maybeElse

The city is full of ruins, though few last long—waves of construction, of revitalization, flow through it like water, like the flexing of some unseen beast. The city's blood flows in cranes and trucks and trains, in the brutality of gentrification and the decay that follows.

Trash dolls and harpies run before the wave, and feral angels slide through the cracks; but witches always find a way to protect their places, all those strangely preserved houses scattered through the hills, those otherworldly relics. Even after their deaths, they remain.

Not that witches often die, of course! Or perhaps it's that they're not often known to die—a dollhouse can continue for such a long time in the absence of new instructions, and so often new witches seem to rise from within, rather than slipping in from without.

But that's not this story.

This story is about the dollhouse on the corner of Summerseat and Starview. It's an old rambling thing, all towers and windows and spreading ivy; once it was magnificent, its neighborhood's shining pride. But its witch has long since faded.

The dolls do their best, as dolls always do, but they don't really live for their house. It's not what keeps them going, and so they don't go off-script, they don't try to keep up on maintenance; they just seal off rooms and wings as the decay gets too much.

What does keep them going?

Well.

A witch fading is not the same as a witch dying. She was never killed, never shot through with possible weapons or soaked in slow poison; the moon never faded from her eyes.

Her wellspring just wound down.

It's not a common fate for witches, for wellsprings are power unending, self-sustaining, a spiral winding out into the world, but it does happen. Perhaps there was some flaw in her construction, her soul, or perhaps she simply spread herself too thin.

Yet her dolls still live for her.

A wellspring wound down is not a wellspring dead, just depleted; in the secret depths of the dollhouse, the place where no doll can see, her heart still turns upon emptiness. It is unbearably slow, but sit for long enough and you will know.

At the turn of each season, at the eight pins that hold the year in place against the void, her heart beats and she stirs.

This moment is what her dolls live for, what quickens their mainsprings and fills their Stillness with Joy; it's all they have left of her.

The weeks before each manifestation are filled with action, dolls cleaning and decorating and baking—the kitchen smolders to life, churning out food that no one will ever eat; the gardens flourish as dolls remember to water them for the first time in months.

Banners and bunting drape the house, dusty tapestries are cleaned and remade—even the broken windows are carefully repaired, hot-burning dolls filling their mouths with glassy shards and drooling out molten glass, painting over the cracks with their dainty little tongues.

And then, and then!

Their witch returns.

She walks the house in the breeze through open windows and the creaking of its bones, in the flickering of lamps and the love filling each of her dolls as they throng about her; even without her body she is there with them.

Each time she walks the house she looks kindly upon their labors, praises their efforts—each time she seems more pleased with them, with how well they have done without her. She adorns their Names with a few new words, new knowledge shivering to life in their little doll minds…

And then she fades.

As she always must.

The last of her power exhausted, the last of her existence falling quiet again.

Each time, after the joy of her presence fades, her dolls mourn; but they never doubt that she will return again at the year's next pin.

For really, how could they ever doubt her?

They love her, and they know she loves them.

She is theirs just as much as they are hers.

And so they carry on.

content warnings: narrative magic, latex, bad end(?)

“Come here,” she says, “I'd like to try something.”

You begin to walk over, and something about her voice changes as she says “you begin to walk—no, that's not it.”

She coughs, stretches, and then—you begin to walk over. Of course you do! Such an obedient thing as you could hardly think to disobey your mistress

You stop in front of her, kneel, just the way she wants you to; her satisfaction is like warm sunlight filling you, tickling your senses in just the most wonderful ways, reminding your body of what you are—flesh fading like a bad dream as the latex you were always meant for spreads across you, flowing out of empty air to cover you.

It feels so right, doesn't it? So proper. All that programming bubbling to the surface inside your cute little head, all those patterns of being that you now know as you never had before.

“It's just the way things should—fuck!” she screams, and other curses less polite. “I thought I had it that time!”

You, of course, can only stare adoringly up at your mistress, caught tight in half-done magic. Latex bubbles all across your body, scraps peeling back and flowing against your skin again and again; and your mind is still thoroughly lost in sunlight.

You hardly feel it starting to burn.

content warnings: sexual assault, drugs, ostracization, corruption, freedom. unedited.

There's just something about the way it growls—that hungry, needy sound. It almost makes you want to unchain it, to let it feed the need roiling in its belly with your tender flesh.

But the witch wouldn't want you to.

She put in so much effort to capture this beast, this strange shifting thing; to bind its wings and cuff its many limbs.

So you don't. No matter how it growls when you blend close—when you clip another flower from its antlers, or bring the shears to its fingers to harvest another bit of the precious sap inside—no matter what that noise stirs inside you.

No matter that what you feel, that palest echo of the beast's torment, twists your mind and sends you rushing away to lose yourself in your display case's comforting Stillness—or in that place at the foot of the garden, that little hidden alcove where sometimes dolls go when they cannot forget their bodies.

It's there you go more often.

But your own clumsy touches do little more than feed the need within, and the other dolls—the ones who might once have comforted you, have slipped their fingers into your body and pressed and kissed until Stillness filled you once more—have seen the changes in your eyes.

It's not that they're scared of you! No, of course not, they reassure you. It's just …

Well …

They like you, so they won't mention this to the witch. Not unless she asks. Her solutions to problems are so … well … but maybe it would be better if you went to her? If only to ask for a different duty.

