Hometown - Chapter 1: Post-Mortem

Hometown – Chapter One: Post-Mortem

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	Susie woke up. She was lying down on a cold, hard floor. Susie rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand. How long was she asleep? Her eyes were heavy, and her mouth was parched. She took a deep breath, her lungs filling with dust and chilled air, as she pushed her body off the floor.

	Was… Was that a dream? She had no idea. Maybe she did something stupid and got blind drunk after Kris and her broke into Toriel’s “juice” cabinet. At this point she’d take that reality over the current one that was dangling over her head.

	Susie dusted off her clothes and she examined the room she had woken up in. Everything was covered in trash. It was near impossible for her to take a step without crushing a cigarette butt or food wrapper under her shoes.

	The room was dim, lit only by a few, flickering fluorescent lights. She was able to make out two couches on opposite ends of the room. Mountains of empty soda cans were piled on them. It looked like someone had a party here. Maybe she did get shitfaced with Kris.
Wait. She knew where this was. Susie recognized the famous baby-blue walls of the town’s little hospital. Everything seemed far more decayed than she remembered. There were yellow stains all over the walls, and there was a strong odour that permeated the entire room.

	There was a front desk where a big-toothed nurse would normally be. Hell, the piano Kris used to play was in one corner of the room, too. The wood on both were rotted and termite infested, however.

	Kris… Kris… Susie decided to give him a call and ask him what was going on. She searched her pockets for her phone, but then she noticed that she was wearing her Light World clothes. “Am I still in the normal world? I’m completely lost.”
Continuing to dig through her pockets, Susie’s eyes widened when her hands clutched onto something small and flat. “Oh, the paper!” she gasped, bringing it out into the open and unfolding it.

	It was a letter. It was written on scented paper and folded with care. “Dear Susie,” it began, “I’m coming to Hometown. It’s been a while since we’ve seen each other, and I’ve missed you terribly. I’m sorry for what I did, and I know it must have been hard for you and your father, but I want to make things better. I only want things to go back to how they used to be.”
Susie swallowed hard when she read the complimentary close: “Love, Mom.”

	Shocked, the dragon read through the message once more, and then again. She read it right, it was indeed from her mother, it even had her handwriting.

	Susie smiled, whispering “mom” under her breath. She hugged the letter close to her chest. Then she paused, her arms dropping to her sides. Susie’s lips quivered.

	“Mom…” she sobbed, crumpling the paper with her claw as tears began to form.

	Susie dried her face with her sleeve before looking around the room. It was time to find a way out and leave this place. She didn’t want to be here anymore.

	Glancing at where the entrance should be, Susie saw a set of automatic sliding doors whirring open and shut on a loop as they tried to close around the front half of an ambulance. Rusted chains had been bolted to the doorframe and onto the vehicle. There was no way she’d be able to leave through these doors.

	“Wow, this really fucking sucks. I think that’s the only way out of here.”

	Susie looked closer at the ambulance. Its days of driving patients around were over. It was missing a tire on the front-ride side, and its hood seemed to have been violently torn off as bits of it were still attached to the vehicle. It even looked like a giant boulder had crushed the back-half of the vehicle.

	There was also a fire axe lodged blade-deep inside the exposed engine.

	Susie approached the ambulance and grabbed the axe’s handle with both hands. With some elbow grease, she pulled it free, almost getting struck in the face when it flung backwards at her.

	Susie hefted the weapon in her hands. Its weight felt good to swing around.

	The monster turned around and walked to the other end of the room. The doors here led deeper into the building, which was the opposite of what she wanted. Considering the state of the front entrance, however, she figured she did not have much of a choice.

	She pressed her face against one of the windows on the doors. It was too dark on the other side to make anything out, so she pulled out her cheap, old cellphone. She flipped it open and looked at its screen. There was no signal, but the batteries were almost full.

	“Well,” Susie huffed, “there goes calling Kris for help, but at least I can use this as a flashlight.”

