The Queen of Half-Life: Deresanzi Mills

(27k, loosely edited)



“…for dark magic tends to save the world more often than the pure kind.”

-some old wizard




The nails she wore drew me to her first. They were a midnight shade of purple, rimmed with gold, each sporting three small daggers, star-like, gradient of gold to the midnight purple. They entranced me, enticed me, and inhaled my existence. In the end, those nails were the ones who brought me to my supposed life. I wasn’t alive, but not quite dead either.

“Half-lifer,” she called me, her crimson lipstick so close to my eyes. “Best come with me.”

This isn’t my story. I’m dead. Well, not yet. I’ve died, and she brought me back, but not to life. I can talk, walk, sleep, and pretend I’m human. I don’t decompose, but have no heartbeat. With one foot in the grave, I’m frozen between life and death. I now serve her, Deresanzi, the Queen of Half-life.”

“Stop calling me a Queen,” she said. “I’m just another Half-lifer like you. You’re only here because Salzy wanted to bring you back.” As they were cursed nails, the only way they could communicated was by sign language. It took me a while to learn all the motions and what they meant, but the story should have all the fixings already in place.

“Yeah, right,” Salzy signed. “It can’t be that you felt the need to save him because you got him killed. Sarcasm.”

“Oh, shush you,” Deresanzi said. I was breathing my last breath as her nails pierced the skin of my neck. I felt no pain given that my system was already shut down. There was pressure in my neck, and I felt something flow inside.

“Do your thing, Salazar,” she said. From the pressure came a sort of heat, as if my body was restarting. Something slithered into my body through the puncture at the neck. Was it blood? I couldn’t tell, but it felt to have a mind of its own. When the fingers pulled out from my neck, I could move again. I flexed my hand to test it and was shocked to find a bit of a delay between when I wanted to do something and when the muscle flexed.

“Done,” it signed. The sharp point of the purple nails shrank back to a subtle length, yet remained as entrancing as before.

“Thank you, Deresanzi,” I said.

“Call me ‘Sanzi’,” she replied. “Alright. Let’s see what we’re working with here. Off with those clothes.” I looked to her in confusion. “What are you waiting for? Strip, or I’ll ask Salzy to do it for you.” Without meaning to, I moved my hand to unbutton my pants. I had no control over the disrobing, but also felt no shame to be naked. On instinct, my hands covered my crotch, but with one motion she exposed what hid beneath. I expected a wave of shame to hit me any second, but none came. No embarrassing blood flooded the length at presence of the female gaze. The warm feeling I had when she penetrated my neck with those cursed nails was gone.

Sanzi’s hands touched my neck first, exploring the body with warm pressure. She ran her fingers inside my mouth, touching my teeth as if she was summing up my worth. When she reached inside my throat, I realized the lack of my gag reflex. All she was doing, I felt dull. If I was still alive, I’d feel something, even if just pain at the constant stretching and pulling of my skin. All the way down my body, she pulled on hair and explored every crevassed the body offered. I winced when she got down to my crotch area, but had little feeling even with her hands all over the parts.

“Good,” she said slapping me on the butt. “You’ll be plenty useful. Get dressed. Of, and if you’re wondering, we’re Halfers now. No blood in our bodies anymore, just Salazar’s ooze.” Before I had a moment to ask, Sanzi cut her arm with a nail and held it out to me. I watched as a red ooze dripped from her arm, denser than blood and darker. I watched as it stopped coming out and formed an eye to look right at me for a moment before winding back into her arm and sealing the cut.

Back in my clothes, I felt freedom once more. A sound turned her to a dark corner of the kitchen freezer we ended up inside after I died by mysterious means. I’d take you back to the last year of high school where I met Sanzi, but there’s no time at the moment. Maybe she’ll tell that part when my voice fades. She sighed and dropped her guard as a black and white cat stepped into the dim light of the walk-in freezer.

“You sneaky bastard,” she said and knelt down to smooth the fur on the cat’s head. When it walked, I could swear the pattern of the fur changed shapes in the moment it took me to blink. “This is, err… What was your name again?” I’d feel hurt if we didn’t just meet three days ago. She transferred into my class, and stood out right away.

“Michael Procket,” I said.

“This is Sampson, the first and ONLY half-lifer cat,” Sanzi said as the furry creature stood on hind paws and offered a paw like a human being would. I looked to her for what to do, but she just rolled her eyes. “He is certain that he was a proper Englishman in his previous life, but I call bullshit.”

“How do you do, Michael?” Sampson spoke.

“And he speaks,” she added a moment too late.