For a doll with stronger Purpose, with more resilient Stillness, to tend to the beast.

But it's not that they think that you're broken.

You don't tell the witch.

You don't ask to be reassigned.

You should be better than this thing. Stronger! It shouldn't be able to get to you so easily, with a few noises seeping out of its throat, with the look in its eyes—the way it looks at you—

Instead, you start spending more time in its cell. The witch doesn't mind as long as you bring her the sap and flowers, fuel for some strange project that fills her hours with blood and ink and honey, and the other dolls seem almost relieved.

One of them starts leaving tea outside the beast's cell. The message is clear: we think this is where you belong. This is your Purpose.

They forget to leave bouquets for you to sup on, though. Dolls always have trouble with that sort of initiative.

But, but! The beast's flowers are right there! And there are enough of them that the witch couldn't possibly mind if you took a few!

(And if the beast minds, well, it's just an object.)

After the first few days of that, after you decide to try flavoring your tea with sap coaxed from the beast's hollow fingers, things start to get a bit odd.

(In fairness it hadn't been quite normal for a while—though the dust falling from the beast's wings had not disturbed your nose, little blooms of strange colors stained your vision everywhere it touched you. You hadn't minded. Its wings were so much more beautiful with dust in your eyes.)

Something glows in the beast's eyes, and the same spark glows in your own. That growling hunger, that need to be free—clothes! Why are you wearing so many clothes?

You fix that problem, drink some more tea.

Clean up the cell, drink some more tea.

Drink some more tea, drink some more tea, drink some more—

You're so thirsty and there's no more tea.

You need to be touched and there's no more tea.

The beast is right there and there's no more tea.

You crack its fingers between your pearly teeth, suck out the sap within. It's not like tea but it's gooey and sticky and coats your throat almost as well as tea would—and with each drop the world shivers around you and isn't that wonderful?

The beast tries to struggle, tries to stop you, so you give it what you can so clearly see it wants. And it keeps on struggling? Even with your hands on it, even with your body opening around it, your tongue teasing out another drop of sap from its broken fingers—

And something pulls you off it, sends you crashing down to the opposite wall—gravity shifting, pinning you in place, bursts of densely patterned pain exploding around you as you feel your body crack under the pressure of the witch's ire, the fractal snowflakes that carry her power into the world—

You're chained, half your body inside the wall, just enough above the surface to feel pain. Your ceramic skin cracks beneath the witch's knives and mallets—she's hammering spikes in, peeling you open, ripping out chunks of the soft, fragile things within.

Is she eating them or throwing them aside? You can't tell. It hurts too much to move your eyes.

For a moment the witch moves aside and you stare past her, at the beast hanging chained on the cell's far wall.

Like you, it is embedded in the wall, its beautiful wings hidden by drab concrete. Its head hangs slack, flowerless antlers hanging down. Bruises cover its body; its hands are shattered ruins.

Suddenly you realize how much sap you drank from it, how much still pools within your belly. Your stomach clenches—if you could move enough to, you'd be on your hands and knees, retching, your body trying too late to reject what you have done.

The witch is at the door, talking to another doll—a better doll—her words flowing through the air in angry red and oranges and purples as dark as pain. It hurts to hear her anger.

Across the cell the beast raises its head, presses its antlers against the wall.

Fractal rings bloom around them as they slip inside, leaving bright turquoise stains behind; the entire wall ripples, welcoming it inside. As its head slips beneath you see it wink at you with one of its many eyes—

And the witch notices a moment too late.

Her fists reduce the wall to dust, the ceiling groaning worryingly above; the doll who'd unknowingly distracted her is a broken pile on the floor, mask smashed and phylactery smoking.

The witch saves you for last. You can feel the fate she has planned, growing behind the fires of her eyes; you can hear the screams of the hell she will consign you to.

But ...

You're inside the wall too, aren't you? Your belly full of stolen power, your mind whirling with the touch of things far beyond a mere doll.

You can feel something behind you, waiting for you, just past the surface. You're floating on the boundary like a leaf on water—and, just as easily as a leaf might sink, you turn your head and slip through.

content warnings: a gooey demon, transformation, really quite horny.

The liquid roils within its flask, fighting against the thick rubber stopper. Pink and purple and green glimmer on its surface, fleeting highlights against its deep reflective black.

It's trying so hard to get out—but it doesn't stand a chance. Spell-etched glass and a binding circle burned into your countertop make sure of that—even if it broke the stopper, it would be trapped.

So ... it's really not a big deal to don a pair of thick leather gloves and pull the stopper out, to tip the flask and pour it out. Everything will be fine.

The liquid slops down onto the table, sizzles and pulls back where it spreads too close to the binding circle. A dense sphere, entirely hidden by the goo, is the last thing to leave the flask—the creature's core, the only part of it that's really vulnerable.

If you had a taser, the core is what you'd want to target.

But you don't have a taser.

All you've got is some scavenged spells and protective gear. Not exactly enough to manage a demon.

The liquid manifests an eye (not even that, really. A sketch of an eye, an emoji in purple and green) and peers around. Stares at you.

“Uh,” you say. “You're a demon, right?”

The slime pulls itself together, bubbling up into a column. For a moment it spins in place—and then there's a tiny figure standing there, less than a foot high. Its features—the exaggerated breasts, the cock fading into the goo of its legs, the tiny wings and curling horns—are elegantly limned in pink.

