Abuse
(Talisman, part XI)
 
by D. Monster
 
“Six hours now.”
 
Lloyd looked up from the papers spread in front of him.  Kate was stalking back and forth across the room.
 
“Any change?”  he asked her.
 
“No.”  She stopped and absently ran a hand across the top of her bald head, as though pushing nonexistent strands of hair away from her face.  “She seems to sleep for a few minutes.  Then she has a contraction, screams, and goes back to sleep.”
 
“Odd.”
 
“Yeah.  Hart’s watching her right now, but I better get back there soon.  Next time she screams, he’s going to head for the hills again.  Can’t blame him, though….gives me the willies too.  Wish I knew how to help.”
 
“Me too.  I offered to fetch the Interlude illusion, but she told me that wasn’t going to do the job, that this was going to require discussion…whatever that means.”
 
*          *          *
 
I can’t.  Things are wrong.
 
You must.  The time has arrived.  You must re-enter the world.
 
No.  Terrible things are lurking outside.
 
I know.
 
A contraction.  And a scream.
 
*          *          *
 
Ron cowered in the dark corner, clutching the crumpled paper doll to her breast.  Through a hole in the roof of her small room, she could see her towering Mistress.  Her breath caught.  What she liked to think of as a room was actually a small cardboard box – Mistress could stomp them both flat if she took a whim to.
 
Well, at least one of us, she thought, holding the paper doll tighter.
 
But no, Mistress was preoccupied – she was gazing happily upon a hazy apparition that hung in the middle of the much larger room they all occupied.  The ghostly form, sometimes a woman named Nina, swam with singing motes of light.  When Mistress passed a hand or some other part of her body through the misty woman, the singing of the motes would coalesce into an orgasmic moan.
 
Sensing that her Mistress’s attention was elsewhere for the time being and that they would not soon be further punished for their latest attempt at escape, Ron relaxed.  She laid the crumpled piece of paper on the floor and stopped to stare at her hands.
 
Her hands, she thought.  My hands.  They were dark with long nails.  Her naked body was compact but muscular and long, shiny black hair hung down past her shoulders.  She hadn’t seen a mirror since she was last changed, but she guessed she was the Indian woman again.  He guessed he was the Indian woman again.
 
It was just so confusing sometimes.
 
His…her dark hands began to smooth the crumpled paper doll.  Spread out, it was as tall as she was, which wasn’t very much right now…maybe four inches.  As she smoothed it, she began to make out a beautiful face and slim body.  An onlooker would have mistaken it for a picture clipped from a magazine.  But Ron knew better.  This was a living, breathing woman, pressed to as close to two dimensions as it was possible for an object in this world to be.
 
Her state pained him.  Ron knew that she was alive…or if not quite alive, she certainly would be again when Mistress took a mind to make her so.  But still, it pained her…him.
 
He gazed at the face.  At the eyes that had so recently been bright and lively, looking to him…her…as they sought to escape.  A face that she…that he loved.  And hated, too.
 
The face of the Mistress.
 
*          *          *
 
“So what’s with all the papers?”
 
Lloyd looked up again.  “Prita okay?”
 
“Yeah,” said Kate.  “What’s with the papers?”
 
“Oh, it’s about the call I got while you were draining out of the Liquid illusion.  Remember the story I told about the tragic history of my old Metamorphosis trick?”
 
She’d been too concerned about his emotional state at the time to remember the details of the story.  “Sort of.”
 
“Well, the call was from the father of the first victim.”
 
“Clara?”
 
“Claudia.  Claudia Strickland.  The man said that an old friend or business associate had seen Claudia in Las Vegas very recently.  I put it down to drunkenness on the part of the friend and wishful thinking on the part of Mr. Strickland…I mean, gorgeous blondes are a dime a dozen in Vegas.”
 
“Hey!  We met in Las Vegas, bucko.”
 
Lloyd reddened.  “You know I don’t mean it that way.”
 
She smiled and let him off the hook.  “Well,” she said, “at the moment, my blondeness is something of a technicality anyhow.”
 
“Anyway,” he continued.  “I was all ready to dismiss it as a case of mistaken identity…”

“But there’s something about the whole thing that bugs you about it.”
 
“Exactly.  A sense of foreboding that I can’t seem to shake.”
 
*          *          *
 
You must face them.
 
Who?
 
The terrible things.
 
Why?

Because that’s the nature of precognition.  That which you sense as your future cannot be avoided and should not be delayed.
 
I don’t like that.
 
I know.
 
I wish I knew what it was.
 
So do I.
 
A contraction.  And a scream.
 
*          *          *
 
Ron and Nina became whomever the Mistress wanted them to be…the Indian woman, the tall black man, the blond with short hair, each other…but the others were always the same….when they were human.  This one - Ron began to think of her as Clea soon after Mistress announced that she was only to be called “Mistress” – was mute, even when animate.  Ron guessed that Mistress had taken her speech from her, though it didn’t seem to matter – though intelligent, she did not appear to understand much English.  She always very frightened.  He could not imagine what Mistress could have done to her. 
 
But at least Ron’s new Clea was kind.
 
Unlike the Other.
 
