#so you really made a great choice for who should represent a 'real' joey y'know?

[ask-joeydrewstudios]

@storm337 submitted: Let’s drop some ANGST on this CUDDLY BITCH!

Based on Joey’s reaction to finding out about the canon verse.

Other Joey based off yunisverse’s Joey design from their Rubberhose AU.

TW: Body horror, gore

“You….you actually did it!”

Joey takes a wobbly step back, bumping into the toons. He herds them against his back, barricading them from the form stepping out of the broken mirror on the other side of his desk. Black drips from the man’s grey bushy beard, as dark as the look in his wild green eyes. Desperation clings like the ink stains ground into his disheveled suit. His perfect white teeth shine, bordered by a smile that stretches painfully at his cheeks and puts Bendy’s grin to shame. Joey has never seen such wild hungry need before. This wasn’t supposed to happen. What did he do wrong?

“They’re perfect!” the man shouts, grabbing at his greasy hair and making a grand gesture to Joey’s children. He gets ink in the graying strands on the side of his head, sticking them out with his constant pulling. Bendy grips tighter onto Joey’s pant leg, tail snaking around his ankle. Boris presses into his back, paws hooked over Joey’s shoulders and muzzle just peeking out from behind his arm. Alice twists the edge of his vest in her hands, body trembling so badly her halo wobbles and drips. Joey is acutely aware of how trapped they are, blocked from the door by his own desk and the deranged man that will not stop advancing. He stalks towards them, an unstable and unpredictably jerky motion. The effort looks painful, like he’s ready to collapse at any moment and held up by nothing but his own twisted form of spite.

Someone will come. Sammy will storm in any minute now, covered in ink and screaming about another pipe bursting. Wally will sheepishly slide through the cracked door to ask if Joey has seen his keys. Henry will shuffle to his armchair for a nap after too many cups of coffee. Someone, anyone. Shawn, Norman, Grant, Thomas, Susie-

“Please,” his copy begs, stumbling the last foot forward and lunging to grab Joey’s vest. He yanks Joey forward, siding him on top of the desk and ripping him from the toons’ hands. Alice shrieks. Bendy’s tail stretches stubbornly before snapping back like a spring. A teacup shatters on the carpet, crushed by several books. At least one script is ruined by an inkwell tipping over. Joey can feel his body shaking, fear making his blood run cold. They are nose to nose and the envy emerald of the man’s eyes are hypnotizing - Joey can’t make himself look away.  An animalistic panic rises, freezing him like helpless prey in the sight of a predator.

“You have to tell me how you did it. I tried so hard, I did everything- I need to know!”

Joey can’t speak. There’s a lump in his throat, blocking his words, making it hard breathe, let alone speak. He is scared of this man, but his fear has nothing on the absolute terror radiating from the toons- his children. They need him, they need him to do something.

“Tell me,” the Other Joey hisses, fingers digging painfully into Joey’s chest. “Tell me, or I’ll find out myself.” His eyes slide past Joey’s, attention slipping to the toons. Alice makes a hiccuped sob noise and Boris whines loudly. Impossibly, Other Joey’s grin widens, teeth bared in a feral snarl - ready to feast, ready to consume and satiate his need. Reflected in his eyes is Bendy, wrapped around Boris’s leg and crying. He’ll start with the star. No one is coming, no one knows, and if Joey doesn’t do something- He would rather die than let this thing touch his kids.

The inkwell is just within reach, the glass slippery with ink and cold in Joey’s palm. He grips it hard enough to make his knuckles ache, praying that it won’t slip from his hand. The Other Joey begins to lean over him, looking ready to crawl across Joey to get at the toons, one black hand dripping ink outstretched towards Bendy. The little toon squeaks pitifully and Joey swings his arm up, slamming the inkwell as hard as he can against his copy’s temple. Glass shatters in a sparkling array, dancing through the air. Black ink explodes from his attacker’s temple like a burst pipe. A high-pitched inhuman screech escapes the Other Joey’s mouth, revealing pointed teeth and a forked tongue. He topples over, hitting the floor with a splat and dragging Joey down with him, knocking the glasses from his face.

