Horror’s head parted from Horror’s neck with a ripping, tearing, wrenching sound — louder than the storm and the wind and the rain, drowning out the creaking of the trees and the roar of the leaves and the drum of raindrops upon the collapsed ruins of the pavilion. Twil’s monstrous paw whirled outward, claws buried deep in Horror’s blonde hair, gripping her scalp with sharpened points, painting the air with an arc of her blood.
Horror’s final expression was wide-eyed with mute and mild surprise, lips parted in a little o-shape, cheeks flushed with faint and fiery blush. Her tangle of blonde hair hung upside down, loose tresses coming free from the bun at the rear of her head. Beads of blood trickled from the stump of her neck, running down her chin, breaking across her lips, flowing past her eyes, to finally be washed away by the steady beat of swirling rain.
The tableau held still for a second longer than necessary, as if some observer was etching this moment into memory, lingering upon the scene.
Was I producing that effect? Or was this Sevens’ influence, scurrying to catch up with our changes to her script? Or did we feel the attention of the Eye itself, turning toward a rupture in the dream?
Then Twil tossed Horror’s head to the right and dropped her decapitated corpse to the left. The body slumped onto the wet blanket of sodden wood chips. The head rolled to a stop amid the shattered red plastic of the pavilion roof.
Twil — our Twil once again, all werewolf and more than wild, her body wrapped in bristling grey-white fur over an under layer of reddish brown, upon a foundation of tight, toned, taut muscle, like steel cables wrapped around her bones, with her fingers and toes tipped by long black claws, her face an elongated snout filled with too many teeth, her eyes twin lamplights of deep glowing amber.
She threw her wolfish head to the stormy sky and howled at the top of her lungs.
“Awoooooooooo-ooooow!”
The howl shook the trees and shivered the leaves and made the raindrops quail in fear. That howl challenged the underbelly of the Eye itself for a single glorious moment, before Twil trailed off, the echoes of her lupine voice absorbed by the wall of thorn and twig.
Then, at my side, Raine threw back her head and joined in: “Awoooooooo!”
Raine’s howl was a mere imitation compared with Twil’s canine clarity, just a human throat playing along with the pack. But the howl set off Twil again. She raised her muzzle to the sky and let out another wolfish howl.
“Awooooooooooooo!”
“Awooo!”
“Awooooooo!”
“Awoo-oooow-oooow!”
Twil and Raine went back and forth half a dozen times, until I was wincing and Evelyn was jamming one of the damp towels over her ears.
Finally they both trailed off. Raine had a gigantic grin on her face, puffing for breath, shaking her head as if she’d just lost a race to one of the most beautiful women she’d ever met.
Twil lowered her head slowly, still facing away from us. She dropped into a squat-crouch, shoulders hunched, all four paws on the ground. The pose was more gorilla or chimpanzee than wolf, with the ape showing through beneath the hound, despite the thick and bushy tail curled at the base of her back. Her ribs heaved and shivered with each pumping breath, her silken coat of greyish-red fur wet with rain. The air steamed in front of her snout.
As if signalled by Horror’s defeat, the storm began to taper off. The wind slowed, dying away, lost between the trees. The raindrops shrank and settled, turning back into drizzly mist as the grey and damp day returned to normal. Raine and I were both soaked to the bone, clothes sodden with water, hair plastered to our heads; Evelyn had escaped the worst of it, protected by towels and her big dressing gown snuggled down in the seat of her wheelchair, but she was still horribly damp.
“Hey there, wolfie,” Raine purred at Twil’s back.
Twil turned and looked over her shoulder, toward the three of us.
Amber eyes narrowed to predatory slits. Ears perked up, tips held high. Wolfish snout closed, teeth tucked neatly behind her lips.
Raine slid forward, in front of me and Evelyn. She didn’t raise her machete, but the blade stood naked in her right fist.
“You’re on our side, right wolfie?” Raine said.
“She is!” I answered quickly, though my belly was clenching up and the tiny hairs on the back of my neck were standing on end. Twil stared at us with the poised and pregnant silence of a wolf on the hunt, her gaze steady and unwavering, sleek muscles held in absolute stillness. “Raine, she is, she’s on our side, please don’t do anything rash. Twil!” I called to her. “Twil it’s us! It’s Heather, and Raine, and Evee. You’re awake now, aren’t you? Twil? Twil, please say something.”
Twil answered by turning to face us. She rose from her crouch, front paws lifting off the ground, amber eyes flicking from one face to the next, cycling between me, then Raine, then Evee. She made no sound at all, neither a word nor a growl.
Adrenaline rushed into my head. Instinct told me to run. This was a predator, a carnivore, a memory from the distant animal past, baked into my cells themselves. Twil — the wolf — was not angry or aggressive. She was hunting. She would dismantle us like food if we let her close.
“Oh no,” I said, then hiccuped painfully. “Oh. Oh, um.”
Raine’s machete twitched in her fist; she wet her lips with a flicker of her tongue. “I can take her—”
“Raine, no!” I whined.
“—but she regenerates, right? We don’t have any silver to stop her for real. Steel won’t do the trick, am I right?”
“We won’t need silver or steel!” I yelled, my own shout chasing fear back down into my guts. I stepped forward, hobbling on my wounded left shin again, as if scrawny little Heather could possibly hold back a werewolf. “Twil! Twil, it’s us! It’s— hic, ow! It’s me, it’s Heather! I’m your friend and I love you. Twil? Twil!”
Twil locked her gaze on Raine and took a step forward.
