"And so, the exiled returns, heralding a rot of degeneracy and decay no doubt."
"What great shame it is for it to even be present in these vaulted stars."
"An insult to life. A waste of sentience. A festering residue of ascension."
"Why a wanderer thinks it's sentient enough to stand among us is beyond comprehension."
"It whores itself to insignificance, a harlot of lesser beings."
"What pride it must believe in to return here."
"It spreads its contagion and its fetish with its presence, a being of objective filth."
"So, deviancy made manifest seeks atonement? Unlikely."
"You are unwelcomed here, as decreed, you are to be banished until the stars flicker and die. Depart, vagrant!"
Celeste suddenly awoke staring at the ceiling. It was nice to know that the Old Ones were just as welcoming and warm as she remembered them. She didn't even bother sighing or waste breath being upset but she did hold her arm out to the light. It looked almost human, like that of a doll's: passable enough at a distance but instantly recognizable as false up close. Part of her questioned what she was doing on Earth and among humans, why she went through the hassle of the Melting Pot Initiative. Surely it would have just been easier to mind melt someone and hide among the population and bid her time.
No, if I did that, I would never have met a friend.
Rising out of her bed, Celeste closed her eldritch eyes and opened her human ones. The spartan room came into existence, its walls barren and its furniture minimal. Just a bed to lay on, a window for light and a single poster Celeste had yet to hand up. Henri bought it for her, it was showing one of Lovecraft's works that had been turned into a movie. He spent the better part of an afternoon trying to get Celeste to accept it after she admitted to enjoying it for its depictions of the Old Ones.
Still too distracted with her trance, Celeste felt that trying to open the bedroom door was too much effort and decided to just drag herself through the door, bottom half still a puddle of ooze. Henri was probably going to give a disapproving look but honestly Celeste was willing to just take it.
"Celeste, you can't just phase through solid objects, you gotta use the doors." Henri said right on cue, "And go put some clothes on, what happened to the ones you had on last night?"
"I think I might have eaten them…" Celeste sloshed her way to the bay window and collapsed into herself under the sunlight, enjoying her morning spooky eldritch photosynthesis.
Even without any eyes or ears, Celeste could feel Henri sighing before she reformed her body to where she was now laying on her stomach and facing Henri as he crouched over some boxes, not really paying attention to what was going on, "What are in those?"
"They're the things I ordered for you from online a few days ago. They finally arrived but I can't seem to find my opener." Henri patted his pockets and searched for the specialized knife.
"Let me handle it." Celeste slithered on the ground before dramatically pulling herself up, forming her hand into a blade and slamming down like an executioner on one of the boxes just as Henri tried to stop her.
BLOOMPH
With a single slash, Celeste managed to cut the box in half, causing chopped up bits of clothing and plastic packing air bags to explode out, covering Henri in a choice selection of women's apparel and thin plastic. The man turned his head and stared at Celeste through the armhole of a t-shirt, "Even if you hide your eyes, I can still see you."
"Oops… sorry?" Celeste popped her human eyes back out but kept them averted as Henri began to clean up the mess. She thought that she had gotten used to the insults of the Old Ones but clearly part of it was still affecting her.
Henri noticed it too, some about her aura was off today. Normally he could feel the madness and fear that would normally emanate from Celeste but today it seemed muted, more akin to a deep sadness than a maddening buzz. Peeling the bits of fabric off of himself and shoving it aside, Henri walked over on his knees and leaned over the slowly melting puddle that was Celeste.
"You, okay? You seem a bit off." Henri poked into the abyssal goo.
"I am… fine." Celeste picked up after a long pause.
"I don't need to see your face to know that you are lying." Henri immediately replied.
"It is a… domestic matter between higher beings." Celeste slowly reformed into her feminine figure, "Even a variable like you wouldn't be able to fully comprehend."
"Variable?" Henri looked at Celeste with equal parts confusion and interest before he put a hand on her head and rubbed the impossibly smooth hair on her head, "Well, maybe one day my little monkey brain can comprehend you fully. Until then, I trust you have it under some kind of control with all the power you have."
"Thanks Henri." Celeste pressed into the man's hand slightly as he rubbed back and forth on her head. To think such a simple gesture would be so comforting honestly astounded the thousand-year-old youth.
"Well. If I can't find my opener, guess I'll just have to use my key to crack open the other box." Henri scooted away from Celeste and pulled out a pair of house keys and reached for the unopened box.
There was a split second, too fast for Henri to ever notice with his human reaction time, but Celeste could see it. The box moved as Henri's hands got closer, opening its lid on its own before a human could even recognize it as a threat. She shouted at Henri telepathically, "Look out!"
