Her heart was still beating unsteadily in her chest, and the air still felt almost cool in that awkward, non committal way you only get from keeping the windows closed during a rainy night. She reached out to brush her hand against the faux black stone countertop, and it felt cool, the surface was smooth and free of dust and grime, and there was absolutely no give at all when she pressed her palm firmly against it, these were all good, and understandable things.
One thing she couldn’t wrap her head around though, was what exactly was standing there in front of her. At first she thought Helena was just one of those mentally unstable fans you know? One of the like, several hundred or thousand really dedicated people who kept on praising her. At least right up until the moment she stepped out of line and needed to be shoved back in with a litany of death threats and comments that her editor has tried and failed to convince her to stop reading for weeks.
But uh, fans don’t melt off their own skin, or grow a secondary pair of arms, or grow in height enough to bump and scrape their crowned head against the apartment’s admittedly low ceiling, but you know who does? Helena Heart, the deathclad tyrant, the smiling reaper, the one who weaves flesh and bone, and the main character’s girlfriend from my hit fantasy web novel and apparent life’s work, Unchained Hearts, the one she just killed off a few months ago. Except, that doesn’t make any sense now, does it?
She heard Helena cough from somewhere far above her, but she tried her best to ignore it as she tried to think this through. If this was a dream she reasoned, it was one of the most coherent and logically consistent dream she’s had in years. Which didn’t seem possible for a creatively burned out husk of a woman passed out on a trash bag, unless dying just added a creative spark that you couldn’t find anywhere else she supposed, but she wasn’t doing that bad, and she had another good reason to believe that this wasn’t a dream.
Helena, the woman, beast, or whatever it is you’d call the freakishly tall four armed flesh wizard thing staring down at her with an eerie stillness right now, she had an extremely well defined shape and name unlike just about anyone she could remember seeing in a dream, one that survived the second glance she inflicted upon it.
Her lack of eyes, the snake circlet on her head, the four arms and amaranth colored robes, her flayed flesh left bare wherever it was untouched by porcelain or cloth, they were all still there just as she last saw it, except her outer, or shoulder arms? Whatever you wanted to call them, they were resting on her waist now, possibly to indicate annoyance or impatience or something, it was a little cute actually.
“Lost for words?” a voice from somewhere above Jeanne said. “I’m not surprised. I would be too if something I thought of as mere fiction appeared in the flesh. Especially since you, you write of magic, but you have never experienced it have you?”
Jeanne craned her head up, almost standing on tiptoes to stare at the beast’s porcelain skinned? Masked? Face with thoughts still churning in her head. “Uh, hmm,” she withdrew back into herself as soon as she started to speak. What the hell can she even say here? Nod along and admit to being a useless shut in who sneered at people who actually believed in this sort of stuff? Pretend that she knew a lot more than Helena is willing to give her credit for? No, she wasn’t even sure if she was talking to a real person.
Instead Jeanne reached out with one hand, and very purposefully grabbed onto Helena’s gloved arm, and pressed firmly against the soft cloth, quickly finding some resistance in the form of the hard if still somewhat malleable plastic flesh underneath. It was cold, but not altogether unpleasant, and her hand lingered there for a while, still kneading as her own gaze drifted up and down the monster’s body from head to toe, taking in every little detail until something finally clicked into place just as the arm was pulled away.
“Your robes, they’re all wrong,” she finally blurted out, before Helena could say anything.
“What?” Helena finally said, as she ran her other shoulder-arm’s hand along where Jeanne touched, smoothing out the creases that formed in her glove.
“They’re all… look I understand that making a new dress wholesale every time you transform is probably a lot harder than I could probably imagine, but couldn’t you have put in some effort for your big reveal?” Jeanne bluntly said, “No offence, but I’ve always imagined you wearing something more regal is all, and not in a, not a… bathrobe.”
“Y-you wha?” Helena blurted out. “Really? That’s what you’re going to do? Grope my arm and then complain about what I’m wearing tonight? You’re not going to try and make a run for it? Or break down crying and start apologising for everything you’ve done to me?”
