From Murder to Dust

4 - Hunger

"T-time?" I asked. I didn't know why I bothered at this point.

"Are you sure you want to know?" Papyrus questioned, recieving a rather shaky nod. In fact, my whole body was shaking. "Very well. One decade, one year, eight months, two weeks, five days, ten hours, thirty-seven minutes, and twenty-one seconds."

I was lying on my bedroom floor in silence, trying not to shiver as badly as I had been recently. A bad side effect of losing magic, I guess. We ran out of food a while ago, and the magic I had was the rest of it; There was no more. The condition also came with stuttering, which made me in turn try to speak less. Papyrus worried about me; I didn't know why: I mean, I killed him, didn't I? Did I care that he may have been suffering just as much if not more than I was now?

"Brother, how do you feel?" Papyrus doted.

"N-not g-g-good." I slowly replied.

"Does it hurt?"

I nodded. It hurt worse than every time I'd dusted, every ounce of pain I've ever felt, and so much more wrapped into one package. The worst part is, it wasn't even centralized; it coursed through my body, and it got worse every tormented second. I might have been whimpering, but my thoughts covered any sounds from outside; I tried my best to listen to what Papyrus said, but I wasn't doing a very good job. People said loud sounds make it hard to think; if that's true, loud thoughts make it hard to do anything. I wasn't scared, no matter what I must have looked like. I deserved everything that happened to me; I must have done worse to others. I wasn't complaining about anything, and no matter how bad it got, I never would. 

"Brother! Snap out of it!" Papyrus ordered.

I coughed and looked at him.

"Brother, we will get through this together, but I need you to stay with me!" Papyrus pleaded.

"I'm-m t-tryi-ing.." I managed to say.

"Try to focus on something, anything!"

"Y-you're th-the b-best, P-Paps."

"Brother, perhaps you should sleep. You can save more energy and magic that way!"

"Ok-kay....P-Papyr-rus.."

I shut my eyesockets and descended into another nightmare. If I had to use magic to get dreams at night, I would have stopped a long time ago. I was feeling the pain even in the dream, and it wasn't the best feeling; in fact, it might have made it hurt worse. I dreamed about dust, just like every other time I slept. Dust that just floated around, doing nothing but torturing me with its existence; I couldn't complain, though. In the past decade, I had learned a lot about dust; I guess that wasn't going to get me very far, was it? I could access the lives of people through their dust, recognize anybody instantly, and even manipulate it somewhat; that is, without magic, of course. I took to writing down what I learned about it, in case anybody else ever fell down; I doubted they would, though.

I woke up to all too familiar surges of pain, and the face of my brother, worrying about me. I never wanted him to have to worry about me, but I guess I couldn't really help that now, could I? I couldn't cover this up like I could with everything else. I was a terrible brother, friend, and all around person; I pitied anybody who had to be in the same universe as me. I wasn't going to let the kid win, though. I was not going to give up; I was determined to live until I couldn't any longer. If I had to go through years more of this torment, so be it, but I was not going to give in to temptation just because I'd been stranded in a universe with only my brother as a ghost for company.

"Murder, are you awake?" Papyrus wondered.

I nodded. I was indeed awake.

"Do you feel any better?"