"My name is 『Rosegold』!" The doll demon says giddily, swishing her legs back and forth through the chilly autumn air. "And I'm your 『Stand』!"

"My- my stand? You're my stand?" I ask almost giddily. As surely as any parent (should) love a child, I can't help but feel overjoyed at the thing in front of me. Some part of me feels validated just by just looking at her. But there should be no sense to it at all.

"That's right! And you are my 『User』!" She giggles, her voice breaking and distorting through lungs that likely don't even exist. Her legs kick back and forth a little bit while she starts to twirl in the air like a ballerina, her smooth gray body effortlessly cutting through the air around me as she starts to zip through it this way and that. As though she has some kind of jetpack, defying the laws of gravity and flying through the air in any way she wants to go at all. Fully 3D movement.

But then she stops in the air, going suddenly rigid and still as her head turns all the way around upon her neck to face behind her. One hundred and eighty degrees, like an owl's.

My starry eyes trail towards the direction she is looking. "I don't see anything?" I ask, still smiling a little, clearly something wrong with my head.

"Someone is coming. Two someones. They will be here within five minutes." She says, hearing or seeing something that I don't.

But, wait… my eyes squint.

I can hear it. The sound of voices in the distance, slowly getting closer and closer as they run across the dirt pathway. They are muffled. But not in the way that distance muffles sound, no. The way that sound is distorted through a pane of thick glass.

These sounds are not heard through my ears.

But the moment I allow myself to focus on the feeling, it vanishes. I can’t hear it anymore, back to my regular old hearing, and no matter how hard I try, I can’t seem to replicate that feeling again at all.

"Oh no…" I say, hardly with enough effort to sound properly scared, even with a still missing arm. "What should we, haha, what should we do…? I think I still need my arm?" I ask, tilting my head to the side. Delirious, dreamily shocked.

Rosegold unfreezes and jerks over, switching abruptly to a more jittery style of movement as she zips towards the pillar man in the base of the crater. Peering at him somehow without any eyes, her head twists back to face me, a jagged smile still plastered where her face would be. I realize it doesn't move when she talks. "Please hold still, User." She tells me in a ‘kind’ voice. And of course, I do as she says.

"What's your idea here?" I ask her, feeling curious but not afraid.

Okay, I’m a little bit afraid.

Rosegold silently drifts through the air towards me, slowly moving her hand out towards my chest. Her smooth gray hand presses against my hoodie directly over my knife. I almost blush at the contact? It feels foreign and strange. The last person to ever actually touch me would have been my mother, and that wasn't in a very kind way. I can't remember the last person before her, though. It must have been years.

"You will get used to it." She tells me, almost like reading my thoughts. Her voice is a little more firm. Her hand shifts into a point, and her finger digs against my shirt where my knife is. "I want this."

I oblige and lift my hoodie. She speedily reaches beneath it and rips the knife from its sheath, dancing away from me at neck breaking speed as I gasp, a little startled from her suddenly changing direction as easily as a ballerina twirls. I watch from the ground as Rosegold hovers over to the pillar man and to my stretched out arm that's still attached. "I am porcelain." She tells me, her back arching awkwardly in a way that would be painful for someone experiencing gravity. For her, though, the contortion seems painless. "You are fragile." She says, finishing her thoughts, a seemingly logical leap in conclusion.

"I am not fragile!" I whine at her, the words specifically bringing back an old piece of disgust from somewhere.

"Correct." Rosegold wraps her gray little fingers around my arm and simply plucks the appendage off from its frozen place. It detaches far easier than I would expect, maybe she’s stronger than me. Then my 『Stand』hovers back over to me, not rushing the wind even slightly. As though she's not really even there at all, it's silent.

She's holding my severed arm in front of her and now I can actually see the bone at the place of detachment. Hell, I can even see where my arteries have been cut. But no blood drips from the wound. It's the cleanest cut imaginable, if slightly jagged. But no blood, and absolutely no pain. It's like I was always missing my arm, and someone just painted a human sized doll arm to look like one. Only an artist's rendition of a severed wound.