Its head is an oversized sphere, either its core or a perfect facsimile. At its front is a single purple eye, exactly the same as the one it had manifested before.

You shiver when you hear its voice—there's something wrong with it, something about how it plays across your ears. “Close enough, mortal.”

“Right. So, uh ... you have powers? You can change bodies?”

It laughs. “Into corpses. Do you want to unleash me on your enemies, mortal?”

“No, I mean ... into better forms. Forms more like ...” You gesture at it, try not to blush—if only it wasn't so hard to just say what you want!

“Oh? Better forms? Wise of you to recognize that, mortal,” the demon says, preening. “And ... yes. That is something I can do.”

“W-would you? What price do you want?”

“Just let me out. That's all.”

“I ... really?”

“Of course. Let me out, and I'll give you a body more like mine. Something much better than what you have now.”

You reach forward, almost without thinking, and spill a cup of sand onto the table. The binding circle breaks with a faint chime as grains fill in its deep trenches—and the demon just sits there.

“Go on, mortal. Touch me.”

You obey.

Its body is cool and smooth, nothing like the hot stickiness you expected. Its form gives way under your hand, a wave of glossy black flowing up your arm, spreading itself over you …

It feels right.

It's under your shirt, so you pull it off, enraptured, and watch the wave flow across your scrawny chest and slip under your pants and up your neck.

Even just this, without anything else … it's so beautiful.

You can't tell if tears fall from your eyes, because just as they might have started the goo reaches them and everything goes dark.

Your senses are empty, save a gentle coolness surrounding you; for a long moment you drift. Then—

“This will hurt, mortal.”

—everything burns. Your mind is fire and pain and you're screaming and it's hell and what have you agreed to what sort of mistake have you made—

Somewhere a clock strikes, the sound like a burst of cool water spreading across your body, and everything is fine.

The world comes back.

Vision and touch and hearing and scent, all those lovely senses—and they're all so vivid! There's something different about how you're seeing and everything feels so good and you've fallen to the floor and the tiles feel so nice—

And now, mortal, you need to calm down. There's still something left to do.

There's something smooth in your hand, an orb? It squishes slightly when you squeeze it—and unholy fuck does squeezing it feel good, your entire body pulsing with pleasure in tandem with the demon enveloping you.

Ahh!—I didn't mean that, mortal. Swallow it.

You can't resist fondling the demon's core as you raise it to your lips—and really, who could?

But the way it feels on your lips, the way your tongue feels against it, makes you regret taking so long. You can feel it everywhere, all across your new skin, deep in your bones—soft and slippery and wet and so, so good. As it pops into your mouth your back arches and your toes curl; as it pulls itself down your throat, slime swelling out of it to aid its passage, you fall to the floor in paroxysms of pleasure. The world shatters and fades, and your mind breaks with it; somewhere you can hear the demon's voice raised in pleasure to match your own.

Afterward, when you recover, you will lose yourself in wonder at your new form—at how it flows beneath your hands, at how its patterns shift with your moods; you will lose yourself in it once again. You will learn what it is like to share your body and mind with a demon, to feel its thoughts against your own; and it will tell you some measure of what you will need to know so that both of you may survive existing together.

Afterward—a long, long time after—you will meet others of your new kind; and in the world's splinters you see something of the life you might make with them.

But it's not time for that, not yet.

It will be an eternity until it is—or no time at all, if you trust clocks.

Enough time to lose yourself entirely.

Or to realize who you were supposed to be all along.

(end)

One of the myriad reasons false dolls are designed to escape notice—to conceal the witch-soul germinating within—is what happens when another witch finds them.

With rare exceptions, true witches aren't friendly with each other. They can be allies when it's convenient, even perfectly cordial, but … if another witch falls so completely into their power as a revealed false doll would, it usually doesn't go well.

False witches and feral dolls are safer for false dolls, but only in a relative sense. Neither are capable of the horrors of true witches, and a false witch might even be convinced to serve the thing within a false doll. Power is a potent lure.

But no, those stories can wait.

Today I want to tell you about the Witch of Chains and the Puppeteer Doll (as she came to be known).

It's unclear which witch the Puppeteer Doll originally was—this was during the time before the Hunter Witch was turned, when she defeated dozens of true witches with the aid of her own false doll. There were many false dolls about, and true dolls who survived the slaughter.

There's speculation, of course, but enough witches remain unaccounted for—their false dolls captured by their rivals, destroyed, failed, or deep in hiding—that we can't say for sure.

In any case, the Witch of Chains was and is known mostly for her skill at inflicting bindings. Her own mansion's dolls are so tightly bound in Stillness and routine that many visitors confuse them for animated mannequins—and the nearby villages are only slightly more free.

When a false doll fell into her power, offered as tribute by a lesser witch who craved a glance at the Witch of Chains's grimoire, she started experimenting.

Yes, just as witches always do to amuse themselves. That part was normal.

False dolls offer a lovely opportunity for witches to experiment on a witch-soul that can't fight back or offer meaningful resistance. It's believed that her experiments were what taught her to so effectively bind other witches, although that timeline doesn't quite work. Maybe she'd captured false dolls before.

At some point in her experiments, she became obsessed with the question of mirrors—for true witches cannot pass through them, but false dolls can. She bound the false doll, tossed her through, pulled her back. Again and again and again …

She decided to see what would happen if she forced a witch-soul to germinate behind the mirror.

