INTESTINAL 5.05

Alright! Here we are again! First two-chapter day in a HAWT minute and I think it's been worth the wait, cause man oh man did that feel good. Suffice to say, in spite of the horrors, we proceed, and I'd say Ilia agrees with me. Confronting some assumptions about how all this mess works, and what's going on with this Michael fella!

__________________________________________________________________________

A puppet is free so long as he loves his strings

-Sam Harris

“It’s all about the curve. You see here, Mikey? You have to curve with the wood. If you’re careful, and gentle, and brave enough to make mistakes, the wood will tell you where it wants to go. You’re not forcing it to be something- you’re asking it, telling it about what you’d like it to be, and if you’re good to it, it’ll listen, and if it listens, then it will be your partner. See here, how when I push my knife, it glides? Wood that doesn’t like you doesn’t work like that. It’s stiff, it chips, it dulls your knife- no, you want helpful wood, the kind that hears about what you want to make and gets excited for it.

“I know this isn’t exactly your favorite thing in the world. When my grandparents were born, up until my parents had me, the world stayed so similar. Now, it moves so quick. You’ve got so many wonderful things to enjoy, so many ways to see the world and play and talk to your friends. I think it’s wonderful. But I still like the wood, like to make things, and even if it’s not your favorite thing in the world, it’s still important to know these things. I won’t be around forever. I want to make sure you and your sisters always have options, and always know how big the world is. There’s so many wonderful things out there, Mikey. You just have to know how to…

“…”

“Hmm? Oh! Mikey! Look at you! So tall! So handsome! Must be beating the ladies off with a stick, huh? Gotta make sure it’s a quality one- any of that balsa wood nonsense and they’ll break your door down! Oh, wait, wait right here, I was… yes, I was making you something. I was making you a present! It’s right-

“Oh. Oh. I’m… sorry. It’s…

“...”

“Yes, that’s- that’s alright. You’re a good boy Mikey. I… did I ever tell you about the process? You have to understand, it’s all about the curve-”

-An old man, sitting with someone he does not recognize but who swears they know him. They swear they love him. They promise that it’s Mikey. 

________________________________________________________________________

It is only because I have already gone behind the glass that I don’t flinch. I stay very still. I stay actively fucking planted in my goddamn chair and do not, in fact, whirl around and start carving into the nightmare limbs that are standing right the fuck behind me. 

I stay still. 

Michael looks… broken. It wasn’t as visible at first, not so easy to see in the dark, but here, now, he looks drained, half-empty and exhausted. He’s crying, but he’s not even breathing all that hard, like the tears are just flowing freely with no regard for the rest of his anatomy. The strings occasionally twitch but otherwise remain inactive, holding enough tension to stay perpendicular to the ground and no more. I only detect hints of change to them when his attention wanders over the gun in his lap, still resting, cocked and loaded, in one of his hands. 

I’m effectively trapped. Behind me and in front of me- both directions hold a threat I can’t easily counter. And in spite of his blatant fear and exhaustion, one thing he said to me stands out- his grandfather said this thing would protect him. I don’t doubt that if I move aggressively towards him or the figure behind me, something will come from the other direction to counter me.

I really need to find more materials and a workshop. I’m getting very fucking tired of everyone else being more equipped to cause harm than I am. Even if it’s just making more pipe bombs, I’m down. It’s illegal as fuck, felony offense and everything, but I’m tempted to start seeing what I can do with fertilizer and pipe-guns. Anything to avoid this kind of moment happening again.

Focus. 

Before Michael can pull himself back together from the strain of defying his strings, I lean closer and look. I feel my Glimpse Beyond come alive, a feeling not unlike swirling mercury in the back of my brain, and as I stare at this broken man I see-

A puppet. 

I see under the skin which is so well crafted, which is so well shaped, which is draped so comfortably over a frame of a person. I see the strands of flesh and how they are shaped, how their proteins and fibers make up the shapes of a human being and artfully connect to the veins and bones and structures and-

It’s wooden.

