A Tale of Rust and Flesh ~ Part 4

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	As Susie approached the front door to the waste disposal building, she couldn't help but notice a trail of blood originating from the door on her right and leading out onto the gravel below. It wasn't thick or dark like the blood coating the bent part of her crowbar. It looked as if it came from a healthy human. The dragon girl's eyebrows scrunched down when she realized that this blood might belong to Kris. Susie hoped that this blood wasn't his, and couldn't stand the thought of Kris being hurt when she potentially could have helped him.

	"If I didn't take so fucking long then this wouldn't have happened. I have to stop being such a fuckup for more than five seconds... Shit, please be okay, Kris." Susie spoke aloud before stepping inside. At the end of the hallway, there was another wooden door left slightly ajar. The floor was a filthy, molded, bloodstained hardwood floor.

	The walls were rotten and had sickly green wallpaper peeling off of it. There was an awful stench on the air that smelled like a combination of rotting flowers and... rotting meat. The trail of blood lead into the slightly opened door on the right.

	A pang of fear and dread hit Susie as she realized the implications of this. Humans didn't turn to dust when they died. Their bodies still stayed intact, but they rotted away just like rotten cow meat Susie has seen lying in an ally way before, but worse. All that was left behind of a fully rotten human was a skeleton, and even skeletons eventually crumbled away into nothing. The very thought of this unnerved Susie immensely.

	"No, he couldn't be dead. It had to be something else." Susie thought. "The only way to find out would be to... to... open the door..." The teenaged dragon stared at the door, then at the blood, then at the door again. Susie approached and tried to pick her arm up to push it open, but she couldn't commit. Her hand just froze in place. If the draconic monster had blood, it would be furiously pumping throughout her entire body as Susie was deathly afraid that she would see Kris' dead, decaying corpse lying on the floor if she dared to push her hand forward.

	The dragon girl felt sick to her stomach as she came to the conclusion that if she thought about this for any longer, she might puke up the little food she might still have inside of her. The still silence didn't provide much comfort to the monster girl, so the only thing to encourage her to open the door was herself. And yet, that same hesitation and dread she felt behind those rusted doors and in her 'room' paralyzed her.

	Susie stayed completely still, her instincts refusing to let her push the door open. She didn't want to believe that he was dead. He couldn't be. The smell had to be something else. He had to be alive, he HAD to be. "Come on, Susie, you told yourself to stop being a jackass! Just... push the door open. Come on! PUSH THE FUCKING DOOR OPEN YOU FUCKING PUSSY."

SLAM

	Susie punched the door open, causing it to collide with the wall with a thud. The sweet, rotten stench hit Susie hard enough to cause her eyes to water. A large pile of bagged up, rotten flowers sat in the middle of the room, leaking a strange black liquid that seeped into the floorboards. It rhythmically pulsated in her presence, which caused the plastic bags to begin crinkling. "Uurgh, that's fucking nasty. The fuck is this shit?" Susie spat at the moist, rotten mess.

	"...You know what? I don't care, I'm just gonna fucking lea-" *splash*

	Susie looked down only to cover her mouth in a mixture of disgust, disbelief, and horror as she realized what she just stepped in. There was a puddle of dark, thick blood pooled around a mass of mulched flesh that was barely hanging onto a lower jaw connected to a sickly yellow body. The pool of blood had spread as far as the corpse's calloused feet. The floor and walls next to it were absolutely drenched and spattered with the blood, and there was a small black flower growing out of the pile of flesh, oozing the same black liquid seeping out of the disgusting pile of plastic and rot to the left.

	"No... No, no, NO NO NO!"

	There was a large amount of blood smearing the walls and pooling together on the floor, along with an entire dead body and Susie somehow managed to not see any of it until this very moment. As Susie examined the dead creature on the ground with tears almost forming in her eyes, something inside of her head clicked. "This isn't Kris."

	There was no sign of any genitalia on the creature. There was no stump, scar, stitches, anything to indicate that there was anything down there at any point. Susie was sure that Kris had a penis. She had never seen it for very obvious reasons, but he was a male human, and male humans had penises, or so she heard. Plus, the proportions on the dead body didn't match Kris' body proportions in the slightest, along with many other inaccuracies. The hands were too big, the limbs were too long, the jaw was too wide, the teeth were too sharp, and it just overall didn't look like him. Plus, she had never heard of flowers growing out of dead human heads before.

