# Off-Topic Discussion > Artists' Corner >  >  Passing Strange

## Darkmatters

*ONE

Dog*

*Floquil:* _It's a certain perverse affinity that merges the two words - they're strange attractors -  fetal/fatal_ 

*Serafiend:* _Fiddle Faddle. Dead babies. With party hats._ 

This isn't right. Something is definitely off. Can't put my finger on what, but I've been aware of it for some time now. So hard to see clearly. I have to squint hard and get my face down right in front of the notebook to see what he wrote. Or she? Can't quite remember now. 

Another line appears - elegant calligraphic script in flowing blue ink:

*Floquil:* _ As witness the beautiful symmetry of gravitas/levitas. Thought and word fuse into meaning. Muse indefining. Intertwining._ 

*Serafiend:* _STFU_

Who are these people? I should know - I _do_ know, but they're not right. Their identities are somehow - fudged. I don't even remember if either one is male or female. Come to think of it - I'm not sure I ever knew really. As of now they're nothing more than names appearing in my notebook. 

The conversation can wait - I need to find out what's going on. I almost know - I've experienced this before... 

But it won't come to me. Something is wrong with my brain - am I drunk? Can't remember... 

A thought - _go with it_. Always best in these cases to just go with it - fighting it will only break the spell entirely. But what does that mean - fighting _what_? The words just float up in my mind like a dim forgotten memory. _Go with it_.

And this: _Sporadic_.

I have no idea what it means.

I jam the pen into the spiral binding and lay the notebook on the bed. Something is off about the room too. My room doesn't look like this. Or - it did - long ago I think. When I lived in a different house. 

There's a quiet murmur of voices in the other room - people. Maybe I can find answers there. But walking is so difficult - for some reason I keep capsizing to the left and can just barely keep my balance. 

The hall's wrong too - really wrong. Really _long_! What the hell!?! 

_Go with it_. Just. Go with it. I'm not sure why, but that's important. 

***
Still hearing the voices -  a pleasant droning susurrus - like a quiet party and they know I'm sleeping so they're keeping it down - but I can't find them. Looked in several rooms and nothing. The sound doesn't get any louder no matter how far I go, or any quieter. And this dim grey light everywhere... 

There's just one bright spot in it all. There on the recliner in the corner. A small dog I think, curled up, and seeming to collect and concentrate all the light in the room. What is it - a poodle? The tiny round head lifts and turns, big beady black eyes fix on me for a moment, then with alarming speed it leaps down and scurries across the floor. 

No. 

Not across. 

Above. 



Its tiny paws are making cartoonish prancing motions a few inches above the floor as it drifts in a smooth arc around the corner. Floating. Too white. Impossibly white. And it casts no shadow. In fact it looks photoshopped.

I lurch after it on unsteady legs. Not sure why, but I must follow that tiny white dog! Something in the way it looked at me - it _knows_. _Everything_. How I could get answers from it I don't know, but at least I can follow it. I _must_. It scampered off with such purpose, head high and chest thrown out so proudly - it's leading me somewhere. 

It makes a faint sleighbell sound as it goes - something like a cross between jingling dogtags and fairy bells. And like the sound of the voices the volume stays constant. The voices I now realize I'm not hearing anymore. 

The kitchen is unfamiliar as I pass through. Is this still my house? Nothing has looked quite right the entire time really. Wait - I know this kitchen - so old-fashioned. Whose was it - my mom's Grammy's, when I was young... I only remember being there one time - something about - waffles and chicken? And an all-day drive stretching well into the night, my little sister and I sleeping in the back seat part of the way. 

The jinglebell sound is coming from the dark open doorway ahead and to the right. It's taking on an ominous echoey quality, and seems to be - descending. Stairs. It's a cellar. A very dark cellar. 

Wooden stairs sheathed with ancient cracked linoleum creak and pop as I descend. The smell of dry dirt almost chokes me. Exactly as I remember it. Great Grammy Greta's cellar. 

As I reach the bottom I sense the vast dirt-walled space stretching out all around me - cavernous. Not as dark as it seemed a moment ago. Here and there are pools of dim light. In one stands the old-fashioned white enameled washtub with the hand-wringer on top. And beyond it a dark hole. 

_The Coal Cellar_. 

***
"We can't go in _The Coal Cellar_! Mom said to stay out of there." Laverne's eyes sparkle, wide and innocent. I can smell the fear and excitement coming off her in waves. And I have a duty as her mischievous and malicious older brother. 

"You gonna do everything mom says?"

That's all it takes. It was a foregone conclusion really. 

***
No doorway here. This is quite literally a hole dug in the ground. There's a light - I remember seeing it once. An ancient wire all dried and cracked with a bare bulb hanging on it, but it doesn't work. I drift forward, unable now to break the spell. Faintly I hear the jingling sound ahead. My eyes are beginning to adjust and I can make out vague forms in the darkness - black heaps to either side, and in the wall before me - an even smaller hole. Dog sized. That's where the jingling sound is coming from. 

I drift on. I have no choice. 


The notebook pings gently at my hip. I lift it to my face - didn't I leave the notebook on the bed upstairs? And how can it ping? Somehow even in the darkness I can make out its surface, dimly glowing. College ruled. Ratty and crinkled from much use, always folded open to the last written-on page. Another line of script appears - red this time.

*Stellarfire:* _Oh Lawd! What is this I don't even_

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## Arra

I'm not sure what you just wrote but I like it. And the last line was hilarious and unexpected.

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## Darkmatters

More to come. Much more. 

I hope you like your part.  :Shades wink:

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## Darkmatters

*TWO*

*Passage*

Somehow now I'm small enough to fit into the doghole, and drifting inexorably toward it. But just before I enter, a figure steps from the shadows and blocks me. It's a woman - blonde and rather voluptuous. In the good way. Not meaning fat. I can see her because her white gown shimmers, radiating the same faint fairy-dust glow as my notebook. So does her ephemeral white skin. Curiouser and curiouser. I bump gently into her front which is - soft and cushiony. Very soft and cushiony. Her breasts are ridiculously huge. Warm and soft like down pillows. 

"What happened here darling?" Her voice is hushed, whispery-soft, and angelic. Yet husky - sexy. Her accent vaguely European. 

"Ummm... you're awfully - sexy. For an angel."

"Nothing is quite what it seems here sweetums. In time you'll understand. But tell me. What happened?"

I know she means the memory. Me and Laverne (that isn't really her name, is it?). Here in _The Coal Cellar_. So long ago it seems almost poised at the very edge of time itself. So early in my life I can't tell if it's a memory or - something else. Why can't I think of the word? Certain words and ideas are completely eluding my grasp. So hard to think clearly. 

Especially here - enveloped in the soft warmth of this angelic woman. Overwhelmed by the divine peace and serenity emanating from her. And suddenly - overwhelmingly in lust. 

"Hey now! Watch that Darkus. Don't get carried away." She holds me safely at arm's length, as if I'm a kitten. Even here her numinous aura is overpowering. 

"Oh god! Sorry - I can't seem to help it. I don't know what's wrong with me." Turning beet red and wishing I could sink into the ground now. She doesn't seem mad so much as vaguely annoyed. Looking like she does, I assume she gets this kind of reaction a lot. But no - this isn't normal. My sudden overwhelming emotion is as unnatural as so many other things happening here. She casts an imploring glance upward - toward - what? The dirt ceiling overhead? The strange house above it? Perhaps the sky? If there is a sky here. I wouldn't be surprised if there weren't. 

"I know. You can't help it. It's the _Amygdala_. We're all under its malicious primal influence here. It has far too much influence in this domain. But do me a favor - try to fight it ok? Think about baseball or something. Quantum mechanics. Rumi. Anything. But do tell me what happened. I think it's very important."

"You called me Darkus. Is - that my name?" I just realized, my own name is among the many things that seem unnaturally barred from my memory. "And who are you?"

She looks thoughtful for a moment, then frowns slightly. It's very attractive when she does it. Her face has an exotic European look, and her lips are very full and thick. 

_Baseball_. 

_Rumi_. 

Who or what is _Rumi?_ 

_Margaret Thatcher._

Dammit - nothing's working.




"Didn't you know darling? I'm Reality, Babe." 

Something is happening. I can feel her fading already as she turns her beautiful head away. 

"Sorry - I can't stay. But _do_ try to remember. _Please_. Everything hinges on it." Her tone imploring - almost desperate.



And she dissipates like a cloud in a speeded-up YouTube clip, her wisps being sucked into the darkness of _The Coal Cellar_. Freed suddenly from her rather potent presence, the compulsion redoubles now and pulls me tumbling end over end into the dark hole where the white dog disappeared. I'm tiny - weightless. About the size of a small mouse I think.  Tumbling. Tumbling. And still powerfully aroused. 

Well this is embarrasing.

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## Darkmatters

Ok people, I'm sorry this is so vague at this point and so - strange. I know it's all very mysterious and weird - but it had to begin this way. All mysteries will be explained as it goes on - well most anyway. As well as I understand them myself. 

I'm curious though - is it clear enough what's happening? Could I get a bit of feedback on that please?

Also, I know the last chapter is pretty short and uneventful - hell the whole thing is so far really. Just setting the stage so far. The real fun begins with the next installment. 

Trust me.

You _will_ like it.

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## Darkmatters

*Three
O*
Under my back the ground is hard. Thankfully I'm not anymore. How embarrassing, to enter a new chapter like that, with no idea who might be around! Speaking of which, I lift my head and look around. Well at least this place is much brighter than any I've seen yet. Large and roomy too, and so colorfully decorated. It seems to be a park with weird candy-colored bushes or low trees everywhere. No, they're - toadstools! All shapes types and sizes, ranging from teeny-tiny to gigantic. Brilliantly colored in bright primaries and secondaries in polka-dots, stripes, swirls and rings. Kind of reminds me of Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory. The good one. Gene Wilder - not that Tim Burton piece of crap. Nothing wrong with Tim Burton mind you, but that movie wasn't exactly his finest moment is all. 

There's a repetitive _shsk_ of steel on steel coming from somewhere near. I get to my feet and find I can walk much better now than before. Rounding a towering cerulean blue stem the size of a Doric column ringed with bright scarlet bands I find its source - a hulking black dude seated on a low toadstool all strapped up in some kind of pseudo-military SWAT style gear and sharpening a glistening Katana. Without stopping his work he turns his shaved head to look at me. He's wearing badass black shades. 


... "Blade?"

He smiles, revealing gleaming fangs. 

"No - not Blade. ONK. Well, that's my acronym anyway. Stands for One Naughty Knight. Sometimes I spell it without the K though, depending on what kind of adventuring I'm up for on a given night. But however I spell it,  it's still ONK - cause ONN is just retarded. Or just call me O - everybody does."

Something clicks in my head. For once something in this crazy mixed-up place seems right. 

O. 

I think it's the first right name I've heard here. But it doesn't stand for One Naughty Knight - not really. Something close though. 

"Neener's dog bring you here?" he asks, sheathing the katana after giving its length a quick wipe against his black-clad thigh and standing to face me. 

"Weiner dog?"

"No, Neener's dog - crazy little white thing that looks like some kind of balloon and floats just over the floor all the time. It brought us all. Something big is going down here. Were being corralled I think."

"Oh - yeah, that was it exactly! Nina's dog. Who's Nina?"

"_Neener_. Neener Neener. The Black Queen. A meaner queen you've never seen, nor leaner. Don't demean 'er. _Dammit_, I hate when I do that! The whole rhyming thing. I think it's part of the spell - whatever's happening here. It's got everybody acting weird and crazy - we all seem to have had certain memories systematically removed and our identities modified. I'm gonna get to the bottom of it though." His huge hands clenched into stony fists. 

"Hrmmm, yeah, I've been noticing the same. Ever since this crazy adventure began back in my bedroom with my false... errr... whatever. Something. It was false though, whatever it was. I can't seem to access the word. And now I'm still in it. Whatever it's called."

"We're all in it" O said, indicating the entire park with a sweeping gesture. "We share it. And all I gotta do is figure out what it is we're all part of - figure out its name, and it's _on_!"

Now I begin to notice lots of other people in among all the crazy toadstools. groups of them mostly, all moving slowly - converging toward the center of the park where squats a single gigantic toadstool larger than any of the others. It's very low though - extremely broad but very short and squat. It somehow resembles a giant beanbag chair from the 60's. And nestled into a little depression in the top of it is what seems to be a huge caterpillar or segmented worm of some sort. Not surprisingly it's smoking a hookah. 

"What's going on over there?" I ask.

"Let's head that way. I need to ask Ganja something. Fucker always talks in crazy riddles, but he seems to know more than the rest of us."

We make our way toward the massive toadstool, which is covered with a shockingly colorful Oriental pattern like some kind of  t shirt from a head shop. I begin to hear music as we near it - and I notice two fellows standing beside the toadstool. One looks like some kind of vagabond minstrel and the other is in a traditional Scottish highland kilt and a GnR concert shirt. The Scottie is playing a bagpipe while the vagabond is blowing continuously into some kind of thick piece of bamboo thick as your arm and slightly longer than his body, which he holds upright in front of him. I believe it's a digeridoo. Strange mix of instruments, but together they're making a very hypnotic droning music filled with crazy little spinning subcurrents and rolling waves. 

"That's Slush2112 and WalkingMonad making the crazy music. Mad respect to em both - coupla badass dudes. But we wanna talk to Ganjataki - he's the one on top. Watch out for that tuffin."

"What?"

"That tuffin - just aheada you there. Wasn't sure if you saw it or not."

Another low toadstool - a maroon one - with a young slender teenage girl seated on it. She's drinking something tall and foamy with a number of straws and spoons emerging from the top like a crooked little plastic forest.

"What's a tuffin?"

"lol well I don't know exactly. Yeah, I said lol - wanna make something of it?" I don't. "You just call it a tuffin cause she's sitting on it."

"Ok I'll bite - who is she?"

"Muffin. Well Lil Miss Muffin really, but we just call her Muffin. She sits on her tuffin. Drinking her hot latte. Along comes a spider, sits down beside her, and _BAM_!" This last said very loudly and accompanied by a quick violent arm gesture that seems to indicate an explosion of some sort. I screw up my face, scratch my head. 

"That doesn't rhyme. Doesn't even make sense really. BAM meaning what? It leaves things in some doubt as to the outcome - I mean it's obviously decisive and final, but who wins? And what exactly happens? Rather a poor nursery rhyme really."

O rubs a thumb along his stubbly jawline looking perplexed. "Damn you're right. Another memory stolen. I know that's how it goes, in this crazy place anyway, but I can't remember why. Wait - here comes the spider now - let's watch and see." 

And sure enough, down from the mass of mushroom heads high above comes a very large spider dangling on the end of a web and descending toward her. A mechanical spider. 

"Why is it mechanical?"

"It's a bot. Goggle I think. Shhh... just watch... "

"That thing's bigger than she is! We can't just let it attack her! Shouldn't we... "

"Don't worry - Muffin can take care of herself. She's nobody's pushover. Watch."

The robotic spider touches down silently about 8 feet behind her. She obviously hasn't heard it yet. It scuttles forward rapidly, surging ahead with a sickening oily smoothness, all it's complex black limbs intertwining with uncanny grace. I catch a glimpse of several unrecognizable corporate logos on its flank as it closes in. 