Not literally. Not really. But I can see it. I can see the way that all that meat is fundamentally no different than the wood of a puppet, than something made to be pulled along and made to dance. 

The strings pull at the tissue as they emerge, but they go deep, deeper than they should, down below the physical layers of his body. I see them tied into and woven throughout and ingrained in the thing below, the thing that is a puppet, pulling from a deeper layer that fits-

Fits poorly. Not like it was originally there. Like at some point someone pulled apart his pieces and slipped an empty space in there, a layer of something that turned man to puppet and then got closed over by the other layers. They wrap it in frilly lace and velvet and woven cotton like puppet’s clothes, just as real as the clothes of a person but designed to obfuscate and hide and distract from the fact that the things it covers are not real. 

There is an ugly place inside him, where the fact that he’s his own person and the fact that he’s a puppet have been forcibly mingled and mauled. From there do the strings flow.

Up. Up. Up. 

Up past the ceiling. Up past the shadows in the wood. Up past the shape of things in the dark, up past where the house would end, up past where the sky demands that all things that go up must go eventually. 

Remember to breathe, Ilia.

“Ok Michael. I think I can see some of what’s going on here, but… let’s treat this like a doctor’s visit, ok? I have information, but only so much. I need you to tell me how it feels, what you’re seeing/ Tell me the symptoms, alright?”

He sniffs, blinking as if in surprise when he notices how wet his face is. Then, slowly, he nods. “Ok. What… what do you want to know?”

“First thing’s first- are you seeing the puppet right now?”

He shakes his head no, flinching as his eyes turn towards the lamp he lit up. “No. No, it… it doesn’t like the light at night. I only see it during the day, around corners and stuff, and at night if I stay up too late. I… it starts getting closer to me if I don’t go to sleep at a certain time.”

“Ok. And what does it look like? How big is it?”

“I… I already told you. It’s like… like a misshapen puppet. It’s face is all wrong, and the limbs, and it’s still got bits of twig and-”

“Michael, how big is it?”

He blinks, refocusing. I think the more practical, direct questions help him more than the abstract ones. 

“It’s about a foot tall. Shows up sitting down wherever it is, sometimes laying down.”

“Alright. Thank you, that’s helpful. Do you see the strings on you right now? Or only sometimes?”

He lifts an arm, shakily, as if expecting it to jerk unexpectedly. When it defies expectations by remaining under his control, his breath shudders, and he waves very gently. “It’s… I have to squint. But they’re there. They’re always there. I can feel them, going under my skin. Like pulling an ingrown hair, but it goes deep, so deep, until I can feel it in the bone of me.”

I frown at that. Alright. The pictures continue to fail to add up. “You have to squint to see them, but you always feel them. Ok. Do you feel the strings going anywhere other than up?”

He shakes his head no. “Just… sometimes they’re limp. Sometimes they’re tight. They’re usually tight after lights-out, until I get to bed.”

“Good information, Michael, thank you. I’m going to get up out of my seat now, ok? I’m going to come closer so I can look at the wire. Is that alright?”

I see several of the strings through his body tighten, tugging ever so slightly further up into the air. He flinches at that (and I have to wonder how much his particular infestation feels, how painful it is), but ironically, the reluctance of the strings actually seems to help him come to a decision, a bit of firmness coming back to his eyes that was there when he invited me in but drifted as the conversation went on.

“Yeah. Yeah, ok, I won’t-”

“Then can we go ahead and put the gun to one side for a second?”

That brings back the hesitation. His eyes swivel from the strings back to me, down to the weapon in his lap, back up. He’s practically cradling it, treating it extremely gently, which, for a piece of that size and weight, does look a little out of place. It only adds to the tension, if anything. I know how a calm, collected person, trained in firearms use, can be unpredictable and dangerous. Someone this messed up, with this level of intimacy with a weapon, is even harder to predict. 

