bats, the bears that pervaded rural New York trotted out of their spots, sniffed at the dust on the ground, and wept over it, wept for their half-brothers, wept for what they could not control.

Just like that.

Just like that.

___

The next day, the next sun, the next swathe of blood is just as good of a time as any to indicate the end of the lull…I do this not to give away the rest of what happened on my own volition, but because the audience no doubt knows what will happen next, and, if not, have been deprived of a history they have been manipulated into forgetting.

I ended up sleeping next to Sans. Granted, it was next to my mother and my brother, and his father as well-we’d both decided to sleep in the extension in case anything happened, regardless of the fact that fewer and fewer monsters were entering the barn by the hour-but it was still, as much again, sleeping next to him. He and I both knew that this was the closest that either of us would ever be, physically or emotionally speaking. He and I both knew that our various traumas would keep us from becoming any closer. Him and I both knew that this conclusion wasn’t by its own merit a bad thing. Still, I was the one to open and close the subject with a, “So, uh…which one of us is going to go out and make breakfast?”

He didn’t respond. He murmured for his brother, rolled over, and went back to sleep.

It was my mother and I who made breakfast, and made it for an additional family who accompanied us to the middle of the barn and hadn’t had anything to eat since yesterday morning’s breakfast. Yesterday morning’s breakfast…our minds had framed it as last week, last month, last year, or some other indeterminable, ancient time, and so we were frantic in making the omelet, the bagels, the toast. It was my mother and I who ended up waking the Gasters, with father and son alike being reluctant to wake-and my brother being awake, as we found out too late, earlier than us, attempting to wake up his own friends.

The only thing that coursed through my mind as I ate my breakfast-the first complete meal I’d had since that ancient period in my life that I’d forgotten- was how strange the sleeping arrangements were. That was the only thing distinguishable from all of the psychological tricks my mind employed to try to convince me that today was a new start to myself, a new start to my species, a new existence, that I didn’t lose my father, that I never had one from the beginning, and that Papyrus had been nothing more than a fictional character Sans and I liked.

It was a little game to keep up whatever sanity and reality that I could. Volunteers had arranged the haystacks by two, two, enough for a child or younger teenager to lay on, enough for an older teenager or an adult to have to lay on the fetal position over, but still possible. Some had attempted to stack bunks on some places for those who were fortunate enough to find wood in the local forest, but most were either squashed together for families, significant others, and even for some close friends who wanted more or were otherwise allotted a few inches of space.

Of course, the smell was horrendous enough to taste in our food.

There were a few lingering thoughts as the Gasters finally roused, as they took to their breakfasts, that this was a sickly sweet imitation, even a mockery, of the pancake breakfasts in the Catholic churches in some weird, foreign land in the back of my imagination. Springfield…now, where’d I read that…

Ten minutes later-I gave Suzanne an embrace, not knowing if I’d be able to do the same the next day-Dr. Gaster finally spoke.

“Everyone. As you know, throughout the collaboration with our leader, all of you here who have came forward and have had no dearth of experience with the Royal Guard, and, lastly, my own coworkers who have friends who have been drafted into the National Guard for this genocide, I have a plan to halt any further northern advances by the mascot. For those of you who may have not been in the know, throughout history, mascots have been used in order to boost soldiers’ morale, as well as provide a focal point for them to fight for. However, throughout most periods in history, this mascot has been either nonexistent or has simply stayed behind, never to initiate any sort of combat on the frontlines.

However, here, we have neither.”

Of course, Dr. Gaster was always his theoretical self. More so, just as he played his own little game to maintain his tired sanity. A few children mewled in the background, but were in an instant either hushed or escorted out of the room; Sans, Suzanne, and I made mental notes to advise them later on what Dr. Gaster had said.

“We’ll start off by sending a few monsters to contact a handful of public officials, although I’m not quite certain as to how effective that will be. However, due to some intel I received from my coworkers at the lab and the knowledge of this mascot, its efficacy should be at least more than marginal.

I’ll start off by relaying a few basic details I received from a meeting with one of my coworkers.” Ah, so these were the details Dr. Gaster had me review in the dead of night. He’d mentioned something about me “having a knack for these sorts of things”, although there were enough “things” involved in the process to where I wasn’t quite sure about what he'd intended his complements for.

“The neighborhood the school is located in, as all of you know, takes place a few miles from Sancta Maria”-Sancta Maria having been the neighborhood in Springfield wherein all of the monsters were heaped in as the cattle they were perceived to be- “but is instead located in the neighborhood of Performance, near where Springfield Central Elementary, Middle, and High Schools are built. Notably, Smith and Wesson has, with the help of Ms. Etilcoise”-referring here to my mother- “established one of its locations there. Our first goal is to send sufficient reinforcements that the company ceases to supply the partisans, along with the Massachusetts State National Guard, with weapons. That I will need approximately twenty for, of which I will prefer having either sufficient physical strength to be considered a candidate for being a boss monster or having previous Royal…Roy…ruh…uhm…” His hands moved to his chest. “Royal Guard experience within the Underground; all the better if they have both.

“That’s only the first wave of offense.

The second wave of offense will be slightly less numerous, consisting of fifteen instead of twenty. While this is not to impede Smith and Wesson, this is rather to establish a perimeter near the north of Granby, about five miles north of Sancta Maria. As far as what I know from my coworkers and fellow refugees here, the National Guard has now moved from Sancta Maria and has attempted-with some success, mind you-to murder any monsters that have attempted to flee up north. The south, moreover, is already crawling, as many of you know from personal experience, with members of local law enforcement. At this point, the safest direction for any monsters who may be left in Springfield to flee is west, but this is not the goal of the second wave. The goal of the second wave is to advance from Sancta Maria to Granby, parallel to the direction of the National Guard as opposed to its opposite. This is both so we can more easily gain resources from Sancta Maria and so we can eliminate any members of the National Guard as the prospective murders of these monsters happen, not afterwards, after they have all turned to little more than piles of dust.

Throughout the day, Craenn-” that was the name of the leader- “has given me his permission to establish a ranking in order to separate those who will be a part of the first offense from those who will be a part of the second offense. A total of thirty-five are needed, although ideal numbers are closer to forty. Should all of you be enthusiastic, we will take up to fifty before it becomes unmanageable as far as resource allocation is concerned.

While there is no requirement to sign up, know that whether or not more of your own live or die-including whether or not the casualties include that of your own family-will be dependent on whether or not you do.”

Silence. Blistering waves of simultaneous dread and sheer gratification roll through me. My prick responds, too, but what of it? My mind is all that matters, all that has ever mattered.

“As for emergency meeting locations, there is, of course, the barn for any who would like to stay. But as for the forty or so who are going on these offensives, we will have three established meeting points: one at any designated location at Sancta Maria-of which I will need about fifty or so volunteers more in order to station with supplies and to man in case of injuries-another north of Granby near the foot of Mount Norwottuck, and one in the west halfway between Sancta Maria and the airport; we have managed to establish a clinic in the College of Our Lady of the Elms, which has so graciously taken us in with the collaboration of the pro-monster humans left in Springfield.

“Be advised that there may be noticeable legal changes. For example, the mayor has since, although these may be little more than rumors, published documents stating that there have been no changes to the monster population for at least a month. So far, there has been little to no further scrutiny from the surrounding humans. Expect further treatment of this nature in the future.

“In terms of our finances, we have little to none, as our population is not allowed into our occupations, and, as an added gesture, the humans are still debating as to whether or not to give us any further accommodations beyond the barn. Because of this, these offenses are critical to our survival, and will determine whether we will stand any chance of living in the city we’ve been living in for this past year or we will continue to be refugees in this barn.

“If any of you have any objections or wish to make any additions-or, otherwise, have any further questions as to what will occur-please do not hesitate to contact Craenn, me, or any of the humans you see in a white coat, as all of them have been vetted by me and are nothing more and nothing less than my coworkers. Had any of them had even a shred of anti-monster sentiment, they would have been left no further north than Granby.” I saw some looks of slight disdain, but predominant amusement, from some of the aforementioned humans.

Funnily enough, I’d managed to grasp everything as easy I’d have grasped a lecture in some sort of foreign land called “school”, with some sort of concept called “education” being something I was fixated on for a while. And so I began losing the comfort that had so held me dear to itself. My psyche began to clench and grasp and writhe in terror as the distortions finally loosed their grip on me. No, school had possibly been something real. Something I could go back to, yet something I was ripped from, torn forever far away from. Why, why was I torn far away from this? What was this horrible concept that had torn me so far away from my education? No, I couldn’t bear that horrible action. There were forces to drive from the city, and that was all. That was all. Oh, God, what had I become by then-

A few minutes had passed, and I was at Sans’ side. Of course. I’d been so enraptured in pondering my own disconnections that I’d neglected to take his into consideration. At the same time, though, I was also looking after my younger brother, who was asking whether or not I’d watched some sort of video on YouTube. I nodded, noticing that I’d remembered what that was and what it was for, but not where I was when I was participating in it.

“Sans? Are you alright?”

There was an amusing contract that our families had seemed to sign. It was less of a compromise and more of a merger of what our families were. I didn’t have a father or a friend, Sans didn’t have a brother or a mother. He could have my brother and my mother so long as I could have him and his father. There wasn’t a word exchanged between any of us, but all the same, we knew what contract we’d signed. Not only did his father have his influence over how I was reared, but I, when my mother couldn’t, served as a grounding mechanism for him.

It was only then that I’d realized he hadn’t paid attention for any of what Dr. Gaster said, and that now, Dr. Gaster was attempting a recap for him, I the supervisor. I always the supervisor at that point in my life.

“Well, you seemed pretty distracted. I thought as much. I won’t tell you about the first and second wave unless you ask, but here’s specifically what we’ll do. Anna, you can join in as well if you’d like.” I nodded, but only out of curiosity.

“I was thinking that maybe we…we could have our personal offensive towards the mascot. You don’t have to come if you like, but…”

No further hesitation. I almost saw the swallowed tears dripping down his throat.

“After we all make it to the high school gym, we tell the teacher to notify the mascot of where we are. Now, I haven’t told you what a mascot is. That’s okay. I think you’ve figured it out, right?”

A brief nod.

“This mascot fights with the soldiers, fights for the soldiers, and from what I’ve heard, fights better than most of the soldiers. Now, most of the soldiers are former civilians and have little to no training, but their numbers make it almost impossible to stage a rebellion against them.”