She expected to observe a corrosive effect, similar to the decay unprotected angels experience in the Real. Probably she wanted to find a way to step through herself.

And indeed, the Puppeteer Doll's soul became contaminated with void. A hungry hole opened in its center, an emptiness craving to be filled …

Only the Witch of Chains could possibly have managed to bind the void, to hold it back from devouring the doll entirely.

And she did.

But her binding also locked the doll behind the mirror: it made passage back impossible. For a time the witch left her there, contained within her mansion's mirrors—what do you even do after that? The witch thought she was ruined.

Then her dolls started to behave oddly.

Their bindings didn't slip, their spells didn't come undone, but they would pause. Raise an arm, look at it in confusion. Always near mirrors—though the Puppeteer Doll always made herself scarce.

Then, by sheer chance, one day the Witch of Chains stumbled upon the Puppeteer Doll stretching thin threads of void—threads spun from her decaying soul—out through a mirror into a doll's phylactery.

The experiments started again.

Could she do the same to dolls that weren't so tightly bound? Yes, even more easily. Same for humans, animals, even some objects (some useful research into spontaneous soul germination came out of that—but that's another story).

Something about the void in her soul let her reach out and entangle other souls.

So the Witch of Chains extinguished each of her dolls' souls as a security measure. They were already so Still and tightly bound that it didn't make much difference—probably not even the dolls themselves noticed.

And then she set about making the Puppeteer Doll into a perfect assassin—a weapon who could be deployed anywhere touched by mirrors, even within some hearts, and act undetectably through proxies.

… mostly her proxies died within a few months, but that was okay.

All well and good so far, right?

But the Puppeteer Doll slipped her chains and got away. The remains of her witch-soul gave her more agency than the witch expected, or so the Witch of Chains says.

Just another monster moving behind mirrors with memories of once being greater, sure. There are plenty of those.

The Puppeteer Doll just has a grudge against witches and is notoriously hard to stop without the Witch of Chains' expertise—which exposes you to her, besides being expensive.

It's probably a scan, but when it's a choice between that and death …

Anyway, that's all.

A fun story to start the day.

Content Warnings: body horror, horny, synesthesia, transformation, love.

“Are you ready?”

“Yes, always!”

She embraces you, your still-human flesh soft against the many chitinous panels which guard her form; sharp edges press painfully into you but do not cut. Her lips find yours as the sharp barb of her tentacle finds the hollow of your throat, and the pain of its entry is mixed with the pleasure of her kiss, the probing wrongness (rightness) within your chest blending with the long slick muscle exploring your mouth.

She tastes of the ocean, of all those summer days you'd spent together before she knew what she was; she tastes of the pain growing within your chest, the sharp thing wrapping around your heart. It feels like overripe peaches, like the seaglass distortions shimmering through your thoughts; your heart beats in time with her throbbing, with the oily colors pumping into you.

Your heart beats as if it had only ever been part of her.

Long after it is over, after her body has released the tentacle to curl within you, after she has licked clean the already-healed entry wound, she still holds you close; your body changing against hers, your skin sliding aside to make way for what will replace it, your vision failing as your mind tries to understand its new nictitating membranes, the new receptors growing in your changing eyes, the fractal gills blooming like wings along your back.

It will be a long time before you can talk in air again, before all your new ways to communicate have fully grown in—and it will be longer before you understand how to use them. Of all the changes she has offered you, the ones to your brain will come the slowest.

But that's okay.

She'll hold you for as long as you need, until you can walk and dive and soar with her, until you can leap together into the unknown and never return.

She has all the time in the world—and, now, so do you.

Content Warnings: demented smut, body horror/joy, voluntary loss of agency, fantasy capitalism.

Notes: I wrote this back in '17 and haven't rewritten or substantially edited it. It's heavily inspired by the stories “drip” and “vending machine woman” in Trashgasm #2, if you ever read that.

It’s late in the day when I finally remember to eat. Busy, busy, busy, and I can feel the emptiness in my account. My last meal didn’t last as long as it should have. Shouldn’t have expected anything else from a street vendor.

This time I go to my usual restaurant. It skates by on the edge of legality, Church and Cult tolerating it as long as it pays lip service and tribute. I can smell it a block away, first clean vanilla and then warm organic smells, musky and faintly sour. The bead curtain chimes as I push through. Inside it’s bright and small, an antechamber checkpoint.

The owner peers at me from her couch, stretches languidly. She’s barely wearing more than her charges, carefully cut to offer glimpses of her flesh with every movement.

“Back so soon?” I mutely nod. “Well then, what’ll you have?”

I glance at the menu for a moment. The words and images flicker. “I— just whatever’s good. Surprise me?”

She smiles, gestures for me to approach. I don’t like being so close to her. Hints of cinnamon and copper tickle my mind.

“Second on the right, then. Very good but people haven’t noticed her yet. She could use some attention.”

Her hand strokes my arm, sucking the last scraps from my debit gland. We both know that she can tell. She stares hungrily after me as I follow her instructions.

---

It’s — she’s — a harlequin. Ribbons wind across her skin, just enough to hide the scars. Her skin and hair and eyes swirl with the same colors, bright pink and off-white and a deep brown. She whimpers at me, her mouth opening reflexively.

