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You are seated in a room that is empty.
A chain digs into your wrist, binding one arm to the wall.
It is quiet, and you are alone.
This is what you deserve. This is what you deserve. This is what you deserve. This is what you deserve. This is what you deserve. This is what you deserve. This is what you deserve. This is what you deserve. This is what you deserve. This is what you deserve. This is what you deserve. This is what you deserve. This is what you deserve. This is what you deserve. This is what you deserve. This is what you deserve. This is what you deserve. This is what you deserve. This is what you deserve. This is what you deserve. This is what you deserve. This is what you deserve. This is what you deser
“Well? Are you still there?” Her voice.
“I'm still here.” You don’t know which one of you you’re trying to comfort.
“Well, that's something. I guess we're really stuck together then...”
“What just happened?” you ask.
“You died, probably. And we're back where I started.”
You can’t accept it. “How are we supposed to get out of here?”
She laughs-- her cruel undertone barely missable. But just barely. “Are you seriously asking me that? I've been stuck here for as long as you've known me. I don't think the two of us would be here right now if I knew how to leave.”
“...If we're both here, then what happened to the others?” You try.
“There's four walls around us, and a chain around my wrist. How am I supposed to know about anything that isn't right in front of me? Maybe they're gone. I guess we'll just have to wait and see.”
The idea of waiting again scares you.
“And if nobody comes by... well, I guess we'll be waiting a long, long time.” You don’t want to think about it.
You try again. “Are we still a ghost?”
Your-- her?-- your gaze turns to your hands. Solid. Then translucent. Then solid again. “Huh. I don't know. It's like we're one and then the other… Ugh. Make up your mind already, body, will you?”
You are uncomfortable in her body. You feel like a growth-- something that does not belong here. But at the same time, something that was always meant to be a part of her. “What are we supposed to do? Just wait for something to happen?”
“Do you have any better ideas?”
You don’t. You change the subject again. “This isn't what it was like the last time I died. The last time I died, I got a title card.”
“That's… weird. And isn't how it works for me. But if you want, I guess I can humor you. What do these 'title cards' look like?”
“...No, this is stupid, you're going to laugh at me.”
“Whether I laugh at you depends on the title. I'm not going to make any promises I can't keep. I don't lie.”
“If I'm going to tell you, you have to promise you won't laugh at me.” Uncharacteristically defensive of you, isn’t it?
She sighs. “Okay. Fine. I promise I won't laugh at you. Now tell me. I wanna know.”
“The first one I got said 'Chapter I: The Hero and the Princess,' and then after we both died, I got 'Chapter II: The Spectre.”
And she laughs.
“You promised you wouldn't laugh at me!”
“I wasn't laughing at you. I was laughing at…”
“Mhm.”
“I was laughing at the whole situation! But really, it's like our lives are some cruel little play for someone else's entertainment…”
You let her trail off, let her think for a moment.
“Chapter III: The Princess and the Dragon.”
You are puzzled. “The Princess and the Dragon ? I thought I was maybe some sort of... bird?”
“I like to think of you as a dragon. It's close enough.” It really isn’t, you think. But whatever. It’s her decision.
The click of a latch and creaking hinges, muffled. Something is here.
“I think that's 'you.'”
Your gaze turns back to your hands. They flicker once again.
"We're still a mess. It's like 'you' don't really know what we are."
A thump on the floorboards above. And then another. The scraping of metal against a surface. The flickering in your body stops. You are solid.
“So you took the knife. Of course you did.”
And then you hear the sound of something crashing through a window.
…What was that ?
You look down to your hands. You are translucent once more, and you stay that way.
“Hello?” you try. Nothing happens.
“Hey, I'm the one in control here. You don't get to put words in my mouth.”
Movement on the stairs.
“You're always so loud on the way down.”
And then a figure emerges, shrouded in a feathered darkness, the world trailing behind it, its shining blade gleaming against the wooden walls. It stares at you with wild, hollow eyes.
“Quick. Tell them I'm in here!”
“Hmm.... maybe that's not so terrible an idea, killer.” And then out loud, she says, “You're missing something important, aren't you?”