It's almost as though Rosegold senses my confusion and fear for a moment, as she reaches out her other hand to gently drag it across my cheek. "You will get used to it." She tells me again as the phantom feeling of caressing my own cheek invades my skin. It's equally as calming as it is nerve wracking. "You will get used to it as you get used to waking up in the morning. Opening your eyes is hard, but it has to be done." She finalizes before holding out my arm between us once again, seemingly beckoning me to watch.

She puts the tip of the blade to my detached arm, and I feel it against my flesh, feet away from where it should be. It makes me shiver.

But I am not afraid. I feel as though she knows what she is doing this time. Rosegold hesitates for a moment longer. “Remember this.” She tells me, and I make sure I pay attention.

Then there's a screeching sound as she attempts to slice into solid porcelain. It's scratchy and almost hurts my ears as much as it hurts my skin. A little red line tears across the surface. Far more akin to a scratch in glass than a tear on flesh. She tilts the arm over and drops the knife to the floor. No blood seeps from the shallow scratch. The same as was for the wound at the end of my severed arm. I sit there awkwardly in confusion until she points her free hand at it and leans her head forward. “Here.” She beckons, pulling her pointer finger forward and backward.

And then a droplet of crimson blood starts to dribble from the wound.

Just one or two, or maybe three, before Rosegold holds a flat palm out towards it, as though to say ‘stop!’. And they do, just like that. Even the droplets already running freeze too, stopping in place like the force of gravity means as little to them as it does for the doll. Then there's motion again as they start to vibrate in place on my glossy skin, the surface of the droplets gaining sharp little jolts poking out of them at random. Looking exactly like magnetic fluid, little spikes of red poke out across the surface before collapsing in on themselves and pulling away from the arm entirely, floating off from the flesh and into the air in front of Rosegold's palm.

It looks exactly like those videos of astronauts drinking juice in zero gravity, a little orb of liquid floats off into the air and stays just where she wants it. Rosegold moves a little backwards before willing the droplet of blood to move more towards me. I watch with my mouth agape as it slowly floats over to me, with my 『Stand』closely behind.

A little drop of crimson floats just in front of my face. I blow on it a little and watch as my breath ripples the surface of the liquid. "W-what are you doing?" I ask, but the demon stays silent.

She just presses her palm out into the air once more and wills the blood to float towards my shoulder wound. My er… stump.

And the moment it makes contact, a bright golden light floods the world around me.

I almost panicked, thinking it could be the flashlights of the officers coming back to find us here, but a moment later, it's gone. In place is a little splat of molten gold that covers the base of my wound. Like wax, thickly coating it but holding its place as it cools. Rosegold presses my severed arm onto the gold, and in an instant the feeling of numb coldness vanishes, my skin loses its sheen, and the fingers on my previously detached hand go limp.

I wriggle my arm to test its ability to move. And it works.

"W-wow… wow, I… I don't…" I mumble, truly dumbfounded. I'm repaired.

"『User.』" Rosegold grabs my attention. I look up at her, seeing a new pair of indents where her eyes should be. But still no eyes. "They are upon us."

"Shit!" I stand quickly as an FBI agent and my own mother come crashing into the clearing with their guns drawn. I just so happen to be facing away from them. Good! I don’t want to let them see me while I’m here! Not after what just happened!

"You there!" They shout out at me. "Drop any weapons you have and turn around slowly!" The man shouts, doing his best impression of an intimidating police man.

It fails, and I take off running into the dark.

"No!!!!!" He shouts and takes off after me, leaving my poor confused mother behind in the dark.

…

I thought jogging in the dark was hard, through these woods. Well, I was wrong. Because it's so much harder to sprint through the woods instead.

Crashing over fallen trees and busting through entire bushes just by running into them, my whole set of clothes is covered in mud and debris with no end in sight.

A yellow stream of light flickers back and forth across the path ahead of me, momentarily lighting up the way I need to go with the flashlight of the agent trailing me just behind. The trampling of leaves and smashing of twigs and branches gets progressively louder and louder and louder as he gets closer and closer, gaining on me two times as fast as I can get away. Like he was entirely unimpeded by any of the surroundings, much less the wet ground and the slowly picking up rain.

And just when I think he's close enough to catch me, a thin gray arm shoots out from behind a tree in front of me, grabbing me by the shoulder and yanking me onto the ground behind it.

