Frank carried the fish tank full of Curr back down to the basement, and over to the cellar. He walked into the dark, dingy room, the room that at the far corner had a pit that was so deep it almost reminded Frank of that Pit of Despair place he'd read so much about in the encyclopedia.
Well, well, well. Frankie Frank, here to see me at last. How funny, chuckled the mind-voice sinisterly. Have any tasty vittles for me? Fried octopus, perhaps?
"I'd never toss a defenseless cephalopod your way," Frank said with vitrol in his voice. "However, I'm interested to see what you really think about Curr, voice."
He raised the aquarium over his bony skull, prepared to toss it into the depths, when a terrible roar shook the ground below. It sent Frank tumbling to his knees as the basement shook. He heard glass break in the distance.
Fool! thought-spoke the voice, only this time it sounded like thousands of voices at once. Before Frank could so much as move a muscle, a string of black goop shot out from the pit and wrapped around his left femur. It gripped him tightly, like thousands of tiny snakes, and then it grew and pulsated over his whole boney leg. You have made a grave mistake, Franklin.
Frank tried to scream, but no sound came out. All he could do was writhe in pain and gag as the strange entity wrapped its way around his bones. Another string of goop shot up and out from the pit, this time wrapping around his neck. Frank was surprised to notice that, despite his status as an undead skeleton, this maneuver was successfully choking him. He hadn't even realized a need to breath in his afterlife, and here we waas feeling as if he was gasping. It was almost like he was also being submerged in water and drowned, he noted. His vision got blurry and shaky, and for the first time in five centuries Frank felt himself losing his grip on consciousness.
All the while, the wretched voice laughed and laughed. It was getting louder and louder in Frank's head, so loud now that it was drowning out his own thoughts, so that it seemed almost as if the voice's thoughts were Frank's as well. String after string of goopy blackness fired up and out at him, globbing on every inch of his bones, and finally latching onto his face. The last thing Frank could do was watch as two big, black globules of goo writhed into his eye sockets. And with that, Frank lost his hold on reality.
"Thank the gods! Finally, a semi-corporeal form weak enough for me to inhabit as my own," said Frank with a laugh. His voice was different - it was deeper yet airier, and it sounded almost like three voices. It didn't have the charming little accent that Frank had when he was conscious. The voice was thrilled with this development. Sure, it would take a lot of the voice's energy just to suppress Frank's consciousness, but there was still enough left for the voice inhabiting Frank to be a formidable opponent to, say, a normal tauman with a normal system.
Frank walked stiffly over to the study and lit his pipe, puffing it lightly. "Now, that is nice. I can't remember the last time I had a taste of tobacco. Stupid Gehaff always kept it for himself, the selfish bastard... No matter. I don't rely on Gehaff any more. Gods, for once I don't have to rely on anyone. " Frank puffed the pipe and walked over to a tea kettle. He figured he ought to treat himself to a cup or two before he inacted his plan for world domination. Of course, he did have to wait for the tea to boil, but Frank's little elemental-powered kettle heated to a boil quite quickly, and besides that the voice inhabiting Frank's body was well accustomed to waiting its turn for things such as this.
Soon enough, the kettle was bubbling magnificently, and Frank poured some steaming water into an ornate, little cup with a gilded handle. Frank impatiently dunked his teabag in the water over and over again - suddenly finding that having a body to inhabit made him feel as if every moment was precious and he didn't want to spend a single one wasted on waiting. Hell, he was done waiting for things - he'd taken posession of a body, and now he was going to take posession of some tea, and nobody could stop him! Frank sipped the steaming hot tea, and was immediately taken aback by the fact that, inexplicably, it seemed to have burned the roof of his mouth!
Now, this was of course a trick of the mind, and the voice inhabiting Frank's body knew this well. First of all, it wasn't even the voice's body that was truly experiencing the pain. Secondly, Frank's body didn't have a roof of the mouth, it was a skull, so what did he even have? An upper jaw? And where would the tea he was drinking be going, exactly? Frank looked down and noticed with a shock that the tea had not just spilled out from his ribcage as he'd expected - in fact it seemed that the tea had, essentially, disappeared! And why, pray tell, why did it seem that the roof of his mouth was in such pain?
Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.