“I mean what’s the point? You’re not real,” Jeanne flatly said.
“Huh?” Helena craned her head down a little to look at something closer, presumably Jeanne’s face, but it was a little hard to tell what with her eyes being black voids and all.
“I mean you can’t possibly be real, you’re a hallucination, you’ve got to be, I mean come on, just think about it for a moment. I’m at the lowest point in my life right now, I think my best friend’s left me, and I’m just not sure what I’ve really been doing for the past five… god, has it been five years? It’s just, I’m barely sapient right now much less attractive, and I only went to your party because I heard there would be free food alright? How am I supposed to believe th-I mean you’re a beautiful woman alright? And I mean really beautiful, so what would you take me home for? I mean it doesn’t make any sense, no sense at all,” Jeanne ejaculated, pacing around the kitchen a little as she spoke without pause.
“You had like, one-two dozen guys to choose from back then, and god knows how many women there would be into it, Vera included probably! God I have no idea why she knows I write this shit, did I leave a tab open or?” Jeanne instinctively started grinding her fingernails together as she spoke, “And yo-you just have to look like her too didn’t you? At least until you did the molten wax thing which looks really cool in person! And God, everything else about you is just, you’re almost perfect alright? Better than what I imagined but it’s all just.”
“No, no! I don’t care about the magic, I don’t care about whatever months long revenge plan you definitely have, because I know that no matter what happens to me now, I’ll wake up inside of a hospital room sometime next week, and make Vera cry when I turn crosseyed and start babbling,” Jeanne finally stopped talking, notably panting for breath as she leaned against the fridge.
There was a long moment of silence, before Helena finally said, “Are you done? Because that…that explains a lot.”
“Huh?” Jeanne said, looking up at Helena once more.
“About you, about the state of the world I lived in, and why everything kept getting worse no matter what she did, and why the little bastards you sent to kill me are still running around unpunished,” Helena said, in a calm and measured tone that still made Jeanne wince for some reason.
“It’s because you’re completely incapable of not looking a gift horse in the mouth aren’t you? I can see why you would be terrified of me after my transformation, but you weren’t even bothered by that were you?” Helena pointed at Jeanne with one of her chest arms as if to punctuate that last statement.
“Well I mean, it was a little scary, but you’re still a hallucination so,” Jeanne said, mostly to herself as Helena continued to speak over her, making an x shape with her two shoulder arms as she continued with, “No, you were too busy thinking you’ve gone insane and started hallucinating after getting invited to another woman’s room, because your clothes look ugly and you haven’t properly groomed yourself in weeks or something after your girlfriend or whoever dumped you?”
Jeanne froze in place before she stammered out, “H-hey!”
“You know most people would see this as getting their foot in the door right? Help me out with a few simple chores, get a moment or two alone to scope out my apartment for any signs of an unseen lover and ask the sort of questions you’d be too embarrassed to ask in front of the hungry crowd, like how long I’m planning to stick around, whether I really live alone here, and what my number is,“ Helena opined, slowly circling around the kitchen counter to approach Jeanne.
“I’m uh, not great at small talk so,” Jeanne said, again, mostly to herself, as she instinctively backed away from Helena’s looming form.
“But you know what? This is great, it really is. Here I thought you would have some well reasoned philosophical grounding, an underlying theme resonating throughout your work about man’s inherently self destructive and ruthlessly tribalistic nature even in the face of the end, or something about how a belief in objective morality and a ceaseless pursuit of purity can baselessly snuff out genuine attempts for redemption. Riveting and respectable stuff I’m still not sure I could have made you abandon without force,” Helena said, with a hint of excitement at the very end that made Jeanne suddenly very aware that she was being backed into a corner.
“Uh, thank you? Wait, no that wasn’t a com-what do you think made me kill you then?” Jeanne said in rapid fire succession, her eyes darting around the room.
