8

Since my “recruitment,” I had visited Her theater several times. She always enjoyed putting on little shows there, using people She had plucked from the streets as Her players. Most of those shows ended with the majority of the cast dying, usually in very bloody ways. Survivors were usually dumped back onto the streets of some faraway country with their tongues removed, so they couldn’t even ask for help. It was a horrible place, but one which I was able to remember clearly.

I led Liz and Raito to the building as soon as they were ready. The whole way I was terrified She would appear to stop us, but the entire journey there was without event. Even entering the building was oddly easy; there wasn’t a single person around to stop us. The inside was eerily silent. There wasn’t a sign of anyone inside, and the air was thick with dust, as if it had been uninhabited for decades. To get backstage, we would need to cross the audience seating. The thought of walking across such an open area didn’t appeal to me, but since there seemed to be no one around, we took it as an acceptable risk.

We were halfway to the stage before anything happened. As we passed by an aisle, I felt something grabbing at my foot. Panicked, I kicked at it, and felt my shoe hit wood. A puppet was crawling out from the aisles, and trying to pull me down. There was another puppet behind it, and as I looked around, puppets were crawling across the floors from every row of the theater. The three of us made a run for the stage, hoping to reach it before we were overwhelmed. I was the first to get on the stage. I grabbed Liz’s hand and pulled her up, then reached for Raito. I didn’t move fast enough to save him. The puppets pulled him to the floor and piled on top of him. I couldn’t see him underneath them, but I heard his cries as they tore into his flesh like animals.

Grim as it may have been, the puppets’ focus on Raito bought Liz and me the time to run backstage. I’d been there before, but it appeared entirely unfamiliar to me. Long stone hallways, lit by flickering oil lamps and covered with cobwebs, stretched out in a dozen directions. We chose one hall at random and ran down it, only to reach another identical intersection. No matter which route we took, all we found were more of the halls. Trying to keep running was wearing me down, and my breath became more ragged and desperate. As we turned down another hall, Her laughter echoed around us, joining the sound of our heavy breathing. The cobwebs started looking less like webs, and became strings that draped across the walls.

Just when it felt like I was going to collapse from fatigue, I saw a door at the end of the hallway. I had no way of knowing if it was the storage room we were looking for. But I would have taken anything at that moment. I ran through the door, and then froze when I saw the army of puppets hanging in front of me. Unlike the others, these didn’t appear to have any life in them, and when that became clear we started pushing past them. I recognized several of the puppets. They all looked like women She had appeared to me as. I kept expecting them to attack us, but not one moved.

After several minutes of navigating through those wooden limbs with only the flickering lamps to show us where to go, we made it to a clearing in that forest of puppets. In the center of that open space, a woman was suspended by strings sewn into her arms and neck. She looked ancient, almost like a corpse. Her skin was grey and dry, and there were only a few strands of hair on her head. Her eyes were closed, but I could still see her breathing slightly. The rags she wore might once have been a dress, but now had rotted away until they barely covered her emaciated body.

This was the actress Raito had told us about. Seeing her there felt as if I was intruding in a temple. The laughter that had been following us stopped, leaving everything silent. Now the question was what we should do next. The plan had been to “destroy” her, but none of us had given much thought to how we would do that when we found her. I think we might not have really believed we actually would find her until then.

That question was taken out of our hands when some of the strings tore themselves out of the actress’s arms and wrapped around Liz. She screamed in fear, then pain, and then she was quiet. I had a fairly good idea what was going to happen next, and started running for the exit. I didn’t make it far before something struck my head from behind, nearly knocking me down. Liz had torn out a jagged wooden floorboard, and was using it as an improvised club. Her hands were wet with blood from ripping it out so quickly, but she ignored it. She kept swinging it as she tried to stab me with the splintered end of the board. Even with the strings controlling her, Experience made me faster and stronger. When she attacked again, I managed to throw her aside and get the board out of her hands. Now armed, I had a chance to end things. I ran back to the actress, and lunged at her with the sharp end of the board. Before I hit, Liz jumped in the way. There wasn’t enough time for me to stop, and the board stabbed through her. But I’d been moving with enough momentum that it kept going, impaling the actress as well.

Both Liz and the actress opened their mouths, and Her screams of pain came out. The strings that had been holding them vanished, and both their bodies crumpled to the ground, but the screams continued all around me. I remember a feeling of exhaustion surging over me then. Hard as it was to believe, I’d done it. I was free.

I waited for the screaming to stop, but it kept going on. Until the tone changed; slowly, the screaming began to sound more like laughter. Laughter which was coming from behind me. I looked, and saw Raito, partially hidden by the puppets, laughing with Her voice. After I noticed him, the laughter died down, and he spoke to me, still sounding just like Her. “Wasn’t that fun?”

It was impossible for Raito to be there. I’d seen him torn apart. “What’s going on, Raito? I don’t… I don’t understand….”

“Raito?” He tilted his head to the side, with a curious grin. “You don’t mean… you actually thought… you didn’t….” He started laughing again. “Oh, you stupid, stupid little slave! I thought you knew!” He stepped out of the puppets, and I could see parts of his skin and clothes had been torn away. Underneath, instead of blood or muscle, was wood. “There never was a Raito. I made him up! Just like I made up that story about the actress. She was just some woman I’d thrown down here AGES ago. I’d been trying to think of a way to get rid of her. I can’t believe you actually fell for such a corny story!”

Horror filled my every thought. Everything had just been another of Her games. The dream of freedom was just another nightmare. I never would escape Her. “But… why?” I asked.

“You’re always running around doing these little jobs for me. It gets lonely, you know, sitting at home and waiting for you. I wanted to join in on the fun! You know they say that couples who share a hobby are happier together!” Raito’s skin started to fall away, leaving a featureless wooden doll, but Her voice continued to speak, like a knife being driven into my mind. “But… oh dear. If you actually thought that story was true… then that means you just tried to kill me. And trying to do something like that would be unforgivable.”

I tried running from Her, but amongst all the puppets, I couldn’t tell where the exit was. I ended up running into a stone wall. She was laughing again, and every moment brought that laughter closer. I grabbed one of the oil lamps off the wall, and when I saw Her approach, threw it at Her. The burning oil covered Her body with fire, but She kept coming toward me. She wrapped her arms around me, burning me with the fire that covered Her. When I tried to scream, I choked on the smoke filling the room. Eventually, the pain became too much, and I blacked out.