	She held the phone in one hand and the axe in the other as she used her body to push open the doors. She tried to open them slowly, to make the least amount of noise, but she was rewarded with a loud creak. Might as well have kicked the doors open, Susie thought.

	The moment she stepped into the room, the doors slammed shut behind her.

“AHH!” Susie grabbed her axe with both hands, awkwardly holding the handle and the phone with the same palm. She braced for something, someone, anything to come at her.

	The sound of an old generator being started echoed throughout the building. Ceiling lights turned on one by one in an orderly row, illuminating a massive hallway that seemed to stretch on forever. Just like the previous room, the hallway was stained-yellow by cigarette smoke and garbage littered the floor. What was unique about this room were the uncountable number of those that stretched the length of the hallway.

	Susie could barely make out the end of the room, but what her eyes saw made her heart sink into the pit of her stomach. Down the end of the hall was someone standing there and watching her. Even from this distance, and even with her eyes near-blinded from all the light, Susie could tell it was at least seven feet tall with long limbs. It was pale and featureless, too, like an unfinished marble sculpture.

	It stood there and watched. Susie had to do a double-take to make sure it wasn’t a statute. It was motionless, but the area around it shimmered, like its existence was distorting reality.

	Susie’s mind began to race. “Is this the same monster I saw earlier? Where am I really? Is this even Hometown anymore? The hospital was never this big. Can I talk to this monster? Am I going to need to use my axe on it? Am I going to die here?”

	Susie gripped her axe and kept it close to her chest. She was terrified, but the weight of her weapon brought her some assuring comfort. She walked down the hall and prayed that the Watcher would remain still.

	The monster did not budge. Susie let out a sigh of relief. She checked each door as she moved forward. Click. Click. Click. All of them were locked. These seemed to be patient rooms, and all the placards were blank so far. She really didn’t know what to do if she found an open room, but it’d be someplace away from the Watcher. Maybe she should just turn around and wait in the reception room for her hero like a good girl.

	Susie approached one more door. This room had a name, Susie. “Holiday,” she read aloud. “Like, Noelle Holiday?” She gripped the doorknob and twisted it, turning it all the way until she heard the latch open. Susie could barely contain a gasp of surprise and relief.

	Before she opened the door, a sudden thought popped into her mind. It was a bad idea, but her curiosity got the better of her. Susie took another peek at the Watcher. She was terrified that it was going to be standing inches from her instead of hundreds of feet away, but it was neither. The monster had disappeared entirely.

	“I think I’m going insane,” Susie said, shaking her head.

	Susie held the doorknob and gave it a sharp turn. The door swung open with relative ease compared to the double doors earlier.

	“Oh. Hello, Susie.”

	Noelle was sitting on a bed in the middle of the room. She was soothingly patting a large bump under the covers. Susie had expected to see Noelle in the room, but she was determined to defensively hold her axe in front of her body.

	“N-Noelle?” the dragon squeaked out, scanning the room and checking for traps or anything malicious. There were some flowers on a coffee table beside the bed, a lone chair in the corner, and the room was outright sterile compared to the others. Everything seemed mundane, aside from the Doe. Susie thought that Noelle looked… off.

	“Yeah, Susie?” The doe’s brows furrowed in worry. “You look a bit pale, are you sick?”

	Susie ran a hand across her face. “Yeah,” she said with grimace, looking down at her feet. “You could say that.”

	Noelle stroked the bump under the blankets again, humming to it in a motherly way. “Just keep a distance maybe. Dad’s already sick enough as it is.”

	The dragon lowered her guard, holding her axe now with only one hand. “Have you been outside this room? It’s like a mad house out there. I’ve been here for five minutes and I’m already about to collapse. I’m surprised there isn’t a single scratch on you!”

	“Why would I?” Noelle giggled. “Well, it’s not like I can keep up with anything when I’m in here all day.”

	For a moment there was dead silence in the room. Whatever Noelle was having, Susie wanted some of it. Maybe she could hide inside this room all day and wait for everything to blow over.

