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Once a week for the past seven years, Toriel excused herself and Kris from school early and made the one-hour journey to a town Kris willfully forgot the name of. And every time they came, Toriel commented on how strikingly similar it was to Hometown. Same trees, same pothole-littered roads, same hills and lowlands.
But Kris never bought it.
It was a demented, mirror-warped version of their little town. Its buildings were dusty, its shadows were dark, its chapel was covered in crosses, and its sidewalks were crawling with hairless, flesh-colored amalgams. It was like something out of an old fairy tale, and since they started coming as a child, they had referred to it as such: the legendary Mancountry across the sea, where under the dirt, piles of paralyzed human bodies lay lifeless.
Kris looked at as little of it as they could manage, a habit which only got worse as they got older. It wasn’t for nothing, though; the less eye contact they made with Dr. Forget-Their-Name, the more time they could spend perfecting their drawings, and the sheet of paper in their hand was their proof.
Its subject was a Boss Monster playing with a jump rope, which didn’t much please the Doctor, but it was well-shaded, and the expression on their face made it seem as if they would come to life at any moment. It comforted Kris far more than sketching that same horrible tree over and over again did, and that made it perfect. Maybe if they were really lucky, they thought, it would convince their mother to let them drop out of art therapy.
“Oh, would you look at that?”
Catching the surprise in their mother’s voice, Kris set the drawing down. “What is it?”
“Gas is a dollar cheaper here!”
It was such a boring topic, Kris almost wished their mother would ask more about the tree, but instead, they nodded along, pretending to listen as they pulled the game console from their pocket.
“We have to stop,” Toriel continued, eager. “Wait until Rudy hears about this!”
Kris’s heart beat faster. “We have enough gas.”
“We have a half a tank, and an hour before we get home. We will have to do it eventually, and we might as well do it while the price is still this low.”
“Mom.”
Toriel let out a sigh, the Deltarune charm on the rearview mirror shaking as she pulled into the station.
“Mom,” Kris said, louder this time. “Stop!”
The car jerked into park as Toriel turned to face them, rubbing their cheek with her claw. “It will only be a minute, my child. And if you would like, you can go inside and get a candy—”
“Whatever.” Their face bright red, Kris slammed the power button on their console. “Just leave me alone.”
Toriel hesitated. “Alright then.”
And with that, she shut the car off and stepped outside.
Kris continued to wait for the console, uneasy, and wished for the thousandth time their mother would let them join Asriel on Wednesday evenings at the clinic in Hometown. If she was really so concerned about gas prices, she would have done it in a heartbeat.
But every conversation ended the same. Kris needed to see someone ‘who looked like them’, who could deal with all of the enigmatic problems they had carried with them since childhood, not just Asriel’s stress about the divorce. A part of them that resented their brother rose to the surface, and letting out an angry sigh, they continued to mash the buttons on their console.
Finally, the logo appeared in the center of the screen, and they breathed a sigh of relief. It was only 4:30; Berdly might just have finished his homework already, and if his mom was in a good mood, she wouldn’t even make him review his math flashcards. If he was on their Minecrap world, he was probably working on that massive statue of himself, and if he wasn’t, Kris would get the sweet pleasure of covering it in lava.
But just as their spirits began to turn, they were met with a horrific discovery. The screen began to flash black and white, a red message in the center nailing their coffin shut: OUT OF BATTERY.
Annoyed, they shoved the device back in their pocket, crossed their arms, and sunk as low into the seat as they could. Turning their head, they could see that their mother had only just grabbed hold of the nozzle, and even worse, a woman on the other side of the pump was looking at her.
Kris’s eyes widened, their skin covered in goosebumps, rage welling up in their stomach.
They wanted to break the window open, leap out of the car, and scream at that four-eyed, saggy-skinned human lady that her mom had fire magic, and if she kept staring, Toriel would blow the entire town into pieces.
Finally, their mother caught sight of the woman’s face, and Kris covered their eyes.
Then, her voice dulled through the glass, Toriel gasped. “Stacy?!”
The woman laughed, muttering something unintelligible about their college days, and Kris let out a low groan.
They were never leaving that gas station, they thought in despair. They might as well walk home.
