by S. Gates
Marionette, you guess, walked away from their keyboard to make a sandwich, because their reply doesn't appear until almost half an hour later, "Hikaru showed them to me. There's more than I can count. I decided I'm going to kill myself tonight. Probably don't mean much but I don't want to be alive when the others come."
The anonymous response to the declaration is strikingly mixed, with equal numbers of posts arguing for or against Marionettestrings taking their life. SilentHarper17 does not reply to the thread again. The last post in it is dated yesterday, around 9:00 in the evening.
On impulse, you close the thread, return to the main page for the sub-forum, and hit the refresh button.
Before you get the chance to see the updated page, a hand falls on your shoulder, startling you enough to cause you to yelp. Simon laughs and sets a plate with a large puff pastry in front of you. "Why do you read that garbage? It's going to rot your brain."
You roll your eyes and pick up the pastry. It's cream-filled and has been warmed in the toaster in the back. "I just needed some mindless entertainment, dude. You on break?"
Simon snorts and perches in the chair across from you. "No, Dougie, I am shirking my duties so I can chat up my roomie in the middle of my shift." You snicker and take a bite of the pastry, making sure to lick up any filling that escapes out the other end. It's delicious, and the filling is not too sweet or too runny.
"Yeah, of course," you say. "When's this mysterious handsome fellow supposed to show up? Is he already here and I just have wildly different tastes in men from yours?"
This elicits another snort from Simon, who then cocks his head toward the landing of the stairs. "He's been hanging out in that corner," he says, voice barely loud enough to carry across your table. "He's a little early tonight, usually he shows up right after I take lunch." Your eyes track toward the corner he'd indicated, glossing over each individual in turn: there is a pair of teenaged girls, obviously not Simon's potential beau; an older gentleman with wrinkled brown skin and a bald head; and then, there is Lucien.
Your stomach clenches as you meet his eyes, but they are merely a dull gray-green. He gives no indication of recognizing you, though his face lights up when his gaze lands on Simon. The change is almost profound in a strange way, because it's like all of the carefully cultivated disinterest melts and Lucien's expression grows... fond. He stands and picks his way through the crowd to claim the remaining chair at your table. He raises a hand in greeting. "Yo."
It's painfully obvious to anyone with eyes that Simon is fighting back a stupid grin and losing ground fast. "Luke, hey! This is my friend, Doug. Doug, this is Luke!"
Lucien's expression doesn't change as he glances in your direction. "Oh, we've met," he says at length. "I plan to braid her entrails into a most delightful adornment once I have fulfilled my duties to my master."
You stare at Lucien, dumbfounded. "What?"
He cocks his head to one side, "I said that we'd bumped into each other earlier. Don't you remember?" His voice sounds almost innocent around the question. At your blank stare, he continues, "I almost ran you over."
"Oh, right, yeah," you say, suddenly unsure. "I wasn't paying attention, either, I guess."
He smirks. "Yes, well. Let me make it up to you, Alice. Simon, would you mind bringing her a drink on me?"
The use of your legal name makes your heart lurch and the blood drain from your face. You share that particular piece of information with very few people. How the hell had Lucien known it? You reach into your back pocket to check your wallet. The chances of him having stolen it during your little confrontation were slim, but it was the only reasoning your brain could produce that made any sort of sense.
Lucien raises a hand. "No, no, put your wallet away. I'm being serious about the drink being on me." His smirk grew until it was an impossibly wide grin. "It is the least I can do, considering I plan to nail your hands to a wall above your head and then use a delightfully sharp knife to slowly fillet the flesh away from your bones. Starting with your face."
Before you can process his words and come up with any sort of reaction, he lashes out with one hand and digs his fingers into your throat. His fingernails worm their way into your skin as if they have a life of their own. You try to yelp, cry out, do something, but the only thing that comes out is a strangled sort of gurgle. Your hands fly to his wrist, clawing desperately at it, but his grin only grows. It's a separate entity unto itself. It's an amused cancerous growth on his face, lined with a billion needle teeth.