Upon seeing it, the girl leaps away with startling speed and power, spasmodically hurling her hot foamy beverage into what seems to be its face and letting out a piercingly loud shriek. Spotting us, she runs toward us in a long arcing curve, arms gesticulating wildly in the air over her head and shrieking repeatedly - hysterical if you ask me. This does not seem like a girl capable of taking care of herself. More what I'd call a panicky screamer. 

"Well that's not right" O breathes, brows drawn down sharply. His arm flashes and half a dozen gleaming black shuriken throwing stars bury themselves in the robot's thorax. It sparks and sputters for a second then slumps on the spot and stops moving. 

"She's supposed to be badass... have some kind of powers... "

From 6 feet away she launches herself against O's thick torso and clamps herself there, making sounds that could have been sobbing or laughing. She buries her head between his meaty shoulder and neck, her long brown hair streaming down his chest.

"O!! Thank god! What the hell was that thing? Heck. I mean heck. You know I don't cuss. I'm just a sweet little Canadian girl."

He lays one hand on her head and one on her back, and pretty well engulfs her in the process. "It's ok now little lady - it can't hurt you now." Somehow he can say little lady without sounding the  least bit patronizing. My respect for this guy is now through the roof. They disentangle themselves and we set off toward the spectacle at the center of the park.

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## Darkmatters

New update, but not a complete chapter this time. Hey, it's a long chapter! And yeah, I know my writing style has completely changed... fuck you. I'm doing this for *FUN*.

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## Darkmatters

Ok, so I decided that was a complete chapter after all. Screw it. Here's the next one:

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## Darkmatters

*FOUR*

*Alas Poor Muffin*
Muffin's head keeps swiveling around rapidly - craning all the way to look over her shoulder every few seconds. O stops, goes to one knee to get their faces on a level and looks steadily into her eyes, which are streaming tears. Her eyes are now ringed with dark circles - surely she isn't wearing mascara at her age?

"Poor thing - you're shaking like a leaf." He wipes the tears away with the back of a hand larger than her head, but they're immediately replaced by more. The dark racoon circles don't wipe away - so not mascara. Her mouth is wide open and trembling as if she's gripped in the absolute depths of horror. O again engulfs her in his massive arms and picks her up bodily as if carrying a baby. "There there lil Muffy." 

"The _Amygdala_" I breathe. O's head swivels toward me, a finger pushes the gleaming black shades up onto his forehead. 

"It's something someone told me, just before I got - here. The _Amygdala_. I don't know what it is - maybe an Italian dish or something? But it seems to have an inordinate amount of control in this place, and it apparently lends a little extra _oomph_ to our more primal emotions." 

O narrows his eyes in thought. "Yeah - Italian can do that." 

Now we're right in front of the massive mushroom cap that's our goal. Quite a crowd is beginning to gather around it in clumps, with more streaming in all the time at a leisurely pace. Up close I can see the thick leathery skin of the mushroom is heavily seamed and wrinkled, like elephant skin. In fact I notice now that many of the toadstools throughout the park are in various stages of decay, some no more than moldering mounds of brown ooze. As I watch, a tall slender one across the park that's leaning and sagging alarmingly to one side suddenly tips and crashes ponderously to the ground, releasing a huge cloud of bright lavender spore dust and sending everybody near it scurrying away rather comically. They don't scurry far though - in fact as soon as the immediate danger of crushing is past everyone near it converges and happily lets the swirling lavender dust cloud engulf them. 

And now I see that people are breaking off chunks of the soft spongey toadstool in front of us and eating it. I reach forward, touch its deeply seamed surface - it has a very nice texture. Unable to help myself, I run my hands over it, feeling every pit and pucker and the soft yielding sponginess of it. Inexplicably as I do this, my vision improves dramatically and I suddenly seem able to think much more clearly. O's massive hand covers both of mine, pinning them to the spot.

"Don't do it - you don't want to become a Shroomhead. All you'll want to do is keep eating more and drifting off into weird hallucinations, then whenever you come down you'll just do it again. I've seen too many of em succumb to it - poor bastards."

Looking around I can see it now - everyone has a glassy faraway stare and dilated pupils - some larger than the irises themselves - some with no actual white showing at all, just glassy black orbs for eyes - like that crazy cartoonish dog that led me into this whole mess. 

"Alright, I won't eat any of it - but _try_ this. Just run your hands over it - feel the surface. It seems to clear things up very nicely."

He does so, looks around slowly, and nods sagely. "Yes - this is powerful. This is good. Still large gaps in the memory, but everything is so much clearer now. Gotta get Muffin to do this - it might bust her out of - _The Horror_". As he says the last part he runs a hand slowly, almost lovingly over his shaved head. I can hear water drip somewhere. Weird. 

"Where _is_ Muffin?" I wonder. He had set her down on reaching our goal, and now I don't see her. 

"Aw crap!! _MUFFIN!_ Where are you?" He scans the crowd around us rapidly. *"MUFFFFFFINNNNNNNN!!"*

"_There!_" I catch sight of her briefly, far away and disappearing into a mass of people much taller than she is. She's running and still looks terrified. We sprint after her, and I suddenly notice the digeridoo music cuts off and WalkingMonad is sprinting alongside us. 

"What's up with Muffin?" he asks. "Her energy feels really off."

I start to notice other girls about her size and apparent age - which I take to be about 12. They're standing around tucked into odd corners of the crowd with their arms dangling leadenly and their weird eyes just staring. In contrast to the shroomheads with the glassy solid black orbs, these girls have solid white - er make that off-white - or more of a greyish-yellow actually - eyes ringed with dark sunken flesh. All their flesh in fact is also rather greyish and sunken and displaying some fairly alarming wounds and gashes, and their hair hangs in lax dank rags and appears to be very in need of a good shampooing. 

"_Zombi Gurlz!_" Monad exclaims and redoubles his speed. "We can't let them get ahold of her! Not our little Muffin!"

I recall the dark rings I saw forming around her eyes earlier. "Uhhh - we better hurry then."

O puts out an arm and stops me. "Let Monad go after her - he has resources you can't even begin to understand. And friends - lots of friends. Nobody is better qualified to rescue Muffin than he is - trust me. Especially once he calls in RaveAllNight and BoSH.But this is important - we seriously need to talk to Ganja - in fact that might be the kind of help Muffy really needs."

I'm still staring disbelievingly after Monad. "How can he run so damn fast?"

"... Who's running?"

And it's true - he actually seems to be gliding on an invisible skateboard. A really _fast_ invisible skateboard. As he glides effortlessly, weaving a miraculous path through the shifting crowd, he raises an arm over his head and shouts "_To me my minions!_" - at which various people in the crowd break off and start moving toward him rapidly. I can't tell if they're running or using some less likely mode of conveyance. I concede she's in good hands.

Just then a crackling fireball the size of both my fists doubled up flies with a hot _WHOOMPH!_ past my face.

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## Oneironaut Zero

Just chiming in to let you know that I haven't had the chance to read it all yet, but, I'm planning on it while I'm at work tonight.  :vicious:

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## Darkmatters

Hooray!! A comment!!   :Bliss: 

Haha - awesome!! Hope you like it. Hell it's practically The Story of O so far! (no - not _THAT_ Story of O!   ::nono:: )

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## Oneironaut Zero

Awesome stuff so far, man! I really like the Wonderland feel, but with the completely original twist and dream-related nuances (which gives it a much more 'DV-ish' feel to it.  :vicious:  Definitely looking forward to reading more.

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## acatalephobic

Before reading on, i should mention that your narration makes all this so plain and easy to like.  

I am all of a sudden riveted.


No regrets.

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## Darkmatters

acatalephobic, I thank you for responding to my shameless begging for comments!   ::lol:: 

I realize I've violated 2 of the fundamental rules of storytelling - 



1) Grab em right away

2) the main character should be actively pursuing some goal and not be a wet blanket



Due to the dreamy/lost/aimless nature of the beginning I did neither here. 

But, it's been years since I did any writing, and I decided to just plunge in with only half-formed ideas and see where it takes me. I wrote the first few lines with basically no real ideas. And as usual after a long period of stasis, it took a couple chapters to get my flow on. But now I'm remembering how much fun it is to be writing a story when suddenly the story starts to write itself. 

I've reached a point where I need to make a lot of decisions affecting the rest of the story before I can write chapter 5, but I'm chewing on it. I don't like to rush these big decisions, I like to fill my head with possibilities and then sleep on it a few times, let things bubble around a bit and see what comes to the surface. I'll probably work a few things out as I walk the dog, which is when  lot of my writing takes place.

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## Darkmatters

It's damnably hard to remember to keep writing in present tense!! I don't think I've ever done that before, but it seemed necessary to keep the sense that this is all a dream happening in real time. I keep finding parts where I lapsed into past tense, but I think I've fixed them all now. If not I apologize, and for all the grammatical errors and whatnot too. Like I said, I'm doing this for fun and mostly on the fly. Anywho - here's chapter 5:

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## Darkmatters

*FIVE*

*Ganja*

I notice little fires lit here and there on the ground amid the milling crowd, and several more hissing fireballs are hurled toward the giant toadstool. In response several hulking fellows in black hoodies run into view from atop the toadstool, a few leaping down while the rest remain on top and begin stomping and batting out the sputtering flames wherever a fireball has landed. The largest of the newcomers, a barrel-chested Nordic guy, runs right past us to the little fire behind us from whence the first fireball had been hurled and grapples with the hurler. He simply clamps the guys collar with one brawny hand and slaps the living shit out of him with the other, leaving the poor firehurler reeling and dazed. 

"Hey wut up Tatte87." O greets the stranger, who is as large and imposing as himself, and whose spikey black tattoos spill around the edges of his black hoodie. They knuckle bump in silent greeting. It's like a pair of hams slamming together. 

"Damn _E D!_" Tatte curses, his steely eyes taking in the surging crowd with distaste. They're growing increasingly unruly as the afternoon light wanes and I can now hear arguing and name-calling all around. 

"What's E D mean?"I ask. 

The newcomer thinks for a moment and scratches his head, then shrugs. "Hell if I can remember, it's just E D. This is what they do - they argue all night about bullshit and slander each other all to hell, and talk on and on and on about all this weird philosophical crap. Damn shroomheads are trippin balls - they think they're at _Flaming Man_." Another volley of fireballs arcs up onto the massive toadstool and again the security team rush to put them out before any damage is done. "All you gotta do is slap the shit out of em - disorients em and they forget what they were doing and just wander around drooling. Just fuckin glad it isn't R/S!"

O cuts in: "Hey Tatte, you're actually just the guy I was hoping to run into. I gotta talk to Taki."

"What is your business with the Oracle?" asks the hulking Nordic looking fellow. 

"We got some questions for him. Very important ones. Important for all of us in fact."

This seems to satisfy the northerner, who extends both thick hands and helps us up onto the spongey unsteady surface. It's like walking on a memory foam mattress. With a colorful psychedelic bedspread. The thing is as big around as a house, and sinks in a little toward the center. As we approach, the strange figure there comes into view - long segmented wormlike body of medium blue with a human head sporting a shaggy sort of light brown afro. He's wearing freaky spectacle-style shades in ever-shifting rainbow metallics and sitting in a worn old recliner. And sitting in front of him is the biggest hookah I've ever seen, sprouting hoses all over and with a decorative ceramic bowl you could eat cereal out of - mounded high with heaping dried vegetable matter and glowing cheerily orange. We sit in two of the empty chairs arranged in a circle surrounding the hookah - chairs seemingly taken at random from a salvation army store. I now notice a pair of spindly human arms emerging from the wormbody which offer us each a hose. 

"Ganja dudes." Says the caterpillar fellow, a cloud of thick aromatic smoke wafting around his head like a swirling fogbank. It seems to be a greeting, so we both return it and accept the offered hoses. There's a moment of silence while we fill our lungs with some very potent smoke, during which I notice a flurry of graceful swirling movement in the middle distance - in fact right at the spot where O had first introduced me to Muffin. A strikingly beautiful young woman in an amazingly layered burnt-orange and green satin Gypsy dress is dancing and whirling toward the disabled Gogglebot spider. This seems very odd to me but nobody else seems to notice. A very pleasant warm buzzing starts to suffuse my head. 


Finishing his hit, O begins:

"Taki, something passing strange is going on. We need answers."

"Coo'. All is passing strange, aint it? And answers are less important than questions. Fire away dudes."

"First, what is the true nature of this existence we're in? I don't think it's the one we're supposed to be in. Second, certain words and ideas have been deleted from our minds - all of our minds. What are they, and why? And how would be nice too. Also who."

"Damn O! Fuckin _investigative reporter_ and shit!" Ganjataki lets out a snorting choking laugh that releases a series of new clouds around his head. He begins another huge hit on the hooka. While we wait I nudge O and motion toward the Gypsy dancer who is now seated next to the disabled spider robot on the maroon toadstool where I first saw Muffin sitting. Her tuffin. If it can be called that when she's not sitting on it, which is entirely beyond my reckoning. She's tinkering with the robot. But even as O turns his head she vanishes, and the spiderbot along with her. 

Taki suddenly leans toward me and lowers the reflective rainbow shades onto his nose, his rainbow-shifting eyes drilling into my head with an incredible intensity, but seeming unfocused all the same. "The unasked question is the most important. _The Vanishing Woman_. The Spider Princess. Beware her most of all. She weaves the deadliest magick. You must find the center of her web to unravel all these mysteries. That is all I can say. It's too much already, but yet not nearly enough. Now fuck off dickheads. Quit bogartin' all my stash." 

With that the strange caterpillar man starts giggling insanely and building a thick cloud all around himself like a cocoon. And Tatte and several of his security henchmen appear, obviously coming to remove us forcibly if necessary. We stand up and start to walk away, but just as we do I notice the worm-man's spindly arms fiddling with something buried in his left armpit - a zipper. He slides it down, opening what I now see is a sleeping bag, and thus revealing the secret of his strange segmented body. He's just a dude. A stoner. In a sleeping bag. 

Tatte takes hold of O's upper arms and begins to escort him to the edge, and a burly henchman does the same for me. But O calls back toward Taki, who is now all but invisible inside his thickening cloud cocoon. "Who is the Spider Princess? How do we find her?"

A flurry of sharp coughs emerges from the cloud, causing a quickening of the swirls right in the front where Taki's mouth must be. "Dude! Come on man! GTFO. I don't know shit but what I told you man. Damn, I'm comin down hard. Need some Dorintoes and Sally-Qs and Orange Squirt."

We drop down to solid ground again. The crowd has largely dispersed with the falling of ultramarine semi-darkness. A few small fires still burn weakly here and there, and the few clusters of people remaining have become very quiescent. O is tense, jaw tight and head hung down in angry concentration. He slams a fist into this palm. "Dammit!!! He didn't tell us shit man!! Vanishing woman?! What the hell does all that crap mean?"

"Uhm... I was trying to show you... a Gypsy dancer. She did something to that spiderbot, and then she disappeared, and took it with her." 

Tatte leans down and "Psssts" us quietly. Apparently so Ganja his boss can't hear. "She's SaffronAxe. Nobody ever sees her for more than a few seconds, then she disappears. Happens all the time." Then he withdraws his blonde head. 

