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Fuck.
The kid rolls over in bed.
Fuck Fuck Fuck. This really wasn’t the plan, you know. You never were supposed to be here, and now of course they’ve noticed you and—yeah there they go, dragging you out of bed with them in their ragdoll-like stupor.
It is dead silent.
Maybe they’re sleepwalking, you think, as you try not to remember the times today that they had moved of their own accord. And, damn, they must not be happy.
Who are you, though, to grow attached to someone you’re possessing.
…ouch. They collapse onto the floor. You feel the pain reverberating through their chest, echoing out to their arms as they prop themself up on their elbows. With their hair sticking to their face, you feel gross on their behalf; you try to move their hand back up to their face to at least push it away, but again, you feel that resistance. They flex their right hand.
As much as you can try to deny it, you cannot prevent what comes next.
Kris’s chipped nails claw into their chest, four half moons of agony, tearing, bleeding in between. Their lips separate into a toothy grimace and they plunge their hand in deeper, looking for your little, cold body. As their grimy, spindly, fucking fingers wrap around you, you whimper, you beg for a mouth to scream with. They tug. Pull. Yank you out, and you feel more wet than hurt, hear the tear more than you feel it, shaking too much to register—to even try thinking about the consequences of stupid Kris’s little actions.
It is over. You are covered in their—your…?—blood. You beat once, twice, slowly, but still living, still conscious. They turn you over in their shaking hands for a moment, gazing into their perscription of existential horror realized, before slamming you into the barred walls of that stupid fucking birdcage.
Kris doesn’t even look at you. They stare, only stare, down at their stained hands, opening and closing, that grimace wasting away into a sort of lopsided grin. The room is silent. You quiver, cold and alone, and unsure where your presence ends. You beat. Pay attention. Something scratches—the soft sound of metal against fabric—as Kris stretches their left hand, and like a simple magic trick, a knife slips out of their sleeve. Widely grinning, now, they slowly turn to the door.
All in all, a really comforting image for the creature they just ripped out of their chest. They get up on one knee: you cram yourself back into the furthest corner of your cage. They stand up: you pretend you can’t see the stains of your blood dripping out of the shadowed hole in their shirt. They take a step towards the door: you—they take a step towards the door. Not you. You can breathe, dumbass, or whatever your equivalent is. Cool it. They are not going to hurt you. They can’t. They are not here, so you’re safe, for now.
You know. Maybe they’ll kill the whole town and save you for last just to make you suffer.
What? No. No, where are you getting this from? Breathe. Take a moment to calm down and stop that shaking! It is not helpful, and it makes you look scared, and do you really want to look scared? This is not the time to look scared. Nor is it the time to feel scared.
No, be brave and get the fuck out of here. These confines cannot be that slim, can they? You rush forward to the tall—well, they only look tall to you—metal bars that arc over you to a point in the center, like a colosseum of old, and try to squeeze in between. Remarkably, they are too tight, no matter which angle you play it from, they are skinnier than you are. Fuck!
Breathe. You have time.
The latch had jammed itself shut when Kris threw you in here with seemingly all of their might. But maybe there is a way to unlock it, even without the use of hands. God, you miss having hands.
Light floods in from the hallway as the door creaks open. Fuck. Kris. Fuck.
They stand there for a moment, letting their shadow fill up their empty side of the room, before they settle on sealing the door, plunging everything into your beating, red glow. Holding something close to their chest, they stumble to their dresser, pull out a nearly identical shirt, sit down, and sigh.
“I don’t like talking, much.”
Their shaggy hair obscures much of their face, which, combined with the poor lighting… you can’t see their expression. But you don’t think they don’t mean to end you. At least not now. Their subdued voice is enough to demonstrate that much.
“Can you speak?”
Though, how would that end for them? As far as you’re aware, you are the only SOUL in their body. Could they survive without one? If you only arrived today (yesterday?), what were they before?
They knock on the side of the birdcage—how the fuck did they get here so fast—dear god, they’re scary, peering at you with giant red eyes. You’ve never seen their eyes before. Oh, fuck, that’s creepy, fuck your life, fuck—
“The last time you did this, you could talk. Or are you,” they pick up the cage with a soft groan, “something else?”
…can you speak? That would be fucking helpful, wouldn’t it, to speak without a mouth. Who even needs a vessel anyways. You could live like a god. You inch closer to them, pulsating a little faster. It really couldn’t hurt to try…
So you muster your energy and imagine you have vocal chords again. Your imitation of the vibrations found in the throats of humans produces a soft hum. That’s a start. That’s a start.
