It was fall in the Forest of Magic, and the trees' leaves bore hues of red and yellow, the same color as the sunset that loomed over the land. In small, dark patches, usually at the feet of the towering trees, oddly-colored mushrooms grew in their thick clumps and harmonious silence, protected by the trees from the burning light. If one listened hard enough, they could hear the toils and conversations happening in the market square of the not too far off Human Village, as merchants eagerly sold their stock before nightfall.
The humans in the village were but small fries to a certain witch, however. She had a pep in her step, as she collected mushrooms, twigs, and anything else she could scavenge off the forest's floor and stuffed them into a sack. In her hands she carried a scrumptious-looking cake on a platter, baked with care. Around her neck, she wore a rope, for her hands were full and she couldn't carry it any other way.
She had a purpose for this scavenging, however, as well as the rope she carried with her. She was planning on meeting the other person who had set up home base in this ominous forest. The only other one who knew the true nature of the forest, and could dismiss the humans' rumors with a flick of her fingers.
"I'm coming, Alice!" Marisa shouted to herself, her voice laced with anticipation.
Meanwhile, in her house, the dollmaker sat in silence aside from the clicking of needles. Since she had taken up sewing, that was all she had done; she expected no visitors aside from the occasional lost human in the forest. So, for days on end, she had holed herself up, her needles and dolls at her side.
The sunlight from the setting star burst its way through her windows. It irked her; she ordered a doll to close the curtains. However, a new problem arose; she couldn't see. Another doll lit a candle and held it, the flickering flames providing ample light for her activities.
A knock at her door, however, startled her enough to make her miss a stitch. Silently, she cursed the interloper, interrupting her moment of solace. Setting her dress aside, she stretched and rose from her chair with a yawn, shuffling her way over to the door. Greeting her was the light she had closed the door on before, as well as the smiling face of a witch carrying a cake. A sack, which twigs extruded from, was lying on the ground behind her.
"Heya, Alice!" Marisa chirped cheerfully.
The dollmaker let out a sigh. "Yes, Marisa? I'm trying to finish a dress here. And no, I don't want to see what you stole. But what's the cake for?"
"It's for you! Sorry ta interrupt your sewing session, but I thought a surprise party would be in order!" Marisa's eyes reflected the flame of the candle Alice's doll carried, giving her an almost ethereal look.
"...Alright, just this one." Alice obliged. Marisa strolled in without a second's notice, placing the cake on a table and dragging the sack in with her. She was amazed that Alice didn't question the rope, and she extolled her reputation as a trouble-maker. She could do nearly anything she wanted, and people would react with 'well, it's Marisa'.
"I hope you're not meaning to propose to me with a candlelight dinner or something." Alice mused.
"Nah! Just have some of the cake. I baked it myself."
Now, that would set off warning bells in anyone's mind. Nobody knew what Marisa would put in her cooking. But Alice considered her sincere, and took a bite of the cake. It was absolutely marvelous, and a smile crossed the dollmaker's face.
"I never knew you were such a good cook!" Alice praised the other.
No reply. Marisa just stared.
"Well? Any comments from the chef?" She asked, somewhat confused by the silence.
Marisa's grin widened.
"Speak up!" Alice was somewhat nervous at this point.
Marisa's grin widened further. Without averting her gaze, she brought a hand up to her face, poking at one of her eyes with her fingernails. Then, with a swift motion, she ripped the eye right out. She didn't flinch, nor did her grin waver. The snapping of the optic nerve reverberated in Alice's mind. As Marisa set the eyeball aside, the empty socket began to turn into a mouth itself. The two mouths grinned and laughed in unison while the candlelight became much more powerful, as well as shifting to a hue of blood red.
"W-What the hell?!" Alice fell out of her chair, staggering backwards. Marisa arose, her two mouths still laughing, and promptly ripped out her other eye with an equally loud snap. The socket morphed into yet another mouth, which began to cackle in harmony with the other two.
