―
36: Some Say Law and Order Are Code Words
The whole sofa nearly upended. It wobbled, at least, and came back down with a thump. The television fizzled static; after a few seconds a NO SIGNAL sign appeared.
Why did the electricity need to work tonight? It never turned on yesterday. They had pressed together in total darkness. In her sleep she twisted at every creak that settled down the tenement's spine, every gurgle in the pipes. Now she stood arched, an exponential angle to tilt her toward the TV, hands in intermittent phases of rigid at her sides and tangled around her head, a constant catching noise in her throat. Like so: ckh-ckh-ckh.
"Please―" said the Baroness.
The Nazi untangled an arm to thrust it toward the gray screen. "Can't―can't believe it. Can't believe it! Look what she's done. Did you see that? Did you see what she's done?"
"Forget it, please―"
She would never. No. Too willful, impudent, imprudent. Once fixed upon an idea she railed it into the dirt. The idea had fixed. That damn Witch. This was her plan? She must have gotten confused somehow. How could she do this? Lure them into her suicide cult?
"I'm going." The Nazi searched the room, frantic, seized a jacket from the stack of dirty laundry. "How, how far's that? Washington. Gotta be, can't be more than, what? Five―six hours. We'll filch a car, plenty around. Can't imagine border security's tight. Easy. Six hours, it can't be over by then."
And it midnight. And the dogs howling outside, the streets clogged, they had already hunted and it drove them nearly insane, it had gotten so much harder after the Witch left, and it had only been two days. So tiring the Baroness had not even bothered to protest when the Nazi turned on the TV, and how she wished she did. How she wished she did! She watched, arms akimbo in the same position she left them, bundled blouses for a pillow, as the Nazi skittered every which way around the room, grabbing all sorts of inutile junk. A kitchen cabinet opened, she withdrew a trash bag, started tossing her items inside. She swayed down the corridor clutching the bag like Santa Claus and returned from the bedroom with it even more laden.
"Please―"
"It has to happen. We have to destroy her. It'll save everything."
She didn't care about saving anything. The Baroness heard the speech. She knew which words riled. A weak hand pressed against the carpet.
"God, finally. Finally someone's doing something about it. I can't believe it took so long, fuck! Ahaheh, and it'll be so great. I can imagine it now, what that cat's stupid face will look like, we'll make her scream. Damn!"
As she stooped for more articles by the door, the Baroness pounced. In reality, it was more of a calculated fall. She had managed to expend the last of her energy to lift herself, despite the soreness in her muscles, the desire but the inability to swallow one of her pearl candies and reinvent herself, as she had already used one on the Nazi, who took an atrocious hit during the evening's combat. She swung out her arms and latched them around the Nazi's midsection as they collapsed together against the doorframe, the Nazi hitting her head hard and loosing a quiet "oof." The bag dropped from her shoulder and scattered its contents to the side while the body struggled to rise but could not against the full force of the Baroness's dead weight.
"Get, off, you fat cow. Fat―cow! Get off, get off me already."
"I will not―allow you―to go. Ma petite amie, I will not―"
"God. Fuck! What are you even doing? Come on. Come on!"
Her fingers slid through the Nazi's hair. She pressed her nose in the hunched crook of the Nazi's neck, inhaled deeply. She could feel the pure hate that reverberated under the surface of the Nazi's skin, a pulse in the blood, chunky and thick and jagged, it scratched the veins as the heart beat it inward and outward, it caused the small small girl to writhe and shriek. Hate. Hate for anything. Hate for everything. Hate for the circumstances, the hunger, the weakness, the despair, the wraiths, the humans, the cat, the Witch, the television, the electricity, the trash bags, the clothes, the carpet, the door frame, the United States of America, the apocalypse, the Nazi, the Baroness. Hate that turned inward as well as outward as easily as breathing. Inhalation, exhalation, a heaving pulse, one quick and ragged and spiteful and one slow and calm and soothing, or she prayed for soothing, she stroked the soft hair and whispered: "My sweet―"
The Nazi no longer uttered words, only unintelligible screeches of frustration.
"I love you," she whispered into her ear. "I love you."