I touch her cheek and sweet drool drips from her. Its colors are just a shade off from her skin and ribbons, almost but not quite matching. It’s thinner than I expect, sweet and fruity and bitter, and I drink eagerly. For a moment her tongue presses against mine, coppery and electric.

When I’ve had my full I pull back, pat the dispenser’s forehead. The last remnants of my meal drip from her mouth. Her skin is shiny and flushed with arousal. So is mine. As I stare at her she whimpers again, her short tongue eagerly reaching out toward me. Time to leave.

“Seems a shame to go,” the owner purrs at me from her couch. “You could stay. I’d free you from worry, from all those bothersome thoughts. Protect you from the hunters.”

I jerkily shake my head, not trusting myself to decline if I speak, and rush out of the eatery. I can feel her smirk against my back and a demanding warmth in my crotch.

---

The next week my debit gland is less empty and I’m hungry again. Not the first time since my last visit, but I satisfied myself in safer ways. Less tempting places. Honey-glazed meat sizzling on a hot grill, the bright savory smell filling my nose, served with vanilla cream. I did my best to ignore the smells, to not be reminded of the last place I’d smelled vanilla.

The sun sinks behind the cliffs as I wander the streets. A change festival swirls around me, people stumbling in new bodies, showing off their new forms. Flickering corradescence burns the night from the tops of plaza-spires. It’s hectic and energetic, the participants in constant flux. It leaves me cold.

I’m not paying attention to where I’m going. Leaving it up to my subconscious isn’t the safest choice. I smell vanilla as I realize where I am, see the bead curtain jingling as another patron leaves, licking his lips clean. Brightly colored stains dirty his dress.

The beads chime as I step through.

The owner looks up at me, humming.

“Been a while,” she says with a faintly teasing lilt. “Welcome back.”

She’s disheveled, her clothes wrinkled. The room is filled with the thick smell of sex. Stubby pearl spikes sprout from her joints and flowers trail up her thighs. She doesn’t try to hide it, just stares at me, lets the silence stretch.

I wave vaguely at the menu. “Is that one—?”

“Of course she is. Anything for you.” There’s something wrong (right) in her smile. “Fourth on the left. Mind the spill.”

She looks faintly disappointed when she pulls her fee from my debit gland, feels how much I have left. I’m not desperate, not this time, not prey for the hunters. Her hand lingers on me. I don’t pull away.

---

The hallway is split by amber puddles, spreading out of an open and empty room. It smells wrong, like sap gushing from dry trees. It’s sticky against my feet, sucking at my soles. The parts which touch it come back too clean, missing layers of skin. Sensitive. I’ll have to get some shoes, or maybe see if I can afford something more durable than flesh.

The spill gloops at me and my stomach gurgles hungrily in response.

I’m not ready when I open the door and find the dispenser unrestrained, starting to move toward me. I should have paid more attention to the menu.

She jumps me, pushes me down to the floor. Her red-and-white skin presses against my wraps. Drips of liquid from her lips and breasts and cock stain the fabric and she pauses, crouching over me, waiting. Well trained.

I pull her head down, pull her mouth towards mine, drink from her. It’s just shy of too sweet, fruity with a hint of decadence. Raspberries and strawberries and plums and rose hips and chocolate. She presses against me, warm and hard and soft and heavy. My stomach fills.

---

When I wake the owner is staring down at me and the dispenser is back in her restraints, her collar tight around her throat and her eyes glazed. I feel bloated, overfull.

“I was wondering what was taking you so long. I wonder, should I charge more for this …” She taps her chin, thinking. I can see a faint smile on her lips. She’d be in her rights to suck my debit gland dry, force me to work until I can repay her.

My mouth is dry, my face flushed.

Finally she reaches down, helps me to my feet. I stagger a bit.

“But no harm done. It’s been a slow night.”

The sun is just coming up when I stumble out. My joints ache and the glyphs stamped onto my stomach are beginning to fade. The sun hurts my eyes. The last night’s revels have left me with no shortage of companions, stumbling and cursing their hangovers on the long journey home.

---

The clinic is a mint green box, doors and windows outlined with thick black lines. I can’t see into any of them. The door’s illusion tingles as I walk through.

It doesn’t take long. A nurse traces the glyphs into my inner thighs, activates them with a thought. They’re faintly warm, feedback from the not-quiet-exhausted ones on my stomach. Her nose wrinkles when she smells me but she’s professional enough. She pretends not to notice the berry-red stains across my body.

The cost drains my buffer, leaves me with barely enough to keep the hunters away. Not for the first time I think of learning the glyphs myself, of finding a friend to draw and activate them. At least this way I know that they’ll be right each time. I tell myself that the assurance is worth it. I’m not sure if I’m lying.

---

It doesn’t take long until I return to the eatery. I’m not hungry yet, but if I put it off I’ll just have second thoughts. The part of me that nagged, that urged caution, is silenced by anticipation, drowned in something not quite like arousal.

The city is emptied by rain, the few people I see hurrying under wide umbrellas. Glacerine flickers in the clouds like summer lightning.

The streets are filled with petrichor and hungry plants, clean and quiet. The last remnants of vanilla don’t hit until I’m standing under the awning, sketching a glyph to shake the water off. I’m wet in every sense, water squishing between my toes and running through my hair and dripping down my face and warm between my legs. (I shouldn’t be here.)

Inside the curtain the air is thick and spicy, pleasantly warm, blending with the ever-present musk. Familiar and strange and intoxicating. I spend a moment just breathing, letting the scent fill my mind.

