A (Bad) Day in Joy's Life

Another hot day in the city, the sun beating down through the windows of the classroom, the school's aging AC system chugging along in a valient, but nearly futile, attempt to keep the students within from baking any further than they already were. Joy was leaning over her desk as she often was, left arm folded atop her right, right cheek resting on her forearm as she stared off to the side, at a bird perched on the building's ledge only a few feet away, on the other side of the glass, her teacher droning on about some obscure changes in civil reform at the end of the 19th century.

She felt a wad of paper bounce off the back of her head, but didn't move, didn't acknowledge it, even knowing its likely origin at the desk of her cousin, two chairs over to the side. Someone else did seem to notice, however, possibly the intent all along, as the irritated voice of her teacher rang out, slapping her workbook onto her desk. "Miss Yamamoto! Am I boring you? Do you think that you can live in ou-, in this country without knowing why, and how, its government works?!" The slip was noticible, snickers barely concealed rustling through the room, as the blonde girl slowly moved to lift her head and sit up, her open notebook empty, in contrast to those of her classmates' filled with notes, as she spoke quietly in response. "…I was listening." The woman arched an eyebrow, then half-turned and waved her arm to gesture to the blackboard, with a tight little smile. "Well then, perhaps you could be so kind as to write, for us, the timeline of reforms between 1894 and 1900 that I've been attempting to educate you on?"

Joy just stared back at her, silently, for several seconds, before shifting her left hand to grip the edge of her desk and moving her prosthetic right to serve as a makeshift balance on top, then rocking forward and up with a visible effort, pulling at the same time with her good arm, to bring herself to an upright position, lips pressed tightly together to suppress any sounds of strain as she did so. Finally standing, she slowly stepped out from behind her desk, hand pressed flat upon it seemingly casually while navigating the simple turn, then began a slightly slower than usual walk between the desks, to the front of the classroom, making her way around the desk carefully and deliberately, and finally lifting the worn nub of chalk in her left hand, then up…and began to write.

The usual hum of hushed voices behind her washed over the back of her neck, while the gaze of her teacher burned into her left temple from a few feet away, the woman's arms folded tightly beneath her chest. When she finally finished, shuffling slowly to the side as her work on the board progressed along the line she'd drawn, right hand gripping the chalk tray while doing so, that din had died out into silence, and her teacher simply waved a hand, turning back to the class stonefacedly. "Take your seat." Joy set the chalk back down, then made her slow journey back to her seat, palm of her good hand pressed flat on her desk and gripping the back of her chair with her myoelectric, latex-covered right, and more or less dropping, almost collapsing really, into it, bowing her head once she was there, swivelling her lower body slowly to place her legs beneath her desk, her teacher resuming the lesson with an almost grudging attitude.

The bell for lunch rang out as the sun rose higher in the sky outside, boxed lunches being withdrawn from backpacks, trips to the meat-bun vendors being embarked upon in groups. Desks were dragged across the floor, groups of friends sitting and laughing as they discussed the latest television shows, video games, idol singers, and more local gossip…a tableaux played out in schools all across the nation, by students far older than them, with only the particulars changing slightly. Joy sat at her desk, alone, an almost tangible space empty of other students surrounding her as she ate her bento in silence, reading a copy of Science Walker boredly at the same time. Roughly fifteen feet away, her cousin sat at a block of desks surrounded by a half-dozen of the other girls in the class, playing to her court as always, the sounds of laughter and chattered words blending into a nearly indecipherable haze. Lunch went normally for the first twenty minutes, students beginning to pack away their now-empty lunchboxes, and that last ten minutes before the teacher returned from the break room began to gnaw on a group of unsupervised, save for her wonderful cousin, the class president, children.

After another five minutes, wherein the conversation at one clustering of girls, and a few boys, had begun to grow quieter, more self-contained, one of those boys stood up and swaggered, as much as any eleven year old can be said to 'swagger', his way over to her desk. The rest of the kids were watching openly, a few whispers and giggles exchanged between them as he moved to stand in front of Joy's desk, towering, from her perspective at least, over the younger girl, who, after several seconds of not seeming to pay him any attention, finally looked up toward him, squinting slightly. "Yes?" He grinned a bit, revealing a missing canine on his upper left, then moved to withdraw the hand he'd had in his pocket thus far, revealing an eraser, which he began to twirl between his fingers. She made no reaction to this, but she saw what was coming, one of the favorite games in the class, 'playing catch with the haffu'. "We were all just wondering…how do you keep from getting shit all over the place when you use the toilet? I mean, you only have one hand, which we decided you used to wipe, but then you also need to use it to pull yourself up afterwards, before you can reach the sink to clean up. Hanako told us about how they had to clean the bathroom a lot more since you moved in, on top of adding all the safety bars and cripple things. So, we were wondering…do you lick your fingers clean, or leave brown handprints over everything, or…?"

