3:4
Ivan and Dan turned as one and coursed for the door, flying up the three stairs as if they weren’t there and bursting into the factory. What greeted them stopped them both for a moment.
Prairie and Ben had fallen back to the wall where the figure had been doing something while Kim stood isolated farther over towards the beds near the far wall. Surrounding her were five women of varying heights, dressed in white nightgowns with ruffles at the hem and the cap sleeves with pale skin, dark hair, and blood red lips that parted in unison while the words of Cage the Elephant’s Black Madonna poured forth from them. It was an unearthly chorus, too synchronized to be real. Yet it ushered from the lips of women who… were…?
Hands reaching they pulled at Kim’s clothes as she batted them away, clearly trying to not hurt what amounted to the victims they’d come to save. There was the distinct smell of burning cloth and several of the women’s nightgowns had clear scorch marks. But their pale flesh remained unmarked. Kim was pulling her punches.
Or was she? A sudden wind whipped the air, dropping the temperature by finite degrees, and hit the women surrounding Kim. Their feet skidded across cement that suddenly spawned a thin layer of frost, the air thrusting them along like sleds on the surface of a frozen pond.
Wavering in the center of the circle Kim held out hands which clearly shook as she panted slightly. Fire was her go to. As she’d pointed out when reviving Prairie she had access to all the elements but she used them infrequently and she’d never displayed the ability to mix water and air as she was now. Who knew how much effort it was taking for her to use her less lethal skills?
Ben and Prairie were dealing with a similar threat, though their group consisted of at least ten women. It was hard to see Ben over the seething mass of shoulders and bodies draped in white. Prairie, with her smaller frame, was completely swallowed by the sea of white.
The women sang in perfect unison climbing high as they tore at hair and clothes and anything they could reach as Prairie and Ben settled back to back and tried to defend themselves with non-lethal moves.
“Ben!” Prairie called over the sound of Black Madonna’s chorus. She pitched her voice to a higher octave, trying to be heard over the song. “I don’t want to hurt them. They are under the effect of something.”
“You think?”
Prairie winced as one of the women caught her hair in long fingers and tugged so hard several of the strands tore out.
“Ow!” Ben called out as the clawing hands wildly swinging at them must have found purchase in his skin.
Prairie was about to lose hope that they were going to get out of this without hurting the women attacking them, as blameless as anyone could be but no less likely to tear them apart, when the sea of women parted, like by divine intervention, as Ivan shoved his hands – pressed together to make a makeshift plow – through the mass of them and heaved with all the strength in his considerable arms.
The women fell like bowling pins, some tumbling to the ground while others went careening into the beds which creaked under their weight. Then as one they rose, raised their arms like something out of an old zombie movie – Night of the Living Dolls – and started shuffling towards them with their trailing iv lines painting odd shadows like tendrils behind them. The collected voices sang from matching red lips about being unable to run or hide.
“We’ll see about that,” Ivan muttered as he snatched Prairie up in his arms without apology and started dashing for the other end of the factory where he’d left Siobhan and Gwen. Ben ran by his side, shoving women aside to give them room to maneuver. They left Dan to handle the dolls that were still attacking Kim.
Dan gritted, “Ya think?” to the women’s singing about not having fun and made a careful tour around the women surrounding Kim. So intent on getting to her or perhaps their driver could only focus them on a single target at a time, they didn’t move to attack him giving him time to study their movements.
The women differed in the level of physical distress their limbs showed, likely the ones with the weakest movements and stiffest joints had been in captivity the longest. Rehab facilities existed solely for the care of coma patients because it took so much therapeutic effort to keep a person who was non-mobile in a healthy state. There were concerns of blood clots when a person was immobile for a long time. Then there was potential issues with muscle tone and range of motion. Unless there had been a squad of caregivers watching over them there was no way twenty women could get the best care to be functional when rising from their beds. And it was clear by the way the women moved that had not been the case.
Each of the women was showing a certain level of spasticity and sensory motor effects, though some were more pronounced. And yet despite these differences, the dragging leg on one, the hanging arm that jerked repeatedly on another, and the way most of them displayed an inability to hold their heads up well so they kept flopping back and to the side with jerky movements, they all moved the same. As if some outside force was puppeting them so their legs took the same amount of steps, their arms swung on the same degrees.
There was no other word to describe the way these women were being used except Grotesque. The Magick driving them was Grotesque. Their movements were Grotesque. The level of suppression of will was Grotesque.
