Heather abyssus — me, just me, me all along, my figure and form and face wrapped in pneuma-somatic truth, flowing with sharp and sinuous grace, stalking ahead with a rapid click-a-click-clack of cleanly curved claws against the cold hospital floor, with barbed tail swishing and snapping from the base of a naked spine lined with velvet fur and armoured scales, with membranous wings flickering about her shoulders and flanks like the razor’s edge of heat-haze in a void.
She plunged back into the labyrinth of Cygnet Asylum.
What else could I do but follow? I had been chasing that euphoria half my life.
Our progress through the buckling, broken, breached-and-beaten guts of the hospital became a burning blur — but not like before, not consumed by the heady rush of cumulative victories. Outwardly nothing had changed except the Abyssal scout and vanguard pulling us onward. I still rode at the head of what had become a conquering army, gathering mass and numbers and power, flowing down the corridors of the hospital like clean blood washing away decades of infected flesh. That ‘army’ was still present at my back, dozens of patients led by my temporary lieutenants, with the great crowd of liberated ex-nurses following behind. The Twins — Zalu and Xiyu, dressed like video game soldiers, with white hair bobbing in mismatched ponytails — still hurried along either side of me, backed up by the trio of Knights we had rescued. Praem was still tucked into my yellow blanket, anchoring me to Eileen’s back with all the strength a plushie could muster. Eileen herself still held my body aloft, a rock-solid foundation for a piggyback. I still wore my squid-skull mask upon my face, and held Horror’s severed head in one hand, proclaiming that the war within myself was all but over. We still cut through the monstrous zombie-nurses like morning sunlight melting nightmare’s mist and fog.
My ‘army’ howled down the hospital corridors, hot on the heels of my Abyssal Self. She led us deeper and deeper through whitewashed hallways, across the debris of ransacked meeting rooms, and through the shattered walls of ruined operating theatres. We were still a rising note of victory, still a crescendo roaring toward climax.
But that climax never came. All I could do was pant and whine behind my mask.
All those others at my rear, all those details of our careening trajectory through the hospital, all of it faded away in my peripheral vision. The cries and shouts of my little army were drowned out by my own quivering breath and the rapid flutter of my heart. Tears of desire and denial ran down my cheeks and gathered on my lips, tasting of salt and copper. I whispered, voice shaking, “Please … please … ”
I had eyes only for her — for myself, I, me, everything I should be — true and beautiful at last.
The mere sight of Heather abyssus stalking and striding and slinking ahead of us drew me from my body like a squid pulled from between a crack in the rocks, my flesh hooked by her venomous spines, pierced by her poison spikes, wrapped tight and squeezed within her tentacles, dragged from my hiding place on a rip-tide current of need and lust.
And I’m not being abstract about the lust.
I had never understood what Raine saw in me, physically and sexually; I trusted that she saw something, of course. I knew she wasn’t faking her appreciation when she told me how attractive she found me, or when she expressed that desire, regularly and often, by pushing me up against a wall and making me squeal into her shoulder with three of her fingers up inside me. Raine wasn’t lying — but I simply couldn’t see through her eyes, could not see myself with the gaze of another. Whenever I examined myself in the mirror, even scrubbed and clean and glowing with happiness, presented in my most confident moments, I struggled to see anything sexually attractive about my small breasts and slender hips and stumpy legs and scrawny five-foot-nothing body, wrapped in pallid, pasty skin, topped by a plain little face and a head of colourless brown hair. That was the Heather I saw when I looked in the mirror — an ordinary girl, with nothing special to recommend me to anybody. But that was also the Heather I had seen on the wall of monitors — Lonely Heather, ugly, small, and stunted, with exactly the same face as my own.
The only beauty I had begun to find in my own body was in those six tentacles, in their smooth and buttery pneuma-somatic muscle, in their bioluminesence, in how they gestured toward a truth of what I should have been all along. Those six tentacles I had made over the last year of trial and error and tribulation were by far my best feature.
But her — as she stalked ahead of us down the corridors of Cygnet Asylum? Heather Abyssal, Heather Ascendant, Heather Angelic, with her eyes like the inside of dying suns, with her undulating skin and scales and softly ruffled fur the thousand colours of boiling midnight skies?
I wanted her, and I wanted to be her, in a way I had never felt before. All my desire for Raine or Zheng or Evee or Sevens was but a mere shadow of this incandescent lust.
If I had met this dream-separated tentacle-self under almost any other conditions, nothing could have held me back, nothing except rejection. If this Heather Abyssal decided to turn around right in the middle of Cygnet and pounce on me, I would not have resisted. If she wanted to drag me from Eileen’s back and impale me on spikes and spines and pull at my flesh with her claws and open me up and climb inside my hot and quivering meat, I would have cried tears of squealing delight. I wanted her to pin me to the wall as Raine did, or slam me against the floor and bite into my neck. I wanted to run my hands over that body — my body! - and drink in the divine truth of scales and fur, cup the bases of claws and spikes, run my shaking fingers over her hips and flanks, kiss the flowing muscle of her tentacles. Kiss myself! Kiss my own beauty, for it was an impossible gift from the abyss.
But she had said no.
She had declined reunion. She had told me I smelled wrong, that I was a poor foundation, incomplete, and not myself. Euphoria was within reach, but I had been found wanting.
So Eileen carried me forward, while I wept and shook behind my squid-skull mask.
Luckily for me — not to mention for my friends, and for Maisie — this one of six, this tentacle-Heather, she possessed a far clearer head than I could keep.
She broke the trance of my forlorn lust upon an unexpected rock, right in the middle of our stream.
Down a particularly dirty, dingy, stain-encrusted Cygnet hallway, lined with rusty bars which blocked off shadow-choked entrances to the prison-level, we slammed right into a thick knot of nurses. Abyssal Heather leapt into them from behind like a threshing machine, clawed fists and barbed tentacles hurling them aside to cut a path, leaving awful lacerated wounds across their sagging grey faces, tearing open their already ragged uniforms. Luckily for the soon-to-be-ex-nurses, Eileen stuck close to Abyssal Heather’s heels; the faintest brush of my skin or a glance from my squid-skull mask was enough to transform a nurse-monster back into a human form, unwounded and whole, blinking and sweating, cowering in awe and terror as Abyssal and Other passed by.
