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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/HughEhhoule on 2024-12-26 23:56:08+00:00.

For anyone who missed the puppets newest issues:

The building was used to death even before Pi took it over. But the level of violence and chaos occurring was a step beyond anything previously contained in those bloodstained walls.

I want to apologize to you fine people. I’m not an evil doll, and historically, often, I have been the problem. I know, I know, I’m spitting in the face of truth in advertising, but please, indulge me.

Who I am, is someone who can provide an outside perspective, both figuratively and literally. And outside perspective is required when Michael is involved.

But at the moment, my identity isn’t important. I applaud those of you observant enough to have the answer already, but if not, I wouldn’t worry about it.

What’s important now is the wound covered hand, holding an ichor dripping keycard inches away from a small, black reader.

Mike is hurting. To be quite frank the man could be accurately described as dying. Nothing crippling at the moment, but the human body can only take so many blows before starting to break in places an improvised tourniquet or battlefield stitching can’t help.

And make no mistake, our boy Michael is nothing more than human. Sure he’s wrapped in the guise of something evil, something unknowable, but that’s all it is. Obfuscation.

Michael isn’t powerful, strong, brave, or even all that clever. He’s, interesting, to some, at best. And that’s coming from one of the closest people to him.

It isn’t nerves of steel that drive him to unlock the cells. It isn’t even altruism. Truth be told, it was this, or death.

Michael had run through every bobble in his gifted bag of tricks, and still found himself near death and trapped with 2 of the guards.

The tortured, mutilated man watches as things he thought were relegated to horror films and urban legends take their first free steps in decades.

If they knew what released them was nothing more than human, he’d have been an appetizer before the main course.

But like everyone so inclined, when this legion of creatures tried to sense what the clown was, they came up blank.

When the choice is revenge on your captors or a struggle with the unknown, no one picks the second option.

When Michael sees what has became of the warehouse floor, he’s more than scared, his entire perspective is changed.

So far you lot have seen things from the point of view of those for whom the paranormal is old hat, or integral to their being. Those of us so blessed have an innate ability to parse the senseless, to deal comfortably with the nature of the supernatural.

But those sons of Adam, daughters of eve ,the multitude that make up humanity, they’re not so lucky.

It takes it’s toll on body and mind, like a sick kind of radiation. It makes a person twisted, strange, and in the long term, a corpse.

Mike gives up on finding a way out, the display of power, Pi’s warping of space and time, is beyond him.

One could argue fatalism and blind optimism are two sides of the same coin. One understands the future, one ignores it.

Mike flips that coin as he sees the chaotic scrum of violence.

And as always for the one time vigilante ( or serial killer, depending on your view of things) that coin lands on it’s edge.

Blood drips down his abdomen, when he looks to the source he sees beyond flesh and fat. A deep cut missed opening his stomach but lacerated his chest so deeply he can see a small sliver of his own rib.

His face is a mask of lunatic glee, but it’s an act. Inside he’s horrified at the thought of his own mortality.

If Michael was a clever man he’d ask for help from the one friend he has in this corner of reality. Unfortunately, our mutilated would-be hero is stubborn.

His plan is born of desperation and fear. More the drunken ramble of a schizophrenic than anything approaching tactical acumen.

He figures if he can’t find his way through the maze, he might as well try and slay the minotaur.

There have been people, historically who went up against demons and came away the victor. It’s pretty much the point of most religious texts. But Michael, is not that man. He is not blessed, and certainly not pure.

So our friend wades into the carnage, on his way to slay dragons, while hoping, deep down, he’s tilting at windmills.

The man looks small compared to the things dealing death around him. The entities trying to slay or ensnare the rioting prisoners of all types. But he begins to feel the ebb and flow of this unnatural disaster. What little cunning and guile he has finds opportunity in carnage.

At this point, many of you may be asking, “How can one man survive something like this?”. I have your answer. It comes in two parts.

First, maybe he doesn’t. Maybe at some point Michael takes makes one wrong decision too many and winds up with a blade in his back. There’s no twist where that vulgar jester is capable of writing this kind of prose.

