INTESTINAL 5.07

And we're back around! First chapter of the day with plenty of hours left for the next one, which is the one I'm real excited on. Dunno if the next chapter's gonna be an interlude or if my craving for the magic and fleshcrafting of the setting and go to Ilia's plans and productions, but either way next one's gonna be fuuuuuun!

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To be alive is to be haunted. To be haunted is to feel the echo of something that once was, and no longer is. Such reverberation, such connection, is quintessential to the Art as we understand it. Connections, once forged, do not easily break, and it can be difficult to re-engage new things into the point which something else has once occupied. In this way, sympathetic effects can be both complex and simple to defend against. 

Bind one’s flesh entirely to one’s own will. Fill every aspect of the self with your chosen concepts, chosen intentions, chosen meanings, such that when one tries to equate you with another, when one attempts to sympathically connect a similar piece of another to you, they are stopped by what you have already filled such a place with. 

Two sunsets are not the same. Reinforce this fact. Be only what you choose to be. Be haunted by the gods and devils you create, above any others.

-Fifteenth Scripture, three-hundred and fifteenth verse of the books of  Lo-ahnn Daughtler, First Architect of Artistry, 

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Something shifts inside me. Something changes. Has changed. Will change. 

The way that the skill grew, the way that my mind twisted out of shape, I felt like… like something was reaching through me, almost. I felt the way it shifted something inside of me, changed something inside of my fucking brain. A kind of pressure, something that pushed further than it should have gone, like when you stretch against a muscle and it pops into place in a way you never knew it could. 

GLIMPSE BEYOND HAS GROWN

Again. Again. That third blip, that strange evolution in the skill, it felt like it branched out, like something in the back of my head stretched out beyond its limitations. And I can still feel it now. The shape of it has changed. 

I think back to my sheet. My eyes drift away from the symbionts, away from the skills, up towards the organs. 

• NEUROLOGOS

  • HOMO SAPIENS CEREBRUM

  • UNDERDEVELOPED [0000000000]

There’s something else there. There’s something next to the cerebellum, underneath it. Just like there was with my character sheet as a Fleshling, the… I think back to my sheet. My eyes drift away from the symbionts, away from the skills, up towards the organs. The “PARASITIC INFESTORICA”, whatever the fuck that meant. Is it… 

Hmm. Lost my train of thought. Feel like that’s been happening more often lately, even as my thoughts have started building train tracks to all new directions. I-

Michael is back, holding a towel and offering it to me. I can see the strings heading up to the Puppet Puppeteer above him, that things inside and beyond and above him, held tight but only guiding right now, reacting to something it doesn’t have a plan for. I’m not sure if it’s an animal, a child-like person, or an outright machine, don’t know what kind of life it’s developed, but-

“Hey! Hey! I asked if you’re ok. Are you-”

I shake my head. “I said I’m fine. I’m not- it’s crazy that you’re the one panicking right now, man. I’m not the one with the strings.”

He goes quiet at that, and I regret the words almost as soon as I say them. Not the time for that. Whatever else he might be, Michael’s at a delicate place right now, as fragile as they come. He’s been undergoing trauma for… if not weeks, then maybe months. Time wasn’t super clear, at least when it came to the big puppet’s understanding of it. 

“Sorry. I… I didn’t mean that. I saw something I wasn’t expecting, and it had an effect, that’s all. It’s… well, I don’t want to say normal, but it’s not exactly outside of my expectations for what might have happened tonight. A little surprised it wasn’t worse.”

“Well… don’t jinx it.”

I laugh a little, tasting the copper and iron tang of blood in the back of my throat. “I would say ‘knock on wood’, but that feels a little insensitive.”

I see some of the strings thrum at the joke, jiggling a bit, and I honestly can’t tell if the joke’s gone over well or if I’ve pissed it off. Not a great sign either way. Until I actively intend it, I’m better off not trying to get a reaction out of this thing. 

I finish wiping the blood up and off of myself, snorting a bit into the towel and leaving it properly stained crimson. I hand it back to Michael, intending the action as grateful, but he definitely makes a face at the mess I’ve made on it. Which, you know, fair.

“Listen, Michael. I don’t think that anything that’s happened to you has been your fault, alright? You’ve got a lot of shit happening to you right now, and while I might not really understand what all the details are, you’re not the source of them. You have something tied to your… your being. Your-”

“My soul?”