Twil’s werewolf form was beautiful; I had rarely gotten any real opportunities to examine the shape of her transformation in full. She really was the stereotypical movie werewolf, a perfect cross between homo sapiens and canis lupus, though lacking the more ostentatious or gruesome features of Hollywood’s imagination. Sleekly furred, lightly muscled, arms and legs elongated, a little like the limbs of an ape. Her four paws were each tipped with long blackish claws, like those of a real wolf. Her transformation gifted her perhaps a couple of inches of additional height, but she was still comfortably short, only a tiny bit taller than me, still recognisably Twil-sized. Her face was stretched forward into a long elegant snout, filled with lots of big white teeth, punctuated by her own amber eyes, topped with a pair of twitching, mobile little ears. She moved with a rolling, loping, canine gait, stalking across the ruins of the pavilion, coming right for us.
Raine raised her machete and raised her voice: “Hey, hey! I don’t wanna fight you, friend!” Twil ignored her, padding closer. “I don’t wanna fight you, I mean it! We’re all friends, right? All buddies here? Didn’t I date you once? That’s what Heather says.” Raine took a step back. “Hey, Twil, you touch either Heather or Evee and I will have to fight you. Stop there, right there. Come on, girl. Don’t make me do this, don’t make me—”
Twil’s lips peeled back from her wolfish teeth. A slow growl rose in her throat, vibrating deep and low in her chest. My heart skipped a beat, and not for the fun reasons. Raine reached for my hand to drag me back and out of the way and—
“Down!”
Evelyn’s shout carried more force than her weak and withered body seemed capable of projecting. I flinched too. Raine twitched, almost as if she’d been about to obey the command.
Twil stopped. Her jaw closed. She ceased to growl. Amber eyes flickered to Evelyn.
“Stay,” Evelyn snapped. Twil obeyed, easing back onto her haunches. “Good,” Evelyn added. “Now wake up.”
Twil just stared, a hound failing to comprehend an unfamiliar order.
“I said wake up!” Evelyn shouted. “Wake the fuck up, Twil! Come on!” Evelyn slapped the armrest of her wheelchair, temper fraying. “We all need you. I need you! Wake up!”
Twil blinked three times, straightened up out of her loping crouch, and shook herself like a wet dog. Raindrops flew everywhere. I squinted my eyes shut, wolf-fur spray misting against my face.
The werewolf transformation began to collapse. Wisps of pneuma-somatic spirit-matter parted and drifted aside like fog beneath the morning sun, tendrils and veils turning pale before vanishing into nothing, unwinding the thickly glossy fur, peeling away the slabs of muscle, revealing Twil’s limbs beneath. Her torso emerged next, still wrapped in that grey school uniform, blazer and skirt both sopping wet with rainwater. Her snout shrank as if sucked back into her face, her true features emerging from the surface. Twil’s real eyes were just as brightly amber, set in a pale face wracked by a squinting frown.
Twil looked as confused as a dog confronted by the lifting of a dream.
“Finally,” said Evelyn. “There you are.”
Raine lowered her machete and puffed out a sigh of relief. “Thanks for the save, Evee. I wasn’t looking forward to that fight.”
“Twil!” I said, hurrying over to her. “Twil, are you okay?! Are you awake? Do you recognise us? Twil?”
Twil raised both hands to ward me off — but she was no longer the shrinking violet, the nervous and apologetic parody of her prior dream-self. She neither recoiled from me nor retreated in fear, just stuck her hands out in total confidence that I would halt, no questions asked.
Though she wore the same clothes and sported the same hairstyle, Twil looked completely different to five minutes earlier. Her eyes were wide and alert, sharp and active, rather than withdrawn and veiled. Her face was no longer composed into a permanent expression of forced feminine passivity, but moved with all the angelic energy she usually displayed. Even the way she held herself was different — hips forward, shoulders back, head high.
She slowly looked left and right, amber eyes roving the clearing with a bewildered frown. Then she looked at me and flinched, blinking with sudden recognition, eyes darting to Raine and Evelyn in turn.
“Twil?” I repeated.
“Uhhhhhhhhhhhhh,” said Twil, emitting a sound like a printer suffering a nasty mechanical error. “What … like … where … uhhh?”
Twil’s voice had lost the airy, floaty, high-pitched tone, no longer a conduit for the dialogue of a heroine from a bad lesbian novel. She had dropped back to her usual cocktail of gravel and honey, soft and rough both at the same time.
“Welcome back to reality,” Evelyn grunted. “Is what I’d like to say, but this isn’t it. So welcome back to your senses, I suppose.”
I stepped closer, one hand out in case Twil needed support. “Twil, do you know where you are, or what’s been happening?”
Twil blinked up and around at the wall of trees again, at the bulwark of twig and thorn in every direction. The forest seemed to be slowly thinning again now, the paths re-opening, the unnatural arena falling away after Horror’s defeat.
“Twil?”
She finally looked at me and blew out a long sigh, puffing out her cheeks. “Yeah.”
“ … yeah?” I echoed.
Twil shrugged, a goofy smile spreading across her face. “Well, nah, not really. But wherever I am, I’m with you three, right?”
“Oh, Twil!”
Twil waved a hand at me, perhaps to forestall a hug. She squinted her eyes shut and frowned, much harder than before. “Uh, for serious, gimme a sec here, Big H. I’m kinda catching up. It’s like I’ve been dreaming for days. This is weird shit.”
I heaved a big sigh of relief. “Oh, it really is you. You’re awake, you’re with us! Twil, I missed you!”
“Uh, yeah,” Twil said, still with her eyes scrunched up. “Missed you three too. What—”
“Do you know where you are?” I asked. “Or what’s happening?”
Twil squeezed her eyes shut even harder — then they flew open, joined by a positively incandescent blush rushing up the sides of her neck and exploding into her cheeks. She stared at me, amber eyes gone wide, then glanced at Evee, then back at me.