A quieting, maybe as imagined as imagined she her voice was soothing, an elbow thrust against her sternum, hard enough hurt, but she allowed her body to settle more snugly against the one beneath her, constricting it, embracing it, holding it steady, the sweet scent that exuded from the skin after consumption of her candy still faint under the soot. She could imbibe it as long as she could stomach a throat full of dust. A little foot kicked.
"Love―love―" A pleasant, gentle coo, into the ear, while her fingertips traced circles, a love to stifle out the messages heard on the television, a love to transfix.
"Nngh. Nnnrrrgh."
"My sweet―"
Stillness.
―
The cat's broadcast, a ritualistic event, beloved by all, today provided a special treat. They outdid themselves with the formulaic assassination attempt this time, ah yes. Too bad the cinematography did not satisfy, everything became a blur, the cat manifesting in many incorporeal clones that came away in gruesome but unfilling detail, then a long pause. Although for several minutes the screen showed nothing and the studios refused to cut the broadcast, everyone watched―transfixed, you might say. For Cook, of course, she could take it or leave it. Her friends weren't of such temperament, they always needed resolution, you know how it goes. She really only tuned in for their sake, Joliet had never been someone who particularly mattered, at least in her opinion. Perhaps others cared? Meh? Sometimes she understood when people cared, even if she didn't, but who could care about Joliet? DuPage and Cicero always despised her, often they acted as though despising her were a matter of course, assumed Cook despised her too, but really? Very meh, top ten mehs of our generation.
Cook liked her friends happy. It killed the mood when even one person got sulky. She displayed the twice-daily broadcasts on a screen of cascading water, nice and big for everyone to watch, because all of them wanted to watch, so at least they were likeminded in that regard? However, this thing that happened when the silence finally ended, she didn't like that. Few things she didn't like, she didn't like this. That silly Witch. Playing a silly game.
She especially didn't like the way her friends reacted. Hooting and hollering, whooping and pounding their fists against the air, whipped into a lather. They acted as though Joliet herself still spoke to them and used her magic, well, that was the power of persuasion, wasn't it? Once an idea takes root, it's not so easily dispelled, be it a nagging thought late at night or the lightbulb of invention... ahhhhh. What a shame. Cook liked to forget ideas. Memory sifted good from the bad. Something like that? This city's finest poet once put it:
That mean I forgot better shit than you ever thought of
"Good, fucking, bye," said the Witch. The screen went static. The crowd went wild. Water sloshed around Cook's waist and then shoulders as she sunk amid the waves of her friends. Blub, blub, she became half a head from which bubbles issued. Blub. ...Blub.
"Oh fuck."
"FUCK."
"God damn!"
"Holy shit."
"Crazy, crazy."
All slurred together into a meaningless slush. She dipped a little deeper and their voices became muffled and filtered, indistinct, a peacefulness in nonsense. She'd wait until they settled.
They didn't settle.
She sank deeper. Until the pressure built in her lungs. But the voices continued, the sloshing frothing, why? Who cared...? Really? This stuff got so tiresome, always something or other, dead bodies in the streets, whatever...
Her friends started getting up. Started moving. Tromping around her shallows. Slick bare legs and arms that glistened. She returned to the surface. "Uhhhhh, hey? What's going on...?"
They didn't hear her. Too quiet a voice, this actually happened sometimes. Oh well. A wall of water rose in front of the room's sole exit and solidified to prevent their disorganized exit. They paid attention to her after that.
"What's happening?" she asked.
"Let's go," said a friend.
"Yeah, seriously," said another.
"Ohhhhh, go to Washington?"
Nods and affirmations in abundance. Met by a slow, sad shake of Cook's head:
"Nahhhhh, let's stay here."
"But we're always here."
"Something big is happening. Let's go."
"Yeah, fuck that cat."
These fun men did not even possess clothes. This whole thing could not be sillier... come on. She rolled her head toward Riley, the only non-nude person present. Cook had attempted to entice her to pleasures, but Riley didn't seem to mind just watching so...? Couldn't blame her. She lived two years undercover in Denver, she had to dissemble. Cook taught her herself how to do it best, because she did it all the time. All in the tendons on the neck. They needed to be loose. Wring them, like this. She placed her hands there, between neck and shoulder, and kneaded, while Riley made a little noise. In that instant, she had wondered, wouldn't it be funny? To snap Riley's neck...