Just then a commotion breaks out in the crowd. People step aside as something moves through. Something too small to see, but it makes a very familiar jinglebell sound. O's eyes widen and he grabs me by the arm, pulls me with him as he steps behind a cluster of nearby toadstools slightly taller than us. "Shit!! It's too late!! _Neener_ is here! Whatever you do, don't let her see you."

The strange little white dog that led me into all this suddenly bursts from the crowd, drifting smoothly a few inches off the ground and working its little legs comically. The pleasant buzz that began when I hit off Ganjataki's hookah is rapidly escalating now to something more like a tornado in my head, making me all confused and disoriented. I can feel my pulsebeat pounding in my head and its rhythm seems to make everything jump and vibrate in my field of vision. I recognize the signs - I'm about to black out. 

Now something larger is moving through the crowd - making it part much wider. As colorless dots mount in my vision I can make out a tall slender woman of immense majesty and statuesque form, her head and shoulders visible above the people surrounding her and gliding forward smoothly as if she's standing on a moving platform of some kind. Where she moves she's surrounded by a stunned hush. 

Her little dog spins around three times in a clear area next to the toadstool cluster where O and I are hiding, and suddenly from out of the crowd springs a scroungy little white mongerel mutt whose hair is all plastered down with something crusty and white. It leaps onto Neener's softly glowing white dog and bears it down to the ground under its weight, mounts it and starts humping for all its worth. The poor little thing turns its head toward me, beady black eyes nearly bulging out of its skull as it yelps and yips helplessly. O's arm shoots out and expertly grabs the scroungy white-caked mutt by the scruff of its neck and snatches it off her back, withdraws back into the cluster of toadstools. 

"Damn!! What have we here?!" he asks, holding the mutt up and looking into its big brown puppy-dog eyes, which look immensely sad. Its muzzle opens and a strange growling animalistic speech comes out. 

"Naughty Knight. Let me hammer the bitch. Get my revenge. Her black mistress did this to me! Drag that shiny balloon animal through the mud. Like me, through the salt of the sea. The salt of all my uncried tears."

"_WTF!?! ScurvySeaMutt??!! Is that YOU??!!_ I'd recognize those immensely sad puppydog eyes anywhere! What the hell _happened_ to you man?"

"It was Neener. I made the mistake of loving her. I love everyone, but I hate them all too. I watched Neener at her bath in the waterfall under the acacia groves with her handmaidens laving her ivory body, and I saw her in all her naked glory. I was transfixed to the spot - unable to turn away because I was stricken to the core by her supernatural beauty. For that crime she called me dog, and dog she made me. But that was not enough. She fixed chains to my collar and chained me to an ivory ship and dragged me through the depths of the sea till I emerged caked with all its salts. Let me drill that proud little bitch of hers into the dirt. All I want now is revenge."

"Sorry dude" O breathed. "That'd draw her attention right toward us. Now keep quiet - don't make me hafta muzzle you."

Now the Black Queen's coterie begins to emerge from the edge of the crowd. She's standing on a broad low platform that seems to float just over the ground. Pulling it is a team of 8 pure white stallions of immense size led by 8 massive white wolves tall as a man, and arrayed on her shoulders a pair of jet black ravens that blend with the blackness of her elaborately coiffed hair. Her statuesque ivory form is wrapped in a long white toga draped like something from a Roman sculpture and her hair is worked with fine silver filigree and studded with gems. Walking behind the platform is a pair of ornately rigged white elephants with elaborately carved tusks. 

"Loving her was their only crime." growled the salt-crusted dog still hanging by his scruff from O's brawny fist. At least  O had turned him so he could see what was going on. And it dawned on me - the wolves, ravens and horses and elephants... all had once been human. Transformed by her magicks as ScurvySeaMutt had been. 

"It's what she does." O hissed through clenched teeth. "Turns them into her slaves. And that's the ones she likes. Her lovers. The rest she turns into poor dumb brutes like Scurvy here and lets them fend for themselves. Or lets her ravens and wolves hunt them."

And with that one of the ravens lifts powerfully and silently from her ivory shoulder and pinions directly toward us. There's something terrifying about its sense of absolute purpose, the intelligence in its black eyes. But not nearly as terrifying as the look the Black Queen fixes on us a second later as her aquiline head follows her raven's flight. Her eyes are solid black orbs like her dogs eyes, like the eyes of the shroomheads all around us. She waves a hand at the cluster of toadstools behind which we crouch and they suddenly grow at incredible speed, as if in one of those speeded-up iTube clips shot in time lapse. They balloon up ridiculously, then begin to shrink rapidly and fall instantly into rotting piles of brown pulp that just as rapidly disappear, absorbed into the ground. It's all very Freudian. 

Now the other raven and the wolves all come at us. The white wolves, as tall as a man, form a ring around us and bare gleaming fangs as long as my pinkie finger. The two ravens grasp ScurvySeaMutt by his collar and lift him, bear him bodily to the ground before the Black Queen's floating platform and deposit him there, trembling and whimpering in terror. They land and take up positions flanking him in case he tries anything. O's jaws are clenching and unclenching rhythmically as beads of sweat run down his face. He seems frozen to the spot with terror. 

Her obsidian eyes are locked on O's now. "My little wiggly piggly." she intones. His eyes now bulge from his head and he begins to tremble all over. And her head snaps forward suddenly, viciously, eyes slitted teeth gritted and lips drawn back in a horrible grimace to hurl the curse. 

"_Neener Neener!_" she shrieks, sounding like a bird of prey screaming its inhuman rage and hatred. And before my eyes O transforms into a squealing pink pig. His clothing and weaponry transforms with him, shrinking to fit. Even the little black shades still fit him. He grunts and screams his displeasure but the ring of immense white wolves keeps him from running. 

And then her eyes turn on me. "And what have we here, tagging along? You're new, aren't you. I haven't seen you before." She makes a pretty little moue as she considers what to do with me. But I hardly notice because the rising tide of unconsciousness that began with Ganjataki's powerful weed is swelling to uncontrollable proportions and making everything seem far away now - so far away...

----------


## Oneironaut Zero

Lovin' it. Amazing entrance for the Black Queen (and a not so graceful turn of events for yours truly. Lol). I have to ask; have you ever seen Mirror Mask? I would be surprised if you haven't. Some of the elements seem like they might have been inspired by the movie (though not too _deeply_ inspired, which is good), so I'm just curious.

Great stuff.  ::thumbup::

----------


## Darkmatters

Many thanks Sir O! 

Wow, this is indeed passing strange for me... you commenting on the story I'm writing with you in it. Layers of reality and dream and story merging and intertwining and becoming indistinguishable. 

I have seen Mirrormask, but I must say, I didn't really care for it much. I also don't remember it very well. Very dark as I recall, and something about it I just didn't like, though usually I love everything Dave McKean touches, and the darker the better. It's possible it remains in my subconscious and influences my writing, but more likely we're just drawing from the same influences. 

I'm a little surprised at the way this is going - it mostly flows out of my mind with little or no input on my part aside from hammering out the basic plot points and laboring to come up with names that fit the characters to some extent. 

Heh - I have no idea what most of these people look like or much else about them, so sometimes my descriptions might be way off. Consider it poetic license. I just got mine renewed and damn the written test was a bitch!!

----------


## Oneironaut Zero

> Many thanks Sir O! 
> 
> Wow, this is indeed passing strange for me... you commenting on the story I'm writing with you in it. Layers of reality and dream and story merging and intertwining and becoming indistinguishable.



Lmao. Amazing, isn't it? It's like, you're reading my comment on a dream site about what I read in the story you're writing about dreaming that has me in it...

I think the left hemisphere of my brain just exploded.  :Boggle: 





> I have seen Mirrormask, but I must say, I didn't really care for it much. I also don't remember it very well. Very dark as I recall, and something about it I just didn't like, though usually I love everything Dave McKean touches, and the darker the better. It's possible it remains in my subconscious and influences my writing, but more likely we're just drawing from the same influences.



I hear that. I found it entertaining, but there was so much more that could have been done with it. It's got that same kind of 'dark, dreamy, down-the-rabbit-hole' feel to the beginning of it, which you're pulling off rather well, here. 





> I'm a little surprised at the way this is going - it mostly flows out of my mind with little or no input on my part aside from hammering out the basic plot points and laboring to come up with names that fit the characters to some extent. 
> 
> Heh - I have no idea what most of these people look like or much else about them, so sometimes my descriptions might be way off. Consider it poetic license. I just got mine renewed and damn the written test was a bitch!!



Haha. Well, I say keep it goin. The imagery you create with these DV (and otherwise dream-related) concepts is outstanding. Just the characterization of even the little things, like the dog in Nina's avatar, is great. I have the most hilarious image in my head, of that dog just hovering around everywhere. Lol.

----------


## Darkmatters

Lol thanks!!! 

After finishing this chapter when it came time to post it I got a little tremor of doubt. I suddenly started to wonder how many people will end up hating me because of this. I don't think I'm being unkind to anybody though - I genuinely like all the people I'm writing about, and I don't think my caricatures of them are too harsh. I hope. Gulp.   ::lol::

----------


## Darkmatters

Oh damn. O, a little more of the story has written itself. 

I just want to say - I'm sorry man. In advance. 

The good news though - you will be back...   :paranoid:

----------


## Oneironaut Zero

Bring it on, man. I can take it.  :Boxing: 

...I hope.  :paranoid:

----------


## Darkmatters

Lol I don't know man - this is gonna be rough. Hard for me to write even. Damn - I didn't realize Nina could be so heartless...   ::shock::   ::lol:: 

I think it'll be a couple chapters before we see your fate though. Well you had a good run. And I don't know - maybe you can still come back.   :Eek:

----------


## Oneironaut Zero

> Lol I don't know man - this is gonna be rough. Hard for me to write even. Damn - I didn't realize Nina could be so heartless...



 ::wtf2:: 

Ok, now I'm a little worried. Lol.





> I think it'll be a couple chapters before we see your fate though. Well you had a good run. And I don't know - maybe you can still come back.



DamnitalltaHell!  :Oh noes:

----------


## Darkmatters

Heh I don't want to run this into the ground, but I can't pass up one last pun. You'll be begging to be barbequed...   ::shock::

----------


## Darkmatters

Suddenly the bedroom door crashes open. Behind it stands DeMonica, looking completely badass, having just kicked it in and practically smashed it right off the hinges, and with arrow already knocked and aimed directly at Neener's heart. 

She lets fly. The arrow penetrates halfway through Neener's torso, emerging partially out her back. Yet curiously there's not a drop of blood - not even a trickle. 

*"Ha ha haaa!!"* Neener howls with laughter that seems a little too cruel to me, just a bit forced. Though I suppose I understand given the circumstances. 

_"Fool!! The hawk returns home to roost!"_ 

That really makes no sense whatsoever. This isn't DeMonica's home...  but then it hits me..

_"Neener neener!"_

Damn, didn't have time to warn her. Now she's a hawk. Literally - a hawk - struggling to emerge from under the noisy pile of armour and weapons and clothing she's buried under. 

"No, I didn't shrink her clothes with her." Neener explains. Fuck, she is really perfectly cut out for this - she's going to give me an explanation of her evil motives!

She grabs the arrow emerging from between her breasts, pulls hard, and yanks it out right through her chest, pulling the arrowhead right back through the wound. There's still no blood. Wow, she seriously _doesn't have a heart!_ 

"A hawk in heavy armour can't fly. I also put her under a compulsion. You'll see what that is in just a minute pussycat. Oh this may be my best work yet! And I came up with it all on the spur of the moment. With her damn arrow right. through. my. chest." 

I'm backing toward the divan with some notion of taking refuge under it, but it's too late. With a powerful lurch the proud hawk shakes off the last bit of chain mesh and screams, takes wing directly toward me. 

I leap directly toward her too. It's the best I could come up with under pressure - unexpected tactics you know. I don't know if it worked, or if maybe DeMonica is as unsure of her new form as I am of mine (though truth be told, she doesn't seem to be a _hatchling_ so much as actually a fully developed bird of prey). But for whatever reason, her first dive misses me and I manage to make it out the partially broken door before she gets herself turned around in the confined space. I'm not sticking around to watch, but I suspect it involved landing and turning on foot before taking off again - there's not enough room in there for her to maneuver in full flight. 

Damn! That would have been my best bet then! I should have stayed in there - maybe went the under-things route that's so effective for small animals. 

But here I am instead now, out in the vast open space of the living room. 

I decide to duck under the table nearby, but before I can razor sharp talons pierce the skin of my scruff and lift me up. I'm yowling pathetically and my legs are sticking straight out as she carries me out the living room door and into the huge corridor, like an airplane hangar. 

I'm facing backwards, and now I see Neener run out the door brandishing DeMonica's bow and knocking an arrow - presumably the very one she just pulled out of her chest. Damn - I wonder if she has some archery skills she also inherited from Diana? She certainly looks the part, fierce and beautiful, black eyes flashing as she bends the bow powerfully beside her cheek. 

Suddenly DeMonica's talons disengage and I'm falling flailing to the polished tile floor where I hit and slide in a tumbling mass of fluffy limbs and tail. It occurs to me that hawks probably need to land before devouring their prey. 

The arrow whizzes clattering off the tiles just next to me. Well, not bad, but Neener's no DeMonica when it comes to archery, fortunately for me. 

There's another shrill screech and I manage to get my head up high enough to see her wheeling savagely around to descend on me, claws spread and hooked beak looking vicious. 

But what's that sound? A sort of drumming coming from behind me. There's something familiar about it

ScurvySeaMutt!! His paws pound rhythmically against the slick tiles, long pink tongue dangling just as it was when he emerged from the dust cloud on the trail behind our broken-down old plow horse. 

He's going to reach me just about the same time the diving hawk does. Just before in fact - he leaps right over me and her claws sink into the flesh of his face rather than into me. They go down in a sprawling writhing mass of beating wings and flailing legs, there's a rapid violent chorus of screeches and growls, and then the hawk lifts off and flies off down the corridor. The white salt-crusted dog is left laying on his side. 

He lifts his head slowly, sadly. It's trembling. His face is ravaged badly by DeMonica's claws - I can't tell if his eyes are still intact or not. 

I bound as fast as I can to his side. 

"You saved my life." I state rather inanely. 

"Somebody had to." He says in his growly voice. "You're the key apparently. Least that's what he says." His head turns toward the open door at the end of the corridor, where just now king Diddy and Xey come running in.

----------


## redisreddish

> He's going to reach me just about the same time the diving hawk does. Just before in fact - he leaps right over me and her claws sink into the flesh of his face rather than into me. They go down in a sprawling writhing mass of beating wings and flailing legs, there's a rapid violent chorus of screeches and growls, and then the hawk lifts off and flies off down the corridor. The white salt-crusted dog is left laying on his side. 
> 
> He lifts his head slowly, sadly. It's trembling. His face is ravaged badly by DeMonica's claws - I can't tell if his eyes are still intact or not. 
> 
> I bound as fast as I can to his side. 
> 
> "You saved my life." I state rather inanely. 
> 
> "Somebody had to." He says in his growly voice. "You're the key apparently. Least that's what he says." His head turns toward the open door at the end of the corridor, where just now king Diddy and Xey come running in.



