Natalie finished helping her dad wipe away the final “NO DUST NOEL” from the walls of the rental place.
It was always hard, to look at her father. Especially after moments like these, where it’s clear that he’s on the verge of a breakdown—yet still has that cocksure expression craved onto his face. Hands on his hips—posture radiating triumph—when something even worse was bound to come afterward.
“There! All done!”
Natalie looked at her dad, what she felt written clearly on her face. The few times that she was allowed to be honest with someone.
And without any words—her father changed his posture to face Natalie. It was never… Hard for Natalie to read people, but rather it was hard to gauge where exactly the emotions came from, what that meant, how will it factor into the conversation—and most importantly, what she had to do after.
“Things are rough by default, Natty… Th-things are gonna be rough for a while, with your mother gone and all. But don’t ever let it get an inch or iota of you. That’s when you lose, really. You gotta be a rock in this world—hardened, immovable, because they don’t know what to do with that.”
And with a smile and raised finger that he used to conduct his point, it still painted such a desperate picture of the man. “And no one. No one. Can ever hurt you.”
And the flashback ended with Natalie being painfully dragged out of the moving wall of regret.
Slammed onto her back, arched with pain, Natalie had to flip to her side to stop it from hurting too much.
But one couldn’t really escape from the pain of wriggling parasites deep inside of the body.
Natalie didn’t want to dwell on how exactly they were locking up her entire body, where she had to fight for control—like forcing whatever festered within her back down her throat, but never the less, forced her gaze directly at the bastard that was doing this to her.
Within her eye, a facsimile of the Fly Subsumed was staring back.
She wanted desperately to shout at it, to undermine the victory it had over her. Maybe to get something from it—dislodge information she doesn’t have, get it to slip up now versus later, anything.
But it was like dad said. She had to be a rock.
And without any control over her own body, she was forced back into the wall of shame once more. As if she was being waterboarded.
Reliving the first day with the visible bald spot from the gum, with the people responsible laughing so hard, they pointed it out to the rest of the class.
Her head was reared back, then violently dunked back in.
Being brought back to that painful stab into the soul, when what should’ve been a bi-weekly bonding day with her mom became the only one of its kind.
The pain of being irreversibly separated constantly seeped into every conversation, every single word. Ending with a very silent trip to the local ice cream parlor. Mutually and desperately trying to stuff their faces so that there’s no need to say anything. Trying desperately gain something sweet to wash away the bitterness.
Natalie was fished out and thrown away, far back. Despite her face being coated with tears, she couldn’t help but snicker.
She knew that she was winning.
With a quick wipe of the eye, she glanced back to the Fly Subsumed.
“Can’t really fuck up a person that constantly thinks about how much they fuck up~”
And just like how a person throwing out an insult, a slur, or anything demeaning the other guy in an argument, Natalie knew that she won the moment the Subsumed began to eat her alive.
***
“Y’know. I kinda wondered what was going to happen with this…”
Natalie was freely talking from her side of the face, of the body they somehow shared. The Fly’s head was on the other side, burst from the human face and skull, wide open. And yet it was the one trembling.
“You said it yourself. We’re basically the same. Opportunistic, desperate scumbags… And for all that work you did, trying to get me so low—you didn’t realize.”
Natalie used the body’s hand to grab hold of the eye of the monster and squeezed.
If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
“In all that effort to bring me down… You didn’t realize that you’re lower than me, idiot.”
She balled the Fly’s eye up like a crumpled piece of paper.
“In all of your cheap wisdom, you didn’t realize that I would do anything and everything to win… You really didn’t catch on, did you?”
She plunged her fist into the beast’s head, using the crushed eye as an entry point.
“I dwelled on those moments, you fucking fool. Chose them. I didn’t know if it would work or not, but it did—I created a smokescreen of memories for you to think that THESE are the ones that keep me up at night. And sure—yeah—they were pretty bad. But your mistake was not looking deep enough.”
Natalie smiled. Empty, uncanny. But never the less proud of herself.
“Ah well! I’ll dig deep into you—to see if you truly got a brain in that dome piece of yours~”
And she made good on that promise.
Through the piercing of exoskeleton and the slurry that gushed from it, Natalie actually did go back. Intrusively taken back due to the trauma, the one that inflicted such.
It wasn't the days where she enacted her revenge. It wasn't when she realized that she was stalking people, hurting them--and felt utter delight from it.
It was during the transition. Where she came home, clearly merging with such a hideous creature that she was now gutting into sludge. She was clearly hiding her manibles, the sharp hairs on her arms. Merely winter suits and scarfs.
