WARNING: The following story is made for fans of modular/natural body magic/detachment/etc. If you are not a member of that community, I strongly advise that you turn back now. Things will get freaky. As a (belated) Halloween story, it also contains guro and macabre elements. If you are easily grossed out, please turn back now.
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"Like, I'm not trying to be political, but like... Don't you think it's kinda messed up how, soon as shit hit the fan, Clarence just started barking orders? Like it's just a given that since he's the straight cis white guy, he's the leader by default? No votes or group decision or anything?" She asked, spinning around and walking backwards to check if Clarence or some other monster was behind them the entire time.
"Oh. Thought you were gonna say you suspected him of orchestrating all this." Her partner mumbled, the powerful but exceedingly narrow and stubby beam of his key chain flashlight painting a pocket in stark whites and leaving everything surrounding a swirling sea of shadows. From the shadows, taxidermy beasts, antique toys in varying states of repair and ancient relics and art pillaged from cultures around the world lurched into view like ghastly spirits.
"What? Why? He'd have, like, nothing to gain... right?" She asked, aiming her cheap plastic flashlight straight into his bloodshot eyes.
"No, yeah. That's my point." He answered, shielding his eyes and waiting for her to take the hint. "He's got nothing to do with this. Dickhead or not, Clarence is on our team. And if we wanna make it out of this, we gotta do our part."
"Yeah..." She said, moving her flashlight out of his eyes less out of courtesy and more to examine the room. "But like, if he WAS trying to kill us all, splitting us up's a good start. And going along with the big group while you and I get picked off..."
"Jesus, Dana!" He said, dropping his arm to his side and leaving Dana in darkness. "Come on, that's... look, the witch can't get back inside without an invite. Alex's notebook said so! We're safe in here, they're in danger out there!" He said, pointing in a random direction as the house was entirely surrounded by presently haunted woods.
"Oh yeah. All-knowing Alex's notebook." Dana mused, pacing in thought as she attempted to blow the conspiracy wide open. "Crazy how the alleged witch expert immediately got killed by a witch. Maybe, and maybe it's just the pot talking, but maybe, Reed, she wasn't as much of an expert as she claimed to be-EEEYY!" Dana howled, crumpling and spinning sideways into the darkness.
"JESUS!" Reed screamed, leaping back and aiming his flashlight at the spot Dana was last seen, where now there was only an empty expanse of carpet.
For a split second, a moral choice was presented. Reed could run for his life, or charge into darkness to save Dana. He hesitated, just for a moment, and the choice was made moot. With a click and an electric thrum, power returned to the Acehol Estate, antique bulbs bathing the room in the dull amber. Reed squeaked, instinctively covering his eyes like he'd been flashbanged, before slowly dragging his hand down his face to reveal the room.
"Aaah, fuck me!" Dana groaned, holding her side and heaving in a crumpled heap on the floor just outside the radius of Reed's flashlight. She appeared to be in one piece, and her groan sounded more like mundane injury than a life threatening one.
"You alright?" Reed asked, rushing to Dana's side.
"Yeah, just bashed into the... that!" She waved, motioning in the direction of the strangest looking record player either had ever seen. It was like someone had sawed a trunk of oak down to a hip height cube, then bolted what was supposed to be a portable player so off-center to the top that almost a third of the record overhung the side, like the blade of a circular saw. If Dana had collided with the player from the other direction, she would've shattered the record into a hundred pieces. A real shame, since as far as Reed could see there were no other vinyls in the room.
Not that he'd done an extensive search. "Oh, shit, they got the emergency generator running!" Reed astutely observed. "Come on, we gotta find a phone and call the cops!"
"Yeah, just... you know, like, give me a hand?" Dana huffed, rolling onto her belly and forcing her feet beneath her.
"Oh shit, sorry!" Reed said, remembering his manners. Hooking his arms beneath Dana's pits, he lifted the diminutive girl up off her feet then set her back down on them, scratching at her beanie like she were a good dog.
"My hero." Dana said flatly, swatting his hand away. Looking around the room, she saw no phone, though she did see that "Man, how is this place just as creepy with light?"
Reed gave the room a cursory glance, and found Dana's complaint valid. "Why are rich old white guys so obsessed with spooky shit?"
"Tell me about it!" Dana said, backing up right back into the record player she'd already run into frontwise. Whipping around she raised her $9 plastic flash light like a baton, ready to beat the inanimate object senseless. After affirming the player posed no threat, Dana realized it may in fact help them. "You think a little music would improve the mood?"
"Uh..." Reed trailed off, squinting at the faded label half hidden by the thick, clamp-like arm that held the record in place. "Bangle... yeah, girl-rock! The least spooky brand of rock!"
"Actually, they're pop, not rock. You fake fan." Dana teased, studying the record players' controls. While she'd never worked one before, the needle seemed be integral to the clamp and spinning mechanism, and the only controls seemed to a volume knob and a switch that controlled the speed. For lack of an on/off button, Dana shoved the switch into the middle position, hoping that this was a slow/normal/fast type situation rather than a normal/fast/faster one. To her own unduly smug satisfaction, the record spun and scratchy static spilled from the speakers in the player's base.
"Uh... this one of their obscure albums?" Reed asked, as a soft operatic melody backed by a lone electric guitar slowly rose up from the white noise.