The head on the figure cocks to the side. Is it inquisitive? Suspicious? Playful? Its emotions are unreadable.
“I know because I have it right here.”
You groan. “I hate this silence. It's putting me on edge.”
“Oh, is it? Because you do this quiet staring act a lot. Can't say I'm a fan.” And then out loud, she continues, “Hey. I'm talking to you. It's rude to have a conversation in front of other people without letting them in on it.”
“Ohhh, so you’d like to hear what we're thinking, hm?” The figure’s smile is wide and sharp and near-wicked, but with a kind of levity in his eyes. Something attempting to be playful, unaware of the reality. “I dunno, gang, what do you say? Do we tell her? Well-- uh, them?” A Voice of yours, but one that is new to you.
Silence as the creature briefly falls back into itself.
“She knows about the decider being gone,” says a presence with a different tone, different posture-- shy and withdrawn, boxy and defensive. “That would be a weird bluff to come up with if it weren’t true.” Your Voice of the Hero.
“Well-- seeing as some total tosser tossed our weapon, our options are pretty limited already.” You may have never met the Voice in front of you before, but you think you’ll call him the Contrarian. “Unless we can just…” He makes a grabbing kind of motion.
And then the figure changed again-- straightened posture, but loose and lazy. “That was you.” Cold.
“Hey! They didn’t know that!” It was obvious.
You rise from your seated position and take a good look at your shackles. They are just as spectral as you. “We… I’m in the exact same position as last time, huh?” she mumbles.
“It’s like a real do-over, isn’t it? You’re a ghost and somebody wants us to slay you-- only, we’re not even sure if we can without letting you back inside of us, hm? And how would we know you’re not going to take revenge for what we did to you? Mighty conflicting, that one.”
“We’re running out of options,” says the Cold. “Why don’t we--”
“Hold that thought!” The Contrarian fixes you with a look. “Don’t worry about it-- official bird business over here. We’ll just be a moment.”
Silence again as they hold their internal debates.
“Unbelievable,” the Princess complains to you.
“Right? How rude.”
“Yeah, this isn’t over yet. One second.” Out loud again, she shouts, “Hey! I was talking to you.”
They startle slightly. “Uh, yeah… It’s… it’s a little chaotic in here right now, sorry,” the Hero’s sheepish tone spills out. “Just bear with us for a little longer.”
They go quiet again. The Princess is dumbfounded.
“We’re almost done, promise?” he offers.
“...Fine.”
They aren’t quiet for much longer. “Lucky for you, we’ve made a decision already!” cheers the Contrarian.
“Between… what, killing me and letting me out?” she questions.
“A third option that nobody likes,” the Cold sighs.
You’re confused. “What? Wasn’t there only two?” she asks.
The Contrarian blinks at you like you’re stupid. “Right. Yeah. Like I said. So we’ve got you, wanting your freedom, and we’ve got Him, buzzing about in our head, trying to get us to try to kill you again -- but we’re not gonna listen to him.”
“The bossy one?”
The Contrarian laughs. “Hear that, old man? We’ve got a Princess here who met you for a minute and even she thinks you’re a bossy old bore.”
How angry the Narrator must be-- oh, to be a fly on the wall in your own head again…
“Meh. But see, then again… we could always just…” Contrarian motions towards the door. As if he’s going to--
“You’re going to try to leave without me?” the Princess spits. “Really? Come down here just to flaunt it in my face?”
You cannot tell if it is playfulness or genuine suspicion that crosses the Contrarian’s eyes. “Well, I was gonna let you plead your case a little, maybe see if you’ll give our guy back, see if we’re over that very silly betrayal business-- but now, well. Eh .”
“Well, wait-- I think she’s within her right to be a little apprehensive,” chimes in the Hero. “We did… kill her. And then try to do it again.”
“There were no hard feelings! Just business.”
“It doesn’t matter whether there were hard feelings. You still killed me. In cold blood. ”
“I think it matters.” The Contrarian is a little defensive, almost. “We didn’t mean anything by it. You know how it is-- you’ve never done anything you might not wanna do because you think it’ll turn out good later? And then realize it actually kinda sucks?”
