8 (2)

== A Very Fucking Long Chapter ==
WBL’s POV
“Little bitch looks nothing like me,” a voice scoffed. Two giant, ink-stained hands lifted me out of the water. The cool and wet water melted away through the cracks in his cupped hands, the air pressing on my gills like a thick, stuffy blanket. I gasped for air, but my half-formed external gill frill things were pasted to my head. I wriggled desperately, trying to flop into the water, before I suffocated on land. The person dumped me back into my crusty tank with a snort. “Look at it. Pathetic.” 
Another face peered at me. This person- no, turtle, studied me with cautious eyes that flickered between a murky swamp-green and dull blue. He was short, and clearly standing on a child’s stepping stool. He turned to the first person with a frown. 
“Leo, it’s a tadpole,” he started slowly. “A tadpole who’s the child of a human and a turtle.” 
“You mean a man-turtle,” Leo corrected. He glared down at me, and I could glimpse his disgusted expression, dark eyes framed by the glasses sitting on his nose. He slapped the turtle, who yelped and clattered to the floor. The turtle rose from the ground, but as a human, with shamrock hair and olive green turtle scales creeping up his neck and chin, covering his pale skin. 
“You know I don’t like my human form,” the former turtle accused. “It’s incomplete.” 
“Then practice it more,” Leo suggested nonchalantly, prodding me with the cold metal nib of a pen. I shuddered, and swam into a darker corner. He seemed to be amused. “When you’re a turtle, you’re too short to lean over the tank and tell your child they’re a disappointing accident.”
Turtle man gave him a hurt look. “I thought you said my turtle form was more fuckable.” 
“That’s irrelevant right now, Carl, even though that is true.” Leo responded with an annoyed sigh. “Neither of us wanted it.” He gestured at me, swimming in circles around the bottom of my tank. I found some algae and ate it. Leo continued. “I fuck you once. And then this cunt over here is born. How the fuck do a male turtle and male human have a frog? guess i fucked the—”
“What should we name him?” Carl interrupted.
“—wrong bot lol—Carl NO! Do not name it!” Leo yelled. 
“We’re just going to dump him anyw—”
“Do not get attached to the ugly little half-turtle bastard! We live in a hole in a cumwood forest and don’t even have enough money for ourselves!”
“damn Leo that’s aggressive” Carl said. He scooped me up in his hands. Despite his long, sharp, scary-looking turtle nail claw things, he was surprisingly gentle. He was careful to keep the water cupped in his hands so I wouldn’t suffocate before they got to abandon me.
Leo opened the short and battered wooden door of their underground home, and Carl stepped out into the sun outside, me still in his hands.
“Goodbye, WrongBotLol,” he whispered quietly, so Leo didn’t hear, and emptied me into the rushing creek below.
MarriageBot’s POV
I nervously peeked out of the mall booth window, and was relieved to see no one there. I ducked down and eagerly but quietly slipped open the flaps on the takeout box. A despaired soul who died single and virgin swooped out, but I speared him on my fork and shoved him in my mouth. His last screams escaped down my throat, cool and refreshing.
What was I thinking? Leaving my cozy shack in the suburbs by the oasis to come to a bustling, dusty shithole of a city with the highest murder rate in all of Landysandia? Where everyone was either a crackhead, homeless, or both?
I had left the comfort of home. I was alone, but happy. Even though I made little money trying to figure out people’s loves and making wedding rings in my spare time, I had everything I needed. 
Now… there was too much. Too many people and too much noise. I had come in the hopes of finding a love of my own after finding so many other people’s loves, but so many people passed through this city, this square, this mall, that the flow of people was overwhelming. The sheer amount of people pressed in on me and made me feel so small and out of place.
I crunched on the unfulfilled hopes of the soul in my mouth, feeling each one crack open and melt on my tongue. They were bitter and rotten, old and forgotten. This soul was old: the soul’s owner had been dead for years. I had been scammed out of fresh souls as usual. The people back where I used to live were so nice about letting me clean out the cemetery for fresh souls. Why did I have to move to find a fresh start when I was already happy?
A few of the failed hopes quivered on my tongue. 
I wish I had become king.
Well damn, that’s a big dream.
I wish I hadn’t fucked things up. That one was a pretty typical wish, moving on. 
I want to live. I want to slap Granny in the face and kick his skull in. I know I’ve been a shitty person, I’ve committed adultery, I’ve lied, cheated, stolen, murdered, bribed and blackmailed— but please—I want to stay with you, muscle man. I don’t want to die I don’t want to dieidon’twanttodieidon’twanttodie—
These weren’t dreams or futile hopes. These were secrets and wishes. This wasn’t a single virgin who died in his third year of law school while throttling a vending machine. This was someone bursting with horniess and crimes against humanity.
I put down my takeout box, my appetite gone and feeling nauseous. Apparently that was what hoe tasted like. 
WBL’s POV
This chapter starts shortly before Leo died. He was in a relationship with Carl before he was Bob. Young and naïve, Carl and Leo had fucked and accidentally had WBL. They agreed to never discuss him again and Leo later was in a relationship with Bob. After Bob left him, Leo was alone for some time. 
