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Knees weak, Vriska stared into the face of the monster before her. She knew she shouldn’t feel this way—it was her lusus, after all, but staring into those eight cold eyes, Vriska Serket had no choice but to admit to herself that she was afraid.
Spidermom’s mandibles clicked, insectoid mouthparts moving in a way that made Vriska’s stomach churn. Her jaw was stained with blood, but none of it was fresh. Not able to bring herself to look at her lusus for more than a few seconds, Vriska looked down at the ground and was puzzled to see she wasn’t wearing her FLARP shirt like she remembered, but some orange outfit she didn’t know she owned.
Normally, she would have questioned her odd outfit choice, but the terror that was flooding through her ate away at every conscious thought, freezing her limbs and making her heart beat out of rhythm. Her lusus roared and shifted. Long, spindly legs covered in tiny coarse hairs like thorns began pounding the ground, crashing against the cliff that held Vriska’s home. The world shook, and she let out a tiny whimper, knees giving out beneath her.
Spidermom knocked against the cliff again, and even though something deep in Vriska’s mind told her she wasn’t in danger, she couldn’t stop herself from shaking, couldn’t stop the burning tears that spilled from her eyes and spilled down her face, blurring her vision until her world was nothing but shaking and blurs. It got louder and louder. The roars and sounds of cracking and crumbling rock hurt her ears. She put her trembling hands over them, doing whatever she could to block the terrible sound.
“Vriska?” a voice said, and suddenly everything was quieter. She could still hear Spidermom’s roars, but they were much quieter than they had been a moment before.
Opening her puffy eyes just a crack, she caught a glimpse of a boy in an outfit she had designed. “J-John?” she asked hesitantly as he swam in and out of her focus and the ground shook.
“Yeah, it’s me. Why are you crying?” He sounded concerned, and she heard his feet crunch on the rocky ground as he approached, sitting down next to her still-shaking body. Her eyes were open just enough to see his hand hovering an inch above her shoulder, trying to decide whether she would want his comfort or not.
He noticed her looking and took his hand away, clearing his throat and looking down. “So that spider,” he began, ignoring the fact that she hadn’t answered his question. Spidermom roared menacingly again, and Vriska seized up, clenching her fists and squeezing her eyes shut. “Was that your denizen or something?” If she hadn’t been petrified, Vriska would have made fun of his ignorance, but in her current state she didn’t have the heart to. She didn’t even want to explain it to him, this alternate John that didn’t know anything about what her lusus was or how her relationship with the monster worked.
Finally able to speak, Vriska opened her mouth and said in a cracking voice, “No, she…she’s my lusus.” John’s brow furrowed, and Vriska assumed he had picked up enough knowledge from the other trolls to know what she was talking about.
“Okay, but what’s wrong? Why are you so scared of her?” John asked bluntly, and Vriska curled back into herself, fresh tears slipping out from between her shut eyelids.
“You don’t get it, do you?” She snapped, but it wasn’t as nasty as it could have been. Her voice was still wavering. “She’s a monster, she makes me…I have to…I have to feed my friends to her!” A sob racked Vriska’s body then, and it was a few moments before she could collect herself enough to speak. “She’s hungry,” she said quietly. “She’s always hungry and I can never feed her enough no matter how hard I try and she takes it out on me and she’s my responsibility and she’s hungry, John. So hungry.”
John didn’t say anything for a while. When he finally did, Vriska could hear that disgusting pity in his voice. “This is just a memory, Vriska. You can’t get hurt here; it’s okay--”
“I know! I—I know I’m dead and that she is too and that it isn’t my responsibility anymore, but I still…” She breathed in deeply. “I can’t.”
“You have to face your fears at some point,” John said.
“I’m not afraid of anything,” Vriska scoffed, with a ghost of her usual conceited air returning. A few seconds of silence screamed skepticism louder than John ever could. She let out a breath. “Okay, so maybe I am. But just this one thing. I’m not a wimp!”
“I believe you,” John smiled. “You’re one of the bravest people I’ve ever met. That’s why I want to help you be brave for this.” He reached out and took her hand, standing up and pulling her to her feet too. She didn’t take her hand away and neither did he. With her other hand she wiped her face clean of tears.
She turned to look at her lusus, still roaring and hungry for fresh meat. Vriska’s stomach flipped at the sight, but John’s hand tightened around hers and she swallowed, steeling her nerves. “You can do it, Vriska,” John said. “Just think of somewhere else—anywhere else. A happy memory.”
She breathed out. “Okay,” she nodded, closing her eyes and concentrating. Despite the ground shaking and monster roaring at her just feet away, Vriska slowly willed her muscles to relax and she concentrated on leaving this memory, her worst memory, the only time in her life she’d ever been truly afraid, and picked a place that had always seemed calm and peaceful to her. Soon the roars of her lusus faded as one memory bled into another, universes mixing and twisting and fading before their world settled on one location. John held her hand the whole time.
“Oh,” he said when they were solidly in one memory. “This is my house.” He had phrased it like a statement, not a question, but Vriska could hear his curiosity for why she had picked this place.
“Yeah,” she replied, pulling her hand away at last and exhaling. It still amazed her that she could see her breath in front of her in this weather. She stepped through the cold white precipitation (she thought the human name of “snow” was silly) on the ground and made her way to John’s slime pogo. She brushed off the top of it and sat down, feeling it bounce a little. John followed her, sitting down on the ground and scooping up some of the cold white precipitation into a small sphere.
They were quiet for a while, until suddenly Vriska threw herself at John with force to envy the slime pogo’s. She wrapped her arms around him and pulled him close to her, and she could feel his surprise.
“Thanks,” she murmured. “For…helping me. Sorry I acted like such a blubbering coward.”
After a second John hugged her back, resting his head on hers. “For a second there I thought you’d been thrown off the pogo. And you didn’t seem like a blubbering coward to me. Everyone’s afraid of something, right?”
Vriska nodded. “But not a word of this to anyone else,” she said as she pulled out of the embrace, her usual proud demeanor back in full force. John gave her a toothy grin and she grabbed his shirt. “I’m serious!”
“Okay, okay, jeez!” John laughed. “I promise I won’t tell anyone. And I guess this means I should stop making ‘yo mama’ jokes?”
Vriska stared.
“Never mind,” John answered his own question, waving the thought away. “Earth joke. You probably wouldn’t get it even if I did explain.”
“I’m not that stupid, John,” Vriska said, giving his shoulder a light, playful punch. John feigned serious injury and fell down in the cold white precipitation. Vriska soon followed, and they broke into fits of laughter together as they played in the snowdrifts.