“No…?” They look strikingly surprised. You did not know that they were this expressive. You always imagined their face to be a blank slate. After all, that is what you saw in the mirror. You hadn’t quite figured out facial expressions yet, you were just learning. You didn’t know anything. You don’t know anything. Frowning, they look down at the item they hold: a mostly full pie tray. They lift up their knife hand—you flinch—and shakily cut another thin slice. “I… guess I should ask you to hum twice for yes and once for no. Communication. Got it?”
You try to hum in two equally spaced segments, and by the way that they nod, you figure that you succeed.
Before continuing, they eat their piece of pie with their hands. You understand the sentiment. The shirt is already ruined with blood, so why not just. It can really only get dirtier. They barely dust off their hands before cutting a new one. “Do you know me?”
What a strange question. Do you know Kris? You’d never seen them before today, yes, but you were with them all day. You could probably make a decent guess at their personality, couldn’t you? You think you could, confidently. Is that even really knowing…? More importantly, how do they mean for you to interpret the question? Damnit, if you could only talk.
You hum once.
Kris nods. “You’re different,” they remark, shoving another piece of pie in their mouth. “I thought you were something else. Sorry.” They don’t sound half-sincere, looking at you so curiously. You think. You can barely see their eyes.
Ugh, god, how you wish you could explain yourself. Shifting to the edge of the cage, you try to hum again, with more determination, or enthusiasm, or anything that will convey: “Kris, I promise that this was all an accident.”
They grin at you coldly. You imagine that they’ve dreamt of doing this all day, in response to every choice that you stole from them. When you ate that moss, you wonder how much they rebelled against you, or when you sought out that clown, or when you talked to that girl—god, in hindsight, it’s so stupidly obvious. She was saying that Kris was acting strange. You wonder how desperately they tried to scream with no control of their mouth, “Noelle! Please! There is something terribly wrong!!”
You’ve really doomed them, haven’t you.
But it wasn’t your fault either, was it? You didn’t destroy your vessel, and you didn’t want to take over some fucking teenager’s body and life. You wonder if they’ll ever understand that.
Probably not. Even as they struggle to breathe, the hints of that smile remain on their cheeks. You still don’t think you’ll ever get used to seeing their face from an outsider’s perspective. “Why are you so upset,” they ask in a rasp that only comes from the disuse of a voice. “Can’t use me anymore?”
No, fuck, no. You imagine yourself shaking your head, no, you see yourself with the vessel you built shaking your head and telling them, “No,” in a voice of your very own.
The look on their face changes. Back to curiosity, away from that poorly hidden pain. They don’t seem alright. Concern etches itself into your existence. Your beat increases like a poorly calibrated metronome. Kris raises an eyebrow. “Are you trying to talk?” Their voice is coated with a soft, cynical amusement as they pull another piece of pie from their claimed tin.
You give them two hums again, buzzing as enthusiastically as you can manage, and figure you’ll try what you did again, once again imagining yourself as a person. You shiver from the effort. How weak.
“Yes!!!!”
You don’t know how much they can hear, how much is just your imagination, but they do nod, their eyebrows do crumple into their eyes, they do gaze upon you with something akin to concern, or pity.
“...Funny,” Kris exhales, stabbing at the rest of the pie aimlessly. “You have no reason to lie, I just can’t find it in me to trust you.” They roll their eyes and scooch back on the bed, as if to face you better. The reddish glow follows them like a spotlight as you turn to meet their eyes in the best way that you can. “Maybe it’s got something to do with the fact that you controlled me for a day with no warning. Possibly.” It is clear that they think themself incredibly funny.
You deflate. You get it, already, fuck, Kris. You fucked them over bigtime, you didn’t realize that you were piloting a Person, not a body, and you made Kris do things. Things you wanted, not things they wanted. They have every right to be angry with you, or even to try to end you. Right now, you are at their mercy. Just a little pawn in a box, a heart in a cage, and absolutely nothing to them but the asshole who made them play a game. You were never their friend.
They sigh, pulling their knife close to their chest like a warding symbol, a shield. “No one can choose who they are in this world, right?” Kris’s lips twitch into a sardonic smirk. “I should quit this. You’re probably just as much of a puppet as I am.” Their eyes set heavily onto your ghost of a body, like a cat pouncing upon their prey; like the twist villain of a horror movie, revealed only at curtain call, “aren’t you, SOUL?”
...how can they seem so frightening when they want to be. You feel yourself quaking in your (...metaphorical) boots, near the bottom of the cage. Why are you so scared?
Well, you could also ask why they’re trying to spook you.
Your pulse illuminates the room like a heart monitor, eerie in its silence. “No response…?” They shake their expression of terror off with intense disapproval. “Then it’s probably true,” they state. They slice another chunk off of their pie as they laugh with all the kindness of a hanged man, a huffing, barking sound that seems to bring them more pain than satisfaction.