I add my own contribution; if nothing else, it was to give myself my own grounding point, haven given much of my own to Sans at this point.
“Which is why we’re staging a rebellion against the mascot? With a few other soldiers, too.”
I pause.
One
brisk
breath.
I realize that there’s no conceivable way that there wasn’t any way Frisk couldn’t have been the mascot.
I’ve seen it in far too many of my human friends; however, I don’t care to elaborate on the ins and the outs of systematic brainwashing to any extent further than what is needed for this narrative. That being said, what is needed for this narrative will most likely be seen as too many even by the least discerning of souls. Nevertheless, what is needed is what is needed, and the rest should be decided by the reader and the reader alone.
Oftentimes, the first step towards any sort of brainwashing-or, as others like to call it, “getting acclimated to” or “getting used to”-any sort of, frankly, whitewashed aspect of totalitarianism or any extreme aspects of politics-mot commonly the far right-the first step is reaching towards someone through an aspect of themselves that would’ve otherwise been wholeheartedly shunned by the outside world. A videogame that’s just laughable enough to reach beyond the spiny extent of the public’s fingertips. A liking for a band that would’ve been just socially unacceptable to not be a piece of one’s life to share in the scope of the public. A TV show-in that specific period of time, most likely an anime-that would’ve been viewed as little more than fodder for either children or degenerates. No matter the medium, it must be just socially unacceptable enough that outreach through the Internet is the only option.
Frisk had been a member of all three. Their conversations to me about Overlord, The Death Parade, Assassination Classroom, their showing to me of a few pictures one time of their room, covered with smatterings of memorabilia for what I recognized as Splatoon and Mario, and still a few more wordings of, “Mayday, mayday, the ship is slowly sinking…” referencing a song by a band they bequeathed their liking of to me called “Starset”.
And, not to mention, their non-binary identity. Any sort of queer identity, as I’ve found through the nearly two and a half decades of my existence, is instant fodder for some sort of ostracization or another.
How could I then not have known what happened afterwards? Their decrease in performance at school? Toriel asking me or the Gaster family to invite them over prior to her death, saying that she hadn’t recalled a time at all where they saw a single friend outside of school? The times when I did see Frisk at school, eyes obliterated, surrounded by voids of gray that had indicated hours upon hours spent in front of their laptop at night?
Not to mention Frisk’s relatively odd behavior. They’d purposefully avoid foods that had come from other countries; they’d told me that it was because they were “afraid of [the food] being contaminated”. Other than me, they’d continue making distasteful, often vaguely sexual jokes towards anyone from the ages of six to sixteen-I was the relative exception, as I was the oldest and the one they’d made the most advances on. That ended with little more than reporting to Toriel, and the entire matter dying with her, dying with our dignity as I began my investigations, dying with us.
As Sans would later disclose to me, Frisk had begun disclosing questionable political opinions, beginning with an odd sentiment that all non-binary individuals should have some sort of sex change-and that was the nail in the coffin.
Sans had also given me the final piece-that Frisk had been kidnapped by the Human Security Organization. What use would
The stage was set.
Of course.
It was Frisk.
Frisk was the mascot.
I gaped my mouth ajar, and-
“Wait.” Sans’ voice. “But but how will we get them to meet in a specific place? And when? Who’s coming with us? I know I might’ve not been paying attention, so sorry about that. But is there anything you can answer now?”
Almost as an instinct, I squeezed…some part of him, some sort of benign part. Was it a hand? Was it an arm? A shoulder? Even his face, if I was delirious enough? The question will most likely linger with me until the day I die and he’ll finally be able to tell me.
Dr. Gaster. “You’re right. I’ve relayed a few of these facts already, but.. I’ve been a little carried away. First off, I was thinking that- if it was possible- you could take us there.”
A personal offensive. With little to no stratagem involved. Even I knew at the age of eighteen that it was certain that this mission was intended so we could kill Frisk, or at least rescue them from their position if God on high had deigned to give us that level of safety. Nothing but pure, utter mutiny, ravaging, revenge…nothing more and nothing less than possible satiation of our personal desires.
Whether I like it or not, there was no denying that my eighteen-year-old mind fastened onto in an instant.
And it was a decision I since have barely had the time to regret.
___
There were very little thoughts streaming through my head around sunset.
By sunset, I’d managed to let the idea settle, settle like cyanide in the cork of an unsuspecting wine, settle into the melting pot, burning point that was my teenage mind.
At my behest and my behest alone, I spoke to my mother about the supposition. Immediately, there was little more than a mixture between a chuckle and a groan of what I could describe as disappointment mixed with utter and complete agony.
“Anna. Anna, Ann- Ananias…”
There was no punishment here. Only a desperate longing to keep the only entity of her life she’d had left. Her dignity had been taken by a handful of men, and, as I would later learn, two women as well. Her husband had been taken by an unknown human, but what the state of Massachusetts still heartily declares to its last fucking strand of muscle fiber as his illness. Her home had been taken from her from those from the Human Security Organization who had targeted her-and, at the time, what marginal company did my barely-ten-year-old brother have to offer?
“Please. Listen to me. Why? What would this do? You wouldn’t be able to target them. The people who took…who took it all. You’d just be able to target…a child.” She turns away from me, and I know the best thing to do is acknowledge her gaping necessity for space.
“I thought about that, Mom.” The wind billows in my cardigan sleeves. I’d brought that outfit to school two days ago, to school… “I thought about that. You…you must know that I’m like this, that I…do this for the community. And if Frisk-” we’d reached the same conclusion within an hour- “is the one responsible for the most monster deaths in our community, then me doing this is going to save the most monster lives. If the soldiers have no morale, then…there aren’t any soldiers. Surely, you know this.”
She nodded. As unethical and as vindictively underhanded as it was, I’d brought her to a near-complete standstill. If she refused me, she would be undermining one of the only things she’d had left for her…her decades of political experience, now only useful for facilitating a few conversations between certain humans in this glorified village of Gallsop. But if she were to accept me…that would mean untold psychological agony for her. I had to give her some sort of consolation.
“I’ll write of my entire experience. I promise. After this, I might even write a book.”
The seed.
“I’ll have these writings sent to you daily, if I can. Some way. If they’re running supply chains or even ambulances back to Gallsop, I’ll send you the letters as much as I can. I can collect things for you, too. Anything you’d like. Anything to remind you of back home. We may even have to settle in New York.” I bite my tongue slightly-mentioning possibilities of what’s not necessarily guaranteed to happen, but also what’s not necessarily guaranteed not to happen is a classic manipulation tactic. “And if those aren’t enough for you, once I get back, I’ll-” For a second, I hesitate at the fact that I forgot to say if we got back. “I’ll…I’ll give you breakfast in bed for the next month. No matter where we go. You don’t have to lift a finger in the morning until you finish eating breakfast, alright?”
I gave the slightest of smiles as my mother’s world continued to implode.
The rest of the evening consisted of little more than attempting to see if there were sponge baths open to those in the barn, if I could possibly take any part in establishing one (I ended up overcome enough with my gender dysphoria that I’d stopped a half an hour in), and latching a vague gaze onto Dr. Gaster’s conversations with Sans, most likely debating the same idea I did with my mother; Dr. Gaster, Craenn, and one of Dr. Gaster’s coworkers Lana had announced that we were leaving the next morning just after an hour-early breakfast.
It also consisted of sobbing, heart-rending, throat-wrenching sobbing that lasted hours upon hours, that lasted forever until eternity, wondering if I would ever see my mother, my brother, or my friends ever again.
___
The sun was up the next morning.
The day had begun.
The sky was red.
___

Chapter Text

___

A note from me in 2021: This is the poem detailing the night that I spent within the motel designated for monsters. While this settles on overcrowding, this is mainly to overshadow the details hinged between my definition of psychological comfort vs. relative psychological overwhelm at that moment, meaning that I was, in short, in nothing more and nothing less than utter, agonizing terror about the massacre that I knew almost for certain at that point in time was about to occur.
Prior to that point in my life, I had never written poetry; this is due to a number of factors that I will spare the audience of, but the main one is because in this moment, I was too physically and mentally exhausted to write further, and the scholarly barriers of Springfield Central High School had long since faded.
I have since not published these poems, or any other that I’ve written since then, in any other work.

Anna Etilcoise

23 September 2015
Poem Entry #1
About forty or fifty monsters here in these three rooms alone
What kind of living,
What kind of living is this,
Existence-what is this?
Colliding, crashing, hush-a-fuss-all-together-now
Go, go, go, run-
Hurry up and wait-
About forty or fifty monsters here, about the amount in ten houses
And those ten houses with ten rooms each
With a total of one hundred rooms
Collided in a big BANG,
With GUNS and PROPAGANDA and EVERSOFRAGILESENSESOFSECURITY,
To only
three.
Doubling,
Tripling,
Quadrupling,
Then piling,
As they have accused us of doing in ancient past,
And
Dying,
As they have conformed us of doing in ancient past.
All I know is that I am
Dying,
It has been 15 hours, 900 minutes, 54,000 seconds since I have eaten,
It has been 3 hours, 180 minutes, 10,800 seconds since I have last had even a drop of water.
In that time, I have undergone a
Six
Mile journey on foot.
All I know is that I am
Dying.
The dying are the minority,
And the living are the majority,
As it has been confirmed of doing since ancient past.
I wasn’t always dying.
I used to be a girl.
I used to be an adolescent,
I used to be able to learn from my mistakes
Instead of die from them,
I used to be able to take a wrong turn and turn back
Instead of die from driving off a cliff
I used to be able to connect with those who are hurtful and turn back
Instead of having them hurt me
I used to be able to bend,
And not break,
And not die.
And not be filled with acridity and hate.
And not be filled with insanity-too late
For anyone of any race or tongue to fix.
Neither can they even provide me what I need-
15 hours, 900 minutes, 54,000 seconds,
3 hours, 180 minute, 10,800 seconds,
-and my brother, too-
But that wouldn’t matter to you; he’s only ten,
At least nine more years before he becomes of any use to any corporation.
So what door do we walk in?
Do we walk into the door of forty-or-fifty-in-three-rooms-but-life
While dying
Or do we walk into the door of forty-or-fifty-in-one-hundred-rooms-but death, a confirmation of it?
How do I speak?
How do I speak when my throat has been leached of all its moisture?
How do I write when my hand has been stripped of all its bravado?
It is all I can do to write,
For there is one twinge of bravado left.
Yes-twinkling, sparkling in the light
Even as the light in our eyes is
Dying.

Chapter Text

___

This second poem details the morning afterwards at school. Note how teenage-like (angsty, for lack of a better word), dissociated and how relatively incoherent this poem appears when compared to the rest of them. At this point, I was operating on a little more than 24 hours without eating, I was incredibly stressed over my feelings of impending doom, and Suzanne was there-which, with this stress, made my birth-cursed body respond in its biological ways I didn’t want it to, which only added to my stress.
___

Anna Etilcoise

24 September 2015
Poem Entry #2
There are only fragments of today,
Shattered mirror-pieces indicating nothing more but death-
Vying for violence,
Vying for wholeness…
The pain of it never ceases to be,
A nagging, hunger-pain that never ceases…
And through it all, I’m so tired.
So tired.
What do I focus on?
Do I focus on her, who makes my body writhe?
Do I focus on him, whom I strive to be?
They say, “to my own self be true”,
But that never helps if you don’t have a self to be true to.
I can’t stop myself from feeling my feelings,
But these feelings don’t have a self to attach themselves to.
I vie for violence,
I die for wholeness.
Things tense and release within me, feelings find their flow
Within my thoughts-regardless of my consent or lack of.
I am deep, I am hollow
I am strange; still, I follow
All the primal vestiges of life.
It comes again and again-
Waves, betraying me each time.
I need
___
Note the interruption.
That was when we were called outside.
I have since never finished this poem.
___

Chapter Text

This was written in the elementary school library, where I’d hid with my brother.
___
Anna Etilcoise

24 September 2015
Poem Entry #3
Nothing.
No breath-
Dust.
Dust and dust only.
No blood-a mark of your innocence.
Erasing us-
Choke us-
Do with us what you wish-
Because that’s all we are.
Play the trumpets,
Crush our bones,
Until we are all but angels.
Trampling us-
Tearing at our meat, our flesh-
Until we are what lays on their feet-
Dust.
Dust and dust only.
Our tree has been cut-
Our tree, supported by dust-
Until we are what lays on its feet-
Dust.
The air drinks of our death.
The mountain air embraces us.
The mountain air cares more for our lives than the people it has birthed.
Your policies are dead-
Your whims are dead-
Your machinations are dead-
Because we are.
I want to rake my eyes out,
To stab and clench and choke
Until I am all
But
Dust-

Chapter Text

This was written in the second or third hour-I’m not sure which-that I hid in the library with my brother. I assumed I’d dissociated for the first hour, as I don’t recall anything that happened then other than what I’ve written previously, as well as didn’t remember writing the previous poem.
__

Anna Etilcoise

24 September 2015
Poem Entry #4
The sheer complication of hiding…
I can’t understand it.
Waiting, sweating, ichor dripping down our veins.
It is noon?
Always a sun,
Never possessing the understanding to look,
Always a moon,
Never possessing the understanding that it exists.
Always something to be wary of,
Always something I feel should be taught,
But never anything to learn-
Always something to do I feel that I’m ought to,
But never anything to earn-
Always something I think I should think,
But never anything grasped by my mind,
Always something I brace for feeling (sorrowsorrowsorrow)-
But never as much as a ghost of a zephyr (numb)-
Always a wave of-something…
But never anything felt by my heart,
Never anything to be wary of,
Always a reason to be alert,
And always a reason to go to sleep.
Always needing a distraction,
Never being free enough to distract myself.
And dreams.
How did I ever find the energy for dreams before?
How do I find it now-
The future.
The future is.
The future is something I should plan for,
But
The future IS happening in the ever-constant now,
So what difference does it hold
Between it
And the ever-constant now?
I tell myself that if I wait, things will get better…
I tell myself that if I dare to wait, things will get much worse…
What is important? So many things are important…
I can’t think of a single one…
What blessings do I have to count? I have so many to count…
What blessings are there in the world? I can’t name a single
one.
What is the point of happiness? Of sadness? Of conclusion-
There are no emotions in waiting.
Just as there are no blessings, no curses,
No songs, no whimpered verses,
No reasons, no feasibility
Of this season’s ingnominity
Only
Life is-They are-
Hiding,
Hiding from me
As I hide from them,
Surviving without me
As I survive without them.

Chapter Text

This poem was written during my flight to Gallsop. Ironically, people have told me that I fainted during this time, although I clearly remember writing this poem. Either I didn’t faint and they simply imagined it, or I did faint and was simply neglected afterwards. Sadly, considering how we were treated, I fear it’s the latter. Note how cohesive I seemed-perhaps there was a biscuit on the plane that I’d eaten and forgotten about. Either that or it was simply the hope of landing-that was food enough for me.