	Susie shivered. “Sheesh, it’s kind of cold in here, isn’t it?”

	“Oh, you feel it, too?” Noelle smiled, but her tired eyes betrayed her feelings, and her ears flattened against her head. “For me it’s always like this.”

	The dragon hugged her body. The metal blade of her axe felt so cold pressed up against her chest that she considered dropping it. She did not, of course. The weapon was a lot like a child’s stuffed animal to her.

	Noelle perked up again, smiling sincerely. “Did you bring Kris with you?”

	“Wh-What? You think I need Kris with me to visit a classmate and her sick dad?” Susie forced a laugh through all her shivering.

	“I actually do think that.”

	“What the f-fuck did you s-say to me?” Susie fumed, though her chattering teeth took most of the bite out of her words.

	Noelle giggled and stood up. She walked over to Susie, and even though Noelle was dwarfed by Susie’s height, the doe gave the dragon a condescending smirk. “You don’t have the right to be mad at me. You never do anything for anyone.”

	Susie considered decking Noelle right in the face for saying that, but the comment stunned her enough that Noelle simply moved around her without resistance. She really didn’t expect something like that from the sweet doe.

	“See you later, Susie.”

	“F-Fuck off.”

	The door slammed shut behind her, leaving Susie alone in the room with Noelle’s dad. Susie raised an eyebrow as she looked at the bed. Was he going to be alright in here? Susie was freezing her tits off, and she wasn’t even bed-ridden.

	Maybe she should check if he’s okay.

	Susie walked over to the side of the bed where Noelle was. She looked down at Mr. Holiday, or at least, the bump under the covers in the shape of the lean monster. The room was so cold that Susie could see her breath, but there were no signs of breathing coming from the other monster in the room.

	“Uhh… Th-This is kind of c-creepy,” Susie stammered. She grabbed the covers and pulled them aside.

	An empty bed greeted the young monster. There was not even a depression in the mattress that would have suggested someone was once on the bed. Susie looked around, looking at the flowers, at the chair off to the corner of the room, and then back to the bed. She did see a bump on it, right? She did see Noelle patting it, right?

	“I’m g-going fucking insane.”

	A faint glimmer on the bed caught her eye. Susie pulled the covers down even more and saw a key lying on the mattress. There was a piece of plastic attached to it that read: HOSPITAL MASTER KEY.

	Susie grabbed the key and stuffed it inside her coat. “I’m going to need this I bet,” she thought.

	Susie moved away from the bed and exited the room. The hallway was much shorter now. She looked to the left – Mr. Holiday’s room was beside only one other door. Susie couldn’t read the placard, and the door was boarded up and chained shut, making entry impossible.

	Susie gasped when she looked forward.

	The double doors leading into the reception room were blocked by a bloated corpse. He looked like he’d been a big and strong monster, but his stomach was swollen. Perhaps it was from the rotten gas, or maybe he had a beer belly when he was alive. His face had no features other than a large, stretched hole where his mouth should be.

	Susie gagged and choked on her own vomit as the stench reached her nostrils. “What… the fuck?” she swore, holding her jacket up to her face to block the foul odour.

	The body was standing, held up by chains attached to the door and its limbs. Susie would need to cut off at least one leg and one arm from one side of his body to open the doors. She thought about doing this for some time. She could try breaking into the other boarded-up room but getting through all the chains would take ages, and the chilling air from Mr. Holiday’s room was quickly seeping into the hallway.

	Susie wondered how Noelle got through here since she was nowhere in sight, but Susie reckoned either her mind or this world was playing a trick on her. Right now, the only thing that mattered to her was breaking out before she froze to death.

	“You’re dead anyway.” Susie took her axe and hefted it above her head. She prepared to strike the body’s right arm, hoping to sever it in one blow.

	The bloated corpse ripped right out of its chains and smacked Susie across the face. Her axe hurdle into one side of the room. The walking corpse grunted in a deep voice as it took one, slow step towards Susie, who had been knocked on her ass.