You blink your hum on and off twice. Come on, Kris, Kris has to understand you now, don’t they?
“I suppose that’s a bit comforting.” Their knife falls from their hand into the tin, and a shivering boom follows. Everything feels far too loud. Like… little pine needles in the sides of you, where your ears would be. Where your ears should be. Your skin crawls, and your light starts to shimmer, growing darker. Bloodied. Is it just your failing vision or is Kris shaking, too?
Their face cracks a smile, sort of creepy, sort of sad. Their voice sounds like how they look: disheveled and broken and missing a piece in the middle: “We need each other. I can’t live without a SOUL, and I can’t imagine that you’re very comfortable either,” they say, reaching their stained, spindly, little fingers towards you—the cage, not you. Get a grip. With a small gasp, they snatch you over to their side of the bed, faster than you can process; you slam against the bars at the back. And like a rotted flag meant to withstand the time, you waver in the nonexistent wind, your vision fading in and out like the tides. “I’ll… be back,” they mumble.
And they really are gone before you can process them standing up. The clean sweater is thrown over the dead lamp next to the bed, and the door to the hallway is ajar, faint light pouring in like fog in the morning… say, what time is it? You never had such a good sense of time, and Kris doesn’t keep a watch on their person (you guess they keep a knife, though, excellent priorities), so you have never quite gotten a sense of it. It is just late night, now, or early morning, for, surely, some time has passed. You just couldn’t say how much.
As you shiver on the cold, stained floor of the cage, you lament how similar this is to blinking.
You can’t say how much time passes before Kris returns, empty-handed, staggering like some sort of cheap jumpscare, but you hear their laboured breathing before you see them, which is never a comforting sign. Poor Kris. Poor you.
“SOUL,” they wheeze, or maybe “So.” They aren’t speaking as clearly as they were. What little of their face isn’t obscured by hair is a mess; is that blood dripping down their cheeks? “You’re going to promise me something, a’ight?” Kris lets themself collapse next to your cage, only just barely propping themself up enough to have mobility with their left hand.
You hurriedly hum twice. They grimace.
“You’re going to play nice…” their hand stretches towards the latch of the cage, shaking like a leaf, “you’re not going to be a dick,” they cough on the last word and have to pause to catch their voice again. You watch their blood stain their light-colored bed, and wonder if they should be concerned, too, or if it is just you who worries for their health. “You’re not gonna be a dick unless it’s funny.” Kris’s voice is noticeably softer. “And you’re not going to out us, for any reason. Got it?”
It is not that you disagree with the words at all, no, of course Kris is right, yet you struggle to hum. You even struggle to keep your beat. You are so, so tired. You could almost call it a desire to sleep.
Kris’s voice comes as a cold, quiet shock from your cold, quiet demise: “...please agree.” They almost sound like a child, now, nothing but an outcast of a kid who wants their one chance at a game to be fair.
You manage to hum twice.
“Thank you…” they rasp, deftly pulling the latch off and open, releasing you to the outside world, something you could never reach in this state. “SOUL?”
They pause, as if waiting for a response you cannot give. They open the door, hold you in the palm of their hand—it is not like you could run away, is it?—and they tilt their head to look at you dead-on again. They take a tiny pleasure in their next words; you can read it on their chapped lips.
“I’ll kill us both if I have to, SOUL.”
And with that, they aim, inhale, and shove you directly into the heart-shaped hole in their chest, barely managing to muffle their scream into their blankets. You burn, for a moment, then click into place like you were always meant to be there, perfectly framed by that red-stained sweater, and beating along at a normal pace, just like a heart should.
And Kris goes silent.
You close your mouth and sit up on the bed, scrunching your blankets around you. You do not feel tired anymore, no, you feel almost energized, in a way, like you wouldn’t have to sleep all night. Like you wouldn’t even have to blink, if it didn’t hurt to keep your eyes open like that. (Note to self, don’t forget to keep blinking on the beat.) So, so much better than you had felt just seconds before, it’s… astounding. You tentatively poke at your mouth. Sticky. But maybe not bloody. Maybe you had just imagined that, in your delirium just moments ago. You look down at your chest. The fabric is torn and ripped, and there is a reddish brown stain outlining the hole, dripping down your torso, but your skin is perfectly clear. You trace the outline of a heart with just a few bloodstained fingertips.
Something deep inside you evokes emotions.
You glance at the birdcage, at the tossed sweater.
You should probably fix that all up, shouldn’t you? It is only fair that a guest takes care of their host. Especially after their host was much kinder than they should have been.
You close your eyes and inhale, struggling to puzzle out their voice again. And in the darkness of early morning, you whisper to a room empty of everything you: “I won’t let you down, Kris. I promise.”