Rita stared at the man, rising from below seemingly on the shoulders of his fellows. Even though she knew that this place was weird and that likely nothing was real, seeing the man she had watched plummet to his death when she was nine years old looking up at her with a rakish smile on his face left her momentarily stunned.
“You… you died…” she mumbled, dumbfounded.
He was standing on top of a human pyramid, made up of a bunch of athletic looking men in purple leotards, much like himself. She could not see past the top three layers, but presumably there were a bunch more down there, forming the base of the pyramid. Something about it bothered her though, but she struggled to put her finger on it.
“Holy shit, what the fuck…!” she heard Alice exclaim from somewhere below.
It was only when the top few began grabbing at some of the lower hanging things dangling from the ceiling and hoisting themselves up without breaking formation that it clicked: there was only one head!
They did not stand on each others' shoulders at all. Instead, the bottom of their legs formed the neck of the persons below them, so that they formed a bifurcating human chain disappearing into the depths, each wearing the same purple leotard.
It was all a single creature, a literal human pyramid.
She watched in horrid fascination as the pyramid creature began pulling each of its individual bodies up into the various swings, rings, and other dangling things from the ceiling, hearing them creak as they took the sudden weight. It crawled slowly upwards as more and more of itself grabbed onto ropes and hauled it ever further upwards. And on its singular head, its rakish grin had transformed into an ugly sneer that she was sure she never saw on the original acrobat.
This close she could smell it. It stank with the sharp tang of fresh sweat, mixed with body odour, like the inside of a gym.
It started reaching out towards her, and Rita did not stick around to find out whether it was friendly. One of the bodies just barely managed to reach out and grab the swing she was clinging to and started to drag it closer towards the centre of its mass when she screamed and kicked off of it. She swung by the strand of web still stuck to the canvas above until she came within reach of another piece of hanging rope further away from the horrible crawling human pyramid and switched to it, abandoning her web before it could swing her back within the thing’s reach.
“Alice?! What the fuck is this thing?!” she shouted as she kept going, moving from rope to swing to random wooden platform dangling from several ropes, working her way steadily upwards and just generally away from the monster. There were far more ropes and things hanging from the ceiling as she moved out from under the patch of open roof, so many that she could reach from one to the next without even needing to swing. It created a weird, three-dimensional terrain.
“How am I supposed to know?!” Alice shouted back from somewhere below. “Just stay away from it!”
Rita looked back to see that the human pyramid had fully pulled itself up into the network of ropes and swings. The peripheral bodies at the bottom of the chain seemed to be able to move faster than the central ones closer to the top of the chain, having less connections holding them back, but they were limited to how far from the central bodies they could go. It made it move in rippling waves of motion, like some kind of huge, twisted slug as it crawled towards her, ropes creaking under its weight.
Even though none of the bodies held any weapons, she realized they did not need any. All it had to do was tear her away from her handholds and let her drop to the ground. She would crunch on impact exactly like the acrobat had.
Rita shuddered and pushed on, trying to move even faster from object to object. She discovered that having eight legs helped. Her two toes on each foot could grip the rope like a set of pincers, and she could hoist herself upwards easily in a way that she would have been hard pressed to match had she still been human. A glance backwards revealed that she could indeed navigate the various ropes and things faster than the human pyramid could. Its connected nature counted against it when it came to speed.
She breathed a sigh of relief. If it had been a hundred separate people chasing her, they would have been able to split up and spread out, cornering her. Connected like it was, it was simply too slow to catch her. If the tent were big enough, which it appeared be, she could run away from the thing forever. Until she got tired. Or slipped. Okay, so maybe not forever, but long enough that she was not in any immediate danger. That realization did a lot to help her calm down.
If she had come in by the door as had clearly been the original intention of whatever insane mind had thought this up, things might have looked a lot different. On the ground, it might have been able to run as fast as she could and with only two dimensions of movement, it could have cornered her or Alice far more easily.