Just like every previous encounter with unredeemed nurses and additional patients, we swept through the crowd as if they were butter before a blowtorch. My patients and liberated ex-nurses hurried up through the breach behind me, spreading the good word among those who lay defeated, rushing forward to rescue those who had been besieged.
But the patients we saved here were subtly different to all those we had previously encountered. These girls were not dressed in Cygnet-issue pajamas, but clad in rags and filthy grey jumpsuits and the remnants of torn-open straitjackets. They were armed not with broken table legs and makeshift shields, but with shivs and dirty little knives and lengths of jagged iron pipe. Some of them looked half-starved, nourished by nothing but the rage of the wrongly confined and blossoming faith in the revolution; others were oddly pale or ghoulish, as if they had not seen sunlight in years, blinking and shying from the thin grey dawn-light filtering in from outdoors. All of them were far filthier, much bloodier, and roaring with triumph as we reached them.
Several of the patients from my ‘army’ rushed forward to embrace old friends or lost comrades. Half a dozen battered Knights strode from the mass of newcomers and clasped hands with the trio we had already gathered.
Abyssal Heather turned to face me, paused in the middle of the crowd, framed by a coiling mass of umbra and shadow.
“Heatherrrrr,” purred Perfect and Flawless Me. She drew my name out, turning the final letter into a high-pitched clicking noise. “Here, here. Pay attention.”
Pay attention? But I was already staring at her, my heart racing, my breath ragged with desire. “Uhhhn?” I managed to grunt.
Abyssal Me cracked a grin. My heart soared — for there I was, my own expressions wrought in abyssal muscle and scale and fur; she was a little embarrassed, almost sheepish, as if trying not to acknowledge something right in front of her face. Was that how I looked when overcome by the same emotions?
No, of course not. I could not look that beautiful, not without reunion.
She hissed gently, then said in that gurgling, inhuman voice: “You’re in heat. It’s very flattering, but this isn’t the time.”
My lips parted. I could barely breathe. “I … but I … can’t we reunite and—”
Then I realised — these were not, strictly speaking, patients we had rescued; these were the inmates released from the prison levels beneath the relatively presentable hospital exterior. These were the girls like Raine, freed by one of my own.
The trance of lust lifted from my eyes. I blinked rapidly behind the sockets of my mask, and realised what shape loomed behind my Abyssal Self.
“Night Praem?” I croaked.
Night Praem stood at the centre of the liberated inmates — a mass of roiling shadow like infinite layers of lace and gossamer floating in an oil-dark sea, a cloud of ink spreading wide beneath the ocean waves, frilled at the edges like delicate folds of mollusc flesh the colour of sable and ebony. Her presence seemed to drink the meagre light in the corridor, tinting the walls and rusty bars to either side with shadows from nowhere, floating in mid-air like a cephalopod bobbing in a column of water. In the very centre of the vortex-mass of living night, the heavy curves of a feminine outline faced toward me, long tendrils of hair hanging over her shoulders in ragged rat-tails, blank and black eyes lost behind waves of charcoal fog.
The inmates and patients gave Night Praem plenty of space, but they were clearly unafraid of her. She had led them out of the dark of the prison, after all.
Abyssal Heather cocked her head and shot me a sceptical look. “Did you forget already, Heatherrrr? I told you, we’re rescuing our family. Stop thinking with your cunt.”
“O-of course I didn’t forget about Praem!” I blurted out. “I just got … distracted, by … w-well, yes.” I huffed. “You can’t blame me … I can’t … I can’t go on much longer without … without you … ”
“Mmmmmmm,” purred Abyssal Heather; that sound was enough to send a shiver through the exact organ she had so indelicately named.
Night Praem floated forward, moving straight through Abyssal Heather like a ghost from a cheap horror movie, as if cutting short our bizarre masturbatory flirting. Abyssal Heather blinked several times as Night Praem passed through her body, then sneezed, an alien sound which drew a ring of flinches from the nearby patients and inmates. Zalu and Xiyu didn’t raise their guns, but they did step back, silently wary of this umbral apparition.
Horror murmured, “Gosh, she’s fab.”
“You be quiet,” I muttered back. “And ‘fab’?”
“Short for fabulous,” Horror whispered. “You should expand your vocabulary sometime.”
“Shut up.”
Night Praem stopped about six feet from Eileen. From below me, Eileen said: “How very occult.”
“Is … is that another pun?” I asked.
“I think so,” said Eileen. “Now, how are we to shed light on this veil?”
The answer came from the Praem Plushie, tucked into the front of my yellow blanket.
Present me, said Praem.
Not one to question the wisdom of plushies, especially when in dreams, I let go of Eileen with my left hand and extracted the Praem Plushie from within my yellow blanket. I held her out over Eileen’s shoulder, but Night Praem made no movement. She neither raised a hand inside her cloud of inky darkness, nor stepped forward to retrieve the missing half of her soul.
“Praem?” I croaked. “Praem, what’s wrong?”
Perfect and Spiky Heather stalked forward, claws clicking against the floor, throat clicking slow and soft when she opened her mouth. “She’s nervous. Doesn’t want to face everything this experience has taught her about herself. A little like you, Heatherrrr.”
“What does that mean?” I demanded.
Smooth and Jagged Me cocked her head, as if I should know exactly what she was talking about.
“W-well,” I said, desperate to fill the fertile silence. “I can hardly blame her for that, this dream has been intense for all of us, to put it lightly. But we don’t have time for this right now, we need to get to the Box, to Maisie. Praem? Praem, you have to—”
Throw me, demanded the Praem Plushie.
“Throw you?!” I said. “Praem, I would never—”
A maid is still a maid, even when in descent, said the Praem Plushie.
With no way in which to formulate a credible counterargument — for I knew so little about maids — I did as she requested. With what little strength remained in my left arm, I tossed the stout and huggable little plushie directly at Night Praem’s face. As the plushie breached the shadow, Night Praem flinched backward. As the plushie made contact with her core, Night Praem lashed out with one shadow-draped arm and caught herself in a gentle grip.
Umbra and shadow collapsed like a sheet of oil caught by gravity’s sudden pull, splashing to the floor and vanishing into the folds of the dream; gloom and fog sucked inward, condensing into lace and frill, peeling back from pale skin and a loose bun of bright blonde hair, revealing a pair of blank white eyes set in a round, pleasant, soft-cheeked face. Undulating shade collapsed into the fabric of a long pleated skirt, the shiny black of heavily booted feet, and the form-fitting ruffles of a well-tailored, very familiar, and most excellent maid uniform.