I snort, then pause, rethinking that reaction. “I… don’t really know what a soul is, in this context, but maybe? It’s in your layers. Whatever that means. Tied to you directly in a way I don’t really know how to articulate, and-”

“So you don’t know how to remove it?”

I can hear in his voice the way that his hope drains away. The way that he’s holding on, desperately, to the idea that this might be over with today rather than maybe never. He’s holding his gaze on me, staring right into my eyes uncomfortably. 

“No. But, to be fair, I didn’t come here with that intention.”

He blinks.

“I told you, Michael. I’m also someone that stuff just sort of happened to. I came here because I heard that there was some kind of weird shit going on, and needed to find out what. Undoing it, confronting it, unmaking whatever was here, that was never in the cards for tonight. I’m not an expert in this shit, and even if I was, I wouldn’t be tearing shit out of your layers willy-nilly anyways, I don’t think that’s how this works. And whatever this thing is, it doesn’t seem like it wants to hurt you.”

“Doesn’t- god fucking damnit!”

He swings his hand against the coffee table, slamming it violently enough that it rattles on its legs and I hear a slight cracking sound. 

“What the fuck do you mean, it’s not trying to hurt me? I can’t leave the house! I can’t go outside! I can’t see people! I can’t sleep or eat or shit when I want to, I’m dragged along by these fucking wires left and right and-”

“I said it doesn’t seem to want to hurt you,” I say, trying to keep my voice even, trying to keep his attention on me rather than on the still-loaded still-cocked gun less than five feet from us. He doesn’t seem outright hostile, but considering his volatility, the last thing that I want to add to the equation is a loaded weapon. “It’s doing what it’s doing because that’s what it knows how to do. I don’t think it’s malicious, just misguided. It doesn’t know that it’s hurting you. It doesn’t think like you do, it-”

“Well what the fuck is it!?” he roars, slamming his hand a second time. I’m rather missing the drooping, barely functional Michael I met at the front door right about now. “It is a fucking ghost? A goddamn demon puppet? Some kind of hoodoo voodoo bullshit that my grandfather did? What? I want it gone. I want my fucking life back! I want to leave this shitty fucking town and go back to my friends and my family and my fucking job! I don’t have savings to just live here forever! I don’t- I’m alone here! With it! And-”

I try to scoot backwards, trying to get enough space to get back to my feet and put some distance between me and him, and he grabs me by the jacket collar.

I punch him in the mouth. 

It is not my most well thought-out plan, but it’s also better than having a violent stranger looming over me in the middle of my panic spiral. Also, he fucking grabbed me. There’s consequences for that.

He blinks, a bit of blood oozing back over his lip, and takes his hand away from my collar to touch his face. I take the opportunity to grab the distance I need, shuffling back until I’m against the lounge chair I was sitting in and using that to get to my feet.

“I don’t fucking know, dude,” I snarl. “And I didn’t come here to get fucking grabbed by you. Next time you do that shit, I’m hitting you with the knife-hand, not the polite one. Got it?”

He’s still there, kneeling next to the coffee table, one hand to his lip. His eyes are blank, wide, and I can see him breathing, but little else. 

And then the strings go taut. 

He moves jerkily, seeming not to try resisting, and before I can react, he’s gotten a hand onto the gun. 

There’s no hesitation. No attempt to stop, square his stance, line up the sights. From where he grabs it, his arm and upper body simply pivot mechanically to face me, drawing a perfect bead against the center of my forehead, and-

Something leaps out of the shadows and tackles him bodily to the floor. The gun goes off with a bang, the sound louder than anything I’ve heard in such a confined space, and the strings start flailing, making his limbs spasm and judder as he and his puppeteer start to fight back against the unknown assailant.

Well. Unknown to him. In the light of the lamp, which still illuminates less than it should, the shadows all at weird angles radiating from it, I see a leather jacket covered in stamps and pins.

“Leisha, what the fuck?”

“Got your back!” She says, doing a fast and efficient readjustment that has her legs wrapped around Michael from behind and her arms locked around his neck in a picture-perfect triangle choke. “Didn’t think I’d just send you in here with no backup, did ya?”

“I- yeah!”