“Run!” Joey screams, scrambling on top of his counterpart and putting all of his weight onto keeping the other man from getting up. The form below him begins to undulate, solidity failing as the body liquefies and shifts. “Go, get Henry!”

The toons bolt, Boris carrying Bendy as the little demon thrashes in his grip. Joey watches his children flee, black tears gushing from Bendy’s pie-cut eyes, his white gloved hands reaching out to Joey desperately. Alice hesitates in the doorway, reluctantly holding the knob.

“I love you,” Joey says, wondering if he’ll ever get to repeat himself again. “Keep them safe.”

Alice gives Joey a jerky nod before slamming the door shut with all her might. Over the pounding of his own heart Joey can hear their footsteps getting fainter until they completely disappear. Henry will protect them. Henry will get them out of here. Henry will fix this. He has to.

The Other Joey throws his head back and roars, the sound making the room shake with its defining vibrations. Joey’s heart skips in his chest and he scrambles back on instinct, his mind telling him to flee, to get as far away from this threat as possible. Shards of glass dig into his aching palms. Half of his double’s face has melted into ink with the consistency of molasses, dragging his eye and nose down into a malformed amalgamation. His grin has transformed, a much sharper version of Bendy’s stretched smile, the edges abnormally close to his dissolving ears. A gooey stub that was once a hand shoves Joey with enough force to send him flying across the room and crashing into the opposite wall. He can’t help but cry out on impact, his old body shrieking from the abuse.

Shadows swim across the office walls, long tendrils of black growing across the furniture and sucking the light from the room. Joey can’t hear anything over the beating of his own heart. He watches in horror as the Other Joey morphs, fingers reforming into hooked claws and arms stretching long enough that he drags his knuckles on the floor. His body elongates and thins, hunching over as the top of his spiked spine touches the ceiling. Horns, twirled and crooked, curl up to halo his head in a mockery of Bendy’s silhouette. One eye remains, glowing an unearthly red, the last reminder that the thing before Joey once resembled a human.

Joey knows how useless an endeavor this is, but the longer this monster is preoccupied with him, the farther the toons can get. Diving for the door requires speed that Joey lost decades ago. He doesn’t even get close to the knob. Retaliation is expected but the massive hand pinning him to the ground and bruising his ribs is still startling. Even more so are the fingers that curl around him, lifting him into the air and squeezing just to hear him scream The last shreds of Joey’s strength evaporate and he goes limp, gasping and wheezing. The world goes fuzzy and nausea flips Joey’s weak stomach.

“I will find them,” the Other Joey hisses, forked tongue writhing like a snake. His breath smells of rubber ink and death. “They will be mine.”

He drags Joey in eye-to-eye again, then impossibly closer, the red too bright, burning, then all consuming. For a moment there is nothing but red until shadows, getting darker and more defined, creep from the ether. Forms take shape, people, and the red dims. A scene emerges, walls erecting, boards aligning, ink pumping. A man writhes helplessly in a demonic circle, trying and failing to escape the ink that clings stubbornly to his body. It climbs him, drowns him, seeps inside of him, and turns him. This is Sammy Lawrence, something tells Joey, another version of Sammy Lawrence. Time skips and speeds forwards, decades gone in seconds, and Joey watches the madness descend. The Other Sammy tries to hold on, but all too soon he loses his mind, loses himself, and the descent is as fast as it is brutal.  A shadow of the former music director wanders the halls, humming senseless tunes, praising the creature that destroyed him. So desperate for release he follows the whims of the demon, an obedient pet with none of the love.