	Susie was relieved at this realization, but she was still quite shaken by seeing such a horrific mess. She had never seen a dead body before, let alone one as gross as this one was. There was so much blood, and it was all over the walls. She even accidentally stepped in it. The teeth on the creature's jaw caught Susie's eye, though. They were dangerously sharp. Upon closer examination, there were pieces of some sort of red meat caught between them. The meat wasn't nearly as dark as the meat that used to be the creature's head.

	Susie attempted to examine the teeth further, but she realized that the combination of the gruesome sight in front of her combined with the smell was making her queasy. Susie walked back into the hallway before she closed the door behind her. The dragon girl almost turned right to immediately follow the blood trail, but the noticed the doors to her front and to her left. "If things were so quiet, and that human thing in the other room was dead, was there actually any danger here?"

	Susie gripped her crowbar tight and kicked the door in front of her open. The room in front of her was completely barren except for several broken off pipes originating from the walls, a pile of blackish brown sludge in the corner, a table, four chairs surrounding the table, several shot-glasses on the table, and a dusty inanimate human skeleton sitting in one of the chairs holding two objects in its death grip. There was a crumpled up box sitting at the skeleton's feet under the table. The walls, floor, and ceiling were completely concrete, but the wall to the left appeared to be smeared with the sludge in the corner. There was a surprising lack of graffiti anywhere in the room.

	After Susie grimaced at the brown smears on the wall, she decided to investigate what the skeleton was holding. Stepping around the table to get a closer look, Susie found the pile of bones to be holding a surprisingly clean white t-shirt in one hand, and an unopened bottle of some form of alcohol in the other. Susie greedily, but carefully removed the bottle from the skeleton's fingers and used one of her claws as an impromptu corkscrew. After Susie flung the cork off of her claw, she lifted it up to her nose to take a good whiff.

	There was no doubt about it, it was liquor. The strong, expensive liquor at that. With a grin, Susie brought the bottle up to her face and chugged a good gulp down before quickly yanking it back down to have a coughing fit. She wasn't very used to such a choking burn, but soon enough, the effects would start kicking in. This was some REALLY strong, grade A stuff. She didn't know how or why monsters were able to get drunk on alcohol considering the lack of blood and how alcohol was supposed to work with humans, but she never questioned it. She just needed a good swig to calm her nerves a bit.

	Susie set the bottle down onto the table and squatted down to reach the box. After setting it next to the liquor, the draconic monster opened the box to see what was inside. It was several small spools of thread along with a shiny silver needle. Susie almost discarded the box due to not having any interest in girly shit like sewing, but her thoughts turned to the possibility of ripping her jacket. She could sew it back together if that... ever...

	That's when it hit her. The blood possibly belonging to Kris, the alcohol... The t-shirt... The sewing kit right in front of her... How could she be so stupid? Susie only just now realized something she actually managed to retain from one of Alphys' classes. It was something about human biology. Kris was the only human in town, and it was important to know about the human body in case he ever got hurt or sick. Or, perhaps, if a human arrived in town and got stranded due to running out of gas or something, or if some injured human came stumbling in after getting into an accident.

	One thing she remembered was that human wounds can get infected if left untreated, and that alcohol can sterilize a human wound, such as whiskey or liquor if in a survival situation. Ideally, a proper anti-bacterial agent would be better, but sometimes you just had to use what was currently on hand. Susie also remembered that the only reason she payed any attention was because she was worryingly 'interested' in alcohol.

	If Kris got seriously hurt, she could use the liquor to sterilize the wound, use the sewing kit to stitch him up, and then wrap the t-shirt around the wound to stop the bleeding. For once in a very long time, Susie almost felt proud of herself for figuring this out, but that feeling of pride was quickly consumed by the remorse of not figuring it out sooner.

	There was still plenty of booze still left in the bottle. Susie decided to choke down another much smaller swig before grabbing the cork that thankfully had not made contact with the disgusting brown sludge and used it to re-close the bottle. The soon-to-be-buzzed Susie slipped it into her jacket, did her best to make sure that it wouldn't fall out and break on the floor, rudely ripped the t-shirt out of the skeleton's other hand to clumsily stuff it in her pocket, and pocketed a few spools of thread along with the needle.

	Susie exited the room and turned to the left to explore the last part of the building before following the trail of blood. Susie pulled the door open only to find that there was just a shitty little birdcage sitting in the corner along with several small piles of plastic junk and garbage. With nothing left to see in this room, Susie promptly leaves.