Then the mass of human bodies stopped. For a few moments they just hung still, clinging to whatever they had been holding. Then the whole thing changed direction, heading back downwards.
Oh shit, it was headed straight for Alice!
“Alice! It’s coming your way!” Rita shouted, hoping that Alice could still hear her.
“Fuck! I can’t reach any of the ropes!” Alice shouted back. She was stuck on one of the tent poles and none of the ropes hung close enough to them.
“Shit! I’m coming!” Rita immediately reversed direction and headed back down as well, towards the vague, distant outline of the tent pole. It meant moving closer to the slow-moving slug of attached acrobats, but she already knew she was faster than it was. If she could slip around it and reach Alice first, she could swing a rope within reach or…
She was about two body lengths away from the creature when it reacted. One of its bottom-most bodies, judging from it having actual feet, was temporarily held aloft and propelled forward by its neighbour above it in the chain. It was flung towards her in a sudden burst that caught Rita completely off-guard. She jerked in fright and gave a scream as a hand suddenly clamped around her leg.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Immediately, the entire lumbering behemoth changed direction and began crawling towards her while its attached body held her in place. Trying to pull away, even with seven legs and both arms, had no effect. Its grip was like a steel vice.
“Let go! Let go of me!” she screamed, trying to pull away.
Purple clad acrobat bodies began moving to surround her, swinging from rope to rope as they moved slowly in.
“Rita?” Alice shouted from the darkness, concern in her voice.
In a panic, Rita began kicking at it with her feet, trying to get it to release her. If it had had a head, she would have aimed for its eyes. Instead, her toes scored cuts and slashes in its purple leotard and across the skin of its arm and chest, all without much effect.
Rita grew desperate. The other bodies were closing in and soon they would be upon her. Reaching back into her backpack, she pulled out the kitchen knife that she had used to stab the Droopy in the house with Bob. Despite knowing intellectually that the creatures in the Nightmare were monsters, the idea of stabbing them with a knife still did not sit well with her. It felt just a little bit too much like murder and she was still coming to terms with killing living things.
There really was no time for her to have an ethical dilemma, however. She plunged the knife into the chest of the body holding onto her leg without hesitation. Not having heads really made it a lot easier to not see them as people.
That finally got the body to release her leg, seemingly in shock at the sudden knife handle sticking out of its chest. Rita immediately put three of her feet on its chest, gripped the handle firmly and yanked it back out, a geyser of blood gushing out of the wound and splashing over her legs. She must have hit an important artery.
She wasted no time in scampering away from the approaching slug-like mass of fused acrobats, only stopping to look back when she was safely out of reach of even another sudden body fling.
She quickly found the body that she had stabbed. It hung limply from one of the legs of the one above. Even as she watched it seemed to shrivel before detaching from the body above and dropping into the darkness below. Where it had been attached was now just a small round, pale blob of flesh at the end of the leg.
So, while the bodies all acted in unison, they could be killed individually! And each one they killed was discarded into the darkness below.
With Rita out of reach again, the creature turned back towards Alice once more, apparently deciding she was too much of a hassle to catch.
Rita wiped the sweat from her brow with her sleeve. Damn! Moving around like this was bloody exhausting work! Even with eight legs to spread her weight between, she was still basically having to hang by her toes the entire time. Her legs were starting to ache, and her fingers were getting chafed raw by the coarse ropes. And still, she could not take a rest. The pyramid thing, on the other hand, did not appear to be getting exhausted at all. It still moved with the exact same methodical slowness that it had up to this point.
Sighing, Rita headed back in again as well, moving from rope to rope. This time, she took a wide detour, making sure she kept out of leaping distance from the blob.
“Alice! Alice, can you hear me?” she shouted into the gloom as she went. Her eyes had gotten used to the dark, but she could make out little more than silhouettes at that distance.
