Human Spines

Rooms Number Eight-III

*Reminder*

*Words and sentences written in both italics and underlined are supposed to be striked out.*

Hans

        "Quickly. Come on." The little girl rushes me. I don't like being rushed but the boy does look pretty underfed. Do they serve cantaloupe at Chinese restaurants?

        I twirl myself around, ready to go... oooh... no. I see Emmeline, the little girl, and I see the thing attached to her. I see Emmeline and I see the bones fused into the back of her body. I see her arms and the textured, ashy blue bones lined up with hers. They've forcibly joined themselves to her skin, making her epidermis look like its trying to grow over the alien bones. Hands, legs, spine, ribs, even her skull has another popping out of it, two thirds of the way concealed by her own head. Like it's standing so close its inside her. Or maybe that skeleton is her and it's being pushed out of her body by the creature puppeteering it. I see Emmeline and I see a creature that could only ever live in the darkest alleyway. A creature that might as well be a JIBBOO straight from the thoughts of the greatest thinker himself, Dr. Seuss.

        My body may be quaking and my hands may be convulsing, my mouth may be begging and my face may be weeping but my mind may be thinking, oh, the thinks it may be thinking! But fear is an anchor weighing me down to the floor. Fear is an octopus wrapped around my legs, suctioning me to the ground. Fear is a rhinoceros sitting on my head, crushing me flat against my own carpet. Fear is so much.

        There are so many things that a thinker can think!

        But I must stand and not simply think. I must stop this Grinching. Because fear must also be inside this little girl's body.

        I straighten my stance. "Do your worst! Bring on your spooks. Shoot the works! I will not flinch!"

        "Oh?" The puppeteering intensifies. "I do not spend my time scaring and I will not apologize for that. I have never seen such a foul being in the presence of Emmeline. Who shall I tell first? The Sibling? Amistifer? Illyvimsius?" The small body rocks while the words are spoken in a pitch much higher than what should naturally come from that mouth.

        "I believe you only threaten us because you find yourself unlucky. 'When you think things are bad, when you feel sour and blue, when you start to get mad... you should do what I do... Just tell yourself, Duckie, you're really quite lucky! Some people are much more... oh, muchly much-much more unlucky than you!' Have you ever thought about the girl you're stealing the body of? Have you ever tried to remember something you know happened just moments ago but not been able to because, as far as your mind can tell, you didn't exist during those moments? Absolutely nothing existed during those moments or hours or days or years. Somehow your world has skipped over them and it is not apologizing. Maybe it happens to everyone, you think. Maybe I just wasn't taking enough control. Maybe it was an accident. Maybe they needed those hours of my life more than I did. Maybe they had no choice. Maybe they don't know it doesn't belong to them. Maybe, you think, maybe, maybe, maybe... but no one is apologizing and no one ever will. Maybe. Maybe they really just don't care. Then after years of maybe, you know. They do not care. They did not care. They WILL NEVER CARE...! So you sit and you wonder. You do not make the mistake of maybe again. You wonder, is it true? You wonder, is it true that this life belongs to me...? And nobody answers." Because they don't know either.