He'd been displaying a shit-eating grin of his own during this whole monologue poorly disguised as an earnest question, eraser twirling between his fingers nimbly all the while, as the hushed giggles of his fellow students grew less hushed as they observed the scene with anticipation. Joy sat silently, gaze having turned downward as he talked, then finally raising her gaze as he seemed to finish…and the eraser arced through the air toward her, an almost friendly-seeming, casual toss that even the most clumsy would be expected to catch. And she raised her good hand, as she always did, up in front of her face, trying to catch, or at least bat, it away…and failing, as it bounced off her cheek stingingly, just below her right eye, as it almost always did. The group in the distance burst into open laughter, some of them at least making an effort to restrain themselves, the chief performer turning to lift his hands and take a theatric bow as her cousin just smirked silently before moving to rise and lift her hands, taking on an expression of being above it all, and began to placate her followers… "Now, now, everyone should move these desks back…"

She was interrupted by the sound of a desk crashing to the ground and a surprised, pained, boy's scream. Joy was pulling herself to her feet via the desk behind her seat, her own having toppled forward, and slammed into the back of the boy's legs, coming to rest on his achilles tendons as he splayed on the floor between the rows of seats, beginning to cry. "Excuse me. You know how clumsy I can be." Her voice was as cold as the sun still beating down was hot, as she smiled somewhat ghoulishly, stepping past him to lean forward on the edge of another desk, both hands resting atop it, the eyes of her fellow students fixed upon her. "You want to know? See, the thing is, I don't get my hands covered in shit when I use the bathroom like the rest of you seem to, so I don't have any problems with getting it elsewhere. Because I'm, unlike the rest of you, not STUPID." And she began looking from one face to another as she spoke, words cutting as precisely as a scalpel. "I don't have problem with simple long division. Or english grammar. Or remembering dates on history tests. Or understanding photosynthesis. Affording school fees. Losing my glasses once a month. Having head lice. Or BEING FUCKED BY MY UNCLE." Each of the boys and girls she faced and addressed looked down or away with varying degrees of embarassment…the last, a normally quiet girl that'd ingratiated herself with the group by finally finding someone seemingly weaker than herself, burst into tears, and after a moment of stunned silence, moved to flee into the hallway. As Joy moved to straighten again, then moving to offer a small, 'polite' bow, she smiled in what seemed a cheerful, carefree fashion. "Since you seem to have SO MUCH trouble with such SIMPLE things, please, feel free to come to me whenever you need help! It's the least I can do for you all!"

She turned her back with a difficult but made casual-looking pivot, and was walking back to her seat when the teacher walked in, her surprised demands to know what'd happened cutting off any response the other children may have made, as the woman moved to hurry over and upright the toppled desk again, the whimpering boy shrugging off her questions and moving to slink off back to his desk, Joy calmly apologizing for having knocked her desk over, and re-taking her seat. Her cousin, who'd been the target of a revelation about the reason she'd 'been on vacation' a few months earlier, while dealing with her medical condition, clenched her hands so tightly shut that a drop or two of blood revealed themselves where her nails bit into her palms, staring straight ahead as class resumed, both more subdued and more stuffy than it'd been when lunch began.

The day ended with the heat unrelenting, the asphalt on the path out of the school and into the street painful to the touch of bare flesh, those students not involved with afterschool clubs heading home to seek the meagre sanctuary of old electric fans or for those luckier few, decent air conditioning units. Joy walked along slowly, silently, every so often lifting her good hand to wipe the sweat from her forehead onto the sleeve of her uniform, sweating more than is typical as she had since the accident. Still, she trudged along at a steady pace with her slightly odd-looking gait, stockings hiding the sight of her prosthetic legs, obvious even when wearing her cosmetic shells over the skeleton-like limbs at their cores. She was nearly 'home', walking down an alleyway, the trees of the private park bordering it on one side providing a bare, but thankful, modicum of shade where they hung over the walls, topped with barbed wire, keeping people out. Then she paused, at doors so carefully designed to make it look like just another private stretch of land, as two girls, and when she looked back over her shoulder, a boy, stepped out into view at the ends of the passageway, and walking swiftly, moved to surround her, closer, trapping her within. She lifted her left hand to wipe the sweat from her good left eye, squinting a little…and she recognized the uniforms they were wearing, identical to her own…and their faces, the boy she'd humiliated physically, the girl with the pain behind her eyes, and, smiling dangerously, her dear cousin.