Your vision swims, and the next thing you know, you're lying on the floor with Lucien's fingers buried in the flesh of your neck and one of his knees on your chest. You flail at him weakly, but your arms feel boneless. He merely chuckles. "Oh my sweet darling, what I would give to wear your skin right now," he says, and wiggles his fingers in your neck. The tips of them stroke the back of your trachea before ever-so-gently pressing on it. You try to scream, and this time he lets you.
* * *
You jolt awake, your hands going for your throat to verify there aren't actually holes there. You're still in the coffee shop, but it's nearly empty. Your laptop sits in front of you, the screensaver cycling through different soothing fractal images you downloaded one morning after work. Simon's walking toward you. "Ready to go?"
Blinking at him owlishly, you nod. "Yeah. Uh, just let me pack up. I kind of zoned out, I guess."
He scowls at you. "No shit, Sherlock. You barely said two words to Luke after he sat down. What the hell were you reading, anyway?"
Your mouth opens, but you realize with a chilly sort of feeling that you don't even remember. With the flick of a finger across your computer's track-pad, you dispel your screen saver and glance at the last thing you left open.
It's the thread you were following before Lucien arrived, but there have been several more posts after the final one you read. "Just... some dumb internet bullshit," you hedge. "Sorry."
Despite yourself, your eyes skim over some of the new posts before you shut your browser down. One anonymous user writes, "tracked ms's ip. dude's haus is on the other end of my town. good samaritaned this bitch n called the cops. gonna see if that shit makes news @ 11."
The most recent post is dated approximately ten minutes ago. "THE GIRL IS DEAD, ALICE. AND IF YOU ARE IMPRUDENT, YOU MAY SOON JOIN HER. <3"
On a lark one day in your youth, when you had been feeling particularly frustrated with your legal name, you had looked up how common it was. For over a century, it has been within the top five hundred girls' names in the United States. It even made a showing on the list of top thousand boys' names in the late 1800's. There are any number of people that the final anonymous poster could be speaking to, or perhaps they simply picked a name at random to try to unnerve anyone with that name.
Yet, as you shut your laptop down and slide it back into its carrying bag, you can't shake the weirdly persistent worry that it might have been aimed at you.
* * *
That night is blissfully devoid of dreams, as is the night that follows. In the interim, you open your mailbox to find your first bill from the hospital (it contains more digits than you particularly care to think about), flush the stragglers of your codeine-laced painkillers, and get a much-needed haircut while Simon makes a show of reading overly trashy Hollywood gossip mags in the waiting area. He makes a similar show of looking bored while you shop for a replacement phone.
You bumble through your final appointment with the neurologist for the next six months, surprising yourself by remaining silent on the issue of your hallucinations; when you open your mouth to try, the words stick in your throat and you simply close your mouth again. The whole time, you toy with the silver band on your finger. The neurologist scribes you a tentatively clean bill of health, along with a note allowing you to operate a motor vehicle at night and a forklift again. When you send JD a text to let him know, his response is simply, "Good. Tomorrow, 6PM."
And with that, life starts to feel normal. Yo
u feel a pang of sadness every time you glance outside and don't see your old car parked in the driveway, but the bruises are all mostly progressing to the gross blotchy green-yellow phase that heralds their inevitable fading away. It's getting easier and easier to write off the wreck and ensuing days as a nasty nightmare.
Work is hard, and it makes you notice contusions in places you hadn't realized you had them, but the repetition of shifting papers adds just another soothing layer to the patina of "ordinary" that's beginning to set in. JD teases you mercilessly about getting into a wreck to beg off of work when the warehouse is at its coldest and least comfortable. You take his words for what they really mean: "I'm glad you aren't dead."
By the time you've run the paper and bundled the stacks set to mail and the stacks set to be placed in the dispensers, you're bone-weary and aching. It takes every ounce of self-discipline to drag your sorry carcass home instead of passing out in your rental at three in the morning. It's a very near thing.