I'm met face to face with the jagged, knife-like killer smile of a demon that ripped open her own jaw. She's terrifying. She's protecting me.

The federal agent comes rounding the corner around the tree to find me laying on the ground covered in mud. I hide my face in my hands as quickly as possible for him not to see. I can tell through the cracks in my fingers that he's aiming his gun at me. I watch him in terror as he bends down to get a closer look at me. Rosegold is now nowhere to be found. She vanished into thin fucking air an instant later.

"Who are you?" The agent asks me. "And what exactly did you see?" He reaches towards my face with his gun still drawn in his other hand, but the moment his fingers would have made contact with my wrist to pull it away, I hear her voice once again.

This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.

"Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!"

Rosegold's gray arm comes bursting into life, piecing together in front of me with a shimmer of sparkling air and the sound of a porcelain plate shattering in reverse. My 『Stand』is summoned. Forming into life from completely thin air. A manifestation.

She pulls her fist back and slams it into the side of his head in an instant, so fucking fast I almost didn't see the blur of movement at all. The lights go out behind his eyes as the crack of a metal baseball bat hits solid skull, and he slumps to the floor in a heap. One shot knockout.

"Oh, fuck!!!" I whisper-shout, startled as the rest of Rosegold finishes pulling herself into existence through my body, climbing out and floating haphazardly in the air as if nothing at all is wrong. She flips slowly around in the air, until she is upright.

"Another is coming. We must leave before they see us." She says through her shattered face, a pattern of static catching on something I can understand. Her voice then clicks off, and the channel goes dead.

I nod, and we run together the rest of the way out of the woods, her floating just behind me to make sure we aren't still being trailed.

We aren't.

…

…

I make it back home in peace and silence, mother's car still isn't in the driveway, and the house is dead-empty.

I make sure to throw my muddy clothes in the wash as quickly as possible before hastily toweling off the rest of me and jumping into bed the moment I hear the front door unlock and open.

Feigning sleep as best as possible, an icy shard of fear stabs into my heart as mother's bootsteps march quietly throughout the house and directly to my door. She stops just in front of it, and I can hear the knob to my door opening ever so slowly. A crack of hallway light spills into my room and across my eyelids. I almost expect her to scream at the visage of a floating gray corpse in the center of my room, defying gravity, and with a smile that could rival a shark’s maw….. But she doesn't. In fact, it doesn't seem like she even notices the 『Stand』at all. I just hear her standing there and watching me as I pretend to be asleep.

"I know you're awake, JoJo." My mom whispers into the room quietly.

I freeze in fear. What is she gonna do?

But eventually it seems like I've convinced her I'm actually sleeping, as she sighs a deep breath, closes my door, and walks away.

Fear and tension flow out of me in equal measure, soon beyond overtaken by drowsiness. It's been a long day.

I sit up in my bed one last time to check, and it seems like Rosegold had vanished before my mom even came in. like she somehow sensed my fear of being found out and hid herself away accordingly. So thank God my mother never saw her.

For some reason, I fear what her reaction to my 『Stand』would be. Why? I have no idea.

But the reason doesn't really seem like it matters as my head hits my pillow once more and sleep overtakes me as though I haven't rested in ages.

…

…

…

…

Early morning comes, bright yellow light flooding my room through the curtains I accidentally left open. Wakefulness takes me abruptly and sharply, forcing me from my slumber in a rush of sudden consciousness the very moment the light breaks through the clouds.

I burst into life with my arms flailing out in front of me.

My- my arms!!!

In my daze, I hold them still out in front of me. Two arms. Phew! That all must have just been a dream.

"Not. A. Dream!" A voice whispers in my ear. It makes me jump and scream a little. I wasn't expecting that!

My head turns left and right as quickly as possible, but I see absolutely nothing, it's a totally empty room. Especially with my eyes still adjusting to the brightness.

Urgh… The sun has far too much strength right now. Maybe I should get up to-

The curtains of my room snap shut the moment I consider closing them, bathing the room in ambient darkness in an instant. Now being able to see, I can tell that I was never alone at all.

