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Kari counted all seven of them fused together in the mound: French man, Italian woman, Scottish man, Faust, American woman, Irish man, the patriarch Jure. Jure’s monobrow looked as fuzzy as it had the night Kari murdered him, and Kari slid a finger over the cool edge of the Djinn, hungry for another taste of revenge.
The group gathered around the stairs, transfixed by the beast. Haralda pulled the tight sleeve of her cardigan over her newly generated arm.
“What was it like in there?” asked Connie.
Haralda shook her head. “No place for the living. I suppose it could be quite comforting for the dead, like a good night's sleep. But there is nothing for us there.”
The now topless Tarquin said, “But these… whatever, they are, the people on the phone… they didn’t want to stay in there, did they? We’ve let them out.”
The seven naked forms leered at them, stretching their newly formed arms, rolling their necks in place, but didn’t — or couldn’t — speak.
“What do you want, Sean?” shouted Saheel. “Why are you here? Did you bring us here? Tell me what in heaven’s name is going on!”
Then everybody’s phone rang, and Kari stepped forward, brandishing the Djinn to cover them while they answered — really, none of them even considered it might be cover for a surprise attack. They held the phones to their ears, expressions darkening.
“KARI,” wailed Kari’s victims from each device, and as they spoke, a light in the centre of the mound pulsed on and off.
Kari licked their lips.
“YOU LET US THROUGH, KARI, AND YOU WILL SUFFER FOR THE SECOND CHANCE YOU HAVE GIVEN US.”
Kari sniggered. Never in the week leading up to their execution did they think they’d get to experience something so delicious. The estate had been powerless against the Djinn before, and this time would be no different.
“WE’LL HAVE YOUR SOUL, KARI. WE’LL LEAVE YOU HERE AND WE’LL WALK AGAIN UPON THE EARTH.”
“Fucking hell,” said Connie, shaking. “We get rid of this thing and we get rid of it NOW.”
“Quite right,” said Tarquin, stiff as a board.
“I don’t know…” mumbled Faust.
“No good can come from it,” declared Haralda, and she shepherded the group further away, tugging Kari by their collar. “It must be destroyed at once.”
“Teleport it out of the tower,” said Eirlys, snapping her phone shut. “Falling endlessly through the clouds should be a pleasant enough afterlife for them.”
“For the love of all that is holy, could you please stop and THINK?” said Saheel. “Are you sure voting it away is going to work? This thing… somehow, it feeds on us when we vote! How is it safe to do something like this?”
Connie turned on him, made like she was going to shove him, then darted away before saying, “So we walk away and have some coffee, or something, and then what do we do when we find ourselves needing to vote about something else? The longer we put it off, the stronger it’ll get. If we vote now we can nip this whole thing in the bud, man!”
“And if it goes wrong, sister?” asked Saheel. “If we make it stronger?”
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“Surely it can’t be against the rules to put distance between us and it,” said Eirlys, studying her post-it note. “It doesn’t have anything to do with the word count, and it’s not trying to cheat death.”
“Are you sure?” Saheel was hyperventilating, barely able to get the words out through panicked breaths. “Are you SURE?”
“There’s four of us who wish to pass the motion,” said Haralda. “Majority rule.”
BORING, said Kari, stretching. YAWN. BUT I CAN’T STOP YOU.
“That’s me in there…” mumbled Faust, catatonic. “It’s really me…”
“You’re making a mistake,” said Saheel.
“Trust me, Saheel,” said Eirlys, clasping both of his hands. “I’ll word it very specifically. All those in favour of teleporting that mound of people fifty meters east?”
Kari’s thumb came ablaze with particles, which immediately rushed towards the bone pile. Arms which had once been thin and sinewy engorged and rippled with muscle, and the humanoid torsos slithered into the air, supported by a rapidly growing scaffolding of flesh. The seven beings smiled, held out their own thumbs, and tilted them down.