The world shudders and reforms itself, swirling like watercolor paints mixing together. The Other Susie walks willingly into the circle, coaxed by the Other Joey’s sweet words and tantalizing promises. Her shrieks are shrill and demented, betrayed. The version of Alice that forms from her is broken like her trust and wails in deformed agony. Its misery does not last long, unable to sustain its form it puddles and disappears. When it emerges again, Joey sees near perfection and feels nothing but pity for the girl who still, somewhere deep inside of her, remembers who she was. She hides, and Joey wonders what horrors hide with her.

Another jerk, a spin, the click of a projector rewinding before it stutters into motion. The Other Norman almost gets away. He makes it to the exit, fingers just grazing the door, before the Searchers catch him and drag him away, kicking and screaming, begging to return to his family. The Other Joey stands over him, projector held high above his head, and makes sure the Other Norman is watching when he drops it. The way the body jerks and the crunching splat sound bounces off the walls makes Joey want to hurl. The ink claims the Other Norman as a sacrifice, twisting and reanimating his mangled remains until a mindless monster emerges from the mess. Its unrestrained rage is as untamable as the deep sorrow it feels, grasping for the pieces of its former life. The Other Joey releases it into level 14, left to wander and search for the people it loved, that it knows it loves, but can’t remember.

Red overwhelms again and Joey furiously blinks the tears from his eyes as reality reshapes itself. He is back in his own world, in his office, sobbing in the tight grip of an abomination, but the demented universe of his copy continues to flash behind his eyes. The cries of the studio employees play in his head, over and over. The Other Sammy’s twisted singing, the Other Susie’s sharp screams, the Other Norman’s head cracking open. The Other Henry, an old man like Joey himself, tentatively hopeful and walking right into a death trap.

Joey knows what happened. He knows this version of himself, the real version of himself, intimately. He knows this monster’s struggles, his strife, his desires, and what he did to all who cared about him. This was him, more Joey Drew than Joey was apparently, and the guilt drops like a stone into Joey’s stomach. Him, his studio, his employees, his world, are a diversion of the norm. The Other Joey- the Real Joey is what is right, is the true destiny for the man that is Joey Drew in any universe. It is a sickening realization, one that leaves Joey numb to his core. He knows, logically, that he is not this thing, but at the same time he is. They are Joey Drew, and Joey Drew is supposed to be a mad, demented, selfish animator that will do anything to make his sick, twisted dreams come true. 

“How dare you,” Joey hisses, narrowing his sore blurry eyes. The Other Joey manages to look taken aback at his fiery statement, grip loosens ever so slightly. It is just enough for Joey to take a painful but refreshing breath, fuel the flames, and let it spill from his heart. The red that overwhelms him this time is all his own.

“How dare you do that to them. How dare you use them like that. They cared about the studio, about the cartoons, about everything! They were loyal to your dream and you-you-you killed them! You deserved to fail. You deserve this.”

The creature that was the Other Joey Drew hisses and looms over Joey, opening its sharp maw and unleashing a torrential shower of ink. It coats him, clinging and slithering over his skin, devouring and absorbing him. There is nothing but the dark and the cold of the all consuming ink.

Joey fears for his children. He fears for his employees, his studio, for himself, but not for his life. No, Joey knows where and when he will die and it is not here and it is not now. This creature will not kill him. It has done worse already by revealing the truth. Joey knows it will make him hurt, it will make him cry, it will make him bleed. It will try to break him, just like it broke the Other Sammy, the Other Susie, the Other Norman. It will try to corrupt him, to turn him, to destroy him, and Joey knows he must do everything in his power to fight back.

No one is coming.

((HOLY FUCK this was spectacularly written, like… jebus. i was literally on the edge of my seat, the tension was so real you could cut it with a knife. the descriptions of The Other World and joey’s reaction to it all– and the way the Other Joey is written is so terrifying I was actually spooked from my desk even though it’s just a fanfic. and that ending… god damn :’D well done, and thank you so much for the fic!! <3))