Her dolls, which she attempted to command to attack the monstrosity, simply burst into flame and started chanting in a tongue unknown to their maker. It distracted her, as Marisa had slowly covered the ground between them and was standing over a frightened and desperate Alice. She prepared for the worst.
"Goodnight, sayeth the witch."
And with a brutal sucker punch, it was lights out for Alice.
She awoke after what seemed like years, groggy and disoriented. She could not get the image of the distorted Marisa out of her head. The way that the light threw itself across her face, creating a wicked shadow of writhing tendrils, or how she had just simply ripped out her eyes without a moment's notice. It almost seemed like a dream.
It took her a minute or two to realize she was both slowly spinning in the air and also unable to move.
Alice looked around her house in a panic. She was tied to a wooden spit, and flames lapped at her dress hungrily below. The tinder that fuelled the flames was, of course, her dolls.
"I don't wanna be a rotisserie!" was all she could croak out as she spun.
"Well, that's too bad."
Turning her head, she saw Marisa at the lever, slowly spinning the contraption. An innocent smile was plastered on her face, and both of her eyes were still intact, somehow. How?
"But, Marisa ... you were ... your eyes ..."
"Mushrooms'll do that to ya. I don't know what you saw, but it ain't my problem now." Marisa sneered.
It was only then that Alice realized the predicament she was truly in.
"Oh God, you're going to eat me?!"
"Now yer gettin' it! Why'd you think I came over? To ask you out? Pshaw. Too bad your dolls can't help ya. I kinda used them to get the fire going while you were conkered out."
Alice could feel the flames slowly searing her flesh and heating her blood. She struggled against the rope, but it held fast. This wasn't how she wanted to go at all. She hoped to be buried with her dolls when she died, but even that was taken away from her.
"But ... why?"
"Ah, yes, the cliche 'why'. You'd expect me ta spill my motives now. All I gotta say for myself is that I'm hungry." Marisa dismissed the other, continually turning the spit to make sure each and every tender inch of flesh that made up Alice was cooked to perfection.
The dollmaker wailed as she was prepared for consumption at the hands of the cannibalistic witch. The slowly turning spit and the flames licking at her face meant an agonizingly slow end. She didn't know how long Marisa intended to cook her, or when she would be 'perfect', but that didn't matter now. The deed had been done already.
"Alright, y'know what, this is getting nowhere." Marisa noted after several minutes of listening to the crackling fire and the other's defeated whimpering. Cracking her fingers, she cocooned the other in a small, searing hot Spark from her Mini-Hakkero. It was not enough to kill, but just enough to get that golden-brown, crispy texture she had hoped for.
Upon being engulfed by heat, Alice screamed, a bloodcurdling wail of despair that pierced the thin night air. Perhaps the Lunarians heard it from the moon, but they wouldn't interfere in a single screech from a dying magician. Her blood boiled and her skin was seared and charred. And she continued to scream out in pain. But this only made things worse for her; the heat crept inside her mouth and began to cook her insides as well.
A wafting aroma of cooked meat filled the air, and it was at that point that Marisa decided to stop the Spark and untie Alice. Even the slightest touch to the dollmaker's scorched skin inflicted upon her a pain equal to that of a thousand needles. She tried to scream, but her vocal cords had just about melted; all that escaped from her mouth was an airy exhale of smoke.
Setting the dollmaker unceremoniously on the table, Marisa went to work. Sifting through her sack, she eventually found the object she was looking for; a carving knife, seemingly brand-new.
"Y'know, Alice, I've always hated your guts. Maybe I won't hate 'em as much now when I taste 'em"
With an audible grunt, she plunged the knife into Alice's abdomen and sliced upwards. The sounds of sizzling liquids and an overwhelming stench escaped from her abdominal cavity, and all she could do was lay there, for even the slightest movements pained her. She could see Marisa, barely, cutting through her blackened and disfigured flesh and tearing out her guts, unholy fervor in her eyes. They were just the right shade of brown that Marisa had hoped for.
