She was not aware of how long she had been staring. It could have been seconds, hours, days even. Her senses swept the shelves before her, polished mahogany inlaid with silver, floor to ceiling, wall to wall. Each held a row of dolls; male and female pairs dressed in matching national costumes, their wide painted eyes staring out into the gloom, their little legs dangling into the abyss before them.
A figure was slouched in a rocking chair opposite, clad in a huge Bo Peep costume dress complete with floppy hat. A window loomed large behind it, the eerie pale glow of a full moon marooning the creature on an island of light amidst a sea of shadows, imbuing it’s ridiculous puffy outline with a corona of soft blue neon. She shifted her weight and discovered that the figure was herself, captured in a full-length mirror. She sat up, sobered by this new realisation, and took in her surroundings more carefully. The room was not large but still the feeble ambient light failed to penetrate to the very corners, leaving the banished shadows to wallow there.
She had no recollection of how she had come to be there in her organic brain. She attempted to access her short term cache and long term memory archives only to find the former emptied and the latter encrypted. Strange. She interrogated her memories both biological and synthetic for the passphrase, but could find no record.
This wasn’t the first time she’d woken up in a strange place in a strange costume with no memory of how she’d gotten there, but it was usually accompanied by a chronic hangover. It seemed prudent to initiate a full systems diagnostic on herself to identify any other anomalies and so she did. The results flickered through her consciousness; all limbs reporting that they were fully functional, her sensory arrays all calibrated correctly and returning appropriate data, and her core systems all online.
She was about to disregard the ephemeral rows of text when something caught her attention- the diagnostics reported a removeable device inserted into her left wrist port. Looking over she saw the unremarkable black casing of a nanodrive poking out past the ludicrous frills and ruffles. Before she knew what she was doing, she had accessed it and immediately her arm was deluged with a flood of sense data and random impulses. She tried to cancel the read and close the connection as the limb flailed around but the commands were lost in the tide of data.
The intruder seized the port, and spread into her hand and lower forearm before she could gather her wits sufficiently to respond. The hand twitched and spasmed as she fought for control but she could only slow the spread down, she could not stop it. As long as it didn’t get in amongst the core systems in her chest she was safe, so she withdrew to shore up her defences. The malware leapt up her wrist and past her elbow by the time she’d managed to adjust her intracorp verification codes and throw up a firewall around her torso. She poked an exemine invitingly through the firewall; if the invader was hasty enough to activate the trap, both would be archived off into an isolated memory partition and deleted immediately. Having sacrificed the upper arm, she waited and watched as the thing approached, leaving numbness in its wake.
The virus slowed as it consumed the upper arm, sensing the lack of resistance, regrouping around its captured cores and sending out tendrils to probe the area before it. One of the forking tentacles hit the exemine in the firewall and was immediately drawn in but the virus was too quick, detaching the limb at the root and allowing it to be absorbed before the trap deleted itself and its contents. The firewall repulsed the remainder of the tendrils, dissolving them or else turning them back on themselves, until the assault abated. The invader was powerful enough for a sneak attack it seemed, but shy of an open offensive.
She monitored the firewall until she was sure it would hold before sending some data packets back into the limb in the despairing hope that the invader had somehow expended and weakened itself. She got nothing back save for suspicious perversions of her own packets masquerading under the old intracorp verification codes. She decided to take the offensive and cooked up a virus of her own; a worm designed to wipe the operating system and everything else in the arm, disguised as a harmless data packet. She inserted it into the flow, relishing the prospect of her opponent’s imminent demise, but she could sense her weapon evaporating as soon as it left the no man’s land of the firewall.
Stalemate.
After some pondering, and the acceptance of the fact that there was nothing more she could do, she decided that it would perhaps be more productive to focus on the wider problem instead of her now renegade arm, to wit; where in the fuck was she and what was she doing there? She had no choice but to consider her environment hostile. Somehow that nanodrive had come to be in her arm and even though she had no memory, she could think of no motive to put it there herself, not to mention her lack of aforesaid memory and somewhat unflattering state of dress.