“You’re depressed, aren’t you?” Helena stated, in a blunt matter of fact tone.
The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.
“What? No no, that’s going too far I think even for a figment of my own imagination, I really don’t want to be one of those people who self psychoanalyse like that, I know I’ve had a bad week… or two, but I wouldn’t say that I’m depressed,” Jeanne said, unconvincingly.
“Have you heard yourself speak Jeanne? I don’t think I’ve heard you say a single good thing about yourself. I get that this could just be a rough day for you, but I don’t think I’m reading too deeply into things when a woman who looks like she’s long past caring for herself starts aggressively putting herself down every time someone mentions her.”
“I uh, don’t know what to say to that,” Jeanne said, while looking down at her feet to try and not focus too much on how close Helena was.
“Look, I’m not going to sugarcoat it, I personally think you’re a right bastard. You’ve given me all of these… feelings, thoughts, desires for a woman I had to live with, bound me into letting them simmer and build up for months until you finally let them boil over, and you what? Let us have barely two weeks of joy before you killed me off? If you weren’t like this in person I would have considered reaching out and crushing you like a grape,“ Helena said, leaving a little pause that let Jeanne’s gaze naturally linger onto her overly long and gloved shoulder-arms.
“But, I meant what I said earlier, in this hollowed out and confusing world you’ve managed to push your head out of the water and scream loud enough to hear. Your work is good, or at least good enough to get people to feel personally attacked when I died, as questionable as that sounds it’s certainly something to be proud of.”
“Thanks I guess?” Jeanne said, daring to look up at Helena’s face once more.
Only to find her practically lunging towards her with one outstretched shoulder-arm, pinning her firmly against the fridge behind her before she leaned right in to say, “But if you don’t at least try to turn your whole life around and give Marie the happiness she deserves, I am going to tear out every single bone in your body outside of your skull, break them into a circular wire frame, and stitch your still living flesh and organs around them so that I can use you as a biodegradable trash can.”
“Uh, w-wha?” Jeanne blurted out, trying and failing to wriggle out of Helena’s grip, as one long finger forces her to look up at her captor while she spoke.
“As fleeting as her presence was in the several hundred years of life you have given me, she was still the light of my life until it was snuffed out by a few strokes of your pen! Do not think for a single second that I would ever let you give her anything other than the happy ending and life that she deserves after she gets out of the mess you put her into.”
Wriggling her chin out of Helena’s grasp, Jeanne takes in a deep breath before blurting out, “B-but she’s not even real! Even if I accept that you’re really here, and talking to me, she isn’t!”
Jeanne could feel Helena’s finger switching tack a little, moving to wrap around her throat and apply firm and insistent pressure, “She’s just, just words on a page! Bullet Points in an outline I started working on when I was an edgy teenager! A 2D JPEG on a cover my publisher paid some guy I’ve never met personally a couple hundred dollars for!”
Helena’s response comes in quick and loud, her large arm grasping firmly onto Jeanne’s body as she shook her back and forth like an etch and sketch, “I don’t care if she’s not real to you the way the sun or your sharply dressed neighborly aunt is! I don’t care if I will never see her again outside of the few words I can tell are distinctively hers on every single page you write! I am not going to let you ruin her life for the crime of existing in your depressed mind!”
Jeanne lets out a gasp as she is violently shaken about, her mind scrabbling to try and find steady ground to defend her life’s work from despite it all, “I’m n-I mean everything’s already set in stone! This isn’t entirely in my hands anymore! I’ve gone fully professional now! All of my notes, all of the little scribblings on a page I’ve made since I was 16, all of it, every single damned thing including the ending needs to go through my editor, I haven’t written it but it’s already approved!”
The shaking stops, if only for a moment, as Helena simply tilts Jeanne’s body up to stare up at her porcelain masked face as she said in a seemingly calmer tone, “And there’s no way to change that? Nothing you could say to your editor about changing your mind?”