Praem — my Praem, looking almost exactly as she did out in reality, with only the addition of a dozen or so extra layers of excessive lace — held the plushie in both hands, staring into the blank fabric eyes of her own little Plush Self.
“Praem!” I cried with relief. Our demon-maid doll-daughter was wide awake at last. “Praem, oh it’s so good to see you. I mean, in full, back to normal. Though … why are you the only one of us who looks exactly like you do outside of the dream?”
Praem looked up and into my eyes. Her blank white orbs were so beautifully unreadable, I could have hugged her if I was down on my own two feet.
“Okay, well,” I said, giving up some ground. “Not exactly like in reality, I suppose. That is a very fancy lace setup at your throat. And … white lace gloves?” Praem raised a hand as I noticed that little detail; from fingertips to elbows both her arms were wrapped in the most delicate lace gloves I’d ever seen, though somehow without leaving a sliver of skin exposed. “And I’m pretty certain the current iteration of your real maid uniform doesn’t have … ” I squinted at her long skirt. “Whatever that inlaid geometric pattern is meant to be. Very fancy. Gosh, you’re halfway to evening gown in that, never mind maid. Nice boots, too. Very, um, stompy.”
Horror muttered, “Good for kicking in heads, no doubt.”
Praem opened her lips with a soft click, then spoke in a voice like the ringing of silver bells amid a tower of ice.
“A maid is still a maid, even in a dream,” she said. “And I have been a bad girl.”
Abyssal Heather let out a soft hisssss. “Don’t feel bad, Praem. Heather’s been worse.”
Praem looked up at me again. “Yes.”
“W-what?” I stammered. “I’ve been a ‘bad girl’? Praem, you were there with us in the Governor’s Office, you know I’m not the bad one, it’s the other me, the bi— ah!”
Without the Praem Plushie anchoring me to Eileen’s back, I was finding it much more difficult to stay situated. The throbbing in my left shin was very bad, a few droplets of blood were falling from the left cuff of my pajama bottoms, and my guts were burning like a banked fire with every minor adjustment of my muscles. I struggled for a moment to wrap my arm back around Eileen’s front. She did her best to help, but even with her steady strength there was only so much she could achieve.
Praem stepped up beside me and slipped the Plushie back into the front of my yellow blanket. The Praem Plushie anchored me once again, her little fabric arms exerting the grip and strength of Praem herself.
“But,” I protested, “Praem, it’s you, it’s part of you. And you only just got yourself back together!”
“Yes,” she said.
“And you—”
“Yes.”
“ … thank you, Praem. I love you.”
Abyssally Beautiful Me agreed: “Love youuuu.”
“Yes,” said Praem.
Eileen turned her pinkly-glowing eyes on Praem as well. “Thank you, for everything you have done—”
“Yes.”
“—granddaughter?”
Praem said nothing.
Eileen said: “Silence may be golden, but it is not currency. Am I to attempt another form of payment?”
“I am not a granddaughter, I am a maid.”
Eileen said, “You may have made yourself a maid, but the one who made you was not a maid, but a maiden, and did not treat you as a maid or maiden made, until Heather made you whole with a name, and finished your making. Therefore, you are my granddaughter.”
Praem stared into Eileen’s pink eyes, like sunset reflected off shimmering sea. She did not smile, but I saw something akin to deep amusement behind those milk-white empty orbs.
“Grand Maid?” Eileen tried one more time. “It is not a word, but I understand we can invent those now.”
“Maids are grand,” said Praem. “Grand Maid is grander still.”
“Oh my gosh,” I whispered, more to myself than either of them. “Granddaughter. Right. Evelyn is going to have the mother of all freak outs.”
Eileen tried to look up at my face. “Heather, you punned.”
“I did?”
“You did!”
Part of me revelled in seeing this — my surrogate daughter (one of two, if one included Tenny, which one should and must) and my surrogate mother, negotiating the starting line of this new relationship, right in the middle of a victorious revolutionary march. All around us, patients and ex-nurses were still helping others up, dressing wounds, clapping shoulders, taking a breather amid the unravelling dream.
But another part of me felt terrible guilt; here I was, enjoying the collateral fruits of the dream, while Maisie was still—
Crack-crrrrack.
That sound again — that great glass enclosure, breaking open so slowly, far beneath our feet, locked in the core of the Box.
For once I was not the only one who heard that noise. Heather Abyssal twitched as well, looking around and cocking her head, tentacles flexing and twisting, nictitating membranes fluttering across her void-dark eyes. Scales flexed and fur stood on end. Muscles pulled taut, rolling beneath her skin. I stared at her for a long second, overawed by the sheer arousal I felt at the sight of myself. But then panic blotted out the speck of lust.
“Praem?!” I blurted out. “Did you feel that? Did you hear that noise?”
“I did not,” said Praem.
“Me neither,” agreed Eileen. “Are there secrets secreted which cannot join our herd?”
Zalu spoke up. “Ma’am, I didn’t hear a thing either. Negative on strange sounds.”
“Ditto,” said Xiyu. “Negative zero-zero.”
Horror muttered, “Not that anybody cares, but I also did not hear. You’re hearing things, Heather.”
Praem looked directly at Horror, and said: “Correct. Nobody cares.”
Horror stuck out her tongue.
Abyssal and Glorious Me went hisssss, then said: “We must hurry onward. The others are already winning.”
“Is that what that sound means?” I called out as she turned to stalk away, back into the corridors of the hospital. “Is that us winning? Is that Maisie breaking free!?”
She glanced back with a look from the deepest ocean trench, cold and alone and afraid, down in the infinite dark which lay along the very bottom of all reality. That look froze my blood and curdled my thoughts. How could something so beautiful look so forlorn, even if only for a moment? All my former lust was suddenly mixed with protective affection; I longed to enfold myself in my arms and tell her she would never be alone again. If only she would join me.
But then she showed me her rows of razor teeth, and shook her head. “We don’t know what that is, Heather. Only you do.”
“W-what?! But I have no idea, the Lonely Me in the Box was keeping it imprisoned, I don’t-”
“We don’t have time for speculation,” she hissed. “We need to save the rest. Or don’t you care?”
“Of course I care!” I cried out. “Eileen, follow her!” I raised Horror’s head, rallying my troops. “Everyone, everybody, we move onward again! To liberate the rest of the hospital! Onward!”