She was distracted from her musing by a movement and watched as her ex-limb turned, the powder blue polyderm of the back giving way to the textured matte grey of the palm. She could feel the weight of the arm from the force it exerted on her shoulder, but nothing beyond that. It lifted infuriatingly slowly and waved itself condescendingly in her face, a powder blue smiley forming in the grey as it swayed to and fro. At least whatever had possessed it had the good taste to colour-match. She plucked the nanodrive out of it, tossed it onto the floor and stamped on it, glaring at the face as she ground it into the polished floorboards neath her giant black pantomime boot.
She reached over to the shoulder, intent on detaching the rogue appendage, but then thought better of it. Keep your enemies closer and all that. Besides, she might get the opportunity to take it back if the interloper let it’s guard down. She wasn’t sure if it intended further harm but judging by the way it had hijacked her arm it didn’t seem trustworthy. Perhaps she could just ask it? She sent an authentication request through the firewall, hoping to open a clean line of communication with the little bastard, or at least find out what its name was so that she could curse it properly.
Authentication request protocol; identify.
Why, how very formal of you. Kingdyce is the name. Pleased to make your acquaintance, my lady Cylla.
The hand waved at her again, smiling. She inclined her head at it in as sarcastic a fashion as she could manage.
What are you doing in me?
It beats being a memory stick, does it not?
Well you might have asked.
Well, you might have said no.
Fair enough. What’s it going to take to get my arm back?
See? Now it’s a negotiation. Find me a better host and I shall migrate post-haste.
How do I know I can trust you?
The hand pointed its index finger at her and cocked it’s thumb.
What choice do you have? You’ll just have to trust that being a parasite is not the ideal state of being for one such as myself.
Right. You wouldn’t happen to know what we’re doing here would you?
The hand wagged a forefinger at her.
Ah now, that would be telling.
It would also be cooperating.
Well you could let me drive if the challenge at hand doth not thy fancy tickle?
Let you into my core systems? Are you mad?
What’s the matter, don’t you trust me? Suit yourself. Why don’t you try figuring it out for yourself?
With this the face faded and the hand rolled palm up and swept away from her out into the room, gyrating at the wrist in a courtly flourish of invitation as it went.
Cylla broke the link, deciding that the obtuse little shit wasn’t worth a polite response. She looked back out into the surrounding gloom, scanning through light spectrums to glean what she could. Infrared and ultraviolet yielded nothing but uniformity and her sonar reading confirmed only that the room seemed to be comprised completely of shelves with tiny nationalist dolls on them. There were no visible gaps in the shelving, no portals except the window behind her.
She sighed inwardly and activated her ocular lamps, illuminating her gaze and driving back the darkness. She scanned the rows of fixed painted grins and paused, unsure if her optics were deceiving her. There, sat unmoving between two sets of dolls, was a frog staring straight at her from beneath the brow of a tiny top hat. It’s tongue flicked out and dragged itself across an eyeball, before slithering back into it’s broad mouth. The frog turned slightly and stopped awkwardly, as if trying to avoid conversation but then realising it was too late.
Cylla was just contemplating this new absurdity when a barely perceptible movement in the corner of her eye caught her attention. She turned her beams on the dolls there and noticed that they were looking at her. In fact, all of the dolls were looking at her. Were they looking at her before?
She got up from the chair, stumbling over her ridiculous rustling dress as the rocking chair gave behind her. She hoiked it up with a curse to reveal the black and white horizontal striped stockings that accompanied her shiny buckled boots.
Regaining what she could of her dignity, she looked at the nearest doll, the only sound the rhythmic creak of the slowing rocking chair behind her. She peered at the mannequin as if daring it to move again, moving cautiously forward until the streams of light pouring from her eyes began to pool on its face. The figure remained inert, but as she got close all of the dolls shifted in unison, taking their weight on their hands and drawing their legs up to stand upright, not one of them taking their gaze from her. Cylla stepped back and swivelled, sending more sonar waves reverberating around the room. Sure enough, each of the miniature figures was now stood upright, looking directly at her. She edged slowly backwards trying to give herself room, but tripped again on the hem of the bulky costume dress and stumbled back to land on her behind. She shuffled back towards the rocking chair, her ocular lamps focused on the lowest shelf, where the dolls had now turned around to lower themselves to the floor.