Through the grace of God and caffeine (which are one and the same in your mind now), you stumble into your home and manage somehow not to bark your shins on anything in your rush to get to the bathroom and out of your work clothes. You have ink smears on your hands and arms, smudges on your face, and you managed to pour soda down your front. The only thing that could prevent you from soaking in the shower is a lack of hot water (a problem you know for a fact you won't have to deal with, given the size of the water tank in this house).
You don't bother with any lights; there's enough glow from the street lamps outside filtering through the bathroom window for you to stumble your way through disrobing and crawling into the shower. The first blast of water that hits you is frigid, but it warms quickly enough that you don't even have time to jump back. The hot water pelts your skin, the warmth soothing away some of the residual soreness after a while. You let your head tilt backward and rest against the tiled wall at the back of the tub.
* * *
The water has gone cold.
You don't remember shutting your eyes, but you know you must have if the shower turned chilly.
The knobs of the tap squeak, and the water slows to a trickle at your feet. In the gloom, you see a slender, pale hand disappear on the other side of the shower curtain. You want to push yourself up, jump away at the start of someone intruding on your shower, but your limbs refuse to move. All you can do is stare ahead, wide-eyed, your heart beating quick and loud in your ears.
The curtain draws back, and you lay eyes on the skinny form of Ori. This time, they are completely nude and even in the dim light you can tell that they lack any sort of sexual definition. Their skin is so pale that they practically glow as they step gracefully into the tub with you. There are no nipples, no navel, not even any signs of how their body expels waste. You can count every rib, separated as they are by little gashes that might have been gills if they'd been born in the water. Through the shadows you can see their pointed teeth glint like little ivory jewels.
"I can't leave you alone, can I, Douglas?" They kneel between your legs and curl forward to rest their head on your chest. "I turn a blind eye for three days and you somehow manage to attract the attention of my nearest, dearest, and most bitter rival. Whatever shall I do with you."
After expending a bit of effort, your tongue decides to start working again. "Could always just give me up as a lost cause."
Ori hisses against your chest. "That is not an option, dearest Douglas. You are too valuable for me to simply let you go." They bury their nose in the hollow space between your breasts, clamping their arms around your ribcage to keep you from squirming away. "No, I believe I shall just have to keep a closer watch on my investment. It is simply unfortunate that you should draw the attention of the Breaker. He is not known to be gentle with those who catch His eye."
You swallow, your throat feeling suddenly dry. "I don't know what you're talking about."
The strange creature wrapped around you heaves a sigh. Their fingers trail up your sides, skate across your chest, and brush lightly against where your trachea is closest to the skin. The places Lucien dug in his fingers blaze like fire under Ori's touch, causing your breath to hitch and your body to jerk away. But Ori's arms are implacable. "Don't lie to me, Douglas. If nothing else, your body knows well what your mind refuses to see." With another sigh, Ori pulls themself up your body until their eyes are even with yours.
Even in the dark, they're like shimmering pools of nothing that devour even the most trace amounts of light. They're almost unnaturally large for Ori's face, lending them an eerie quality like an alien child. You can't help but imagine an entire race of Ori-people: skin stretched over bones like knives and black pits for eyes and huge shark grins.
Their fingers grip your jaw, wrenching you back to reality. "Focus, dear one. I let you be fallow for three days as promised. It's time now to collect."
"Collect?" you ask, feeling like you've swallowed a lump of lead.
Suddenly, you find yourself hauled upright, clutched to Ori's chest. It feels like your legs won't support you, but Ori's grip is (as always) iron-like. "Come. I have such wonderful things to show you." Once they have you on your knees, they shift their grip and stand you on both feet like a well-behaved doll.
The world lurches underneath you; you can see the walls of your bathroom warp and bubble like skin dunked in acid. The tiles on the floor bow up, crack, erupt in little bursts of black slime that congeals mid-air. Above you, the ceiling splits open to reveal not the cluttered attic you know should be there, but instead a noxiously gray-green sky filled with roiling clouds. Sheetrock melts, timbers behind them turn black and rot, and you're suddenly standing in what might as well be the burnt-out ribcage of your home. Howling winds that reek of bad eggs and spoiled meat pick up globules of goo and send them rolling along the debris-covered floor.