That's the part of the movie where I'd start bawling.  :Sad:

----------


## Darkmatters

Lol yeah, it's a tearjerker for sure! Good old Scurvy!

----------


## sinoblak

?

----------


## HeavySleeper

> ?



I agree.

----------


## Darkmatters

More on its way - thanks for the interest!!  I ran into a tough spot that requires some serious thinking-through before I can write again (plus had a lot going on yesterday and today).   ::jester::

----------


## Arra

Yeah I've noticed you haven't been writing much lately. I hope you haven't lost your motivation.

----------


## Darkmatters

Not_at_all!!

Just gathering my energies before wading into the 3rd and final act. A prayer before battle>

----------


## Darkmatters

Sad news - for those who haven't seen it, Dianeva posted this 2 days ago on the Going Somewhere or Returning thread:





> I'm leaving DV. I know that to many people it won't make a difference, but there are a few who would prefer that I stay, and to them I'm sorry.
> 
> I'd like to thank everyone who regularly posts in the RRC&C thread - Zhaylin, Darkmatters, Gavin, etc. I experienced a sort of community compassion there that I haven't anywhere else. Even outside of that, this forum is filled with amazing people. I wish you all luck with your lives. If there's one thing DV is good at, besides the lucid dreaming thing, it's bringing a bunch of colorful often slightly crazy people together to form what might be the most wonderful internet community in existence.
> 
> It's strange that actions based on desperate longings for escape can end up just burying you deeper.



All the holiday madness of Thanksgiving is over now, and I can again return to normal daily routine, but I'm afraid it might take me a while to get back on track now with the story. This is a serious blow. Just as I did when she first came aboard as a character, I need to rethink the entire story before proceeding now. My character may be the narrator and the 'main character', but DeMonica was truly the central character. 

I guess it's fortunate that this happened toward the end of the story anyway - if we were only halfway through the Underworld section it would be much harder.

----------


## Oneironaut Zero

Aw. No bueno.  ::cry::

----------


## HeavySleeper

Why do people leave? It's not like there's a shortage of internet wherever they're going. They could always just check in now and then, and leave the odd post.

Tis indeed a sad occurrence.  :Sad:

----------


## Darkmatters

Ok, I've resolved the issue. I know how I'm going to handle this now. I would feel weird writing about Dianeva with her not being here, so - art imitates life. 

And with that decision made - I crack my knuckles and once again return to the keyboard. Back in a few with the next section.

----------


## Darkmatters

_"Stop the hawk!"_ I try to shout, but it comes out a cute squeak instead. They apparently don't hear or don't understand, and keep running toward me. 

"Wot the 'ell??!!" Xey bursts upon getting a better look at me. _"Darkus_, is that you?!!"

"Yeah, it's me... but the _hawk_ that just flew out - _that's DeMonica!!!_ Don't let her get away!!!"

They turn and run back out, with me leaping and bounding clumsily after them. Man it's hard to make any forward progress when you weigh little more than a feather and most of it is your head!!

I reach the door (which is thankfully propped open) and spill out. The sky is dark and brooding and I can see several huge twisters wandering in the middle distance beyond the castle walls. Diddy and Xey are standing a few dozen yards away, Xey with his arm held out level before his chest, and the hawk is circling gently down to land on it. 

At sight of me she immediately beats her wings powerfully in an attempt to take off again, but Xey grabs her leg with his free hand and restrains her. Diddy glances back at me, then at her, and places a hand over her head to keep her from seeing me. 

"She must be under one of Neener's compulsions." he says. "As long as she doesn't see or hear him she'll be alright."

Ah, then that explains why she was able to fly away as long as she was facing the other direction. I was wondering about that. 

_"Let me go!"_ Her voice rises, harsh and shrill. "All I've done is bring disaster and pain - I'm supposed to be your protector and warrior but I've only hurt you." I'm not sure if that was directed at me specifically or to all of us. 

"Are you _KIDDING?"_ Diddy bursts. "You saved us all from that stag monster, and if you hadn't shot down the harpies we would never have freed our guide and found what we needed on the island at all!"

Her voice shrieks out again, a plaintive wail: "Be that as it may, you all almost died saving _me_ from the stag, and I've brought nothing but pain and misery to everyone. Not only that, but I can feel my energy draining rapidly. It's almost gone now - I need to return to my glade or I'll soon die. Let me go."

Suddenly a note rises into being - a terrible and hypnotic note. 

"Saffron's Discordion!" Diddy shouts. "We must find her and kill her!!"

But before we can do anything of the sort the spider minions begin appearing. 

They come from everywhere - from around every corner, through every doorway, climbing through windows on every floor and scurrying down the walls. Some of them are familiar - people I had seen before, most I suppose at the sausage feast - which after all is where they were turned into these hideous creatures. 

Most have their legs and lower bodies hidden in some way - long dresses or big floppy pants, but some are partially  or completely naked. It's uncanny to see the way they flow across surfaces - horizontal or vertical - it doesn't seem to make a difference. 

"These aren't catatonic like the Stable boy was!" Diddy announces unnecessarily. They draw toward us in an ever-tightening circle, hissing and scuttling nervously to and fro. Quite active. 

Xey rapidly transfers the hawk to Diddy's arm and draws a pair of small farming implements from his belt. 

"Sickles." I say. "They're sickles, not scythes." Not that it matters I suppose - but a scythe is a heavy two-handed tool used for harvesting grains and grasses - like what the Grim Reaper carries. Well, all reapers really, at least pre-industrial age. A sickle is a small crescent-shaped blade wielded with one hand - like the Communist hammer and sickle emblem. 

Holding one wicked hooked blade in each hand, Xey advances on the closest spider minion, takes a quick swipe at it, and manages to cut through one of it's spindly black legs. It hisses loudly at him and scuttles backwards dripping white goo. But at the same moment a dozen more advance on him, growing bolder now that he's drawn first blood. Or first ichor I suppose.

Sorry, I can't help making these little on-the-fly corrections - it's the writer in me. 

Diddy runs the only direction left open - toward me and the open doorway. He's holding DeMonica on his forearm and has his other hand cupped over her head like a hawking hood. 

Xey lets out a savage shriek - not sure if it's a battle cry or a scream of pure terror, and starts laying about him on all sides, blades flashing and ichor flying as slender black limbs get lopped off. Suddenly he disappears in a writhing mass of hissing spider limbs and human arms and familiar heads. It's truly a nightmare image come to vivid life. 

"Oh dear! We've got to help him - he can't last long against all of them, and there are more showing up every second.. " Diddy runs inside and thrusts DeMonica into the first room, shuts the door, and then runs past bleeding, trembling ScurvySeaMutt to the pile of armour heaped in the corridor. He picks up the bow and arrows and returns to the doorway, fitting an arrow to the bowstring. He lifts it and draws back, but his arms are shaking fiercely. 

_"Oh hell!_ I managed to do this before, but that was sheer luck. Or maybe a bit of divine intervention - What the hell - it might work again, right? _O Holy Knight!"_

The trembling lessens a bit but doesn't stop. He  looses an arrow, and it disappears into the mass of writhing bodies. We can't tell if he hit anything or anyone, until one of the spider minions comes lurching out of the crowd with the arrow through its chest. 

"No blood!" Diddy whispers in amazement. "And it didn't faze him at all. Maybe I'm shooting at the wrong part."

He draws back another arrow, aims lower, and lets fly. This time one wades out screaming, white ichor spurting from the arrow stuck into its thorax (which is beneath the human torso). It takes two more trembly steps and then collapses into a heap. 

_"YES!! That's it._ The human parts aren't even alive now - they're like zombies, completely controlled by the spiders. That must be why the Stable Boy failed to respond to us - the spider must have been sleeping, or whatever it is that spiders do when they sit inert for so long."

He fires a few more arrows into the thronging crowd, then comes up empty handed.

"Damn! No more arrows!!" He throws the useless bow down and returns to the pile of armour, strapping DeMonica's sword belt around his spindly waist. 

"I don't suppose there's anything you can do in this form. Just stay here."

And with that he wades into battle, drawing both swords and shouting his own battle cry. 

I can't do it. I can't just sit here and watch as my two remaining friends fight to their deaths. I have no idea exactly what it is I think I can accomplish, but I must help them, so I start bounding toward the fracas. 

Suddenly a shadow passes by overhead. I flinch instinctively, thinking DeMonica got out somehow - maybe the window was open or something. But no - it's not a hawk - it's Blueberry, in wolf form with huge blue wings beating furiously and with a small child sitting on her back..

*"Serafiend!!"* I shout, but of course my tiny squeak is lost in the scuffle. 

The flying blue werewolf drops into a ground-pounding lope, and smashes directly into the mass of bodies, scattering spider minions like tenpins. Sera leaps off and dives headlong into battle, disappearing from sight. The huge blue wolf rears up on hind legs and bares terrifyingly long canines, snapping and tearing at everything that moves. 

Between them they manage to open a corridor from which Diddy and Xey emerge, backing warily toward the door and safety. 

_"Come on - inside!"_ Diddy urges, pushing Xey in through the door and pulling hard at the little 10 year old cannibal girl as she rips into another spider minion with her terribly sharp teeth. She's growling like a wild beast, but being so small she's lifted up bodily and carried inside. The werewolf however is caught up entirely in battle frenzy - leaping and tearing into the crowd. 

_"Blueberry! Come in!! There's no point trying to fight them all!"_ Diddy shouts to no avail. 

But suddenly something happens to her. 

She switches to human form.

Not the familiar Victoria's Secret lingerie model with blue wings that we know - it's just a normal human girl. She does look quite similar - in fact the face is the same, but her body is slightly shorter and not quite as impossibly svelte and slender as her supermodel form. And there are no wings.

She looks directly at us for a second as if in shock, her eyes widening incredulously, and her arms moving to cover her nearly nude body. She still wears only the lacy white lingerie, but now for the first time she seems embarrassed by it. Or maybe just surprised - it's hard to tell. 

At any rate, she leaps toward the open door and comes scurrying inside, arms still crossed in front of her chest.

Diddy and Xey close the ponderous door, cutting off a few waggling spider legs that try to force their way in, and set the floor locks. 

"That should hold them momentarily," Diddy says, "but they'll get in elsewhere. Our only hope is to kill Saffron. And I don't know if that will actually stop them or not."

"Wot the 'ell 'appened to you?" Xey asks the pretty girl, no longer sporting her blue wings. 

"I'm _myself_ again." She replies, sounding almost baffled, as if the answer is suggesting itself to her and catching her by surprise. 

"I'm really _me_ now - Raspberry."

Raspberry. Yeah - of course. That's who she is - who she's always been, except that she was distorted - changed into a sort of caricature of herself, and her name was changed to Blueberry. 

"Raspberry - yeah! I recognize you now. Welcome back!" Xey says, taking off his too-tight black jacket and draping it over her shoulders. 

"Thanks. Wow - this is so weird - what the hell has happened to DV?!!"

"The personalities must've changed when Alex changed the names" I venture. "And when he changes a name back that person returns to their original personality."

And suddenly I'm me. Human I mean. Not a bundle of cuteness and hair and warmth. 

I must say I rather miss the feeling of being impossibly young again, but it is nice to have actual mass and be taller than everyone's ankles. 

*"Darkmatters!"* Diddy cries. "I _remember_ you all of a sudden."

"Yeh, me too." Xey says. 

"Darkmatters - comes slightly after Blueberry alphabetically - " I muse, to myself mostly. 

"What's that?" Diddy prompts.

"Alex and Ninja are changing the names back - they must be doing it alphabetically."

"Shit." Xey moans. _"I've_ got a long wait.. "

----------


## Darkmatters

Posted today by Dianeva on _Going Somewhere or Returning_:





> I. Can. Not. Take. This. Anymore.
> 
> I. Love. DV. Too. Much.
> 
> I'll elaborate once I'm finished playing this l4d vs game!
> 
> I'm drunk =(



 :Awesome Dance:

----------


## HeavySleeper

Does this mean she's not leaving? If so, that's great news.

----------


## Darkmatters

Yep. She's back.

----------


## Darkmatters

*24 

SaffronAxe*



The sky is a darkening mass of scudding black clouds - stirred by the half dozen huge twisters patrolling impatiently just beyond the walls of the Castle. Wind is lashing ferociously through the stone-walled enclosure of the corral, ripping up handfuls of straw from the ground and dashing them against the walls and whipping Zombie_Muffin's long brown hair sideways. She's standing now - mouth closed and all her attention focused on the opposite wall - or perhaps on one of the many tools and implements hung from hooks or standing on the ground against that wall. 

And though her hair is whipped into a frenzy till it makes snapping sounds and lashes against her skin, she stands resolute - arms held stiffly by her sides rather than swinging loosely the way they have been for so long - hands repeatedly clenching and unclenching. For once even the ever-present string of foamy drool has been torn from her chin by the fierce wind. 

The churning sky is darkening perceptibly, roiling clouds piling atop one another and blotting out the few scraps of open sky that remain. A sudden flare of lightning illuminates her determined face right through the wire mask, flashing from her yellow-grey eyes, and a moment later the thunder rips across the enclosure. 

As if that's the cue she's been waiting for the zombie girl takes one faltering step forward. It's a bit stiff and awkward, but a far cry from her disjointed spastic movements of the last couple days. Every rigid line of her slender little body registers sheer concentration. 

She takes another step, and another - each a bit more controlled than the last. Then she's walking. Not lurching but really walking, though rather more like a sleepwalker than anything else. 

She reaches the opposite wall, her hands extending toward something that rests propped against it. 

Another brilliant flash of lightning illuminates the scene blindingly for a second to reveal a large heavy sledge hammer propped upside-down against the wall. Both of her small hands close on the grip and she tilts it toward her body. 

It's very heavy - probably weighs nearly as much as she does! But she struggles and strains and manages to drag the hammer out away from the wall a couple of steps, keeps tugging on it as if she expects to be able to actually lift it. 

Another forked lightning flash tears across the sky and something very strange happens..

The hammer seems to leap into the air. 

As if propelled by some powerful underground explosion or yanked by invisible wires from above. 

It flips itself upright and lifts to a level of some 7 feet in the air where it hovers restlessly, tiny slender Zombie_Muffin still gripping it with one upthrust hand - the other now groping about in the air as if for balance. 

One final lightningbolt cracks and explodes inside the corral itself, revealing letters inscribed on the side of the huge rectangular head:

*BANHAMMER*

----------


## Arra

I'm sorry Darkmatters, I feel terrible about making you have to rethink everything, then coming back quickly, probably causing you to rethink it all again.

----------


## Darkmatters

That's alright - it keeps things fresh! 

Besides, I suppose your real life takes precedence over your story life - by a little bit anyway..   :Cheeky: 

Plus I like the new idea better than what I originally had.

----------


## Arra

Okay.  Am I gonna end up dead soon due to my momentary decision to leave?  :Crying:  lol

----------


## Darkmatters

Hmmmm...

----------


## HeavySleeper

There there, Dianeva. We all die eventually.

----------


## Darkmatters

_"Doreenema.. "_

"What?" Diddy looks askance at me.

"Doreenema - comes shortly after Darkus. Since Blueberry changed just before me, we can assume they're going by the changed names, not the original ones. And her official screen name was still Doreenema, remember? She couldn't get it changed. Guess it hardly matters either way though..