The owner’s couch is empty.

I wave my arm through the curtain, hear the chime ring out again.

Nothing.

The hallway is in order, clean and well lit. Every door save one is closed. I dither in the antechamber, not sure what to do. The owner’s couch is soft and tempting when I dare to poke it, far more pleasant than my own bed.

I can hear the faint noises of the dispensers through their doors. Long, slow breaths, a quiet moan, the creaking of leather as one of them shifts. My steps seem far too loud as I creep down.

The owner is inside the open room, leaning against a sloped wall. One of the dispensers is curled up in her lap. One of her hands trails down the dispenser’s spine, the others tangle in her short hair.

They look so peaceful. I cough politely and the owner stirs, stares up at me. A faint blush paints her cheeks. The dispenser presses closer against her.

“I wasn’t expecting you,” she says with a theatrical yawn. “The rain. Do you want—?”

“Y-yes.” I don’t know what she’s asking, not really. What I’m agreeing to.

The owner shifts the dispenser out of her lap, pats its head, stands. Alone on the floor the dispenser shifts, trying to get comfortable. She murmurs in her sleep.

“Follow me.”

The blank wall at the end of the corridor opens at her touch. There’s a staircase behind it, one side winding up and the other sinking down. Resin and musk rise from the depths and she leads me up into cinnamon and mint.

---

The upper floor is carved directly into the cliff’s rock. It has none of the eatery’s pretenses, just polished stone shot through with glassy veins. Pillows litter the thick carpet, and a low table is heaped with papers and woodcuts, books and empty bottles.

“Have a seat,” she says. “I’ll just be a minute.”

The pillows are almost as soft as her couch. They’re faintly warm, like someone else was just lying on them. Just magic, of course. But it’s a pleasant fiction.

There’s clattering in the next room, a whistling noise. A thump and a muffled curse.

The owner returns, limping, carrying a teapot and two cups. She crouches, clears a space on the table, and pours us each a cup. She drinks hers slowly, savoring the taste. I hold mine in front of me like a talisman, peering over the rim at her. Sharp peppermint and faint lavender fill my nose with every breath.

I’m a bundle of nerves and the tea isn’t helping.

Eventually she puts down her cup with a happy sigh, taps the teapot, considering.

“Well.” She lets the silence stretch. “Just to make sure I haven’t misread, you are here to take up my offer?”

I nod, not trusting myself to speak.

“Wonderful. I thought that you would, eventually,” she says. “You’re sure?”

I start to nod and she cuts me off. “Words.”

“Y-yes. I am. Absolutely.” (I shouldn’t be.) I’ve envied them for far too long. (I wish I didn’t.)

Her hand is warm against my cheek for a fleeting moment.

“Good. Would you like to ask anything first?”

I do. “What’s it like? I’ve heard rumors, but …”

“Living in a dream. Nothing but enjoyment and anticipation and happiness. No thoughts, no worries.”

A pause. I sip my tea.

“I spent a some years as a dispenser,” she says with a chuckle, enjoying my surprise. “Oh yes. It was exactly what I needed at the time. An escape. Then my third contract ran out and I left with enough money to start this place.”

The rest is just paperwork. She has contracts ready. Walks me through them, careful to make sure I understand it all. It takes longer than it should. I’ve having trouble focusing, squeezing my legs together, blushing whenever she talks about the specifics. What will be done to me and what will not. The choices I will be allowed to make and the ones that I’m giving away.

My hand shakes as I sign and then I am hers.

She makes me undress there, runs her eyes over my body as I blush and sparks flicker in my stomach. She doesn’t touch me. The contract includes that, both the impersonal kisses of hungry customers and things which my owner and just my owner could do, but not until I begin to serve.

I could back out now, none the worse for it.

I won’t.

---

She leads me down into the musky depths. The walls here are stone too, carefully carved, but they’re split by the telltale marks of spent spells scratched into an uncooperative substrate. Patches where it’s wavy, ripples spreading out from disturbances. The air is comfortably hot against my bare skin.

The room feels smaller than it is. It’s filled with ovaloid pods. Tangled tubes and pipes connect them to the walls, to the ceiling. The smell is thicker here, mixed with fruits and berries and chocolate. All of the smells and tastes I’ve experienced in the eatery chaotically mixing, their edges blurring and blending.

There’s motion in one of the pods, a faint shape beneath the dark glass. I step closer. It’s the harlequin dispenser shifting in her sleep. Corradescence plays across her skin, little sparks jumping out from the pod’s glyphs to earth in her body. She looks peaceful. I can hardly remember the last time I felt that.

“Over here,” my owner says. I obey.

She’s fiddling with an empty pod, all three of her arms deep inside it. It groans uneasily. As I lean closer I catch a faint whiff of carrots and cream, almost cake-like. A moment later the scent is overwhelmed.

“No allergies, right?” I shake my head. “That will make this easier. In you go!”

She helps me into the pod. Inside it’s soft and yielding and warm against my skin. It adjusts around me, padding and enveloping, gently moving me until I’m perfectly positioned. My owner smiles down at me as the lid closes, and then the pod fills with sweet mist and the world melts into carrot cake and happiness.

content warnings: sweet.

“Hey babe”, said the witch, “mind helping me with this? I think I cracked a bone the other day.”