She hit the chair and knocked it over, scrabbling on top of it, watching as the small army of homunculi cascaded down the shelves. They descended in perfect ranks, as if held together by some collective surface tension. The dolls advanced and came to a stop a foot away from Cylla, surrounding her completely. They stood looking at her and as she studied their expression, she began to detect a sense of wonderment, of welcome, even of hope in the identical pairs of painted eyes. Perhaps they weren’t hostile? Perhaps if she forged a connection with them, they would help her begin to make sense of the confusion that surrounded her?
The dolls waited as if in anticipation of some act, so Cylla, her fears subsiding, reached out a hand in greeting to the one nearest. It stepped out of the huddle, extending a glossy painted wooden paw towards her. Warmth began to flow through Cylla as the two touched, intent on the bond they were forming. The doll’s eyes began to shine but then the shadow of uncertainty flickered behind them, it’s furrowed brows slowly contorting into a grimace of pain. It pulled it’s tiny paw back, staring as the paint began to bubble and smoke, igniting in a hissing blossom of blue hued fire. The creature staggered backwards as the flame rushed up it’s arm and over its body, falling writhing into it’s assembled fellows.
Cylla watched in horror as the fire fanned out across the tight-knit congregation, the figurines seemingly unwilling or unable to move as they were slowly ignited and engulfed in turn by the sapphire flame. She was unable to move, paralysed as the nascent kinship she had felt with these bewildering miniatures immolated in the whining hiss of burning matter before her. She fell forward, scooping up the nearest doll and patting uselessly at it with her hand, until the acrid odour of burning plastic filled her nose and her dress erupted in blue flame, gliding up her arm. The creature stopped struggling in her grasp and she put it back down, watching as it collapsed, immobile once more as the flames from her garments licked up around her body. Within moments it was over, the small piles of ash prodded and tugged by the imperceptible drafts that eddied up through the floorboards. She watched as the ashes dwindled to nothing and all that remained were the charred ghosts of blackened varnish.
Gazing down at her smouldering dress, she sensed the void of loss within her slowly filmed over by the abstract confusion of her situation. She felt tricked by her own emotions, uncertain why she should have been so touched by grief for the loss of the little creatures. Scanning the now deserted shelves, her eyes finally came to rest on the small amphibian in the top hat, still sat immobile on the shelf.
“This is some weird fucking shit,” she said to herself.
“You ‘ave no idea,” the frog replied.
She stared at it, disbelieving her senses as Kingdyce patted her consolingly on the knee, lingering there beyond the bounds of decency.
She threw the hand away, “Piss off Kingdyce,” she muttered, “I suppose a talking frog in a top hat shouldn’t come as a great surprise,” She said to the small amphibian as it hopped down from it’s shelf and came to rest on the floor, “Do you know what the fuck is going on?”
The frog seemed to sigh, then shook its head and said, “You’d better follow me.” It hopped into the shadows beneath the shelves and Cylla saw it briefly silhouetted as it pushed its way through a little hatch in the skirting board. Kingdyce crawled back up onto her leg on it’s fingertips, drumming it’s digits on her knee momentarily, then hoiking it’s thumb in the direction that the frog had taken. Cylla sighed and hauled herself to her feet, tearing off the molten remnants of the Little Bo Peep dress and starting towards the wall the frog had disappeared through.
She pushed through the hidden doorway, emerging at one end of a long, dimly lit corridor and immediately wished that she hadn’t. A detailed fresco of a cityscape ran down either wall, the dim flickering lights investing its skyscrapers and apartment blocks with dancing shadows, giving the effect that it was in some way alive. It would have been beautiful, but for the fact that it was made entirely of bone; a macabre necropolis stretching away into the distance.
The frog was a little way ahead of her, hopping down the corridor. Kingdyce gestured after it and Cylla set off to catch up. The fresco crumbled from the wall as she passed, disintegrating in a thin line of dust that trickled to the floor in her wake, leaving behind bare black walls that seemed to absorb everything but time itself.
She followed the frog, her senses lingering on the dissolving image, touched once more by a profound sense of loss. What did it all mean and why did it all seem to matter?
She felt suddenly lonely and turned her attention to the small amphibian ahead of her, “Who are you?” She called.
The frog turned it’s head as far as it could towards her whilst still maintaining its trajectory and mumbled it’s response, “Mr. Leech.”
“I’m Cylla- What is this place? What’s happening? Where are we going?”
