The Hug Toll (DHMIS Fanfiction)

Seven

"He has a... girlfriend." Harry whispered very quietly to Clarissa and Buttercream to the point where there were no vibrations in his throat as he took noted in the notebook he borrowed from Clarissa.

"Well, we don't want him to know we've escaped thanks to my cat." Clarissa added in response; Buttercream mewed a little.

"Let's just get back to your apartment and buy a new key in the process."

That was when Buttercream meowed a little too loud.

"M'AM! THERE'S A CAT BEHIND THIS FOUNTAIN!" The black figure called to the little black lady. "Oh, there is? Maybe we should go look as long as you don't scare it off." The lady reacted; the black figure just cleared his throat and ignored her like a piece of trash. 

"Kill it, then."

Clarissa gasped under her breath. "They REALLY have gotten on to us..."

The minute Harry's eyes connected with the black figures', he knew that they were gonna die in a puddle of blood for sure. There was once a time a lot like this...

Harry, Dennis and Bert were in the living room with pale blue walls and a wooden floor; the household clock, Tony, had recently screamed over Bert's theory of time and Dennis's little ears were bleeding, but Tony kept singing.

"Sunrise, sunset, night and day, the changing seasons, the smell of hay."

This shouldn't be that bad...

"Look at your hair grow, isn't it strange how time makes your appearance change?"

Ha! Change is really boring anyway.

But suddenly, Harry noticed that his red hairs began to change to an unsettling gray. His friends were changing too- Bert was losing his feathers, revealing a gore-filled interior, while Dennis's face and, of course, his hair, were changing dramatically as he let out an agonizing wail of pain.

"MAKE IT STOP!"

"It's out of my hands; I'm only a clock." Tony's grim voice rang through Harry's eardrums.

"Don't worry, I'm sure you'll be fine. But eventually, everyone runs out of time."

Harry woke up in shock as he realized what he'd been dreaming about, but that awful black figure was still on his way to vengeance.

"Psst, Harry! Hurry up! We gotta escape before he catches us!"

"What if we do get caught, I may ask?"

"We'll figure it out!" Clarissa pleaded with a meow of agreement from Buttercream. "Now, COME ON!"

"Fine; let me catch up first!"

As the two mopes (plus cat) raced downtown, Harry began to worry if anything good would come out of this. After all, even when he pulled the plug on his imaginary world, Harry still kept having repeated nightmares about his old make-believe friends, so of course something suspicious and eerie might generate into the real world. He's British, after all!

"Sir! I found a place we can stay!"

"You already have some good shelter... and a broken window."

"I don't have my key, remember?"

"Oh well, it doesn't matter anyway. Let's get in this..." Harry looked at the sign. "...pizzeria?"

"Heavenly, right?"

When they all  got in the building, a blue mope cashier looked happy to finally have some customers. The whole area was empty with no customers but a small kitchen filled with trained chefs making pizza after pizza.

"W-Welcome to Joe's Pizzeria; may I take your order?" The blue male stammered.

"We're not here to eat pizza." Harry spoke firmly. "We've got some serious trouble in our hands." He pointed to the ketchup bottle at one of the tables. "Look, if you don't act fast, we'd probably be dead."

"Well, I-I'm not a crime investigator, but I'll try t-to help y'all. The two can lay on the floor while put some ketchup on your bodies, and as for the cat, he can make himself at home in the kitchen. It's not too hot."

As Buttercream padded his way into the certainly-not-hot kitchen, Harry and Clarissa got onto the checkered ground as the blue mope spilled ketchup all over them like a maniac, even getting some on the floor.

"Don't worry, whatever your name is, it's supposed to be like that in reality."

"Oh, my name's Thomas. Yours?"

"I'm Clarissa Winfred, and this is my friend Harry Woolsworth."

"I'm not your friend..."

Without warning, the door slowly opened. Thomas paced back to his desk in fear of what would happen next while the red male and yellow female lay there as if they really were dead. Buttercream watched from inside as the long-awaited action began to take place.

"Okay, bastard, what the hay are these corpses doing here!?" The black figure stepped into the spotlight, looking much scarier than ever before.

"Well, um, I found these two a while ago. They look to have succumbed to their injuries."

"How did they die..."

"I don't know; they came here with their stomachs ripped open and blood dripping on the ground."

"That is not enough. TELL ME."

Thomas tried to think quickly to respond to the black figure's dark words. "Well, from the looks of it, they might have been mauled by a bear or a very large animal like that."

The black figure's frown only grew as time progressed. 

"Give me the bodies."