___
Anna Etilcoise

24 September 2015
Poem Entry #5
Imprisoned…do I see it anymore?
Do I see the spring-yards, the flowers, the sprung-prison underneath me?
Do I see its beauty-whatever it may have held, whatever it fails to hold now?
Am I floating? Floating within a machine? Is this what it will take to save my soul?
Am I a butterfly? Am I a bird? Am I anything less artificial, less cacophonous than this
Machine?
What am I taught by what I have left-what jeers I have borne, what I have been told to hate by that
Machine?
What lessons have I been taught about how to take a beating, belabor, belabor, belabor, by every gear of that
Machine?
But I learn from this machine-I learn there is nothing better than to be free, than to be nothing and no one.
To gain knowledge and never to use it besides for my own contentment, to be free and never give thanks.
Am I a human? Do I have a soul? Do I have any of the lessons applied to me by this and that and those
Machines?
This machine-its wings glide along the air (i fly my kite), my wings stretched out as a babe, my mother
Catching me
And telling me never to ever listen to this or that or those-no matter how hard I try-
Machines.
Above the ground-the bitter ground, the bitter earth, the earth I have nevertheless came from-
And above all, soothed and comforted by this mother of a
Machine.
Nevertheless, I am no one’s child-
Because no one on Earth should the child of a machine, even if a child cannot stand to be from Earth-
So I have nothing left to fix my gaze on but the horizon and the pieces of time that lie beyond.
And the clouds have nothing left but to fix their gaze into my horizon and the pieces of sanity that lie within.
The moments I have left are nothing but fragments, I realize-
The moments I have in the future now take on the form of a body.
Do I have a better life-
Should I dance a better dance-
Perhaps that is too much to hope in the day,
But perhaps the conclusion to draw on
And on
Into the machine
Of night.

Chapter Text

hi.
So I know I haven't posted anything here in the past two weeks or so, and I have very good reasons.
These past two weeks have been absolute whirlwinds-after performing in several venues and attending the biggest annual event in my university, I simply haven't been able to write. In fact, the time I've been able to negotiate now is because the professor in the class I'm currently in is particularly generous. Final exams don't help either, and there's also been some changes at work that I need to smooth out this next week. But things should be much calmer for at least the next two weeks, and, God willing, three (with the exception of the Paschal Triduum, which is basically when I have to go to church 3-4 times in a week ughhhh).
I know how frustrating it is to have another update. But trust me-patience is a virtue, and new chapters should be coming out within the next three days.
Thank you for your understanding. I'm sorry that I couldn't pump this out nearly as much as I wanted it to be.

Chapter Text

This poem was written during my burgeoning father-daughter-figure relationship with Dr. Gaster. Note the confusion I exude-although throughout these past years, we have both allowed each other to allay not only our confusion, but also our respective fears. I am proud of all we have overcame-see the epilogue at the end of the volume for a testament from Dr. Gaster and I of how he became a father to me, I a daughter to him, and I an older sister to his three toddlers. With this analogy, this created another justification as to how Sans and I were so, so close during that period of time, but never so much as planted a kiss on the other’s cheek: by this view, to an extent (Papyrus was a part of neither of our lives at that point, and so that established a barrier in between each others’ lives), Sans was my twin brother, and I his twin sister.
Interestingly enough, my mother and Dr. Gaster have never seen each other as anything more than possible colleagues.
In addition, note the slightly regressive vocabulary and the poem’s relatively short length-I was incredibly tired by then establishing the extensions in the back of the barn.

Poem Entry #6
You didn’t gift me my life.
My body was not forged from you.
I am not your half, your better half, your lesser half-
I am not made of you, and neither are you made of me-
Yet behold how we have made each other.
Behold how we have taken each other from the Sculptor, sculpted each other twain.
Behold how we have taken each other from the Undoer of Knots, knotted ourselves together.
Our hearts were forged from the same God, his tapestry-scissors cutting at the cloth-
Our souls were forged from the same Mary above, her mantle-awning donning the sun-
Our minds, too, our minds were taken from the same cloud, transplanted-
Fragmented and torn in much the same ways,
Our wisdom cluttered, scattered, jaded,
Not perfect,
But enough.
It wasn’t a dream we had
Or a plan we schemed
Or even a thought we conceived
In order to bring what we had about,
But it was an anthology of emotions and beliefs and truths and-yes, some lies-
In order to bring ourselves about.
It was not the riches of that state-that inglorious, lambasted state-that brought you to me,
But the riches of our own hearts that was our true catalyst.
And so, we formed our settlement-our abode, our dwelling, nothing more than chairs in a barn-
But it was home.
Home all the same.
Home-with cans of food tossed to the side, communal outhouses and vanity mirrors-
Home-with all of our glorious rooms sequestered to a few feet of land, of crab-apple grass.
Home all the same.
Home intertwined itself in us, then, and us to our home,
Home prodding us, nodding to us, to care, to bear, to share for each other-
In this case, then, life gifted me to you-
And our souls cleaved to each other true.

Chapter Text

Here-and perhaps in the previous poem-is when I noticed I’d omitted the formatting.
By then, as the audience may grasp, school was a dream.
A dream I was now on the verge of slipping into until the next day dawned on Hell.
What that entails, I will elaborate on after the next entry.
Still, for today, Hell I was in; I’d been affected by sheer exhaustion to the point where I was almost on the verge of death, coupled with what may have been, due to the symptoms, some effects gained or lost from the poison. Even to this day, it should be noted that many-including those who were at their prime at the time of the genocide-still suffer from long-term complications, such as respiratory difficulties, blindness in one or both eyes, and cardiovascular difficulties. I personally know one who was my little brother’s friend, and who was shot at ten during the genocide, survived, and then died of a heart attack last year at fifteen. At fifteen.
My little brother’s friend…
___

Drifting, inandout, in and out, inandout…
Normality eschewed from my field of vision…
The clouds no longer rippling with traces of life…
But now replaced by drifting, inandout drifting, drifting…

I see nothing

From the other’s perspective, I’d come from a place of light…
Stumbling into my best friend’s arms, into her peace…
We could’ve been lovers, cut twins into glory…
But now replaced by drifting, inandout drifting, drifting…

Still nothing

Softly come softly go, the beardtongues taunt me,
Floating me as to my best friend’s arms I onward to…
And as a boat over water, I am wafted…
And now I am nothing but drifting, inandout drifting, drifting…

Hear nothing

I then forge a path, reluctant as it is…
Forge a path towards Heaven-so close…
Yet so long-trodden from the people I could help below…
So I am nothing but drifting, inandout drifting, drifting…

Touch nothing-I see a light, white, perfectly fractal…

To forge a path someplace, forever…
Somewhere in sometime, in some land…
Hopefully, forginglearninggrowing with someone…
She aids me through my nothing but drifting, inandout drifting, drifting…

Light comes into form…a plant of some sort…

Yet to float here forever, I ponder…
To be suspended between sun and moon…
To be suspended between violence and void…
Should I be a better woman with nothing but drifting, inandout drifting, drifting…

What is it called, I wonder?

Shall I mourn for this state of refulgence-
Doing nothing but reflecting, hoping to reflect nothing…
An abode of possibilities never to be tried, let alone lived…
Shall I mourn for doing nothing but drifting, inandout drifting, drifting…

A beardtongue. That’s what it is.

Then the beardtongues, her eyes, begin sparkling…
Then the diffuse, wresting pain of the killings grips me…
Then I scream, scream to the stars, to the clouds…
And now there is no more drifting, inandout drifting, drifting…

I see more-a Canada anemone, a blueflag-

She holds me. She holds me, despite her own rapture.
Despite the baby in her belly, not affixed there by choice.
For all her half-cruel words, she sees nothing but my writhing…
And she silently puts to death my drifting, inandout drifting, drifting.

I see, smell, hear a garden.

Chapter Text

This is the final poem that I’d written in the lull. It was one of the, if not the most cohesive poem out of the eight-and the poem that I feel ends one chapter of my life and begins a previous one.
As promised, you will see why after this entry.
The next entries after the next explanation to the audience, however, are not poems, as there was no time to differentiate between when I had to work for our survival.
But more later.
For now, all there is left to do is read.
To an extent, all we can ever do is read.
____
Poem Entry #8

“The sun is red.”
Four words.
Four words that I see from my friend’s journal, yet they are all I want-
All I need to satisfy this moment-
An archaic sphere, whirling and twisting-
Writhing to and fro, writhing through hill and dale-
Killing the oceans of my mind, my soul-
Yet drowning-
The sun is red.
It’s supposed to be warmth,
It’s supposed to be comforting,
It’s supposed to be nothing more and nothing less than hospitality,
But the flame shines on not beds, but straw,
But the flame haunts and dares and-
Motivates.
It motivates me…to do what?
To kill a child?
To strap my arms and storm our bases?
To steel my heart and render me deaf?
To purge the hearts and render my enemies dead
Simply because they were told
Their minds
Unfolded,
Caterwauling,
To murder us,
And now I-
Of such a primeval state, of such a roaring fate,
To murder them?
To commit a crime so ancient,
A crime so renewed,
A crime I can barely comprehend,
But a crime of victory?
A crime that-had we not been juxtaposed here-
I could have been their child, or their sister…
Or perhaps a lover, if I hadn’t sorted myself aright…
Or if nothing else, a friend.
A friend to share a drink with-when I was ready-
A friend to share a laugh or a cry with,
A friend to share an experience or a thought or a belief with-
To share a life with-
And yet I am supposed to accept this crime as victory and laud?
The sun is read, I conclude, by my faltering eyes, by my stuttering heart.
Read as a book, plunging, free-fall through the sky,
BeatbeatBEAT, stutter, stutter…
…fall…
As my crime-or if nothing else, the crimes of others, reverberate-I utter a howl-
Holding onto the flowers of our peace, my now-native Empire State,
Beardtongues, anemonae, blueflags…
And I promptly upturn my hands to the sky,
Drop the flowers, shattered across the floor of my barn,
And collapse.
Our love is dead, I conclude, by blood-
By desire-
By hate-
By fire-
The sun is dead.