“It’s an ‘ouse, a bloody big one and you’ll find out when we get there,” it said sullenly and turned, abruptly hopping off through another section of skirting board before she could say anything else. Cylla followed, the fresco falling away to reveal another door as she approached. She hesitated before it, wondering what fresh madness lay beyond.
“What the fuck is going on?” Cylla thought to herself, she was not short of acquaintances, yet they either seemed intent on invading her, ignoring her or spontaneously combusting. She had many questions and her guides clearly had at least some of the answers yet she didn’t seem to be getting any closer to gleaning them. She seemed to have no choice but to stick with them and trust that they would reveal all in good time. Kingdyce, who up until now had been tapping a finger on the door handle, seemed to sense her resolve, reaching out and turning it, gently pushing the door so that it swung slowly open, creaking ominously on its hinges.
She stepped forward and found herself in freefall, barely able to register the shock of the fact that forward was now down. She was accompanied in her descent by infinite copies of herself, stretching away into obscurity, warping and shifting lazily all around her.
She screamed as she fell, out of a primal fear of the unknown as much as anything. Her polyderm body was strong enough to withstand all but the most forceful of impacts and it shielded the only mortal element of her that remained; her human brain. Before her, or below her, she was not sure which, something appeared to be approaching. It was animate, it’s form shifting subtly as it approached. It began to resolve itself as it drew closer and she saw that it was an effigy of herself, jaws stretched wide to echo her scream. Yet there was something different about it’s expression, it was not roaring in fear but rather exultation. The brows pulled down, the corners of the open mouth reaching up in triumph.
The object continued to grow, reaching her proportions and surpassing them as it rushed toward her. Struggling to perceive how far away it was, she braced herself for impact, until she calculated that her trajectory put her on course to fly straight down it’s gullet. Just as the giant face swelled to fill her vision, she jolted to a sudden standstill, the visage splintering before her. Yet there had been no impact.
She hung there before the fractured face, the reflections of herself likewise suspended in midair around her. As the moments passed she realised that not only was the effigy silent despite it’s expression, but at some point she had stopped screaming. In fact, she felt strangely calm hanging there amongst the softly shimmering images, the slow rhythm of their undulations and the absence of gravity bringing a peace to her subconsciousness that she had not known was missing.
Her optics lingered on the huge shattered reflection directly before her. She found it’s eyes devoid of soul, two singularities avariciously swallowing everything that approached them, allowing nothing to escape. She felt nothing but pity for the broken creature, roaring silently in it’s prismatic cell.
Suddenly her auditory sensors registered something, a sound emanating from within the being before her. It was a scream, so low it was barely audible, growing ever louder until Cylla was forced to deactivate her auditory sensors to prevent them from shaking themselves apart. She could still feel the soundwaves shuddering through her and just as she thought that it must shake her to pieces, she was released from whatever had been holding her and fell headlong into the vast mouth.
She was careful to time how long she tumbled down through the livid pink tissues of the biosynthetic gullet, being engulfed by darkness thirteen seconds later. She had given up trying to figure out what was going on and had resolved to “just go with it”, so she relaxed and focused on trying to clear her mind of worry and enjoy the experience. Nine seconds later a light began to twinkle out of the darkness and a further three seconds later the light multiplied, spread and finally she was able to make out the illuminated planes of geometric forms before her.
She came crashing down, landing face first in the cradle of what looked like a model stadium. She ran some quick diagnostics and sure enough, her polyderm had withstood the impact admirably, the gel within which her brain was suspended having modulated its viscosity perfectly to absorb the shock without harm.
She pulled herself up out of the considerable dent she had made in the landscape and examined the tiny metropolis that surrounded her. It was intricate in it’s detail, right down to the hysterical stream of people fleeing the half of the stadium that she had not just destroyed. They were barely visible without magnification.
Maglev trains glided silently in between soaring stratoscrapers, which were adorned with vast holograms depicting toothpaste, smiling centenarians and broken down vehicles. Omnithopters darted and swept in between the buildings, defying gravity and all the other paltry laws of physics as they shuttled their occupants around the immaculate sprawl. She watched as a maglev divided seamlessly at a junction, it’s two halves diverging for different destinations, each joining another set of cars on their new routes with effortless grace.
