II--Little Bo Peep Show

I’m not supposed to be here. Why am I here? Boby’s supposed to be here. Boby? Boby, c’mon! Y-you know what happens when I take the wheel!

Nothing. Nothing inside and outside, besides for myself… and moist blackness.

Where am I, even? Is this what it’s like to travel through his body? I thought it would be… narrower. He always describes it like sharing a mind with a tree, or gliding down a stream. Something like that sounds so cramped. It’s too black to see anything, but there’s something expansive about it, like some kind of cave. It feels humid in here. Smells really pungent, but I can’t think of a word worse than that.

Wait, I glow. I should be using my light to find my around.

Heheh, I know it’s scary, but c’mon Bo, you gotta move! If the others can’t help you, you can only help yourself! Just strain your body a little more and you’ll get out of this rut! It’s alright. This body is immortal, practically! There’s no way you can—

“Oh, for fucks sake.”

The Noise clicks on a flashlight, the light beaming below his chin. Vacant anger stands on his face, like a cold father.

He smirks and continues, “it was about time you had to say something about this. It seems like the exact thing you’d hate.”

Okay okay, just do his job. You know a little bit about this job—you did it in the past! It was a long time ago. You can’t handle these kinds of things. I’ve heard very bad things about this guy.

I guess I’ll have to find a way.

I try to reply. “Y-you’re no fool. You know what you’re—”

He’s hurting himself. He’s using her to hurt himself! We’re inside her! It’s a labyrinth, a labyrinth of the body made to serve! Leaving her lifeless, just an object, just a toaster in a bath! No, no! Stop it! All this information is flooding inside me, with every little atom so tangible and forcing me to see beyond miles and miles I could see in the past. I know everything about him. Everything.

“I’m—you’re scared! This is scaring you!” I blurt out of horror.

His eyes widen like a wound getting opened, and he’s trying to smile it off.

“That’s the fucking point! And you can’t do anything about it, oh guilty conscious of mine.”

I caught eye of his tattered legs, bleeding fresh blood. He did that to himself. He acts like he’s just exploring some old cave with a special treasure inside, and rams himself onto her teeth to give the illusion of falling for some kind of trap. We’re inside someone, someone who isn’t aware of the levels that he is adding to the experience. And she feels nothing. And I know that because their bodies are interlinked right now. This is the only time I can feel an inkling of her soul, and it is only when she is a vessel.

“How are you g-going to hide the wounds?” I ask, trying to look serious.

“She never says a thing about it. At most, she looks a little sad, but it never goes anywhere.”

You’re a real minefield. It’s hard to keep my head quiet. If it won’t be the information flashing in my head that kills me, it’ll be hearing his heart beat, feeling his lungs constrict and release, tasting the old nicotine in his mouth, feeling lightheaded from the blood loss from his body, the nausea, the stiff muscles in his penis, the—

“I don’t like this…” I whimper without my volition. My body is not shrinking, but I feel like I am. Just a childlike form I am. Just a child.

The Noise’s mouth softens and his eyes crinkle after realizing what I said. His heart bangs faster, its rein of throbbing consuming more and more of my body.

“I don’t wanna be here! I wanna go home!” I bawl.

His fear deepens, and he starts to heave, almost dropping his flashlight as the tension rattles through his body. He looks down at his body and he starts to laugh hysterically. The laughter hurts the most, like some kind of asphyxia.

“You—you’re,” he struggles to speak under his uncontrollable laughter. “You’re not actually—haha—a part of me, are you?” He suddenly coughs, wheezing heavily.

His brow furrows as he gasps for air. He lurches over and grabs onto my tiny body with a singular hand, engulfing almost my entire torso. Frozen. I can’t do anything but breathe.

He glares at me, his scowl standing strong.

“I’m not letting anyone tell you a damn thing about what I’m doing to myself,” he growls.

His hand tightly vices me as he continues exploring the “cave”, holding just like any other item. Am I going to die? No, I won’t; you know so. But… he’s… everything’s so… tight. But I can still breathe. Why can I breathe? I don’t breathe.

He clenches his teeth, biting my bullet so he doesn’t have to bite his own. Let me leave. Please. Do something, anything.

“Pl—please…” I creak with as much strength as possible, “let me leave.”

He shifts his vision towards me for a split moment.

“P-p-please… I w-won’t tell a soul.”