“GET THE FUCK OFF OF ME!” Michael screams, though with the way his limbs are jerking against their own movements I’m not sure if he’s talking more to Leisha or to the strings. The gun is still in his hand, but the puppet’s attempts to use it are stymied by Michael’s instinctive need to protect his airway, trying to reach up and grab at the arms choking him out. It barely takes a second, but I see that moment of disconnect, the instant where the puppet stops yanking the gun back towards me and starts working with Michael to shift it, point it over his shoulder-

I don’t think, I just move. Two steps across the living room and the moment before the gun goes up at an angle that’ll kill him or Leisha, I swipe across seemingly empty space with the Glove. 

I feel a tiny bit of resistance as I cut, scalpel-tools extended out of the Glove’s internal folds and joints. A slight “twang” sound as the strings over his arm are neatly severed, sending his arm wildly off course until it flops limply against the table, banging his hand on it.

In the shattering brightness of the second gunshot, I see Michael’s eyes, wide, staring up at me in a mix of hope and horror I’ve never seen on a human face.

I see the horror get louder as he tries to lift his arm and finds it completely slack. 

“What… what did-”

Leisha redoubles on the choke, no longer needing to dodge away from the gun. For all his supernatural precision and the ongoing flopping-around of his body, aided by the strings, it doesn’t take long for his eyes to roll up into the back of his head.

But he doesn’t go limp.

The puppet strings, almost vibrating with the force being put on them, keep jerking his body around, keep forcibly moving him, and I see the glint of new ones drifting down like spider’s web from above, fluttering down towards his arm.

Fuck. Fuck. 

I’m behind the glass. I can focus. I am not ruled by panic or animal need or desperate survival drives. There are choices to be made here.

First things first.

“Leisha, he’s out! It’s the puppet-thing that’s moving, if you keep choking him-”

I don’t even need to finish the sentence. She drops the hold immediately, at least as aware as I am that the difference between unconscious from lack of oxygen in the brain and dead from lack of oxygen in the brain takes seconds at most. The Puppet Puppeteer takes the opportunity to jerk his body away from the both of us, dragging him forcefully enough that the points where the strings enter his body bend out of place and begin to bleed. Michael is pulled back to his feet, forcibly moved into a standing position as he tries to raise the gun and fails again.

I don’t think the Puppet has a mouth, much less lungs. But I can feel it screaming. I can feel it in the way that the house trembles, that the furniture starts to move, each shift bringing to light the micron-thin shine of wires tied to them, too. I don’t know if it’s feeling pain, grief, or loss at the tearing of those strings, but it is absolutely feeling as close as it can to rage.

“Leisha, I think we need to-”

I can see why Dani likes using her as an agent in the field. Either she’s got a faster tactical mind than I do, or she’s just really good at reacting to things. I don’t even get to finish my breath before she’s run past me, grabbed me by the shoulder and spun me around to push me ahead of her and towards the door. No words, no hesitation, just action, pure and simple.

It takes me a second, but I get the message. We both run for the fucking exit. 

Things start to fly off the walls at us, more and more objects showing off their interconnected nature as movement makes the little light available glint off of their previously invisible strings. I block off a picture frame, duck around a table in the lounge area, get forcibly jerked forward out of the line of fire of a bunch of knives that fucking flew out of the kitchen and into the entry hallway. Leisha keeps moving, bits of flesh-magic visible under her clothes as if awoken by the struggle, goes to grab the door handle-

And freezes.

I slam into her back, and find it as unyielding as a brick wall, knocking me back onto my ass on the ground. 

“Leisha, the f-”

I don’t bother finishing. Been a night for short sentences and interruptions. I see the flesh-magic under her coat, previously only visible in the inside of her sleeves or over her collar, now flaring out, tiny threads of something like neural tissue or lymph nodes violently spasming out from the interior to the exterior of the jacket. They’re climbing towards a central point, right up against her neck, where-

Where a single thread has managed to punch through and into her skin. 

I see others reaching down out of the Above-place, down from the Puppet, and whatever defenses she has seem to be protecting her from most of them. Like the pendant Dani had me wear, hiding me from the Big Guy’s predation, she’s clearly got an extensive amount of protections layered on her, but they don’t seem equipped for this- I see the jacket writhing as things like glands and muscle fibers flex beneath it, possibly responsible for some of her reaction time, but the threads are blocked only where the jacket extends to. On her neck, now her left hand, they’ve found bare skin, and have already begun to dig in, even as Leisha’s armor seems to be trying to react and become a sort of membrane over her vulnerabilities.