“Rita, are you okay? It looked as if it grabbed you!” Alice shouted back. She sounded a bit higher up than she had been before, and Rita could just barely see her perched on a wooden platform around the tent pole at a roughly similar height to herself and the creature.
“Yeah, I’m fine. Had to stab one of them but I got out. On a related note, the bodies can be killed individually.”
“Really? Anyway, I’m working on something. Can you keep it busy for a little bit longer?” she asked.
Rita groaned. “Alright, if I have to…”
Meanwhile, the blob of bodies had kept moving towards Alice in its slow, crawling motion, completely ignoring Rita. She realized she would have to get its attention first.
Moving closer until she was at the same distance she had been before when it had jumped at her, she readied her knife. If it leapt at her again, she was just going to stab it again, maybe kill a second body.
But she had no such luck. The creature stubbornly continued to ignore her as it lurched to the tentpole where Alice was doing whatever it was that she was busy with. Rita could just barely make out the head of the acrobat somewhere in the centre of its bodies, at the tip of the pyramid. He had a scowl on his face and was staring intently at Alice’s silhouette.
Shouting taunts at him had no effect. Neither did darting closer to get his attention. He remained firmly fixated on Alice. Eventually, frustrated, Rita did the only thing left she could think of to get his attention. She attacked.
Darting in again as she had done before, she suddenly leapt onto another rope, using her momentum to swing her within range of one of the bodies at the edge. She had been watching its movement for a while and stuck a part of it that was extended and not ‘coiled’ and ready to surge forth. In that way, when she slashed at its hand holding onto the rope, leaving a shallow cut, it was unable to follow her as she swung back out of reach.
His head whipped around angrily, making a very inhuman hissing sound as the whole pyramid realigned itself again to go after Rita.
Again, Rita just stayed out ahead of it until it lost interest and turned back to Alice again. This time it kept its body more bunched up and more able to suddenly dart in any direction if she were to get close.
Rita scrunched up her face as she circled the thing that was now moving even more slowly, like a crab that had pulled itself into its shell. She was unsure how to make a move on it. Getting close now would be dangerous if it surged towards her again, and with more ‘branches’ ready to be propelled in her direction, it would be able to follow up faster if it got a hold of her.
She was just puzzling out what to do next when one of the ropes that several of its bodies were holding onto suddenly went slack, causing the entire centre of the thing to sag and all of its bodies to just cling to whatever ropes were nearby for dear life.
For a moment, Rita had no idea what had happened. Then she realized, someone had cut one of the ropes that this thing had been hanging from!
Rita glanced up and sure enough, something glinted in the dim light from up above. Alice had found a balancing pole somewhere and had webbed a knife to its end. Following the long, drooping wooden beam back to its source, she found Alice perched up near the ceiling above her. She was holding onto ropes with six of her legs and one arm, while with the rest of her limbs she directed the unwieldy pole like a polearm, sawing at the ropes that the creature was clinging to.
“Hey! Where did you get that?” Rita exclaimed as she climbed up to where Alice was.
Even as Rita watched, another rope snapped, and the pyramid of bodies lurched again. This time it seemed to realize the danger and began moving, trying to get away from Alice and into an area with more handholds.
“Found the pole attached to one of the platforms. Figured this guy died from hitting the ground once, maybe this time it will stick,” Alice grinned as Rita approached. She repositioned slightly, and with a bit of work sawed off another rope, making the creature lurch again and forcing it to find an alternative route as one of the important ropes to hold up its bulk was suddenly no longer there.
“And the knife?” Rita asked.
“Its our knife. The one you stabbed the Droopy with,” Alice explained. “Somehow it ended up with me.”
“No, it isn’t,” Rita replied, holding out her own knife, covered in red blood. “This is the one I stabbed the Droopy with.”
Alice glanced down at the knife in Rita’s hand, then looked out at the identical knife at the end of her pole.
“Huh. Interesting,” she said.