“Keep begging for mercy, you submissive little thing,” he teases.

God, let me leave. Perhaps if I get crushed enough, I will be able to slip from his grasp. But I… I just want to leave! I want it to be over! Please! Please, oh please! Let me leave! Whether it be through my body or my consciousness, let me crawl away from the bed!

He suddenly stops. He raises me up slowly, then swiftly jams my groin onto some kind of appendage, some macabre structure to blackened for my angel eyes to see, something that pierces all the way from my waist to my throat. I’m just a ring too big for this finger, all the while shrinking from all the wear and tear from the other finger trying to wear me. I feel heat.

Let me scream. It burns. It burns so bad. I try to scream, but the door inside my soul will not open—no, the fingers will not let me! All that comes out is a dying gurgle, inflamed by this stake impaling me. It burns like acid. It burns, it burns, it burns. The burn prompts soreness, and the soreness prompts throbbing, like I’m being sucked into a black hole.

And his body can’t take it either. He keeps laughing, not much out of humor, but because his body is trying to scream too. It’s doing everything it can to reject this action, but yet his will overpowers it all. It’s sickening how it silences everything. What is this, evilness? It is likely just cowardice but all I can say is evil. Evil, evil, evil and soulless. How evil it is that his mind can overpower his body, his heart, and his senses.

A reflex in his body thrusts me upward from the appendage, but I am quickly shoved back onto the appendage, his mind deflecting another attack. I feel another warmness flow through me, and it makes me lightheaded.

The laughter starts to ease his spirit with a rush of dopamine. His body is powered by copious amounts of this new energy, yet his chest becomes even more sore and his muscles more exhausted.

“Holy fuck, you’re bleeding!” He exclaims. He holds me up for a moment.

I feel my blood pour down my legs.

“That’s not blood, that’s not blood…” he repeats with panicked denial. “…It’s not mine.”

He starts to repeatedly thrash me into and out of that appendage to deepen my wound. Over and over… my mind starts to drift away. I think I’m leaving now. That’s okay. I don’t mind that. It feels like some kind of little nap… let me take a nap.

I feel something.

Out of nowhere, I let out an ungodly shriek. The Noise suddenly stops his torment as my cry rings throughout the cave. A sinking feeling wafts through the area and within both of us. He stays paused, startled, listening to my cry grow weaker and weaker.

He presses his fingers into my chest as hard as he can and looks me dead in the eye.

“What the fuck did you—”

Some unknown force pushes the Noise out of his current position, like a giant hand. It continues pushing with great speed, leading him down some path I can’t recognize, before exerting him out of the cave and back into reality. He and I fall to the ground. He gets up, but the pain still rings through my body, preventing me from getting up.

“I heard you scream,” Noisette pants. “Oh god! Your legs are all cut up!”

He says nothing.

“You’ve never come out of me looking this injured. Are you okay?”

His silence continues. She seems to be worried sick, but she joins the silence for a moment.

“I… I think we shouldn’t be doing this anymore. I can’t really tell what you’re doing inside of me and… it’s… I don’t think it’s healthy.”

He finally sighs. “I guess you’re right. You hurt me sometimes, love. B-but let’s do the right thing and move on from it. Keep the past in the past, m’kay?”

I shakily lift my body up with my elbows, getting a better look at what’s happening.

“Alright…” she agrees, sounding defeated and confused. “Wait, are you sure? You seem pretty shaken up, do you need a moment to just, I don’t know, take it in?”

He raises a hand near her mouth. “I need to move on,” he softly assures her.

Her frown deepens. “Okay, I’ll clean your wounds for you, alright Theodore?”

“Thank you,” he replies dryly. The two then walk out of the room, leaving me alone. Even then, I’m just a spectator.

My god.

I roll myself over and lay on my back. I breathe deeply in an attempt to take back my own body.

What was that moment?

My eyes waft around, trying to get some grasp on my surroundings. I don’t care about that room. I don’t want to take it in.

A tail?

I strain myself to sit up, and there, right between my legs, is a tail. A tail with a broken heart at the end. It sits on my lap like it isn’t a part of me, yet it’s chained to me.

I can shapeshift. Shapeshifting feels like nothing; it shouldn’t be a problem. No need to be scared.

It’s not going away.

I start to whimper as tears drip from my eyes.

Maybe it will go away when I feel better.