Dan’s skin prickled, a response to the unnatural nature of what pushed the women to move. No matter he tilted his head this way or that he couldn’t catch a glimpse of the tapestry he suspected was flowing through the scene. Without that avenue of interaction he yanked out his book with it’s carefully applied tabs and ran his thumb down the edge of the page until he hit the notch that designated he’d hit the letter B.
Flipping the book open to the page with the Bind incant he read, his Magick filtering the words from the page through his voice and into that which defined “real” in a subtle wave of pale gray words that targeted the legs of the woman closest to him. There was a feeling of resistance and then the Magick snapped back at him.
Damn. Okay. Thumb slide down the edge to the R tab. Flip open to the Reveal spell. More Magick, more words flowing through the conduit of his voice, and a bolus of Magick rippled across the space, a riot of words like ghosts in the air splashing over the women surrounding Kim.
Come on, he chanted in his head. Show me what I’m looking at.
Again there was a feeling of resistance and his Magick rebounded.
Crap, he hated to try this but… His thumb sought and found the next tab for S and he slid open the book to the Suffocate incant. He hesitated a moment, closing his eyes as he weighed the consequences of his choice. Doubt assailed him. If he put to much Magick into this it could kill the women. But just enough would deprive them of breath and possibly buy him the time to get Kim free of their circle.
As he debated frost formed on the surface of the women’s skin and their motions slowed more. The eyes Kim stared at them with devoid of warmth, contempt radiating from their depths. Frost formed in a nimbus around them, growing as if on a window and spreading to her temples and cheeks.
Now, he thought. I have to do this. He pushed his Magick into the words he read from the page, directing the Magick at the frost glazed faces of the women.
Again. Again the Magick did nothing. It didn’t rebound. It didn’t fizzle. It seemed, Dan squinted, it seemed to be breaking apart. Like some enzyme was dissolving it at the base level.
What the crap was this Magick?
Giving up on subtlety he put his head down and rammed between the two women closest to him, making a window into which he slid to stand next to Kim.
“You having fun?” he quipped, careful to keep any frustration he felt over his failed Magick out of the tone. No need to worry, his pitch said. Just a little fun.
“Not even a little!” She frowned and dodged the grasping hands of one of the women. “They aren’t afraid of fire. What self-respecting zombie doesn’t fear fire? The movies lied to me. These ladies fight like girls and I’m running out of ways to not get smacked, clawed, or called snotty names.”
“They calling snotty names?”
“Nope. Just singing like that. All together. Really creepy.”
“Tell me!”
Kim pulled in a sharp breath and let it out with a hard puffing sound and another gust of wind pushed the women back, allowing them to step forward several feet. “You have any thoughts on this?” She panted, giving away her fatigue.
“It’s some kind of spell.”
Another short puff of breath summoned wind gained them another few feet. “Break it?”
The frustration he’d felt as everything he tried failed earlier returned, adding grit to his voice. “Can’t edit what I can’t read.”
“Sucks. So, you want to try running? Not sure how much longer I’ll have the breath for it. This wind stuff, you know?”
He didn’t but the gist was clear.
They revved up to make a run for it in the direction Ivan had gone, bursting from the small pack of women and flying like their asses were on fire.
The women trailed behind them but blessedly at a slow walk. Again he thanked Hoody McHood Head for not providing adequate therapeutic care to the women. And damn, that just sounded cold. But the grave would be colder and he wasn’t ready to go there yet.
The chorus of Black Madonna followed Dan and Kim as they darted back to where the remainder of the group had formed a loose circle with Gwen, who was sitting on the floor and staring blindly into space, in the middle and were carefully handling the small clutch of nearly identical women surrounding them and singing.
As they slid into the group Kim quietly sang along in a breathy tone that showed clear signs of her depleted air supply. Dan paused to give her an eyebrow full of ‘what?’ to which she shrugged and murmured, “It’s catchy.”
They continued to try to hold off the women but they were getting their hit’s in. Soon most of them were sporting long scratches on hands, wrists, and in some places cheeks and foreheads. It was damned hard to not cause harm when your attackers showed no such constraints. The only member of their group with a non-lethal reach weapon was sitting staring at the air like it held secrets only she could read. It was clear when it occurred to Ivan he could just take Gwen’s plunger and wield it to hold off the attacking women.
He frowned as he swung, adjusting his grip on the handle. “This thing has lousy balance. Respect to Gwen for using it.”
“Less yapping; more bapping,” Ben grunted next to him. Ben had been acting as a moving target for the women, revealing apparent weaknesses that drew them in and then sliding away to let the others take hit’s at them. But suddenly he dropped back, calculation stretching his mouth into a wicked grin.