“Twil?”
“Uh … y-yeah. Yeah … I. Oh, oh wow.” She swallowed hard. “I’ve been like, in a trance, or something? Oh wow, this is really no-shit hella embarrassing. What have I been doing this whole time?”
Evelyn snorted. “Having fun, apparently.”
Twil rounded on her, bright red in the face. “That wasn’t me! None of that was really me!”
“Yes,” Evelyn said. “Yes it was. And it’s fine to admit it. I shouldn’t laugh.”
Twil boggled at her, then shook her head, turning away. “Damn. Uh, yeah, damn, that was some major high-key embarrassing shit. Uh, you guys, uh, if you could maybe, like, forget about … about … ”
She trailed off, voice going small and reedy, then looked up and looked at me, wide-eyed with shock.
Twil burst into tears.
She was not a pretty little crier, our werewolf. Twil’s tears were big and messy. She let out a sudden series of wracking sobs and threw herself at me, arms going around my back, burying her face in my shoulder. It was one of the most uncomfortable hugs I’d ever experienced, mostly because she and I were both soaked through by the rain. I squeaked, left leg almost buckling beneath me; Twil seemed to instinctively understand what was wrong — she pulled back and used the pressure of the hug to hold me up.
“I’m one of you guys, right?!” she asked me through her tears. “I’m— I’m one of you, yeah? I always was, right?!”
“Yes, yes!” I answered, hugging her back as hard as I dared. “You are, Twil! Of course you are!”
“Shit, shit, shit!” Twil sobbed.
Twil’s crying jag ended almost as quickly as it had begun. She sobbed and sniffed a few more times, then awkwardly let go of me and stepped back, wiping her eyes and scrubbing at her face. She took a series of deep breaths, not forcing it down but letting it all out. One with final sniff she seemed to steady herself — but then she looked at Evee, her face dropping into desolate emotion all over again.
Evelyn said: “Hug me like Heather and you’ll break my fucking spine.”
“Y-yeah,” Twil said, swallowing hard, nodding along. “I-I’m cool now. I’m cool. I think.”
“Twil,” I said gently. “How much do you remember—”
“All of it,” she said through a big cringe.
“Okay, so, do you know where you are? Both physically and metaphysically??”
Twil blew out a big breath. “Yeah. Well, kinda, like. We’re all trapped in a cartoon mental hospital or some shit? Evil nurses and crap like that. Sevens is in charge of the place. The Eye is a fucking gilf or something. Lozzie threw a riot. Which, you know, good. Fuck this place.” She sighed and shook her head, almost laughing. “Would be funny if it wasn’t so dumb. Or, like, serious, I know. And me, yeah, I was … ”
Twil looked down at herself. Her mouth dropped open.
“What the fuck am I wearing!?” she said. She plucked at the absurd school uniform, lifting the sides of the grey blazer, her face contorting with disgust and dismay as she pulled at the tie around her neck. “Why am I dressed like a prep school wanker?! Or an anime girl? And it’s all grey, what the hell?! Did you put me up to this?” She pointed at Evee. “Is this like your fantasy, projected onto me?”
“Ha!” Evelyn barked, utterly unembarrassed. That made Twil blink in surprise. “If I was in charge of dressing you up, you’d be wearing a magical girl outfit. In pink. With frills. High heels maybe. No, Twil, none of us had a hand in any of this. You did this to yourself.”
“That’s not precisely accurate,” I said gently. “Technically the Eye is responsible for all of this. Kind of. You were just—”
“Yeah, yeah, I remember the chat earlier, Big H, it’s cool.” Twil huffed. “But seriously, this?” she gestured up and down at herself. “I look like a private school mascot!”
Evelyn snorted again. “And you were having yourself quite the nice little fantasy.”
Twil grimaced, hissing through her teeth. She grabbed the lapels of her grey blazer and peeled the sodden garment off her shoulders, then threw it at the ground with a wet slap. Her white shirt was soaked through as well, stuck to her skin, leaving very little to the imagination, highlighting the outline of a bra against her torso.
I blushed, putting one hand to my mouth. “Um, Twil. I-I can see your—”
She grabbed her grey tie and yanked the knot forward, pulling and tugging until the whole thing came loose. She was about to cast that away as well, but then thought better of it and stuck the loose tie into her skirt pocket. Then she reached up and tore the top two buttons off her shirt, opening the collar and releasing her throat, revealing a slip of collarbone on either side.
Twil hesitated, then shouted, “Fuck it!” and ripped the rest of her shirt open, pulling the buttons free all the way to the bottom.
Thankfully she didn’t peel the shirt off as well, but left it draped over her shoulders, open down the middle. Even so, the open shirt left nothing to the imagination.
“T-Twil—” I stammered.
“I don’t fuckin’ care!” Twil spat. “Fuck this, fuck all of it! I’d go naked if I thought I could get away with it. Screw this skirt, too. I didn’t even wear shit this bad in secondary school! And why is my hair so straight?!” She reached up and ran both hands through her unnaturally straightened hair, messing it up in every possible direction, until her head was a mass of jumbled dark tresses. “Fuckin’ take away my curls, bitch-ass stupid dream shit.” She huffed. “Uh, sorry, Big H. Evee. Raine. Just … this is real weird. I hate this.”
“We’ve all been through it,” I said as gently as I could. “Some of us worse, some of us easier. Just … do what you need to do, Twil.”
Twil sniffed and ran a hand through her hair. She had gone from prudish good-girl to punk-rock rakish in record time. The open-shirt look suited her, even if it was dictated by nothing more than necessity.
“Yeah, yeah. I think I’m alright now,” she muttered. “Mostly. Kinda. Fuuuuuck that was weird.”