And it was at this point that the voice inhabiting Frank noticed something peculiar. Now, it seemed that Frank's voice was in the voice's head.
Tally ho, old chap, you're not wrong at all. Tis I, your old pal Frank, here to grace your consciousness with a bit of a hum dinger of a good time while you have my consciousness suppressed. Mighty impressive power of yours, might I say, my lad. How does one acquire such abilities? I haven't read of anything like it. Is it a [skill] of yours? Don't worry, you don't need to answer, your mind is, essentially, my favorite spectator sport at the present moment - so proceed as you are and I'm sure I'll get my answer eventually. Regardless, if you're having a bit of trouble understanding how digestion works for us undead skeletons, why don't you just mozy on over to my collection of fine literary nonfiction pieces and find a book titled 'On the Physical Machinations of Undead Skeletons'? It's quite a fun read, if I do say so myself, good chap. Plus, it'll answer all your questions lickedy-split.
The voice was, already, tired of Frank's shit. She was not here - yes, regardless of how others may have interpreteed her intimidating voice, the voice itself was a she - she was not here to listen to Frank drone on and on with inane pleasantries or asking her questions about her evil powers. Weren't her abilities as a formerly disembodied voice intimidating? She figured they ought to be, and moreso that they ought to be especially intimidating to the fellow whose body she'd essentially possessed at the flick of a whim. Then again, maybe Frank was just a nervous talker, and so he was trying to thought-speak her to death. Well, the voice wouldn't succumb to such a lesser, such an inferior being. However, she did feel that reading the book Frank had referenced might serve some utility, so she searched through the study almost aimlessly, struggling but not faltering in her efforts to locate the book.
Eventually, Frank's voice took pity on her, and insisted that he help by explaining where the book was in the study. Begrudgingly, the previously disembodied voice accepted this assistance, and sooner rather than later she cracked open the book and sklimmed through it.
There were a number of extraneous details that the voice gleaned regarding undead skeletons from skimming the book. The most important and relevant thing she learned was that the concept of phantom limbs existed for undead skeletons to a larger degree. It was often referred to as experiencing phantom anatomical systems and usually mapped one to one to bodily processes that were commonplace for living tauman beings. Only, the really crazy thing about phantom anatomical systems was that, conversely to phantom limbs in the experience of living taumans, phantom anatomical systems were not only something that around eighty percent of undead skeletons experienced, but indeed that the experience of them manifested their existence by way of spiritual association. That is to say, undead beings were by nature of existence tied to something that had once been living, and with that came ghostly impacts that could, more often than not, include some hint of bodily functions - such as a functioning digestive system, which was one of the most common of phantom anatomical systems in fact - that said undead skeleton had experienced when they were living.
And it was through this that the voice inhabiting Frank realized that she'd de facto inherited Frank's phantom anatomy. She didn't know how to feel about this.
It's an inconvenient truth more than anything, said Frank. I just thank the gods I was fortunate enough not to insubstantiate in this skeletal form with a phantom colon. Phantom colons, being part of phantom digestive systems, are indeed terribly common, but imagine if I would've been shut in this study with no loo! That would've been dreadful. Thankfully, I was not punished for five centuries due to my lack of knowledge of phantom anatomy.
The voice was so sick of Frank's voice in her head, but she'd assumed control of his body, and she did her best to focus on that and how happy that made her.
When the voice was satisfied, or at least sick of, learning about the physical experiences of undead skeletons walking among the living, she resolved to leave the basement and never return - and the voice was no quitter, so that's exactly what she did.
After climbing up the stairs, she stopped to see the octopus sitting there. She'd heard Frank's thoughts about the octopus, and how concerned for its safety he had been - and, the voice hated to admit this, but she too started to feel for the little creature. She couldn't help but think it cute, and possibly endangered. It was unlike any octopus she'd ever heard of in all her years as an evil voice living at the bottom of a pit in the basement of a restaurant.
The voice scooped up the octopus and set it on its shoulder. It seemed very pleased, as if it had just finished some grand meal, although the voice could not see anything in their vicinity that the octopus might have eaten.
Regardless, there was not a lot of time to look, because the door swung right open.
"Frank!" shouted Gehaffrey. Stupid, foolish Gehaffrey. "Frank, what in the hell are you doing? Get back in the basement before someone sees you!"