As if on cue with my thoughts, the string going to the back of his palm twitches, making his fingers curl very slightly around the grip. 

He growls to himself and forcibly grabs the gun before tossing it to one side of the sofa, making me fucking flinch as he tosses a gun that is loaded and cocked like it’s a fucking paperweight. Design ultimately wins out- the gun lands without blowing a hole through anything its barrel is coincidentally pointing at, leaving a seven-pound weight in the couch cushion.

“Alright. Just… just do it.”

I nod, lifting myself up slowly from the chair. Now that the gun’s a little further from him and not actively pointing at me, my eyes are glued to the window behind him and the reflection it gives off. The two long, stick-thin limbs to either side of me remain still, as if planted, but I know better. Sure, I saw them move, but also, humans are pretty good at math, even if we don’t understand it- we know that heavy things move slower unless they have more force, without needing to be told it. These long, slender, misshapen legs are thin enough to sway in a breeze, and I can too-easily picture them jerking forwards like the limbs of an insect to stab at me or lower the body hiding above down. 

They shift, like thin saplings swaying, but don’t leave their spots. Unease, maybe. Or something less human. A predator, shifting insectile limbs into place one at a time, waiting for a singular moment. 

Focus. 

I don’t let my sweating or my shivering or my anxiety reach me. I’m behind the glass. We lean forward, coming up off the seat, staring so pointedly at the reflection in the glass behind Michael’s head that he briefly flicks his gaze to check behind himself too. Apparently, he sees nothing, looking back at me in confusion, and then taking in a shallow breath at the fact that I am standing and he is not, that I am approaching and he is not retreating.

A human being, given enough fear over a long enough period of time, is an excellent case study of how animalistic one can become. 

I kneel on the ground in front of the couch, one knee up (just in case, for movement purposes), and gingerly reach for his hand. When he doesn’t retract it, I lift it up gently, bringing it a little closer to me, staring at the back of his palm where one of the wires holds enough tension to have lifted a hill in his skin.

Not just his skin. His muscles, too. There’s less stretchiness there, less drag- if it were hooked into only skin, at this much held force, it would have torn it off the back of his hand.

But I already know that it goes deeper.

I inhale, then exhale. Nice and slow. I pull up my character sheet onto the lid of my eyeball, using it as a tool to see what I need and to focus. 

{MANIFESTATION OF [00000000]}

GENUS: HOMINIDAE HOMINIA HOMO 

SPECIES: SAPIENS

STATS:

ADAPTATION

CANALISATION

EVOLUTION

SYNCHRONICITY

🔺

🔺

🔺🔺🔺

            ORGANS: 

·        CUTANEOUS

o   HOMO SAPIENS SKIN

·        SKELETAL

o   HOMO SAPIENS BONE

·        MUSCLE

o   HOMO SAPIENS MUSCLE

o   HOMO SAPIENS TENDON

·        CIRCULATION

o   HOMO SAPIENS CIRCULATION

o   HOMO SAPIENS HEART

·        RESPIRIUM

o   HOMO SAPIENS LUNGS LUNGS

·        GLANDULAR

o   HOMO SAPIENS LIVER

o   HOMO SAPIENS PITUITARY GLAND

·        NEUROLOGOS

o   HOMO SAPIENS CEREBRUM

o   UNDERDEVELOPED [0000000000]

·        SENSORIA

o   HOMO SAPIENS SENSORIA

·        DEGUSTATION

o   HOMO SAPIENS DIGESTIVE TRACT

SKILLS:

·        GLIMPSE BEYOND ⦽⦽

MUTATIONS: N/A

SYMBIONTS:

·        DIVINE BLOODLING

·        THE GLOVE

The organs are the same, and for now, irrelevant. Stats and my Skill, the only one that carries over. 