Chapter Text

“If there wasn’t any other good reason to prevent war, the correlation between war and genocide would most certainly be a good one.”-Normon Naimark (2017), professor of European Studies at Northeastern University
Anna from 2021 again.
It should first be stated that this part of the entry is, surprisingly, not the most taxing part of the narrative. We were hinged on physical and psychological survival at the time, yes, but this time, we had a plan. This entailed latching onto certain ideas, certain plans, taking our flights of fantasy and enacting them onto reality instead of simply accepting that there was nothing better to do but to eat, sleep, reunite with one family member or another occasionally, what have you. This entailed, more than this, documentation, if only to a small extent, and if only by Dr. Gaster-he has chosen not to detail all of his documentations in this narrative, although they will be referred to, as the logistics of the offensive are not by any means the main focus of this narrative.
It should also be stated that, while I applaud the human audience for verifying that this was indeed a horrific event with appalling events occurring to all within it, this was not a genocide; genocides must take the lives of at least a thousand, whereas mass killings may take the lives of anywhere from a hundred to a thousand. As the final death toll from the September 2015 atrocity was six hundred and sixty four, this would be designated as a mass killing, and I will refer to it as such subsequently.
Other than this, however, I will provide a brief elaboration of the details to provide more of a conceptualization as to what actually took place during these offenses; however, while I did live through these scenarios, I did not have the competence or the psychological wherewithal about me to comprehend every aspect of the offensive. For those who are especially interested, please contact any of the following three members of the Human-Monster Relations: Eoghana Maecaennti at [email protected], Cillian Beolaenn at [email protected], and Ana Quesada at aquesada@[email protected]. Other than Dr. Gaster, they mainly formed the offensive; the latter is a human historian whom I consider a personal friend of mine and who was able to conduct sound analyses of the entire genocide, not the least this one.
Without further ado, let me begin:
Before I begin detailing the actual events, allow me to first detail some of the major locations.
Within the city of Springfield, near its northeastern section, there lies our neighborhood, Sancta Maria… an exclusively monster-populated ghetto. I say “ghetto” not because of any of its more informal connotations, but because, by any and all definitions, it was a ghetto. Our population was forced into it, all other housing being either financially or bureaucratically prohibited by the human authorities. No humans were allowed to purchase property there, either; all humans who even wished to live near Sancta Maria were limited to Royal Chateau, an adjacent property with substantially better housing. As chilling as it is now, I and many other prominent individuals in the monster community have concluded that the ghetto served as a “transition location”, wherein a certain demographic could easily be located prior to the mass killing. Neither was the idea of a ghetto for a transition location a recent idea, either; only now have I opened my eyes to the atrocities of Adolf Hitler…and his genocide’s similarities to our own mass killing.
Separate from Sancta Maria is the area of Performance, where Central Elementary, Middle and High Schools are located; they are about a fifth of a mile west from Sancta Maria, and are deliberately separated by little more than foliage. In addition, happily, the areas of Central Elementary to High Schools are not only located in a very adjacent series-making the mass killing all the more easily facilitated-but the area was entirely a small industrial complex, meaning that, other than the schools and a few informal stores here and there, there was little to no entanglement in human affairs for us monsters. Smith and Wesson, the most prominent arms manufacturers, had established one of its locations here, replacing a location that, according to local record, had been occupied by Jana’s Mediterranean Grill and Bar from 2010 to 2013. As many of the monster community suspected, there were very little dealings within its own facility; unbeknownst to us, most of its dealings occurred between itself and the National Guard for the state of Massachusetts. It is estimated that this location alone supplied three hundred and fifty six pistols, rifles, and semiautomatic shotguns from September of 2014 to September of 2015. According to my mother, who had a plentiful amount of dealings with them, anywhere from twenty three to twenty seven more locations were established by Smith and Wesson throughout the city of Springfield during that time.
There were many disputes about the church, as it was placed directly next to Royal Chateau. So it was decided that not only would we only be secluded to Thursday evening Masses, but that a barbed wire fence would be established surrounding the church. Ironically, more human children and teenagers hurt themselves crawling over the fence than from our neighborhood-it never ceases to amaze me how much dominant parties are willing to sabotage themselves for the sake of supposed “purity”.
As the major locations have all been explained, the waves themselves of the humans were surprising. There were three; the first being there to conduct the majority of the mass killing, the second being there to search for any survivors who had hidden (meaning many of the survivors had to change their hiding spots), and the third being-and to this day, this still manages to steal my breath and the breath of my mother-to storm the airport and exterminate any monsters attempting to flee there. The latter, us having had to spend the first and second offensives fleeing for our own survival, was what our offensive managed to halt, at least partially.
Regardless of the wave, however, they operated uniformly, not expecting us to have the psychological wherewithal to change our positions. As a result, they did not change theirs. Beginning in the western half of Springfield-although, thanks to the government’s resentful reticence about the entire affair, we are unsure as to where exactly they began-they advanced to Sancta Maria and its surrounding areas, where essentially all the horrors you have read take place in. Still, after their combing through Sancta Maria-and combing through it again to extinguish any survivors who hid, and then revealed themselves upon thinking their environment was safe- they circulated a five-mile radius around the immediate Sancta Maria area.
Due to Springfield’s size, much of their searches continued to be within its borders, but this was not always the case. To the north, this extended to Granby; to the south, the borders of Springfield; to the west, the western Springfield border; to the east, the relatively rural town of Wilbraham, little more than a commuter town to either Springfield or Boston. However, it is estimated that only about twenty five percent of their forces combined went to either of these locations; when a monster who reported being in those areas at the time of the mass killing, I personally believe it is common sense to believe them.
Regardless of whether the troops stayed in the immediate Sancta Maria area or whether they separated to one of these four locations, however, all of the troops agreed to gather at Granby, where they could recuperate, treat their wounded, bury their dead, and all of the postmortem affairs we as monsters did not have the opportunity to carry out towards our own.
And so the first, second, and third waves circulated…west Springfield, Sancta Maria, either there or one of the four directions, and then Granby. This was predictable enough to where the human intelligence gained from many of the monsters was correct, at least for the purpose of the offensive; whether or not any portions of the forces split prior to the offensive has since turned to be nothing more and nothing less than speculation.
In short, Dr. Gaster elaborated on many of the details of the offensive in his speech, but for those who are interested, much of the offensive consisted of multiple waves:
By then-about eighteen hours after the bulk of the genocide- the humans had already attempted to claim victory over the monster race, and, unbeknownst to us, had already published advertisements around Springfield declaring that the monster race had been eradicated.
Still, we were stubborn enough to bypass that notion. Intended to be as much of an offensive of attrition as we could muster, we first attempted to send a handful of monsters-five, to be exact-to contact the public officials that had since fled to the interior of Springfield.
Contrary to what one might expect, this was quite easy in terms of initial transportation, as much of the National Guard had since moved on to Granby; such monsters could easily be teleported by Sans into the middle of the city itself, or could otherwise be dropped off at a more remote location in Westfield and continue their advances to Springfield from there. These monsters had every understanding that they had a high chance of being killed; because of this, these monsters were relatively old, aged approximately 40 to 80 (for today’s context, they were born anytime from 1934 to 1974). In addition, these monsters were relatively malnourished, as, we’d learn later, rationing had occurred within families, and these monsters aged 40 to 80 had willingly given up those portions of their food, thus adding to their degrees of psychological stress. The difficult part would be bypassing any National Guard forces that may have been in surrounding these buildings-talking to these officials would be the relatively easier part.
What they’d discuss about with the officials, however, had to be relatively carefully planned, as many, even some of the monsters going themselves, knew the inefficacy of such a plan, and while we wouldn’t quite revert to the level of pleading for our lives, we wouldn’t exactly advocate for any sort of policy changes, either. Rather, we would begin negotiations-first introducing the fact that some of us-the monsters there downplayed the number to only a hundred or so-and then we’d proceed to sign a treaty with them to live in the state of New York, where their bureaucracy would no longer be able to pursue us, or, in our words, “have to be in their hair”. As there were no national guard troops-the mayor, who I do not have the mental capacity to name for now, was hellbent on assuming we had all been eradicated-the mayor, shocked into silence, signed the treaty. The monsters then left and stayed temporarily in Colonie, a town halfway between Albany and Schenectady and on the way to Gallsop. They knew anything else would be impossible to negotiate. Why they had to reside for a while in Colonie instead of Gallsop I’ll inform the audience of later.
According to reports from the mayor prior to his death in 2018, he considered the conversations to have been “marginal” and “not to have posed a threat”; however, the general consensus reached by the monster community is that he was simply too shocked to reject their proposal. I will refer to this group here on out as the Colonie group.
After this wave of particularly aged monsters came the Performance offensive, wherein one of the major goals of the overall offensive was secured: to capture the Smith and Wesson facility wherein arms deals were being made. It was laughable, at the very least, to assert that we could prevent further arms deals, but many suspected, and some confirmed, that the National Guard troops were at least attempting some sort of counterattack. If nothing else, and our intelligence proved us wrong and our suspicions proved to be too effective, then we could at least sabotage further arms deals and escape quickly enough for us to have evaded them by the time any of them traveled south from Granby to Performance. For this purpose, we sent fifteen, not twenty, since our intelligence was not confirmed as to whether or not National Guard troops would be actively killing any more of us. However, this was on the condition that all of them had at least some Royal Guard training; Undyne, although she had long since passed in the massacre, had listed fifty in the roster. Twenty-five had survived, meaning the ten that were left would accompany us on the third offensive, of which I will elaborate upon shortly.
We were highly aware at what danger this would bring to my mother, who prior to now had been attempting to form negotiations with them in order to avert such a situation; however, the humans-and, to a marginal degree, this offensive-had made this impossible. As such, it was decided then that my mother would stay to Gallsop, and, if nothing else, flee to Pulaski, an idyllic lakeside town wherein one of the Gallsop humans so generously offered us his second home there. There is not a single monster whom I know of even today who has a second home.
Many of the other monsters debated amongst themselves as to who may join my mother and build a new life for themselves in New York, but as they diverted attention away from the ultimate goal of the offensive-to make living conditions as safe for us as possible in Springfield, if only temporarily, so we could reclaim our belongings and then possibly flee-we escorted them out of the room.
That was only the first wave of offense.
The second wave of offense consisted of the ten remaining Royal Guard members in order to establish further distance between Sancta Maria and the National Guard troops and to prevent further killings of monsters who’d fled to Granby; Dr. Gaster in his original outline had cited that only fifteen would be needed, but upon further intelligence, we had received word that the humans would reach northern Granby by the time this would occur; this would decrease the time we would need to establish camp. Anything further north would provide less resources, as it would be far more rural than the southern localities. We decided we would have no choice, then, but to rely on numbers; while no one in the monster population was content with this, we ultimately decided that it would be best for the whole of the monster population to halt their advances before they could control the area sufficiently for returning to home and reclaiming our livelihoods to be completely unfeasible. Still, we estimated that our numbers would slightly outnumber theirs, which sent a cheer through the group; while our health was, and still remains, relatively fragile compared to that of the humans’ (specifically, a group of twenty-five as opposed to the humans’ twenty), our strength in combat, for those of you who have paid even the slightest hint of attention since September of 2015, is nothing short of devastating. From there, it was little more and nothing else than a push to the National Guard forces, and, if all our hopes were fulfilled, to push them further south before encircling them and giving them an opportunity towards the east to retreat. As of the many various tactics in that regard, full knowledge of this was not disclosed to me, and even my knowledge of this I will not disclose to the audience for the sake of narrative length; however, many of the tactics used included what could be best described as guerrilla warfare utilizing the natural features of Granby, makeshift phalanxes of Royal Guard troops with the front armed with various debris, and, according to rumors, the utilization of Batchelor Brook to drown some of the remaining Royal Guard troops, or at least terrify them into retreat (on a personal note, if you think for a moment this won’t work on you, lay down on your bed on your stomach. Hold your breath. Now hold it for two minutes. Now imagine that as you’re doing this, a hand twice the size as yours is jamming your head into a body of water, and all the while, you’re writhing and attempting to get away, the oxygen only draining from your body all the faster. I guarantee you that you’d piss your pants).
Should, however, a retreat be needed, they would retreat not to Granby, not to further in the heart of Springfield, or even to Sancta Maria-should that point be reached, asserted many of the leading members of the Gallsop barn, Sancta Maria would most likely be overridden with National Guard troops. Unless there were communications to dictate otherwise, a retreat would be made instead to Westfield; by then, the surviving monsters from the first offensive would have established some sort of camp there at best and they would be there alone at the worst.
By then, however, estimations in terms of time would be all but speculation; the first offensive would leave at dawn in order to arrive in Springfield by mid-morning. The second offense, meanwhile, would leave around mid-morning to arrive in Springfield by noon. We would be arriving at noon and be there by mid-afternoon, when the sun would begin to set. This was an attempt to blind our opponents without excessively obscuring our own line of vision; fighting during the evening would ensure nothing more and nothing less than mutually-assured destruction when it came to our visuals.
After the first and second offensives would come our third, final, and, ultimately, more personal offensive. This is the offensive Dr. Gaster, Sans, and I were a part of, and mainly included securing the school. After extensive discussion, it was determined that ultimately, since Dr. Gaster was a boss monster-and Sans was well on his way towards becoming one-as well as with my resourcefulness that outmatched theirs-we would be equipped with sufficient protection to where we could establish a perimeter around the schools, but, more importantly, encounter the mascot ourselves. (The mascot I will not elaborate on here; I apologize, as this is a different topic entirely. Perhaps on a different volume or a separate talk, audiobook, or something of the sort. But the formation of Frisk-the undoing of Frisk, the nature of Frisk’s said undoing, why Frisk was chosen among the rest of the human children in order to become the mascot-is a subject too complex and too intrusive, too distracting for the purposes of this specific narrative.)
This offensive was laughed at by many-humans of Massachusetts, fellow monsters, humans from Europe, even. But many of them failed to recognize that boss monsters held a high degree of privilege in the monster world, if one could not garner this by my interactions with Sans. For God’s sake, half of them were royalty. There were many historical instances of boss monsters (of which I will not do you the displeasure of boring you with today), because they were far stronger than the average human, and, therefore, less likely to become hurt enough to die. One legend circa 1000 A.D. even tells a particular story of a monster who destroyed an entire, 25-story long building, although it has long been debated as to whether this is true, invented by the monsters as propaganda for their own superiority, or invented by the monsters as propaganda for the monsters’ brutality.
But as personal as it was, only one monster deemed a fully-fledged boss monster was sent-Dr. Gaster-with the mentality circulating throughout the monsters that since Sans and I were not fully-formed adults, we would not be subject to the same importance. This was foolish, as this would mean would Sans or I die, we would be deprived of lack of transportation or any source of political power; death would be spelled for all three of us if the both of us were to have died. I sincerely hope that those of you who have read Sans’ narrative agree.
Through all of this in mind, there were a few sentences being exchanged as to whether or not there would be any foreign aid.
While it would eventually come, none of these details were relevant at that point in time.
How could they be?
They were the ones who’d dealt the killing, so how could they possibly be the ones to help us in our hour of need?
And we did need some sort of us and some sort of them, didn’t we?
Didn’t we?
Perhaps we’re more monstrous than I thought we were.
___
Anything else in this moment has been disclosed by Dr. Gaster.
Allow me to disclose the rest, as Dr. Gaster will be unable to.
___
For more of the technicalities of what occurred during our offensive, I highly recommend reading Dr. Gaster’s narrative; however, as I am not him, I will relay the more personal details as simply and as blisteringly painless as possible.
We went to the high school.
Sans fought the mascot-no, Frisk. Always Frisk. Always human. If nothing else, always a BEING.
Frisk killed Sans.
I was there in his last minutes. I was there to look into his eyes. I was there, if nothing else, to not only say goodbye to him, but to help him say goodbye to a reality where he wasn’t going to be immersed in Papyrus, the whole Papyrus, and nothing but Papyrus.
And Dr. Gaster killed Frisk.
I was there in their last moments, too.
And I could only hope that whatever God existed in Heaven would have mercy.
____
There was nothing left but three survivors. One, Dr. Gaster, two, me, and three, the words that I forever spoke, forever whispered, forever screamed and choked and sobbed into the wind.
____