I open the door to the room where Diddy put her - step in and close it quickly so she can't fly out. It's a study or library - walls lined with shelves of books and a big writing desk against one wall. She's perched atop the tall back of an ornate wooden chair right in front of it, one eye locked on me.

There's a tiny _*pop*_ noise and suddenly she's human - human and entirely naked. For an impossible second she remains perched on the chair before it topples and dumps her onto a thick rug where she lands in a graceful crouch. 

She looks up at me - eyes red and face already wet with the tears she was unable to shed as a hawk. In a sudden rush she's up and plastered against the front of my body - clasping me in a tight embrace and sobbing wetly against my shoulder. 

This is not DeMonica - or Doreenema for that matter. No Amazon warrior, though in many respects she still looks the same - not as tall or athletic, though only slightly less so really, and her face is still as dazzlingly beautiful. The changes are subtle, but before me stands a real young woman - not the fantasy character she had been. And suddenly I remember - she's Dianeva.

Her grief is overpowering - her emotions elemental. For a lost moment I'm caught up completely in her, holding my hands out clumsily behind her so as not to touch her naked body - how to hold a crying woman when she's naked.. ?

_"I'm so sorry!"_ She bawls. _"All I've done is screw everything up!! Some great warrior I turned out to be.. I almost got everybody killed!!"_

My hands slide against her back - one goes up into her hair and one remains beneath her shoulderblades. I press her head into the hollow between my shoulder and neck - thankful it's not the side so terribly soaked with grease from carrying those sausages for so long. 

"So - now what?" I ask. 

After a moment she leans back slightly, careful to keep her body pressed against mine to cover her nakedness. Her face is a trembling mask of sorrow threatening to break like a sudden storm at any second into more tears.

Her raised eyebrows ask the question.

"What do you do now? - Go home?"

The tearstorm begins. She sniffles loudly and buries her face once again. But I feel a bit of tension seep away - her resistance has given way and she's becoming a teary-eyed little girl in my arms. What I'm about to say gets a lot harder to say. But it has to be said. 

"You think you've betrayed us? How - you've given your _all_ - practically sacrificed yourself for people you hardly know! If not for your amazing courage against that stag-thing the rest of us would have lay down to die!! YOU gave us that!! And the reason you didn't kill it is because of compassion - you could have shot it right through the heart, but you held back for a second too long - I saw it. You didn't hesitate with Neener though.. "

"She was about to - _kill_ you.. "

"You did what had to be done - you had learned from your earlier mistake - and that's all it was - a momentary mistake. Nobody can be blamed for that!"

Suddenly she draws away, eyes flashing anger or resentment. She does her best to cover herself with her hands. 

_"I CAN'T!!_ Don't you understand - I have to _go!!"_ She's seething rage at me and instantly I know it's really rage against herself. And what I need to do becomes suddenly - not easy exactly - but necessary. Inescapable.

I slap her hard against the side of her face. In the heat of the moment I can't tell how hard, but her head rocks and her eyes snap wide open in shock. Now she's not crying - not anything. Just listening.

_"What the hell do you think this IS??!!"_ I practically scream at her. "You think you've betrayed anybody? What will it be if you leave now? That would be the ultimate betrayal. Just go back to your comfortable grove - disappear into the woods and leave us all to die? Or worse - to become those _spider_ things!!??"

She turns her head away defiantly. I grab her hair and yank it back. Our eyes lock - there can be no dishonesty in this moment. 

I'm about to ask her what happens then - after Saffron and Neener destroy us and expand their evil empire to overtake her even there in her idyllic woods - but suddenly her face changes. She draws herself up taller, no longer covering with her hands. Her hands both reach up, tangle themselves in my beard, and she yanks my head forward and down to meet hers. It's so sudden and unexpected it catches me entirely off guard and before I know what's happening she's planting a hot savage kiss on my mouth, salty with her tears. 

Involuntarily my eyes close. Looks like I've lost control to her now. She pushes me away forcibly and I discover she's changed once again - into the Amazon. 

She's DeMonica now. Not Doreenema - somehow I just know her name change has gone through and Alex or Ninja has changed it to DeMonica as she requested. 

She's as surprised as I am and for a moment we both drink in her tall athletic form. Then she smiles and slaps me hard across the face. 

"Yes, this body is good." She says. "In fact I don't feel depleted anymore - with the change in identity I've been recharged. Let's go kick some ass, shall we?"

My head is still ringing from the powerful blow, the entire side of it numb and throbbing. And I can feel a tear rolling hotly down into my beard. I suppose now we're on even terms. 

"And don't ever do that again." She warns. But I know - for just a second I felt it - some part of her enjoyed it momentarily. It'll remain our little secret.

----------


## Oneironaut Zero

Haha. Awesome scene.  ::thumbup::

----------


## Arra

Hmmmmm......................

I forgive you, but not in that way.

----------


## acatalephobic

Oooooh shit
The story anticipates!

----------


## Darkmatters

inorite?


(what - it's a tender caress!   ::lol:: )

Dianeva - thank you for being an amazingly good sport!!! (And point taken) 

I couldn't ask for any more... any forgiveness is appreciated - I was pretty worried about your reaction.   :Hiding: 

It's tough to write a story like this - I don't want it to be boring, but at the same time I don't want to go too far. Sometimes I'm afraid I make the wrong choices. Heh, and I have been taking character inspiration largely from the Fetish thread..   :paranoid:   :Whistle:

----------


## Darkmatters

**Commentary**
Both my character and Dianeva's just had their pivotal moments. She's been broken all the way down now - from proud invulnerable warrior to naked crying little girl who just wants to run away - but in that moment she found the strength to stay and fight. And my character finally stood up and grew a pair. Now it remains to be seen if he can be as assertive against an enemy - especially when it involves killing..  :Shades wink: 

(Just wanted to point out that there are actually important things going on in that scene   ::lol:: )

----------


## Darkmatters

Moments later she's arrayed in her armour again - including the sword belt Diddy was wearing - and we're off to try to find the source of the eerie discordant music. 

_"Look out bitch!"_ Diddy hisses a bit over-dramatically.. _"Mama's got a squeezebox!"_

He grabs the accordion and riffs off a few notes, but it sounds terrible. 

"Dammit, this isn't going to work! I dragged you folks all through Hell for this accordion - because after all, what's the opposite of discord? Harmony right? Accord. I used to be able to make magic with this thing - but it depends on being able to PLAY it!! No magic unless there's music. In order to combat Saffron's discord I need to be able to counter it note for note - find the notes that, added to hers, create harmonious chords - and it needs to be done instantaneously without thinking consciously about it. That requires a musician - something I used to be. This truly is a magical accordion - but it's useless unless somebody can play it flawlessly.. "

DeMonica puts her hands on his shoulders. 

"It's because you lost your soul - your anima. Your Lucy. She's your muse. Without her you wont be able to create anything beautiful. She's not dead - or you'd be dead. If we could only _find_ her.. "

"She's probably right here in the castle somewhere - I know Neener - she'd think it was a great trick to hide her right in plain sight somewhere. But where? It would take forever to search the entire castle!"

"Wait - " Xey begins. "What about that thing Darkmatters said - about burying the kitten in the coal cellar

"Under. Under the Coal Cellar." I pipe up.

"Yeh whatever. You said that was important right? Maybe it's a clue?"

Diddy pulls his lip for a moment in deep thought.

"Yes.. yes, it must be. But how? Under... under what?"

"Under everything." I guess. "What's the deepest part of the Castle?"

"Well - the dungeons of course... but there are too many... *of course!!!* That's it!"

And we're running. 

"I just remembered - see all this nice tile? We got a great deal on it but we had a bunch left over, so we stacked it in an unused dungeon room."

"Yeh - so?" Xey inquires.

"We stacked it right on top of a solitary confinement cell - which is the only thing deeper than the dungeons!! Right on top  of the trapdoor!"

"Oh hell - that's GOT to be it!" I agree. 

In moments we've pounded down a flight of stone stairs into a dungeon room lit by a few guttering torches. Diddy cautions us with a raised hand..

"If there are torches that means somebody's here - a guard probably."

"Which means you're right." I point out unnecessarily. 

And just then someone steps out into the light. 

"Tommy-O!" Xey ejaculates. 

The newcomer raises a hand to stop us and Xey lops it off with a sickle.

"Bloody bastard!! Learn some inductive reasoning ya Git!"

He sinks the point of the hooked blade into Tommy-O's chest. It doesn't seem to affect him much -  his face remains impassive and odd. And there's no blood.

"Gah!! _Spider-thing!!"_ Xey cries, leaping away convulsively. 

"Wait - " DeMonica interjects. "You didn't know?"

"Oh I knew! Just freaked me out is all."

We're all looking at him a little funny as he draws back and proceeds to hack Tommy-O to bits, revealing the black spider legs hidden by his coveralls. 

Xey looks up from his bloody work - "Hey, I might not be all smart anymore, but I _remember_ I used to be and this fool couldn't reason his way out of a paper bag!!"

DeMonica grabs him by the wrist and pulls him away. Wow..

*"There!"* Diddy exclaims as we round a corner. Before us lay stacks of slick tile all piled to mid-thigh height.

----------


## Singularity125

I just spent a good portion of 2 days reading this all. Amazing penmenship, a remarkable story, and though it... sometimes turned directions I'm not used to reading, I kept reading right through to the end! As a lurker, I only know a few of the people caricatured in this tale... so there's a mixture of confusion and knowing there, but it was entertaining all the same.

But... you're leaving me hanging here! I need to know what happens next.  :Oh noes:

----------


## Darkmatters

Thank you. You know - I'm a bit surprised myself at the direction this has gone, and sometimes I just think "What the hell am I DOING??!!!"   ::shock:: 

And I know - I didn't write yesterday. My excuse is my Kindle came in and I got a bad case of gadgetitis. Spent too much time downloading free books and reading and playing around with the features. So today I'll make up for it.

----------


## Singularity125

Hah, no worries.

You know, right after I posted here I checked my watched threads and saw you responded to me in the Rant and Rave thread, so I posted there. Then I see you've already responded here, too. Funny how that works.  :tongue2:

----------


## HeavySleeper

> And I know - I didn't write yesterday. My excuse is my Kindle came in and I got a bad case of gadgetitis.



Any excuse short of a dead relative is not valid!  :Pissed:

----------


## redisreddish

The entire time I didn't have access to the internet over the past few weeks, I was almost constantly thinking about this story. And now I've read what I missed... and it continues to be awesome.  ::D:  I'm going to be depressed when this is over.

----------


## Darkmatters

Haha! Awesome!! Way to make a writer very happy!! 

Also, thank you for bumping this right to the top just when I was ready to post the next (rather small) scene. Seriously, made this easy...

----------


## Darkmatters

** * ** 


Mighty Banhammer is slicing through the air at a height of about 5 feet, pulling Zombie_Muffin behind it - her legs and feet dragging across the ground. It's hard to say which is controlling which, if indeed there is any control. 

The funnel clouds have drawn closer - they roam in restless loops crossing over the castle walls - now inside and now out. Wind is lashing violently through the entire Castle grounds. Lightning flashes almost constantly and the rumbling of thunder is continuous. 

Suddenly the careening hammer angles upward, yanking her off the ground and into the air. It does a few loops and barrel rolls - swoops up and down dizzyingly - all with no rhyme or reason. It dips groundward, rips through a little grove of trees and bounces off the dirt a few times before stabilizing at about an 8 foot altitude and swerving toward the corner of the Castle. 

It smashes a hole right through the stone wall. There follow a series of crashing noises from inside, and then it smashes out again a dozen yards away going in a different direction. Muffin still dangles like the tail of a kite behind it, and a tattered curtain flutters for a moment from her body before violent winds tear it away.

----------


## Darkmatters

** * ** 

It's the work of 5 minutes to clear away enough stacked tile to reveal the trapdoor underneath. Now Diddy stands just in front of it. He takes a deep breath, then lifts off the accordion from his chest and sets it on a nearby stack. Then he nods. 

DeMonica and Xey remove the thick pins securing the hasps and I lift the heavy door open. Immediately there's an audible gasp from inside the dark hole and I see pale arms rise up toward Diddy even as his (similarly pale) reach toward whoever is in the cell. It's like a magnetic attraction. Behind the arms rises a slender pale girl - nude with long black hair hanging almost shroudlike over her body. She's crying out loud now, and so is Diddy as they come together in a tight embrace. 

The cell must be tiny! She's standing in it and only her calves and knees are still hidden. It must be hardly large enough to lay in - like a casket!! I can't even conceive how horrible it would be to spend any time in there. 

I notice they're breathing completely in unison. Even sobbing in unison. Their voices in total sync.  

Their embrace is so tight it's hard to tell it's actually two people. They're literally melting together. And then it's only one person.

Before us now stands Ominous_Diddy - but no longer effeminate and weak. 

Now he's quite obviously masculine - I mean not like big and brawny or anything, but a far cry from the feeble, pallid transvestite we've known. Neener's pink gown tears in a few places as his chest expands and his stance becomes assertive and dominant. And now, even in drag he exudes an undeniable masculine power. We all unconsciously bow our heads for a moment in awe - no wonder he was the king!

----------


## Darkmatters

Something profound happens the moment they merge. A powerful surge crackles like electricity through the air - through all of us. It changes us subtly. For a moment we exchange incredulous glances, like sleepers awakened and not yet sure quite what's going on.

_"Lucidity."_ I say quietly.

"Wot's that?" Xey asks. 

"Lucidity. That's it - it's the word we didn't have access to earlier - or one of them anyway. Lucy Diddy.. "

----------


## Darkmatters

** * ** 


At the selfsame moment Zombie_Muffin is being flailed violently against the ground once more - rather like a tin can being dragged behind a speeding car. 

The surge passes through her and instantly her flight stabilizes. Her face changes slightly as well - a new self-control settles onto her features and she turns her face toward the Castle. Smoothly she sails up and over the spires and turrets until the courtyards at the center come into view. 

Crowds are massing there - throngs of people (there's something strangely wrong with their legs and the way they walk) and something else - creatures larger than people and with too many legs... striped in grey and black.

----------


## Darkmatters

** * ** 

Suddenly there's a faintly audible *pop* and Ominous changes again. 


*"Omnis Dei!"* DeMonica gasps. Indeed. "The God-King is come again!"

He's also had a very fortunate and instantaneous change of clothing - A rather strange one though. 

He's wearing pencil-slim Levis and a poncho and flat wide brimmed hat. In fact he looks suspiciously like Clint Eastwood from the Dollars trilogy. And I'll be damned if he doesn't actually exude just enough masculine power to pull it off!! 

He picks up the accordion and settles it against his chest, experimentally riffs off a few bars of  _Welcome to the Jungle_ by Guns-n-Roses. It sounds amazing!!! I can swear I even hear Slash's lead guitar... how the hell can you _do_ that with an accordion??!!! 

Then he slings it across his back and gives us a grim look. 