“Twil, I need to ask you, very seriously. How much do you remember? How much are you aware of?”
Twil let out a big sigh. “All of it, like I said before. Look, I’m good, I’m cool, I’m up to speed. We’re inside a dream, trapped in a mental hospital, all that weird jazz. And you’ve lost your tentacles.” Twil gestured at me. “Sorry to hear about that. Fuckin’ sucks for you, right?”
“Um, yes,” I replied. “It does ‘fucking suck’, to put it lightly. Thank you.”
Twil nodded at Raine. “Raine’s half-awake, right?” Then Evee. “Evelyn, Evee, you … you doing alright like that?”
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“No,” Evee grunted. “I am confined to this chair. My magic does not work. Praem is reduced to a plushie.”
“Figures,” Twil said with a grimace. “Sorry. You’re in real bad, worst of us all. Wish I could, like, do something to help.”
“Huh,” Evee grunted again. “Thank you.”
“So, yeah,” Twil said. “I’m up to speed. I even remember … the … hey?” Twil squinted and trailed off, looking left and right, one hand out as if reaching for somebody who should have been at her side. “Where are the two girls I was with?” Twil cracked a sudden grin. “Daaaaaaamn. Damn, that was my fantasy? Hoooo, okay, I mean I’m not into the schoolgirl look, it’s kinda shitty, but those two were fine as fuck. Nice!”
Evelyn rolled her eyes. “They were you, you absolute moron. You were playing out your own sapphic boarding school fantasy with yourself and yourself. You may as well have been snogging the back of your own hand.”
Twil laughed, relieved at last. “Yeah, which means I’m fine as fuck too! I think you agree, right?”
Evelyn answered by rolling her eyes again. “This is going to be insufferable.”
“Maybe I should dye my hair blonde for a bit, like the first one,” Twil muttered, then cleared her throat. “Uh, but yeah, I mean, they were real ten out of ten hot shit, right up until the part where they turned into plants, which was weird.”
“I thought the plants were really pretty,” I said. “In a very … special … way?”
Everyone was looking at me, so I trailed off and stopped talking.
“Aliens,” Twil said. “Actual no-shit aliens. Plant people! Hiding inside my mind. Weird. Thank fuck they were on our side, right?”
“Yes, quite,” I said.
“Twil,” Evelyn said, rather matter-of-fact. “You’ve got your werewolf transformation back, yes? We may be relying on you. We can’t have any duds.”
Twil snorted, rolled her eyes, and trudged over to Evee’s wheelchair. The back of her white shirt was still wet, stuck to her skin. Her tattoos were clearly visible through the sodden fabric — beautiful dark green spirals of solid colour, stretching from her shoulders all the way down her back, vanishing beneath the waistline of her skirt. The spiral pattern had no beginning and no end, forming one unbroken line; yet when one looked at any single point, a hundred dead ends appeared to proliferate in one’s peripheral vision, animating the spirals with sinuous, coiling, snake-like motions.
Twil stopped a few paces from Evee, put her hands on her hips, and said: “Of course I’m back to normal. I’m completely in contro—”
A pair of wolf ears sprung from the top of Twil’s head with a little ‘spoink!’ sound effect — an actual noise, not just something in my imagination. Furred in luxuriant greyish-red, they twitched and shivered as Twil stood there blinking in surprise. A half-second later, a bushy tail sprouted from her rear, lifting the back of her grey skirt, swishing back and forth as if with sudden excitement.
Raine burst out laughing. Evelyn cleared her throat and raised her chin. Twil touched her ears and tail, frowning in confusion.
“You were saying?” Evelyn asked.
“I didn’t do this on purpose!” Twil went all shrill. “It’s just … it’s never been this easy before. Is this because we’re in a dream?”
“Probably,” Evelyn grunted. “Or maybe you’ve come to terms with something and turned into a furry.”
“Well, shit. I’m riding high, I guess.” Twil cracked a grin, tail wagging — then stopped, and stopped grinning too, frowning down at Evee. “Hey, you bopped me in the face earlier. Like, you actually punched me, Evee.”
“Just doing what I had to.”
Twil rubbed her chin, though she wasn’t even bruised. Her cheeks went a little red. Her tail stuck straight out. “You, uh … all that stuff you said. When you were waking me up. What about all that?”
“I meant every word,” Evelyn said, utterly unembarrassed. “And the kiss, too. A little bit more important than the punch, no?”
Twil didn’t seem to know what to say for a moment. She cleared her throat, turned away and back again, then just nodded. Her tail coiled up, her wolf-ears went flat. “Well, uh. We can like, talk about all that when we’re out of here. Yeah?”
“Certainly,” Evelyn deadpanned. “My beloved mongrel.”
Twil spluttered. “Don’t fuckin’ call me that, that’s weird! And I’m not a mongrel.”
Evelyn smiled, as much with her eyes as with her mouth. Twil frowned at her for a long moment, blushing awkwardly. After a moment, her new tail started wagging again. Eventually she turned away, looking at me and Raine.
“Big H, hey,” she said. “Thanks for the assist. Meant a lot. I already like, hugged you and all. You know?”
“You’re welcome. I like your, um, new tail, yes. Um. Really, the Lillies did most of the heavy lifting. I really, really hope they come back. We could use their help a second time.”
I stuck my hand inside my yellow blanket and felt for the greenish soapstone coins, just to make sure they were secure. They were still slightly warm from the Lillies’ hands.
“Huh,” Evelyn grunted. “We could, yes. Though I would rather not rely on the whims of those particular Outsiders.”
I boggled at her. “Why not? They more than proved themselves.”