"Yeah. Not sure this is them." Dana observed, as a theremin weaved itself into the mix.
"Kinda neat though." Reed said, bobbing his head as a hauntingly harmonious chorus of feminine voices rose from the background, singing in a language unfamiliar but soothingly gentle.
"Yeah, like, it's... yeah. Funky." Dana agreed, tapping her foot as the instruments and vocals pitched together and blurred into each other, voice and string and electricity inseparable and inscrutable.
"Yeah." Reed agreed. Snapping in time with the alien rhythm, like he'd heard this song a hundred times before and knew its contours even as the tempo and beat changed three times in thirty seconds. "Anyway, let's keep looking for that phone."
"Yeah." Dana agreed, nodding. She continued to nod with the swinging wail of the theremin, her head erratically swaying back and forth. "Uh, after you."
"Ok." Reed agreed, his feet moving only to the music as he stepped back, and then forth, and back, and then spun in place, and then forth. "Uh... this song is kinda hitting different."
"It's REALLY good." Dana confirmed. "Kinda distracting. Can't... focus."
"Yeah, maybe we should turn it off?" Reed said, slowly reaching for the switch. Not that he had any desire to move slowly, but his hand felt like it was forcing its way through rapidly hardening cement as it inched closer to the controls.
"Shit!" Reed swore, as Dana's hand snatched his wrist and yanked it aside. "Dana, what're you-"
"I'm not doing anything!" Dana insisted, even as she twisted Reed's arm behind his back and grabbed his collar.
While Reed wanted to debate that point, he couldn't help but notice that his 8 inch height advantage and the sixty pounds he had on Dana couldn't be mustered to overpower her. His muscles refused to fight hers, moving instead in perfect concert Dana's as the entrancing music swelled. His body waited patiently as Dana bumped the record player up to max speed, the vinyl spinning up to RPMs normally reserved for CDs, the plastic glowing red hot but not deforming or even speeding up the music to any noticeable degree. Then, Reed's body let itself be doubled over, forcing his neck into the madly spinning record.
Soon, Reed was spinning too. The world was washed away in a sea of amber, then reborn as with a hard thud he hit the floor. He blinked, and focused on the figures now towering over him. One was Dana, of course, and the other was himself. Sans head.
The red hot record had rather effectively cauterized his wounds, only a few small spurts of blood dribbling out of his neck as his body, against all logic, stood up straight. His headless body, on a will its own, stroked Dana's cheek lovingly as the stunned and visibly frightened girl obediently sank to her knees in a suggestive position before the headless body. The body reached down with a single finger tilted her head back to look up at him, craning her neck as a quivering gulp passed through it.
Reed's body placed a hand on either side of her head, but rather than pull her into his crotch, he gently pushed her backwards into the record, giving her an impromptu haircut and sawing her head off to match. A drop of blood hit Reed's face, and he watched the blackened underside of her neck stump plummet down and land beside him with a heavy thud. The pair exchanged a stare, then looked back at their bodies.
Like Reed's, Dana's body stood up without any apparent difficulties resulting from its decapitation. The bodies stood stock still for a moment, then Reed's body stooped over and planted his neck stump against hers, sharing a sickening kiss with crispy, grisly squelches that turned Reed and Dana's figurative stomachs, even as their literal ones seemed to be filling with butterflies. Right when it seemed the bodies were about to tear their clothes away and go at it, they broke off the embrace and settled on simply holding hands, kicking up their heels and nearly kicking their own heads as they bounded to one of the many tall, narrow, double windows lining the Acehol Estate's private collection.
Each body unlocked one of a pair of windows and grandly swung them open, and after a flash of rain-less lightning, the witch appeared outside. Reed and Dana gulped, spit dribbling out of their stumps onto the muddy maroon carpet.
"Good evening." The witch greeted, addressing not Dana or Reed but their bodies. "May I come in?"
The bodies both took a deep and flourishing bow, stepping aside and motioning inside, a clear nonverbal invitation.
"Oh, you're too kind!" The witch chirped, floating through the window before dropping down onto her feet. Or Alex's feet, rather, for she was still wearing the first victim's body beneath her neck, a black choker attaching her olive skinned head to Alex's pasty white ass. Strutting her mismatched body over to the cowering heads, the witch scratched her chin. "Hmm... now, what to do with you? You didn't disturb my slumber, it's true. And your bodies proved awfully courteous. I could keep you alive, so much as you'd consider it living, anyway. But then again, I don't quite have a use for you right now, and until the ritual is complete, I should really be rationing my magic. Hmm..."
"Fuck you." Dana silently mouthed, unable to come up with anything better to not-say.
"Yeah." Reed mouthed, equally at a loss for non-words.
"I'd spare your strength, if I were you. At least until I've made up my mind." The witch suggested, snickering as the pair of heads struggled to keep their eyes open and focused on her. She watched them, watched the life slowly ebb out of their eyes, watched their twitching muscles tire and relent, watched them turn from people to mere medical waste as their own traitorous bodies flanked the witch on either side and watched their own heads die with as much glee as the witch herself.
Gods, she loved being evil!
"Hmm... decisions, decisions." The witch mused, ravenously chewing on Alex's immaculately trimmed nails as she weighed her options. As Dana and Reed were slipping across the edge of infinity, they heard a distant voice casually huff "Well, I suppose..."