"Let us out," said the friends. One of them, despite his bare skin, attempted to scale her wall, made it nowhere, slipped and plopped into the water.
Cook propped cheek on hand and expelled air. "Whyyyyy?"
"Because we're not your damn prisoners," said one. "If we wanna leave, we can fucking leave, can't we?" The other friends liked that, they buttressed it with affirmations and nods.
"But," she said, "this is all really dumb? You're pretty likely to die, is all I'm saying."
"Let us out," said one, and soon they started to chant it: Let us out. Let us out. Moses to Pharaoh.
She extended a hand toward Riley. "Alright, alright. Go take them on a ride," she said. And added: Send them in circles around the city until they get bored, okay? Soon enough they'll want back.
Riley slithered down the side of her tree and spooled into the water. Only after a moment did Cook realize she had mimed for herself a little paddleboat. She wobbled her feet back and forth to slowly cross the surface of the lagoon. Several bright birds perched on her shoulders. They took flight when she extended her arms, stretched, yawned.
"Hm. Well, ya know, I think I'll go to Washington with em."
"Ohhhhh. I see. You're stupid too?"
"Please, Val. Some faith? I'll admit it's uh, opportunistic waiting until they actually got going to help em out, but better uh, better never late? If that Witch's speech got your friends going, I'm sure it'll get plenty others going too..."
The friends parted as she padded between them. She climbed out of her boat, slid the straps of an imaginary backpack around her shoulders, and hoisted an invisible hose which she aimed toward the wall of ice. She motioned for the friends to stand back as she braced her legs and pulled a lever on the nozzle.
Nothing happened. Riley tapped the fake end of the nozzle, only to immediately reel back, wave her arm frantically, blow on it, shove it into the water―hot, hot, hot. When she finally cooled down her fingers with a silent sigh, she pulled the lever again and this time the ice wall began to melt.
Cook watched this goofy flamethrower mime almost in disbelief, not at that crappy performance (although it did really suck?), but at the logic...
"Why," she finally asked. "It makes no sense? If everyone else is going to do it, why do you have to? I mean, good for them? They're making it happen, saving the world, hurray. No need for you to bother about it..."
She could lock them in, of course, ice not even Riley could melt, it would be easy. But the comment about prison stuck with her, that wasn't who she was, a warden, her friends were her friends, they stayed because of that, no other reason...
"Come with us, Val. You're strong. Sure they could use you. Don't ya think? I mean, you keep saying you're not dumb, you're not dumb, but if it works, don't you wanna be in on it? If the world goes back to normal, doubt they'll let you keep living up here in this tower, right?"
"Ohhhhh, you mean like get in nice with the new regime?" That made more sense.
But Riley shrugged. "Fuck. I dunno. I just wanna make sure it works. I wanna make sure they do it. Maybe getting the ear of whoever's in charge next is a bonus, too? Maybe we can, uh, you know―Convince whoever they are to do things a little better. A little like how the Empress dreamed it? Maybe we can turn this whole shitshow into something with a good ending. Give it a purpose... Give the Empire a reason for ever existing. Yanno? Like that? Not just a return to normalcy. But when normalcy returns, it's a little better normalcy than the normalcy that came before. A little better world. I think that's maybe possible? No grand, sweeping revolution. Just a little better. Even a little better is better."
Her sheepish ramble ended with a goofy grin and a "who, me" shrug. Cook didn't know. She guessed that was a good enough reason. If the world was revolving anyway... She should have guessed this wouldn't last? This, too, shall pass. That's the phrase. Even an apocalypse passes. The world won't end so easily...
"Okay. Go ahead. I'm not your jailer, you're right. You're free people. Go ahead, do what feels right."
"Come with us," said Riley.
But if they could do what felt best for them she could do what felt best for her, too. What suited her, that's the phrase. Suited, like clothes, and what suited her was this languid clotheslessness, the feel of her own body and nothing else to change it, make it suitable for society. So ironic―or perhaps perfectly fitting (fitting being another clothes word, what a cute coincidence)―that Magical Girls always had heaps and heaps of clothes on them, all sorts of stuffy formal wear, perfect creases and folds and embroidery... More constricted by that junk despite the ostensible freedom.