"I made this for you," Ori breathes. The words somehow reach your ears, though the wind tries to whip them away. "For us."
"There's no 'us,'" you reply, but the words are dry and cracked in your throat.
"Of course there is," says Ori. "There always has been, and there will be until the end. Either you will succeed, and we will rule this place together; or you will fail, and I will take great pleasure in feasting upon your flesh as my consolation prize."
Your throat burns, and you can't tell if it's just an echo of what Lucien did or the acrid air getting to you. "You're high," you croak.
"No, we are in fact rather low. Would you prefer we were higher?" Ori says, and you regret ever having learned a language with which to utter those two words.
Everything tilts and the ground rushes away from you faster than your eyes can really track. Suddenly you're hundreds of feet above the bombed-out shell of your home, looking at the street on which you live. All of the houses resemble yours: gutted, rotting, twisted parodies of how you know them to be. The street bubbles over with that black slime, which flows like a bloated river toward the city. The sky is still bruise-colored, but the skyline where you know the city's skyscrapers should be glows an angry, infected red. Below you, you hear a single bird chirp. Something long and dripping emerges from the muck of the street to snatch it and drag it beneath the depths. Your stomach churns.
"Is this not to your liking?" Instead of trying to form words and risking vomiting, you shake your head. "Oh, that's all right, we can change it. What would suit you better?" You hazard a glance at Ori. Their face is pinched just a little, as if caught in deep thought. The tension releases after a moment, their features smoothing and a wide grin takes hold. "Ah, yes, of course, how could I forget?"
It feels like falling, but then you're in a room with which you'd become intimately familiar several months ago (and with which you've become increasingly estranged since Amanda broke things off). It even smells like her, though she isn't there. It's just like you remember it: small, neat, cleaned to within an inch of its life. The comforter is even folded on top of the blanket made into the hospital cor
ners you recall taking great joy in wrecking. Your knees give out, and Ori lets you collapse onto the carpet next to Amanda's bed. You glance at Ori's knees. They're bony and the skin on them looks dry and scaly.
"Perhaps now we can discuss the fact that you have met some of our competition," Ori says, their voice dropping in what is probably meant to be dangerous but sounds more like a child pretending they're an adult. "It saddens me that it happened so soon."
"Competition?" you ask the shark-child's knees.
Ori takes a few steps so their knees are outside your field of vision. Instead, you're now staring at the faded old ivy-print on Amanda's bed linens. "Don't play coy, dearest. I know you're well aware of the game we are all playing. Some of the players have been... shall we say... less than circumspect." They reach down and dig their fingers into your scalp like you are a favored canine companion. It makes your stomach lurch, and their touch does not follow when you shy away.
"We are playing a game, Douglas," they say. "Its rules are complex beyond your understanding, but the principles are very simple: whosoever is invited in first will win possession of this world. We choose our players to increase our chances of being invited in, and those who allow us to lay claim to their home are richly rewarded." As Ori speaks, they begin pacing across your field of vision. "It is a game as old as the universe, and I have chosen to share it with you."
Ori continues to talk, but the words roll off your brain and refuse to stick. You know you've heard this story before. Or rather, you've read it. While you've made a valiant effort to forget your first encounter with Lucien, you clearly remember that (stupid) forum thread. Of course, it seems like your imagination –you are quite obviously hallucinating at this point –has provided a few new details, but the essence of it remains unchanged.
The pacing slows. Stops. Ori kneels before you such that you're now staring where their navel would be if they'd been spawned in any sort of way resembling mammalian birth. One of their hands comes to cup your chin and tilt your face up so that you've no choice but to stare at that serrated grin. "Douglas," they say, and the sound of your name is like the rumbling in the chest of a particularly hungry lion. You shiver and say nothing.