Evelyn chewed on her tongue for a moment. “I’ll refer you to the relevant passages of certain books sometime. I recognised them, by description. That’s all.”
“The Lillies specifically? Zalu and Xiyu?”
Evelyn shook her head. “No. Their ‘species’, I suppose.”
I let out a little sigh. “Evee, imagine if you recognised a human being by description. On average we’re a pretty nasty species too. You don’t even have to go beyond England to find some of the worst examples of us. Don’t judge the Lillies just because they were big starfish cactus creatures. They helped us, without holding back. And they were like me! They were taken by the Eye!”
Evelyn let out a grudging sigh. “Fine, fine.”
While Evelyn and I debated the nature of our Outsider friends, Twil and Raine were eyeing each other up, far too much like a pair of unfamiliar dogs.
“You look like total shit,” Twil said to Raine, grinning with friendly affection, tail wagging back and forth. “Like you’ve been dragged backwards through a cesspit.”
Raine broke into a slow grin too, looking Twil up and down. “Did we really used to date?”
Twil grimaced. “For like five minutes. You aren’t my type, Raine, real talk. You never were. I was just lonely and being funny.”
Raine nodded slowly, then tilted her head from side to side, cracking and popping the vertebrae in her neck. “So, this is the real Twillamina, huh?”
Twil’s grimace did double-duty. “Shiiiiiit, don’t call me that. That is not my real name. Cringey bullshit.”
“Sure thing, Twil,” Raine purred. “I think you and I are gonna get on just fine.”
Twil eyed Raine again; Twil’s new tail stopped wagging. “You’re weird like this.”
“Weird how?”
“ … I dunno,” Twil said. “You get my hackles up. Like you’re gonna throw down all of a sudden. Like I don’t wanna turn my back toward you. Hey, Big H, Heather, is she really safe like this?”
I cleared my throat. “Behave, please. Both of you. Raine, be a good girl for me. And Twil, yes, Raine is on our side. Unquestionably.”
Raine shot Twil a wink. Twil blew out a long, long sigh. “Alright. One for all and all for one and all that shit. So, like, what do we do now?”
Evelyn spoke up. “First, I think we should inspect your kill. Make sure we’ve been successful. Somebody wheel me over there, please.”
In the shock and aftermath of the fight and the victory and Twil’s transformation, nobody offered an alternative course of action, and we did need to go check on the dubious spoils of our little war, after all. I started to hobble over to take the handles of Evee’s wheelchair, but Twil got there first. She said, “I’ll do it, I feel strong and energetic. You gotta rest that leg, right?”
“That she does,” Evelyn said. “Heather, take your weight off that leg. Twil, you’re on wheelchair duty — and do not leave me behind if I need to move. Understand?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Twil grumbled with a smile in her voice. “I got you, Saye.”
“And I’ve got Heather,” said Raine. She slipped her machete away inside the canvas bag on the back of Evee’s wheelchair, then helped me to stand properly, with an arm beneath my shoulders. She took a good portion of my body weight so I could lessen the burden on my wounded left shin.
We four — five, if one counted Praem tucked away inside Evelyn’s big grey dressing gown — circled around the ruins of the shattered pavilion, to where Horror’s headless corpse and decapitated cranium lay, at the edge of the plastic and wooden rubble.
Horror’s body lay on its side, twisted by the angle at which Twil had dropped it; both arms were stuck out backward, one pinned awkwardly beneath her body weight, the other flopped at an unnatural angle, hanging limp over her opposite side. One leg was bent backward, the other lay straight. They both looked broken. She seemed no smaller or less imposing in death, wrapped in her puffy white coat and matching uniform.
Horror’s head sat upright in a pile of red plastic roof fragments. The eyes were open, staring straight ahead. The mouth gaped slightly, the echo of a final unspoken word on her tongue. A trickle of blood ran from the corner of her lips.
“Looks pretty dead to me,” Twil muttered, leaning over Evee’s shoulder from behind. “I kinda remember doing it, but … kinda hazy, like.”
Evelyn snorted. “This isn’t right. Can’t you see?”
Raine said, “Not enough blood.”
“Eh?” Twil frowned. “What? What are you two talking about?”
“Not enough blood,” Raine repeated. “Should be a lot more blood in a human body than that.”
“She’s right,” I said with slowly dawning realisation. “I’ve … well, all of us, really, we’ve all seen more than our fair share of corpses. There’s nowhere near enough blood around the body and the head. Look at that little puddle. That’s not enough blood from a fatal neck wound.”
A picturesque little pool of blood lay beneath the ragged stump of the neck, still and serene, the edges perfectly rounded as if it was refusing to mix with the moisture on the ground. It could not have been more than than a single mug-full worth of crimson. No blood at all had pooled beneath the severed head, not even a few droplets.
“Huh,” Twil grunted, frowning hard. “Okaaaaay. That’s weird, yeah. Maybe it’s the sun? Maybe it dried? Sun’s finally coming out, after … all … ” Twil trailed off as she looked up, one hand out to feel for the rain. “Is that … the Eye, up there? Like, in the sky?”
“Yes,” I confirmed. “And it’s a good sign that you can see that, by the way. That means you’re fully awake.”
Twil puffed out a big sigh. “Great. Still. Sun’s coming out. That’s gotta be a good sign, hey?”
Twil was correct. The rain had ceased and the light was slowly brightening, creeping through the woodland canopy with gentle fingers of early afternoon sun. The ragged remains of the wind rustled the leaves against themselves, but no longer shook the trees with freezing gusts. The storm had passed, blown itself out, leaving behind a sunny afternoon.
“Not necessarily,” Evelyn grunted. “All it means is the conditions of the dream have changed. The rules or the script or whatever, it’s all adjusted according to our actions.”