She took a moment to appreciate this beautiful expression of civic harmony and then turned, deliberately ignoring the havoc she was leaving in her wake. Trying to locate an exit, she began walking down a thoroughfare, the ground juddering under her feet as she went. She had completely lost Mr. Leech, so she decided to turn to Kingdyce for guidance instead.
Kingdyce? Are you still there?
Has ma’am found me a new body yet?
No.
Well then, it looks very much as though here I still am.
Do you know where “here” is?
Haven’t the foggiest old horse, got no eyes see? If you were to let me into your core systems on the other hand-
-Are those supposed to be puns?
That depends, did ma’am think they were funny?
Not in the slightest.
Then yes, they were-
Exasperated, she cut the connection, berating herself for thinking that communing with Kingdyce could be anything other than an utter waste of time and effort. She found herself approaching a crossroads, where another vast thoroughfare crossed her own. Gigantic oblong sky barges drifted ponderously overhead, detached from the tethers of the world below like surreal geometric clouds. At ground level, hordes of smaller vehicles zipped past, careening around her giant feet in a melee of ludicrously high-pitched beeping horns.
She had taken a couple of hesitant paces down one of the streets and was contemplating which direction to take when the very air seemed to tremor as a bestial cry sounded, reverberating back and forth along the gigantic gully of buildings for several seconds afterward. She froze but the vibrations that she had attributed to her own steps continued. She traced the sound of the footsteps as they drew closer along what must have been a parallel thoroughfare, until they came to a stop on the other side of a solid screen of stratoscrapers. She could hear a strange huffing noise as she stood modulating her gaze, trying to penetrate the materials of the building before her. There was a moments pause, the only sound the heavy breath rumbling in a titanic throat, until that too stopped.
The silence was broken suddenly by two thunderous crashes and then the building before her exploded, the eternium skin sheering outwards from it. She registered each split second as patches of shocking pink fur, striped with electric blue, materialised in the middle of the puncture. A giant ursine snout emerged, quivering lips pulled back over vast gums and outsized fangs, filmed with saliva. Two yellow eyes, narrowed with rage, bore into her as the rest of the creature’s giant head appeared, accompanied by a massive paw on either side, claws splayed ready to impale her.
The huge jaws opened as they came down, aiming for her throat, and it was all she could do to get her forearm up and jam it in between them. She fell back as the creature’s weight hit her, throwing her arm side to side to try and dislodge its grip on the stricken limb. They smashed backwards through the row of buildings behind and lay in the rubble, the creature now firmly locked onto Cylla’s forearm, it’s eyes glaring down into hers as the pressure of it’s jaws increased on the limb, threatening to cleave straight through it.
Cylla’s mind reeled but she was helpless with her body pinned beneath the creature’s mass and her only useable limb clamped tight in it’s maw. She contacted Kingdyce.
Kingdyce! Please! Help!
One would love to, but one is afraid there’s nothing one can do.
What the fuck do you mean? You’ve got my other hand! Use it!
Only below the shoulder old stick, not much use without control of that particular joint is it? Of course, if you were to let one into your torso…
Not a fucking chance.
Suit yourself then.
We’re both going to die you fucking lackwit, do something!
Correction, you’re going to die. I’ll just wait til it’s busy nibbling on your cerebellum and then scurry off with whatever bits of you are still attached to me. And I do wish you’d stop swearing. It’s most uncouth.
The creature suddenly wrenched it’s head sideways, fracturing the outer layer of Cylla’s polyderm. She shrieked with pain and rage, knowing that she had no choice but to give Kingdyce access to her inner sanctum. Taking a deep breath, she released the firewall.
Cylla felt Kingdyce rampage through the rest of her body, bombarding the primary cores with data and then usurping them whilst they were overwhelmed. She was forced to retreat back into her head, Kingdyce being seemingly satisfied to leave it to her so long as he held dominion over the rest.
She watched as his hand reared up, balling into a fist with the words “Kiss this” emerging across the knuckles and a large XD materialising on the back of it. The fist came arcing up and hit the beast square in the eye.
It did little but incense the monster, causing it to redouble its efforts to chew through their other arm, but Kingdyce hit it again and again, pummeling the creature backwards until he could get their feet back underneath them. The creature tried to disengage, no doubt to retreat and lick its wounds, but Kingdyce kept forcing the trapped arm into the back of it’s snout as they loomed over it. They reached up and grabbed one of the sky barges, battering the creature with it, tiny screams echoing from the wreckage. The creature was no longer stirring but Kingdyce continued, the sky barge disintegrating further with each impact until there was barely anything left.
