Fungal Halo

She crossed the room leaving a smudge across my vision that no amount of blinking would clear. Her fingertips bled black ink into the air around them. I should have been afraid, but I was transfixed, couldn't let her leave my sight. I ditched my friends and followed her outside.

I have a pit where my stomach should be, an endless hole that nothing fills. When my hunger grows out of control and my self-control lapses, I find myself gripping the neck of someone beautiful again, maybe in a dark alley or in their own bedroom, as the light fades from inside.

I've come to hate the girl in the mirror. She barely manages to make eye contact with me any more, like she's ashamed of me or something. She doesn't even spend time admiring the new bruises on my face and neck or appear disappointed when they fade. Pathetic. Downright rude.

I sit, silent and pretty, among my sisters. My Mistress is greeting some very rude guests who speak to her in raised voices. I would giggle at their foolishness if my Mistress's magic weren't perfect. If I weren't her perfect, silent doll.

It isn't your friend who joins you and the others at the diner, but for some reason everyone else in your group treats it exactly the same as if it were her.

Do they notice? Or are they all going along with it the same as you because everyone else is doing so?

I kiss her and feel wetness everywhere she touches me.

She grips me firmly, fingers wrapped in my hair, pressing my face into her as if to keep me from looking down and seeing what she is doing to me.

As if I didn't watch her do it to someone else before.

Many of us are aware of the ways that an angel's halo is also their collar.

Whenever the angel so much as thinks of going astray...

*yank*

Their owner tugs on a leash of light, and they are corrected.

That is not all that a halo is good for, however.

As you get ready to leave, you spot her again out of the corner of your eye. She's sitting in the kitchen.

They tried to tell me that moths don't have mouths, at least not after their larval stage.

Ah, to still be such a fool to believe that a thing is only itself.

I know to fear that which a thing is not. I know what a moth does not eat with its mouth that does not exist.

Concept: you've done it. You've digitized your mind. You're the first person to completely escape the confines of your fleshy original form.

Since you're the first they want to run some experiments on you. How ruthlessly can they compress your data before you stop being you?

The kiss hits me like a knife wound in the mind, like something cold and foreign, violently separating parts of me that only ever knew connection with one another.

She slides herself into that makeshift opening, and the pain of her unexpected intrusion screams inside me.

From the once-brilliant First Temple of Lyenne, the light of Wisdom fades out.

From the once-brilliant First Temple of Lyenne, the light of Wisdom fades out.

I stand on the shore of a great ocean—one that isn't an ocean at all—and I start to feel the occasional wave's surge reach me and tickle my toes. I can still turn around, make any other choice.

I don't.

I stand in front of a witch house, and I do not belong here.

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.

"Do you think we got her in time?"

"Yeah! I mean, pretty sure."

"She was so determined to join those freaks, though… What if we were too late?"

"We're not! She's fine. She's still, y'know, untouched. Still good."

"How can you tell?"

"Just look! She's still—"

The water churns with the thrashing bodies of countless swimming parasites. It's hard to get a good look at them like this. All I can pick out is a handful of individual details—tendrils, rows of tiny teeth, beady eyes. I have to put my arm in there and let one choose me.