scribble_puppet | Island Church (??? World)

Island Church (??? World)

Voices

Crackling

Headache

Ash

Amber blinks.

White dress

Charred bars

People in robes

Torches

"SHIT!" She scrambles up, briefly tangling herself in the trailing sleeves of the dress that she has never worn before.

A brief flash of horrified realization- someone else changed her clothing- flickers in her brain before she takes in the greater horror.

She's in a cage. Suspended over a large brazier filled with wood. The woman is there, and Johnny, and people she doesn't know, all holding lit torches. The circle symbol is patterned on the floor. The woman is chanting something. Everyone is focused on Amber, with strange, reverent expressions.

Amber screams, rattling the cage door.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

it's the same as me, isn't it?

something inside that she couldn't control

like a reflex

like a heartbeat

would i be me if it weren't there?

"No, no it's not." Rachel reached up to stroke Amber's cheek, ignoring all the blood and chains. "You are who you are despite what was planted in you. You're a strong woman, Amber."

i don't know...

The touch ripples through her, warmth like growing, resting, healing- not the warmth of burning, shed blood, withering.

The outlines are faint in her mind, but she can see the separation- the chains are through her and around her, and the origin is in her, but no more her than if she'd swallowed a rock.

clink-rattle

splch

Wrenching pain as something is pulled from her, skin and veins and muscles tearing, bones cracking.

She is on the floor, gasping for breath, bleeding, a hole in back.

She is free.

The chains rattle again, now the wings for a small, twisted thing like a mummified fetus. It struggles and squirms, reaching for Amber.

"Yes you do." Even if only deep down. Amber wouldn't hate her hand, her writing so much if she truly thought it was a part of her.

She stepped back just enough to give the girl room for her separation, and as soon as the girl was on the floor she helped her stand. Best to get a little distance between the new wounds and the previously snug parasite. "Told you."

"...feel real light," she comments. Lack of a major parasite will do that!

"where we going?"

"Where we went last time." Rachel decided, slinging an arm around the girl's waist and waiting for the subway car they were in to rumble to a stop. "See if we can do anything else there so it can't come back."

WHOA HI THE ARM ON WAIST AMBER WAS NOT EXPECTING TO BUMP INTO YOU

She is working very hard at not being to leany on Rachel. STRONG LIKE STEEL HERE.

"it's

"um

"yeah."

The station is dim and empty, a place with buzzing, fizzling lights and grungy tile. A few ancient bits of litter lie on the tracks, but otherwise there isn't even an intact advertisement or scribble of graffiti to signify other people.

Amber gestures toward a stairwell. "One we need is down more."

She was actually reassured by the deserted quality, after all this was Amber's mind. There shouldn't be other people within it. As for the arm around the girl's waist? Well, she'd just survive something very, very damaging. Strong like steel or no that was something to worry about.

"Alright, then we go down." Deeper into Amber's mind. "Can you tell if there's anything ahead that's likely to attack us?"

She shrugs. "Dunno." She's not usually introspective to the point of knowing her mind's ins and outs.

Especially not with a squatter in there, too.

The next level is darker and grimier. Red trickles around the tracks, pooling in depressed spots and cracks in the concrete. One end of the tunnel is scorched black.

"Three guesses which way," Amber remarks dryly.

Well, she could understand others not knowing their own minds as well as she knew hers. They weren't cracked telepaths after all. "If you feel anything odd, let me know?" She'd keep an mental eye out as well but Amber was the best monitor in here!

"Into the deep and the dark of course." Rachel actually laughed. Warm , tingling laughter was good for frightening places! "That's where light is always needed most."

"If you wanna see that shit." Amber does not particularly WANT to see that shit, but... there's want, and there's need, and she knows the difference.

So she moves to the edge of the platform and climbs onto the floor of the tunnel.

"Stinks," she announces. "Like the rest of that place."

"Have to see it." Rachel admitted with a sigh. Line of duty went to some rather nasty places on most days. Anyone trying to sell the glamorous life of a hero needed to be shot! On the upside though, that meant she'd seen worse places!

She hopped down lightly next to Amber and shuffled some of the litter with a booted foot. "We can take care of that, unless you want to keep the smell later."

"Why the fuck would I want that?"

"Some people are weird?" Rachel offered. "Some keep things like this is reminders, or other reasons like that."

"Rather forget all this shit."

There's a light at the end of the tunnel, wavering and eerie. It flickers on the edges, picking out slick spots of red- some blood, some other fleshy things. The walls seem less like concrete and brick, and more like some bodily interior.

"That tends to lead to nightmares." Rachel warned almost conversationally. What? It did. People couldn't help but probe at suppressed memories...consciously or unconsciously.

"Is that you or it's little cocoon?"

"Like, completely. Fuckin' gone." Repression wouldn't help. Complete removal would be nice.

OK, realistically, there are probably a few bits that she'd like to keep. (Many of them involving Rachel.) But mostly...

"Cocoon. I may be nuts, but I'm not that fucked up." She's trying to touch as little of it as possible. "Stuff is sick."

"Whole different set of problems." Rachel sighed, reaching out to stroke fingers over the fleshy walls. She trusted Amber, but it was best if she felt the edges of this thing herself. She didn't want to catch any bits of her friends brain when they got rid of it.

"People's minds are all about what they think it should be like. Some people it should look like the inside of a brain, some people's minds look like crystals or bushes, some people think all they are inside is meat." And thoughts like that made her very sad to see, but she couldn't change everyone. "Now, let's see how far this goes..." She let flame crawl along that sickly wall, lighting up the cells inside so she could see it's full shape.

"Never thought about it much," Amber admits. Though she's had enough imaginary journeys when school or jail got boring...

She cringes, falling to her knees as the flame penetrates the darkness. The walls contract, shuddering fleshily.

It's the sort of thing one might see in a colonoscopy. Or, more accurately, one of the more graphic representations of human reproduction.

"Does it hurt?" Rachel asked urgently of her friend. she didn't draw the flame back but she was watching Amber now instead of the light. "Or just feel strange? Look horrible? I need to know before we burn it away Amber." Because if it was hooked into the girl's nerves they might need another tactic.

[*GLOMP* Bweeeeeee!]

[SORRY FOR TAKING FOREVER thankfully things are back to the sane temperature range and not sidewalk-egg-boiling!]

"hurts," she rasps.

"keep going."

Damn. This was going to be...well, very painful then. Rachel nodded grimly and turned her flame from simply curious illumination to burning. She could take out the alien, and dead, flesh safely and quickly.

Hopefully quickly enough that amber was spared some of the pain.

It's like the cage

except here, she's in control.

She grits her teeth, trying to strangle the screams. They strain through her teeth, clawing the air.

The tunnel shudders and spasms, and a screech of sirens and metal and burning reverberates, covering Amber's voice.

Some things...

...some things simply had to be endured. For Amber it was the pain. For Rachel it was being the cause of such pain. Even knowing the goal, the need, it was hard not to falter.

Heroes didn't torture people.

Lucky for them both Rachel hadn't always been a hero. It gave her the nerve, and the ability, to carry on destroying those foreign materials, cell by cell if necessary.

Burning

and then

fading

something heavy dropping from her

it hurts

it's exhausting

but it's better.

She feels great.

In the real world and the mental world, she stands.

The thing that was her isn't her anymore.

She is Amber, and nothing else.

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