Hey, Nonny Nonny
:::
Wanda had never liked being in the presence of evil, never mind in a place where said evil resides. She, having very sharp precision and sensitivity to detecting darkness, could always tell when something was awry. She would often get chills, or perhaps her hands would shake. A few times, the feeling of danger had been so strong that she blacked out, but her past experiences had been nothing compared to this.
Being in Anti-Cosmo's castle was bad enough in itself. The overwhelming feeling of agony and hatred twisted her magical organs in tight, painful knots. Shivers overtook her, sending cold bolts of lightning up and down her spine.
What made it worse was the fact that she had no idea of the layout of the mansion, and she was just wandering around without much idea of where she was going. It may have just been the fear clinging to the walls of the mansion, but something in her told her that she would never make it out - at least, not alive.
Why had she agreed to this? She hesitantly opened a door on top of a dark mahogany staircase. The rails were intricately carved, and she took a moment to appreciate them before continuing. Evil or not, Anti-Cosmo had good decorative tastes.
Why are you thinking of things like this when you might die as soon as you enter that room? she scolded herself, her magenta eyes darting around the room to make sure no one - and nothing - was lurking in the shadows of what appeared to be Anti-Cosmo's study. Jorgen told you to focus. You're thinking like Cosmo. Now stop being so paranoid and go in.
Taking a deep breath, she stepped in and took a more observant look around. It was beautifully decorated, but in a rather dark manner, with the lightest thing in the room being the curtains, which were a rich blood red. The floor was hardwood - so dark brown it looked almost black - and the walls were so lined with bookcases full of thick texts (and a few Stephen King novels) and blueprints for various plots she could hardly see what lay behind them. If she had to guess, however, she would guess that the walls would be ebony, or at least close to it.
The room was huge despite the dark colours that outlined it. There was an immense desk in one corner, with a huge, blank piece of paper spread across it. Atop the sheet was an enormous amount of different pencils and, for whatever reason, charcoal.
Well, whatever Jorgen was looking for, it wasn't in here... but hold on. There was a small, hardly noticeable section of the floor that was sticking up just a little bit. Thankful for her long, penetrating nails, she dug them into this part of the floor, thinking there could be something beneath it. A plan, a journal, something.
It took some hard work, but she finally got the chunk of floor up. Beneath it was a ladder, eventually fading down into a huge pit of darkness. She briefly wondered why she needed the ladder in the first place, but she quickly found out why; when she put her hand on the ladder, she stopped hovering and fell to the ground. Anti-flight spell, of course. Basic black magic.
Would it lead to endlessness? Anti-Cosmo was powerful. Who knows what kind of magic he could perform? She hesitantly took one of the pencils from the desk and dropped it, watching it fall until it vanished into the shadows of what, if anything, lay beneath the darkness.
When she heard a small clit-clit sound, she knew that it had reached the bottom and began her descent. After a few minutes of fearfully climbing the rickety ladder, she began to see things light up again. The orange glow seemed to flicker, making her guess that it was candles lighting the place up.
Wanda felt her foot hit the ground and turned around. Immediately she felt disturbed, but she wasn't sure why. Perhaps it was the fact that she was afraid of fire. Perhaps it was merely the notion of being in the castle of her ultimate enemy. Perhaps it was the chains attached to the aged brickwork.
But, most likely, it was the lineup of voodoo dolls against the many shelves lining the cracked brick wall.
One of them, she noted, looked like her. It had no pins in it, thank goodness, but she was nevertheless afraid that someday soon Anti-Cosmo would cause her endless pain. She was a fairy. His enemy. He had no reason not to...
There was another one next to her. Cosmo, no doubt. Then Anti-Wanda, Jorgen, Juandissimo, Anti-Mama Cosma, Timmy, Remy, Anti-Cosmo himself, HP, Sanderson...
The line of disturbing dolls ended to be replaced with many knives of different shapes and sizes. Wanda's stomach twisted and writhed in her body like a tortured worm when she saw that many had blood on them. Was it all the blood of someone else, or did Anti-Cosmo had problems that made him...?
Stop it. Stop it right now. She turned her attention back to the dolls, noticing a book beside them.