Abyssal and Razor-Clean Me turned and stalked away, her passing pulling at the attention of so many patients and inmates. Knights turned to follow, patients rejoined the mob, Zalu and Xiyu formed up either side of Eileen. The great mass of ex-nurses behind us fell in line.
We followed truth and beauty, plunging once more through the winding corridors of Cygnet Asylum.
Less than three minutes later, we stumbled into Lozzie.
Our Lozzie — our surrogate sister forever, no matter the blood in her veins — was in little need of rescue. She and her elite group of well-armed girls were waiting for us by the smashed-open wreckage of a fire door, which led down into the dark access tunnels beneath the hospital. All around them lay the bound and gagged forms of over a dozen nurses — already starting to lose their monstrous features and transform back into human forms, as our triumphant procession reached Lozzie’s position.
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Lozzie herself was hanging off the arm of a second Heather abyssus.
Lozzie was treating that Abyssal Heather like a delightful squeeze toy; she was half-wrapped in tentacles, rubbing her face against the scales and fur, giggling and purring, running her hands along spikes and spines and nuzzling against the plated and armoured neck of this Perfect Version of Me. Envy blossomed in my heart, for I longed so much to do the same, to be in Lozzie’s place and take the embrace a step further. How Lozzie avoided getting pricked on toxic spikes or lacerated by rows of tentacle-barbs, I had no idea; this second Abyssal Heather had made no effort to fold away her sharp edges and lethal weapons, though Lozzie was perfectly unharmed. Her pentacolour poncho was stained with dirt and soot and more than a little blood, but she was glowing with a triumph all her own.
Behind me, whispers started to rise from the patients I had liberated.
“It’s her! It’s the Lozzers!”
“It’s Lozzie!”
“It’s her!”
Lozzie lit up as we approached, bouncing upward in the arms of this second Abyssal Me. “Heathy!” she cried out. “And Heathy! Two for one and one for two! Or three now, three’s a magic number too! And Praemy! And ooooooooooh!”
‘My’ Abyssal Heather trotted forward to meet this second, identical self — another tentacle, now two of six. The second Abyssal Heather slipped out of Lozzie’s embrace to greet the first. They touched their tentacle tips together, then entwined their limbs, smooth muscle spiralling each around the other’s grasp. Membranous wings quivered and flexed and brushed in feathery caress. These Beautiful Twins pulled close, spikes and spines fitting together like puzzle pieces, their bodies a perfect match. They purred and trilled and made little clicking noises, then finally locked mouths in an open-eyed kiss.
A bomb went off in my chest — a meltdown of lust and need, thawing through my wounded gut and burning in my loins.
And here I was, alone inside my mask, left out of the embrace, denied reunion with myself. My lips quivered. I reached out a hand. “Please … p-please, you two, please—”
But then Lozzie was right in front of Praem and Eileen and myself, wide-eyed and wide-mouthed, making a face like she’d been handed a unicorn puppy.
“Hello,” said Eileen. “You are small, but also large. A little bit like me. Why have I never met you before? I would have learned so much, just by looking. But looking respectfully.”
Lozzie gaped, starstruck. “Heathy,” she whispered. “Heathy, how did you do it?!”
“My name is Eileen,” said Eileen.
Lozzie exploded into squeals, poncho flapping everywhere, raking greasy blonde hair out of her face. “No!? No waaaaaay! Seriously!? For serious double extra serious not a joke yes? Yes! Yes!?”
“I chose it myself,” Eileen confirmed. “Do you like it?”
Lozzie squealed again, going red in the face. “Yeah!”
I cleared my throat inside my squid-skull mask, trying to ignore the lust surging through my body, and the pair of Abyssal Mes necking just a few feet away. “It’s a long story, Lozzie. But to make it short, um, say hello to Eileen, she’s my … surrogate … mother.”
Lozzie straightened up like a cartoon snapping to attention; I half-expected her body to make a boi-oi-oi-oingggg sound. She stuck out a hand for Eileen. “You don’t get a hug, not yet, but you do get this!”
Eileen just stared at the hand, then at Lozzie. “I only have two. Both are occupied with Heather. I must uphold her decisions.”
“Ooooooh,” Lozzie purred, then nodded. She grabbed her own hand and shook it in Eileen’s place. “There. Now! Heathy!” Lozzie pointed up at my mask, then tilted her head sideways, her elation faltering just a little. “Heathy?”
“Y-yes? Lozzie, it’s good to see you, it’s good to see you’re not hurt!”
“Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm,” Lozzie hummed. “I was going to say that we should take Eileen home, that we have to take her home, because her pun game is encoded in her name. But … Heathy?” Lozzie tilted her head the other way. “Heathy?”
“Lozzie, what’s wrong?”
Praem said: “Heather is currently divided.”
“Ohhhhhh,” Lozzie cooed, as if this made perfect sense — then turned and slammed a hug into Praem’s front, without the slightest warning.
Anybody else would have gone flying backward and sprawled on the floor under Lozzie’s sudden ‘glomp’ — a delightful word I had learned only recently, but had been warned not to say in front of Evee. But Praem took the hug like a cross between an oak tree and a foam mattress, barely even adjusting her footing. She gently patted Lozzie on the back several times. When Lozzie bounced free of the hug, Praem’s maid uniform had not a single cuff of lace misplaced, not one crease where it should not be.
“Lozzie, I … ” I struggled with a sudden feeling of dislocation. Was there something so wrong with me that it was obvious to Lozzie from a single glance? “Lozzie, it’s still me under here. It’s me, it’s Heather! I swear it! I’m not … well I am divided, but … ”
Lozzie nodded. “Mmhmm, mmhmm! I know, Heathy! And well done, well done, well done! You got the Box opened! Opened up!”
Lozzie did a little jig-shuffle dance on the spot, oscillating back and forth and making her poncho spin. Several of her elite team of girls noticed and joined in, copying her swaying motions. The dance spread to other patients as well, among those who must have known Lozzie only by reputation. For a dizzying second my ‘army’ almost turned into an improvised dance party.
The dream was so thin now that Lozzie could impose genre at will, with nothing more powerful than a twirl of her poncho.
But then I muttered, “It … it wasn’t me. Who opened the Box, I mean. I was me, but the … the other … me … ”
Lonely Heather, the version of me who had gone straight for Maisie without a second thought.