She waved them away. Eventually they left, to find something to wear and rejoin the world outside.
Cook sank back into her water in her silent room. All very fine, no major inconvenience: One big whatever.
"Caw," said a bird.
"Caw-caw," Cook said back.
She blew bubbles. She kicked her feet to cause ripples.
If this is what the world wanted, to leave her alone, so be it, she could be alone. Wasn't that her wish, after all? To be left alone? Not quite, but something similar to that. That was what she wanted, after all. The water was as warm with one body as thirteen.
Drip. Drip.
Drip.
She'll find new friends? That's it. That'll do. She stood. The water washed off her. She looked around for something but wasn't sure what. It was fine for them to go. DuPage wasn't waiting for them like she waited for Cook. Cook, of course, it was all very obvious, all very clear... An encounter with DuPage, she did not quite want that. No, not at all really? So let everyone else go. She'll find new friends.
But the city was dead. Ohhhhh―how could they do this to her? Leave her like this? She was nice to them all, wasn't she? She wasn't a mean or bad person. She took care of them? Right?
Her lagoon had resolved into stagnant, sitting water. The water dripped from her fingertips did not disturb its placid surface. They would come back, right? Come back to her? Even if everything changed, they would come back...?
Val, come on. Riley from above. The roof, probably. Let's do this. I think we can. If everyone goes together, yanno?
If everyone goes together. She twisted her fingers together. Ten wriggling digits bent and intermingled. She tried to wring the water from out of her body, to turn herself into a dried prune. They would leave her... Leave her alone.
Ohhhhh, sure, I guess we can do that, she said, her voice relaxed and languid despite the cramped twisting nature of her body. Maybe it'll even be fun?
―
Fifty-two white doves split down the middle, but before the blood and feathers could obscure, mad eyes shoved through the gore. Somewhat annoying, an audience with such an aggressive gaze. Cynics she might misdirect, turn their rationalism against them, but this bride was blindly watchful.
Down fell her blade. Clownmuffle bounced aside as it whooshed millimeters past her board-flat body. Their faces crossed for an instant and in that instant the bride spat and the saliva sliced open Clownmuffle's cheek. Blood rushed into her mouth, tasted like cherry cola. She drained it into a glass she produced from her cuff but instead of cherry cola it was cherry bombs which she hurled like Yahtzee dice at the bride's back as she glided past.
Except somehow the bride had already contorted her body in the midst of a second swing. Instead of following through she brought up her blade like a shield to defend from the bombs before they exploded as multicolored fireworks. Until then the bride had only ever attacked regardless of peril to her body, but this shift meant she took her eyes off Clownmuffle. And with the fireworks blasting all around―
Ta da! It may be unbelievable, but Clownmuffle had truly teleported behind the bride, a baton already lunging to deliver the coup de grace to the bride's undefended head. Instead, the baton clanged against metal. No head present. No body, either. The blade, unsupported, wobbled and fell. Clang, it went. Fizzle, went the fireworks.
A spray of white embers cascaded and through them lunged the bride. Where had she, when had she―well! So it seemed Clownmuffle had fallen prey to the same foibles of her audience. She could appreciate a fellow practitioner of misdirection, even as the bride's two hands straightened into blades sliced past her fast enough to shear the tuxedo off one shoulder and cut clean through the arm under the other. From the stump spurted five hundred and twenty playing cards that swirled toward the bride.
The bride unhinged her jaw and screeched. Blood erupted from Clownmuffle's ears. Crisscross gashes split her vision, each playing card cut into confetti, her tuxedo unraveled into ribbons. She blinked to heal her eyes and whipped a handkerchief to restore her clothes but the cards scattered no larger than pixels and the bride's relentless assault resumed in the form of subsequent swinging karate chops. She looked absurd. The exaggerated kung fu gestures, devoid of style, contextualized her dull uniform into something parodic. She lacked elegance or even form. The frantic strikes of a beast. Brainless. Instinctual.