I clenched a fake healing crystal in my webbed hand and threw it into the box at my feet. It shattered into thousands of glittering shards, like all of my childhood dreams :(
Cheap junk. None of my crystals really worked and never would. But I didn’t have the money for real ones, and my customers didn’t need to know that. Well, not that I had any customers anyway. 
I looked at the mantelpiece above the little electric fireplace in my shop. A few spare kermit collars, and several dreamcatchers. This was fucking pathetic, just like Leo had once said. I was two days old and didn’t understand the words, but it was pretty clear that I wasn’t wanted.
And it didn’t seem like this town wanted me either. A tiny building crammed between a mall and a sex toy shop, selling crystals and incense and fake jewels and trinkets.
I thought I would be better than my fathers, a failed stripper and a serial killer. (guess which one is which)
But had I turned out to be anything better than them? I couldn’t think of one good deed I had done. In my whole life. You would think I spent my life spewing kindness because I was abandoned and wanted the best for others, but nah, it actually just turned me into an amphibian saltine cracker.
I kicked open another box full of more crystals, and sifted my hand through the top layer. Though it was full of needle-likeD shards that should’ve made me jump up and scream in pain, the webbing between my phrog fingers were tough and leathery after years of not finding someone to fuck -leo
I yelped and clutched my right hand in pain. A hot pink shard of crystal, two inches long, was embedded in the membrane stretched between my phroge fingies. A love crystal. 
I peered into the crystal, the reflective surface only showing my own suspicious face. More useless shit. They were supposed to show you your true love, but usually ended up showing you cucumbers or glue sticks or something like that. 
Then all of a sudden, a hazy human face flashed across the surface. I caught a glimpse of the grinning human face, pink hair framed by glowing rings above their head. I yanked the sliver of crystal out of my skin, wiped my bleeding hand on my leg and threw the pink monstrosity on the ground. I glared at the tiny little pinpricks of pink on my floor, shards of shards. They began smoking, and an acrid stench filled the tiny enclosed room. 
What the hell was that? Who the fuck was that? What did I just see?
No wonder people always returned these. They just didn’t work. Didn’t make sense. Showed you things that wouldn’t happen in a million years.
I stepped over the evil glittering dust on the floor, and yanked open the storage room door by the display tAbLe. A heavy broom fell out of the tiny closet onto my foot ow. I picked it up and swept the last of the crystal into the fireplace, and trudged up the moldy stairs to the second floor, where I slept.
Too bad I didn’t see the fire starting.
MarriageBot’s POV
🅱usiness was slow today. I tapped my fingers on the counter nervously, half hoping and half dreading a customer would approach. I wasn’t very good at communicating with them.
But at the end of the day, I still had bills to pay. I had people back home to send money to. If no one came to buy anything, I was fucked.
A tall, thin man separated from the crowd gathered at the escalator going to the plaza and caught my attention. He pulled his trench coat tighter and his beady eyes quickly darted left and right. He patted his pocket, where I could now see the top of a SlimJim poking out. The man briskly walked towards me. His arms were stiffly stuck to his sides, like there was something hidden in his sleeves. I winced as he shoved past a white haired man with a bucket of wet sand, stepped over a small child, and planted himself in front of my booth.
He slammed his hand onto the table counter. I heard a soft crunch and I winced. But he lifted his hand up and I saw a crumpled stack of bills, before he quickly slid them over to me.
“How many sex toys for this?” he rasped. 
I gaped at him, shocked and confused. I made, dealt and sold everything from candles to crystal balls, but those balls were for seeing the future, not for sliding into your ass. 
“I- uh- sir, I believe there’s a shop selling those two buildings down, but I don’t have any of that here, nor is there any in this mall.” My halo-glow flushed pink with embarrassment. 
The man’s eyes narrowed at me. “Ring bitch, I’m not taking no as an answer. I didn’t earn the title Leo the Ass Slayer by backing down.” 
I gulped. His scowl deepened as I backed up in my wheelie chair away from him. 
“Well, what’s that long thing over there behind you, then?” He pointed at something behind me. 
“That’s a candle, sir. A scented one.” He leaned over me to grab it. 
“Not as wide as I’d like, but it works. Carl isn’t picky,” he muttered. He flicked the wad of money up his sleeve again, abruptly turned on his heel and dashed in the opposite direction.
The first thing I felt was shock, until I noticed the anger starting to boil in my core. I bet this man did that to a lot of people.
“Hey! Sir! You need to pay for that!” I was already having a bad day after receiving six noise complaints, and I wasn’t going to let this sex-crazed shoplifting maniac ruin it any more. That giant candle cost a third of what I made everyday. The mall “police”, who were often seen patrolling the centre plaza, eating bagels, were nowhere to be found. Today was the Poledancing Festival, and the entire West Wing was nearly deserted.
I vaulted over the counter and sprinted after him. 
WBL’s POV
It took me far too long to realize my house was burning.