Thinking that her words have finally found purchase, Jeanne simply states, “W-well I wouldn’t want to sound wishy washy right?”
This is met with a long sigh, and a brief glimmer of hope as Helena’s grip seemed to loosen, only for her grip to shift to grasping firmly onto Jeanne’s right arm as the other shoulder arm reached for her left, “Alright, trashcan time it is, did you know that your world has discovered some interesting new ways to keep a head alive for hours and days without the rest of the body? There’s a lot of medicines and fancy training and equipment involved that I can’t get here on short notice, but I think with magic I can do this for you.”
Staring up at Helena with eyes the size of dish plates, Jeanne violently wriggled and writhed in place, struggling to throw her off as she blurted out, “Wha-wait! Wait! Uh, I mean even if I wanted to change it I really wouldn’t know what to replace it with! There’s a reason why it hasn't been updated in over a month! I’ve been stuck on the same goddamn chapter ever since my best friend left me okay? I’m a mess! I’m a complete loser! I’m the most worthless piece of shit that’s ever lived! But please-please don’t kill me.”
“Why should I? If you can’t even write anymore then what’s the point?” Helena bluntly asked, still struggling to pin her down without damaging her fridge.
Thinking as fast as she could with part of her mind still firmly focused on wriggling and squirming around in place to ward off Helena’s other hand, Jeanne’s mind finally remembered something, a bit of vaguely generic advice a disgraced psychiatrist gave in a video that her weird american ex online friend sent her after learning that she was depressed, “Uh, well uh, I! I can think of a good reason to change it now! If, if you’d give me a moment to speak.”
With one finger already loosely wrapped around Jeanne’s left arm, Helena let out a sigh, and simply said, “You know what? Fine, what is it now?”
Struggling to stare directly ahead at Helena’s face despite herself, Jeanne stammers out a, “What, what if we, I mean, what if after a long period of soul searching where I uh, took the proper time out to deal with my mental health issues? R-right? What if after all that, once I’ve… sorted out my room, started going outside more, and changed my eating habits? What if I realized that I had taken a wrong turn, that I wanted to give Marie a properly happy ending after all? Would, wouldn’t that work for you?”
Helena let out a disappointed sigh, her grip already tightening once more as she said, “No, that's dumb Jeanne, you can’t affect lasting change to your mental health just from what? Getting some exercise, cleaning your room more, and eating healthier? Where are you getting all this from? A self help book?”
Still in a blind rush, Jeanne counters with a panicked, “It doesn’t need to be lasting! F-for you right? You only need me to be happy for long enough to write the ending you want, something pleasant I can pitch to my editor and commit to having her review and accept!”
There’s a brief pause, as Helena simply holds Jeanne in place, before she finally says, “I suppose you’re right, but, how can I be sure that you won’t try to wriggle out of pursuing your own happiness? You said it yourself didn’t you? You’ve been stuck like this for a month haven’t you?”
Still very much aware of the position she’s in, Jeanne resorts to a desperate, impassionate cry of, “T-then help me find happiness damnit! Force me to eat three square meals a day! Drag me outside whenever you want to! Make me spitshine every damn inch of my apartment every day! Whatever the hell you think you need to do, do it, just don’t-, just don’t kill me alright?”
Another pause, as Helena simply stared down at Jeanne for a while, before she finally laughs, “Gods that has to be the most pathetic thing I’ve heard in years, you can’t even ask for help normally can you?”
Squirming a little in place, Jeanne simply notes, “Y-you can literally tear out my spine one handed.”
Helena cranes her head slightly at that, “Right, well I suppose the fact that you’re this willing to compromise and beg for your own life in the face of certain death is a step in the right direction”
Finding a glimmer of hope at the end of the tunnel, Jeanne quickly stumbles forward with a, “Yeah! If I was really depressed I’d just let you kill me right?”
