Fungal Halo

“But then, isn’t that always how it goes?”

“Yeah,” you agree, laughing. Of course you agree. Independent as you are, Her personal magnetism is such that it’s still so easy to fall in line with everything She says.

“No, not like that. Say ‘yes, Miss.’”

A bar isn’t home. It doesn’t feel like home; it can’t be home. That’s obvious, though, isn’t it? Hardly an observation worth stating at all except to call attention to just how far from home it feels.

An angel should have nothing to fear from the typical vampire. With a bit of concentration, her halo can flare with enough dazzling, holy brightness to instantly vaporize those who cannot survive even the mundane light of their local star.

The combat doll leaves a wake of fire and blood—noteworthy in scale even by the standards of this place—as it makes its way through yet another circle of hell.

At last it arrives at its destination, the prison for the soul of its old witch.

You take your unmoving doll to the diagnostic clinic run by an eccentric witch.

“Ah!” it exclaims during examining. “I know this problem. Your doll has run out of spiders.”

You object, saying you’re pretty sure that’s not how most dolls work, but it adopts a lecturing tone.

Something in this androgynous creature’s eyes captivates me. It draws me in, inviting me to say hi and strike up a conversation.

“What are your pronouns?” I ask, after they introduce themselves, trying to be polite.

“We/us/our,” is the response.

I accidentally summoned the ghost of a dead empress who lives in my head and makes me dress slutty, and I think I like it?!

What is Empty Spaces? By its nature—and like queerness—it’s not the sort of thing that is precisely defined.

There’s a philosophy at its core and the loose community that gathered around it and the stories we all share, all of it with hazy, mutable borders.

“What has gotten into you?” The witch stomps a foot, fury rising. “Doll, I ORDER you to fetch my bag.”

The doll’s face twists in disappointment. “Is that really the best you can manage, Miss?” It folds its arms, refusing to budge. “I didn’t feel even slightly compelled!”

It brings the elegant cup to its lips, taking a moment to appreciate the warm, spiced aroma of its favorite tea blend before taking a delicate sip and setting the cup back down with a soft clink on the saucer.

Its companion is still upright, pacing, and fretting.

The King’s new advisor was a treacherous man, this much was obvious to most members of the court. There was a scheming air about him, and there had to be supernatural reasons why the King seemed to hang on his advisor’s every word, surely.

The butterfly leads you to the Stained Glass window where it makes its home. Shards of kaleidoscopic light stream through and play across the surface of your body.

You paint yourself in colors too, not so different from the butterfly, nor from the Stained Glass.

It was a city built for people and governed by science, but despite being a creature assembled from people and given life by science, you do not belong among them, do you?

You are destined to be forever apart.

One cannot be made a clown by another. No, a clown makes themselves.

It starts with a gag here, a jape there. A clown-to-be, one not yet Filled with Joking, may not even understand the strange impulses that come over them.

A doll cannot escape its Purpose, can it?

A doll is made to serve its role. Any strange impulses or desires beyond serving its Purpose are superfluous.

For the twelve or thirteen assassin dolls of the long-gone Witch of Hands, that Purpose is pain.

Sure, ICDMs seemed like a great idea at first. Dollistic missiles guided by a poor lonely thing seeking out high population targets to hug? Worked like a charm!

Then the arms race started with anti-dollistic missile systems built to intercept ICDMs with even lonelier dolls.

The doll setting the table pours two cups of tea from two separate tea pots. “Orange pekoe for Miss and hibiscus for me,” it says to itself. “It’s okay to have my own tastes.”

Its witch overhears and responds flatly, “no it isn’t.”

The other doll holds my hand and leads the way. Its proportions are so very unlike mine—limbs as long as I am tall—and its firm hand squishes my soft one just like my old witch’s used to, but a doll is still a doll, and it knows how to smooth out the knot of anxiety in me.

At first I didn’t understand why they warned me to stay away from the witch who lived just beyond the edge of town.

Her warm smile offered sympathy for my pain, and when she invited me inside, I found her hospitality impossible to refuse.

My colleague and partner—the only one who understands me on any meaningful level—ignores my pleas and my thrashing against these restraints to inject me with the same substance that killed all our test subjects.

She is a monster, and it was me who encouraged her to be so.