I am a frog, who also happens to be a turtlehuman. I can barely smell, and my body is fucked up enough without the things I’ve put it through. My senses, dulled from an exhausting day of work, didn’t pick up the smoke pouring into the bedroom until it was pretty much a hundred degrees fahrenheit, stuffy, and ashy.
I woke up sweating after a horrible nightmare of my father roasting me over an open fire to “make your goddamn asshole crispier”. My eyes flew open. Upon realizing it was a dream, I sighed with relief, until I saw something even worse right in front of me.
I should mention that my fireplace doesn’t work. I keep it there to make my living space feel more like a home, rather than a part of a store. But it doesn’t work. It’s a plastic plate with some wood glued on. So instead of being a source of warmth in the winter, it’s a fire hazard in the hot, dry summer. I was usually careful and blocked it off, but not today.
And now I was facing my punishment.
The thick, dark gray smoke billowed into the room from the crack under the door. Something eerily bright was flickering there, growing closer as the room grew hotter. My eyes began watering and I hacked out a dry cough. I was sitting on my bed, paralyzed with shock, unable to move a muscle even though I knew that everything on the first floor was probably burning up and crumbling into ashes under me.
I sleep on the second floor of a two story shop, made of wood planks and a few rocks. The house wasn’t going to hold any longer.
I wanted to move, to get out, to not go up in flames. I didn’t want this to be the end for me. I was rooted to my bed as the panic trickled down my spin.
What was I supposed to do? Jump out the second floor window that hasn’t been opened in four years, when I got here? I didn’t know if I would be able to open the door and run through the smoke without being blinded or roasted.  I wasn’t taught fire safety seeing as I never went to school. I’d been dumped in a fucking creek at birth.
I wasn’t taught how to survive a fire, but I was (somehow) taught that the most important thing was to not die.
My shoulders slackened and I fell out of bed. Ow. The shoulder I fell on was throbbing, but looking up at the hazy smoke filling the room, that wasn’t my biggest problem at the minute. I jabbed my fingers into the slats on the walls, groping at them with my froggy fingers in an attempt to pull myself up. I didn’t know what I was doing. 
Somewhere above me was the telephone. It was old and dusty and barely worked. I didn’t know if I could reach it. I didn’t know if the nearest fire department, the one behind the town hall, would reach me in time. And there wasn’t a fire hydrant within 500 feet. The first floor would collapse, followed by the second floor long before they’d arrive. I didn’t do it. But that was kind of the attitude that got me here in the first place.
So I yanked the phone off the wall, my sweaty fingers struggling to punch in a simple 911, and I screamed into the speaker, or something that looked like it, “MY HOUSE IS ON FUCKING FIRE THE FUCK DO I DO *coughs* OH FUCKOHFUCKOHFUCK.”
How long had the house been burning? I clearly didn’t have much time left, but how much time had passed already? Was it too late for me? 
The door and the farthest wall were blackening and withering. The fire was consuming them. It was coming for me, scalding my feet as it burned through the floor. I screamed and grabbed my froggy feet. It was like playing Hot Potato except it wasn’t just the potato that was hot. The walls and floor and air and everything was hot and burning up and oh god oh fuck holy shit oh no what do i do oh fuck fuck fuck fuck.
The latch on the window wasn’t opening. It was glued shut with dirt and oil and probably bug poop. There was an exceptional amount of dead flies on the windowsill. 
I was scrambling up the last wall not on fire. My bare sweaty feet didn’t stick. Neither did my hands. Where were my frog powers when I needed them? I was slipping and scared for my life. Everything was on fire. 
I was desperately kicking the window, clinging to the wall, sweating my ass off because it was 140+ degrees by now. I knew I wasn’t going to make it. That didn’t stop all natural instinct to do whatever I possibly could to make it out alive.
Somehow, by some miracle, the window popped open. Maybe it was me. Maybe it was fate. Maybe it was Srainbow telling me that I can’t die now because I have more shit to go through later.
So I, in the full force of the swing, flew through the open window, my green frog limbs red, my pajamas on fire, the building collapsing, and everything I had painstakingly earned in the past 17 years collapsing with it.
MarriageBot’s POV
The man I was pursuing did not seem to have a plan. He was tripping on the long tails of his trench coat, running slowly with his giant (not dildo) candle, and overall not very fast. Also, I can fly. He didn’t even make it 15 feet away from my stand. 
“Nice try, motherfucker,” I growled, tackling him from the air and wrapping my arms around his head in a headlock. “Pay me back and put it back, shoplifter.” I didn’t like being aggressive. I got the feeling, however, that this guy wouldn’t listen otherwise.
“Fuck you,” he spat, throwing the giant candle to the ground. He got up, brushed the dirt off his suit, and practically flew down the escalator. He dodged a jar of mayonnaise going up (he was on the wrong escalator) 
I flew back to my stand with the giant candle and put it back on the shelf. 
And then I saw the piece of paper left on the counter. It was wadded up tightly and had a few Cheeto-looking fingerprints on it. With all necessary precautions, including tugging on disposable latex gloves, I carefully tugged a corner free and unballed the dirty thing.
Meet me by the old cum tree at midnight, hee ja boo