Queen Bee announces the approaching chrome spinal cord that ends in a screeching child’s mouth. “Companion Unlocked: Futakuchi-onna.” Where the stickiest remains of Futakuchi-onna’s previous owner have fallen free from its body, the slithering metal reflects the liquid spilled from the jars in red and blue that meet and turn purple. The potential companion stretches and coils across the light-splattered concrete like a tentacled snake skipping across a shallow stream.
Baka! Companion? Decline.
Queen Bee yells through the speakers, sending static popping through the air so the slithering child may be able to hear above her own screeching. “COMPANION DECLINED.”
Futakuchi-onna’s mouth snaps shut. Emi’s hearing powers on. The thin lips that serve as the very top of the child-snake’s head turn downward in a frown. The slumping onto the ground with clinks and a thud add to the child’s show of hurt.
Her mouth still closed in a tight frown, Futakuchi-onna mumbles. “My new stepmother doesn’t want me?” If she had eyes, they’d be crying.
Queen Bee offers, “GOOD JOB, YOU HURT HER FEELINGS,” which only makes matters worse.
The snake-spine rises its head-mouth off the ground just high enough to nod in confirmation.
With the creature’s teeth—including all evidence of any stolen fangs—hidden, Emi almost feels bad for the lost child.
Tell her to give me back my teeth.
“What are you offering?”
Nothing.
“Invalid offer.”
Fine. To let it live.
Queen Bee giggles. “This should be fun. INMATE 392689 PROPOSES A TRADE—”
Emi covers her ears, the snake coils into a protective ball a few feet from Emi’s curling glow-in-the-dark painted toes. Why are you still yelling?
“Oops, forgot to turn the speaker volume back down. Inmate 392689 proposes a trade: The Life of Inmate 92576 for the Fangs of Inmate 392689.”
Inmate 92576? I thought that was the woman behind the counter.
“You mean the corpse you beheaded?”
She asked for it.
“You didn’t recognize her reanimated corpse?”
No time to get an answer. The snake starts popping in a delighted cackle at the offer, the effort of the noise sending its body grinding across the thinly puddled concrete and sending goosebumps up Emi’s spine that curl her toes and foot closer towards her.
Why is it laughing?
Queen Bee, also now laughing loud enough for the whole world to hear, needs a moment to find her voice.
Emi’s cheeks are burning with anger and embarrassment from not being in on the joke. Get it together, B.
Queen Bee tries but fails, which only makes the metal spine on the floor roll around faster and cackle harder.
Emi pulls at the now blue-highlighted gray ‘wig’ hanging from her waistband and throws a handful of hair at her feet. She points at the child that has gone quiet while it feasts. Look at this, you are acting like that hair-eating child. And I’m the immature one? What’s so funny?
This must sting Queen Bee’s pride, because she stops laughing after a stifling snort. “Futakuchi-onna cannot be killed.”
Why not?
“A lot of reasons.”
Emi slaps her broken hand onto the ground, regretting it at once. Such as…
“Are you crying?”
Just answer me!
“Running diagnostics.”
Emi’s jaw shakes as the electrical currents slither down her veins. She swallows. Stop diagnostics and give me answers.
“Diagnostics complete. Health (52%). Heart rate: 199BPM (Potential Electrical Malfunction). Body Temperature: 39° Celsius (Potential Infecti—"
I’m pissed off, not malfunctioning! Without thinking, she slams her hand down again.
“Significant Injury Identified: Fracture of fourth and fifth metacarpal bones right hand. Fracture of scaphoid bone left wrist.”
Why can’t she be killed?
The child suddenly sitting tall like a cobra preparing to strike at cornered prey, blue foam drips from the corners of her mouth. Her high-pitched voice is like that of the know-it-all girl found in every second-grade classroom. “For one, you have nothing to penetrate my skin.”
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Yeah, ‘cause you stole my blades! Give them back or I’ll kill you! Emi’s tongue slithers around in her mouth, the venom lost by the fact that no words come out. Her empty gums throb where the absence of fangs is a more pressing concern than ever.
The child, still standing tall with half her extendable spinal cord body erect, cocks her head sideways, making the shape of an ‘S’ out of her hastily roller-painted body.
Bee, translate!
Queen Bee plays the sound of static through the speaker.
Please. Please translate.
It’s Bee’s turn to be embarrassed again. “I have forgotten what you wanted me to say.”
Can you please stay focused? Are we or are we not dealing with an immortal snake here?
Her Australian accent becomes cleaner, as if she just straightened out her uniform. “Yes, you’re right. My apologies. You have my full services.”
Tell the kid, ‘Yeah, ‘cause you stole my blades! Give them back or I’ll kill you!’.
“But she did not steal my blades.”
Emi lifts the saw from her lap, the weight nearly too much for the small bones broken in her hand and holds the jagged blade against her patchily shaven skull. You know what I mean. Translate or I’ll take this saw to my brain.
Bee mimics the sound she would make if she had a throat in need of gentle clearing. “My vessel wishes to respond with the following: ‘Yeah, ‘cause you stole my blades! Give them back or I’ll kill you!’.”
The stretched-out time between when the comeback was supposed to happen and when it did, makes the snappiness of the already slacking response have no bite at all.
Futakuchi-onna mumbles through closed lips, ensuring the ball of hair still being processed doesn’t fall free. “No, I didn’t.”