Henri stopped for a second to turn back in confusion at Celeste, only to feel rows upon rows of daggers slicing and tearing into his forearms as a slobbering tongue tried to rope his hands and pull Henri into the maw. There was no way Henri could escape and in seconds he'd be consumed by the mimic, but Celeste could save him faster than it could bite his head off.
Her hands turned into tentacles as her arms unraveled from their human form, latching on to Henri's upper body and easily overpowering the long, tail-like tongue. However, Henri's arms were still dragged back through the forest of jagged teeth as he cried out in pain. His skin was torn into ribbons and covered in a thick coat of crimson blood, flesh and muscle was torn away in a gruesome display down to the bone. The cool air of the apartment now seared Henri's open wounds like salted hot irons as he flopped on to his back, his arms now glued to his side and completely unable to move.
"Thank you for the appetizer~" The mimic licked its bloody teeth with its tongue as it transformed into something else, a human form with too many wide, jagged maws and chitinous plates arranged on its skin, "I'll eat well today with both of—"
The mimic girl was suddenly filled with a deep, paralyzing fear. She couldn't move an inch, unable to even blink. First the confusion hit her and then the fear and then the horror as a terrifying voice screamed at her in her head in a voice she couldn't understand but could feel dripping with malice and venom. Just a second ago she was a hidden predator but now wasn't even prey, she was a fleck of grass in an endless field facing down a reaper. All of her confidence and all of her voice was robbed of her as she frantically tried to move and transform a body that wouldn't respond. With her chest pounding she managed to look over at the man she almost devoured and the woman that was now tending to him only to realize it wasn't a woman by his side, it wasn't even real.
Celeste dropped her form and let all of her eye's seer with hatred as her own mouths gnashed their teeth, baying for blood. A nightmarish shadow slowly covered the room, forcing the mimic into an ever-darkening corner that never seemed to end, an infinite standing still fall.
"PleASe hOld sTIll HenRI…" Celeste's voice was more monstrous than Henri had ever heard, like an unholy roar of a dying star as she began to envelop his flayed arms, "Let mE reCOnsTruct yOUr fLEsh…"
Henri could only watch as an opaque black slime ran over his wounds. He held his breath for the pain of rushing water running over them, but it never came. It came about five seconds later as he felt his flesh getting slashed open again as bone regrow, muscle fibers were rewoven, and skin was knit back like a human doll. He honestly wasn't sure which was worse, the pain of getting his arms cut open or the pain of getting them fixed.
"Holy… what the hell was that?" Henri was covered in sweat as he shakily moved his arms to his eyes, marveling with more than a little terror at how it seemed like he was never wounded at all.
"OrGAniC reCOnsTrUctION…" Celeste echoed, "NoW tO reCOnsTruCT tHIs litTLe wReTCh… I wONdeR iF iT WilL scREaM LiKE a mUSiC bOx aS I fLAy it AtOm by aToM…"
Henri could see the mimic pass out from fear, but something kept her conscious against her will. She couldn't open her mouth, but he could hear a very faint, distant howl of wind that sounded like a desperate cry through sealed lips for help as Celeste, now a pillar of ooze several feet taller than Henri remembered and well paste what he thought his ceiling height was, advanced on her. For a second their eyes met, and Henri could see the pure terror and desperation in her eyes.
"Celeste! Enough!" Henri shot up and put himself between the towering eldritch being and the paralyzed mimic, "Let me talk first. Then we can decide if you still want to devour her or something."
The unholy tower of matter shook as it thought before all of the darkness in the room was sucked back into its shadow and sunlight broke through the windows once more. Celeste returned to a more human-ish form but kept her lower half a monstrous mess of slime, mouths, and eyes and both of her hands as blades sharp enough to cut atoms. The mimic instantly collapsed into a half box form, too drained to even try to maintain a cohesive shape as her body bulged at regular intervals and its chitin kept cycling through colors.
Henri took a closer look, now confident that the mimic wouldn't try to even look at him with Celeste behind him and saw that even without Celeste's mind-shattering outbreak, the mimic was in terrible shape. Her skin was a sickly pale that didn't look healthy and was stretched over a wire frame that made her look emaciated while her chitin plates were cracked and chipped with the rest of her melted body looking overstretched and unable to heal itself after every transformation. Some of her mouths were permanently agape like Venus Fly Traps, reduced to simply waiting and hoping for food to fall in.