The girl was the first. 'Her name is Yue', Joy couldn't help but think, even as she stepped forward quickly with eyes blazing, thrusting out both hands and shoving Joy back into the wall encircling the park, the blonde girl slamming into it and swiftly losing her balance to fall to the ground. "I never did that…that! You lying bitch! How dare you! You…didn't need to…" Yue hissed her fury, fists trembling clenched at her sides, the barest trace of tears glistening in her eyes through her long bangs. Joy stirred, moving to push herself upright slowly, head throbbing dully where it smacked the wall when she was pushed into it, and glanced up at the older girl silently for a long moment…before shaking her head, looking down at the ground with her bangs falling over her eyes, and murmering a response too quiet for her cousin and the boy to hear. "…no, I didn't. I'm sorry." Then the boy could hold back no longer, and was sweeping in, to deliver a vicious kick to her stomach, curling her up into a fetal position on the ground to feebly try to ward off further blows, as he kicked her another half-dozen times, ranging from her thighs up to the last delivered to her forehead, which drove her onto her back. "You think you're so smart! Too bad you're just a crippled ugly piece of shit!" She was pulled up to her feet again, his hands at her collar, the task not difficult considering her diminished total weight thanks to her prosthetics, then shoved her back against the wall once again, this time hanging on and keeping her from collapsing again.

Yue had backed away at this sight, eyes widening and hands held up in front of her mouth, her taste for violence clearly having soured. Cousin Hanako, on the other hand, had moved to lift a fallen brick from one of the walls lining the other side of the alleyway and stepped forward to flank the boy…'Akeno', Joy thought dazedly, as he kept talking, punctuating his words with the occasional vicious if not particularly skilled knee to the stomach. "You should've just killed yourself…you're worthless, and nobody wants you around. You make everyone that sees you sick!" Joy couldn't help but cough after the last blow, eyes shifting toward her cousin, her bag at her feet, shirt ripped at the collar, and a faint pink discoloration to the saliva flecking her lips as she spoke again, in a moment of silence. "…yeah. I know. Sometimes I feel the same way when I'm around all of you, and I think how hard it must b-"; her words interrupted by the impact of the improvised bludgeoning device in her cousin's hands slamming into her temple. "You really don't belong here, you know. No more than any other gaijin piece of garbage. I have no idea why my parents ever arranged for you to come here, unless it was to start a zoo." The boy released his grip on the younger girl as her cousin's second and third hits slammed into Joy's head and drove her downward, letting her slump to the ground at their feet, voices fading in and out of clarity above her. "I know what to do with her…my brother taught me about this place when I was younger. When people go in, they don't come out…that's why it's sealed off. Help me get this door open…" She felt, distantly, the sensation of being lifted off the ground again, by two people on either side of herself it seemed, and then…all too brief flight, culminating in rolling through…dirt? Grass? 'Cool', she thought, at the sensation of that grass her cheek was resting upon, and then nothing, for some time.

When she next awoke, it was dark, still swelteringly hot, and her blonde hair was caked in dried blood that outwardly reflected the pain she felt throughout her body. Her bag was missing, though that wasn't too surprising, considering it'd been barely hanging from one shoulder toward the end of her talk with the three, and, as she moved to push herself up to a sitting position, she noted that her right, prosthetic, wrist wasn't moving like it should be…a closer inspection revealing footprints on the latex glove. She couldn't help but let out a strained laugh as she moved to crawl toward, then pull herself up, slowly and painfully, the nearest tree on the grassy path she was upon, at the thought of giving thanks for small mercies. Once she was on her feet once again, fingers on her good hand now as bloody as many other parts of her, she surveyed her surroundings, trying to make sense of where she was. A…forest? The wall behind her was clear enough, but in the dark, the grassy and wooded space before her went on as far as she could see, though it did appear that she was on a path of some sort between the trees, unmarked, but clear enough. What was it doing here? Why did it even still exist, in a city as densely developed as this, let alone exist in such a…wild…state? She couldn't even see the sky through the trees above. Needless to say, there were many questions echoing through her mind as she made the only decision that she could, and began shambling forward, doing her best to keep her balance, for the moment.