If she had not done that, could I have freed my Abyssal Selves? Without that other part of me, would I have overcome the nurses, and accepted my trauma?
Lozzie halted her little dance and cocked her head at me again. “You mean it was one of the other other Heathys?” She flapped a corner of poncho at the two Abyssal Heathers, who were now holding hands and tentacles, staring at us with those huge dark eyes, as if waiting for Lozzie and I to finish. “Like them! Aren’t they soooo pretty?! You’re so beautiful, Heathy! Look at youuuuuu! Look at you two!”
The Doubly Beautiful Heathers From Below both went hissssss at Lozzie, who giggled back and blew them a kiss.
“Uh … t-thank you,” I stammered, feeling steamrollered by Lozzie’s affection.
How could she compare me with the blinding truth of those abyssal bodies? How could she call me beautiful, when I had the same face as the Loneliest Me, down in the Box? How could she call me pretty when, compared with those two, I was so small and rotten?
Lozzie bobbed her head at me again, then ducked low, as if trying to look upward and under the curved lip of my squid-skull mask. “Heathyyyy? Are you okay-okay in there? You sound kinda funny! Let me see—”
“No!” I blurted out, recoiling backward so hard I almost lost my grip on Eileen’s shoulders. “I’m not taking the mask off! I’m not let—”
Crick-crack-crrrrrack.
That hidden enclosure was still breaking open, somewhere deep down inside the Box, the cracks now deep and guttural, splitting apart metres of glass.
Both Abyssal Heathers turned on the spot, twitching their attention up and down the corridor, tentacles flexing, emitting faint hissing from their identical maws of sharp teeth. Either side of them the corridor was full of patients and ex-nurses now — untying the nurses on the floor, raising them to their feet, spreading the good news. Patients and nurses alike gave the Abyssal Pair a wide berth, and flinched when they — we, I — let out that double-hiss of soft alarm.
The cracking sound had cut off the rest of my sentence.
I’m not letting you see how ugly I am.
For a moment of dizzying vertigo, I felt absurd and stupid; but it was true — compared to those Abyssal Heathers, I was ugly.
Lozzie did not appear to have heard that cracking sound, not been shocked by my unspoken admission. She was already speeding on, her words gathering momentum. “Okay okay okay! Any-way any-way any-way!” she chanted, bobbing from foot to foot. I breathed a silent sigh of relief, my heart racing behind my ribs. The idea of taking off the squid-skull mask terrified me, as if Lozzie would be repelled when she saw the truth of my face beneath. “Have you seen outdoors, Heathy? Tenn-Tenns is here! I told her not to come into the dream, but she did anyway and we have to get to her and help her though I think it’s all just foam rockets and—”
“Uh, yeah, yes, of course, Lozzie, I saw her too. And Jan is up on her back.”
Lozzie’s eyes lit up with mischief and delight. “She’s come to rescue me! She’s soooooo sweet!”
“I, uh, don’t think it’s quite as heroic as that. But perhaps in principle, certainly.”
Lozzie thrust one fist into the air, a sharpened metal shiv clutched in her grubby fingers. “And meanwhilies down here we’ve cut all the phone lines and the internet cables and everything!” Lozzie broke into a grin — predatory, dangerous, with a promise of violence behind her teeth. My little Lozzie might be awake, but she was still part of the dream, and loving it more than she had guessed. “Nobody’s calling for help, not before we’re done! And ooooh, hellos!” Lozzie was instantly distracted by the sight of Zalu and Xiyu. “You’re both prettyyyyy. Are you two from Mrs Eileen as well?”
Eileen echoed, in a whisper, “Mrs. Mm.”
“Not with her, Ma’am,” said one of the twins.
“We’re here to back up Heather,” said the other.
“Another very long story,” I said, trying not to get bogged down. “They’re from Outside, and they’re on our side. That’s all you need to know for now.”
Lozzie threw me a playful, sketchy, skew-whiff salute. To my surprise, several of the patients she’d been leading did the same, mimicking the gesture. Lozzie’s mannerisms were infectious.
“Yes Ma’am,” Lozzie yelled. “Scary Heather Ma’am!”
“ … scary Heather?”
Lozzie shrugged. “S’what you’re trying to be, right? Right!”
“I … n-no, I’m just … just me … ”
The pair of Abyssal Heathers were already turning away and moving off down the corridor, clawed feet clicking against the floor, grey dawn light catching the iridescent sheen of their scales, drowned out by the subtle rainbow bioluminesence pulsing inside their tentacles, with matching tails swishing in the air, brushing tips, and parting again with little taps and touches. That sight grabbed my head, my heart, and something significantly lower as well. I shivered and gulped, feeling a whine rising up my throat.
Lozzie was tilting her head at me again in silent question, like there was something wrong with me. “Heathy?”
“Uh … l-look, Lozzie, explanations can wait until later!” I said, nodding after my Two Tentacles. “We have to keep up, and reunite with the others! Eileen, Zalu, Xiyu, Praem—”
“Yes,” said Praem, and strode on ahead, maid dress swishing about her ankles.
Eileen followed, carrying me forward. Zalu and Xiyu shouldered their guns and took up position either side. Praem walked with hands clasped behind her back, like a head maid inspecting the work of her many girls. Lozzie’s poncho fluttered as she fell in with the other patients; she turned around and back-pedalled after us, waving her arms and her poncho at the crowd.
“Come on, ladies and ladiettes!” she shouted. “We gotta tear down these fucking walls and we ain’t donezo onezo yetzo! Yaaaaaah!”
A wild cry went up from Lozzie’s revolutionaries — howling, chanting, squeals of delight, a roar from the prison inmates, and more than a few muffled whines as girls were swept off their feet and kissed by those at their side.
Because in the end they were Lozzie’s revolutionaries, not my ‘army’. This was not a war, I was just tidying up my mess, and I couldn’t do it alone.
No, the real war was between me, myself, and I. Between me and Lonely Heather.
If only I could talk to her alone. Just her and I, in private, where our mutual ugliness could not be seen. Maybe then I could bury this guilt—
Crack-craaaack.
We followed the Abyssal Pair — Truth and Beauty, I dubbed them, though they were impossible to tell apart — along the spiral which led to the outer shell of Cygnet Asylum.