It looked like a journal of some sort. Deciding to flip though it, she skimmed a few entries, noting his handwriting was astoundingly fancy but still legible, until she came across one that disturbed her:
Welcome to my little corner of Hell, Wanda.
Snapping the book shut, she shuddered. No. He couldn't know. He couldn't...
He's a genius. He knows I'm here. He knows! I have to protect myself! She quickly snatched up her doll, but before she could even turn around, she heard a voice that made her muscles lock in cold fear.
"Please refrain from touching the dolls, Wanda. The magic surrounding them is very fragile and will most definitely be broken if handled improperly." Deciding it was the only hope she had, she obeyed and slowly set the doll down. "That's a good girl. Slowly, slowly. You may turn around now."
Wanda gulped and did is the blue creature told her to. His fanged smile was haunting, chilling her to the core. "You're foolish to think you could come in without me knowing, Wanda," he stated, his glare stabbing into her. "Do you think me to be stupid?"
"N- no," she finally managed after a moment of silence. The coldness of his presence enveloped her in a blanket of ice. "No. I don't think you're stupid." Her voice sounded weak and dry. It was not the presence of him alone, it was those eyes, those shockingly luminescent green eyes, that held her in place and did not allow her gaze away from his.
It was those eyes that made her so afraid of him.
"I... I should go," she choked, willing her muscles to move.
Had she not been paralyzed, she would not have had the chance to escape anyway, because he went to her and grabbed her shoulders with impossible speed, pinning her against one of the rare spaces of the wall that was bare. She glanced at the wrist under his coat and saw numerous scabs and scars. "Ohh, no, Wanda!" he grinned. "You can't leave, no, no, you mustn't leave! You just got here! I forbid it."
She let out a slow, shuddering breath, shocked into stillness.
"Sigh no more, lady, sigh no more!" Anti-Cosmo exclaimed, emitting a maniacal laugh. "You must stay! Stay... stay here! Enjoy this moment! I'm ever so delighted to have a visitor to my little Hell! So-o-o-o-o-o... so happy." His hand quickly shot to the shelf of knives as his other hand gripped her neck. "I'm so rarely ever happy anymore, you see, Innocentling... yes, I love that name. That shall be my name for you now. Innocentling..." He rolled the word around on his tongue as he tilted his head to one side. "Yes-s-s-s... it suits you. It suits you very much so, indeed, yes yes! Now," he held up a rather long and dangerous knife, this one clean of any blood, "how would you like to go out, my flower? Quickly? Slowly? Hmmm?"
Wanda only stared at the knife, silent and fearful.
"Undecided!" he exclaimed, withdrawing his hand from her throat and replacing it with the knife. His recently freed hand gripped a strong chain and shackled one of her ankles. "One foot in sea and one ashore, Innocentling! Oh, how adorable you are!"
He took the knife from her neck and ran the blade vertically down her arm. She screamed at the intense pain and found her speech, begging him to stop, pleading for him to let her go, and he just smiled.
He loved the sight of blood. After hungrily watching her writhe, he decided to intensify the experience, cutting her hair, cutting her stomach, cutting her legs, all to get the thrill he got from seeing her blood run.
"Happy... yes. Thank you, Innocentling. You have made me very happy..."
:::
Anti-Wanda had always paid attention to her hearing. It had worked so that she could always hear when her darling son, Foop, was in distress, but the person screaming right now obviously had not been Foop. Foop's voice was deeper than that, and he never lowered himself to begging.
The sounds seemed to be coming from her husband's study - which was across the house. Whoever was screaming was screaming loud. Curious, she walked up the dark stairs and peeked in.
Awh, well that's jus' silly. Why's part'a the floor missin'? Well, she would have to worry herself with that later. The screaming woman had stopped screaming, and she heard some clinking. Something was going on down there.
She descended the ladder and looked around her shoulder to see Anti-Cosmo sitting with his back to her, shackling someone's leg. He stood. His black suede jacket was covered in blood and pink hair. "Greetings, my love. I shall assume all the commotion has brought you here?"
"Mmm-hmm." She looked around him and now it was her turn to scream.
Wanda was sitting there, bloody, with her head down and her arms crossed. Her wrists where cuffed, as were her ankles. "Is... is she dead?" she asked shakily, biting her lip.