After walking for what seemed like hours, in which she travelled thirty feet at her slow, sore, pace, (it only took her fifteen minutes, in reality), she blinked, and her eyes opened wide, as out of the darkness, glowing luminously, walked…herself. Herself as she'd be if not for the accident, whole and unscarred, and…smiling. Joy stared, silently, a host of emotions playing on her face in the span of a few heartbeats, as her doppleganger smiled beatifically upon herself…then she dropped her gaze, good hand clenching into a fist, and she literally (if appropriately for her size) growled. "What…the fuck…is this supposed to be? Is this a fucking joke? You think this is FUNNY?" Her head shot up again, eyes narrowed now, only to find that her ghostly self was disappearing back into the darkness, arcing toward the right as it went, leaving an audible giggle the sound of bells in its path. The girl furrowed her brows, and resumed her shuffling gait, pace now noticibly quicker than before, as she followed thae path laid down by this mockery of herself in a mood somewhere near the polar opposite of amused.

Only to find herself, as she took the last step, blown back and off her feet in a cacophany of sound, fury, and fresh pain, losing conciousness once again, if only for a brief moment, this time. When she came to again, she found herself on her back on the grass, body stinging in a dozen new places, ears ringing as she tried to move, slowly pushing against the ground with her good hand to raise her torso a bit and look down at the rest of herself…whereupon she noticed, first, the small smoking crater in the ground where she'd stepped, and second, that her left leg had been blown clean off at the knee, her hydraulic, computer-chipped knee exposed to the world and torn apart, tattered stocking and shredded latex shell hanging around it. She stared at the sight, almost not comprehending…then dropped back onto the grass once again, looking up at the sky and the almost invisible sillouette of the moon shining through the leaves…and began to laugh. Unrestrained, frighteningly uncontrolled laughter, tears soon rolling down her cheeks, unlike anything she'd managed since the accident, lifting her good hand to her forehead and over her eyes, laughing her heart out while blood from (thankfully) small shrapnel wounds in her thighs and a few spots in her torso and rear end trickling blood into the grass beneath her.

Minutes passed, and as she began to feel lightheaded, her merriment finally dwindled into gasps for air, and finally, the occasional hiccuping chuckle, as she forced herself upright once again…and began to get to work, proceeding to shred her stockings into strips, then locating and gingerly removing, when possible, or simply bandaging, when not, these new wounds. It was at this time that she noticed her right foot had been twisted badly as well, nearly 90 degrees to the left, and that the explosion, as it seemed to have been, was the source of what looked like a shattered metal shell of some sort, mostly buried beneath the ground she'd trodden on. Scenarios began to run through her mind as she worked on herself, reasons for why this forest was seemingly so untouched…but, once she'd finished, she dispelled them and began to look at her surroundings, and finally took in the building a few hundred feet away, in a small clearing. And so, with few other options, she began to crawl over the grass in that direction as best as her functional portions of limbs could take her…pausing to check for unusual topographies in her path as she went with each foot she travelled.

On the journey to what eventually revealed itself to be an ancient-looking wooden shrine the size of a small modern Japanese house, she caught a flickering of light out of the corner of her eye several times, but never turned her full attention upon it, continuing to crawl forward with single-minded determination…and avoiding disturbing another ancient metal object on the way, as well. Finally, what seemed like days later, but was actually hours this time, she reached up, then pulled herself forward and upward, onto the steps of this temple, rolling onto her side and shivering a little as the night temperature began to chill, finally…a bit too preoccupied to notice that the wood she was laying upon was far too well preserved for the architectural cues of which it may have been built, if it'd really been abandoned even fifty, or just a hundred years without maintenance. And silently, eyes squeezed shut, she admitted to herself that she wanted to go home. She wanted to go to her real home, to her parents, to her cat…and she couldn't. She had to admit that to herself, too, and it still hurt as much now as it did the first time she had to do it.

Some time later, the blonde girl moved to roll over and sit up, then, firming her expression, she moved to crawl up the rest of the steps to the sliding paper door, reaching out and pulling it aside with some effort, and slowly making her way inside…to find a foyer lined with skeletons, lit by a lantern hanging from the ceiling. Arranged quite purposefully, in sitting positions against the walls, many still bearing scraps of clothing from various eras…what looked like a police uniform from twenty or so years ago, a military uniform from WWII, traditional clothing from the 19th century and earlier…a shrine maiden's uniform. Twenty-seven, when she finished counting, biting her lip…the answer to why this place was walled off becoming more clear. She noted that at least four of them had missing and broken leg bones, as well, suggesting she wasn't the first to be lured into stepping where she shouldn't, either. Something…or some things, were up to the same tricks now as they were decades ago. Something here was old.