	The dragon girl to followed the trail of blood and occasionally looked up to see where she was going. The sky was still a dull gray due to the overwhelming amount of clouds smothering the sky, but there was still plenty of light to see things clearly. It actually reminded her of how the sky looked in Hometown before she busted those doors open.

	Susie followed the blood trail up to a single train track, which was odd considering that train yards usually have train tracks bunched up next to each other, but it wasn't like things were making much sense today anyway. The blood seemed to be dripped onto the metal tracks, which made following it all the easier due to how it glistened in the dull light. There was a train in the distance that Susie could see over the horizon, which was the most likely place that the blood led to.

	Without much else to do other than to keep walking, the gears in her head began to turn as she got lost in thought.

	"What the fuck was that thing? It looked human, but something was wrong with it... other than the fact that it had its head caved in, anyway... Fuck, I hope this blood doesn't belong to Kris... Or... if it DID, that means that I would find him. If it DIDN'T... Okay, maybe it might be better if the blood belonged to him. Wait, no, if I didn't fuck around waiting for dad to come in and kick my ass like a fucking pussy, then Kris might not have gotten hurt at all! God damn it, I'm such a fucking idiot."

	Susie's thoughts grew more and more self deprecating as the alcohol began to kick in.

	"If I didn't find this stupid crowbar and break those stupid doors open, we'd still be in Hometown, and I WOULDN'T HAVE TO WORRY SO DAMN MUCH ABOUT IF KRIS WAS OKAY. I always do stupid shit like this. This is why everyone hates me. I'm a massive fuckup who always ends up getting SOMEONE hurt, and THIS TIME, that SOMEONE was my only fucking friend. He probably hates me. I don't blame him."

	Tears began forming in Susie's eyes as she kept walking.

	"...Why does he even act like he likes me? I hurt him several times and he acted like it's nothing. He's so fucking weird... I treated him like shit and he just became friends with me, and STAYED friends for these last two months while putting up with all of my bullshit. Why the fuck does he do shit like that? Does he see something in me? Does he know something that I don't? I know he didn't have any friends other than Noelle, but why me?"

	Susie wiped the tears away from her eyes as she noticed the slightest wobble in her footsteps.

	"...I shouldn't be drinking at a time like this. Okay, I'm not in my right state of mind right now, so I gotta stop with the self hating shit for a bit. God, I can't stop complaining about myself for more than five seconds. It's all I fucking do... WAIT, I'M STILL FUCKING DOING IT."

	Susie swung the crowbar in anger and tried to quell the thoughts swarming in her mind. She needed to focus on following the trail and finding Kris. The train as getting closer, yet closer with every single crunchy footstep. The blood trail was beginning to thin out at this point, but it looked like the train might lead her to Kris. Susie stopped when she heard yelling echoing in the distance behind the train.

	The voice was strangely familiar to her. "...Was that Kris!?" Susie yelled aloud. Without another thought, Susie bolted towards the train. She could always come back to the tracks to track the blood again if the yelling wasn't from Kris. Dirt and pebbles were flung high into the air behind the dragon as she began to pant from the intensity of the full sprint she was in.

	Then Susie heard the voice again, except more clearly. It was much more familiar this time, and it almost sounded like it was calling her name. Susie managed to somehow sprint just slightly faster. She would be at the train in a mere 20 seconds at this rate.

	"SUUSIIIEEEE..."

	It was Kris' voice. She heard it loud and clear. However, it was weak and strained. The tone of his voice was harsh and desperate, almost as if he was crying. Susie slowed down as she approached the train and ran around to the front of it to get to the other side.

	"SUU- *cough* S-Suusiieee... Where... haaa.... where are you...?"

	The despair and sadness in his voice broke Susie's heart into pieces. She stopped and completely froze just as she turned the corner. It was Kris. His left arm from his wrist up to his elbow was completely shredded. Blood was still dripping from his fingertips. Kris had taken his apparently filthy sweater and tied it around his arm to slow the bleeding. His face was covered in dirt, small bits of rotten flower ooze, dark red blood, several cuts and gashes, and tears. The knife he was loosely carrying, his right arm, bits of his hair, his pants, and his neck were caked with dark dried blood from the yellow creature. He was stumbling and almost tripping over himself with every step, constantly wobbling back and forth as she struggled to keep his balance. His skin was quite pale, but his arm was even paler. Kris' eyes were tired and bloodshot, with dark bags forming underneath. He seemed to be out of breath.