"No, no, love. She is in a permanent comatose state. We are immortal, remember?" He tapped the center of his chest. "I have merely Torn her."
"You mean her body... wha?"
"Her body is alive, but her soul is split."
Anti-Wanda wasn't sure she wanted to learn more, but she asked anyway: "How'd ya do that?"
"Voodoo dolls, enchanted to represent one's soul." He picked up Wanda's doll and held it lovingly as though it was the most beautiful thing he had ever laid eyes upon. "Wonderful things, they are. So powerful... so... fragile." He faced her. "Like you. So, so delicate. Yet, you draw me to you..." He smiled. It chilled her. "It takes great power to draw me to someone as you attract me, dearest. I speak truth."
"Aww." She blushed. "I ain't that good."
"Not- not that good!" Her husband started to laugh. Something about the laugh just wasn't... right. "Oh, yes, you are so incredibly funny! Yes! Yes." He shot to her quickly and put his finger to her lips. "Ithinkthat'saliefromyourmouth. A silly observation of yourself manifested in a statement untrue, a statement untrue, yes! A deliberate falsification of this twisted reality you see with your own two pink little eyes!"
"Are you okay?" she asked.
"Oh? Oh yes. You're concerned! Concerned, the woman is." He narrowed his eyes, but they soon shot open again. "What keeps you here?" he whispered, grabbing the collar of her shirt.
"You are so innocent, Anti-Wanda. I do not want you to get hurt. Bad things happen to people like me, and those associated with!" He craned his neck and touched noses with his wife. "Ba-a-ad things. Gruesome things. Things that make you wish they would just take your soul already and leave your body to writhe in a bare state of consciousness! A zombie! With only one goal in mind, to feast..." the evil genius put one hand upon Anti-Wanda's forehead, "...upon the minds of the sane. This goal is either reached and never thought of again, leaving you to float in the world without any direction, or never reached at all..."
He looked away from her and appeared to be thinking. "I'm not sure of which yet. I wouldn't know. Hmmm." Facing her again, he continued, "In any circumstance, it is torturous, and you would wander alone, void of any emotion. Emotion lies where the soul does, surely, you know. You know. She knows, yes. Smart lady. You know. You would become cold, painless, and gray. Gray." As he released her, he murmured, "Gray, ever so gray. Like a pixie. A pixie, yes. Gray." He sniffed. "Still tolerable when compared to the pain. Oh yes, the pain, let us not forget the pain! If I only knew how to Tear myself apart..."
She backed away, looking at him cautiously. She may have been stupid, but she could tell that this wasn't the man she married. Anti-Cosmo talked strangely, but never like this; he had never rambled in the past like this. And his eyes... why were they so wide? "Anti-Cosmo...?" She wasn't sure of what else to say.
"Yes, yes, that is my name."
"You're actin' crazy."
"Ahh!" Anti-Cosmo grinned now, almost on the brink of laughter. "There's that word again! Wanda used it, too, upon the point of my ripping her soul into two!" A giggle escaped him. "Counterparts, yet so alike! It amuses me so!" Grabbing a candle, he asked, "But, love, you see... I am not 'crazy'. Crazy is believing lies. Inaccurate presentations of a complete truth! Ah, yes. Crazy, they dare call me. I am a genius. You do not see me swinging around the room, screaming, 'Hey, nonny nonny'! I am still alive! My garments, heavy with their drink, did not drag me down to muddy death!
"Some never believed in love, can you see that dearest? So shocking." He shivered. "Doubt truth to be a liar! Insanity. But never doubt I love, yes. Love is real, it all is. Can you not see, love? You can see it. I know that you can." He smiled at her.
It scared her.
"Please don't kill me," she managed.
"That is not possible, sweetling. I could never kill you." He caressed her face. "Never, never. You will always live... even when your soul does not."
"C- Cozzie?" No. Did he mean that he was going to...
"Cozzie," he repeated, looking up to the ceiling. "Cozzie, Cozzie... yes! Yes, I like that! Eh-hah! So affectionate." He put his head in one hand and stared dreamily. "Such a show of love. Love. Yes, love." He picked up the doll depicting her and cradled it in his arms. "It makes me so happy."