_"Come on."_

----------


## Darkmatters

** * ** 

*DeeryTheDeer:* _You fucked up._ 

what

*DeeryTheDeer:* _You wrote the Muffin scenes in third person. Your character wasn't there to see it - even in a 'vision'. Until now everything has been seen through your character's eyes. In fact you're fucking up right now - how can you be seeing my posts?_

----------


## Oneironaut Zero

> He picks up the accordion and settles it against his chest, experimentally riffs off a few bars of _Welcome to the Jungle_ by Guns-n-Roses. It sounds amazing!!! I can swear I even hear Slash's lead guitar... how the hell can you _do_ that with an accordion??!!! 
> 
> Then he slings it across his back and gives us a grim look. 
> 
> _"Come on."_



 





> ** * ** 
> *DeeryTheDeer:* _You fucked up._ 
> what
> *DeeryTheDeer:* _You wrote the Muffin scenes in third person. Your character wasn't there to see it - even in a 'vision'. Until now everything has been seen through your character's eyes._



hahaha. That threw me off a bit, too.  ::chuckle::

----------


## Darkmatters

I was wondering if anybody caught that or was going to say anything.  ::lol:: 

And now the end draws near.

I'm sad to see it end, but in a way it's almost a relief. The writing has changed drastically (for me - I mean the writing process) since those heady early days when I was so fired up I felt like I was floating. Some of the more recent days it actually felt like a chore - and some days I just coasted by, writing on autopilot. 

I remember doing the early parts of the journey across the island of IRC - the thrill of weaving those complex sentences and archaic terms so it almost sounded like Dante or Shakespeare (er - ALMOST almost.. ) and checking online thesaurii every few minutes to find interesting words that I never would have come up with on my own. Ahhhh - if only that kind of passion and patience were available all the time on demand!! 

If this was a more serious story I would have done it differently - I would have outlined the entire thing first and then roughed out a 1st draft before anybody else saw it. But that wouldn't have been nearly as much fun!! For one thing - if I approached it that way and saw how long this was going to be - I would have probably got discouraged and moved on to something else. (I wonder how long it is? I want to put it into some kind of software that can do a word count - wonder if it's hit novel length yet? It sure feels like it!) But posting each scene as soon as I write it for everyone to see (and thus locking myself in to something that I might later wish I had done differently) kept it fresh and exciting - it was as much an adventure for me as for anybody. I often start writing and as ideas occur I'll laugh or shake my head and smile... I love the way it twists and turns even though I knew basically where I was going.

But it's not over yet... the most exciting parts still lie ahead. Looking forward to tomorrow!

----------


## Darkmatters

_'Yes, the new brood has grown nicely'_ thinks Saffron. She thinks it with the surface part of her mind, for the deeper part is busy directing thoughts into the minds of her minions as they sway hypnotized before her - half-human spider-minions in front and beyond them the larger heavier warrior class standing some 7 to 8 feet tall and built thicker than the minions - heavily armored until they have knobby bony shells almost more like crustaceans than arachnids. And they're beautiful - sleek and powerful, adorned with patterned grey and black stripes. 

_'I remember birthing you all as if it was only yesterday'_ she thinks and smiles wickedly. Actually it was earlier today. But they had scuttled out to seek dark nooks and hollows where they could grow unseen until they became strong enough to defend themselves. 

But her pleasure at this family reunion is marred by the howling winds and constantly pounding thunder and the threatening tornadoes that ring the entire Castle and occasionally roam right across the perimeter wall to chew up the sward - HER sward - or at least it soon will be. In a sense she already owns it all - it's just that nobody else knows it yet. And there are those who will try to take it back from her.

But all this noise makes it so hard to hold her warriors and minions in thrall and communicate their instructions to them. What should have been done in 5 minutes has taken over an hour now and won't be done for some time yet. Her arms are getting worn out working the Discordion. 

But that's discord for you. It fouls the best laid plans of men and monsters. Usually it's on her side because unlike most she understands the powerful role chaos plays in everything - but she supposes creating this complex plan to take over DV was an open invitation to chaos to come in and foul it up somehow. That's alright - she always accepts its dictates. As a faithful servitor of the Goddess Discord  she had rather expected a little help from her though. 

She's also beginning to get a little peeved because every so often another of her Minions suddenly pops and turns into a person again - very similar to the person it had been, but not exactly the same. It's happened to a few dozen of them already, and at this rate she'll have no minions left in another few hours. Thus far though she's simply instructed all the nearby minions or warriors to tear the changelings asunder. This at least has kept them from running and causing any trouble. So many interruptions though.. 

But what's this now - a young girl flying up over the walls - attached to the handle of a huge sledge hammer??! A zombie girl it looks like - no wait, she just popped and became fully human again - became Puffin again. And now she's speeding downward behind the hammer and tearing huge swaths of destruction through the ranks of her lovely pets.

----------


## Darkmatters

_'Fuck it'_ She decides. 

She quickly instructs all of her ranked pets to just go on a destructive rampage (THAT isn't so hard) - then she compresses the Discordion flat and latches it with a tiny brass hook and lets it hang once again on its thin leather strap from her sash. 

She didn't even realize how much tension was building up inside her throughout this ordeal. But now it all floods her - her arms feel shaky and there's a fierce throbbing headache shaping up  mostly behind her left eye. For a moment, unable to deal with the debacle that's become of her beautiful plan, she covers her face with both hands and sighs deeply. 

And when she slides her hands down yet another problem confronts her. 

The king is here. 

What the hell.. she had the entire castle searched all day for him immediately after the sausage feast - she thought she had him cornered in the Royal Bedchambers briefly, but he had apparently escaped just before her arrival. She was beginning to believe he had fled and would not present a problem - but there the bastard is now - dressed like some kind of Marlboro Man and with a huge clunky old worn-out accordion slung on his back. He's just burst out the doors leading down to the dungeons with a couple of other people..

Well, her pets will keep them occupied. Even now they're swamped in battle against a dozen minions with more closing in rapidly and a few warriors beginning to move that way. 

She turns and slips discreetly through the doors behind her to stalk angrily down the empty corridor, silken dress swirling agitatedly. There's only one thing that can calm her distraught nerves now. It's been many months since she last indulged herself, but this is just too much.

----------


## Darkmatters

_"There she is!"_ I shout _"SaffronAxe!"_

But no-one can hear me. There's too much noise - too much violence and confusion. Suddenly I'm attacked by 2 spider minions at once and I'm forced to draw the heavy battle axe from my belt and defend myself. For a moment I only use it to swat at them and thrust them away - but their attack is too powerful and aggressive and there's no alternative. So I start swiping downward - hacking off spider legs and spider heads and splattering gobs of thick white ichor all over. I can't bring myself to destroy the human parts. 

We're all separated in seconds. I can just see Omnis's cowboy hat over a few bobbing heads -the rest have utterly melted into the raging battle. I keep my back to the wall and take down three more minions - this thing is a real bitch to swing but once I get it moving it cleaves through spider parts like a hot knife through butter - seriously, I hardly feel the slightest resistance. 


But now one of the bigger ones is moving toward me. Jesus - that thing is huge!! It towers over the crowd, and it presents the impression of a sort of tank on multi-jointed legs. The armor looks thick - but I suppose the axe will stave it in pretty handily. But holy shit - I have to FIGHT that thing? 

I do. I can't abandon my friends. I steel myself and prepare for the worst. Then I catch momentary sight of Omnis. He's waving frantically for my attention - motioning me to go after Saffron I think. Yes - I'm the closest and I think I'm the only one who saw her. He must have heard me after all. Now he draws his finger across his throat in a universal gesture that's unmistakable. He wants me to follow her and kill her. Alright - that I can do. But first I take one quick swipe at the advancing marauder's foremost leg - 

Holy shit! Ok, it's not a leg it's more of a thick pincer like what a preying mantis has, and it reaches toward me with alarming speed. Right behind it is the other pincer. One strikes the axe right out of my hands and leaves my right arm numbed and throbbing and the other knocks me backwards off my feet. The giant scuttles forward rapidly and looms over me like death itself. But there's a momentary blinding flash of blue light quite near at hand. Not a lightning strike, though there are plenty of those at intervals - this emanates from a large ball of light that suddenly appeared just beside me. 

The warrior is just as stunned by it as I am and scuttles around to get a good look as the brilliantly glowing ball begins to fade, white smoke rising from it. A form is revealed inside - human. Crouching. 

He begins to stand, and I recognize him. 

Onieronaut Zero.

----------


## Darkmatters

It used to just be Onieronaut, the Zero must be new. But somehow I know it's there. 

He's human again. And he looks pissed. He's dressed as he was before, some sort of SWAT gear with black straps all across his otherwise bare sweat-glistening chest. His teeth are bared in a frightful grimace, revealing the fangs I saw when I first met him. But most noticeable is his new sword. It's a heavy broadsword of some sort, and it's on fire. Like the flaming sword of an archangel sent to wreak destruction. With a savage grin he lifts it and leaps at the spider warrior, taking a two-handed overhead grip and swinging it powerfully downward so that his own momentum is added to the momentum of the blade. 

The flaming blade cleaves right through the things head and thorax, which are upright rather like a human torso and head - as if the warrior design is based on some sort of centaur model. 

The things armored legs collapse and it falls heavily to the ground.  He draws the heavy blade back and thrusts the point of it into the creature's body - his neck muscles all clench terrifically for a second as if he's straining really hard, then there's a blinding flash from the blade and a surge of energy travels down its length and into the monster, which instantly explodes into shrapnel and vapor. Not even a drop of ichor escapes - it must all have been vaporized instantly. 

As the swirling smoke clears we make eye contact momentarily - his face is a savage mask of battle frenzy, but he smiles at me briefly before spinning with a howl and leaping toward another of the huge creatures. 

I stumble toward the doorway through which Saffron disappeared minutes ago. I've lost the axe - I can no longer see it on the ground and the surging crowd is forcing me farther from where I dropped it. Screw it. I begin to slap some life back into my throbbing right arm and run up the steps and through the double doors into the empty ringing corridor.

----------


## Darkmatters

** * **


Saffron rounds the final corner - her apartment and sweet relief are only yards away now - but what the fuck is THIS??!! 

A dead dog lying in a pool of blood in the middle of the corridor just ten feet from her door. And an arrow laying against the wall nearby. Something has happened here - and whatever it was is not good! All she wants now is a few moments of selfish pleasure - just to close the door and once again open those lovely little jars.. She clenches her fists, throws back her head and screams a brief scream of frustration and pent-up tension. Then she sweeps past the dog and into the apartment where she had birthed the warrior creatures mere hours earlier, only to find furniture overturned, tables broken, and the bedroom door smashed right off its hinges.

----------


## Darkmatters

** * ** 

I'm not sure which way she went until I hear the brief scream. Then I run toward the sound. A couple of turns and I suddenly find myself in a very familiar corridor.. of course!! It's her apartment! I had got all turned around and didn't even realize where I was anymore in relation to it. There's poor ScurvySeaMutt lying still in his own blood. 

The door isn't locked, so I open it as quietly as possible and slip inside. She's nowhere in sight - but I hear a quiet sound from the bedroom. I almost have to laugh thinking about the last time I was in this room. But then I remember the reason - I had let myself be entranced by a beautiful woman who held powers beyond my comprehension. And now SaffronAxe is just in the next room - which in fact is the very room where Neener had almost destroyed me. Suddenly I have to swallow a big lump in my throat. I'd better be careful. 

Some kind of weapon would be nice too.. I look around and lo and behold - there's O's katana laying on the sofa!! Neener must have thrown it down before picking up DeMonica's bow to try some target practice on me earlier. Speaking of Neener - no telling where she's got off to since then or what she's up to. She could still be here. I need to be doubly on my guard. 

I take up the sword and hold it behind my back as I take a deep breath and step into the bedroom over the splintered remains of the door DeMonica had kicked in..

----------


## Oneironaut Zero

> The warrior is just as stunned by it as I am and scuttles around to get a good look as the brilliantly glowing ball begins to fade, white smoke rising from it. A form is revealed inside - human. Crouching. 
> 
> He begins to stand, and I recognize him. 
> 
> Onieronaut Zero.



Aw yeah! Let's get it on!!  :Boxing:

----------


## Darkmatters

^ He is risen..

----------


## Darkmatters

She's standing in front of the full-length mirror with her back to me, exactly like Neener was when I saw her. She's dabbing at her face with one hand and in the other she holds a small jar or paint pot of some kind. Her movements are a bit frantic, like she's working off some serious anger or frustration. Dabbing, dabbing..

I've never been this close to her. In the mirror I can see her eyes, though they're not directed toward me - they're focused on her own reflection. And they're as beautiful as Neener's. Huge - and green. 

But I can't quite understand what I'm seeing. 

Why does her entire face look white? 

She sets the jar down on the dresser and opens another one beside it - there are several there. She wipes her white-smeared fingers off on a cloth and dips into the new jar, comes out crimson. Her fingers come up to her face - cover her mouth and smear roughly across as if she's wiping something off her face. Or onto it... 

It's makeup! Not normal cosmetic makeup, but thick face paint like clowns wear. Like greasepaint. What the hell is she doing... has she lost her mind? 

She isn't being careful or methodical at all - her hand seems to be trembling and she swipes it almost viciously across her face, leaving a ragged red smear over her mouth and covering much of her lower face. Then with a quick dab she places a red dot on the end of her nose. Like a clown. Or like war paint perhaps. 

Actually what I'm reminded of is Serafiend's bloodied face after she half devoured the harpies. 

She sets down this jar next to the first, wipes her hands off again, and suddenly she grasps the front of her dress and rips open the entire bodice. Now she has my full attention. 

Both hands dig deeply into the first paint pot - the white one - and emerge with big gobs of paint that she slaps against her naked flesh and smears down her torso. 

No - I've got to get my racing thoughts under control - can't let myself be entranced again. And I'm staring. I shake my head briefly and suddenly there's swift movement beside me. Something pinkish-white leaping toward me from a high shelf - I flinch away and try to bring up the sword, but the suddenness of the attack shocks me into clumsiness - my hand strikes dully against the doorframe and I drop the katana. 

Dammit!!! If I had kept my wits about me..

It's a small white rat or large mouse, flying at me with all its little pink talons extended to shred my face. 

It lands on my shoulder and I knock it off with a convulsive swipe. But in the instant it takes to do that Saffron launches herself at me, both hands spread in a gesture all too similar to that of her little pet, and made even more so by the white greasepaint covering them. Her hands rake clawlike at my face and she shrieks savagely as she bears me backwards off-balance with surprising strength and ferocity. 

I manage to twist sideways in an attempt to throw her off but it only results in both of us tumbling onto the red velvet divan. Yes - the same one. The one where Neener seduced me and defeated me. The irony is not lost. This is playing out like a grotesque parody of that earlier encounter. 

I'm holding Saffron's wrists, trying to keep her from raking my eyes out, but suddenly she stops struggling - relaxes and sits back. 

And smiles. 

Oh this is not good..

----------


## Darkmatters

Suddenly she rises with impossible fluidity. 

"You're the one who was trying so hard to see my legs.. "

Damn - she remembers! That was way back at the sausage feast when I had first seen her play her Discordion. DeMonica had laughed at me for it. But I wasn't the only one... I swear all the men present were looking - something about the mystery of the long dress with multiple layers and the way she was dancing - spinning and spinning..

She laughs - it's as if she can read my mind. Maybe she can - I get the feeling most of these women I've been encountering here can. 

