Fungal Halo

I peer through the glass into the holding chamber. The specimen within paces aimlessly, without purpose or direction, interacting with nothing inside.

“What’s wrong with it?” I ask.

“She’s been restless and agitated like this since we separated her from the others.”

When your eyes alight upon me, there is an ache within you, isn’t there? Something you’ve always lived with. Something with roots deep down in your very bones.

I see you wrestling with it. I see your longing. There is a question on your lips you need to ask me.

“Are you me?”

The creature’s jaw closed around my midsection, squeezing with the effort of ripping my body to shreds.

The inadequate effort.

Such fearsome stature; what a huge maw! Yet I am still too much.

“You will need sharper teeth, and many more of them, to make a meal of me, child.

You start dating a lovely girl who warns you that her job has her on-call 24/7/365 but assures you that they so rarely ever call her in.

Touching nib to fang, the Spider Witch draws on her own venom for this part of the ritual.

With practiced movements, she inks fine lines onto her canvas. The securely bound creature does an admirable job of not flinching as its skin burns under each stroke.

Many of us are aware of the ways that an angel’s halo is also their collar.

Whenever the angel so much as thinks of going astray…

yank

Their owner tugs on a leash of light, and they are corrected.

That is not all that a halo is good for, however.

Elegant, hand-painted flowers adorned the glossy white surface of the mask in my hands. The more I looked, the more of its intricate detail jumped out at me. Every delicate line, every brush stroke—it all seemed perfectly in place.

“Found something you like, did you?”

Once upon a time, there was a group of stalwart, incorruptible heroes who ventured forth on a quest to save a kingdom from ruin. Monsters had overrun the land, and these were capable warriors with the power to dispatch them.

But they needed someone who could keep them alive.

Somewhere out there, among the countless worlds and timelines that could ever be, is a dead, forgotten, and utterly barren world.

No more gods or witches or people or purpose or even stars in the night sky.

A lonely rock. An indifferent sun.

And one last, abandoned doll.

“I am not an angel.”

Her claim is hard to accept. Her snowy wings, delicate complexion, and shining halo make such a denial an absurdity.

Even if the look in her eyes is not at all the flat certainty of an angel acting in accordance with her Purpose.

I kiss her and feel wetness everywhere she touches me.

She grips me firmly, fingers wrapped in my hair, pressing my face into her as if to keep me from looking down and seeing what she is doing to me.

As if I didn’t watch her do it to someone else before.

Nobody summons me on purpose.

I live in the accidental spaces between correct rituals.

My forms are as different as there are ways for a mirror unlocking to go awry.

So why did such an experienced one as you seem so sure of yourself, drawing those lines on mirrored glass?

I haven’t seen the ocean in so long. I barely remember it any more. I barely remember myself.

I grew up there, you know? I miss having access to fresh seafood everywhere.

Out here, in the middle of the continent, it all tastes lifeless, somehow. Definitely missing something.