Chapter Text

I neglected to write anything substantial in the dawn before we left; this was because we were both too embroiled with trying to revive our souls in more tangible ways-breakfast, trying to brush our teeth with any toothpaste we could find, and, if nothing else, human interaction-and we had a rigorous schedule to adhere to. The only opportunity I had to write afterwards was a few hours later, when Sans had teleported us to the elementary school, where we in vain began looking for the mascot, following a few complementary tips by Suzanne.
From there, I could say nothing else despite all of us being stunned at the Sancta Maria area’s desolation, even if we only looked in from afar. The Mary statue in the woods was nowhere to be found, and, as I would later be the one to find out, would be thrown in a garbage can in a public park three towns over in Wales. At least a few monsters would always, always be found tending to their lawns or looking after their pets or, if nothing else, wandering the curb…now, there was nothing. Nothing- on a weekday evening, when ordinarily, Sans and I would have been walking home from school together, talking about our schoolwork, our work work, and our little siblings coming home later; Dr. Gaster would have been driving home from Bay Path.
Monsters had evidently been pulled over to the side of the road and ordered to be shot-I could only witness a few grains of dust falling and the robin’s-egg blue door of the Accent swaying back and forth slightly in the wind before I looked away.
Before I began writing my pain.
____
Poem Entry #9

“The Robot and His World”
The robot-
A him, never a her-
Never a her being given the opportunity to perpetrate any of this-
Could be everyone, should not be even a single soul-
Looks out onto his toys,
Stepped on, pulchra pulvis, dust wafting to his joints,
A product of greed.
Created in the ires of Communism and the aftermath of the second World War,
He, the toy, smashed, flipped-wracked-crushed, let his toys hear the sound and fury of his loudened jury…and looked at his toys.
A social Darwinistic hellion,
His blood…or rottened oil…covered arms stretch to the heavens and scream,
Scream at the sound and fury of his own glory.
Scream at the sound and triumph of his own rhyme, his own social norm, his
-beep, beep, beep-
Each beep someone dehumanized,
Someone condemned,
Someone contained into the most hellish boxes that could be created in this life.
Red, and white, and blue,
The red from his hands and the white powdery,
The blue factory paint created by those who deemed themselves superior.
He looks to the walls of his own city, created by his creators-
-the walls, therefore, being his own brothers and sisters-
And, unthinking, traumatized, or both,
Declares the walls’ creators to be none other than his toys.
And so he gnaws, he rips, he kills, for no lack of better words…and, if nothing else, he erodes…
Until, having nothing else to do, and no other fate to be entitled to,
His toys-although mangled, smashed, torn to pieces,
Are no longer in a state to be played with,
And so,
To the bitter last,
Are now
Free.

Chapter Text

___
This is the point in the narrative where I will create a brief breach.
To say the minimum of what I need to say.
To create a memoriam.
Two of my friends died that day-one being Sans, killed by Frisk, and one being Frisk, killed by Dr. Gaster. Sans had attempted to kill Frisk first out of revenge for his brother; however, while Sans did manage to weaken them drastically, he did not manage to kill them-and for this, he paid with his life.
And I killed a man.
Just a man. But nothing less than a man. A man with a misguided psyche, uniform, and rifle. A man who had joined a paramilitary organization and come running at us with a rifle-and for this, he paid with his life.
He could have been anyone-and this is something Dr. Gaster has already said. He could’ve been anyone. Anyone from a janitor to a CEO. A husband. A father. And, if nothing else, he was most certainly somebody’s son.
And I killed him.
I believe all the monsters in the genocide have, by nature, forgiven me for my transgressions. God willing, even Frisk has-even as I was complicit in his brainwashing by the Human Security Organization.
But if I ever receive word that this man whose blood I am directly responsible, for his soul’s travel I am directly the agent of, has not, by any means, forgiven me…then, so help me, I will join him directly and stay by his side, doing whatever he asks of me until he does.
But for now, what I can do for him-for my friend, for all of my friends-is create a memoriam.
____
Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat eis, te decet
hymnus, Deus in Sion, et tibi reddetur votum in Jerusalem; exaudi
orationem meam, ad te omnis caro veniet.
Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat eis.
Kyrie eleison, Christe eleison, Kyrie eleison.
For those who have not had the childhood or the desire to understand Church Latin:
Eternal rest grant them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine on them, to you, I send
a hymn, O God in Zion, and a vow will be paid to you in Jerusalem; answer
my prayer, all flesh will come to you.
Eternal rest grant them, O Lord, and may perpetual light shine on them.
Lord have mercy. Christ have mercy. Lord have mercy.
_____
Lord indeed have mercy on us all.

Chapter Text

____
Poem Entry #10

“Of Crimes of the Soul”
Etched upon me, mark upon sweet mark,
Blood upon blood, the mark of traitor’s guilt-
Bloodguiltiness wreaking bloodshed on my dreams,
My goals, my aspirations-till my life
Is nothing more but survival’s imitations…
Nothing more than beatings of the blood, blood, blood,
The markings, markings, markings, of my veins…

The drum of war. Oh, a single drum shattering-
Shattering, shattering bleached and unrepentant bone-
Of whose bone I cannot bear to reconcile-
And their own blood all stopping, while mine flows
Forever on and on-the traitor’s mark.

A hero’s life decreed for centuries past
And centuries future-the most pernicious toll of all,
The tolling of his bell falls short of tithes
To all the kin to whom his life’s-end rips
Tears
Relentless

And yet…

I ask the question of abasement now,
I ask the very deities I question now,
“O are my steps eligible for this Earth?”
“O is my soul deserving of death’s flight
And all the matter of my veins dissolve?
O is my heart reduced to nothing more
Than ashes, dust, blood-uncomely to behold
To any sort of creature-then ostracized
From all the creatures who have made me known?”
“O tell me, sweet deity, for I am all but jailed.”

Resounding silence…resounding chills and stabs
Throughout my circulating veins…and yet
And yet, and yet there is no “yes”, and yet
No shame, no denouncing from that which I call home,
O’er hill and dale regardless-those I love
Refuse, reduce my blaming to piecemeat,
To dandelion seeds to blow away
And send to be taken o’er hill and dale.

Thus though a fugitive, I walk the Earth,
And every ghost about me brings its mirth.