Forming a cage of his fingers over his core he pulled a measure of shadow free. Instead of balling it tight as was his usual tactic he slowly, carefully drew his hands apart, dragging the shadow out until it was a thin blanket with tendrils curling between his fingers. Once satisfied he leaped forward and cast it out, like a net over water, like a blanket in a pillow fight. The shadow spread even thinner as it flew and wrapped around the head of one of the attacking women. Stumbling blindly she fell away from the circle.
Hot shit! It worked.
He pulled another piece of shadow, spun it out thin, and cast again. Another woman stumbled away with nothing but shadows in her vision.
Ivan stopped the swing of the plunger for a moment to stare.
“Ben? Can you make them all blind?”
Ben scoffed. “If I was a Lord of Shadow maybe.”
“You aren’t one?”
“It’s not a thing!” Ben snapped even as he pulled another dab of shadow loose from his core of Magick and started dragging it into a sheet.
“Oh.”
“It’s hard for me to make the Shadow thin enough to cause no harm.” The effort came out in his voice. He frowned. Damn, there went the laid-back, this-takes-no-effort thing he worked to project. “It’s hungry.”
Ivan got to swinging with the plunger, tucking Prairie harder to his side. “Damn man. When this is over we need to talk about your Magick.”
“Uh,” Ben pretended to think for a sec, “No.”
Dan looked to Siobhan who was fending women off with a sweep of one arm while trying to drop herbs into an open vial she had shoved into her cleavage. Alchemy was *not* an on-the-fly art. “Plan?”
“Don’t have one.”
“Fall back outside?”
“Not ideal. They have more space then. Not that I’m a fan of a circle of death but at least this is a contained area. They don’t have weapons. We need to subdue them.”
Ben dodged as two of the women who’d followed Kim and Dan shuffled up and tried to snatch a piece out of him. “They don’t have weapons. Tell that to that guy in the Handmaids Tale that got himself ripped apart by angry chicks.”
“I’m going to be an angry woman if you say chicks again.” Kim darted around Ben and started kicking her lavender Doc Martens randomly like she was a demented Rockette. The effect was completed by her matching the kicks to the song.
At Dan’s stare she mouthed, “I got nothing else left. If this doesn’t work I spit on them!”
She sang out the next line, gleefully kicking and watching the zombie dolls drop back as she made contact. Another phrase. Another kick, “C’mon you pink table rejects! I can’t hear you!”
“You are demented!” Ivan called out as he tried to fend off the hands and arms and the sound of voices singing while also trying to shelter Prairie with his big body.
“Seriously,” Prairie’s light voice barely carried. She shoved against Ivan and fell two steps back from him. “I am a strong and capable woman. I am not a damsel in distress.”
“I’m a damsel. And I’m in distress.” Voice slow Gwen, whose eyes up until then had been half-lidded, slowly looked around as she finished the line from that Disney movie, “I can handle this.”
“Gwen!” Kim stopped the kick line to spin and look at where Gwen was very slowly pushing herself to her feet. “You’re alive.”
“I am.” Gwen swayed on her feet, her hands out at her sides to find her balance. “Maybe.”
Then in a move that none of them was ready for she crashed through the circle, pushing between Dan and Siobhan, and lumbered into the women surrounding them while pinwheeling her arms.
The women, as one, turned to look at her and said in perfect unison, which again, super creepy, “Mother does not want you to follow.”
“Enough!” Gwen hollered and started making clutching motions in the air, like she was grasping something they couldn’t see. As she grasped the bundle of invisible between her hands expanded until her fingers were about six inches apart, like she was holding a transparent basketball. Prairie squinted and then whispered, “Oh. That’s gross.”
“Lovely ladies!” she hollered over the sound of the singing and the kicking and the general fending off of grasping hands and lunging torsos. “Forgive me.”
Mouthing the chorus along with the women Gwen made a yanking and twisting motion, pulling taut the cords no one else could see except apparently she and Prairie. The women’s motions slowed but didn’t stop. Gwen frowned then hollered at Dan, “I need your help.”
He hurried over to her.
“Here,” she said, “Put your hands around mine and when I yank and twist do the same, but do it with, like your Magick too.”
“My Magick involves cantrips. It doesn’t work like this!”
“Doesn’t it? You better start believing, buddy, because this is all I’ve got. Now!”
She twisted and pulled. Dan twisted and pulled. And the attacking women, as one, rose on their toes, foreheads thrown back and drawn towards the ceiling with arms loose at their sides or falling behind them, limp hands flapping. Then as Gwen and Dan made a huge yank to the side all the women collapsed to the ground at once.
The room fell blessedly quiet.
Enter The Woods 