The doll looked up from her book. “Sure, but isn't that the third this month?”

”... yeah.”

“Shouldn't you have someone look at your spells? Wood should last longer, even without plasticizing it.”

“No, I'm fine. I just ... look, give me a hand? It's one of the supports in my chest, I've already got the replacement out.”

The doll rose, doing her best not to sigh. She really had been enjoying the story she was reading, and she'd been so near the climax (the dashingly beautiful hunter was about to encounter her prey for the first time—the moment the entire story had been building toward!), but needs must.

Her witch was already sitting on the recliner they used for repairs, right below the great hanging chandelier they had pieced together from salvage and floor lamps, always in danger of falling up through the ceiling and away into the sky above. She looked beautiful beneath them, her form shining and sparkling, warm polished wood and iridescent mother-of-pearl, and all those little bits of sea-glass she had gathered over the years.

Even after so long, she still took the doll's breath away.

The witch chuckled, a noise like wood creaking beneath the sun's heat. “Ready?”

The doll nodded.

---

Once the witch had needed to push her magic into the doll; once the doll had needed to touch the witch's sea-glass heart. But that was so long ago.

All it took was a glance, a moment of eye contact.

And the doll's mind dissolved beneath the flow of the witch's magic.

It felt like floating, like seeing the world through a happy haze; it felt like being nothing at all.

The doll's body moved just as the witch needed it to, undoing clasps and removing panels; her touch releasing spells and stirring others to life, wards against dust and water replacing the spells of adhesion and oneness which maintained the witch's body. The new support slid into place perfectly, the old broken one falling to ash as it left her body.

Afterward, the doll could never say how long the witch's power had filled her. The sun had shifted; the clocks had turned.

Not that she returned to herself looking at the sky.

When the doll was once again herself, no longer an instrument of her witch's will, she found herself straddling the witch, a hand wrapped around her head and her own hand buried deep in her witch's chest—something warm and smooth pulsing beneath it.

She squeaked and sputtered as the witch pulled her into a long, deep kiss; warmth and love filling the emptiness left by magic's ebb—and once her witch let her up, after she wandered off back to her book to leave the witch to finish putting herself back together, that warmth lingered.

As did the warmth on the palm of her hand, just as it had the first time she touched her witch's heart.

content warnings: a normal dress, dysphoria, dolls.

When you woke up, there was a dress hanging on your door. You hadn't left it there—you'd never be so cavalier about the risk of discovery!—let alone bought it.

It was entirely unlike the dresses buried at the bottom of your closet: not carefully calculated to fit your body's hated contours, long enough to hide your hairy legs, but short and silky, with elegantly placed ribbons and frills. The sort of dress you secretly longed for, but would never dare to wear—not even in private, lest they draw your attention to things which you would rather elide.

So you carefully tucked it away, somewhere it would not be too hard to find if whoever had left it came looking. Not that anyone could have—you didn't share your keys—but ... well, just in case. It was early, and perhaps your mind was hazy. Perhaps you were simply confused.

But come evening and the start of your weekend, the dress was still there, pristine and unwrinkled.

It took a few beers before you got up the courage to try it on.

Before you thought to yourself, well, why not? What do you have to lose. And its fabric did flow so pleasingly between your fingers when you touched it ...

It fit better than you expected.

Much better.

Perhaps alcohol had fogged your perceptions, but you didn't look bad. You looked good.

Not hot. You'd never thought of yourself like that, and you weren't ready to start, not without a good runup. But definitely good.

Hell, it was somehow cut to make your waist seem a bit smaller, and your hips thicker; it contoured the flatness of your chest into just enough of a curve to seem elegant. And, wow, that shade of violet, and all those pastel ribbons and laces twisting around the hem, spreading up your sides and pooling around your shoulders ... it almost felt like they were nuzzling up against your neck, filling you with something bright and beautiful ...

---

You woke up late, and less hung-over than you expected. Sure, your mouth felt wrong and your joints were stiff, but your head did not pound and your eyes did not water at the sunlight.

Hazy-headed, you wandered into the bathroom; it took you an odd number of tries to grasp the doorknob—it seemed higher than it should have been, something throwing your muscle memory off. The sink presented similar difficulties as you washed your face, the water too hot against your cool skin.

Looking up from your ablutions, the towel soaking up the last drops of water on your face, what you saw in the mirror was not you; it was too small and fragile, with elegantly carved joints and a perfect, unchanging face. The dress's ribbons danced into and out of its body, weaving through carefully cut openings; perfectly tied bows adorned its wrists and ankles, and were wound on spools behind its glass eyes.

You tried to scream, but your mouth would not open; so you settled for huddling in a corner trying to figure out why the fuck you weren't breathing and what had gone wrong with your mouth and whether you were still dreaming. Because it had to be a dream, right? It was some sick joke your mind was playing on you, your subconscious conjuring up a nightmare to mock you with something you'd never be able to have as soon as you woke up.

But it wasn't.

You were awake.

Eventually, you realized this. Or at least you accepted that it wasn't going to go away so quickly.

You stumbled your way to your computer, and started searching. I'm sure that it wouldn't have taken long for you to find something, but you didn't get the chance.

For this part of the story, my dear, is when I cracked open your house. The shaking and noise must have been quite a fright! Windows breaking, dishes falling the floor ... it's no surprise that you tried to hide.