“What’s with the shifting black and white fur?” I asked as the pattern changed right in front of my eyes.

“You can see that?” Deresanzi asked. “It took me years to notice that. I guess Salzy’s gellin’ on you. That, or you have an affinity toward being dead. Could be that you were meant to die soon anyway. If that’s true, Deddy’s gonna be hollow, eh, Sammy?” Sampson dropped back to all four legs and walked over to glide his fur near her legs.

“Hollow?” he asked. “More like pokey, with those sharp fingers of his. Ugh.”

“Let’s just hope he doesn’t find out,” Sanzi said as Salazard signed out a few motions.

“Can we go? My ooze is starting to clot.”

“Well, what’d you go and eat his blood for then?” she asked. “But, yeah, we should split. Come on, Mike, I’ll show you where we’ll be staying.”

A few dead bodies of men who killed me were strewn right outside the cafeteria freezer. I had no idea why they came after me, but I was at school this late because Sanzi asked me to. Before we got more than ten feet from the door, I saw a hooded figure reach out a skeletal finger to impale an eye on one of the corpses. With a tug, the finger exited with the eyeball only to disappear into the robes of utter dark. I searched for others beside me, but Sanzi was already walking up to the figure.

“Deddy,” she said. “I was hoping to avoid you.” The hood fell back to reveal a skull painted to look like a calavera, something I learned about recently in school.

“Deresanzi Mills, as I die and decay,” the figure said. “Are you trying to put me out of a job, Salazar?” Sanzi’s hands signed a few motions.

“Don’t start this fight again, Death,” he said and the nails grew to nine-inch claws that looked especially menacing on Sanzi. The figure pulled out two short sickles with short chains from the handles manifesting black skulls and crossed them toward Sanzi.

“Alright, cool it, both of you,” she said and shook her hands until the nails shrunk back down. “I’ll take full responsibility. Yes, I made a new Half-lifer. I’m sorry, Deddy.”

“That’s Father Death to you,” Death said and chuckled. It was a chilling cackle, something between shattering teeth and nails on a chalkboard. “You got me playing along. But really Sanzi, you took another from me.”

“I also gave you a few for the quota,” she said and pointed to the bodies in the cafeteria kitchen. I wanted to be shocked, to be sad, but my emotions were dulled down. “I don’t suppose you could powder them, could you? Missing people warrant less attention, don’t you think? Please?”

“Fine,” he replied. “But you’re explaining to me what makes this kid so special that you’d make him into a Half-lifer. And you’re helping me out, both of you.” He put away his sickles and reached into his mouth to withdraw a wooden spike. On the blunt end, there was a carving of a naked lady, curled up in agony.

“Alright, hold that one up,” Deddy said and pointed to a man in the corner missing his legs. With the man hoisted and reassembled, Death poked his neck with the stake. The lady on the end moved, shifted, and moaned out in pain.

“What is she?” I asked to no answer. The man’s skin revitalized to look alive as he stood. After one step, his body disintegrated into a powder so fine it didn’t even make it to the ground. It was as if he just turned to ash so fine that the air accepted it as part of itself.

“That’s Deddy’s lady of perpetual sorrow,” Sanzi said as we walked over to another body, this one missing a head. Deddy tossed the missing part over to the body’s side and dispatched them together. This one didn’t stand, but his eyes opened with shock before becoming the air. “Deddy says that she sometimes dances for him like a stripper, but I think he’s just bullshitting. It’s a useful tool for creating souls that will not be mourned. That gives him a sort of high. Missing people tend to have their loved ones stuck in a sense of slight hope, thus eliminating the mourning for the soul.”

“Alright, last one, guys,” Deddy said. “And she SO dances for me sometimes. LOPSy is just shy being herself around strangers. Aren’t you, Lops?” She moaned out in pain as the strake entered the last body, made it stand and walk off. “Oh, we’ve got a walking dead. That’s one committed soul.” Deddy turned to face us. “Wanna see how far he gets?” Sanzi motioned her head toward the body now disintegrating at the door out. “Oh, he’s gone.” He walked over to pick up the stake and swallowed it up again.

“You seem too cool to be Death, if you don’t mind my saying,” I said. Deddy put a skeleton hand to his face.

“There isn’t just one Death, silly,” he said. “You know how many people die every second? Two per second in the world, a hundred or do go in a minute. There just isn’t enough time to get to them all. You see, there are many of my kind, and we’ve got districts. I just happen to have Sanzi in my district, which interferes with my work.”

“Oh, hush, you know you love me,” Sanzi said. “It’s just Salazar you’re not fond of. He’s the one who fucks with death, or rather stops it.”