Resistance was rapidly thinning out. The groups of nurses we overran were smaller now, no longer the hallway-choking zombie-like hordes of before; these were only stragglers and wanderers, the lost and the damned. The few patients we encountered were the same — individuals and pairs locked in dark rooms, terrified girls hiding all alone under tables, screaming for mercy and clawing at the nurses clambering after them, as well as those unlucky few who had already been caught, drugged and bound and wrapped in straitjackets. We enlightened those locked in darkness, offered a hand to those who thought they were alone, and cut free those who had been trapped, even if they needed carrying afterward.
No matter how small or mean or overlooked, nobody was getting left behind. When this was over, every patient would be free and every trauma would be accepted. Every piece of the dream would come crashing down. Cygnet would be over and done.
We swept through the hospital faster and faster, hot on the heels of my twinned Abyssal Selves. Sickly grey morning light poured in through the windows — always to our left now, providing occasional glimpses of Tenny’s parallel progress; my beloved giant moth-puppy was grinding her way across the toy-tank battlefield outdoors, toward the vast dark steel edifice of the Box. At that distance I couldn’t spot the shiny metal speck of Jan up on her back, only the bulk of Tenny herself, her velvet-black body and the white whorls of her fur.
Every time we spotted her, Lozzie would leap and point and flap like she’d seen the world’s best dog. “That’s my Tenn-Tenns! My girl! Look at her, she’s so huge now!”
Distant echoes of that fight reached us through the stout brick walls — booming and crashing, the rip-tear of torn metal, the clatter of armoured vehicles dropped from a great height to smash open upon the ground.
Eventually the Abyssal Heathers led the way into a canteen, where our tidal wave of revolutionary inevitability slammed head first into the last true battle of Cygnet’s fall.
This canteen was not the one in which I had eaten breakfast upon my arrival in the dream. That first canteen had been a sad and drab affair, plucked from my memories of the real Cygnet. Compared to this it may as well have been a pleasure palace stuffed with honey and dates and little dishes of caviar. The canteen into which we burst was unsuitable for any use, let alone for eating food.
The floor of cracked tiles was filthy with dark stains, both brownish red and reddish brown, the kind of stains which had weight and texture and offered a spongy cushion beneath one’s cringing feet. The walls were worse, spotted with black mold and streaked with decades of water damage, perhaps once off-yellow or dark cream, but now reduced to soggy, sodden, slippery grey, as if the very substrate had been replaced by a mat of fungal infection. The tables and chairs were more rust than metal, and the metal was the soft grey sheen of unpainted lead. Rotten food lay discarded here and there upon cracked tin plates. At the rear of the room stood a counter from which food may have once been served, but had been overrun by a carpet of furry blue mold.
Many of the tables and chairs had been overturned, their rusty edges leaving streaks and scrapes upon the floor. In the centre of the room stood a makeshift barricade — a fortress of four tables turned on their sides, with one in the middle as a raised platform. That fortress was under assault from all four sides by the final mass grouping of monstrous zombie-nurses, numbering perhaps fifty or sixty, waves of ghoulish flesh and snatching claws, brandishing bubbling syringes and snapping lengths of blue nylon rope.
My family held that fortress, against the crashing waves of my trauma.
Eight Knights stood inside the square of overturned tables, knighting the makeshift walls of the little fort. They were in an even worse state than the Knights who had accompanied Praem through the labyrinth of the prison levels. Black helmets were cracked and shiny visors were shattered, showing glimpses of pinkish-red meat wriggling and writhing beneath their humanoid exteriors. Bulletproof vests were slashed and torn, whole segments of armour ripped open and hanging loose. Their guns were reduced to twisted lumps of jagged metal, having long ago run out of bullets. They clubbed nurses with their guns as the monsters of my trauma tried to swarm over the tables, reaching down past the barricade to push back the onrushing tide. Between and behind the Knights were perhaps a dozen additional Cygnet patients, the very last few of the lost girls of the asylum, doing what little they could to assist the defence.
But Knights and patients did not stand alone. Four figures fought beyond the barricade, sowing chaos and carnage to keep the pressure off the others.
Raine — grinning with every flash and fall of her machete, whirling like a cross between a rugby player and a ballerina, fighting barefoot and greasy and stained with worse things than blood. Zheng — half-naked in shorts and a torn-up t-shirt, covered head to toe in a sheen of glistening crimson blood, knocking nurses together with brute strength; Zheng still did not look like her usual self, shrunken down to a cruel parody of her muscle and mass, lacking her sheer imposing height. But that compact frame now held all her demonic strength, undeniable as the ripping grin on her face. Then, Twil — all werewolf, a ball of tooth and claw and bristling fur, darting about like a hound among hens; nurses piled atop her, but she was an unstoppable force, a coiling knot of muscle and sinew and snarling teeth. And last — myself, me, I, another Abyssal Heather, floating and fluttering between the others whenever any of them should falter, bringing down nurses at unprotected rears, keeping the little trio tight and together and more well-protected than they knew.
Inside the barricade, past the wall of Knights and patients, my family’s little fortress benefited from what Raine might call ‘fire support.’
Evelyn’s wheelchair was up on the table in the middle, brakes applied, seat empty but for the coiled mass of a discarded grey dressing gown. Evelyn herself — still withered and wasted, her body so thin and fragile beneath a scratchy Cygnet t-shirt, with her one leg missing, and her eyes sunken with exhaustion and stress — was up, not on her own one foot, but supported and cradled and held aloft, by Another Me.
Another Abyssal Heather - Number Four? I was losing count — was helping Evee to ‘stand’. Evelyn’s withered foot rested atop abyssal claws, cradled in perfect safety so close to those razor-sharp weapons. The Abyssal Heather had both arms and four tentacles wrapped around Evelyn’s body, cradling her from behind, supporting her weight with tendrils turned to plush cushions against her spine. That Abyssal Heather had folded away every single sharp edge and hooked barb. Her remaining two tentacles acted as a prosthetic leg, anchored at Evee’s hip, their entwined tips splayed to take her weight.
Evelyn’s eyes were wide with rage and satisfaction, her teeth clenched, her face flushed. She held a human thigh-bone in both hands — the fresh white of the newly dead, scraps of flesh still clinging to both ends, the middle covered in scrimshawed magic symbols.
Her mother’s leg, stolen all over again. Evee’s one memento, her revenge.
Evelyn clutched the bone-wand in both hands and shouted scraps of inhuman language from her raw and ragged throat, spitting blood as the syllables split her flesh. Any nurses who made it over the barricade were thrown back by coils of crimson flame, the product and pride of Evelyn the Mage.