Yet whenever her own father came to check on her, looked at her...
Nothing.
Things were just the same, for people.
And as Natalie looked into the mirror that night... She realized, then and there, that such a face suited her after all. There was no use in fighting any of it.
It was less of a reclamation of her soul... But an acceptance, of what she truly was.
***
It was amazing how Natalie sensed that the Better People were not only made their way toward them, but felt them lying in wait.
The perks of having multiple eyes and thousands of environment-sensitive hairs covering her—she figured.
She turned her new head towards her similarly evolved friends. Moved it in an accelerated, twitchy fashion to signal what she learned.
It was hard still, but each of the monster girls reached up toward their respective heads, and with all of their might, tore off the guises that they became. Writhing, twitching as they ripped meat from bone—but having to remind their already altered minds that it isn’t the case. Thankfully, they all were freed from the monster flesh as it faded into shadows at their bare feet.
“Hopefully your reused sock puppets don’t have libidos—otherwise we’d be blushing right now…” Natalie quipped, summoning her cloak as she faced the approaching crowd.
Scarecrow boy walked towards the monster girl trio, rubbing his gloved hands. Didn’t really help Natalie’s case, by doing that—
“I’m just happy that you’ve managed to do it…” Richard sounded dumbfounded. Or at the very least, disheartened at the fact that they didn’t get to shoot at them.
Regardless, Natalie looked to Calypso. She was practically the elder god of figuring people out—so stiff in her movements, tried to keep her head held so high despite the visible hunch in her posture. And of course, the nigh unreadable face when she knows how to use it.
“See? Little to no bloodshed. Only ours, if anything,” Calypso joked. But didn’t have a lilt or change in tone to carry the joke across.
“True. But I’m sure that this clearing wasn’t here before, when we got here…” Richard looked about with his sagging mask flopping side to side, following his gaze.
It was a tad incriminating, seeing the various trees that were broken down and uprooted around them.
“But I must say… I was right to trust you all. And now we have a great weapon in our arsenal against Morgan. I commend you all~”
“Commend you too, dude~” Gale chirped happily—with little-to-no irony behind that statement.
Natalie had to move to her, patting her on the shadow-covered shoulder. Gale was a precious bean, and had to be protected by the terrors of this world as long as they could.
“How are things shaping up on your end, if I may be so bold?” Calypso asked Richard, her arms disappearing into her cloak. She looked as if she was truly Death—it was pretty rad.
Richard sighed softly, clasping his hands tightly. “While the celebration itself has more than enough redundancies… The actual solution still needs time. By our estimation, it will literally be ready on the hour of when it all happens. Which isn’t the best—”
“Man…” Gale responded—if anything, embodied what Natalie and Calypso were feeling at that moment. Gale then walked up to Richard a tad and with a lowered, sympathetic tone, “I know, like… You’re all secrets and planning and plans within plans… But since we told you guys what we were doing—can we know what the ‘solution’ is…? You don’t have to, but—”
Richard raised his gloved hand, before lowering it. “Of course, of course. No need to worry about pressing anything, Gale. It’s rather simple, if anything…”
Another reason to keep Gale around—she legitimately cares about people and in turn, people feel like caring about her. It was practically more witchcraft than the actual witchcraft they practiced.
“Sealing her away. The sealing practice itself is rather… Akin to say, government authorization, it requires the perfect line of materials and components for it to truly work. Otherwise, Cassie would just simply have a little vacation all but in name, only to return and kill us all. And we are aware of… Melissa Harker’s role in all of this. Sealing her too would just complicate things, both for you all with your sentiments and simply put, sealing being finicky as is. That’s why…”
Richard gestured towards one of the nameless, faceless grunts.
“We’re creating a body for her to be forever sealed in. The DNA we’ve collected and had… Well, seems to be not enough for us. We need at least a limb or more to recreate a body. It’s why the hospital incident was too unfruitful for us, after all.”
“…Funny that you brought that up~”
Natalie felt all the stares on her, sans her friends. In actuality, Natalie glanced at a smiling Gale, and a Calypso gave a mischievous grin back at Natalie.
“While our collective pants are on the other side—we’re awaiting a text from our associate about if Part 2 of our little plan worked~”
“Part 2…?”
Natalie just grinned. “Never could find that bunker of Morgan’s right…? Y’know, that was somehow connected to the hospital's basement in that flipside-hell version…? Well, we’ve been there before—and it took us a while, but we might have a lead about where it is in the normal world… Who knows what could be lurking down in that thing…~?”
Richard’s stance stiffened in contemplation… And was loosened in barely contained joy.
“What fun!”