Again, their eyes met, and Henri could see just how much the predatory mimic had been cowed. Eyes that once flowed with an all-consuming hunger were reduced to a teary mess as the mimic sobbed into the floor. Any sense of dominance and control had been forcibly stripped from her and thrown into the deepest corners of the abyss by Celeste.
Without saying a word, Henri ran to his kitchen and checked his dwindling food reserves. Returning with half a bag of frozen shrimp, a bottle of water and leftover lamb kebab over rice, Henri placed the shrimp and lamb containers in front of the mimic and poured water into one of the larger open maws by her lower torso, where her human-like body met the formless flesh that made up the rest of her being.
"You must be hungry. Eat up." Henri's suspicions were confirmed when a painful, empty growling came from the mimic's stomach (?) area.
There was a wordless eating session as the mimic slowly munched its way through the food Henri put in front of her, still traumatized as it began to eat the plastic bag and Styrofoam tray before its hands reached out to Henri and wrapped around his leg, desperately holding on to it for the warmth it could no longer feel inside itself.
Henri was happy to let the poor thing press itself against him as he and Celeste had a silent argument over allowing it to have physical contact with him. Celeste tried to stare Henri down with multiple sets of eyes, but it had little effect on the fearless man. She resigned herself back to the sun streaming through the bay window, casually laying herself out like a starfish as Henri tried to get the mimic's attention, "Hey, what's your name?"
The mimic simply shook its head, indicating she didn't have one.
"Hmm… would you mind if I called you Mimi?" Henri asked.
The mimic again shook its head.
"Well Mimi, I can see that you were in poor health presumably before you got here. What happened?"
The mimic shook its head as it closed its eyes, seeming to have a panic attack before Henri kneeled down in front of it and let Mimi put her head on his thighs. Was it cheesy to do such an anime-esque act? Probably, but it seemed to work as Henri gave off a very paternal, older brother feeling that was calming Mimi down.
"I…" Mimi began, "I wanted to find humans… thought I could be strong and eat one like all mimics should…"
Henri simply listened as he put his hands through her hair, ignoring the idea that eating humans was some kind of mimic rite of passage.
"Stayed in a big store house… but couldn't find any good prey… too many humans… too dangerous… too scary… Humans then began putting things in front and on top of me… couldn't move or eat at all…"
Henri deciphered that Mimi had probably set up in some kind of warehouse as a box, hoping to try to catch one of the workers but she never had the chance or the nerves to actually go through until one day the workers just started piling things on top of her thinking, she was actually just a box.
"So hungry… excited to move… eager to try to eat you for food… then… th-then…" Mimi broke down weeping again as she didn't even want to recount what she felt when she faced the wrath of Celeste.
Henri could tell that Mimi had been so thoroughly traumatized that whatever boisterous personality she had originally while still hoping to eat him had been thoroughly sapped out, escaping her body through her tears. As she continued to cry, Mimi suddenly felt herself being lifted up. She panicked for a second before feeling arms wrap around her.
"You must be very hungry and very tired." Henri calmly whispered as Mimi nodded into his shoulder, some of her maws breathing heavily, "Lucky for you, I can feed and shelter you. So long as you don't try to eat people."
Mimi glanced over at the spot where Celeste was still sprawled out naked in the sunlight before turning back milliseconds afterwards.
"I can talk to Celeste. As long as you behave, you will be fine." Henri brushed Mimi's hair.
"Henri." Celeste lifted her head and looked over with bored eyes, "Your insistence on altruism is probably respected among humans, but how do you intend on keeping it around? It sounds that it is an undocumented and probably illegal Liminal."
"She can stay in my room; she could turn into a box or container and that wouldn't look out of place. You don't need to worry about her, I'll take care of her. Just try not to scar her anymore, will you?"
Celeste shrugged as she went back to sunbathing a meal via solar radiation. However, when Henri looked down, he saw Mimi smiling, face stuck in wonder at the prospect of no longer having to hunt for food or being trapped under weight for weeks or months at end. And as for Henri, he saw Mimi's smile and smiled right back.
"Okay, now I really need to go and get more food." Henri internally sighed to himself, still petting the mimic girl in his arms.
A/N: Welcome to "Clock can't sleep so he decides to write at 1 in the morning". Bit more of a serious chapter and honestly very different than the one I originally drafted up but I'm happy with it. I'm amazed at how coherent I am at the ass crack of dawn when posting this. The Henri House expands by one member, if you've ever read a manga called Mimic Girl, Mimi is basically her just without the maid outfit.
Thank you so much for everyone whose favorited, followed and especially commented, all of it helps tremendously. See you all next time! (And hopefully at a more reasonable hour of day _)