“Cay, breakfast is ready,” Aiden called through her bedroom door. He waited a few seconds for a response..

When none came, he thumped the door gently. “Cay, breakfast, you lazy whore.” He grinned and walked back towards the kitchen to continue frying up bacon and eggs.

“Uh, Cay?” Chris nudged at her - more specifically at her arm wrapped around him.

She groaned in her sleep and hugged him closer.

“C-CAILYN….” He shoved against the cleavage he was being pulled into. It wasn’t as though he feared suffocating or anything, but he definitely didn’t want her to wake up with him nestled there, and think he was some kind of pervert.

He’d always been conscious of giving women space. He knew that guys could come across as a threat, just as a general rule.

“Ugh, whaaaaat?” Cailyn groaned, shifting in her fitful waking.

“You’re crushing me into your chest, Cay, and Aiden is calling for you!” Chris desperately urged.

“Alright, alright…” she sat up, letting him go as she swung her legs out of bed and stood.

‘Oh my god, that’s so much ass…’ he quickly looked away from Cailyn, standing before him in just panties and a riding-up nightshirt.

“Nnnn~.... Morning, Chris,” Cay said, stretching out. She glanced back to the bed and saw him averting his eyes, and realized why. Her shirt was well up past her waist, giving him quite the show of her underwear. She burst out laughing.

“Come on, this can’t be the first time you’ve seen a girl in her underwear,” she teased.

Christian kept quiet. 

“Oh my goddess it is, you precious cinnamon roll.” She laughed and scooped him up again, holding him at arm’s length. “Well, don’t worry, I won’t tell my brother you saw my undies.” She carried him over to her vanity and sat him down on it. “Here. While I get dressed, why don’t you take a look at yourself. You haven’t gotten to see what you look like yet.”

Chris groaned. It wasn’t like he hadn’t wanted to see girls… but he’d never really had any attraction to them. Sure, he had been caught looking down shirts, staring at chests, or admiring an ass or two… but it wasn’t in a sexual way.

Not that he could put a finger on exactly why he was interested, if it wasn’t sexual. At most, he thought maybe he was jealous that he wasn’t as pretty as them… but even that didn’t make much sense to him.

Putting that thought aside for now, he turned to face the mirror on the vanity to meet his new temporary reflection to divert his eyes while Cailyn got dressed.

‘Holy shit…’ he thought.

He was humanoid-shaped, at the very least, so that was a bonus, but his skin was a patchwork of gray, brown, black, white, and peach colored cloth, sewn together with a thick black thread clearly not made for this kind of delicate seamwork. His hair was a straggly mess of multi-color yarn, framing a face set with a roughly stitched-shut mouth, and two large, cracked, black button-eyes that stared back at him unblinkingly, despite him feeling like he was blinking, and even if he ‘closed’ one eye, the other button simply ‘dimmed’ a bit, losing some of its glossy sheen. He reached up, experimentally tapping one of the buttons with one of his metal shard finger-claws. Nothing. No sensation at all. 

“I look like something Tim Burton would give his kids to play with…”

“Yeah, you kinda do,” Cay agreed from the other side of the room. 

Further experimenting revealed that he could control the rigid shards of metal like crudely articulated fingers. Despite the fact that they couldn’t physically hold anything, he still had no trouble grasping things through some sort of magical force surrounding his hands.

“Alright, my cute little Nightmare on Sesame Street, let’s go,” Cay scooped him up, causing him to drop the stick of mascara he’d been testing his grip on.

“Eep!” he squeaked, his voice like a hinge in need of oiling.

Cailyn carried him out of the room like some kind of stuffed animal, holding him against her chest. “So hey, Aiden… uh, we’re going to have a new roommate for a few weeks.”

“Huh?” He looked up from the stove, spotting his sister and the creepy doll. “Oh hell no, that creepy thing isn’t staying here.”

‘Ouch,’ Chris thought, frowning inwardly. He much preferred when Cay was calling him cute earlier.

“Hey, dick, this is Christian!” Cay shot back defensively, holding him tighter.