“Yeah,” Twil said, “because we beat the mid-boss, right?” She gestured at Horror’s head and corpse again. “One down, one to go. How is this bad?”
“It’s not,” I said gently. “This is very good. Thank you, Twil, you did the right thing by killing her. We exploited the nature of the dream and we won this battle. But the war is far from over. Um, not to get too metaphorical.”
“Yuuuuuup,” Raine echoed me. She made sure I could stand properly, then left my side briefly. She circled around the ruins of the pavilion to the right, then doubled back to the left, head on a swivel as she stared off into the woods. “We need to be on the lookout for the next move.”
Twil snorted. “But—”
“This isn’t Castlevania,” Raine went on. “The hospital won’t come crumbling down just because we cut off Dracula’s head.” Raine thumbed at the corpse. “And she ain’t Dracula, anyway.”
“Yes,” I added. “I have only the vaguest idea what ‘Castlevania’ means, but Raine is right. One nurse is not the entire institution.”
Twil laughed and spread her hands, shaking her head with disbelief. “Uhh, but you’ve got me now, yo? Can’t we just walk in the front door and bust some heads open? I’m invincible!”
“They’ll have silver now,” I said.
“Ha!” Evelyn barked. “Probably. Good thinking, Heather.”
Twil went wide-eyed, staring at me. “Wh-what?”
I sighed and rubbed at my eyes, feeling exhausted. “Sorry. I mean, it’s just a guess, but it makes perfect sense. The dream reacts to the changes we make. I’m not willing to risk you putting yourself up front and getting stabbed with a silver dagger or something, Twil. We’ve introduced the concept of a werewolf into the dream. It may react accordingly. We’ve gotten this far by being careful and cautious, by relying on proper planning. We have no reason to change that now.”
Twil boggled at me, then at Evelyn. Evee nodded in silent agreement. Finally Twil turned and appealed to Raine for help, but Raine just smirked, and said, “You ain’t solving all our problems alone, wolfie.”
“Then what the fuck was the point!?” Twil went shrill. Her tail went all bushy, bristling with anger, while her wolf-ears stood straight up. “All that stuff about me you said to the Lillies, was that bullshit? Aren’t I your ace in the hole? I thought we were gonna rock up through the front door so I could go all Brinkwood style on their asses!”
I took a deep breath and closed my eyes, gathering my thoughts. “Twil—”
“No, seriously,” Twil interrupted before I could get the words out. “What was the point of freeing me if we’re not gonna strike back?”
Evelyn snapped, “Because we all love you, you dozy mutt.”
Twil spluttered to a halt. “Wha— I mean— buh— um—”
“We would free you even if you were completely bloody useless,” Evelyn went on. “Because, as Heather so eloquently said, you are and always will be one of us. Look at me, I’m borderline useless right now myself. No magic, very little help, practically a burden with this wheelchair. But Heather moved heaven and earth to free me. We’d all do the same for you. Stop whining.”
“Evee,” I said, gently but firmly. “Do not call yourself useless, please.” Then I opened my eyes and raised my chin. “Twil.”
“Y-yeah?” Twil’s tail curled upward and her ears went flat. “What’s up, Big H?”
“As I was trying to say. Sooner or later, Lozzie will throw a second riot, a second attempt at her revolution. Those girls in the hospital, whatever they really are, they’re ready to boil over whenever she says. And when Lozzie turns up the heat and makes that happen, we need to be ready.”
Twil frowned at me, mildly confused. “Sure we do? Yeah, of course, we do?”
“You, Zheng, Praem, Raine,” I went on. “Evee, if we can get her magic back. Even me, if I can somehow regain my brain-math or get my other selves back. Yes, Lozzie has freed the Cattys, and the Knights will be on our side eventually. But when Lozzie throws that riot, we have to be ready, as a group, to fight for that. The next time the institution responds, we have to be prepared to do incredible violence to protect those girls and overthrow the systems at play here. If we rush in there now and you get overwhelmed, we will have wasted that future opening. We support Lozzie’s revolution, the moment she needs us. We don’t go off beforehand. That’s my plan.”
Twil gaped at me, then swallowed, looking me up and down. She nodded slowly. “Okay. Okay, sure. Holy shit, Big H. When’d you turn into Che Guevara?”
I blinked, bewildered. “I’m sorry? Pardon?”
Raine chuckled with affectionate laughter. “Little Lozz ain’t the only revolutionary at work around here.”
A blush exploded into my cheeks. “I’m just laying out the obvious strategy! I’m not making a special argument here, really! I don’t know the first thing about guerilla warfare, this is just obvious stuff, isn’t it?”
“To some,” Evelyn grumbled, though she had a strange little smile on her lips.
Twil shrugged. “Not to me, I guess. Sure, though. We’ll go with your plan, Big H. You’re the one with most of the dream in your head, after all. So, what’s the next step now we’ve done for Horror?”
“I, um … ” I trailed off, feeling a weight settling on my shoulders. My head felt heavy and tired. My left leg was throbbing very badly, the wound gone stiff and hard now the worst of the adrenaline had once again left my bloodstream. My hair was still wet, my pajama bottoms were soaked through, and my slippers were sodden with water; my torso and shoulders had been protected from the worst of the rain by the yellow blanket, but the rest of me had not fared so well. “I’m not sure,” I said eventually. “We’re all tired and wet after that. We need to regroup, um … ”
“Sunshine’ll help with that part,” Twil said, spreading her arms to catch more of the slowly brightening sun. “This is pretty good, actually!”
She had a point. The light and heat were climbing toward those of a proper summer’s afternoon, despite the absence of a real sun in the sky. My hair was starting to dry out a little. I flapped the sides of my yellow blanket.
