Fungal Halo

At first it was so scary to hear that my best friend managed to upset the local witch enough that she started making threats.

Everyone in town said that she was powerful and terrifying and cruel. I was so worried about what she’d do.

An oracle writhes on the platform prepared for her, gripped by vision and sensation from beyond the Door. Words dribble helplessly from parted lips that move without conscious thought, punctuated by pained moans or gasps hissed through clenched teeth.

“Beware that witch. She is a dangerous one, and you are too sweet a thing to get caught up with one as vicious as her!”

Such rumors swirled around the Unbowed, a witch whose rise in power and influence drew fearful whispers among the people and dolls in town.

The goddess watches while her chosen hero arrives at the culmination of his journey. He’s so close now. All he needs to do is raise the amulet and speak the invocation, and the goddess’s great enemy will at last be vanquished.

And yet, he collapses instead. He fails.

The kiss hits me like a knife wound in the mind, like something cold and foreign, violently separating parts of me that only ever knew connection with one another.

She slides herself into that makeshift opening, and the pain of her unexpected intrusion screams inside me.

The witch was so very busy almost all of the time. Every day she spent diving into the mysteries of the universe. Every night she spent using that knowledge to develop new ways to tug on the threads of fate.

She also owned a dozen dolls that regularly got into trouble.

There is a hierarchy to all things. Those at the top make the rules, determining the degree of humanity allotted to the rest, down to the very peasants and lower.

Even the dead deserve some measure of dignity.

Not so those of us born to the dark, crawling from the depths.

Oh, dear pet, there is no need to flinch from me in fear. You surrendered your will to me, remember? You serve me now, utterly and irrevocably, and I have no need to make you suffer any longer.

I am not one to damage what is mine; I take care of my possessions.

The spider isn’t Real, of course. You won’t find it in your bathtub, nor in your kitchen, nor in the shadowy corners of your poorly-lit basement. You won’t clean any web it doesn’t leave up attached to your ceiling.

It lives in your dreams.

In the dream, the Queen of Spiders sneaks up from behind you and sinks her fangs into your neck.

Your Gem is missing. Your power does not answer your call. But the venom in her bite fills you with indescribable heat and desire, and you don’t care.

The low creaking sounds of wood and the lazy rocking motion tilting the doll’s head side-to-side in a slow, gentle rhythm made for soothing sensations.

At least they did so in a vacuum, and the doll was trying her very best to exist only in that perfect vacuum.

Your angel is so sweet, so pliant, with her collar around her neck. Such a wonderfully docile creature since you learned how to leash her more firmly than even her halo.

The defiant warrior swinging her flaming sword is long, long gone now.

The moth emerges from its chrysalis, reborn at last into the form it was meant to be.

But, wait, no—

This can’t be right.

It can’t be this.

What does it do when infinite, hopeful possibility crystallizes into such disappointing certainty?

It feels like a tug from another world. One moment, my life makes sense, the pieces my senses feed me all fit together with a satisfying click. The next, I lose my balance.

A standing fall, a wave of vertigo, and everything tilts imperceptibly.