	"S-Suusiiieee......"
	"KRIS!"

	The injured human jerked his head up to see a blurry, teary-eyed dragon carrying a dark red tipped crowbar approaching him. The knife fell out of Kris' hands with a clatter as he wobbled back and forth, not believing what he thought he was seeing. Kris rationalized it to be a hallucination, but she looked so real, even if he couldn't fully make her facial features out very well. "Susie...?"
	"Kris, wha- WHAT HAPPENED TO YOU?"
	Kris looked down to examine his mutilated arm. "...S-something... something bit me, Susie..." Kris heavily stuttered and was barely able to string together his words.
	"..." Susie couldn't take her eyes off of Kris' arm. Bits of skin were easily moved around by a stiff breeze, and she could clearly see the red muscle underneath.
	"A-are you okay, Susie?"
	"Wh-why are you asking ME if I'm okay!? Look at your arm!"
	"..."
	"L-look, I got stuff for your arm, just gimme a sec." Susie dropped the crowbar to the ground and shakily pulled the bottle of liquor out. Without any further instruction, Kris sat down and leaned against the cold metal of the train. Kris' posture was weak and slumped as if all of his energy had been drained from him.

	Susie popped the cork out of the bottle and carefully held Kris' arm up. "Uh... this might hurt."
	"..."
	Just as Susie began pouring the liquor onto Kris' arm, he instinctively let out a mix between a grunt and a scream, clenching his left hand and digging the other into the gravel. "Shit! Fuck, I'm sorry, did I hurt you!? God damn it I didn't mean t-" Susie's apologetic sputters were interrupted as Kris clumsily snatched the bottle away from Susie. "J-just let me do it..."
	"U-uh..." Kris continued to pour the liquor onto his arm, clenching his teeth and grunting with pain.

	The sting of the alcohol making contact with his flesh was unbearable, but Kris managed to coat his entire arm with the sanitizing liquid before setting it down. "...You alright?"
	Through gritting teeth and a panting breath, Kris managed to choke out an answer. "Yep... Ne-... Never better..." The concerned dragon remembered the needle and threads in her pocket and hastily pulled them out. Susie couldn't help but hesitate once she held the needle in her hand. "...Kris... Uh... You should probably drink some of that right there." A single claw pointed at the glass bottle. "Your arm is... it's really bad, dude, I think we'll need to... uh... It's gonna fucking hurt, Kris."

	With a shaky hand, Kris obliged Susie as he brought the bottle up to his lips. The most he's ever drank before this point was a bit of stolen wine from the old church, but he has never gotten a hold of anything stronger. With a single large gulp, Kris ended up being caught in a coughing fit as he wheezed between each cough. The burn of the alcohol running down his throat and pooling into one spot in his stomach was a strange feeling, but it was oddly comforting.

	Susie watched Kris hesitate before taking another mouthful, barely managing to choke it down before coughing again. "Okay, I think that's enough. Y-you're gonna feel reeaaally good in a minute." Susie took the bottle, re-corked it, and stuffed it back into her jacket. "...W-what was that stuff, Susie?"
	"Liquor. It's really strong shit. Y-you're uh... kind of a lightweight, I can tell."
	"Heh... y-yeah..."
	"...So... Just... Lemme know when you want to... uh..." Kris' attention managed to find its way to the small, shiny object in Susie's hand and grimaced at the thought of a needle going through his already agonized arm. It looked like she had already stuck the thread through the small hole at the end of it.
	"Let's just do it now." Kris wanted to go ahead and get this over with. The sooner get got patched up, the better.
	"Y-you sure, Kris? It takes a minute or two before you start to feel d-drunk..."
	"L-let's... let's just... g-get it o-over with..."

	Susie hesitated for a few brief moments, but she worked up the courage to walk over to Kris and squat down to his level. She was still somewhat intoxicated, but she knew that Kris wouldn't be able to go through with it. With one hand, the dragon girl gently grabbed Kris' wrist and held it up.

	With her other hand, Susie carefully pushed and pulled the skin into place, earning several pained gasps and grunts from Kris. With his free hand, Kris pulled the t-shirt hanging out of Susie's pocket, twisted it up, and stuck it into his mouth. He had a feeling this would be absolute hell, and he didn't want to accidentally chew his tongue off.