The wedding gown had gone to tatters. Strips flashed around the girl's legs and no effort went to preservation of modesty. Perhaps in that sense the uniform had improved. It made one ponder, consider how a costume so emblematic of enchainment to societal mores gave way to the harpy roving now inside it. The veil split down the middle to reveal a single red eye bulging. Drool drizzled from gnashing teeth, and everything about this girl had become so sharp. When Clownmuffle waved her handkerchief toward the face to wipe it away, a few stray beads of blood from earlier wounds diced it to uselessness. Sharper and sharper still the girl became, Clownmuffle bent backward to avoid the karate chops but when she seized the girl's wrists her palms split open. Her feet, simply from stepping upon the ground, chopped up the miasma and allowed bright beams like searchlights to shine through.
Clownmuffle drew a dagger from behind her ear. It snapped in two when she stabbed. She pulled a revolver from her top hat. The bullets split into pieces when they crashed against the bride's body. The bride swung a hand and Clownmuffle's shoulder burst blood even though she dodged the attack entirely.
She doubled back, flipped, rolled, gained enough distance for a momentary reprieve. What a wonderful girl, what a pleasant surprise. She had never possessed abilities such as these when Clownmuffle saw her last. No, she remembered that outfit, constrictive, limiting the flow of natural motion. A reliance on singular broad strokes. This girl's costume had done all the fighting for her. Quaint, but for such a lousy costume, Clownmuffle could never get too excited. It had all changed now, the longer this fight drew, the more thrilled she became by this bride, who activated new skills, something never learned or taught, the natural impetus of her body, to become sharp. Her emotions and her body unified as one. A complete mastery over self even in the throes of madness. Was it not so? Beautiful. This girl cut the world simply by existing within it. It did not contain her, could not, the black splitting at the seams for her and her alone...!
It would not, of course, be enough to stop Clownmuffle.
Pyrotechnics. How long can a body survive aflame? Let's find out. Clownmuffle clapped her ankles together and extended her arms. The bride drilled into her, one arm plunged under the ribcage, the other into the throat, and at that moment Clownmuffle flicked a lighter nobody had seen her produce and immolated herself with the help of combustible fluid she had lined beneath her clothing.
The bride, of course, being brought so close to her, and with so many twirling strips of fabric dangling from her body, caught flame as well. As Clownmuffle expected, the bride didn't care. Even as her face charred black she pressed deeper into Clownmuffle's body, eyes locked against eyes. She reached up through Clownmuffle's throat into her head. She was reaching for the gem on her hat, like a mole, prepared to drill out through the skull and skewer it in a single strike.
Before that happened (although she allowed things to progress to a certain point in order to heighten the tension), Clownmuffle buckled her heel and caused her legs to no longer support her weight. Backwards she fell, and the bride fell with her, not because she couldn't stand herself but because her single-minded ire required her to remain as close to the object of her hatred as possible. But the flames burned so bright, so close, that―
That when Clownmuffle hit the ground the flames flared brighter and for a brief moment―she needed only a brief moment―a pure hot whiteness consumed the millimeters between their faces. In that moment the thing the bride clutched became not innards, not soft flesh, but soft cotton, the body not Clownmuffle's, but a life-size doll, an effigy if you will; classic substitution. The real Clownmuffle flourished dramatically from behind a curtain on the opposite end of the stage, a pointless gesture because her audience still focused too heavily upon the doll. Oh well. Sometimes you can perform an illusion too well. Fire makes it even easier than usual, it gums up the eyes, occludes with smoke, distorts with waves of heat. A cheap trick, yes. Not Clownmuffle's proudest. She ought to have given an opponent who possessed a hint of beauty in her soul something more. She already felt bad.
The bride's crackling body fidgeted. She realized something did not cohere. Too late, of course, on this stage nothing would put out such a blaze save the revelation that the blaze had never existed.
Yet the bride rose. She staggered, her fingers curled. Her body would not be able to support itself much longer, no matter her willpower.