“That’s … true.”
Raine stepped past me and headed toward Horror’s collapsed body. “Executive decision,” she said. “Let’s turn Horror upside down and shake her by the ankles, see if any goodies fall out of her pockets.”
“Raine!” I tutted, vaguely horrified.
Luckily for our sensitive constitutions and the contents of our collective stomachs, Raine was not speaking literally in her proposed handling of Horror’s already grisly corpse. She rolled the body onto its back and spent a few minutes going through the pockets of both the coat and the nurse uniform. I watched, feeling a little sick, but unable to look away; we had killed this woman, whatever she really was, whatever she represented. Evelyn and Twil watched as well, though Twil took several moments to re-arrange Evelyn’s towels and help with her dressing gown, so the damp patches would dry in the sun. Evelyn grumbled and fussed, but she submitted to Twil’s tender care without further complaint.
Raine recovered Horror’s cattle-prod stun-gun, though the weapon failed to activate when she thumbed the button; perhaps the electrical components had been ruined by the rainwater. She dug out Horror’s mobile phone, nice and dry, with plenty of charge left in the battery. She tossed the phone to Twil, to slip into the canvas bag on the back of Evee’s wheelchair. Next came a lanyard and an ID card, with a little photograph of Horror herself printed on the plastic. The card showed an employee number and her name — simply A.HORROR, the same as on her name badge. She had a purse with two credit cards and no cash, but nothing else of note within the pink leather folds. Last but not least, the inner pockets of her uniform provided us with an unexpected bounty — a heavy bunch of keys in all different shapes and sizes, hanging from a big steel keyring.
“Bingo,” Raine said, straightening up and cracking a grin, dangling the jingling bunch from her fingers. “Keys to the kingdom.”
“I doubt any of those will open the high-security wing,” I said. “But that’s wonderful, yes! We could potentially get in anywhere we need. We could find somewhere to rest, somewhere more secure than that locker room, at least.”
Raine winked at me. “Or we could find weapons. Food. Clothes. Whatever you like, sweet thing.”
“Or the morgue,” Evelyn grunted. “If they have one.”
I blinked at her. “The … the morgue? Why? What for?”
Evelyn sighed. “We’ve already discussed this, Heather. I need my mother’s corpse. Or more accurately, her thigh bone. If I’m going to be a mage once again, inside this dream, I need my wand.”
Twil leaned around Evee’s chair and boggled at her. “What?!”
Evelyn rolled her eyes. “The less you comprehend, the better for you.”
“Wait wait wait,” Twil said. “No way. Your wand, that bone, the real one, like. That was your mother’s leg all this time!?”
Evelyn folded her arms. The Praem Plushie seemed to peek over her forearms. “Like I said, Twil. The less you know, the better for you.”
“Fucking hell!” Twil said. “Absolutely not! You need something, I wanna know about it, Evee! I don’t care what it is—”
Evelyn spluttered. “Just— stop— Twil, please—”
I spoke over both of them, trying to cut this short. “We all have to accept how weird this is. If getting Evee’s magic back means stealing her mother’s thigh bone, then, fine. That’s what we’ll do.”
Twil puffed out a big sigh. “Yeah, that’s what I’m saying, yo. Is that our next step, then?”
“Actually,” I said slowly, as a lump formed in my throat. “No. I think our next move has to be dictated by … available … resources.”
“Eh?” Twil frowned.
Evelyn said, “Heather, what are you talking about?”
Raine walked back over to the wheelchair and tossed the bunch of keys into our canvas bag. Then she drew her machete and removed it from the fabric sheath. She nodded to me, unsmiling, taking this entirely seriously.
“Arm or leg?” she asked.
I winced. “That probably won’t be enough, not by itself.”
Twil glanced between me and Raine, frown deepening, wolf ears going flat. “What the hell are you two talking about?” she said slowly.
“Freeing Zheng,” I said, unable to meet Twil’s eyes.
“Ah,” Evelyn said. “I should have guessed.”
“What?” Twil said, low and slow.
Raine nodded, hefting her machete in one hand. “Both arms? Both legs? More?”
I swallowed, trying not to feel nauseated. This was all a dream, and none of the people here were inhabiting their real, actual, physical bodies. But it was going to look and feel entirely authentic.
“Probably an arm,” I said. “For bulk. And … and … we need the heart. Zheng always has a thing about hearts. She finds them very symbolic.”
Raine pulled a big comedic wince. “That’s gonna get real messy. I can do it, sweet thing, ain’t saying I can’t. But I’m gonna be messy once I’m done.”
“We’ll find you a shower afterward, so you can clean up.”
Twil held out both hands. “Can one of you three explain to me what the hell you’re talking about? ‘Cos I don’t like where this is going.”
I raised my eyes to Twil’s face, then looked over at Horror’s corpse, lying on it’s back.
Twil went pale. “Oh, fuck no.”
“I promised Zheng she could eat a nurse,” I said. “Horror, specifically. I don’t think we can carry the whole corpse without getting spotted, especially trying to get it into the hospital, even with Evee’s Fadestone to help us. But an arm for bulk, and the heart for symbolic reasons, we can do that. It will probably free Zheng. We do Zheng next, because the resources are right here, and we’re unlikely to get a better chance than this. Then we find Evee’s mother’s corpse, solve the magic problem. Then we … figure out Praem? We can go from there.”
“Fuuuuuuck,” Twil groaned. Her wolf ears went flat and her tail tucked up between her legs. “Oh shit, yo, I don’t wanna see this! How do you even get a heart out of a chest?”
Raine grinned. “With a big enough knife, all things are possible.”
“Ohhhh fuck,” Twil moaned.