“Are you going to explain yourself?” Deddy asked. “Why’d you make another one? I thought the deal was that you stop making buddies for yourself and I don’t ask for help dealing with you from the guys.”

“Alright, but can we do it at my place?” Sanzi asked. “I’m so done with this school. Mamma always did prefer home schooling.” I started to leave, but Deresanzi put a hand on my shoulder. Without a word, she motioned to Deddy who put his hood back on and breathed out what looked like bone dust. The powder hung in the air and churned without falling with the pull of gravity.

“Id’ keep my mouth closed going through,” Sanzi said as Deddy motioned a hand to enter the cloud. “Sammy, you coming? Sampson! Silly cat.” Sampson leapt out from the shadows and skipped within the bone dust portal. Sanzi entered next, leaving me standing at the churning opening. Deddy stopped me entering at the last second.

“Do you miss your blood?” he asked. “I sure would being around that bod, but I’m always bone hard.” With the same cackle as before, somehow more frightening up close, Deddy pushed me into the cloud of bone dust with my mouth fully open. The sensation inside was akin to floating inside a muddy swamp until the bottom dropped me out into a dark room. There was something soft beneath me as something bony dropped on me from above.

“Damnit, Deddy,” Sazni said. “I told you to look before you blow the marrow cloud. Where are we?” It was Deresanzi beneath me, and the softness was her chest, but she didn’t seem bothered by my hands. On a memory of excitement, I lowered to her face and kissed her, but as my tongue entered her mouth, she bit it off. I felt like I should scream, but there was no pain or blood. The space around us was small, like a closet. Sanzi tried the handle, but it was closed. The little light from underneath lit her face as she spat out my severed tongue into her hand. Before I knew it, she was molding it like putty, much to my surprise.

“Deddy, you better not be rubbing your bones up against me,” she said.

“But I’m all bones,” he protested.

“Got it,” she said with a key in her hand made out of my tongue. As the door popped open, we spilled out to what I assumed was Deresanzi’s bedroom. Now in the light, the key-tongue skipped out of the lock and reattached to the inside of my mouth. Salazar was an amazing being.

“Thanks,” Sanzi signed and sat up. “Why’d you kiss me, Mike?”

“Just instinct, I guess,” I said. “The setting was like that on game, seven minutes in heaven. I’m sorry if I stole it.”

“Not the issue,” she said standing up. “You’re a halfer now. All of that should be gone. You’ve got no blood. I mean, I’ve been living like this for a while now, and I’ve never felt the need to kiss anyone. Hold on. I gotta run a test real quick.” She reached at her sides and peeled off her shirt to reveal her breasts, no bra restricting those delightful nipples. I couldn’t help but feel embarrassed, but she turned my head back to her. Though I had no blood anymore, I still felt the embarrassing formation below.

“Huh,” she said upon seeing it. “Salzy, you doing this?”

“Not me,” Salzy signed out. “Patch me in a sec.” Sanzy stabbed a nail right past the pants into the erect member. I cringed again, yet felt no pain even as the nail impaled what once was my penis. The hand withdrew.

“Well, this is perplexing,” Salzy signed as Sanzi sat on her bed.

“So, what is it? She asked.

“I’m in there, in the kid,” Salzy signed. “But I’m not the only one, if that makes any sense. I can control him, stop wounds, heal him, but this other being seems to act more like blood. I can’t absorb it like his other blood though. I tried talking to it, but got no response. I- I’m at a loss, Sanzi. We might have to see my old friend to know more.” Sanzi’s face curved to an evil smile.

“The great Salazar is at a loss,” she said. “Ah, so that’s how it feels to be on the same level with a supernatural being. Alright, guess we’re going to see the dark vixen-witch Selemandra.”

“Hey, hold up,” Deddy said. “You were gonna explain the kid.”

“Clearly, this is more interesting,” Salzy signed.

“I’ll do it on the way,” Sanzi said. “Where is she, Salzy? Do we get to take the coffin again?”

“Nah,” Salzy signed. “Gotta go a step further. The Flaming Bog.” Deddy threw his hands up at the mention.

“No way am I going through that place again,” he said. “Last time, it took me years to clean out my body.”

“Nobody told you to swim in the bog,” Salzy signed. “This guy.”

“Come on, Deresanzi,” Deddy said. “Tell me about the kid before you go. I don’t wanna go anywhere near FB again.”

“Fine, geez,” Sanzi said and glanced at me again. “Can you put that away?”

“Only if you can put THOSE away,” I said pointing out that she was still topless. Nobody else in the room seemed to mind the nudity.