4👍 3👎 – MAJORITY REACHED; INVALID PERMISSION
“Oh shit,” said Connie. “Oh FUCK.”
And the beast charged. Every one of the wretched souls seemed to know their target – Patriarch Jure shot towards Kari, propelled by the mess spooling out of the mound at such a speed that it took the child by surprise. Out of sheer reflex, Kari held out their left arm to defend themselves from a rain of blows so that they could find an opening for the knife, but Jure wasn’t interested in punching. The monstrosity latched onto Kari’s wrist with large, clammy hands, and…
Into Kari’s mind came the smell of roses that used to waft in from the estate gardens, one of the sole sensory experiences that they enjoyed, for it reminded them of their home country. The smell stayed, briefly, before the memory shattered. In an instant, the smell was forgotten, replaced by longing.
Then came the distant, blurred, but ever-treasured memory of their mother’s face amongst the fallen leaves of autumn…
STAND TALL, whispered the Djinn. FIGHT BACK.
And Kari wrenched away, wrist stinging, mouth screaming, trying to run, feeling the awful presence of Jure hot on their tail. The child turned, and stabbed, and their aim was true, headed straight for his face — but at the last moment Jure’s body peeled like an orange into three and became the Estate Siblings, burly, bare chested and armed with red-hot pokers. They swung their weapons down on Kari, faces silent with laughter.
Kari heard the flesh singe, heard themselves cry out, smelled the unforgettable scent of burnt flesh (Jure would never have taken that memory away), but felt no pain. Kari stumbled to the floor.
STAND, urged the Djinn. YOU ARE STRONG.
Kari felt no strength. They looked meekly to the others, who were routed; Haralda twisting and struggling against the Frenchman, Saheel ineffectually raining blows upon the Irishman, who gripped him like a vice. Energy poured from the team’s skulls into the beast, memory upon memory upon memory.
It’s game over, thought Kari, as the three siblings towered above, reaching out their hands to absorb their soul. They’d pushed Kari to the limit in one life already, filling the days with endless torment, making them jump at the mere sight of a flame, forcing them to lie in agony most nights, when the burns just hurt too much. Eduard gripped Kari’s wrist and plucked out the taste of licorice. Gerson took the singsong of a hummingbird. Joe rifled through further, and lingered greedily on the image of a certain knife.
THEY PUSHED YOU PAST YOUR LIMIT, whispered the Djinn, AND YOU FOUND ME.
No, Kari thought, I thought I became you.
IS THERE A DIFFERENCE? asked the Djinn. WE DESTROYED THEM. ATTAINED VENGEANCE.
No, I didn’t get my revenge. Everything I did… every throat of theirs I slit… I did it as the Djinn. I laid the blame at your feet. Gave you the credit.
YOU ARE ME. I AM YOU. ARE WE NOT ONE?
No! Becoming you just made it easier. It meant I didn’t have to carry the weight of their deaths on my shoulders. But now I’m ready to face it. I see why I’m here now. This time, when I kill them, when I get my vengeance – it’s not from the Djinn, but from me. From Kari. Are you ready?
OF COURSE.
And so Kari came to terms with the murders. A bright light, of truth, of knowledge, of justice shone from the knife, and Kari lashed out with it, severing the siblings’ limbs. Kari slashed again, and again, like she was scything through a field of wheat, cutting apart the body that kept changing from scullery maid to guard to patriarch, and Kari worked all the way down to the base of the mound, where she sliced off the last of outgrowth number nine, and could gaze into the swirling mass of souls that lay beneath it.
Kari said, “I am Kari, nine of nine.”
She held the shining Djinn high, ready to plunge it down, to finally claim revenge — but the other outgrowths noticed, and swarmed towards her, forcing her to leap back.
As before, she slashed — but her knife clanked uselessly against the arm of the Irishman. She couldn’t make so much as a dent in the others, and the beast used this to its advantage, clumping their bodies around the wound to protect it.
Sickeningly, the hole she’d cut away scabbed over, and began to repair itself. The battle was far from won.