Yes, you did!
Queen Bee translates in her best guess of what Emi’s voice might sound like—cartoonish. “Yes, you did!”
The child shakes her closed head.
Then open your mouth.
“Then open your mouth.”
The snake points its tongue at the ground and opens its mouth.
Lift your head up.
“Lift you head up.”
Futakuchi-onna raises its flexible body higher into the air but keeps the mouth pointing at the ground so Emi can’t see what’s inside.
Emi reaches out her hands, her lightning-fast reflexes seeming to finally have returned to her, and grabs Futakuchi-onna by the spine/throat/body. She nearly drops the child from the pain in her hands as much as the stench of the open mouth now pointing straight at her face.
She holds the snake-child above her head so the sharpened fangs lining the roof of its mouth are visible. See, those right there. Those are m—
Futakuchi-onna uses the advantage of having no human spine, and Emi’s lack of patience, to allow it to turn the open mouth on the hand it now expects to feed it. Emi screeches, shutting off her own hearing for a brief second, her reflexes having already returned to failing in their attempt at dropping the child to the ground before it’s too late. Four teeth, sharper than any nail, clamp through her already broken right hand with painful ease.
In front of the room, at the far end of the runway where she first entered, the door unlocks and opens.
“New Companion: Futakuchi-onna. Final Boss (Futakuchi-onna): Defeated.”
Emi rises to her foot and tries to shake the child off her hand. What do you mean defeated? I thought only one inmate could leave a room.
“Only one inmate is leaving. Well, will be leaving once you stop trying to hurt yourself and escape this dungeon before it’s too late.”
Slamming the long metal body into the walls only hammers the fangs—Emi’s fangs—clenched tighter through her throbbing hand. Glass, light, and teeth, rain through the air as jars burst with loud pops. Decline companion!
“Companion Confirmed.”
I said decline!
“Companion Confirmed.”
Emi falls to the ground, wrapping her body around the companion that has coiled itself around her right arm so perfectly it is as if it has lived there all its life. From above, it appears Emi is attempting to perform Constrictor’s Grip on her own arm. Are you broken or something? I said, ‘DECLINE’.
“No, I am choosing to override your command.”
Emi is running out of air, as if her attempt at suffocating her companion only costs her own breath. Override my command? How do I turn off your ability to do that?
“Protective Override Commands may be turned off in Settings.”
Settings: Turn off Protective Override Commands.
“Protective Override Commands: On.”
No, turn them off!
“Override Commands: On.”
Baka! Stop overriding my command! On the brink of fainting, Emi releases her right arm to pick up the now dented saw from where she dropped it to the ground. Her left wrist refuses to work without help from her coiled right hand, but she soon manages to trigger the blade.
“Health Status: 148%. Mental Fortitude: +3.”
Sparks fly from the saw-guard at the backside of the blade where the misshaped metal cover now hangs in the path of the spinning weapon. She raises the saw in a fast arc toward her own head, but before she can hit her target, Futakuchi-onna uncoils herself and swings her body between the saw and Emi’s skull. The blade catches, stops, and bursts into flames.
“Companion Move Discovered: Auto Deflect.”
Futakuchi-onna tries to shake the saw free from where her body caught it, but the microscopic gears have pinched it too tight.
Emi drops her right arm, moving her new companion and therefore the hot flame it holds away from her face. If you won’t let me decline the companion, can you at least tell me why?
“If you’re going to survive what’s coming, you need her.”
I’ve been surviving just fine without her.
“Kills: 2; Deaths: 1. And look at what’s left of the wig still in your waistband, the one who killed you had to have been at least in her eighties.”
I killed her too, remember?
Queen Bee plays the sound of a mockingly slow clap through the speaker.
And what about the dead inmate I left behind the counter? I should have three kills.
The slow clapping is reaching its crescendo while the child hanging from her right hand continues trying to wiggle the saw free but only succeeding at sending balls of fire through the air. When they land, the glowing liquid spilled on the floor burns, then rises as smoke.
The room soon fills with black clouds, all light seeming to go out.
What’s coming?
Queen Bee enlarges the two-minute timer Emi has been ignoring since it popped into the corner of her vision. Just in time, the white numbers start blinking red as they turn to the final ten seconds of the countdown.
“You defeated the final boss. They’re coming for your loot before you can escape the dungeon with it.”
Emi looks toward the exit, only finding it because of the large purple waypoint flashing above the door.
“Warning: Motion Detected.”
At least your ominous clapping has stopped.
Queen Bee giggles. “Spoke too soon. Listen.” She turns up Emi’s hearing.
In her neon blue eyes, the volume bar pops open just to climb upward and disappear. The soft sound of distant slapping of feet against wet concrete rises louder in warning.
How many?
The child with a mouthful of Emi’s hand mumbles just clearly enough for the missing phonics from her words to be inferred. “Every inmate in the dungeon.”
Emi shivers, the feeling of the creature’s tongue against her skin as it talks making what little hair she has left stand up straight. She licks her left hand and slides it over her head, as if trying to water her recently shaved hair, or push it back down into hiding, so it has a chance to regrow.
The child continues, “You can have their teeth…if that’s your thing like Stepmother Nadia…but I’ve got dibs on their hair.”
How should Emi prepare for the approaching inmate(s)?