	With Kris' skin put in place, Susie stuck the needle into Kris' arm. Kris clenched his eyes and bit down on the shirt as Susie's needle found the other piece of skin and pierced it. The feeling of a thread moving through his flesh was extremely uncomfortable. The draconic monster's breathing quickened as she prepared to stick the needle in again. Another set of searing pricks in his arm and more uncomfortable thread caused Kris to whimper.

	"You doing okay?" Kris responded with several quick nods as he briefly made eye contact with Susie. The needle entered his flesh again, and again, and again. It was a horrible feeling, but it was nothing like what he had felt when the creature ripped his arm apart in the first place. Kris could feel his severed pieces of skin tightening with every pull, and his teeth hurt from biting as hard as he did.

	Susie did everything in her power to not have a nervous breakdown. Blood had started to stain her hands, and the sounds of agony coming from Kris almost drove her to tears. Every single push of the needle needed to be slow and deliberate lest she mess up and make things worse. Eventually, Susie tied the last bits of skin together and made sure that they were tightly bound by the thread with a long pull.

	Kris was extremely dizzy from the combination of severe pain and blood loss. The t-shirt fell out of his mouth as he felt his world going dark. His eyelids grew extremely heavy. Before he blacked out, he felt a large hand slap him awake before he was being jerked and shook around like a ragdoll. With a yelp, Kris opened his eyes to see Susie crouching over him, hands on his shoulders. "Come on, Kris, stay with me!"

	"..I-is... is it..."
	"Yeah, i-it's over. Look."

	Kris' arm seemed to be stable as the skin was held tight by a wet thread in his arm. His flesh no longer flapped around in the wind. Before Kris could say anything else, Susie began to carefully rip the t-shirt until it was one long piece of cloth. Susie helped Kris untie the filthy sweater from his arm and started to wrap the crude, makeshift bandage around it.

	Once the cloth was tight and secure on his arm, Susie used the needle and thread to hold it together. Moisture from the blood and liquor would only keep that cloth on him for so long. Kris began to feel... different. He knew what the feeling was, but it was much more intense than he was used to. He was starting to become drunk and he knew it. It slowly started to become easier and easier to ignore the pain in his arm.

	"...Thank you." Kris said before leaning his head back against the train, panting heavily. The dragon girl sat next to the drained human to his right. "Kris... I... God damn it, I'm sorry, none of this wouldn't have happened if I wasn't so fucking stupid..."
	"...What? What are you talking about?"
	"Kris, I... I woke up in... i-in my r-room, and... it.. it wasn't ACTUALLY my room, and I was locked in there and I was scared, and..."

	Susie's voice began to break and quiver with every word. "I... I was too slow. I was a fucking coward and I waited too long to break the door down and now... I-I s-saw t-the... the yellow t-thing a-and all t-that b-b-blood and..."

	Susie began to shake and shudder as tears rolled down her cheeks. "I-I c-c-could have helped you. I-I w-w-w-was a f-fucking coward, Kris, I-I-I'm s-so sorry, I could h-have... I-I'm the reason we're even here! I got t-this s-s-stupid f-fucking c-c-crowbar a-and... I... I f-f-f-f-f-fucked u-..."

	Susie stopped when she felt Kris weakly wrap his arm around her waist and pull her shuddering body into his. "It's not your fault..."
	"Y-yes it is..." Susie pulled her hands up to her face to cover her eyes, not caring that her hands still had blood on them. Susie began to sniffle. "I should have just-"
	"It's not your fault." Kris said again, sternly this time. Kris hugged her tighter. "If I had said no, then you might have been out here all by yourself..."
	"T-t-that w-would h-have been b-better... A-a-at l-least y-you w-wou-wouldn't ha-have g-go-gotten hu-hurt..."
	"......You wouldn't have gone without me, Susie, I know you well enough to know that..."
	"...*hic* Y-yeah... Y-y-you're r-right..."

	The two practically shellshocked teenagers shared several moments of silence together as Susie decided to return Kris' hug, much to his drunken delight. He rarely willingly hugged anyone, but the warmth of his friend next to him was very comforting. At this point, Kris almost completely forgot the pain in his patched up arm due to a mixture of shock and inebriation.

	Eventually, Susie began to calm down and wiped the tears out of her eyes. He wasn't even mad at her for everything that's happened so far. He seemed like he was so happy to see her, even when she ranted about how it was all her fault that he got hurt. A smile almost crept up onto her snout before Kris asked Susie a question.

	"...Hey, Susie?"
	"*sniff* Y-yeah?"
	"...Do you think... we'd be able to get this train working? You wanna... You wanna maybe go for a ride?"

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