Except the flames began to sizzle. Smoke rose, first tiny plumes, then billowing gray clouds that looked almost white against the total blackness of their backdrop. The waves of heat dispersed, the orange embers diminished. The charred flesh renewed and glistened, water drizzled from her arms and shoulders, chin, neck, chest, the now-exposed midriff that looked somehow even slighter without the corset than with, the remains of the gown, everything―her entire body. Sweat. She was sweating a river, enough to extinguish the flames. Absurd. Completely absurd, Clownmuffle loved it, she laughed and clapped, "Encore!" That's a trick. How'd she do it? Some kind of hidden mechanism, tubing that ran surreptitiously along her body, ready to dispense fluid on command, something Clownmuffle had failed to spot. Or else, perhaps, true magic, could this mad little girl be so enlightened as to realize there was no such thing as "powers" or "skills" and that with magic she could accomplish literally anything? That each imagining a skillset, confirms their uselessness? Was this girl so mad she simply did not care about anything?
Clownmuffle welcomed the continuation of their struggle. Her opponent deserved her enthusiasm. Let's rage together. Let's all lose our minds and dance in this endless spiral of irrelevance.
But the bride instead withdrew into the smoke that now surrounded them. Clownmuffle opened her mouth to call out to her but the bride rushed from the side with her giant blade and Clownmuffle had to climb into her hat for a moment to avoid an inconvenient bifurcation. By the time she climbed back out the bride slashed from another direction, then another, then another, each time drawing into the smoke, turning one of the magician's best friends against her. Moments like these had confused Clownmuffle since the fight began. Usually, the bride attacked with mindless straightforwardness. But other times, she acted with a rational, tactical purpose. Nothing intelligent enough to be spectacular, but any intelligent thought from this frothing red-eyed beast surprised. Who gave in to madness only partially? Hatred didn't work like that.
And smoke was only one half of the equation. The bride's next strike cut Clownmuffle through the middle―or appeared to. Instead, a pane of glass came apart and shattered against the ground, while the real Clownmuffle seized the bride from behind before she had a chance to dart back into the smoke. The bride's sharp skin drove into her own but flesh wounds concerned her little. When the bride twisted her head and opened her mouth to scream a torpedo into Clownmuffle's face, that was when she saw it.
Ah.
What a disappointment.
She shoved her hand into the bride's open mouth before the sound could issue. The bride bit down and chomped the hand off clean at the wrist, which did not stifle Clownmuffle's ability to control the hand. The fingers probed around the tongue—the only soft and smooth part of the bride's entire body—pinched something small found beneath it, and shoved against the roof of the mouth to pry it back open.
The severed hand crawled out quickly before the mouth could snap back closed. After it hopped back onto Clownmuffle's stump, a casual adjustment of her cuff removed any indication it had ever been severed, and now between her fingers she clutched the little thing she had discovered under the bride's tongue.
A person. A tiny person. It wriggled.
They really were using all her own tricks against her. Living inside someone's mouth! Classic!
She almost laughed before something pricked her thumb, a stinger or nettle. She examined it―a tiny syringe. Hm.
Her entire body locked in place. Motionless save fluttering eyelids. Fingers, hands, arms, they remained still, no matter what she thought, no matter what she attempted.
She couldn't move.
She couldn't move anything. Only her eyes. An occasional twitch. A reflexive tremor in certain tendons.
A blurred memory struck her, a thought she thought she vanquished, an electric paralysis, a body on top of hers, a crystal prism, it blended together and she could not construct individual details, her emotions flared between them, eyelids flickered PANIC but she crushed that grape of panic with the involuntary undulations in the base of her throat and streamed the cold juice into her hollow interior. They loved to rob her body of its capacity for motion. It was worse when they surprised her. When she opted into their designs herself she could bear it, because it was her freedom to suspend her freedom. What did this tiny creature do? A syringe. Serum. In her veins. Her veins inside her body. They could never see what lurked inside and so she could change it at will, that was her right, that was what she had won for herself. One instant, the serum should be gone, replaced by her familiar blood on its familiar beat.
No.
Nothing changed.
Her veins had become steel rods under her skin. It was the small person's magic, and everyone's magic was an extension of themselves. The small person didn't simply inject her with a fluid, the small person injected her with herself. The small person was inside her. The small person could see and feel and touch and taste her insides. Clownmuffle could not get rid of her.