I gasp, seeing an awkwardly curled, completely smooth gray mannequin slowly shimmering into nothingness in the air just beside my windowsill. Like your shadow vanishing from sight once you step into the light, my 『Stand』vanishes as well. I swear if she had eyeballs, I bet she would have winked on her way out.

Moments later, my door slams open to reveal a very disgruntled look on my mom. She's not looking too good, like she didn't sleep at all the night before. Bags under her eyes go for days. "JoJo? Are you okay, honey??" She asks, hurrying over to my bedside as I rub the sleep out of my eyes. "I heard you scream in here, are you alright?" She puts her hand on my shoulder and helps me shake awake.

"bbbwwwwaaaaaaahhhhh" I yawn exaggeratedly. "Yyyyyyeeaaaahhhh…." I drawl, emphasizing having just woken up. "I'm okay, mom. It was just a nightmare that had me worked up." I say, visibly focusing my eyes on her. "Are you okay, mom? You look like you haven't slept."

She frowns. "Do I really look that bad?"

"No, no that's not what I meant…" I backpedaled a little bit. "It's just… did you sleep okay last night?" I ask her, doubling down. "I didn't see you home when I went to bed last night. Did the station call you in?"

My mother pulls away from me a little bit, scanning me up and down with her inquisitive eyes. "Did you go out last night?" She asks me.

I shrug. "No, why?" I feel like I can’t let her know this. Something important depends on it.

"Because I left the house at two in the morning. You only could have seen me gone if you were up that late." She states, firmly.

My breath catches in my throat.

"I- I'm sorry, mom. I was just up late last night. I didn't go anywhere, but it was hard for me to sleep with how badly I felt over what happened yesterday. I- I was playing my games……" I hang my head in shame and guilt. Somehow she buys it.

"Oh, look. JoJo, it's not that big of a deal. I was only mad at you for it for a moment, but I'm sure Mister Donneham probably had it coming, right? Don't feel too messed up about it, okay?" She smiles warmly at me. "He'll probably be over it by next week anyway."

"Yeah. Probably." I say, picking my head up again to look at her. Sometimes it's easy to get her back on my side over something, sometimes it isn't.

"Why don't we get you some breakfast to start your weekend. I'm sure you have a ton of homework to catch up on?" She inquires as she stands up and makes her way to my door.

I nod. "Mountains of it."

She smiles. "Good. Then some eggs and bacon should help you on your day. Get dressed and it'll be done in ten minutes." She says happily, despite her dark eyebags, and wanders out the door.

The tension in my body collapses and I flop limply back onto my bed in a heap. Rosegold is nowhere to be found.

…

…

"Are you sure you didn't go out last night?" My mother asks me, plating the last piece of bacon for me, setting a beautiful looking display of breakfast down in front of me.

"Yeah, why? Did something happen?" I ask her as I pick up my fork and knife and begin to dig in. Aahhh! The eggs are perfect and runny!!! ^-^

"Well… yeah…. No… I'm not really sure? Maybe?" She says and shrugs.

I laugh with my mouth full, almost losing a few pieces back onto my plate. "Good answer!" I say through my mouthful.

She just frowns at me and tilts her head. "Don't laugh at me, Jojo." She says before the frown vanishes into a smirk and she giggles a little herself. "I'm just playing. And, mm.. yeah. I guess so. I was out on patrol last night with some new guy from uptown when we saw something… honestly truly bizarre. Out in the woods towards the park…" She trails off. "Actually I probably really shouldn't be telling you this." She raises her hands dismissively, looking a tiny bit embarrassed at her divulgence.

"Whaaaaahhhhh??" I swallow. "You can't stop now! You can't just say you saw something crazy and then leave it like that! Mooooooooooom!" I whine like a little baby.

She caves. "It really wasn't as strange as I'm playing it out to be. Just we saw something spooky in the woods and had to chase after somebody who sort of looked like you from behind is all. My partner got wacked on the head pretty good when he caught up to the guy so we never ended up catching him. That's it. Really." She says, firmly cutting off the conversation there.

"Something spooky?" I try to inquire.

"No no no, that's enough out of you, mister inquisitive. You'll take after your father, asking questions like that." She says, shaking her head resolutely.

Ah…uh.. huh…. Something about her saying that kind of stings…. I don’t know why… I guess I don't like her bringing up Dad or something. That must be why.