Squeezing the excess bile out of the tube, she took a tentative bite out of it. The blood had cooked into the lining of the intestine, giving it a unique and mouthwatering flavor that gripped Marisa's taste buds and wouldn't let go.
"I hate your guts slightly less now!" The witch said between mouthfuls, leaving Alice on the table, the blood still simmering where she was cut.
"Oh, Alice, you're absolutely divine! I mean, I hate ya, but at least you have good taste!"
The dollmaker did not respond.
"I guess I can treat myself to more! Just gotta scoop the shit and bile outta the organs, though..."
With her carving knife, she methodically removed organs from Alice in preference of which ones she wanted to eat the most. First, she ate the stomach; the cooked and mushy remnants of the few bites of cake were still present. Eating them gave her mild hallucinogenic effects due to the mushrooms she had baked into it, but she knew how to handle them, unlike Alice. She wouldn't let them stop her from her feast.
Next came the heart. It was apparent that Alice had died at this point, as her eyes were glossed over and she just simply stared off into nothingness. Severing the arteries and having bubbling blood splatter all over her hands, she gently removed the heart from its cavity.
"Ooh, ooh, hot, hot!" She quipped, dropping it with a small squelch back into Alice's opened body.
"Yer heart must have been burnin' when ya died! Haha!"
Using Alice's now-ragged and burnt dress as a form of hand protection, she removed the heart a second time, and immediately shoved it into her face, taking a bite out of the nice and hot organ. Her eyes widened, due to both the taste of the heart and the heat it provided to her mouth.
"Ooh, ooh, mmf, mmmmfgh!" She grunted, her mouth full of tissue and heat. "Tuuh hot! Tuuh hot!"
The dollmaker's corpse was still steaming as Marisa rushed for water to rinse out her burned mouth, the heart and the cloth from Alice's dress still in her hands. The sizzling and bubbling had died down, and all that was left was a charred cadaver, cut open without a second's thought, releasing both its innards and its soul.
Meanwhile, Marisa had found a glass of water to put out the pseudo-fire in her mouth and to wash down the scrap of heart she had eaten. Calmly, she returned to the scene of the crime, a glass of water in one hand and the heart, wrapped in cloth, in the other.
"Good, you're still here!" She chuckled, looking at Alice's corpse with both excitement and disdain.
And thus began the cycle. She would remove each of the organs, severing ties and cutting through flesh, with her carving knife. She gave them a while to cool outside in the autumn air before eating them voraciously. She felt no remorse, only hunger for the next morsel that she would carve out of Alice.
Finally, after an hour of feasting on the flesh of the fallen, she sat back in a recliner, a smile on her face and a bit of blood trickling down from her mouth. Her hands, however, were covered in it, as was most of her dress.
"Phew, I'm full!" She exclaimed, as if she was talking to the corpse. "Can't have another bite. For now, anyway. I'll save the rest of ya for later."
The sack, having been emptied of its contents of twigs and mushrooms, was then used as a body bag. Marisa cut the scorched corpse into several pieces, dismembering it and decapitating it, so that it would fit in the bag easier. It wouldn't affect the taste, after all. This would feed her for days.
And so she left the house, a bloody sack thrown across her shoulder, as the moon shone down on her and gave her the spotlight. It was fitting; she was proud of herself, after all. She hadn't tried flesh before, and it's always good to try something new, whether it's food or anything else!
"I'm an adventurous soul, aren't I? Tryin' all this new stuff, yadda yadda yadda. I like it!"
The witch didn't even bother to clean up; she'd leave the rotisserie there, as well as the pile of ashes that were once loyal dolls and the blood-covered table. It mattered not to her. She had enough food to last her for a while, and it wasn't that hard to get, either. All she had to do was trick an oblivious Alice, and she was the master of deceit.
"Maybe I'll keep the head." she mused to herself. "I don't want to forget this, after all! Thanks for this, Alice, you piece of shit!"
And the witch laughed the whole way home.