A fifth and final Abyssal Heather stood a little way back from Evelyn, cradling a bundle of pale flesh and black clothes. She was not contributing to the fight, concentrating instead on protecting whatever it was which she carried in her arms and tentacles.
My family had done an incredible job of holding this little fortress, buried deep in the toxic stew of my trauma; without my support, they may have held it for many hours longer — but eventually they would have fallen. The nurses which fell beneath Raine’s machete stuck their arms back onto their shoulders and rose from the bloody heaps of their own bodies on the floor. The nurses with heads cracked and broken by Zheng re-knit their flesh and came at her again. The nurses dashed apart by Twil always stood right back up, like weighted children’s toys bouncing upright, re-animated by the terrible logic of the dream.
But my family did not fight alone. None of us did, or would ever do so again.
I swept into the rotten canteen on a tidal wave of patients and inmates and liberated ex-nurses, carried forward by Eileen, flanked by Zalu and Xiyu, backed up by Lozzie and Praem, holding Horror’s head aloft with a cry of victory echoing inside my squid-skull mask.
My pair of Abyssal Heathers ploughed into the final scrum of zombie-nurses, tearing a gaping hole in their formation. Patients poured in, laying about themselves left and right with improvised weapons, ripping the gap wider, ruining the nurse’s cohesion, flowing right past the surprised looks from Raine and Zheng and Twil. Lozzie joined them, a flittering butterfly of pastel poncho sprinting down the middle — pausing briefly to hug Zheng’s naked, bloody form, and to plant a sneaky little kiss on Twil’s furry snout. Praem proceeded directly toward her mother, as if strolling down a Sharrowford street.
Zalu and Xiyu guided me forward, riding upon Eileen’s back. I cast about myself with the six baleful eyes of the squid-skull mask, felling nurses before us, driving them back into their human forms, leaving them panting and gasping down on the floor.
The battle was won within seconds. Eileen had carried me to the edge of the makeshift barricade, and there were no more nurses, no more living trauma, no more monsters in this dream.
A sudden echoing silence settled on the rotten canteen, broken only by the distant rumble and crack-bang of Tenny’s solitary fight outdoors. The room shook gently under the pounding of faraway guns and the fall of giant moth-feet.
I panted inside my squid-skull mask, quivering with victory and anxiety both at once. “Is it over? Are we done?”
“Staffing issues have been resolved,” Eileen said under her breath. “Collective bargaining is so much easier when one is not alone.”
I tried to laugh, but I felt limp and spent, sagging against her shoulders.
Time and sound and motion resumed all around. The aftermath of the final battle of the Cygnet Revolution began to unfold — patients and ex-nurses came forward to raise the defeated back to their feet, to offer them my acceptance; eight Knights opened the barricade and limped out to greet those who had rescued them; patients collapsed with relief or exhaustion. Shouts went up as the patients and inmates began to organise themselves — “Is that everybody?”, “Anybody missing a friend?”, “We need a full roll-call, find out if anybody’s not here!”
And amid all that, my friends and family and lovers approached.
Praem mounted the table in the middle of the fortress and took responsibility for Evee, easing her from the tender embrace of Abyssal Heather Number Five, helping her back into her wheelchair. Evelyn clung to Praem with an urgent desperation, but allowed herself to be lifted up and lowered all the way back to the floor, wheelchair and all. She raised a curious eyebrow at me as Praem wheeled her forward, then went pale and silent. Lozzie flitted among the patients, then hovered at the edge of our gathering group, hopping from foot to foot, overexcited at this penultimate climax of the dream. Twil dropped most of her werewolf transformation — once again retaining only her wolfish ears and bushy tail — then stopped dead to gape at me and Eileen. Zheng joined us, grinning wide; she shouted “Shaman! Victory tastes like steaming meat!”
Raine ambled over next to Zheng, skin running with sweat, machete held in a numb fist, and broke into a matching grin, beaming for me, at me, because of me. She raised her eyebrows at the sight of Eileen, and said, “Holy shit, sweet thing. Heather, my genius little squid girl. You really did it.”
The Five Abyssal Heathers joined their tentacles together, matching caresses, swapping quick, strange, otherworldly kisses with each other — though one stood slightly apart, still cradling that bundle of black clothing in her arms.
For a long moment, nobody spoke, our mutual silence laid upon the backdrop of patient voices and sobbing nurses and the distant crack-boom of Tenny’s ongoing battle outdoors.
Everyone just stared at me, at Eileen, at those I had brought with me and what I had achieved. Everyone — with the exception of Praem — cast several fascinated glances at the Abyssal Heathers, and what they were all evidently getting up to with each other.
But eventually, attention settled back on me.
Raine blinked. “Sweet thing? You okay up there?”
I cleared my throat behind my squid-skull mask. “Y-yes, I just …”
“Nah, serious question,” Raine said. “Your wounds. You doing okay?”
I shrugged. “I’ll keep. I’m … f-fine.” My heart was racing. My skin itched. My mask felt thin as paper. “Is … is anybody … hurt?” I asked, filling the silence with anything, the first thing that seemed right to ask.
Heads were shaken, shoulders were shrugged. Zheng said, “Yes, shaman! And it feels good!”, then thumped her own chest. Raine chuckled at that, and nudged Zheng in the side.
Twill shook her head, and kept shaking. “Big H, I cannot believe what I’m looking at, yo. And who the hell are these two?” She gestured at Zalu and Xiyu.
“Yeah,” Raine purred, with obvious appreciation in her voice. “Introduce us to these two spicy spec-op babes, why don’t you?”
“It’s us,” said Zalu.
“Hello,” said Xiyu. “We were plants last time we met.”
“Oh,” Raine said, eyebrows shooting up. She cracked a grin. “Nice, nice. I preferred your birthday suits.”
Evelyn pointed at Eileen with her bone-wand, eyes bulging in her face. “Am I the only one here ignoring the obvious problem with this scene? Heather. Heather, start talking.”
“Uh, yes,” I said. “I know this looks—”
“Heather,” Evelyn repeated, and made it sound like ‘do not test me’. Her lips were still flecked with blood from her spell-casting, and she looked grey with exhaustion, animated only by irritation. “Heather, I love you, and I am endlessly grateful that you are safe, and that you have just ridden to our rescue. But choose your next words carefully. If you tell me that you have seduced the fucking Eye, I am going to have some kind of cardiac event, right here, right now, and Praem is going to have to resuscitate me.”