Second, what you’re ignoring are the millions of determined, able, individuals willing to spit in the face of fate that were turned into pulp by some horror lurking in the shadows.

You don’t hear their stories, because they have none.

What Michael does isn’t really combat, it’s theatre. It’s violence by way of professional wrestling.

Michael’s plan doesn’t survive first contact with the enemy (to coin an old phrase), first contact with the enemy forms it.

A lanky being, grey skinned and pierced by rusted barbs of steel sees the man. And lack of aura or no, decides to vent it’s rage in Michael’s direction.

The clown is blindsided, the masochistic entity grabs him by the ill-fitting suit jacket and tosses him like a ragdoll.

If you heard it from the horse’s mouth, it’d be a ten thousand word nearly coulrophillic rant. But let me save you from that.

Michael isn’t a clown themed killer. He’s a professional clown, who was forced to fight and damned to lose.

As such, he manages to minimize the impact of the brutal throw. That being said, he makes it look nearly fatal.

Michael stumbles away into the crowd, the newly freed abomination following close behind.

In it’s haste it slams into something holding back a determined but doomed group of human rioters. The massive asymmetrical humanoid howls in rage and backhands the steel skewered supernatural stalker.

New blood is thin, and the lanky, gibbering entity squirms in pain on the ground, broken bones tearing at bruised organs.

It doesn’t see Michael break his way from the rapidly devolving melee, nor the two handed blow that caves in the side of it’s face.

But others do, and that was the point.

They didn’t see the lucky accident that truly put the pierced paranormal peon down. Just this blood soaked man dispatching something that goes bump in the night with ease.

Mike isn’t a warrior, he’s a performer. One who can shape a narrative, give some kind of meaning to bloodshed and violence. And this is how he makes his way around the warehouse.

Sneaking, hiding, and taking credit for work nearly completed.

But cracks are starting to show, the clown is panicked, he can’t find what he’s looking for, and with the way the warehouse is twisting it’s own dimensions, he knows it may not even exist.

Lightheaded from blood loss, toes broken on bare feet, Michael collapses near a row of lockers stained with blood and gore.

No one around to see it but myself, so the man drops the mask. There’s only so long a performer can perform.

Screams of the dying, howls of rage, gunfire, all of this means nothing to him.

Tears wash small furrows of grime and blended offal from his face. These aren’t the maniac sobs of someone disconnected from reality. No, fate is far too cruel to break Michael’s mind. It merely bends it to an excruciating degree.

He thinks back to a time where his biggest worry was if his pilot for a clown show for the new millennium would be picked up ( It wasn’t.). It’s a stupid thought, but it drives home the scale, and horror of his situation.

He’s wracked with shivering sobs of fear, grief and regret. He’d give up if he wasn’t scared of the implications of dying somewhere a demon seemed to be making home.

But no good deed goes unpunished and there is no rest for the wicked. Mike concentrates, clearing his eyes and thoughts. Forcing himself to put one foot in front of the other.

Michael may not know a thing about the void, or it’s spawn, but architecture was required learning for his, post-entertainment career. And there was enough logic and reason left in the design of the building for the clown to find what he was looking for.

Much like sewer pipes, most air ducts are far to small for a person to crawl through. But service corridors are a necessity for any industrial building. Paranormal or not, things break.

It’s cramped, dark, and reeking, but luckily for Mike, unoccupied.

His back and shoulders scream with every bump of the claustrophobic , maze-like series of hallways and ladders. One foot has started to go numb, nerves being twisted and compressed by fractured bones.

He ignores the architectural impossibilities, and keeps putting one foot in front of the other, hoping the dust covered etched steel maps and markers still hold some weight.

He doesn’t know if it’s been hours or minutes, but Michael hears something. A soft, erratic scuttling noise.

He stops, tensed like a coyote, dim emergency lights givin…

Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1hn1ols/im_an_evil_doll_but_im_not_the_problem_part_11/