"It worked, it worked," said the tiny voice between her fingers. "Pepper, quick, do it now, before she figures something out―the Soul Gem, one stroke!"
The mad bride sliced out of Clownmuffle's locked grasp and swiveled on her heel to reaffirm her grip on the hilt of her sword. Whether she heeded the tiny person or her madness set her on a singular path that happened to coincide, who could say. But her eyes fixated on the band in Clownmuffle's top hat, on her gem.
Who cared about the bride. Clownmuffle needed―this creature―OUT. Out of her. Out out out. Out! Out, out. OUT. The others, the others, they thought they could control her, they could only harm her partly, they could only violate her in one way, the rest of herself remained, she could dwell in that part and cede only a fragment for the use of whoever desired it, she could do it in return for something, a cure to her disease, she was strong enough for that. What had this Lilliputian left her? Eyelids, a few snatches of skin displaced from major arteries? Her thoughts, she still had her thoughts, her brain, her sight―Sight.
As the bride swung Clownmuffle mustered the control that remained and fluttered an eyelid shut. The eyeball within its cavity of bone, unseen by those outside, unseen by those inside, disappeared. It reappeared under the bride's foot the moment she stepped down, another burst grape, thick and slick enough. The bride wore heeled glass slippers, and still such a young woman. Her ankle twisted, the full force of her body came down on it. Not enough to snap it, but enough to eliminate her balance.
Clownmuffle opened her eyelid. From inside extended the barrel of a gun, which fired a dumdum bullet into the bride's face as she fell. Splat. The bride could no longer be said to possess a head. Her body thumped against the floor.
She waited for the headless body to rise. Experienced girls learn to live without their brains. But this girl was apparently not experienced enough. She remained down.
"What, what!" said the tiny creature still clutched in her frozen fingers. "How. How! You cannot, you cannot, I refuse to allow this, I will DESTROY you—AAAAAEUGH!"
Another syringe plunged into Clownmuffle's thumb. And another. And another. All sorts of ugly things started to take hold in Clownmuffle's body, but by that time she didn't care. From the smoking barrel of the gun in her eye socket climbed a tiny Clownmuffle to match the tiny person in her fingers. Just a tiny Clownmuffle, cobbled together from the few parts this cunt could not control. Rudimentary, simple, a little jerky as she made her way down the larger Clownmuffle's body. She swung down the earlobe, bounced off the shoulder, cushioned her fall in the tuxedo's boutonniere, hopped to the outstretched arm. The little doctor didn't seem to notice, indeed was quite surprised when, after cramming around ten syringes with far too much anger into the large Clownmuffle's various fingers, she glanced up and saw the little Clownmuffle perfectly fine before her.
"No," she said. She shook her head. Clownmuffle seized her by the hair.
The large Clownmuffle crumbled. It broke apart, spurted blood, liquefied, resolved into acrid goo. The arm and then the hand detached and the little Clownmuffle and the little doctor dropped, hit the ground, bounced, came to a stop in the bloody drainage from the bride's stump neck.
"Hi," said Clownmuffle.
"No."
Clownmuffle's regular-sized top hat, no longer supported by the corpse crumbling beneath it, dropped on top of them and sealed them into total darkness. At which point, a renewed Clownmuffle, now fully formed and fully sized, bent and scooped the hat off the ground. She brushed dust off the brim, plopped it on her head, and considered the tiny doctor she had left behind in the blood, a speck only visible in contrast to the bright red.
"I knew it. I knew it," said the tiny doctor. "I knew it. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry."
"You'll disappear now." Clownmuffle extracted a napkin from her cuff.
"Please. Please. Do anything you want to me. Torture me or crush me. I don't care. Please―let her go." A tiny arm pointed to the much larger body on the ground behind her. "She didn't do anything. I controlled her the whole time. She had no choice. I forced her to do it, she's not to blame, only me. Please, will you promise me, will you let her go? Please."
The tiny being clasped her hands together and shook them. She got on her knees. At the same time, she began to grow, so slowly it was difficult to tell, and only after a few seconds had passed could Clownmuffle say she was definitively larger.