Doesn’t matter. No time. I hear more rattling behind us, more household items ready to be hurled at us poltergeist-style- and worse, I hear disorganized, uneven footsteps, emerging from the living room and out into the foyer. A glance behind me is enough to see Michael, still unconscious, walking jerkily forward on now-bloody strings that support his weight, his right arm partially extended.

It’s not fixed, but there’s new threads over where I cut. His forearm, wrist, and hand are all still limp and disconnected, but his shoulder and bicep are enough to begin to raise the weapon as other wires drift down towards the limb.

Cool. Great. Awesome. Fucking ideal, even. Trapped in a haunted house with a possessed, ghost-wielding asshole, but with a twist. Why not!

I have to dodge a set of shoes and an improvised spear of a coat rack to get to my feet, my multiple layers of jackets and sweaters making the smaller items coming from random directions feel like dull punches rather than anything bone breaking. I have to crawl to the wall to get enough space to get my hands under me and make it back to my feet.

Leisha is turning, her jaw partially slack, her one strung-up hand coming to point towards my face, and I don’t bother to figure out the Puppet’s intentions. I just swing my scalpels through the air over Leisha, severing a bundle of wires that flutter down from their cut ends.

Leisha inhales like she was drowning, blinking rapidly in confusion- I don’t bother with explaining, just dashing past her to yank at the door-

Which is closed, more wires strung into its hinges, the knob, and the lock. All of them resist any effort to move them, actively refusing to turn as demanded.

“Leisha! I’m going to cut it open, get the knob!”

No need for repetition, no request for clarification- she just grabs it, partially blocking me with one arm from the flying objects or Michael, whose gun hand is still getting closer and closer to functionality. Her jacket and it’s new malformed membrane seem to be better at blocking the shit flying at my head than I am, and I trust in her, turning in the tight pocket of space and cutting blindly at every part of the door I can reach, trying to sever every goddamn wire on the thing.

I hear the sound of metal-on-metal as the gun is cocked back for a third shot, as the hand holding it gains function once more and turns it towards us.

I feel a final musical note of a string under tension being cut. 

The door clatters open as Leisha shoves against it, hard enough to dent the wood and more than hard enough to force it open the wrong way, breaking some of the hinges in the process. The flesh beneath her leather jacket spasms with the action, then goes stiff, and I wonder if it’s out of power as I somehow, impossibly, hear the sound of a trigger being pulled over the cacophony of the house.

And then a hand has grabbed me by the front of my shirt and dragged me violently forward as Leisha and I both fall out of the house.

I feel something tug at my hair a millisecond before I hear a crack like thunder. 

We hit the porch in a jumble, falling down of the stairs in much the same way. Our limbs get tangled, I hit my head on one of the steps, I feel my knee bang against the railing to one side, and then it’s concrete and grass and we’re on the lawn, and then Leisha is moving again. She’s fast, grabbing me by the back of my heaviest jacket and yanking me forward, fully dragging me one-handed down the lawn even without her jacket’s pulsing enchantments. 

I try to get my feet under me, pushing myself in the direction she’s dragging me, up to the point that we’re both halfway across the lawn before I have the time to look back.

Michael is there. His eyes are foggy, his gaze unfocused, but almost as if on cue, they center on me the moment I make eye contact. He’s covered in blood, bleeding out of dozens of points where the strings have pulled too hard and torn his skin and muscle, and the gun is in his hands, still pointing out towards us, still ready to fire, still wrapped in string and ready.

I see the muscles under his skin pull taut, and watch the muzzle of the weapon turn just a few degrees left. 

The ground beside me splashes like water as the bullet turns the grass to mulch, echoed by the thunder of the firing a moment later.

And then Leisha has hoisted me to my feet, opened my car door, and thrown me the fuck inside. Instinct takes over and as she vaults to the other side, tearing open the door there too, I’ve already turned the keys to the right angle to wake up my piece-of-shit jalopy, hit the gas, and started driving us both away from that house. Away from the thing playing in it. Away from the poor bastard it’s playing with.

And as we’re driving, for about half a second before I lose my train of thought, I wonder why the Puppet didn’t (or couldn’t) put any strings on me.