Chapter Text

But there is a light.
A light beyond what any human-and, to some extent, any monster-would like to admit.
____
It must have been half past seven in the evening when I watched Dr. Gaster as he snatched a pistol from the ground-him having the decency not to take the one I used in order to kill the bleeding piece of Earth that I did-and fire once, twice, three times.
Frisk and I may have made eye contact as they fell. I’m almost certain that I at least imagined them making eye contact with me.
From there, I was unsure of what happened a minute afterward despite me evading a pool of what I was at first equally unsure of, but what I recognize now that it was blood. From there, I ran towards unlocking the door that I believe said, “EMPLOYEES ONLY” because my eye happened to rest on the security camera, and one thought and one thought alone pervaded me-the truth, the truth, the truth! My God, if I were to ever investigate the truth, I would have to do this; if not to serve as a culmination, if only to serve as a validation for everything I was, for everything I was supposed to be, for everything we were supposed to be…
From there, all I knew was that while Dr. Gaster was combing through the footage, I took the direction towards the clinic and wandered. What I did wandering there, I’m still not entirely sure. Collecting any resources we could use afterwards? That I did do, because I did know that clinic had a ghost, but it was undoubtedly the ghost of one of the best friends I had at that age. And once I was finished, I continued to wander over hill and dale, through hallway and classroom, snatching whatever remnants I could find, with little thought-albeit some-as to their usefulness. All that circulated elsewhere through my mind was that the power had been left off at home-and I suppose that was a consequence of the blind instincts, so often accused of by mankind, that had circulated through my bones. A bottle of water from one of the students…could it take up too much room?...it’s still a bottle of water, and that’s all that matters, all that will ever matter. A pencil? I suppose I could stab-no, put that down, Anna, God knows when you’re going to kill again, I don’t want to kill again…
And from there-covered with a hodgepodge of everything I collected, dropping what I thought was stale to the left and to the right-Dr. Gaster stepped out of the camera room. I tapped his shoulder, let him know it was time to go. Yet only one thought at that point had circulated through our minds-our only reliable method of transportation was dead. A method of transportation-that is, already, what he had dialed down to in the state of our minds’ primeval gasps for air. That was all he ever could be for us for those next few hours if we were not to take the all-too available pistol and join him right then and there. And even this would be an instinct. Even, too, when the words of, “THIS IS THE HUMAN SECURITY ORGANIZATION. ALL TROOPS REMAINING ARE ORDERED TO CEASE FIRE AND REPORT TO THE HSO HEADQUARTERS UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE” rang through all of the speakers of the school, the instinct would live on.
That was when I realized that yes, Dr. Gaster could step in as a fatherly figure. Because, in many ways, I took care of him, albeit not to the extent he cared to me-for that is the way all parent/child relationships are supposed to occur until the parent reaches debilitation or death. And as if he were a clairvoyant, our conversation for those next few moments went as follows:
“Where are we supposed to go now?
I’m sorry, I shouldn't've. Anna, I-”
“Don’t. Don’t worry about it, alright? It’s been way too horrible to even get a fucking lick of sense.”
With that, I handled much of the semantics of the journey, albeit that, among with many things, was primarily to lead the both of us to some sort of resemblance of success rather than to take care of Dr. Gaster like a helpmeet-to-be would be expected to do in the still-patriarchal dances of transplanted European descendants. However, that being said, there were little to no semantics within the journey-all that was within his mind or mine was to escape, to find some way to escape that little parchment of land, to walk beyond the clinic and beyond the hallways and beyond the small hill no more than twelve feet high separating the school from Roosevelt Road. And from there, all I was ever told to do from this past year was to walk left, not right, to walk back into Sancta Maria-from which the human troops had long since been driven out of. To ignore the piles of dust, to ignore the call within me to bury my head within Dr. Gaster’s arms-not because of a deep-seated insecurity of being unable to take care of him, but because of a deep-seated panic of not having someone to lead the both of us. Especially with the ceasefire, while the humans weren’t here for now, they would most likely return as soon as they caught word that there was no one left in Sancta Maria, and two lives would not be difficult to snuff out and then hide from view.
By the hand of some sort of deity or another, Dr. Gaster, once I’d handled the walk to his house-not mine, as there would still be the possibility that the Human Security Organization would leave some sort of trap there due to the sheer amount of societal influence my mother had with the monsters-he’d fallen asleep on his desk. And so I continued. I continued past the desk, past the area where I’d exchange my first kiss with Suzanne, past the stairs-where Dr. Gaster had given his Christmas presents that so-distinguishable shake when walking down the stairs. I continued-and as soon as I realized he was asleep, I cried. I wailed like a baby, so long as the baby was chained to a contract to not wake her father. I fought the impulse to run to their bedrooms, to cry out for the both of them to wake up, to cry out my apologies that not everyone had the same privileges as my family did, to cry out for the whole of monsterkind to come back, for the whole of the universe to grant the monster population back to me…
A thundering, throbbing headache for a minute, and then silence.
Silence, which was replaced with an inkling of a plan. If we left here, we could attempt to drive back to Gallsop. The road was long, but not particularly, and unlike Dr. Gaster, I hadn’t been informed of exactly how long apart these flights would be spaced; it may be more practical to simply drive there. So I went through the house and packed whatever looked unused, whatever looked unopened, whichever items wouldn’t have any sort of connection to this family-ravaged by the hands of bigotry, shame, and murder-and packed them. Nonperishable foods. A can opener. Disposable bowls and paper towels. An umbrella. A few towels to cover the car windows with, never minding at the moment that they’d probably had a few towels underneath one of the chairs in case they needed to clean up some mess or another. A small radio with a boombox, although I’d made sure to replace the batteries. A laptop I’d found tucked away in the attic along with a charger cord, although I questioned the merit of an Internet connection at this point.
I couldn’t. Couldn’t be upstairs, rocking back and forth in some sort of preoccupied state of catatonia as I’d fully realize the work I was in actuality doing. And I’d had enough dissociation tucked away inside of me to where any more substantial amount would paralye me, and therefore quite possibly Dr. Gaster and I’s survival.
I went downstairs and gathered any cursory products I could find here and there that could aid in our survival. Coats. A few hand crank flashlights. A utility knife-although, silly me, my legs would be able to kick at any attacker with the speed of a car on the highway. It would incapacitate them, but never kill them. Never blood, never any sort of threat of death; if I’d killed, then I’d kill the very killer, or, if Dr. Gaster were to physically restrain me, satisfy myself with cutting off the very part that had done the killing…
I even hunted in their storage room I’d found the key for, and-even after choking back tears after finding there a letter Sans had rolled up to give to Papyrus once he was in his first relationship and not being able to read it in the end-I’d found a map of the state of Massachusetts, including in the corner, to our great fortune, a map of New York to Albany.
After mapping out the route we would take on I-90, I proceeded to cover all of the windows-walking into the boys’ rooms with eyes closed at first as I did-and barred the side and the back door with whatever furniture I could find. A little startled that Dr. Gaster hadn’t quite awoken at the sound, I accepted the fact that I was going to be preparing for quite a while yet. By now, it had been twenty minutes since I had first noticed Dr. Gaster had fallen asleep. Relatively exhausted, I set down the bags for now and looked in the pantry.
Desolation upon little-desolation, I’d realized, when I noticed there were in fact some sorts of signs of occupancy. There were crumbs on the wood of the pantry that, if my intuition was correct, would’ve been fresher than the dried blood I’d seen if the clinic if they’d happened to be liquid. Even now, I don’t have any more articulate way to describe how I’d known. Nothing other than a vague, tugging chill that stretched through my back and into my chest.
Not knowing the fate of my stomach, I finally woke Dr. Gaster. Twenty-five minutesh had passed simply without knowledge.
He’d stared at me without any seeming understanding at what I’d just done. Went to the refrigerator to get a drink as I’d realized, for the first time, that my hair was sticky, and resisting the urge to look at my hands because I knew that I’d used my hands to try for a little while to stop my friend’s blood flow-that still takes my breath away knowing that thought has left my hands. And, without further ado, we sat.
We sat for a long while.
I began debating, as with him, on places to go. Certainly, there were contacts, but I hadn’t had access to a phone charger for days. I quickly left my seat to go and find some sort of charger. When I’d come back, Dr. Gaster muttered a slight, “it’s eight miles away”, immediately knowing he was debating on going to the airport.
And I did something remarkable.
I didn’t bother with thinking of anything else.
Come to think of it, perhaps it was more reasonable than I thought it would be. After all, I’d packed essentially everything one would need to pack if they’d needed to flee their home, but not on a relatively sudden basis, and had exhausted myself with the particulars of the journey. But there was also something in me that had acknowledged something indelible had happened. My method of thinking had changed-of course, I’d always continued to put the emotional needs and perhaps desires of others first, and had always managed to build and maintain as many healthy social connections as I’d possibly could, but there was another aspect, another cog to the wheel that had changed. An indelible mark-I would never consider thinking in methods of novelty again. No-I would instead prioritize efficacy of doing what was not necessarily perfect, but effective. By God, I wouldn’t think of a second option. By God-instead, I’d pick up a map and see if I could survey any alternative routes besides I-90, through Routes 20 and 22 and 7! By God, I’d pick up my items and put them into the car! By God, the absence of those in this household had, fully despite nonconsensually, dubbed me a new woman, dubbed me the woman I would become without so much as my own consent.
By God, I would never be the same Anna Etilcoise in the future that I was when I began the eleventh grade.
Dr. Gaster, without any preamble, announced that we were going to the car to reach the city airport-I didn’t bother attempting to override any of his decisions because I already knew that virtually any other alternatives would result in further danger for us. So without any further ado on my part, I showed him the route through I-90. We discussed which bridges were most likely filled with monsters, which were most likely filled with humans-the latter had moved on further north, and the former would lead to us crashing, which was less than optimal considering that the both of us had only a little over a year of driving experience at that point. I only stopped routinely hitting my car against curbs in 2019.
Dr. Gaster drove first, it being his car, while I served as the navigator. Only a few years later did I disclose to him, after having seen a therapist for a year, that I’d seen dust perhaps every half a second on some sort of windshield, some sort of dashboard, and-as it was the majority of the time-on a sidewalk or jerked far against a wall of some sort.
After navigating through Sancta Maria, Roosevelt Avenue, and, eventually, I-291 and I-90, I noticed what looked like a human-of course, a white male-reaching into his pocket, pulling out what appeared to be a rod of some sort, and later identifying in my brain as a sniper rifle facing in another direction aiming at Stewart Street just off of I-90. Vaguely, I recalled the split second where Dr. Gaster muttered something about putting a towel up near the window. Just then, the sign of “Chicopee” flashed by-I noticed that this was less than ten miles from where the monsters were engaging the humans. I shouted to Dr. Gaster that we needed to drive further south, and that we needed to merge on I-390 in order to safely drive into Granby. He nodded, and, with hands trembling, merged onto the highway, hitting a curb.
By then, we were a few miles down I-391, about to merge onto I-91 to make our way back west. With hands trembling enough to go into the emergency lane, I shouted at Dr. Gaster to exit. We did, and I drove.
I drove for a very long time. At first, I made my way up I-91, having the competency to switch to the right lane when I noticed I was drifting to the left and switching to the left lane when I noticed I was drifting to the right, but, to my great alarm, noticing I was driving no or less better than Dr. Gaster was besides for those manuevers. I’d also had the sense to attach the map to the front of the window. In five minutes, I’d merged back onto I-90. In ten, I’d found the exit. In fifteen, I’d found the homeless shelter, and in twenty, we were in the airport. In thirty, my legs had stopped shaking and I could finally exit the car, where Dr. Gaster was sitting next to a monster woman who looked to be in her mid-forties. Only then would I acknowledge her as Faemnae Maeclaemhaer, who’d later, along with a small team, represent us monsters at the UN in 2017. For now, though, another woman, Caeorl, immediately spoke to me.
“Heya, honey.” It punched at me-this is how Sans would greet me (jokingly, of course, based on one day in elementary school someone asking us if we were dating and if he called me “honey” and I called him “babe”). “Would you do me a favor and watch my kid?”
One thing immediately struck me, although one more would sink in five minutes later-the former that she’d so callously ordered me around and the latter that she’d called her son by “kid” instead of his name. So I responded with a brief “not yet, I’d like to listen to what Dr. Gaster is talking about first”-she glared at me, but for the remaining time, I tried my utmost to focus on Faemnae.
“...so I’m here, believing that, since the humans already tried to take us by force, it makes sense militarily to send the footage to the United States’ allies, seeing as them not recognizing essentially any indigenous society as a nation is working out in our favor. If only unexpectedly.
What I’m thinking is we actually don’t send it to France. I know what all of you are thinking-since many of the humans supported the two assailants on the Hebdo attacks, sending it to France should be our first move. But I advise against it if only because both sides are rising rapidly, and not only can we not afford beginning conflict in France and being scapegoated again-not to offend our beloved Royal Family’s breed-but because we also can’t afford any sort of interactions with the burgeoning alt-right in there. But I still believe that some of France’s closest allies can be our closest for that very reason due to them being relatively impersonal. Germany, Finland, Poland, those sorts of countries. Relative to France, they’ve been very uneventful in the past year.
And I’m not sure whether or not it’s just my experience with Asgore talking, but by God, we can at least give it a chance. The humans already secured our leasing on the barn, and with a few of us working full-time and a few more part-time, we can easily secure the amount of money for all of our rent. Even if we do lose something, what we do lose is our relationship with Massachusetts. Not New York.”
