Author Games: Path of the Guildpact

Task Six Entries

Newt-Ella Doe-Knott

What's the matter, honey?

They swirl around me: one minute, the voices hiss behind my head, but then they lie above me the next. I shake my head frantically, trying to catch whoever is speaking to me, but I never glimpse so much as a shadow. Are they even here? What's happening? My breaths race and my heart thumps as panic rises in my brain. My head goes numb. My sight goes blurry. Though I can't remember raising them to my mouth, my nails are bitten beyond shreds.

Hi! My name is Newt-Ella Doe-Knott...

No. This can't be. But suddenly, the shadows start to look familiar, and I realize why: the teeth-like peaks before me are my bangs, falling before my eyes; the two suns in the sky, so bright to my senses, are my eyes; the never-ending pit a few feet in front of me is my mouth, my throat, my stomach. It might be an exit – there has to be one somewhere –, were it not for the teeth that bar them off. To most people, this kind of introspection is a blessing. Having spent so long here, before, I know much better.

My mind is my prison.

Now, pet, there's no need to be melodramatic, is there? We had some good times, once...

Fuck off, Pete.

His voice is unmistakeable, strange as its appearance might be. The mere sound of it sends a feeling like shivers down my spine or spiders creeping comes across my neck. His high, tenor-like tones sound like a screech where they once were a beautiful melody. There was a time, once, where our conversations were a duet; now they are two dissonant melodies played an organ, the right hand dancing a G major where the left slams a B-flat minor. Our tune would be deafening, had I any ears to hear it.

Wetness splashes against my consciousness, filling me with coldness. I could try to describe the strangeness of this, having no body but my mind, no sense saved for sensation – is there even anyone reading? Who am I speaking to? – but there's no proper way to capture it. Even as I live it, I can find no concreteness to it. To speak it would be pointless; to explain it, fruitless.

I imagine a shark, floating towards me. Perhaps that's where the wetness came from – imagined as well, like the rest of the world I live in. I can picture every inch of him, from the razor-like teeth that fill his gaping mouth to the slightly crooked fin resting beneath its stomach. It snaps its jaw at me and splashes me with its tail. A shriek sounds in the air.

"Kill me," it says.

"Why? That makes no sense."

"Because you won't. That's why you're here, isn't it?"

"What do you mean?"

"You think killing is wrong. It makes you hold back. It makes you weak."

"Killing is wrong. It ends a person. Forever."

"But it makes you stronger. Think about it. What would I be if I didn't kill? I'd starve and die."

"Well, yeah. But I don't need to eat you to live."

"Your magic does. It's its nature."

It can't be. It won't be.

Come on, darlin'. What do you think? Do you have it in you?

I shake my head. The shark swims away. Even Pete's presence fades, and suddenly I am truly on my own.

Hi! My name is Newt-Ella Doe-Knott, and do I have a story for you!