	“N-No! Stop!” Susie wailed miserably. She crawled to her axe on all fours like an animal, but the creature simply wrapped its pus-soaked, putrid arms around her stomach and picked her up. Susie kicked at the beast feebly, only for the wind to be knocked out of her when he slammed her against the cold, hard floor.

	The creature straddled Susie, using his weight to keep her against the ground. Susie kicked her legs to break free, but she couldn’t make the monster budge. She could only scream as she stared straight into the monster’s gaping maw, the dark hole slowly approaching her face.

	Susie’s right hand patted against the floor in a blind search for the axe. It had to be around here somewhere. Her fingers grazed the wooden handle, but in her frantic panicking she only pushed it away from her.

	“No, no, no, no!” Susie screamed. The creature had his mouth over one side of Susie’s face. The stench was horrible. His breath smelled like rotten fish, and Susie was worried that the smell alone would make her pass out.

	With a stroke of luck, while Susie was kicking at the monster, she managed to move the axe close enough that she could grab it. It’d be hard to do much damage with one hand, but it was all or nothing. Susie gripped the handle tightly and swung the weapon at the bloated monster.

	The blade sunk deep into the monster’s ribs, spewing black blood all over the ground and onto Susie. Groaning, the walking corpse fell backwards and stood up, giving Susie a chance to get back on her feet.

	Adrenaline was rushing through her body. Susie dashed to the creature and ripped the fire axe out of his side. She held the weapon with both hands this time and hefted the weapon above her head. With a shout, Susie struck the creature in the chest. She could hear bones shatter, and the monster groaned like a bull being slaughtered.

	She pulled out the blade again and swung the axe at his belly. The blade sunk into his stomach handle-deep, and black blood exploded from him. Susie released her grip on the axe in shock. The creature wailed and spewed bile all over the room before running into a corner and collapsing.

	Susie wanted her axe back, but before she could grab the weapon from the now-properly-dead corpse, the body began to dissolve. The dragon backed up as boiling-hot bile spilled all over the room. The body was deflating like a balloon and the black, tar-like substance looked like it was going to flood the entire hallway.

	“Yeah, fuck this,” Susie said as she bolted down the hall. She could smell the rubber on her shoes melting as she ran over the bile, but it was only a small price to pay for her freedom.

	Susie smashed her way through the now-unblocked double doors and back into the reception room. It was the same as before, garbage everywhere, but the front entrance looked different.

	“Yes! YES!”

	The automatic doors were normal again, there wasn’t a half-crushed ambulance blocking the way anymore.

	Susie almost broke her nose when she crashed into the doors. “No, what the fuck?” she shrieked. The doors remained closed. She could hear footsteps behind her. Sweat and tears were running down her cheeks. Either the walking corpse had more fight in it, or there was something else in the hospital.

	There was a small lock to the side of the automatic doors. Susie shoved her hand inside her pocket and pulled out the master key. “I almost forgot about this!” she exclaimed, jamming the key inside the slot and twisting it.

	There was a click, and the doors slid open. Susie did not hesitate for a moment. She ran out into the town, her feet taking her straight onto the street. Susie huffed and leaned over, hands on her knees. She needed to take a breather, and then she was going to leg it to Kris’ house.

	The dragon turned around before running away. Behind the glass doors, Noelle was standing inside the hospital and looking at her. Susie turned away. She didn’t care anymore. She needed to get out of here.

	Susie ran down the street. Fog surrounded her on all sides, but she ignored it. She was going to run back home and find Kris, and nothing was going to stop her.

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	Kris sat at the table, waiting for Susie to return from the bathroom. He was too afraid to get up and check on her since there was a monster watching him from across the room. So, he waited.

	It looked like a deformed demon with horns on its head, holes where its eyes should be, and a gaping mouth that seemed stuck on an expression of extreme sadness. Its long arms looked like it could wrap themselves around a large tree, and Kris was sure he’d never be able to outrun it.

	Kris decided it was best not to anger it.