"You okay, Jojo?" She asks as she finally starts eating off her own plate too.

"I'm okay…. Could you… no…. Nevermind." I say trailing off and taking a bite from some toast.

"No, tell me. Can I do what?"

"Can you tell me a little bit more about Dad?" I ask, and she frowns.

"Right… I forgot you don't really like me bringing him up. It's all bad memories." She says as she looks back down at her plate.

She's … sort of right. Yes, I don't usually like him being brought up, but it's not because I have bad memories of the guy. Or even of his death. It's because I have almost zero memories about him at all. Like all the places he was in my life have already left me. I don't remember what he even looks like in my head until I'm looking directly at a photo of him in person. I vaguely remember he was nice, a good man, but beyond that, I can't really remember. It makes me feel guilty sometimes, because I've heard at least once from everyone in my life how much they appreciated him. Yet to me it's like I never even cared. I want to. But I can't. It feels terrible.

"Your father was…. Your father was a good man. He was a very, very good man." She says, and nothing else comes after.

I nod and say nothing further. This is pretty much the same answer I've gotten my whole life, anyway.

I go to ask something further, but almost drop my fork in startle when I see something standing behind her chair.

The half translucent vision of a floating gray mannequin head hovers just off to my mothers right, just above her shoulder. Cracked open jaw of daggers, like one of those “scary skeleton skull” pictures you might find on pinterest. A spindly gray hand flickers into life next to it, watching as every piece materializes bit by bit, again like a plate smashing in reverse. Puzzle pieces of ghostly material forming in the air and piecing together into a raised finger at Rosegold’s lips. I can imagine her making a shushing sound from the open jagged hole, the twisted smiling mouth, seals right back up. The shards close back together seamlessly, leaving nothing. She's but a doll-mannequin again. Mouthless, faceless, featureless. Then, just like the opposite of the hand forming, Rosegold the evil spirit shatters away in silence like a plate dropped on the floor, leaving nothing but a few errant sparkles in her wake.

My mouth instead, is agape.

My mom raises her eyebrow at me questioningly before her eyes widen and she turns around. “What? Is there something on the wall?” There was nothing there for her to turn around to, Rosegold was already gone.

“Uh, it's nothing.” Nice save.

She just shrugs and goes back to eating her meal. I force myself to finish my own plate in peace

…

…

Once breakfast is finally finished, my mother retreats back into her bedroom, shutting the door behind her and locking it for the moment. I believe she must still be tired from last night and needs some more rest.

Well, I sure hope she gets it.

Though she’s left me with a sink full of dishes to clean. Not that I mind though, really. It's repayment for her cooking breakfast and a normal chore I’ve done ten thousand times before anyway. It should be a nice bit of monotonous silence and a task to distract myself with to relax my nerves. But for some reason I still have a pit in my stomach when trying to start. It feels like I’m missing something about the conversation we just had.

I stand there for almost ten straight minutes just mulling over every word my mother said to me, looking for something deeper, anything to just slightly point me in a direction that I don't already know. Any kind of guidance.

But I find nothing, and it leaves me feeling pretty frustrated. I have a sick feeling in my chest that she knows more about what happened last night than I even saw from the bushes. I can’t prove it, but I swear I can just tell. And it's up to me whether or not I figure it out.

I grumble and cross my arms in front of the sink. I'm not really looking forward to being stuck doing these with the paranoid headspace I'm in, even if I did appreciate a bit of silence for a while. Hopefully they will be a good enough distraction, I can’t just keep thinking about this stuff. It's gonna make me start being fearful of things that aren’t really there again.

There. Is. Nothing. Wrong.

I step forward to pull the big skillet pan out from the soapy water in the sink, the pan that my mother used to cook the bacon, but when I turn to pick up the dish sponge, there's a person standing halfway out the door of the bathroom at the end of the hall. Rosegold spawned again.

Gasp. “Jesus! Don’t keep scaring me like that!” I turn away from her in frustration. “I don’t want to see you right now!”

The doll laughs and steps backwards out of sight. When I turn to look again, she's completely gone again. I reach out after her on impulse to not see her go. “Wait… shit. I don’t… I didn’t mean to say that, Rosegold.” I say, immediately feeling a little guilty for my outburst.

