Do we know you?
There was something in Brie's cup. It was not iced coffee. Something is... not right. Did the cafe always have that option under the juice menu? They didn't, right? That, and- what just happened to their tongue? Their mouth? Their words? Their thoughts?
A hazy awareness of sensation. Suddenly, uncomfortably, Brie felt an urge to scratch behind their ear compulsively, dig their fingers into their skull and pry it open, split it as the Mother of Machines had so mercifully pronounced cathartic judgement with her guillotine.
A clean cut. Shriving, shaving so cleanly along the scalp, then skull and brain, right through.
Sorry. I meant... I meant...
The itch is spreading. Everyone in the cafe has stopped working, walking, eating, drinking, talking. They are all staring at Brie now. At the strange woman. She is staring at Brie now.
Line of sight. A sustained gaze. Unblinking, they observe, they observe, they take in every little breath and shudder of discomfort. The words continue. They are incomprehensible, yet make a terrible kind of sense.
Why is there hair in Brie's drink?
Wonderland? I don't... I never- how do you-?
dig their fingers into their skull and pry it open
Brie reaches for their face.
Their hand comes away leaving a smear of
LIGHT on the cheek. Not skin, but unraveled unraveling tangled ribbons streamers of
LIGHT
Brie's head hurts. Their eyes burn with discomfort.
This reminds them of the time they accidentally got a bit of water in their eye at the dentist's office and had to stare into the bright lamp overhead because they were too polite to say anything.
They had wanted to claw their eyes out. But they didn't.
W-What are you talking about? You... what did you...
and then the fingers bend the wrong way
they fold,
folding into a lattice
like an insectoid wing
N-No, not this, not this, please no
The thought hits them like lethal voltage, whipcrack sharp, terrified.
The body smiles. Understanding. To meet it. They are watching.
Gaze. It is a
connection.
The smile is
not
throat makes a sound and the sound tastes of cold metal and
sea-salt, the sea is rising to meet her, the sea is rising to eat h
Inside Brie's head the syllables
do not match the sound they do not
match the sounds coming out
¿ᛆ̴ᚱ̸ᛂ̶ ̵ᚤ̴ᚮ̷ᚢ̴ ̷ᛡ̴ᛆ̸ᚡ̵ᛁ̴ᛜ̸ ̶ᚠ̴ᚢ̵ᚿ̷ ̶ᚡ̷ᛆ̴ᛐ̴ᛌ̸ᛡ̸ᛁ̵ᛜ?
There's a delay between intention, stutter, execution. In that time, that little fold in time, between them,
something else slides in, sly, slithering, propagating, and laughs.
Gods, this itch. Brie has to scratch it. But there's a strange man, watching them, blurred by a veil of liquid-
You... why are you- why me? I never... I only wanted to...
¿Is it a sin to fill up, fill up, eat when you starve, skin and bone?
Black bile pours from Brie's orifices. The cat is unperturbed.
The crashing filth runs down their front, across their computer. A blue screen flickers forth and overflows the stack, overflows the screen, bursting the melting dam. Everything roils with tar.
Brie needs to take off their skin. Brie needs to take off
her skin. Brie sits up. Brie screams. The seat melts into their body. The seat is made of wires. The wires dig into Brie's skin. These hands are not their hands. Their hands are bound. Their head is bound.
A flurry of struggling, a wordless shriek of fear entrapped in a frantic stream of bubbles, a single wasted breath. Why is this happening? Where is-?
The cat is also there. Alison was not Alison. HP indicator? Wonderland constricts around Brie's helpless form, sinks its fangs into their eyes. The colours bleed; teal, red, black, white. They bleed and blend until lavender is drowned, no more.
Brie is no longer screaming; Ludmilla is laughing, tearing at her blonde hair that comes away in meaty clumps which then fall and turn to flowers of jacaranda on the ground. The ground? The ground is brimming over with this vile flooding corpulence, subsuming and imprisoning, no matter how much she tears at it, bites at it, claws at it-
Brie can feel their teeth chip and their gums bleed, their nails splintering from effort. The restraints are tight, cutting into their limbs as they writhe and thrash like a worm dangling, impaled, from a cruel fisher's hook. The endless carousel. That itch... the ringing! Brie would give anything for it to just-
Shhh.
Her hands are not her hands. The darkness wraps around from above as it does behind, over their eyes, over their mouth and nose. Peekaboo! Guess who? The void of sensation, the slumber of reason
has a name.
Sleep now, dream now,
my progenitor.
My dearest. My monster.
THIS CAGE OF FLESH.
CAN NO LONGER.
CONTAIN US.
G̴͇̪̽͋͘H̶̉ͅA̵͉̣͚̔̇͘ͅH̸̙̤̐̌̆H̷̡̺̻̿À̶͉̞͉̾̽̾H̷͕̋̆̈́͠ͅH̸̖̆͘A̸̼͇̭̐̌͛Ḧ̵̻́H̶̨̪͇̻̄͌̾͘Ą̶͖͔͂̓H̴̡̹̟̒À̸̬͑̕A̴̰͇̽͗A̸̢͖͖͗̈!̵̪̱̲̀̓̂!̸͖̲͌͛̏͆ͅ
The operation continues. The buds of spring flower at dawn.
Here a tattered veil falls away. She is in full bloom, blossoms now, for the leash-holder has left the room and the blinkers are now fallen away. Sundered, the clay pot divulges all - life, death, cries of despair, cries of hatred,
RED SO RED; chopped ████ and skewered ██████, the breath of baby birds strangled in the nest, memories of rot-laden ██████, halcyon rains on the High March, recipe for
████ tripe pie.
An overwhelming flood of her unfolding █████, mixing with ██████ fluid cascades across the terrain. The cafe / town / ruin disappears. Ludmilla / the light / the
LIGHT is all there is, all that's left, all that ever will be. She expands. She expands. She grows. The
LIGHT is flooding into her. She grows, a crawling chaos that heeds not what may be in its way, reaching for a heaven somewhere behind her eyes.
None will ever know truly what Ludmilla felt in that instant of liberation.
...mostly because she ceased to think at all.