"Come to…"

She flinched at the sudden sound of the voice coming from…somewhere, nearby. A voice that boomed like it was echoing from the heavens itself, or somewhere deeper…and distorted to the point where she couldn't tell whether it was washing over her ears from outside of herself, or from within her own mind. "Come to!" it came once again, this time more insistently, as she felt a tickle at the back of her mind, as if something was wrapping around it gingerly…before withdrawing immediately. And so she narrowed her eyes once again, and moved across the floor to the only door she saw, moving to slide it open…and crawled through.

Or was in the process of doing so, when something suddenly curled around her, physically this time, and pulled her into the room, as she let out a cry of surprise and pain, unready to supress it. She was yanked into the air, something, some things, oily and black in the dim lantern light, wrapped around her arms and waist, legs dangling, unmoving, beneath herself as she was turned to face…something…that filled the rest of the room. Not just the floor, and the space above it…but the walls…the ceiling, stretched and splayed above it like some hideous wet fungus, dripping off pieces of itself from above that landed upon and became pieces of itself below…and all over its surface, at random intervals, were eyes…tiny, human-sized eyes, of varying shades…varying Japanese shades. And then a single eye the size of a dinner plate, red as blood, glowing more brightly than the lantern half-engulfed on the ceiling, opened, and focused upon her, and it SPOKE.

"Such a delicious smell, blood of the things that put here. Last one smelled was delicious tasting as well…not strong enough, that one. Not enough understanding to control, to put here. To bind, the way the first one of you smelled, tasted. You smell different than the others, somehow…" A pause, as something snaked up under the back of her shirt, running over the small of her back, and she bit her lip to keep from making any noise. "…the taste of ice and snow…how delightful, on a night like this, for. But how sad, so little of you for to taste. Something else got to you first perhaps, gobbled you up like the tasty treat you are?" The tendril coiled around her right arm squeezed, and twisted, then, painfully wrenching at the seal keeping it attached, before finally ripping it away, then bringing it closer to itself, to that squamous great eye, looking it over, while Joy bit back the ache from the force of its removal, her silicone sheath exposed… "Tastes of oil, and metal, and sand…not good." And that tendril casually tossed her prosthetic aside, bouncing off the rear wall of the room, a few feet from her.

Then it came seeking her again, running up over her shirt, up to her neck, and over her right cheek, as she turned her face to try and get away from it with little effect, biting her lip a bit harder now to stay silent. The tip of the…thing, ran over the lower edge of her scar, then followed it upward, over her eyelids…and finally, over her cosmetic eye. "More missing…very disappointed. The best parts, the ones save, and finally find new colours, but only one for to aquire? Tragedy!" And at this almost giggled word, a sound so incongruous with the depth of its voice that it made her twitch on its own, that tendril slipped beneath her eyelid, and slid her cosmetic prosthesis out of her socket, passing it down its own length by growing a host of tinier protrusions, then the main tip dug, flowed, deeper within, to grasp at the orbital implant…and ripped it free of its sutured tissue and carefully preserved muscle anchors, pulling it from her head in a spray of gore. Finally, it was too much for her, and she screamed, tensing and writhing within the thing's grasp; it undulated, starting where it held her, then rippling down the length of the tendrils to the rest of its body, waves that rolled over its entire surface, a sound hideously similar to the purring of her cat made years ago echoing through the room…almost resembling an alien laughter, as it crushed its new treasures casually.

The sound of its sonorous voice managed to pierce her cries as she struggled to bite them off, "Such a fearful people! None of you have the rage to touch. can simply play with you as long as wish, like the last girl that visited, and there is nothing you can do to stop!" Dozens of new tendrils shot out from the central mass of the thing, wrapping about her, running over her, one of them pressing into her right eye socket with a horrific intimacy despite her efforts to squeeze them both shut, even as another tickling at the back of her mind suggested another attempt at a similar intrusion. "And soon, maybe with your contribution, will be strong enough to leave this place once again, and there are none outside strong enough to stop this time, just as there are none in here! Now let see what's changed outside since last dinner guest…" And that tendril within her mind wrapped about it like a rapacious python, everything going dark, save for a giant red, glowing, eye. She could feel it trying to bludgeon its way deeper into her thoughts, to slurp them up like a greedy child with a milkshake, to take the last things she possessed that were truly untarnished, her memories, from her…and her fury ignited, like unto a dying sun going supernova.