“If you’re bothered by that,” Sampson said. “I worry for how much you’ll be able to handle of the Half-lifer ways.”

“Oh, right,” Sanzi said. “If we’re going through the bog, we’re bound to go through the flesh pit, right?”

“Yes,” Salazar signed.

“This might be tougher than I imagined,” she said. “Unless we make a caster-blocker.”

“That could work,” Sammy said already with a different fur pattern. I wondered if he had any control over the changes or if it was just random genetic fluctuation. Sanzi slipped a shirt on with three letters inside a box, but I had no idea what the “NIN” meant. The second N was reflected in the middle I. I lingered on her chest for a moment because her nipples were still visible.

“Quit it, Salazar,” she said and turned to me. “You good to go?” I turned away and tried NOT to think of what I’d seen so far. I had no blood, but the result of seeing bare breasts seemed to defeat that idea. With a memory of all things scary and gross, the tightness finally released.

“Open up,” Sanzi said and thrust her hand into my mouth. “Bite me and you’re dead.” One hand exited as the other brought a glass figurine of a turtle into my stomach. “The turtle charm should stop the flesh-mongers from pulling out your insides.

“Flesh-mongers?” I asked once her hand cleared my throat. “What’s that?”

“You’ll see,” she said and lingered near my face again. “They live in the flesh pit, well, they pretty much ARE the flesh pit. Plenty of dark magic uses parts of the human body.” Her lips looked so inviting that I had to close the distance and kiss her again, this time being careful not ot use tongue. We parted a few moments later.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I kissed you again.”

“Let’s just say I wanted you to,” Sanzi said. “It makes me feel something, like before I was a Half-lifer. I don’t know why. Maybe I just remember it from before.”

“You know, if you two wanna screw, I can make that happen,” Salazar signed. I didn’t know what he said at the time, but Sanzi grimaced at the hand gestures and pulled away angry.

“Alright, let’s just go,” she said.

“Hello!” Deddy waved his skeletal hands in fort of her face. “What am I, invisible?”

“One can dream,” Sanzi said under her breath.

“You said you’d explain the kid before you go,” he said. “It can’t be that long of a story. Come on.”

“Yeah, I promised, so fine,” Deresanzi said and sat cross-legged on her bed. The theme of her room was dark, with bursts of midnight purple like her nails and pink. “You remember that guy we found a couple months back on orders from Count and Dame?”

“Moredo, yeah,” Deddy said and turned to me to explain. “Some dude came to our world from some alternate and started spouting stuff about being ruler of all worlds. Major weirdo vibes.”

“Yeah,” Sanzi said. “But we didn’t find him. He integrated into the world too well.”

“Or he left,” Salazar signed.

“He could have,” Deddy agreed, but Sanzi shook her head.

“Not a chance,” she said. “He was the sort to announce that he will win and then go stealth to make it happen. In other words, he’s a sly motherfucker. I’ve been tracking him and finally found a few of his lackeys hiding out in a school of all places. So I signed up to attend it.” Deddy made a strange sound that was possibly meant to be a giggle, but came out as a rush of air from a dying depths of a snake.

“Or did you just want to be near living folks, Sanzi?” He asked and giggled his hollow until she punched him in the shoulder.

“Shush, you,” she said. “Just so you know, humans are just walking toolboxes to me, and you’re no different, Mike.” So she said, but remembered my name. Then there was the mystery of another creature like Salazar inside my body that simulated excitement of blood in a human body. I didn’t feel my heart beat anymore, but was glad to still react to nudity the way a human would.

“So, how does the kid come into play?” Deddy asked

“He asked her out,” Salzy signed out.

“And I said no, in all fairness,” she added. “But then he insisted to the point that I had him stay after school into the night. I decided to make him into a toolbox then, but then felt bad when he died. He ended up a toolbox anyway, thanks to Salazar. We fought off the lackeys while Mike chilled down and became a halfer. That’s it.”

“I mean… not in full…” I said wondering if she forgot one part or omitted it on purpose.

“They had sex,” Salazar signed using Sanzi’s hands. I searched her hands for any sign or embarrassment, but she presented none.

“Oh, right,” she said. “That we did, or at least he did. I was testing if I can feel anything from the experience when Salzy heats my body up. Turns out I can’t, but I’m glad he got to experience a last bit of pleasure before he died a few minutes later.”

Deddy let out another whoosh of snake air at the thought. This was Death, a cursed set of nails, a halfer, and a halfer cat, talking about human stuff as if it was normal. I was stunned by the fact Sanzi had no feelings for me at all, and a question escaped my mouth before I checked the contents.

