A real monster

Sans is forty-six years old, and has been battling baldness for twenty-six of them. Fighting, though, was too strong an epithet for someone like him. Sans had never really fought in his life, except for his naive, simple, and infinitely kind brother. A brother he’d managed to persuade not to bring in as a witness. A brother he wanted to believe would have someone to take care of, and who wouldn’t be associated with him, Sans. Sans is forty-six, but he looks much older. He compensates for his small stature with a fair amount of breadth — which is readily helped by a sedentary life and diabetes due to shitty fast food. Because of sweating and the reluctance to change clothes (and change shoes too), an aura is always formed around him that is not very sympathetic. Sans isn’t homeless or penniless — he’s just lazy. He’s just don’t care. Still, she saw something in him. His ray of light, his little kiddo… Sans is sitting on a bench in a corner enclosed by transparent plastic. On his face is a tired and slightly confused smile, his eyes are closed. He has nothing to look at. She won’t be there. She wasn’t allowed to come. They thought it would be too traumatic for her to see him again. Her opinion was taken’t into account. No one asked Sans’s opinion too. Sans has nothing to look at — he already knows what he’s going to see. Before the scowling judge and the trembling in rage and jury, the public prosecutor is pacing like a lion on the sand of the Colosseum. That’s who’s to be in of one’s element, Sans grins bitterly to himself, he’s twirling them around as he wants. There is no lawyer in the courtroom — he refused a free one, but there was no money for a paid one. And who, in such an obvious scenario, would tarnish their reputation by defending a pedophile? He’d known Frisk since he was nine… or ten… no, since she was nine. When he first came face-to-face with the woman who had taken custody of her, and with whom he had had a long period of romantic correspondence. In fact, he was in the first acquaintance to her home, holding the arm box of chocolates, which took a big part of their brother’s meager savings: from brother work’t, and Sans has pulled the two of them, has taken any work, but due to pathological laziness and the universe’s doesn’t care never lingering long. Going on a date might have seemed like a feat to him, if he do not care. This woman was good… when she laughed at his jokes in absentia and even tried to joke back. What would she be like when they met face to face? How would she react to him? Sans didn’t care. Still, he was taken aback when the door opened in response to the bell, and a swarthy little girl in a blue-and-purple striped sweater appeared in the doorway. Sleepily closed eyes shot out from under a shock of brown hair, and the girl disappeared. Sans didn’t even have time to say anything before the one he was originally heading for appeared in her place. The one who laughed at his jokes. The one he’d never really gotten close to. The one who now burns him with a look of hatred and disgust from the depths of the hall, under the sharp jumping speech of the prosecutor. No, Sans couldn’t have imagined then that he could have anything to do with such a kiddo. It came as a surprise to both of them three years later, when the hair on Sans’s head had thinned and Frisk was standing on the thin line between girl and girl. A nymphet, as some enthusiastic classicist would say, whom Sans had never read — nor, perhaps, anyone else in their town. Then understanding broke through the layer of indifference, understanding that this golden-skinned angel was the only joy of his life. Understanding not only his, but also hers, sympathy (but not pity, and for that he was even more grateful to her) connected their souls and dreams in an effort to one day connect in reality. No, Sans had never wanted to possess her — it was a real platonic feeling. Only once did a wave of despair wash over him — despair at the realization of what he had made of his life. The realization that no one needs it. The realization that even his brother sometimes thought him worthless. The realization that he was just a rotting bag of useless garbage. And Frisk was there, as she always had been lately. The girl tried to cheer him up with everything that came into her head, and when, in desperation, she pulled away from him and began to pull off her favorite tattered sweater, Sans was confused and couldn’t stop what happened next… Or maybe he just didn’t care. Perhaps this incident could have changed something in him. Snatch him out of his apathy and throw him into a real, full — fledged life-because now he wasn’t really alone. But one small fact, like a lonely shoal in a vast, raging ocean, shattered the canoe of his dreams, throwing him into the dock. He was forty-six and she was thirteen. And in a society that cares deeply about the health of children and adolescents, their small, almost innocent impulse did not long remain a secret to others. When they came to him, he did not try to justify himself — only asked that nothing be said to his brother… He stands up, listening to the verdict, but not hearing it, smiling confusedly and guiltily-baggy, untidy, unsympathetic, but somehow very dear to one girl’s heart. He looks around at the bustling jurors with unseeing eyes, not really hoping that something will arouse his interest — and suddenly his gaze collides with the eyes of the state prosecutor. The accuser stands next to the one who once laughed at Sans’s jokes. A moment ago they were talking animatedly, but now they’re looking at him. The same look of disgust in her eyes — or anger at being traded for another? The prosecutor’s view is different. Mocking. Sympathetic? Understanding. Suddenly, Sans understands. So an inopportune attack turns his cry into a gurgling cough, and he hangs on the unfriendly paws of the guards, swallowing phlegm and tears of his own impotence. For the third — and perhaps the last — time in his life, his veil of indifference is broken, replaced by horror. For at the last moment, before the doors closed behind him, Sans heard in his head the words he had read in the accuser’s mocking gaze. “I’m going to her. And I won’t get caught.”