“Well-- I don’t know, maybe.” She’s thinking about asking to possess you in the first place. “But I certainly haven’t then done it again for no reason. ”
“...Okay, okay, but have you considered-- it was funny.”
Suddenly, your body-- the Princess’ body, bone and spectral skin, leap forward, hand enveloping some cavity in the figure’s chest. She squeezes down and--
“-The Princess has a fist around your heart-- whatever you do next better count. ”
You're back.
“And we didn’t move after all,” sighs the Cold. “Oh, well. Now you get to see what she was about to do, don’t you?”
“Just make her stop,” whines the Hero. “It hurts.”
“Yeah, I know, but there’s not exactly anything I can do about it!” the Contrarian returns. “Okay, it’s not funny to provoke her anymore-- changed my mind. Happy now?”
“No. Not really.” The Cold is the only one to keep his composure. You expected nothing less.
You try to raise a hand, to steady yourself, but you find no purchase. Your limbs are ice. You shudder. “Y-You’re going to kill me if you keep doing that,” you stutter. “B-But if, if you’ll-- If that’s what you want, go ahead. Do whatever you need to do. It’s okay.”
She freezes. “You’re…”
Her hand pulls back. “You’re new,” comments the Narrator.
“Oh! He’s back!” The Contrarian cheers. “The gang’s all here! Knew you could bail us out.”
“Really? That was your plan?”
“Well… eh… it worked out anyway? I didn’t think a third option nobody liked would work out so well.”
“ Trying to leave, you mean?” the Hero sighs. “I mean… I feel like it could have gone better, still.”
“Meh. We’ve got our man back. We’re alive. Good as we can hope for, I think.” The Contrarian pauses. “Only question now is… well. Now what?”
It falls to you again. Three voices and a shroud waiting on you. You turn your gaze to the Princess’ face-- skeletal and wide-eyed, also waiting. A lot of waiting today.
“I mean… I can let you in again,” you say. “If you want.”
“...” She is very obviously not a fan of trying that again. “How about… we just try to leave side by side instead? We’ll see what happens when we get to the door.” She starts to lead the way up the stairs, spectral hands hesitant to grab yours. “That way, we’ll already be there in case you get any stupid ideas again, killer.”
Ow. But you suppose you deserve her suspicion.
“Are you serious?” And the Narrator spoils what little peace you had.
“I think we are,” says the Cold. “Go on. Don’t you have a job to do?”
“Eugh. Fine.”
And so He narrates, begrudgingly, how your hands flicker inside the others’ as you head up the stairs, how cold her hands are, and how bad of an idea this is.
“Welcome back, by the way,” the Hero says.
“We all missed you a whole lot,” says the Contrarian. “But I think Mr. Creepy, over there in the corner, missed you the most. ”
“What a ridiculous statement…” Cold sighs. You don’t question him-- you get the impression there’s some truth to it, but that the Contrarian is deflecting. Feeling your absence and trying to live up to something he couldn’t be. You find the Princess at the door, hesitant, but willing to leave with you.
“There’s the door. Moment of truth…”
You get ready to step into your freedom. The Narrator picks up with a, ”You twist the doorknob in your hand and step forward into the world you’ve damned. You fall to the ground, exhausted, and the Princess gently floats down to your side.” And so she does, a heavy sigh leaving her as you lay together. The sky is deep, beautiful, but you find yourself gazing at her instead. She is fixated on the stars, each little pocket of brightness above you. You consider them, and look back to her. “I hope this all comes back to bite you, do you hear? I hope you’re forced to feel the weight of all the regret there’s ever been…”
But He doesn’t finish His thought before disappearing entirely. And you find yourself free of any of the regrets He wished upon you.
“Finally. You know… I think this is what I was looking for this whole time.” She turns to you. “I think… this is where I was meant to be. Home.”
You don’t get to ask her what she means. There's a whispering at the corners of your hearing, threads of darkness at the corners of your vision. Your peace does not last. Something rips her from you, and it leaves something else in her place.