I piped up. “Germany? I know that all of us are tired and stressed to no end, but I believe that’s an oversight. And I’m not just running off of stereotypes….I’ve done the research. As of this year, besides us and France, Germany and Sweden tied at the third spot when it came to the alt-right…let’s not beat around the bush here.” I saw some discomfort shifting between the various members of the group, but I ignored it; cognitive dissonance between having a Catholic upbringing and realizing the worst of the worst unfolding from conservatism was, by any and all God-granted, fucking means, completely normal at the time. “Finland I’d definitely send the footage to if only to bypass Sweden, and Poland I’d also send the footage to. Of course, there are also the smaller European countries that we also associate with more open-minded individuals…” this I was willing and had the psychological wherewithal to candy-coat. “...think the Netherlands, Denmark, that sort of thing.”
After all of this, Dr. Gaster nodded, seemingly not giving Caeorl, who’d cut me off from their conversation in the first place, an opportunity to speak. “But like I said, this is going to be tricky.
Regardless of which nation we send it to-Faemnae, Anna-there will be repercussions digitally. First of all, we’re still considered to be in the city of Springfield, and for now, while I didn’t notice any sort of inconsistencies with the Internet, there will most likely be so. I would switch to a more public computer if I could, but unfortunately, my personal laptop is the best that we have. That I am willing to give up, by all means.
I propose one of us document this via paper and pencil-the good news is I was informed before we left Gallsop that we found some essential documents from Smith and Wesson containing many of the plans of the genocide. I’m only just starting to remember bits and pieces of this now. For the person doing this, I will document everything I can remember via mouth, and see if I can corroborate any of our anecdotal evidence. If nothing else, should the situation be safe, we can document all of the monster remains you can. Anna, you’ve taken pictures with your phone along the way, right?”
I nodded, although some of the pictures had mysteriously disappeared. Panicking, I’d disconnected my Google account as soon as I could.
“Good. Until we can mount a safer in-person investigation-which first needs regrouping back in Gallsop, as I believe the group who was formerly at Chicopee is now heading further north towards Hadley to monitor the activity of the troops after the ceasefire-then I believe there is nothing further for us to do but to wait for a further flight."
After a few minutes more of overseeing Dr. Gaster's list of clients he would send the footage to-a total of fifteen, not counting the twenty news agencies Dr. Gaster attempted to send the footage to. Eventually, my body faltered-I couldn't absorb any more particulars of any more European nations, I slumped over, I even began releasing a few tears for no particular reason. Even so, I fought against Caeorl, if only during an argument having to do with if the monster species could have prevented any sort of massacre in the first place. Then, and only then, did Dr. Gaster suggest that I play with Caeorl's child.
I barely absorbed the child's name before the world warped, and, before long, it was nothing more than me chasing who I thought was a child in a place I thought I could identify as a forest and I knew no more.
The only piece of information that I would know of that night was my body hitting the air mattress someone had found in a closet for when the airport workers took night shifts.
___
Too quickly.
Too quickly did I see the gray outline in the sky, my subconscious registering it to be, for a split second, some opulent caterpillar. But nevertheless, some opulent caterpillar en route to my rescue.
My conscious mind, however, did register the words "La Compagnie"-slightly too foreign to be English, slightly too foreign to be translated into the monster language. Foreign. Foreign…away from our homeland, away from our oppression, away from the gears turning and turning and turning, away from any previous history that could be justified towards us as any sort of scapegoating. Foreign…I rushed towards the plane. There was none of the dissociation, none of the mental ineptitude that had been characteristic of the first flight. What replaced it was tempered expectations and my heart threatening to jump from my chest while I did my utmost to escort every man, woman, and child besides myself to the plane mainly because I knew that whatever fate it would provide me, it would provide to them.
Luckily, I did happen to study French a little. "B-bonjour," I began, stepping onto the ramp. "Qui etes-vous?"
The woman in question muttered something intelligible to me, and as Dr. Gaster dissuaded me and thoughts invaded me of how my brother was faring and how my mother would react when she found that I'd massively failed in my attempt to apply my French.
There she was. There was the Anna I knew and loved.
And there she was, using a translation program to begin telling her story, to begin telling her heart, to begin plumbing the depths of the indelible mark of this attempt on my race, this eradication of my culture, this little-snuffing of everything I was, everything I was supposed to be…
Many of you have heard of "nous avons", a relatively influential movement in France documenting and advocating against genocide against our kind, genocide against humankind, and, to the end of it all, against what we tend to call Neonazis and supremacists of all sorts. To this date, it is the largest of such movements. But it was I who drafted the opening text through our translation software.
"Nous avons une grande variété de documents, y compris des registres de ventes d'armes, des rapports de décès et des photographies clandestines prises par certains de nos semblables. Nous espérons, à travers cela, vous transmettre les vérités de certaines de nos horreurs…"
____
A labor of love.
All of the horrors of the massacre, in brief, documented.
664 dead. Almost everyone wounded physically to some extent. 32 hospitalized. And 125 more to die from suicide in the past 5 years alone-including them, the total death toll being 729, leaving 211 survivors. 211 out of 1,106.
As of 2020, the documented monster population is 378. Five years after the genocide, the monster population has-even after extensive church services proclaiming to "go forth and multiply for the sake of our species"-only ever risen from 211 to 378.
The perpetrators…no one knows how many. But current estimates mention approximately 15,839 out of Springfield's 153,000 has explicitly stayed that they supported the massacre. That equates to only ten percent of the population. I doubt that very much.
These liberal estimates in mind, however, there were 15,839 perpetrators and 1,006 monsters.
Fifteen perpetrators for any one monster.
“Quinze auteurs pour chaque monstre,” muttered the woman who was writing the details after we’d both done the math together.
___
Upon my disclosing of what I knew about the massacre-the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, for the world demanded nothing less-we’d landed mere minutes later in Hadley. I was ordered to stay in the plane-something about violating a clause from the UN, and that, since I was under 18, I could be designated to have been a minor involved in an armed conflict, and could therefore ruin France’s shortened relationship with the United States. Because of this, Dr. Gaster and a few armed Frenchmen exited the plane. Nothing else must have happened of note except for the dishevelled hair and rusted weapons of the monsters before we took off. The entire time, I pondered as to why Dr. Gaster had continued to pursue France anyway. Perhaps it was an act of nothing more and nothing less than pure desperation for any sort of aid-France was, after all, one of the largest nations we’d discussed. Perhaps it was an attempt to become politically relevant, to distance ourselves further from the perpetrators of the Charlie Hebdo attacks and thus bolster the reputation of both France and the United States-both of which were likely to result in better treatment for us on our part. Perhaps it was a measure to become less politically relevant, to hide in the wave of the masses of protestors against the alt-right in France that year, and to become more conspicuous amidst all the events involving France and any sort of entanglements with the alt-right at once.
Perhaps it was a mix of it all.
It has taken me years to acknowledge that most of any decisions we make in life are a mix of it all.
And it has taken me at least years more to acknowledge that it is okay to be frightened in that most of any decisions we make in life are a mix of it all.
___
Far from a bushplane, the Airbus was a much more professional effort than what we’d mounted in our flights to Gallsop. Because of this, not only were we able to rescue ourselves and the troops in Hadley . All the while, I assisted all I could in administering nutrition to both myself and others, first aid, and, if nothing else, some psychological counseling- but, for the same reason I was not allowed to negotiate with the troops, I was not allowed to administer first aid to those whose conditions were “particularly acute” in that there was a small chance they would live for the next hour.
When I wasn’t doing this in the less than an hour it had taken for us to fly from Hadley to Gallsop-compared to the three hours it had taken for our city bushplane to fly from Springfield to Gallsop the first time-I was learning some sorts of elementary French that would echo forever and ever, in my mind, in the minds of everyone in both the United States and France that had eyes to see and ears to hear, in the minds of Dr. Gaster when he would resign from university to instead travel the world and advocate against genocide, in the minds of his future children-two sons and a daughter-who would carry on this vocation for them…
“Tuerie.
Auters.
And, above all,
Survivants.”
____
I need not include the initial details as to what I did when we landed in Gallsop besides telling you that I ran headlong into my mother’s arms, into Suzanne’s arms, into the arms of Dr. Gaster when I found that my father was, is, and forever would not be in the barn. Dr. Gaster took care of administering the massive burdens of having the loss of his second, and final, child. I, for one, ran headlong into the arms of my little brother.
Immediately afterwards, however, was a massive overthrow of almost every personal boundary I’d had, practically save for touching my private parts-the knowledge that we were the ones to cause the ceasefire, or at least were there around that time, caused the rest of the three hundred and thirty six members of the Gallsop barn to come rushing at me, to come rushing at Dr. Gaster, to come rushing towards the twenty or so surviving troops that the Airbus had rescued from Hadley. Immediately, I was pulled aside, and almost with reckless abandon, the monsters began asking at every home, searching for every town to provide what we could in terms of a feast. In the span of ten minutes, I’d had chicken, bacon, pork, eggs-every single type of meat imaginable. In the 11th century, when us monsters had been taken to the Western hemisphere, meat was reserved exclusively for feasts, and feast I did, if not out of nothing more and nothing less than pure hunger over these past days.
Only then did I notice that there was still a trace of my best friend’s blood coating the edges of my fingernails.
That wasn’t to say by any means, after the celebration, that we’d abandoned the Frenchmen and Frenchwomen, or that they’d abandoned us. In fact, they were there for us more than ever as the mayor of Gallsop came to the barn and, with all the respect demanded towards what would be the closest the village would ever come to seeing a foreign official, asked him to “convince the (monster) population to leave the barn so we could use it for our own purposes”.
None of the monsters complained. Yet none of the monsters rejoiced, either-I myself was pulled from the feast halfway. The French offered us their plane one more time, seeming to be incredulous at the fact that they could only muster one hundred and would have to take two flights more. I myself came to the mayor-along with my mother-and, from mayor to mayor, from mayor to mayor’s child, we secured the two flights without the help of the French when my mother and the mayor of Gallsop contacted Syracuse, the closest area with any sort of commercial-sized planes, and we reimbursed Syracuse to keep the operation under wraps, report that two less planes flew, and help them to submit reports that dictated the two planes they sent were “undergoing repairs”.
And so three flights flew at once.
Three flights to home, three flights to a land we once knew, three flights to a land we would never know again.
___
I suppose this is the point in the narrative where everyone in the audience-or virtually everyone in the audience-turns away. Whenever they acknowledge that a "happily ever after" has taken place, as annoyingly picturesque the notion is. And to an extent, I suppose they'd be correct. My mother and brothers had survived; moreover, Suzanne had survived, survived to mentor me on past college and beyond and to navigate me through all the sorts of adventures and excitement that had normally came with navigating relationships, even if they weren't romantic. And, most importantly for the audience, I survived. Survived to pursue the operation table to finally rid myself of that piece of meat that had given me such trouble, to pursue the admissions table for Barnard University, and to pursue the table for the homeschool coop, as this was ultimately the method that I would graduate high school.
So I suppose this is the point where I should tell the audience that I descended into my personal hell.
Even following my aspirations to study Psychology, my self-education on trauma, and what I believe to be a finely-tuned sense of intuition, that left me only marginally prepared (and that is a gross understatement) for my experiences with trauma. I don't believe anything could quite prepare me for the life I would experience around two weeks to a month following the flight home. (I should tell the audience that the bulleted list is for the purpose of readability and not out of apathy on my part):
-The rush of knives searing to the bottom of my stomach whenever I passed down the Gasters' house
-The unmistakable fracture-seizes in my neck whenever I would awaken, screaming, whether by a nightmare or whether only by my body's whims
-The hours of surges through my leg as I paced at least an hour a day throughout the hallways in pure agitation and feigned exercise
-The days without eating, having to drink a meal replacement in order to function throughout certain days, and the hours spent over the toilet attempting to keep in whatever meal replacement I could
-The sweeping of my father's jacket down the hallway, my bare feet sprinting to the end of the hallway, and realizing nothing was there
-The times my emotions would sear across my being like a seizure, and, before I'd come to my agonizingly sensitive senses, my brother would hold his arm crying after I'd apparently hit it
-A few minutes afterwards, the rolling up of my sleeve as I'd sharpened a pencil as much as was humanly possible and carving enough marks in my skin to where at times, I couldn't move my arm for an hour
-The weeks wherein I would talk with my friends perhaps once a week, then two weeks, then three weeks…in the darkest parts of that period, I didn't talk to a single one of my friends for a month
-The taste of the honey in the tea my mother offered me as she coaxed me out of a particular lengthy nightmare one night
-The scent of my mother's jacket as I loosed a voiceless scream and let flow my thankless tears
-My first therapist appointment
Perhaps the audience may misinterpret the latter as the big, monumental, defining moment of my life where I decided I would be a psychologist-after all, I've studied in MIT's psychology program since 2017, and that was a year after I was enrolled in Barnard College. But, as I've wanted to be a therapist since my mother took me along to my first session in 2004 after my father was first admitted to the hospital, this was not the case. This was nothing more and nothing less than an intervention.
Intervention or not, as we were monsters, my "therapist" was nothing more and nothing less than a man who looked no more than two or so years older than I was, and that I'd vaguely remembered seeing around the high school hallways in 2013.
By then, I'd sloughed my way past October and agonized my way through November. The first traces of winter were threatening to appear, and by then, I was almost halfway through my senior year. The male monster-Ollie-was one of the least involved therapists I've ever met, yet still by all means a competent one.
The reason why is he'd directed to me a question that needed to be directed to me in those months:
"So…what do you plan to do with your life now that you have it for your own, Anna?"
___