The front of her skirt comes up suddenly as if thrown by something inside. And this time it's not other layers of satin I see underneath - all the layers are thrown up at once. 

Revealing a nightmare. 

A cluster of spider legs with a grinning leering spider head right in the middle. Not black like her minions, or black and grey striped like the warriors she spawned this morning, but a pale beige so pale it's almost white. 

She's still smiling - with her human head - a rather insane smile - the kind of smile I imagine Lizzy Borden might have smiled as she chopped her parents to bits. The pair of foremost legs are holding the skirts up and the rest are moving restlessly - keeping up an impatient but uncannily graceful dance like the legs of impossibly slender ballerinas - always _en pointe_.

She drifts forward as if on oiled bearings - leans down and places her hands on my face - smearing it with the white greasepaint while at the same time holding my face caressingly as if for a kiss. Then she flows right up onto me, all her spider legs churning fluidly in the shadowed recesses of her skirts and the grotesque little spider head snapping its wickedly hooked mandibles repeatedly. 

Frozen in terror I cross my hands convulsively over my crotch. At the same moment I feel her human lips press against my cheek and the spider's sharp jaws pierce again and again into the flesh of my hands. Venom! Poison.. burning numbness spreading like icewater through my hands and up my arms..

Without thinking I head-butt her hard right in the face, knocking her off me. She tumbles back onto the bed, but never takes her eyes off me and never stops smiling that crazy smile - even though there's a trickle of blood running from her mouth now. 

The gypsy dress is thrown up over her torso to completely reveal the mass of writhing spider legs - I can even see where they join the human torso, and it's not a crude acid-melted seam like where the minions are conjoined spider to human - she seems to have grown organically this way. Or perhaps transformed herself magically. I wonder for a moment which one is really in charge - woman or spider. 

But there's little time for idle conjecture as she heaves herself up again and comes at me in a rush. I leap up from the divan and stumble into the living room where I immediately trip over the katana - I suppose I'm lucky I didn't cut a foot off. The way things are going it wouldn't surprise me a bit. 

I grab at the katana as I lurch clumsily back to my feet, pick it up - but my hands are already too numb to handle it. They might as well be boxing gloves at this point. Before I can even fumble the sword into a defensive position she's attacking again. 

That's when DeMonica kicks down the apartment door and bursts in with both swords at the ready to rescue me yet again.

----------


## Darkmatters

She shoots me a quick look of exasperation as she advances on Saffron, who now crouches uncertainly - dress still thrown up around her waist and held aloft by the 2 foremost legs and little gargoylish spider head hissing and snapping agitatedly at both me and DeMonica. 

The katana falls numbly from my hands, which I notice compulsively return to covering my crotch. It feels very vulnerable right now. I know I haven't mentioned it for some time because it was becoming repetitive, but yes, I'm still flying at full mast and suffering excruciating agony from it. And my treatment at Neener's hands - er make that _feet_ - didn't help matters any. And yes - it was just as bad the entire time I was a kitten. 

It's unfair that I'm in this state and surrounded by so many sexy females. It makes me too vulnerable - easy prey. Is this some kind of cruel joke? Or a crazy nightmare...   

Wait - how could I not have made the connection before??! 

Of course! _Lucidity_ - if we're able to achieve lucidity now (which obviously Puffin and O are!) - then this is all a dream!! 

I'm not sure what that means though - I mean, I suppose when I wake up it will be like none of it mattered, but right now I still feel the intensive need to protect myself. Thinking back, I've never had much luck with lucidity myself, and I doubt I'll be able to change that just now. But I should definitely look into it once things calm down a bit. 

As for right now, things are decidedly not calm. Well, ok, DeMonica is proving me wrong - she just quite sedately pokes her rapier right through Saffron's chest. Wow - really? That was so simple! And unlike Neener, Saffron is bleeding. Rather profusely, all down her white-painted torso and flooding over the hissing spider head like a syrupy red waterfall. 

Saffron's human head begins to lose the crazy smile that's been plastered in place all this time. It's a bit hard to tell because of the shapeless smear of red paint over her mouth, but I can see the tension seep from her face and the gleam fade from her amazing green eyes. She looks down, swallows once, lifts an arm and gently holds the sword blade as if it's the arm of a lover, and then begins to slump forward slowly. 

The spider head goes into an insane fit of spastic side-to-side motions - I can't tell if it feels the pain through some shared nervous system or if it's just desperately trying to escape a similar fate. But then the tangle of stalklike legs trembles and collapses and saffron thumps to the floor as if kneeling - strangely held upright still by DeMonica's embedded sword. Perhaps her last thought is a final prayer to Discord. 

I lift a foot and start stomping as hard as I can on that vile little spider head. I don't know exactly how many times, but somewhere I lose count and get lost in a sort of groaning scream of released terror and anger and revulsion all rolled up in one. I go a little crazy for a few seconds there and don't come out of it until DeMonica is pulling me away from the morbid sight. The only thing I remember clearly is the sickening way the head felt as it burst like a small pumpkin under my foot.  God, that feeling will haunt me - that and the horrible way Saffron' face just went slack as the life seeped from her. I shudder briefly and uncontrollably once, and then DeMonica is pulling me out through the smashed door. 

She had wiped off her sword on one of Saffron's sofa cushions and sheathed it while I was out of it - I sort of remember that like it was a dream - heh, a dream within a dream. In the corridor we step around ScurvySeaMutt's body. The poor guy - he saved my life and lost his in the process. I need to bury him properly when this is over and make him a fitting tombstone. 

Suddenly there's a quiet _*pop*_ and he's human - human and shirtless and sitting on the floor. There's no blood - it all disappeared when he changed. 

_"Saltyseedog!"_ I shout, stunned at his instantaneous resurrection. He seems none the worse for wear - just slightly dazed. DeMonica helps him to his feet (I would have, but my hands feel just like two balloons.. ) and he gives us an enigmatic look. 

"People are a fucking crock of shit." he says and walks off. Yep - same old Salty!

DeMonica and I blink at each other for a moment and start to smile - then the same thought strikes us both in the same instant. We both spin and look back at the shattered remains of Saffron's door - er, make that Sassafrax's door... damn! The fact that I remember her now means she just changed too!! Saffron would come just before Scurvy alphabetically. 

We run back into the apartment - but she's gone. No blood, no splattered white ichor where I smashed the grotesque little nightmare head (though thankfully those substances are also gone from my shoes and pants now). DeMonica bolts toward the one door that remains unsmashed and smashes it down. Must be the bathroom. I follow to find an open window with a curtain billowing out into the howling wind and roiling darkness of the tornado field where the din and clash of battle resound. I peer outside and look both ways, but she's nowhere to be seen.

----------


## Darkmatters

*25 

Nina*


*Nina:* _Wait - so Sassafrax has a heart and I don't? AND she got cool spider legs? Not fair._

Nina strides with that amazingly smooth graceful walk (which is the result of charm school training, and not due to any arachnid limbs) across the Royal Bedchambers and up to the little dresser next to the closet from whence King Diddy had emerged back in chapter 9 (or whatever it was - too lazy to check right now). Incidentally the red velvet curtain had been carefully rehung. 

She gazes for a moment at her reflection in the ornate mirror, picks up a cut crystal bottle of perfume with a little squeeze-bulb sprayer and mists herself briefly with it. It's been a hellacious day and a queen can't afford to give off any odors that remind her subjects she has armpits just like they do. 

A tiny movement behind her catches her eye in the mirror - but what was it? By the time she looked it had stopped and now all is still. There's a sudden snapping sound as of a very strong rubber band and all in an instant the perfume bottle shatters into fragments in an explosion of perfume vapors. She drops the remains in a moment of shock as her mouth falls open and she begins to feel the perfume soaking through her dress - most of it had dropped right onto her. 

Now the red velvet curtain is yanked down off its rod and falls into a pile just as it had been yesterday after her cowardly husband's escape. 

_That was it!_ The curtain - _that's_ what had moved. It was closed at first, and it opened just slightly just before the bottle exploded. 

And standing there revealed in the closet is Omnis Dei - the God King once again, not the poor emasculated whelp she had so carefully made of him over the last few years. He stands tall and proud again like he did when she first met him. That potent masculinity is what she had found so attractive about him - and once she had taken him in marriage and shown him who was boss in the bedroom she had felt the need to gradually destroy it. The memory brings a twisted smile.  

He steps out - unhurried - at his leisure. Holding a wrist rocket type slingshot. Damn, he's really got it all back now! No cowering, no looking down. Of course she had allowed him to retain a certain air of majesty in public - it wouldn't do for the king to look weak  - it would reflect poorly on her. But in private she had cowed him completely. It was a shame she had also lost all respect for him at the same time. But that's the game. There are winners and there are losers. 


"I always hated that perfume." He says, taking another step toward her. 

Her smile  grows, twists into a wicked grin. 

"I know. Why do you think I always wore it?"

He shakes his head. Damn, he actually seems to feel pity for her. The bastard... who the fuck does he think he is? She is not to be pitied. And he's actually pulling it off - doing it with _authority_. The way he used to. The first faint stirrings of desire begin in her loins. Fuck that - she refuses to acknowledge it. He's still her bitch dammit. 

He coughs and waves a hand in front of his face - damn, this shit really does reek when there's a half a quart of it spilled all at once! It's hard to fucking breathe! _That's_ the only reason her breath had caught in her throat.. 

He steps right up next to her - damn he has the aura again! But he can't see the goosebumps he's raising - they're hidden under the dress. She continues to glare levelly at him. 

He opens the bottom drawer. Fuck - _HER_ dresser! He hasn't had this kind of nerve for years!! She can't repress a nervous swallow. His hand digs through her silken underthings - comes out with a small leather sack. 

"I knew this is where you kept them. _I knew!_ And you had me so fucking cowed I didn't dare do a damn thing about it. Fuck it pisses me off!" He opens the sack and pulls out the crumpled cellophane-wrapped pack of cigarillos that he used to love to smoke - that she had taken away from him. That had been the second stage of his degradation. The first took place in her bed. 

He pulls the pack of matches from inside the cellophane, yanks one off and strikes it, shakes out a cigarillo and puffs it alight against his stubbly jaw. His eyes are slitted - dangerous. Fuck - this is more masculine than she's ever _seen_ him before! Suddenly she can't deny the yearning anymore.. 

And he steps back and flicks the still-lit match into the pool of perfume at her feet. 

She goes up instantly like dry tinder that's been soaked in lighter fluid. Essentially that's what she *is*. 

She runs to the shallow pool in the center of the vast bedchamber - flames roaring as her speed feeds them with fresh oxygen, and she flings herself in a smooth swan dive into it - graceful right to the bitter end. It's entirely too late when she realizes he's already drained the water. The hose is still laying in the pool, one end draped out the french doors into the courtyard outside. He must have arrived some time ago and begun to siphon it out. 

_Fuck!_

Her flaming body collapses against the beautifully tiled floor of the pool, with all the decorative images of gods and goddesses and satyrs and nymphs cavorting. And she screams long and agonizingly as she becomes a charred corpse. 

Omnis Dei just stands and watches, puffing clouds of acrid smoke all the while and smiling pleasantly.

----------


## Darkmatters

*26

Climax*




"Yeah, it was a totally epic battle." I say. "DeMonica told me about it - tornadoes everywhere, lightning and thunder, Puffin smashing the shit out of them with that hammer, and O blasting them with energy beams and slicing them to bits with his sword. And Omnis played his accordion and pacified the creatures, made them all calm and shit, and they were able to demolish them all. Wish I could have seen it!"

Zha_Zha smiles dazzlingly at me. Damn I've missed her energy and warmth! A smile from her is like bathing in sunshine. 

DeMonica had delivered me over to her for treatment while she joined in the mopping-up operation - there are still a few straggling minions and warriors lurking here and there in secret nooks and crannies. 

"You poor thing!"

She steps up and takes both of my hands in hers, examines them. They're a mix of purple black and blue with a few other colors stirred in, all swollen and shit. It's a shame my hands are so numb I can't feel hers. 

"Here - you sit down, and I'll fix you right up!" She says, easing me down onto the couch. She turns and walks into the bathroom - it's quite a treat to watch her walk away. A sigh rises unbidden from my chest. 

She returns in a moment with three or four tubes of antibiotic ointment. 

"DeMonica told me about your little problem... the OTHER one - not your hands. She said it almost broke her heart when everybody got healed except for you. This stuff will take the sting out and let the healing begin!"

I lift my hands and look at them doubtfully.

"Yeah, that's a problem, I know. You can't do it." Her smile grows even warmer - I didn't think it was possible. 

"You just relax and let Zha-Zha take care of things for a while - you've been through enough. And you can tell me all about it. But first let's get you all fixed up."

She looks briefly at her own hands, shakes her head sadly. "I work hard in the kitchen, cooking and scrubbing all day. My hands are callused and hard. What you need is some nice soft skin to soothe away the hurt while applying the ointment."

Now the smile becomes a bit saucy. "Have you ever played _horsie?"_

She turns around to reveal her back to me, criss-crossed with the lacings of her corset. 

"Undo me


*DeeryTheDeer:* _Alright I can't take it anymore. Stop stop stop. That's enough of this crap._

----------


## Darkmatters

What the fuck! Why you blockin' me??!! 

*DeeryTheDeer:* _Blocking what? Dude come on - it's only a story! You DO understand that, right? A big fucking fantasy for you - with all the girls you like from DV changed into whatever form you want..._ 

Come on, let me finish! It's almost done now - just a little bit more..

*DeeryTheDeer:* _Oh please! Let me finish! Just a little bit more! Haha! Sounds like I caught you just in time!_ 


No, it's not gonna be like that - there's nothing explicit - it's all very tastefully done. I was about to tactfully cut away from this scene, maybe out into the corridor where we hear a long loud series of groans and cries that could be either pain or pleasure - maybe a bit of both... and then the trial scene. I want to end with a trial like at the end of Alice in Wonderland..

*DeeryTheDeer:* _This is your trial jack!_ 

No - a trial for Neener and Saffron..

*DeeryTheDeer:* _It's YOUR trial motherfucker - Nina and Sassafrax didn't do a damn thing wrong! YOU'RE the author here - you made them do everything they did. Does Sassafrax even KNOW you're writing about her?_ 

Aw come on - you're spoiling all the fun!! Get out of my story!

*DeeryTheDeer:* _Nope. I'm not one of your characters. You don't control me. I'll type whatever the hell I damn well please in here! See if you can stop me!! And if you try to delete a single word of it I'll PM Nina._ 

[email protected]%#$^$#!%@!!!! Fuck. 

*DeeryTheDeer:* _Male chauvinist asshole._ 

Waitwat? Why?! Is it so wrong that men have sexual fantasies? You know what - fuck this. It's my story dammit. I'm gonna write it my way.

----------


## Darkmatters

I've never felt better in my life. My hands are still swollen and bruised horribly, but they're numb and don't actually hurt - and for the first time since this story started my groin is not hurting - in fact quite the opposite. A pleasant tingling is washing over my entire body from that area. 

Zhaylin is in the kitchen clattering some dishes around - fixing a nice meal for my recovery. I've found Alien on the plasma screen and there's an ice cold beer making a wet ring on the table next to me. 

The door opens quietly and DeeryTheDeer walks in wearing nothing but a smile...

