WHAT DO YOU KNOW…?

DO YOU TRULY KNOW ANYTHING…?

As Calypso stared dumbfoundedly, this voice echoing throughout her head, she honestly reviewed everything that she knew at that point. Even things pre-monster.

“W-WHAT WAS THAT, CAL--?!” Gale screamed from behind. “AND WHAT WAS ALSO THAT?!”

Melissa abruptly appeared before her, sucking the needed air that Calypso required to answer.

“Yeah, no idea what’s going on with that but hey—works out for meeee~!” Melissa chirped disturbingly.

Calypso was forced into a vice grip. Melissa clambered onto the skeletal monster girl’s body with glee, and wrapped her furry arms around the midsection. Too fast for Calypso to maneuver her arms, as they were forced to her sides. Hearing firsthand that her spiked armor pop and snap as they meant nothing at all.

“Aaaah… So warm…” Melissa squeezed harder soon after, cooing with a delirious smirk. “We all know what that meeeeeans~”

Gale was immediately behind the girl, using all of her monstrous strength to attempt to pry Melissa off.

Again, precious little.

Melissa started to giggle again, staring directly at Calypso. A deep stare that was an uneasy mash of attraction and admiration of a really tasty meal.

Calypso herself took in her face, how pained yet exhilarated she was. Brows furrowed in confusion, but a rictus smile stretched the face into sadism.

It was looking directly into a mirror. That was the scariest aspect of this encounter.

“Please, Melissa…!” Gale strained the words, trying desperately to stop this, to talk sense, anything that averts this. “This… Isn’t you…!”

Melissa took a series of exhausted pants, wearing a tormented leering expression as she angled her chin upwards. “I don’t know you, didn’t know you until today—and w-while yeah you saved me, I don’t have to feel so bad in drinking you like a juice box! It’s all cool! You’re still saving me!”

The dark, tainted veins that crested crescent patterns across the cheeks and at the sides of her chin flared. It was the first time Calypso noticed such details, this is the closest she’s gotten to this woman.

As Melissa opened her drooling maw, those veins turned turgid, physically rising from surface-level skin, pumping manically. And as a result, the monstrous canine fangs the Vampire sported were pushed out of the rows of fangs, connected by writhing veins that were gasping for substance.

Melissa laughed like mad, as her jaw unhinged further. Steam poured from the rampant salvia as it ran down onto the stage, her raspberry tongue flickered about.

Calypso was frozen in place. It was too similar. Similar to the woman—the thing, that quickly made her realize that she meant nothing to the worlds at large.

And like Cassie before her, Melissa plunged all four of her fangs deep into her. All into the neck, for good measure.

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Sudden, guttural breaths didn’t matter. Screaming out in pain and trauma didn’t work either. It felt just as draining, just as alien… Invasive. The experience of your innards being craved with a hot syringe, as the veins dig further into you as if you were the corpse maggots dined on. Feeling such a yanking pull of the muscles they’ve invaded, yet the push being just as present and painful. Making themselves home, when you were still living in it.

But then came the newer sensations, and truly, Calypso began to panic… But lacked the strength to do so.

She felt her hammering heart slow to a crawl, almost confused that the blood it circulated just vanished into thin air. She felt her skin began to shrink in size, due to her muscles atrophy in real-time. Her very mind, constantly praised for being so sharp, fuzzed into wooziness. Everything running dangerously cold.

Calypso had broken her fingers, despite never even spraining anything before then. Has mutilated herself willingly on multiple occasions now. She was trapped under molten blood—it was for all purposes magma, and would’ve been dead. This?

The girl that constantly called herself the living dead, a zombie without purpose, a pretty corpse to pose—she wanted to go back in time, shake her stupid past self into being sensible. She was being mummified without mercy, and she lacked the autonomy to even weep.

What Melissa, and by extension, her den mother, was doing to her was the most horrible experience she had so far.

And one couldn’t tell by the look on Melissa’s face. Totally relaxed to the point of her dark eyes rolled back and her tongue lulled out. Which was by necessity, but it was clearly presented otherwise.

So when the reset occurred once more, Calypso was so out of it, so plunged into her traumatic stress, she didn’t notice.

Clutching at her neck, being able to shudder out panicked breaths, falling onto her knees as she closed her eyes. The voice that didn’t have a sound once again asked:

WHAT DO YOU KNOW…?

DO YOU TRULY KNOW ANYTHING…?

At this point, Calypso’s mind was filled to the brim with accusations, questions… Doubt that she ever made progress in the first place.

But the self-effacing was cut short, by a very brisk chill that the girl felt.

Because she was that. A girl—a human, once more, once again.

As she hugged herself and looked at her available hand, however… It was clear that her constant transformations were taking their toll.

Her sharp nails merged with her now bony-brittle fingers. No beginning or end to which was which. Her arms were angled at such a point, that they were accommodation for her elbow scythes. She felt her brown hair hitting her shoulder blades as it swayed in the cold winds. Her fangs poked themselves out of her pouty lips.

Calypso looked around. The spotlight was only on her, the void being the only captive audience.

On all sides, shadow puppet creations played out her life. Her strained relationship with her mother, the death of her father. Her maiming of her bully, and the immediate regret of ever thinking of such a thing. Her kinship with Alice, and the many fights to keep that spark kindled.

All of it, circling itself around her in a shadow theatre feature. Over and over, the animatronics somehow blurring together, and the events they represented into Calypso herself. In shadow form, just a silhouette this thing… And yet perfectly conveyed the many sleepless nights alone. Staring forward.

With a huff, Calypso turned away, with a determined look etched on her face. Not only that, proceeded to just walk past the entire display on her lonesome. Without a look backward or second thought.

Even she was tired of knowing how much she sucked.

Of course, the efforts followed her as she walked away. The crazed clanking sounds and the shapes that the puppets forced themselves into existed in Calypso’s peripheral vision. Her first transformation, her maiming of the Baker boy. And thusly, her entire encounter with Cassie.

Calypso continued to move forward. With a trembling hand clutched at her neck, before softening that hand as it rubbed her neck, all as she kept her expression. Tellingly exhausted, but never been more sure.

And to her surprise, the animatronics stopped. Calypso looked back, then around, with her widened eyes. Nothing but the stage now.

Only to stop in place, with her breath caught in her throat. She saw something as she craned her head about.

Shadows of what she assumed to be Gale’s “show”.

Outreached hand, and with a brisk step, Calypso was ready to pull her friend out.

But she heard very, very familiar buzzing.

She turned around to the sound, and saw the Bug girl’s show in process.

Calypso looked back at Gale’s show, a mournful bite of the lip as she bled as a result.

She sighed. Even Gale would’ve wanted her to do it.

So Calypso marched towards the Bug’s life.