Ron shuddered.  The Other was a demon.  When human, she always had the same form:  tall and pale, with long blonde hair, the twin of the woman that Mistress had transformed Ron into upon their first meeting.  She must have once been extraordinarily beautiful, but that beauty was destroyed by a savage, burning malice that frightening and repellent.  Mistress seldom left her alone with Ron and the others.  The first time she had done so, the Other had fallen into a fury, screaming silently – like Ron’s new Clea, she was mute – and attacked them.  All teeth and claw-like nails, she had disemboweled Nina and beaten Ron into unconsciousness.  Nina told Ron later that the Other had begun to eat her flesh when Mistress arrived to discipline her.
 
And discipline her she did.  Horribly so.  While Mistress’s treatment of all of them could be extreme, she reserved the cruelest for the Other.  Even so, such harsh treatment could hardly begin to explain the Other.
 
*          *          *
 
“Can you find the coroner’s reports in that pile over there?”
 
“This pile?”
 
“Yeah.”
 
“You really need to organize these better, you know.  Let’s see.  Claudia Strickland.”  She set the report on the table and returned to the stack, quickly locating a second and reading the name at the top.  “Samuel Flamming….”
 
“Fleming.”
 
She peered closely at the document.  “Oh yeah.  Sorry.  The writing’s a little smudged.”  She went back to searching.  “Hmmm….ah!  Here we are…Maya Howard.”
 
Lloyd gasped and looked up, eyes wide.
 
“What did you just say?” he asked frantically.
 
*          *          *
 
Will it be bad for everyone else?
 
I don’t know.  Since I’ve been carrying you, my sense of these sorts of things has been dulled.
 
Am I sensing what you normally would?
 
Perhaps.  During this time, we have been linked.  Perhaps you feel it because it is you who are pivotal in what is to come.
 
What do you do when you sense these sorts of things?
 
I face them.
 
Does it go easier then?
 
Not for me.  Things will be just as bad for me regardless of when I act.  If I try to avoid that which I sense, however, things can often be much worse for those that I know and love.  This I have learned over the years.
 
This is so difficult
 
I know.
 
A contraction.  And a scream.
 
*          *          *
 
If it hadn’t been for the cat…
 
Their first attempt at escape had been thwarted when Nina had betrayed them to the Mistress.  After that, Mistress had taken to keeping them either shrunken or in inanimate forms while she wasn’t playing with them.   The latest attempt had come when both Ron and Clea were animate but shrunken…and unattended.  They had made it out of Mistress’s room only to come face to face with a huge ginger cat.  They had fled back into the room and were discovered by Mistress shortly thereafter.  She had stomped Clea flat and changed Ron into her present form, her favorite form to deliver condescending speeches to.
 
“Why hello there!” a voice boomed above them.
 
The Mistress had taken an interest in the box again.  And she was holding a very large knife.
 
*          *          *
 
The look on Lloyd’s face had frightened Kate into silence.
 
“What did you say?” he asked again in a hoarse whisper.
 
“I said ‘Maya Howard.’”
 
“Again.  Slowly.”
 
“MAY-uh HOW-ard.  What’s the problem?  Is it supposed to be MY-uh?”
 
“That’s how I’d been pronouncing it,” he said, even quieter now.
 
“So I got it wrong.  Since when are you such a stickler for pronunciation?”
 
“I minored in linguistics at University…but I don’t think you’re wrong.”
 
“Then what’s the problem?”
 
“When did we rent that movie…I’ve forgotten the name….the Western that you didn’t like?”
 
“Huh?  Uh, let’s see.  It was a Friday….but not yesterday and not last Friday.  So I’d say two weeks ago yesterday.  What’s all this about?”
 
Lloyd stood up suddenly and papers scattered on the floor.  He grabbed Kate by the shoulders.  “Go stay with Prita.  Now.  Don’t leave her for any reason.  If you see Hart, tell him to meet me outside Clea’s room.  There’s something I need to do.”
 
He kissed her quickly and ran from the room.
 
*          *          *
 
It’s starting.
 
I know.  Kate just came into the room to be with us.  She’s terribly agitated.
 
What do I do?
 
You do what you need to.
 
*          *          *
 
“Why can’t you be nice little girl like your sister Nina?”  chided Mistress.  You’ve been very naughty and I think that that perhaps calls for punishment.”
 
Ron stared at the blade.
 
“The knife?”   She eyed the sharp blade theatrically before tossing it aside.  “Oh no.  Much too gauche.  I have someone…er…something more interesting.” 
 
She coughed twice, puckered her lips, and spat something into the box.  It thumped against the cardboard wall and came to rest.  Ron moved toward it and then recoiled. 
 
It was a human head. 
 
The head of the Other, its stringy blonde hair wet and matted.
 
Has she finally killed it?
 
Its eyes opened and it snarled at him.
 
That would be no.
 
As he fell away from the gibbering disembodied head, Ron became aware that at some point in the last minute or so he had become male again.  He looked back to where he had sat and saw that Clea was once again animate.  She appeared to be torn between rushing to him and staying as far as possible from the Mistress and the head, which was beginning to sprout long, twitching spider’s legs from its neck.
 
Ron turned to go to her, but found he could only move with great difficulty.  His nose caught the strong odor of almonds.  Clea’s face looked pale.
 
Cyanide?  Is she poisoning us all now?  No...she wouldn’t kill us…we’d cease to be interesting toys.  No, it’s more like..
.
“By the way,” said Mistress matter-of-factly.  “You’re both made out of marzipan now.”  She began to close the box.  “Enjoy!  Ms. Claudia always loved marzipan.” she said brightly as they were plunged into darkness.
 
There was a loud snarl in his ear and he felt teeth sink into his neck.
 
To be continued….