----------


## Darkmatters



----------


## Darkmatters

It is done. My labors are completed. Now I sleep.   :Off to Bed:

----------


## Oneironaut Zero

> It is done. My labors are completed. Now I sleep.



And a well-deserved rest it is. Remarkable work, man. Enjoyed every moment of it. :bravo:

----------


## HeavySleeper



----------


## redisreddish

I DEMAND A MOVIE.

----------


## Darkmatters

^ Haha - me too!! Directed by Peter Jackson maybe? With effects by WETA. Yeah.. I can see it now... (cue imaginary movie montage).   ::lol:: 

But hey - amazing news!! I downloaded some freeware that does a page count, and I now have this to say:



(Irony alert - I wrote about half of this during November.. )



Yep. It's official! Anything between 50,000 and 110,000 words is considered a novel. Most publishers apparently want something around 70,000 words for an author's first novel. And P S clocks in at a whopping 71,255. After final editing I imagine it will grow somewhat. 

*whew*

I'll probably take a little break before tackling the editing. Though there are a couple of brief insert scenes and partial scenes I'd like to scribble up real soon. Some stuff I forgot to add in. 

I'd also like to reminisce here on what the experience of writing my first novel was like - it was different from anything else I've done. I've finished a few short stories before - mostly crappy ones around high school age that I wouldn't care for anybody to see. Never even thought about writing a novel (actually I still haven't - if I ever thought about it that way it would have been too daunting). I can break it down into 3 distinct stages - 

*Beginning* - Inspiration. Excitement. Wide open possibilities spreading into all possible directions. It could turn into anything from this point. Motivation is high.

*Middle* - Still inspired. Still exciting, though not exhilarating like in the beginning. All those possibilities have been narrowed down to just a few. Tapering to somewhat of a trudge toward the end of this period. 

*End* - Running on sheer endurance now. And if you're lucky support and gentle nudging from friends online. No more possibilities left - you've now narrowed it down to exactly the story it is. Still occasional moments of inspiration popping up now and then. Moments of excitement when you're able to write big payoff scenes that you set up earlier, or when something unexpected occurs. A mounting sense of relief as you feel the end of the monumental task approaching. 

At least that was my experience here - it might be different depending on the project (and the writer).

It's also really true what people sy about an artistic project being like a baby you conceive, give birth to and raise and then turn it free to go its own way in the world. I've known this for a long time, but it was more true here than with anything I've done before, probably because this is the biggest project I've completed. 

So many ideas going into it -  some of them got discarded, some changed, some I simply forgot about or screwed up in some way. I was going to have DeMonica be a warrior-poet and quote some of Dianeva's beautifully morbid poetry, but it never happened. I was also going to have Omnis keep misusing words to comical effect - nope. I just never found the right place to do either. It probably would have complicated things - not only by making the story a bit longer and possibly slowing down the flow of the plot, but because it would add another facet to their characters that I would then have to develop and explore further. A few things just spontaneously happened mainly because of accidents of wording as I wrote, and slightly altered the course of the story. So that in the end it didn't come out to be exactly the story I envisioned. It's like a child who becomes rebellious and refuses to do some of what you want, but grows into a wonderful person anyway that you can be proud of. 

Wow ok, I need to stop now. I'm getting a bit carried away. Next thing you knwo Ill be throwing it a graduation party and buying it a car..  :Cheeky:

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## Darkmatters

The main thrust of the story really grew from the following posts:

From Seroquel's Marry, have sex with, and kill someone from DV thread:





> Marry: Stormcrow
> Sex: Xei
> Kill: Raspberry (she gets too much love)







> Don't kill Raspberry until everybody who wants to has had a go at her. There's quite a line.  Plus - are you sure you want to kill Seroquel's wife?  
> 
> As for me -
> 
> Marry - Zhaylin to save her from her fucked up life
> 
> Sex - Zhaylin so she doesn't kill me
> 
> Kill - myself because Zhaylin's life is too fucked up



From Ninja's Do, date, marry thread:





> *Do:* Dianeva. I want to be looking into those blue eyes when I bust. Oh yeah, I said it.
> 
> *Date:* Nina and hope I get lucky
> 
> *Marry:* Zhaylin for reasons already stated on another thread   (and just because she's a real sweetheart)







> hahah- don't rush me.  I'm still thinkin' 
> 
>  Darkmatters  You're getting real high on my list however with all your flattery







> 








> Okay, okay lol
> 
> Do: Ninja 
> Date: Raspberry
> Marry:  Darkmatters



Now I wish I had saved those posts and referred to them more carefully - I should have used a few more wishes, like for instance HeavySleeper wanted to Kill Seroquel. Would have made a good scene. I might even write it in when I do the edit. I did kind of abandon Sleeper there, sleeping in the field, didn't I? I was going to have him rise up because he couldn't sleep with all the tornadic activity and come sweeping in and help kill off spiderthings so he can get his treasure. 

Could have had DeMonica kill Raspberry. I sort of forgot about her character too as soon as she lost her Victoria's Secret wings. I need to look at those threads some more - I'll bet I can find a few more goodies to include. 

But basically I structured the main body of the story around the fact that I said I wanted to do Dianeva but she never mentioned me - ergo my character is in lust which she doesn't return, though she does like him (you know - the old "as a friend" routine blah). And since I wooed Zhaylin and won her heart - I said I'd marry her and after some coaxing she agreed to marry me as well - well, that part pretty well wrote itself. I was going to include Stormcrow - in fact he was going to be the original Scarecrow character - and that's what sparked the whole idea of us being like the Wizard of Oz crew - but he stopped posting and apparently left the board. So by default Xei became the scarecrow, and it worked because his profile pic kind of makes him LOOK like one lol! 

Damn this post took forever to make!!!

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## HeavySleeper

> I did kind of abandon Sleeper there, sleeping in the field, didn't I?



Damn right you did, bitch! How anyone can forget a giant sleeping dragon is beyond me. I kid though, I enjoyed the ending.

Even though I wasn't there to see it.

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## Darkmatters

> Damn right you did, bitch! How anyone can forget a giant sleeping dragon is beyond me. I kid though, I enjoyed the ending.



Well, it IS easier to forget a dragon when it's sleeping..   :Whistle: 





> Even though I wasn't there to see it.



This is the funny part - NOBODY was really there to see the end. The climactic battle anyway. Lol - I bypassed it entirely and just had my character describe it to Zha_Zha as almost an afterthought!! Even though the chapter is called Climax. Which means the real climax is..

Ahem. Ok, this is where the story really unravels. I wanted it to be like the way some dreams start to fall apart as you're waking up - you know how you can be having a clear, vivid, awesome dream and as you start to wake up things get all weird - like characters become cartoonish or the environment fades out or something. I also wanted it to be like the end of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, where the story unravels in the same way... suddenly there are modern Bobbies intruding in what's supposed to be a medieval story, camera crews and directors and extras are seen standing around, the movie production is shut down as everyone gets arrested... 

And at this point the story becomes a dialogue between me and Deery, each supporting opposing views of its ethics. Neither view is completely right or wrong, they're just two different viewpoints. Lol also, hurriedly slapping a "The End" tag on was my (authorial) character's way of rather childishly trying to get the last word in before she responds. I get the feeling the dialogue itself went on, with my character plugging his ears and saying "Lalalalala... " While she continued to harangue him, and he imagining her into increasingly undignified scenarios. 

I do regret that I never actually wrote out the final battle, and I think I'll do it and insert it. Or maybe I'll write it and see if it works... I do like the boldness of skipping right over it as the story structure itself is revealed to be nothing more than a fantasy that's unraveling now.. Heh, maybe I'll write it up as a "deleted scene". 

I also have an idea for a subplot that I might try to add in, though that could be too much. It would however solve the problem of forgetting about Raspberry's character after she became human.

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## Arra

The rest of the story is great!  I'm sorry about not reading the last 8 or so story postings until now due to procrastination.  I tried to read them a few times while drunk, but that didn't really work out.  I really liked it and I'll have to read it again someday, after you've gotten all of the edits in.  Some scenes near the end were hilarious, especially the ones with Deery.  I liked the way Nina died, I don't know what it was about it, it just seemed perfect.  And it was nice to see your character _finally_ get his relief.  Something weird is that I didn't realise until she transformed back that Saffron Axe was Sassafrax.  It seems obvious now, I don't know why it never occurred to me before.

It's strange how those two date threads influenced the story so much.  I was so close to mentioning tommo in it, honestly, and decided not to only because he hadn't mentioned me in his post and I didn't want to look pathetic  :Sad: .  Maybe he would have ended up being more than a spider minion who died right away.  Then I was thinking of posting in the do/date/marry thread but decided not to because of other awkwardness-related issues.

There are a lot of unanswered questions.  Like who was the woman in the beginning, and what did she want you not to forget?  But all in all it was a great story.  I sincerely thank you for making me such a big part of it.  I was happy even to be included in the short disembodied dialog near the beginning and thought my part was over, so the fact that I was one of the main characters just felt fucking amazing, so thanks.

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## Oneironaut Zero

Anybody else keep checking their Subscribed Threads, hoping to see this thread come up with more story??  ::?:

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## Darkmatters

(@ Dianeva)
Wow, thank you! What an awesome post! 

Lol I'd just like to point out - my character was ABOUT to get his relief, when suddenly Deery intruded from outside the story world and ended things abruptly. Then the last scene I wrote - after her little harangue - was my narrator/author character's final, desperate last-ditch effort to once again gain control over his story, which she had usurped. It was implied in that final scene that he had got his relief/healing, but somehow I see that last scene as something that didn't so much actually happen as more like a hurried and forced fantasy that the author/narrator character tacked on. 

In one sense the whole story was like a dream that was breaking up at the end like dreams do when you're waking up (I think I said that already) and so that last scene was like when you've woken and want desperately to go back in and finish the dream, so you lay there halfway between waking and sleeping and sort of fantasize/daydream the ending you want. That's why the last scene was markedly different from the rest in that my character had (supposedly already) gotten his sexual healing and is about to get some more action - from the very character who he's unable to control and who keeps intruding at the most inopportune moments. It's his attempt to take the power back and turn the tables on her, and if you notice it's a very chauvinistic scene... in the afterglow I'm lounging in front of the TV with a beer, a woman is in the kitchen cooking for me, and I'm about to get laid again (would that even be possible so soon?). So the whole scene is sort of his way of saying "Oh yeah? Oh yeah.... well, well then I'll just do THIS! HAH! I WIN!" And then abruptly slapping a The End tag on before Deery can respond. I'm not sure any of this really came across at all clearly. 

The woman at the beginning - Reality Babe, was Reality Girl, Mayflow's alter-ego. I was going to have her appear just before the end again to bracket the entire story between her appearances, but somehow I had lost all respect for Mayflow by then (and banned her in several incarnations). 

Lol I know, I feel bad about poor Tommo! But then it's funnier to do the outrageous and unexpected than to be nice. But then, at some point he must have made a *pop* sound and sprung back to life good as new, just like everybody else. I wanted to have a scene where this happens on the filed of battle - littered with mangled corpses of spider-things that start going off like popcorn and walking away a bit dazed but none the worse for wear. Heh - I had a bit of a start though when I realized Nina's death scene happened AFTER she had popped back to her real self - so does that mean she died for reals? But THEN I realized that, since the whole reveal at the end is the fact that the entire story is really just a story being written on a message board (if that makes any sense) then nobody died at all. 

I think the funniest thing about it all is that I labored the point (in comments) that I needed to make my character find a backbone and have his character arc - find the power to stand up to these evil seductresses, and it seems like it's happening (in the scene where he slapped you around), but then in the end he's still a weak kitten before Sassafrax and fails completely to stand up to her, requiring you to once again steadfastly come to the rescue. So yeah - for much of the story your character was mean to mine in certain ways, but she always came through when it counted and she was the real hero of the piece. 

This is a trip - never having written such a long or involved story before I never realized that they can be analyzed like a dream. Hmm - not too sure I really want to think too deeply about what it all means..  :Whistle:

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## Darkmatters

> Anybody else keep checking their Subscribed Threads, hoping to see this thread come up with more story??



Haha!! I do!! 

Seriously, in a way I really miss this world, and wish I could go on writing it forever. But in another sense I'm glad to be done with it. It seriously jump-started my stalled creativity and toward the beginning it made me feel literally better than I have for a long time (since I learned my mom was dying a few years ago). I feel like it's brought me back to life creatively. 

And now I'm working on my film. I plan to attack it with the same 'get something done every day' attitude that allowed me to *WRITE A FUCKING NOVEL!!!!*  :Rock out: 

But who knows - maybe a se(ro)quel one day. Passing Strange Revisited.. ?   ::dreaming::

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## Oneironaut Zero

Well, even if none follows, this one was great as it is. And I agree with Dianeva; I thought Neener's death was great. I love how cool and collected King Diddy was when he setting her ablaze - after being so frail and questionable, throughout the story. And there is just something about diving into an empty pool to try and douse yourself, that is just plain hilarious.  ::chuckle::

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## Darkmatters

Oops - things I didn't respond to:





> There are a lot of unanswered questions.  Like who was the woman in the beginning, and what did she want you not to forget?  But all in all it was a great story.  I sincerely thank you for making me such a big part of it.  I was happy even to be included in the short disembodied dialog near the beginning and thought my part was over, so the fact that I was one of the main characters just felt fucking amazing, so thanks.



What Reality Babe wanted me to remember is exactly what had happened in the Coal Cellar with me and my sister when we were little kids, which turned out to be finding the dead kitten and burying it under a pile of coal so nobody would ever find it. And of course that memory allowed Omnis to figure out where his Anima/soul was hidden. 

Even before you ended up becoming a main character you would have played some part in the ending like Deery did. Originally I was going to have a trial scene at the end which was supposed to be for Nina and Sassafrax, but you and Deery were going to put me as an author on trial instead, as prosecutors. But I like the more compact ending with a very impromptu and informal 'trial' better (the trial just being Deery bitching me out basically). 

I don't think there will be a sequel - I was considering maybe a very short story that would be very different in tone, or possibly just more like an afterword like a "Where are they now" sort of thing. One of the main reasons I'd want to do it is to include a Drunken DeMonica scene... Lol that would quite honestly be the most intense part of the whole story! I might have to work a scene like that into the re-edit.

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## Din

Damn.  This is _amazing_.

God, I love this story.  Your writing reminds me somewhat of a friend of mine's writing.  It's descriptive, yet not overly so.  It says what needs to be said by the most vivid means necessary.

Keep it up!

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## Darkmatters

Thank you! 

I used to spend a lot more time on descriptions, but I notice now I tend to keep them to one sentence only for the most part. I'm rather surprised at my newfound ability to compress description and yet keep it pretty strong I think, and not interrupt the action.

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## sinoblak

The thrill was great,Dark, I'm really missing this story.  ::?:

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## Darkmatters

Awww - and I miss your clear and insightful comments on it!  ::hug::

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## Carôusoul

> Carou!! 
> 
> Great to see you in here! You know, if you'd have been around a month or so ago, this might have been different... 
> 
> (Actually I'm not sure I could write you at all - I don't know you well enough. You're - enigmatic)



You know me better than you think.

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## Darkmatters



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## Carôusoul

2deep4u

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