Praem put a gentle hand on Evee’s shoulder. “Yes.”
“Oh!” I breathed a sigh of relief. “No, no! Not in the slightest, absolutely not. I’ve not made her into a lover, or anything like that. That would feel … terribly wrong, gosh.”
Evelyn breathed a sigh of relief too, visibly sagging with an emotion I didn’t understand.
“She’s my mother,” I said.
Evelyn froze.
“Spiritually speaking,” I added quickly. “Not biologically. Metaphorically, I mean. By choice.”
Eileen opened her mouth. “Hello, everybody. It is nice to meet you. I am called Eileen.”
Raine threw her hands into the air, machete and all, and roared with a kind of wild triumph I’d never heard from her before, hard enough to make me flinch. Zheng copied her, breaking into a hooting chant of absolute abandon, stomping both feet and gnashing her teeth and waving her fists about. Twil blinked several times, then did a squint-frown, then finally got it; she winced. Lozzie covered her mouth with a corner of her poncho, stifling the giggles.
Evelyn stared and stared and stared. Praem stared too, for rather different reasons.
I waited for the cheer to die away.
“Um,” I said. “She’s on our side now. I’ve … woken her up, out of a lifelong stupor, sort of. It’s very complicated to explain, and I don’t have time to go over all the details, but you can read the book she wrote, later on.”
“The what?” Evelyn squinted. “She wrote a book, what? Sorry? Heather, this is too much to unpack. Don’t even try.”
The bundle of black clothing and pale flesh cradled in the arms of Abyssal Heather Number Five shifted and uncoiled, and revealed herself as Seven-Shades-of-Blood-Goblin, red-black looking a bit teary, scrawny frame rather worse for wear, like she’d been recently tossed down a hillside covered in brambles.
“Told you the Eye was open in the sky, Evee,” she gurgled. “Told youu-urrrk!”
Evelyn huffed and pressed a hand to her eyes. “Yes, fine. Fine!”
Eileen looked at Sevens. “Hello, Rainbow.”
Seven-Shades-of-Sunlight spluttered with something only half akin to laughter.
“Sevens!” I said. “Sevens, oh, oh dear, I’m glad you’re here too. I thought you were up on the roof!”
“I wasssss,” Sevens rasped. “Fell off.” She nudged the Abyssal Heather who was carrying her. “You caught me before I hit the ground. Still hurting. Urrrrr … ”
Sevens’ trailing gurgle was undercut by the distant booming and crashing of Tenny’s fight outdoors.
Evelyn raised her free hand. “Heather is right. We don’t have time to unpack all this. You.” She gestured at Eileen. “You … I’m going to pretend, for now.”
“We can all pretend together,” said Eileen.
A horrible churning in my chest made me speak. “It’ll make sense, I promise. We just don’t have time for explaining the whole thing right now. We have to get to Tenny, and the Box, and Maisie, and finally end this dream. Don’t we?”
To my surprise — and with a growing, gnawing, stomach-churning anxiety — my friends all shared a series of worried looks. Evelyn squinted at me, then glanced at the others, as if something was terribly wrong. Raine’s beaming grin dipped in brightness; she frowned at me in thought. Zheng cracked her neck from left to right, then sniffed the air, as if trying to pick up my scent. Twil’s bushy tail fluffed up with sudden alarm, ears twitching.
Lozzie bounced from foot to foot, capering forward. “Heathy’s not all there right now! Praem told me alllll about it! Half of her is elsewhere!”
“That’s not true!” I blurted out from behind my mask, my cheeks suddenly burning in private darkness. “Well, um, no. I mean, part of me is elsewhere, but it’s not half. That would be far too much. And it’s not relevant right now! It’s not! We just have to keep moving and keep going so I can deal with it. So I can deal with me. I promise I can deal with me. I can.”
Evelyn frowned harder “Heather,” she said slowly. “Is that really you under there?”
Craaack-crack went that distant glass; the quintet of Abyssal Heathers reacted like a pack of hounds, twitching at the distant sound.
“Of course it’s me!” I said from behind my mask. “Evee, how could you ask such a thing?”
Silence seeped into the room, broken by the boom and crash from Tenny’s lone battle.
And I realised, with horrifying clarity, that none of my friends had approached me. None of them had stepped forward. My friends, my family, those I loved and trusted, they stood well beyond arm’s length, in a semi-circle of examination, with I and Eileen at the centre.
Evelyn didn’t answer.
“Yeeeeeeeah,” Twil said eventually. “Big H, I’m not like, being rude, or looking a gift horse in the mouth after you just rode in and saved us all and shit, but there’s something not right about you, like. And I’m not talking about the nurse’s head swinging from your fist.”
“Hello there,” Horror said. “Twillamina, you’re looking well and—”
“Shut the fuck up, stump-head,” Twil said, “or I’ll come finish the job.”
Seven-Shades-of-Sunlight said, “Mmmmm. Heather’s all … fragmentary.”
Zheng let out a purr — soft and low, without her usual power. “The Shaman does not smell right. Shaman, what has happened?”
“N-nothing!” I stammered, panting and sweating now, horrified at the prospect of taking off my mask and showing them all what lay beneath — her face, my face, Lonely Heather staring out from behind my eyes, full of the guilt of abandoning her, abandoning myself, of—
Raine stepped forward.
She walked right up to me. I would have flinched away and clutched my squid-skull mask to my head, but Eileen was my legs, and she did not comprehend.
Raine — glowing with sweat and love, her eyes meeting my empty sockets without fear, her chestnut brown hair raked back over her head — stopped, and put her free hand on my thigh.
“Sweet thing, it’s only me.”
“ … R-Raine, don’t … ”
“I can tell,” she murmured. “I may only be half awake, but I can tell, sure as I can look up at the sky and see the sun.”
My throat was dry. My lips were glue. When I parted them, they hurt. “Tell what?” I whispered.
“That we’re only talking to half of you, Heather. Where’s the rest of my girl gotten to, hey?”
And with those words, a mighty breaking split my ears, louder and longer and more final than any I had yet heard. The ground shook and the walls trembled. Patients and inmates and ex-nurses screamed. My friends felt it happen, heard every moment. The creaking and cracking was no longer confined to the space beneath the asylum and the space between my ears.
This prison break was for everybody now.
Crack!