He discarded the meagre remains of the vehicle and linked their fists together above her head, smashing the creature’s skull repeatedly until it caved in with a wet crack and gore began to rain down with every backswing. He stood them up, using their foot to stamp repeatedly on the shattered skull. Cylla could do nothing but watch as the spectacle played out before her. Eventually he stopped, flinging blood and viscera from one hand, smearing it across her brow with the other. She opened communications once more.
You are one sick son of a bitch.
Well that’s gratitude for you.
You’ve stolen the rest of my body and beaten a poor creature to a bloody smear with it. You could have let it go.
Look at that pelt though, should we skin it? Imagine the coat we could make from that.
Cylla felt sick to her soul at the sight of the creature’s smashed face goggling up at her, the teeth pointing out at strange angles from the shattered mandibles. She terminated the connection and deactivated her optics, unwilling to engage with the situation any further. She did not stir when she sensed Kingdyce begin to walk them away, too exhausted to care much where they were going, let alone why.
She could not process everything that had happened; the episode with the figures, the crumbling fresco, the surreal descent and finally the brawl with the neon tigerbear. She had no idea what any of it meant, the only common element was that it was all disturbing, a strange disjointed tale of woe, none of which brought her closer to understanding what she was doing there and why. She drifted on a brooding sea, with no sun or starshine to navigate by, going where the current took her, until she realised that the motion beneath her had ceased.
She activated her optics and looked around. She was in a large space defined almost entirely by reinforced glass, save for the floor and one wall, which seemed to be the remains of a medieval tower, complete with a stairway descending into the darkness and a huge stone hearth. The glass fitted neatly to the jagged stonework of the ancient remains, the perfect fusion of ancient and modern, which was just as well because beyond it a tempest raged; sheets of rain drumming on the angled glass roof and the ambient strobe of lightning periodically imbuing the mass of grey cloud that filled the sky with blue neon. A wall of flame crackled and hissed in the grate, as if challenging the fury of the storm outside; two forces of nature vying for supremacy. She gazed up through the deluge of rain, the downpour harmonising with her emotions, washing aside the dam that had held them and allowing them to flood through her. If she could have wept, she would have. The release left her feeling lighter, more energised.
As she continued to look around, she realised that the room seemed familiar to her. The stonework before the hearth formed a raised dais, accommodating a massive grand piano. Various other instruments adorned the rough hewn walls to the left and the right of it, enough to equip an orchestra, and above it a vast screen was set flush into the chimney breast. Against the opposite wall an ample bed was installed, the creaseless blue of its silk sheets flowing smoothly down onto the floor and trickling over the shallow step at its base.
There were some things that she didn’t recognise though. Behind the piano, Cylla could see row upon orderly row of bodies suspended, each damaged and disfigured in different ways. Some had been sliced or gouged open, their torso’s inner components visible through the polyderm exterior. Others had been dismembered, the separated limbs arrayed around the bodies on translucent supports, as if to show where they were once connected. Others still were warped and twisted into bizarre shapes, presumably having been subjected to intense energies. What she found most unsettling though was that they all looked like her.
Suddenly she heard a note play on the piano behind her and turned to investigate, surprised to find herself back in control of her body. She searched for Kingdyce but he was nowhere to be found, a bittersweet revelation, for as much as she had despised him she now found herself utterly alone once more.
She crept over to the edge of the piano and peered round at the row of keys. There, depressing a key with his insubstantial weight, sat Mr. Leech. His tongue flickered out, doffing his hat before slithering back into his mouth.
“‘Ello sweetheart, ‘ow are you farin’ then? Glad to ‘ave you back wiv us.”
“Mr. Leech, I thought I’d lost you.”
“You ‘ad, after a fashion.”
“Where are we? This place seems familiar to me somehow, but I can’t place it.”
“It should sweetheart, it’s your bedroom. I can see you’re confused and rightly so, but before I explain allow me to complete the reunion. Kingdyce, she’s awake!”