The creature let out a sibilant scream, the mass of its great bulk pressing back against the rear wall opposite her as if trying to flee, its eyes, all of them, opening wide in fear and pain, even as the tendrils covering the small blonde girl suddenly burst into bright white and blue flames. Shifting her good hand to grab ahold of the tentacle currently wrapped around her wrist, she opened her good eye, blazing with an intensity to match the fire wreathing the creature as it attempted to withdraw from her, dropping her to the floor and pulling all but the one she had hold of away. "WHAT ARE YOU YOU ARE NOT LIKETHEOTHERSWHATAREYOUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE", the thing's screams shattering the glass in the lantern on the ceiling, even as the small blonde girl refused to release her grip on its last tendril despite its desperate squirming; indeed, she squeezed harder at that, and the flames intensified to the point where ijt literally melted in her grasp, falling to the floor with sizzling sparks and turning to a noxious smoke. Leaving her hand free to grasp at the tatami mat with her fingernails, and begin pulling herself forward, slowly, with just her one arm, mismatched gaze locked onto the creature.

"What am I?" Her words cut through its screaming like a knife, barely above a whisper, but with as much venom packed into them as the most deadly predator might possess. "I'm a monster. Couldn't you tell? Everyone else seems to have figured it out by now…seem to realize I'm no good to have around, not if they want to be happy. I would think you'd be more perceptive…with all those eyes…" Inch by inch, leaving five gouges in the mat with each burst of effort, the girl crawled closer to the monster, as it cowered in the corner, making a noise that almost sounded like a dozen mismatched weeping children. "What's the matter? Lose your appetite? Those eyes of yours too big for your stomach? I'd have thought I was just a midnight snack for something your size…" Each foot closer she got, the creature forced more of its bulk back and onto itself, withdrawing its hold on the walls and ceiling as well, gradually becoming denser as it packed itself in tighter…though, despite its best efforts, more and more of it was bursting into flames the closer she got, the smell of its burning 'flesh' unlike anything she'd ever smelled before. "STAYAWAYFROMSTAYAWAYFROMSTAYAWAYFROM" In what seemed an act of desperation even in a creature without a body language anyone on Earth could read, it extended a dozen psuedopods, lashing out at the crawling girl from every angle, but they blazed and almost instantly vaporized before they could touch her, simply turning to a light mist and wafting away. And she continued her implacable pace, already crawling over the space the creature's 'outer' edge had covered when she entered the room…as her split and bloodstained lips split into a sickening grin that had the noticible effect of driving the thing's eyes even wider. "Let me show you some of what the world's shown me, Monster-kun…let me return the favour and give you some tender caresses to show you my affections…"

The entire form of the thing had burst into flames by now, as it literally melted away around her, attempts to slip to one side or the other being met with even quicker dissipation, and, finally, as it screamed like a wounded animal, she moved to force her torso upward, balanced on her remaining artificial knee and the stump of her other leg, then thrust her good hand forward, into the gelatinous burning heart of the thing, and squeezed…pulling herself closer, to bring herself face to face with the 'central' eye, its smaller trophies bursting and popping all around her, covered in the colorless flames that now covered the room. "There's nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide from me. And since someone asked me earlier today…no, I don't give up, even when it would be SO EASY…" The squamous eye of the thing spasmed, pupil dilating wildly, and its voice, sounding once again like the mewling of her former cat, but this time when it was in pain and fear, when it'd had a run-in with a neighbour's dog. "PLEASESTOPDONOTHURTSERVEYOUPLEASEPLEASESTOPSTOPSTOPSTTTTTTT" She tightened her grip, the flesh around the spot she'd thrust her hand into having already melted away more quickly than the rest of it, leaving behind a thin ropey strand connecting it to its great eye, and growled gutterally in response. "Shut…up. You are an abomination…you don't deserve to exist…anymore than I do. I should just end you now, and then lay down in this place…they won't come looking for me, I know it…"

A moment of silence, then Joy spoke again, more quietly now, though her singular gaze and black void streaked with blood didn't lessen in their intensity, staring into the terrified eye of the monster of the shrine. "I know it. …but I've never been smart enough to do things easy." Then those eyes narrowed, and she leaned backward a bit, to look down onto it. "So, let's talk…"

Unless otherwise stated, the content of this page is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License