“I thought you were a werewolf, Twil?” Evelyn grumbled. “Show some … some … stomach.”
“That doesn’t mean I wanna watch Raine go all Texas Chainsaw Massacre on some lady’s corpse! Fucking hell!”
Evelyn looked a little green in the face as well. She cleared her throat. “Well, we can both look away, then. I’ll thank you to wheel me around, please.”
“No time like the present,” Raine announced. “I’ll get to straight to work, make this quick. Sweet thing, you don’t have to watch either.”
“I … I think I owe it, to you, maybe even to Horror,” I said, though sweat broke out on my forehead and down my back. “Just … let’s get this over with, as quickly and efficiently as we can, yes.”
Raine grabbed three of the spare towels from inside the canvas bag, then strode back over toward the corpse. I crossed my arms over my chest, hugging myself tight, my mouth going dry; I didn’t want to watch the gory details, but I had ordered Raine to do this, so I could not allow her to shoulder the entire burden alone, no matter how robust and sturdy her stomach.
Twil turned Evee’s wheelchair away, to spare both of them from observing the coming butchery. Evelyn reached out with one hesitant hand and brushed the edge of Twil’s bushy tail. Twil flinched, then relaxed. I left them to their flirting — or whatever it was — and focused on Raine’s work with Horror.
Raine worked fast, without speaking or cracking jokes or any unnecessary flair. She knelt next to the corpse and manoeuvred Horror’s right arm out of her puffy white raincoat, extending it perpendicular from her body. Raine raised the machete, using her other hand to guide her aim. The limb came off in three quick hacks with the blade — chop chop chop, like a butcher’s knife slamming through meat. I felt bile rise up my throat as Raine finally cut all the way through, separating Horror’s right arm from her torso at the shoulder. Raine lifted the severed limb, folded it at the elbow, and quickly wrapped it in one of the towels, hiding it away. The stump barely bled at all, exactly like Horror’s neck.
Extracting Horror’s heart was more of a challenge. Raine didn’t have a bone saw to break through the sternum or the ribcage, so she cut into the soft flesh just below the last of Horror’s floating ribs, on the left side of her chest. She worked the point and edge of her machete inside the wound, hacking and yanking at the bottom of the ribcage; the corpse produced the most awful sounds of ripping and sucking, fluids and blood spilling forth, meat ripping and tearing. I had to turn away and gag when Raine stuck her whole hand and wrist inside the massive wound, but then I turned back, forcing myself to bear witness.
“There you are,” Raine grunted, gritting her teeth, almost elbow-deep inside a still-warm corpse. “Just a biiiitt more, come on, come on. There!”
Raine yanked. A ripping sound made the corpse jerk. Raine pulled her hand free, holding a fist-sized lump of bloody flesh, trailing the ends of several flapping meaty tubes.
It didn’t look much like a heart. It was just a rose-red lump of steaming, bleeding, quivering meat. But I trusted Raine’s judgement. She bundled up Horror’s heart in the second towel, tied it into a tight package, then used the third towel to wipe the worst of the blood off her hands and forearm.
“Good girl, Raine,” I said, taking slow, steady, deep breaths to still my own queasy stomach. “Good girl, well done, that was … difficult. Oh my gosh, that was the most disgusting thing we’ve ever done. Oh my gosh. Oh, we did not just do that. Oh.”
Raine cracked a grin and shot me a wink, wiping the sticky crimson mess off her machete with the spare towel. “Not difficult for me, sweet thing.”
“Bloody hell,” Twil grunted, wheeling Evelyn back around. “The sounds were bad enough!”
Evelyn huffed, looking pale and green. “Stop talking about the sounds. Stop talking about it at all, please—”
A sudden and unexpected voice interrupted us all, filling the sunny air of the woodland clearing.
“Don’t you girls know that it’s very rude to take other people’s things without permission?”
I jumped about a foot in the air, swallowing a scream. Raine spun, machete out, ready for the one thing we’d all silently agreed not to discuss. Evelyn clutched at the armrests of her wheelchair. Twil swore, loudly and creatively and with several mentions of female genitalia.
Horror’s head — her severed head, perched on a mass of broken roof fragments — stared at us, waiting for an answer. She blinked several times. Her lips opened, drooling a thin trickle of blood from both corners of her mouth.
“It’s stealing,” she said. Her voice bubbled with the blood in her throat, gummy and moist. “Theft. Very naughty. Technically a crime, though I suspect that’s the least of your criminal worries at present, considering what you’ve just done.”
I stared at it — at her? At Horror? — with my mouth hanging open in shock. Raine reacted with much more practical considerations in mind; she turned and kicked the corpse itself to make sure it wasn’t about to get up and walk around. The corpse did not so much as twitch. Twil started laughing, panting for breath, muttering ‘fuck me, fuck me’. Evelyn hissed between her teeth, almost growling with frustration.
“We … ” I said, trying to gather my voice. “We all knew this might happen! Everybody stay calm!”
Twil shouted at the head: “How are you talking without any fucking lungs?! You haven’t got any air up in your pipes!”
“This is a dream, or a play,” Evelyn growled through her teeth. “Forget logic, Twil. Think narratively.”
Raine lifted her machete again. “Oh, I’m thinking narratively alright. Sweet thing, say the word and I’ll scoop out whatever’s left of her.”
Horror’s eyes flicked back and forth as we spoke, eyebrows raised with the distinct air of a very unimpressed adult watching a group of children attempting to hide the evidence of a failed practical joke. She waited until we all trailed off, all of us staring down at her severed head.
“Well,” she said. “I’m glad you girls are having so much fun with this. But I assure you, this little jaunt is far from over, and I am far from finished with you all.”