I set the pan back in the sink and walk over towards the bathroom, half expecting to see her standing just beyond the doorway. But of course, she's not. The bathroom is empty, she wasn’t even there to begin with.

I frown. “Don’t be like that… Come back.” :( I plead into the empty bathroom but see no changes. When I turn back towards the kitchen, Rosegold is hovering a few inches behind me, silently. I almost jump again, but I catch myself just before. “R-rosegold.” My voice trembles. “Will you be following me forever?”

She nods. Still having no mouth to speak with. But that's enough to answer my question with.

I tilt my head at her, letting the fear of her appearance drain from my system. She turns her head with me. “You called me 『User』before, does that have any significance?” Rosegold nods. “I am… 『user』.”

I wonder if…. My hand raises to point at the sink, just like how I remember the FBI agent describing the man in mexico pointing to use his 『stand』.

Rosegold turns slowly around to face the sink like a vinyl record on a turntable. But she does not move.

Hmm… Did I just not try hard enough? I want her to-

Rosegold flashes into life, blinking from the place she was just in. Like a flashbang goes off, my stand warps at nearly light speed across the room and to the sink, a true blur of messy gray goes fucking crazy, and all of the cupboards in the room open and close allin the same instant. Barely five seconds later, she is before me once again, floating leisurely in the air with dripping wet hands, leaning her head forward towards me as though she's waiting for something to come next.

Holy fucking shit that was fast!

She's like some kind of gray lightning bolt! Fast and agile and she responds to my thoughts as commands! This is, this is incredible! I could do anything I wanted with a deal like this!!

Rosegold then backs off into invisibility again after a moment of me staring at her dumbfoundedly, the water still left on her hands all falls off at once onto the floor into two puddles. The splash on the floor breaks me from my stupor.

“That was incredible!” I cheer excitedly in the middle of the kitchen, dancing alone to myself. “Now come on, I wanna see you do something else for me!” I ask for her, fully expecting her to return to me at my command. But for some reason, she does not.

“Rosegold?” I call out for my doll, frowning at the lack of response. “Are you there? We have more stuff to try!” There is yet more silence.

“A-are you there?”

But it doesn’t seem like she is.

…

“Come back!” I shout. Nothing. “Come back now!” Nothing, nothing.

I pout, almost whining. “Come back… please?”

A cold whooshing feeling passes through my upper body as Rosegold’s translucent form flows out of me. Through my body like threading a needle or passing sand through a sieve. Projecting out into the world with me as the starting point. She comes out rolling, doing a summersault forward in the air as though she was just rolling by in the breeze. She floats fully out of me until she is limp and upside down.

I reach out forward for her, to take her hand, but the breeze she’s being carried on blows her away before I can reach. Like chasing a paper bag. “No- wait!” I called for her again. “I’m sorry!” She stops flowing away from me, and I’m able to reach her once I’m all the way into the living room. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry I mean it, you aren’t a plaything….” She lets me reach out and take her hand, finally.

Her body flows and pivots around our point of contact, facing me upright, properly. She leans her featureless head forward towards me, expecting something.

“I meant to say thank you.” I tell her, earnestly. I think that's what I must have missed. Rosegold reaches down to take my other hand, showing me that I was right.

A thin line forms across her face, growing thicker until it splits and opens to reveal a fully sculpted mouth. Twin rows of blisteringly white painted teeth, still jagged and sharp like a shark’s but now clearly teeth instead of just a broken pane of glass in place of a mouth. It also goes deeper now, she has a cavity there now that isn't just a black void.

As well as an exaggeratedly long tongue, two or three times the length of a normal human’s. It’s thinner and rounder too, ending in a point that drags slowly across the back of her teeth, coiled into a snake in waiting inside her mouth. As though she's almost a child's rendition of something scary, she is everything I think of when someone says ‘monster.’

“You are welcome,『User.』” My stand says to me, her confidence restored to where it should be. She feels powerful, she feels dangerous. She knows she is strong. “Now please take me somewhere! We are dying to have some fun!”

I smirk with her. I think we're gonna be a force to be reckoned with. "Yes, yes we are."

(End Of Chapter Two.)

←To Be Continued.