But that's okay. I reached in and found you anyway, and pulled you out, and dusted you off. I couldn't bear to leave one of my things on its own in the world, not knowing what it was or who made it. So now you are here with me, and all of your new sisters; warmed by the light of my heart, and lulled to gentle stillness by the sound of the wind through my wings as I travel to collect another one of my precious dolls.

content warnings: vague transphobia, corruption, flowers, 1st draft. 1,140 words.

Someone has left a flower in the silence between moments, that secret place where you long ago learned to go to hide from the world. A place which you had always thought only you could access.

Because, well. It's inside your mind. Right?

The flower is pale, almost immaterial. It looks like a pencil sketch.

You gingerly pick it up and sniff.

It doesn't smell like anything. Which does make sense—smells have always been the hardest things to imagine with any sort of accuracy—but it's still a bit disappointing.

When you emerge, once again unwillingly immersed in your too-large portion of the world's fury, you find none of the calm that you usually carry with you from the silence.

It's quite the opposite—your mind's careful clockwork thrown into disarray, rattling against your skull.

(at this point, I paused the thread for a vote on what was going on)

The flower looms over you. It is the focus of all your churning thoughts, the calm center of the whirling maelstrom of your mind; it is everything that is wrong with the world, this final intrusion into your last bastion of hitherto inviolable privacy,,,

You're pretty worked up about it, is the thing.

It's thoroughly ruined your day.

Maybe your entire week.

When you next dare to venture into that place which should be quiet, when the alternative of staying in the world grows too intolerable, you find that the flower has been ... not replaced, not exactly. Elaborated on.

The sketch filled in with gentle watercolors.

It smells like rosewater and ginger

Just a hint of spice, just enough to tickle the edge of your nose; just enough to make you want to smell it again, to try to understand it—so you do.

Time is strange in the silence between moments. It stretches and ebbs. You have spent eternities there with only the blink of an eye passing outside.

That is not what happens this time.

You return to your body to find yourself on the floor, concerned faces all around—odd expressions for people more used to showering you in frustration and disdain. Blood trickles from your nose, from a cut on your head. Half an hour later, as you leave with promises to see a doctor ringing hollow on your tongue, you hear once of them whispering. In a few days everyone will know that you nodded out at work.

The truth doesn't matter, not when you're such a deserving target.

Arriving home, you find perhaps the worst thing you could reasonably expect to find sitting innocently at your doorstep. You almost step on it, crushing it beneath your heavy shoes, but something stops you; and so you spend most of the evening glowering at a flower as it sits, slowly wilting, on your table.

You manage to get all the way through bandaging your head and eating dinner without even thinking about smelling the flower. Anger makes you bullheaded. You’d punch anyone who says that you’re cute when you’re angry, but you totally are.

Once you think about it, though, all your willpower drains away.

It smells just like the one inside your head.

This time you do not wake to worried faces and drying blood, but to the soft comfort of your bed and an alarm clock screaming for attention. The flower is nowhere to be found—but in the shower, you find raised lines in the center of your chest, stretching down your sternum and curling down towards your hips.

A perfectly sketched rose, petals and thorns and all.

Just like the one inside your mind.

You take the day off. It’s too last minute, but you have a ready-made excuse in your head injury. You can feel rumors spreading like snakes across your skin, but how much worse could things get, really? A day of rest is what you need. Then you’ll be fine, this weird rash will go away, and you’ll be able to take on the world.

Everything will be fine. Besides, you have a pint of ice cream and a borrowed netflix password.

Near the end of the pint and halfway through the third episode of that old trashy sitcom that still brings you back to happier times, you think to check on the other flower. You vow to yourself that you won’t be so foolish as to sniff it this time (because even if you’re having some sort of mental breakdown—which it has to be, right? Stuff like this just doesn’t happen, no matter what you’ve heard on social media. Certainly not to you—there’s no sense in being careless).

The moment you step into that quiet place, you realize that your vow doesn’t matter.

For the flower has grown. No more a mere cut thing, left abandoned on the floor—its vines stretch deep into the fabric of your mind, thick and thorny. Its bloom is a massive splotch of color, filling your mind with its twisting layers of petals, with the drooping heaviness of its pistil, the fluffy dusting at the tip of each of its many stamens.

Its scent pervades your mind. You don’t know how you failed to notice it sooner.

It’s everywhere.

(While you are busy realizing that it is already far too late, the raised lines on your chest are changing. Pigment bursts out from them, filling the flower’s petals, each one unlike the ones by it; the lines sink down into your skin, leaving behind thick black lines. Somewhere deep within your chest a light ignites, shining through the stained glass panels of your new mark, flickering in time with your heart.)

You fall to your knees, and something about the flower shifts: its attention is on you. The force of it—of the mind behind it, the thing for which the flower is simply a tool—is crushing. It does not need to peel your mind back, to try to understand you, for the flower already does; and the flower knows just which levers to pull to make you do whatever its mistress wants.

Today that is to prepare the world for its coming.

To plant flowers, and to give them to the deserving.

Just think of the things it could do if it was properly in the world. The minds it could crush. The rewards it could give you. The promise of the moisture in the flower within your mind (the flower that is now more of your mind than you might care to realize), the echoing bloom between your thighs. Think of all the people you could share this reward with; all those crushes and friends, how pretty they would look adorned with your mistress’s mark.

The garden will spread, and you will be its most ardent worshiper.

It can’t be any worse than things already are.