I don’t know why, exactly, I don’t have some kind of skill for crafting symbionts. It seems like it should be even more impactful than my ability to see weird shit- but maybe there’s some criteria that I haven’t met yet. I don’t know. 

It doesn’t matter. My Synchronicity is my highest stat, pushing the others entirely out of any sort of balance in favor of pushing for a deeper affinity for… something. 

I cast my mind back to when I first read through it, when I wrote down what the “system” told me about the stat. 

SYNCHRONICITY: The Entity's communion with higher ideals, improving its understanding and ability to use organic technology and the mechanics of reformation.

Communion with higher ideals. Organic technology and the mechanics of reformation.

Is that why I don’t have a skill for crafting things? The stat is built in, or it’s just high enough to be able to just… do that?

It doesn’t matter right now. Or, it does, and it might be helpful, but I can’t let myself be distracted by theory.

I focus on the part of myself that’s strangest, that’s furthest from what feels normal and closest to how I feel when I experience all this shit, when I feel a tickle in the back of my mind telling me what might work and what definitely won’t. I push that feeling into my skill, feeling Glimpse Beyond cycle back to life like a light behind my eyes, shining out-

Skin. More skin. Muscle. Tendon. Veins. Intermingled and layered, like sediment crafted over millenia, each strata holding different meaning, different function. And there, nestled between them, a little bit beneath and a little bit sideways to everything else, I find the layer where the string is. 

It’s under him. Kind of. It’s under the idea of muscle and bone, of organic functionality, tying itself like a parasite around the idea of all of that biology as an arm. It’s like a razor blade’s been tucked between the folds of his skin, except it’s the folds of who he is, but it’s balanced just so, carefully planted so it doesn’t just tear its way free. 

But for all the balance and care, it’s not well maintained, not well done. It’s still a razor tucked into tissue. I think… for a moment, I think I can see how it might be done differently. How it might be slid in like just another layer, as comfortable and well-adjusted as every other rather than dragging harshly on the edges of Michael’s being. It’s like…

It’s like an artisan’s work. I recognize technique in things I cannot replicate, the small flourishes of casual comfort with methods I don’t understand- but it’s also like seeing that same artist’s hand tremble. Like watching them hesitate when they need to move fluidly, like watching them forget what they’re doing partway into the action.

His grandfather had dementia, he said. 

But also? There’s something missing.

It feels like… it feels like it should go further. Like string wrapped around an idea isn’t enough. I’m looking for a source, a core, a way to unknot the entire weaving at once, and I just… can’t find it.

And I remember what he said. How he can’t see the puppet. How he has to squint to see the strings. How the strings seem to affect only him, and no one else.

I decide to answer a question.

Turning my head, ever so slowly, I look away from Michael’s hand, from the layers beneath/inside/under it, and up to the string.

And up.

And up.

And up.

Past / above / outside the ceiling. Outside the layer that the ceiling exists in, that we exist in, at least as whole and functional flesh. Up to where the thin legs of sticks lead.

It looks back down at me with lopsided eyes and a grin that means nothing. It stares down at the toy dangling at the edge of its strings with blank, painted features that do not match the whorls and delicate patterns carved beneath. 

The puppet isn’t just a manifestation. It isn’t just something happening to Michael.

The puppet is alive. And in its eyes, painted-on and blank and reflecting nothing, I see the way it sees the world. 

I feel something warm run down to my upper lip, something red slip past the corner of one eye, as I push my skill further. Further. 

I see that the puppet has too many layers. 

I see that when it looks down, the couch and the house and the lamp and the table and the two dollies on the floor are all made of wood. Simple wooden toys. 

It’s time for the toys to go to bed. That’s what the moon means. It’s time to put the toys away for bed. 

It smiles down at me with a smile that does not match its features and does not look like a smile and means only as much as it pretends to mean. 

I feel something in my mind straining. 

And then-

GLIMPSE BEYOND HAS GROWN.

And I blink. 

And I understand.