Praying their mother wouldn’t force them to come out and say hello to a friend she had only just then remembered the name of, Kris leaned their head against the window, and though they tried to stare at the ground, they found their eyes drawn to the neighborhood around them.
The gas station was in the center of the town, it seemed, beside a small pharmacy and a row of houses. An old couple sat in a pair of rocking chairs on a porch, and Kris could not help but wonder how close they were to death, to just freezing up in the way that humans did, their souls shattering. When they did, would their eyes be opened or closed? Would they be stuck staring at the ground they were buried in?
They shivered and diverted their attention elsewhere.
A pair of teenagers—likely the same age as Asriel—was sitting on the curb outside of the pharmacy, splitting a bag of sour gummy snakes and laughing wildly. Looking at them filled Kris’s chest with an emotion they couldn’t quite name, a poisonous mixture of disgust and jealousy.
One had long, straight hair trailing all the way down her back, her clothes hugging her body, her neck and wrists decorated with heaps of glimmering silver jewelry, and watching her, Kris felt their eyes widen. Another next to her pulled the snake’s apple-flavored head off with his tiny, dull teeth, crushing the candy between fingers too soft and too thin, but beautiful in their own horrible way. The edges of his face were dark and covered in bumps, not unlike Kris’s own, but on him, they thought, it looked right.
Both of them looked right exactly the way they were, and for that, Kris hated them. They didn’t waste their days washing their too-small hands, hoping their skin would simply fall off. They didn’t gag at the sound of the cracks in their voices, or cry when they realized the dress they bought would never quite fit the way they wanted—the way they needed it to.
They traced the shape of the girl’s face with their finger, trying to crush it, and wondered what she would have done the week before at Catti’s all-girls-and-Kris birthday party. It made them sick just to imagine the way she would have melted into the scene, laughing and painting her nails in neat streaks with all the others. How her throat would have gone dry, jumping into every conversation with callous disregard. She wouldn’t have glued herself to the wall, feeling like an alien. She wouldn’t have locked herself in Catti’s bathroom wondering whether they had been invited to girl’s night as some sick joke, one where the punchline was how hard she tried and failed to pretend she was like them. And she sure as the Roaring didn’t have to go to art therapy in a monster town every week.
She could go straight to the hell she so fervently believed in, they thought. Her life was too easy, and she would have to be punished for it sooner or later. But as if the Angel itself was trying to prove them wrong, they caught a glimpse of a Deltarune necklace around her neck, making them grit their teeth even harder.
Turning their attention to the boy, Kris let out a long, angry sigh. He had the same stupid cystic acne and the same square, lanky body that all the human boys in Jockington’s sports dramas did—traits he had so kindly identified in Kris before asking if they were a star soccer player, too. And he was oblivious to all of it, sitting on the curb with citric acid on his fingers, just happy with the role the Angel gave him. He didn’t even realize that he was sitting like a man, leaning like a man, breathing like a man, eating those god-awful sour gummy snakes that would probably take 35 years off of his worthless life—
Their eyes met.
Kris felt like they were going to vomit, rolling themselves as far down into their seat as they could, until their knees were tucked under the glove compartment. Their heart beat like a machine gun, their teeth chattering, their thoughts racing.
Of course they were caught. What else had they been expecting?
Their head swelled as they imagined what the pair was saying about them across the street. Had they noticed their peach fuzz? Had they caught the rush job lip-gloss they had applied before they left the school, too heavy-handed and too light for their skin tone?
And what in the Tail of Hell did they make of it, they wondered, rubbing their hands together feverishly? There were sexless monsters of all kinds, but humans, broadly speaking, were either/or. And it was so horrifically easy to tell the sexes apart.
Their hands were sticky, their console was dead, and all of the faces around them looked too much like their own. Tears welled in their eyes against their will, making them remember just how much uglier and pathetic they looked when they cried, and they could feel their stomach lurching.
Then, by the grace of the Angel, they heard the car door open.
“Oh, Kris, you will never believe who lives around here—”
They leapt up in their seat. “Did you pay yet?”
Toriel frowned. “Is something wrong?”
Their voice shook like a leaf in the wind. “Get me out of here.”
And without a moment’s hesitation, their mother shut the door, turned the key, and drove away, one paw rubbing their back as they began to sob.