"I am begging you. Begging you. I don't care what happens to me. See how calm I am? Even while you suspend your instrument of doom above my head? I'm coherent enough I can even think to call it something so florid as an 'instrument of doom,' aye? Or maybe this floridity is a kind of panic itself. Look. Friend. I understand you have us at our mercy. I can't bargain with you. I can only beg."
Clownmuffle knelt to examine the creature in better detail. She had taken it at first for a doctor, because of the syringes, but what she had thought was a labcoat was actually a white cape clasped around her neck. It concealed the rest of her uniform, she looked like a tent with a head, or a poppet created by tying a noose around a handkerchief.
"PLEASE. PLEASE. Can't you see? Can't you see? I was the one who made her do it. I was. Don't blame her. Don't blame her! Please, please. Don't just LOOK at me like that, say something, show SOMETHING, or god dammit get it over with and let me die before I want to die. I've let go of everything about myself, I've sacrificed everything already, I'll let the last few pieces fall away and then you can take my body, my soul, all of it, one final trade―for her."
Thoughts of the uniform sank into a lower level of consciousness. Clownmuffle became aware of the words for the first time. She tilted her head to make sense of them. "What are you saying?"
"DON'T KILL HER."
Kill her. The hand shot out of the cape-tent and pointed at the headless body. By now the tiny not-doctor had become the size of a toddler.
Clownmuffle failed to comprehend. This creature pleaded. She sobbed. She clasped her hands and shook them. Nobody had done this before.
"I'm sorry. I'M SORRY."
She was sorry. She didn't care what happened to her. Just don't kill her friend.
Huh.
Well.
Of course?
No Magical Girl would vanquish a penitent foe. That was the whole... there was an idea here... something distant and faraway but remembered nonetheless. She once killed a girl and it horrified her. It tore her to pieces. She remembered it―even though she had forgotten at some point. It had once been a piece of herself not to kill other girls.
She had let go of a lot of pieces of herself. Like the tiny girl did. "What did you mean, when you said you let go of everything about yourself?"
"Hunh?" A blink, a snag in the sob. "What did I...? For her, for the Empire, for those ideals. Those stupid fucking ideals. I cut away my identity, my personality, left only a few bits of character to lean upon in lieu of anything else, now I'll drop those too, I'll drop everything. Am I too abstract? I can babble about nothing like a drunk atheist. I know, I know, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'M SORRY."
How did Clownmuffle get here? Why did it suddenly feel like she had also sacrificed so much of herself, even though she had only ever done whatever she wanted?
She sat down. Crossed her legs. The beggar became a midget. But the beggar had fallen onto the floor, rolled, beat her fists against the ground. The blood soaked her. "Why, why, why." An endless string of why.
How did this city become like this? So black? Where did the cat go. No, she didn't need the cat. Why did she want the cat? She wanted to stroke and pet the cat. Purr, purr. Kitty, kitty. She had a bag of bones to feed you. Her own bones, plucked one by one from her body.
"Please. Please. We never should have left. We never should have come. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry."
Clownmuffle crumpled her handkerchief and crammed it into her mouth. In the distance, over the black tops of towers against the black sky, an orange blaze had risen. Like a sunrise.
She had only ever lived her life the way she wanted. Right? She had only ever been the person she wanted to be. Yes? She had never allowed, save for sparse and short-lived intervals, she had never allowed anyone to inflict their rules or structures upon her. She had forever dwelled within the inviolable space of her own body, her own mind. No government or authority controlled her. Right? That was right, right? She was stating true statements, right?
But if it were true, how had she, looking now back at herself, at things she had not remembered, but which she had never forgot, how had she done so many terrible things? How had she—killed people?
The fires on the horizon raged. The black buildings crumbled and fell. The pool of blood within which she sat reflected it bright and full into her face. She felt the heat on her neck, and all the while the beggar sobbed, the beggar pleaded, the beggar begged.
"I won't kill you," said Clownmuffle.
The sobbing stopped abruptly with a sucking sound in a snotty nostril. "You―won't? Or her?"
"I won't kill anyone."
A flood of people passed through a space onto her bloody stage. They screamed, howled. They held signs and torches. "KILL THE CAT," they chanted in unison.
"I'm a good person," said Clownmuffle.