“Cay…” Chris wheezed, despite the fact that his body didn’t actually have lungs to compress.

“Holy shit… a knot? But it’s so creepy…”

“Hey, thanks,” Chris grumbled.

“Sorry, man. I just… usually a knot looks like the person you put into it, or like, an animal if you use an animal base. But you’re like, um… not like you at all.”

“I’m aware. I look like some kind of chop-shop muppet.”

Cay giggled, and Aiden cracked a smile. Despite his emo aesthetic, he was actually a pretty upbeat guy, most of the time. Christian was pretty sure that the biggest reason he rocked the emo look is because he liked it, and because he worked for a black market magic shop.

“After we get some breakfast, I’m taking him to the Underground to have Nate take a look at him,” Cay said, setting him down on the table.

“Wait, how are we going to get to the Underground when I look like this? You can’t just carry me.If I accidentally move or talk, I’ll give people nightmares.”

He’d already noticed that his movements were rather jerky and unnatural. This body seemed straight out of a horror movie.

“I’ll just put you in my bag.”

“Oh that’s not demeaning at all…” Chris rolled his eyes - in spirit, at least.

“Hey, it’s good enough for those little purse dogs,” Aiden teased.

“Shut up, Aiden!” Chris shot back creatively.

“Eat up,” Cay said as she grabbed two plates from Aiden and brought them back to the table, placing one in front of Chris.

“How? My mouth is sewn shut.” 

“Oh, right. One sec.” Cay hopped back up and walked over to the knife block.

For a non-existent pulse-pounding second, Chris thought she was going to come back with a kitchen knife and start hacking at his face. Instead she grabbed some shears and brought those back.

“Okay, hold still…”

She began fumbling with his face stitching, and he felt an intense fear swirling in the pit of his stomach… fluff.

A few quick snips, and his mouth was open.

“Th-thank… you…” he said, his mouth actually working with his words, instead of… however he had been talking before. 

“Oh my god, that actually makes it worse,” Aiden shuddered.

“Holy shit, Chris… your mouth is just like… full of metal shrapnel.”

“What?”

“Here, open your mouth,” she said.

Chris complied, opening wide. He felt like his head was nearly split in half.

She pulled out her phone and took a picture, then turned the screen to face him.

“Holy shit…” he said, mirroring Cay’s earlier sentiment. His mouth was literally a yawning chasm of metal shards at all kinds of weird angles, opened unnaturally far for any sort of normal mouth. The feeling that his head had split in half wasn’t even wrong. It looked like it almost had.

“What the fuck am I?” he asked, trying to open his mouth as little as possible while he spoke.

“A really fuckin’ cool Knot, Chris,” Cailyn said with a grin. “Seriously though, eat, you need the energy.”

“Drink up, too,” Aiden said, putting a small shot glass of orange juice down in front of Christian.

“Uh, thanks…” he grabbed one of the strips of bacon and took a bite, trying not to think about how that worked. Chewing felt mostly like it had before, except… he wasn’t really sure where the food he was swallowing went. It wasn’t like he had a stomach.

The orange juice he was drinking just seemed to soak into him somewhere in the depths of his new fluffy nightmare body, before fading into nothingness.

He made his way through breakfast, trying to ignore the sensation of Cay watching him intently. It only worked for a few minutes before he shouted at her.

“What?!”

“Sorry!” she jumped, startled by his sharp shriek. “It’s just fascinating, you know? You’re like a little garbage disposal, all gnashing metal teeth.”

“Wh-what?” Chris asked. He hadn’t been gnashing… had he?

“When you’re eating, you like… flap your mouth open and closed and just shred everything. It’s super gross, but also kinda cool,” Cay said.

“Ugh,” Chris groaned. “I don’t think I’m hungry anymore.” He turned away from the plate, unable to stomach the idea of eating any more.

‘Great. Now I’m ‘super gross’ in addition to being a nightmare horror movie puppet…’ he thought, sulking as he hugged his badly stitched knees to his patchwork chest.