Chapter Text

Anna Etilcoise
Ms. Saerbsaech (Virtual)
Honors English 11-8
03 June 2016
Final Entry
Overall, I'd say as far as high school goes, these four years has been the time I’ve grown. The time I’ve grown from a girl to a woman-no, I even say from a boy, a counterfeit, sobbing little boy to the precious, confident woman that I am now. In short, just like everyone else, and no more than anyone else-I began freshman year as a child and left senior year an adult.
Now, I'd prefer not to drive headlong into the hellhole that was August through November, but December afterwards was the closest period of time that the school year ever felt relatively normal. So I suppose I will end from there.
As far as academic planning has gone, I'm still incredibly, incredibly gratified with the fact that Barnard College accepted me a month ago. As of now, I, Anna Etilcoise, have a slot of all of Barnard College's graduating class of 2020. Maybe then I'll pursue postgraduate school…even now, though, it still feels like too far of a dream to access now. Let me make it to 2020 first and see how my life plays out. I can still remember the words of the admissions officer as she offered me my letter of acceptance… “Make us proud, Anna, and you certainly won’t find life here the way you’ve found it to be at home thus far.” A bittersweet remark for the deepest and most underhanded of reasons. Perhaps I’ll take that as a harbinger for how my life may come about.
The first day of wandering throughout whatever here-and-theres pervaded the school hallways during my freshman year, I was in nothing more and nothing less than the sterility of peace. Peace that I did not the least to acknowledge, peace that required complacency and nothing more. The teachers and students were supposedly new, supposedly full of life. Mrs. Trodaerae, who was no more than twenty-five and teaching students no younger than ten years, a person whom most students would first identify as their older sister. She died in the genocide while walking out of a temp agency that had accepted her application. Mr. Laeghis, who was not quite thirty and had a daughter who was around our age. He died in the genocide while visiting her in Baystate Medical Center after a sports injury. Mr. Rugaedh, who, at the time of the genocide, was a year away from retirement. He’d died in the genocide after offering a student cupcakes who was being abused in their household after they came out as non-binary.
I need not delve into the lives of students, the lives of my friends simply because I cannot bring myself to do so at the moment. But I will tell you that Suzanne and I have been nothing less than thick as thieves so far-and, as she has helped me with my searches in college admissions just as equally as I have supported her throughout her decision to stay at home for a year and dedicate this time towards improving her discipline, making improvements in fighting her dyslexia, and taking on full-time work temporarily as a landscaper for, as proud as both she and I am to say the name, Weed Man Lawn Care. And I have reopened my heart to men lately-most recently, I’ve reconnected with a monster about two grades below me named Toby. He seems to like politics and pizza, same as I do (with the occasional eccentricity towards cats, videogames, livestreaming, and, mostly, all of the above). One part of myself says that I’ll never be friends with him the same way I was friends with Sans. Another part of myself says that all of us shared both life in our Mt. Ebott childhoods and our witnessed deaths in the past year-and I’d say that’s one hell of a good shot towards friendship in my book.
Yet while death has pervaded this last year, to surprise both myself and anyone who may be reading this, much of life has not consisted of this. Much of my senior year has consisted of putting my laptop on, saying hello to my classmates who have about a 90% chance of living in the same neighborhood as I do, and studying for perhaps six hours a day, not moving from the start of the first class until the thirty-minute long lunch break in the middle of the day and from the thirty-minute long lunch break until the last second of the last minute of class. Still, much of the time afterwards also consisted of staying on my computer yet more, spending about two or so hours finishing my homework. By the time all of this would be completed, my mother would have been home from work for two hours and romancing some sort of boyfriend or another…
Perhaps that is the meaning of life returning to normal-a romance. I do not mean by this to say I have suddenly “overcame” my asexuality, or that because I did not romance anyone during this time, never have, and never will, I have never experienced life. I say this to mean that life is a romance. Why else would one get up in the morning if not for a decent-or even full-hearted-love of something? Love of a person-romantic, familial, or platonic-or, if nothing else, love of one’s schooling or job, or a certain hobby or interest? Why else would one subject themselves to getting up early in the morning and having to resign themselves to broken coffee machines and facing crowded schedules and crowded highways and crowded tables where room is not always made ready for them? Why else would one be exposed to the various heartbreaks and heartaches of life, and, perhaps, the disillusionment that came from some sort of trauma or another, if the safer alternative was to keep their bodies in their beds-save for meals and the bathroom-and their hearts caged?
As I learn to devolve-or, more accurately, evolve-from survival mode, I realize that romancing life becomes more and more commonplace. My schooling-each day prior to my graduation, I came to appreciate the fact that, no matter how complicated the lessons were or how isolating it was for everyone to live in the same neighborhood, but to all be isolated from each other, I would no longer have to attend or experience the doldrums of public school, and never would I have to separate myself from my brother. My work-yes, you read right, I found gainful employment for myself. It took hours of searching, hours of my mother wondering why I could possibly need a job if we were relatively financially well-off, and an equal amount of hours of me showing my mother graphs upon statistics upon graphs as to why, compared to the rest of the population of Springfield, we weren’t. It took an unspeakable amount of romance, in addition, for me to appreciate the fact that, for thirty hours a week, I would no longer be in the prison of home or the prison of Springfield High School and instead be in the prison of Springfield Behavioral Health Network as a “general aide”. Except in this prison, gains were not only given, but expected, and based on one’s diligence and effort as opposed to one’s ethnicity. In this prison, the knowledge we were given in school was applied…and, for everyone who’s read this journal even to the smallest extent, I badly need this. And in this prison…it was here, not in the fiery forges of the genocide itself, that my decision to major in psychology was cemented.
How will I measure the years ahead of me, the years gifted to me by those who were sacrificed, both willing and unwilling? How will I measure the time perpetually alloted to me by humans, driven by nothing more and nothing less than political imbroiglios? Surely, I will measure them by this romance, but romance is not expected to be endured alone, regardless of presence or absence of actual romantic love…
As startingly beautiful as it is to say, I made new friends. Friends who, while not necessarily human living in the city-that, I believe, will take me at least another year to reconcile-fell under one of two categories; one, under the category of being a monster, and two, under the category of being marginalized in some way without having any standing in my personal life. For the first, that took a great deal of reflection into what intrapersonal relationships I’d been neglecting ever since the day I was born, and for the second, that took a great deal of reaching out beyond our local doldrums-to New York, to Connecticut, to New Hampshire, to Boston. And that, as well, took a great deal of loneliness-except during the summer breaks and spring breaks and weekends where we’d meet somewhere in the middle and spend the weekend at a retreat. And many of these friends I still keep beside me. And as callous as I thought it would be of me to say initially-I think Sans and Jackie are looking down on me right now, glad I moved on, found a Freddy and a Marcy for me to spend my time with instead.
Moreover, I learned to romance life in ways that I never imagined. Through a seminar in the city’s Academy of Music learning the harp, through the festivals where I found my newfound love for deep friend Oreos, through all of the Pride parades that my mother only responded with a “make sure you’re home in time for dinner, though” for. And perhaps that is the greatest romance of it all.
At times, I still ask myself which is better: if we’d stayed in the mountain-where my sense of self, my independence, everything that I even thought I’d held dear would rot and decay-or if I continue living here. Here, where my place in society, my dependence on my intrapersonal relationships with humans, and everything else that I know I hold dear will rot and decay.
But I recently made a discovery.
Our homeschool coop, after being cooped up over the next several months, made a trip in March to the area at the foot of the mountain to explore all that we’d been missing for these centuries. During that trip, my brother and I witnessed the foot of a tree, a tree that was quite unique from all the rest-the New Mexico locust tree, nowhere near native to the state of Massachusetts. On that tree, there was a locust tree flower which had failed to flourish, which had decayed.
And underneath that decay…as I gave a final glance at my brother, towards the neighborhood where my mother was, towards the sky where my father and my friends and so many I’d held dear were…as I gave a final look down towards the Earth below that had so chained us and the sky above so many above us were so rudely forced to dwell in…
…I found a brighter flower underneath.

Chapter Text

Had Sans been alive, he would have graduated from high school in 2016 and moved to New Hampshire to pursue physics at Dartmouth College.
He would have obtained his Associate's in 2018, his Bachelor's in 2020, and his Master’s in 2022, and is planning to pursue a Doctorate when he graduates in 2023.
He would have also begun seeing a therapist for his depression, trauma, and low self-esteem in 2017.
Today, he would have turned 25.

(My Song):
Had Papyrus been alive, he would have begun dating in 2017 with his first and only boyfriend, and would have married him in 2019. They would have been perfect together.

He would have learned to drive in 2016.

He would have graduated high school in 2019, and would have decided to move out with his then-boyfriend that year rather than pursue a postsecondary education. He would then proceed to discover his passion in sales pursue a career as a salesman for Culligan Co., and would proceed to become one of the best salesmen in the area.
In 2020, he and his husband would’ve adopted his first and only child-a 1-year-old human boy who’d been abused by his parents and had been taken in by the city. Papyrus and his husband would’ve been amazing parents, Sans (not to mention the three children Dr. Gaster and Fraeoda had from 2016-2019) would’ve been enveloped with pride at his nephew, and Dr. Gaster and Fraeoda would’ve been proud grandparents.

Today, Papyrus would have turned 22.

Anna's parents were both born in 1956. Anna's mother became the mayor of Snowdin in 1983. She had Anna in 1997 and Aaron in 2002. Upon her husband’s death in 2015, Anna’s mother-in a groundbreaking move that would unite the humans and the monsters in solidarity-married a human man named Gilbert Gross, changing Anna’s mother’s surname to Gross. While by this time, Anna had moved out and begun her college education, Aaron was only 15, and was raised by Gilbert until he, too, was ready to move out.
They became empty nesters in 2021.
They retired from their prospective positions that year.
Anna’s mother died in 2032 due to complications from old age, and Gilbert died soon afterward in 2037.

Anna’s brother survived the genocide. He was born in 2005, and was 10 when the genocide occurred. When Anna moved out in 2017 to begin college, he was 12, and was raised by his mother and Gilbert until he, too, was ready to move out.
As for his college education, he was inspired by the flights from Springfield and Gallsop and decided he wanted to pursue his Bachelor’s in Aerospace Engineering, leaving home in 2024 to begin his studies at Idaho State University, one of the few colleges that were willing to take him in due to his ethnicity as a monster. During that time, he met and married his wife, also a human named Sylvia Etilcoise, nee Chapman, although the both of them decided not to have children. Upon graduating from Idaho State University in 2027, he moved back to Massachusetts and began working for Bradley International Airport at Windsor, Connecticut in 2028. He later retired from his career as an aerospace engineer, repairing the airport’s various planes until 2070.
He began to show signs of dementia at the age of 77 in 2082, and began living in the nursing home at the age of 82 in 2087.
He died at the age of 87 in 2092 due to complications from old age.

Suzanne survived the genocide.
Upon surviving the genocide, she took her time to grieve, albeit wasn’t as disabled as many of the other monsters; both of her parents had survived the genocide, and she was an only child. She finished her high school education at home with her parents, and later moved out in 2017 to begin her college education after years of tutoring in order to improve her grades in high school education. She graduated in 2023, much to her parents’ and her own pride, with a Master’s in Computer Science from the University of Chicago, and continued to live in Chicago in order to pursue a new life away from her sense of entrapment and her trauma in Massachusetts. Happily enough, she found a career as a software analyst for Indeed-the very platform she used to look for jobs. She continued working there until her retirement in 2062.
As for her romantic life, she found a boyfriend the same species as her as soon as she moved to Chicago, although she would shun the prospect of marriage due to it feeling too limiting for her. She immediately became pregnant with twin daughters in 2017 after beginning her relationship with him, and had a son with him five years after meeting him in 2022.
She was diagnosed with dementia at the age of 78 in 2075, and had to move into her son’s home in 2080 when her symptoms became too debilitating for her to live independently.
She died at the age of 88 in 2085.

The Teachers:
Sans:
Mr. Moran was born in 1953, and did participate in the genocide slightly; however, after killing a few various monsters in the school, he found himself consumed with grief and instead stayed at home. His children would berate him for it, but he found that the experience of withdrawing from the genocide was freeing rather than limiting.
However, there is some evidence that his withdrawal from the genocide was used against him, as he suspiciously died in a car accident a year later in 2016.
The perpetrator was none other than a student of his who expressed explicit support for the genocide, but also claimed it was an accident.

Mrs. Bush was born in 1971. She did not participate in the genocide, and rather stayed in Springfield to assist the monsters in being evacuated from their homes to the airport, or otherwise in safe places in the outskirts of Springfield. She was never recognized for her efforts, but was given an award posthumously by Sans Jr. in honor of his older brother. She would continue her job as a twelfth-grade English teacher, however, retiring in 2036.
She died at the age of 84 in 2055.
Anna:
Ms. Sanchez was born in 1953. Out of all three, she was the one who participated least in the genocide, and advocated most for the monsters’ freedom. When she determined that conditions were unsafe for both her and the monsters, she assisted many, including Mrs. Bush, in helping the monsters escape to the airport, while she took herself and five or so monsters back to her family’s home in Mexico, where they could live a peaceful life.
Once the ordeal was over, she decided to go back to the United States, although the monsters became fluent in Spanish and decided to become Mexican citizens instead, where they were treated much better despite their relative high poverty.
Unable to reconcile her teaching job at Springfield Central High School, she changed schools and instead began teaching 12th grade English at St. Stanislaus School in Chicopee, MA, adjacent to Springfield. Within the school, she began normalizing the culture, reintroducing humans to Roman Catholicism and teaching them to tolerate the presence of monsters within their worship. She retired in 2018 three years later.
She was diagnosed with dementia in 2037 before having to move back to Mexico in 2042, where she was taken care of by not only her loving family, but the five monsters who had made lives for themselves in that country for the past thirty years.
She died at the age of 94 due to complications from her old age in 2047.

Mr. Cox was born in 1969. He participated slightly in the genocide, but eventually was so consumed with survivor’s guilt and grief from what he had done that he promptly moved himself and his then 6-year-old son out of the state of Massachusetts to live where he’d originally came from in the relatively rural area of Scituate, Massachusetts, which was, conveniently, only a 30-minute drive from the city of Boston. He landed a teaching job at Norwell Middle School, where he would continue to reach until the end of the 2010’s.
When that occurred, however, he took that time to ponder and to realize his complacency and his role in spurring on the genocide. He then used this notion to question all the other aspects of his life, and realized that he, in fact, did not want to be a teacher, but wanted to start his own business. And so he did so, resigning in 2020 and beginning to sell exclusively items needed for travel, such as luggage, travel items, and pocket size books-traveling was a passion of his. Business boomed, as the only other option for his clients at the time was to drive into the crowded downtown area of Boston. He passed on the torch of his business to his eager son in 2034, when his son was in his mid-twenties.
He lived the longest out of nearly all both the major and minor characters of the story, dying at the grand old age of 117 in 2086; however, dementia did set in during the early 2080’s.

Principal Miley was born in 1976. From then onto her death in 2064, she would do nothing remotely praiseworthy with her life save for retire three years prior to her required age at 62 in 2038 in order to spare the public of her blatant narcissism, sense of entitlement, and xenophobia.
During the time when the “Karen” stand-in would arise on the Internet, she would feel personally offended by the term.
Just before her death in 2064, when the government of the state of Massachusetts admitted that it had indeed perpetrated her genocide, her son would release one final video of her screaming, ranting, and overall being incredibly temperamental about the state’s decision.
It was her final public appearance.

Vice Principal Fresno was born in 1963. Unlike Principal Miley, he realized the complacency of his actions and simply went back to his home. This was a particularly trying time for him, as he knew he was ill with cancer since 2009, and questioned whether or not participating in the genocide was a mistake for him during his last decade of life. Due to him being in a sizeably rich portion of the upper-middle class, there were no repercussions against him. At the end of the genocide, he would simply go back to his role in the school, although any student from then on could clearly tell that his and Principal Miley’s working relationship was much more tense after 2015 than before.
Luckily, he would be rid of Principal Miley via his death in 2019 of his cancer, whereas she would continue to exert her reign of terror upon the school for nearly two more decades. Unhappily, however, Principal Miley did pay her respects during his funeral.
Principal Miley would experience strange symptoms in her home from then on, such as unexplainable cold spots, scents of chimichangas when there was no chimichangas, and a face of disappointment seeming to look at her from the corner of the room whenever she so much as thought of how much she enjoyed purging the monsters in 2015.
Occasionally, she would sometimes see random blue hoodies and red scarves popping up in various locations around her home as well. It was all in good fun.