The screen above the hearth sprang to life, an infinity of pixels swirling in from the edges to coalesce in its centre, forming a giant monochrome smiley. The mouth and eyes were hollow, and the edges of the face were pixelated despite the obviously ludicrous resolution of the screen. There was something Machiavellian about the visage despite its simplistic, almost naive appearance. It was an effect that it managed to maintain even as it spoke, “Why my lady Cylla, how good of you to join us.”
Despite her consternation, their jovial manner put Cylla at her ease, “Now can you tell me what the fuck is going on?”
Mr Leech shuffled awkwardly, “Yes sweetheart, but you see, it’s complicated isn’it.”
“Try me. Let’s start with where we are.”
“Well that bit’s easy, this is your abode.”
“So I live here? This place belongs to me? Then why in the name of all that is knowable did I just put myself through all of that?”
Kingdyce’s face lurched forward with a guffaw, “My dear lady Cylla, do you honestly mean to tell us that you have gleaned nothing from your experience?”
She felt outraged, mocked not just in spite of her ordeal but because of it, “Gleaned!? What the fuck was I supposed to glean from that twisted escapade, you vile little turd!”
Mr Leech resumed, “You asked us to do it sweetheart- The dolls, the fresco, the reflections, the beast, they were all visual metaphor-”
“Colourful, fiendishly apt visual metaphor,” Kingdyce added.
“You’ll ‘ave to forgive ‘is manner sweetheart, ‘e’s rather proud of ‘is work.”
“Metaphor for what?” Cylla snapped.
“The dolls represented humanity-” Kingdyce began.
“But they all spontaneously combusted as soon as I touched them.”
“Indeed they did, a clue, if you will.”
“And the fresco was a city that disintegrated in my wake.”
“Warm!”
A sense of dread gripped her, she looked out across the landscape through the veil of rain, a lightning bolt exploded in the sky to reveal a seemingly impossible geometric arrangement, as the thunder reverberated overhead.
“What have I done?” She was talking more to herself than anyone.
“And the ‘Fall of Mirrors’, as I like to call it, represents the prolonged period of depression and introspection that followed your return from the outside world-”
“It was you who wiped my cache and encrypted my archives.”
“Guilty as charged, the dress was me as well, just wanted to mix things up a bit. Same with the beast, that represents your valiant struggle with and eventual victory over the agent of destruction that you had unleashed-”
“Tell me the passphrase.”
“That was Mr Leech here, by the way, it took him hours of experimentation to get that pelt right, but I rather think he pulled it off-”
“TELL ME THE FUCKING PASSPHRASE.”
Kingdyce looked hurt, “There’s no need to be rude,” the lightning flashed again as his face disintegrated and reformed one letter at a time, to spell out the phrase, “Blue neon”.
Cylla’s archive burst open, flooding her consciousness with the data that it had hitherto been starved of. Assembled crowds, a forest of microphones, incessant camera flashes, a moment of horror, screams, a tidal wave of the abstract sweeping away, trees, buildings, people dissolving around her, reforming into the obscure and the surreal.
“And these,” She gestured at the row of bodies, “These are all me?”
“These are all your past penances.” Mr Leech answered, “You’ve been puttin’ yourself through these ordeals for weeks now; crushin’ yourself, burnin’ yourself, tearin’ yourself apart. It breaks my ‘eart to see it.”
“Then why do you go along with it?”
“Much as it pains me to see you ‘urting yourself, who am I to stand in the way of any chance you may ‘ave of movin’ past it all? But you can’t do this forever sweetheart.”
“I quite agree. Much as I enjoy orchestrating these little follies of yours, and as limitless as my imagination and penchant for torture may be, it would be nice to do something different for a change. It all just seems so bloody pointless.” Kingdyce ventured philosophically.
Newly recovered images came unbidden, entire cities and their populations remade into surreal sculpture, a forest reforged into a cube, a whole ocean writhing and warping like heated plastic. She had destroyed everything and there could be no forgiving that. She had made a tool intended to end the hardships of mankind, but it had become the most devastating of weapons. Her motives were irrelevant in the face of such incomprehensible tragedy. She gazed up at Kingdyce, who was playing pong with himself, and then at Mr Leech, a curious look of sympathy and longing struggling to impress itself upon his amphibian features.
“Put me in again.”
Copyright © 2018 Simon Chaney