Helena surprisingly, simply shook her head, loosening her grip on Jeanne a little as she states, “Not everyone who’s depressed is suicidal Jeanne, and I would have let you live for far too long for it to count as merely ‘killing’ you, but you have a point, as I was going to say, if you are willing to go that far then I suppose I have nothing to lose from humoring you for a little while.”
Jeanne, by this point, is simply reduced to nodding along as she is allowed to slump back down onto the floor, “Uh, yeah…”
Helena continues with, “I mean what can you really do against me anyway? Call the cops? Make a run for it? A shut in like you?”
Jeanne awkwardly laughed in response before saying, “Yeah…”
Helena takes a step back, leaning away once more to not loom over Jeanne as threateningly, “But if all you really need to turn your life around enough to give me everything I’d want is what? Three square meals and a clean house and body? Then I wouldn’t mind cleaning up or throwing a hot meal at you every now and then for a month or two, at least it’ll let me keep a close watch on you to make damn sure you’re really trying.”
Jeanne has that awkward smile on her face again as she replies with, “Oh! Well, thank you?”
Helena rests one of her shoulder arms onto the nearby countertop, casually scraping off a bit of the stone with the edge of her finger, “And of course if nothing changes by the end of the month I could always still turn you into a trashcan, couldn’t I?”
Jeanne blinks a little, still keenly aware of how cornered she still is as she notes, “Uhhhh.”
Helena very suddenly leans forward once more, one of her chest arms reaching in to grab Jeanne’s chin, “You said it yourself didn’t you? I could do whatever I wanted with you to make sure you’re taking this seriously.”
Jeanne squirms around a little in place, trying to look away, “I uh, I don’t think that I’ll be happy as a trash can.”
Despite her lack of lips, Jeanne could tell by the tone of her voice that Helena was smiling somehow, “Then just get happy enough to write Marie’s happy ending for me before the end of the month, simple as that.”
Jeanne swallowed a lump in her throat, before she finally asked, “Umm, h-how happy does it need to be?”
“That’s a good question,” Helena noted, stopping to think for a moment before she continued with, “Well I wouldn’t want you to do something as extreme as bringing me back to life, that’d be a bit upsetting for all of your fans I think, and me personally.”
The turn surprised Jeanne a little, at least until she continued with, “After all, would the Helena Heart on that page be myself? Returned to your fictional world at some unspecified future date? Or would I remain trapped here while I am forced to watch another me live out the idyllic life I know I will never have? That’s the sort of question I hope I’d never have to answer.”
Jeanne blinks a little, thoughts still swarming in her head as she simply asked, “Well, what do you want then?”
Helena lets her grip on Jeanne’s chin slacken as she says, “I think I wouldn’t mind seeing her struggle, don’t get me wrong I wouldn’t want to watch her suffer any more than she has to, you’ve put her in a difficult place Jeanne, and I don’t think she’s going to get out of it scot free.“
“But,” She said, taking a brief pause for emphasis, “I want you to take whatever pit you’ve doubtlessly planned to cast her into, and I want you to turn it into a tunnel Jeanne, with a light at the very end that she can follow until she comes out battered, bruised, but not broken.”
Jeanne looked deep into Helena’s void eyes as she continued with, “I want her to at least start finding the sort of peace I only started to seek near the end of my life, I want her friends and family to be there for her no matter what, at least most of them, and I want her to be able to love again Jeanne, or well, at least theoretically, I think it’d still be weird if I saw it happen now.”
Jeanne remained silent for a while, before she finally notes, “I… hum, I’ll have to think about it a bit more.”
Helena shrugged, the slightest bit of movement in her otherwise immobile form causing Jeanne to instinctively squirm, “It probably wouldn’t be a harder sell than what you were already planning. Knowing you, you were going to do something tragic and poignant or whatever by steadily driving her out and away from everyone she’s ever known and loved and harrying her with assassins and temple knights at every turn until she finally broke and became a twisted reflection of me weren’t you?”
Jeanne opened her eyes once more, nervously coughing as she simply said, “Well… she would have had a cool design at least.”
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