Bim and Bliss had been walking around the ‘house’, Bliss showing them all the places the two used to play together. They didn’t know what was real anymore and honestly…? They were starting to like this place. /I know Bim, we shouldn’t like here. But it’s so cool and… nostalgic and comforting here./ And for someone they thought they didn’t know, Bliss was nice. Bim wasn’t used to nice people. Or people at all, honestly. The only people Bim really liked were their parents, sister and their lizard, Emiliano. Wait, no, Emiliano wasn’t a person - but if he was, Bim thought that they would definitely like him. Bim often liked to imagine Emiliano as a human. "You’d be… tall and skinny, your one eye a black brown. And your petals around your eye would be… [green]. Like your lizard skin. Or maybe all many colours because you’re a chameleon? I think you would be trans." Is what you would normally hear if you walked past their room. Back to the story - Bim was now sitting down in front of Bliss, an array of snacks and drinks laid out in front of the two. "Remember when we used to have picnics like this, Bim? It was amazing!" Bim nodded slowly. "Y-yeah, I remember. It was… fun?" Bliss laughed, shaking her head. "Silly, why did that sound like a question?" Her laugh sounded strange. Bim couldn’t place a finger on it, but she sounded… like… [off]. Funny. Kinda fake. It made the baby-petals on the back of their neck prickle and stand up. ———————————— After finishing the picnic, Bliss had said that there was something she wanted to show them. With that had began the dragging again, Bliss’s hand encasing their hand, borderline painful. She brought Bim back into the house - her TV antenna’s bobbing with each bouncing step - taking him down a long, windy, tipsy, turvy turny flight of stairs. They kept going, down, down, down, down until Bliss came to a halt at a pretty pink door, with feathers, bracelets, shoes and all sorts of pink things. "Close your eyes, Bim. You’ll like what’s inside." Bim hesitated, then closed their eyes. The door opened and Bim could feel themselves being pulled inside. A blast of cold hit them, and they shivered. Bliss seemed fine, pulling them deeper into the room and stopping. Bim was pushed into a chair, then felt Bliss’s breath flutter their petals. "Keep your eyes closed." They nodded and before they could register anything, their were chains wrapped around them, confining them to the chair. "Bliss what-" "Shut it!" Bliss hissed, tightening the chains. "And open your eyes." Bim’s eyes snapped open out of fear and the sight shocked them. There were mangled bodies hanging upside down from the ceiling, bloodied and torn up to the point they were unrecognisable. Petals and antennas littered the ground. One of the bodies twirled slowly around to face them, startling Bim. It’s eye was gauged, bits of eyeball oozing onto the floor. "What-" "Did I not tell you to shut up? Now…" Bliss’s voice was suddenly very wrong. Glitching. It sounded like it was being played from an old cassette tape underwater — fast, then slow, then back again. Bliss’s voice sounded everywhere at once - on the ceiling, the room itself, the bodies. Something clicked - not a door, not a lock, more like bones. The lights above buzzed and flickered, casting long shadows that didn’t seem to line up with the bodies. One of them had too many arms. The gauged eyeball seemingly blinked, more eyeball dripping. Bim felt something cold wrap around their wrist. A vine? A cable? No. It pulsed. It was slimy. They tried to scream, but their jaw stayed shut, like the thought hadn’t loaded yet. Static filled their ears. The voice kept speaking—no, chanting—but the words weren’t words anymore, just wet, mushy, disgusting syllables, whispered into their skull: “Unmake… unwind… unfold…” A light overhead popped, and for a fraction of a second, Bim saw Bliss in the corner. But Bliss didn’t look like Bliss. She wasn’t a person. Not a machine. Both. Neither. She was rearranging itself—bones pulling out of places they didn’t belong, wires threading through a gaping mouth, petals and antennas blooming from its back like rot.
“What do you think hurts more?” ‘Bliss’ asked, voice now painfully clear. “Losing your eyes, or what’s behind them?” Then the floor opened up, and the screaming began—not from Bim, but from something deeper down. Something old. Something waiting. Bim fell, faster than they had fallen down the first time. They managed to open their eye but a tentacle out of nowhere shot into their pupil. A sharp pain shot all throughout their body - blinding, all-consuming. Every nerve screamed in a language they didn’t know. Vision shattered into flickering fragments: a red hallway, a doll’s face melting, hands—dozens of their own hands—scratching at the inside of their skull. They weren’t falling anymore. They were floating, suspended in a thick, honey-like substance that tasted like static. Around them, giant clock faces blinked like eyes, the hands ticking backward, faster and faster until they snapped off and spun into the darkness. Bim couldn’t move—not really. Their limbs twitched, but not in response to thought. It was as if someone else was piloting them. Every movement felt distant, artificial. A voice crackled from inside their spine: “You let it in. It’s writing in your blood now.” The tentacle—still lodged in their eye—pulsed, and with each pulse came a memory that wasn’t theirs: * A girl whispering to a wall covered in teeth. * A garden where the flowers screamed lullabies. * A mirror that reflected the wrong version of you. * A room full of clocks that bled when you looked away. Then came the feeling of unzipping—not the skin, but deeper. Thoughts unraveling. Identity leaking. Bim tried to scream again, but instead, a low dial tone buzzed from their mouth, harmonizing with something hidden in the dark above. The tentacle slowly retracted, slurping out of their eye with a wet pop. No blood—just smoke. Bim floated in silence, pupil stretched and torn, their vision cracked like an old screen. And somewhere far below, something clicked again. It was a countdown. But they didn’t know what it was counting down to—or whether they’d still be them when it reached zero. The countdown hit zero. Bim heard a loud *crash* and felt their whole body started burning. Pure, white, hot pain was all they could feel. And then it ended. And Bim saw no more.