“So, how old are you, Deresanzi?” I asked and wondered if she had a similar complex that older women had.

“Well, if you count Salazar, he’d been around for millennia,” she said. “But he’s been inside me for only about fifty years since I died. So I guess I’d be seventy or so. Salzy, how old are you?”

“Oh, honey, you don’t ask a cursed set of nails how old they are,” Salazar signed. “It’s rude. Besides, weren’t we going to see Selemandra?”

“Excuses,” Sampson cut in.

“So if one of the nails comes off or breaks,” I posed. “Does that mean Salzy no longer exists inside you?” Sanzi stood up from the bed and opened a cabinet to a large array of weapons, though some were very clearly sex toys meant for fetish play. She pulled a grey hat from the top shelf before closing the doors onto what I assumed was her general box of toys.

“The nails are just a tool I use,” Salzy signed after putting the hat on Sanzi’s head. “I’m the ooze in your body, kid. The mails are just like this hat, something I wear that I found along the way. They sure have their quirks.” The nails grew out straight wrapping sides over the fingers they originated from for support. Sanzi held up a magazine with some buff buys on the cover as the nails seemed to pass right through it in the air. A full second later, the booklet fell apart into loose pieces of paper on the way to the floor.

“Amazing,” I said.

“Pshh!” Deddy exclaimed. “I got cooler stuff. Check these out!” He whipped out his sickles and slid them together to create a dancing white spark in the air. It formed into a naked dancing woman for a few seconds before fading out.

“Show off,” Sampson said walking up on all fours. “Some of us have natural talent.” He stood poised for a moment, shaking his behind a bit before leaping up to a tall bookshelf with grace. Unfortunately for him, something on the edge resisted his claws, and he fell back to the ground on all fours. “I meant to do that.” With his tail raised in pride, he walked off shifting his fur pattern.

“Right,” Sanzi said. “We should head out. Do you have any better clothes at home?” Rather than answer, I watched as Sanzi slipped her pants and underwear in front of me, much to no response from the other entity inside me. She held up a suit jacket from within the closet and slipped into it without a bra under the NIN t-shirt. With another motion she pulled out a black pair of underwear that read “Vampire Magnet” on the front in red ink. I felt the need to look away as they slipped up her legs. Not long after, grey pants joined her suit top. I was so stunned by her lack of shame that I almost forgot to respond.

“Yeah, I think I still have the suit from my grandma’s funeral,” I said. “But won’t it be weird, me coming back home while dead?”

“Nah,” Sanzi said. “You could technically lather yourself up in makeup and lead a normal life. Though you have no heartbeat, or heat, so without touching or hospitals. Other than that, Half-lifers can blend in fine.”

“I mean, pretending that nothing’s changed,” I said. “I’m dead, but with no body, I’m just missing, right?”

“People go missing all the time, Michael,” Sanzi said. “But we have to get to your place, so you know what that means.” She looked to Deddy who sighed visibly with shoulders.

“We don’t HAVE to take the coffin,” he suggested. “I could just use the marrow cloud again.”

“Don’t be a sourpuss,” she said. “Mike’s never been on the coffin. Call it for a pickup, Deddy.”

“Fine,” he said, pulled out a smartphone, and slipped on a human-looking finger to operate the screen. I was a little curious.

“Why not just use a stylus?” I asked.

“Ehh, these things are meant to be used with fingers,” Deddy said tapping a few things on the screen. “Easier to just carry a hand around.” A notification popped up on his screen with a countdown.

“Ah, shit,” he said. “Sorry, Sanzi. I got a suicide to pick up over on Blakely. Damn randoms. Sorry, man, guess we’re going by dust.”

“Well, just call us the coffin and go there by dust,” Sanzi said. “You can catch up at the bog.” Deddy blew a marrow cloud while ordering a ride as if he was getting a lyft.

“Two minutes,” he said and jumped into the cloud as the whole thing vanished. I stood next to Sanzi in silence and felt the need for a bit of small talk, but wasn’t sure she’d be up for it. The symbol on her old shirt lit up in my mind with the band name. The logo was for Nine Inch Nails, an alternative rock band. It opened up an avenue for a conversation.

“So, do you like Alternative Rock?” I asked. Sanzi looked to me with a bored expression that changed to a look of concern.

“Industrial rock,” she said looking past me. “Say, do you happen to have any wisdom teeth?”

“Two,” I said and was about to point out where, but Sanzi had her fingers in my mouth before I could say another word. With two fingers on one of the before mentioned teeth, she pulled free from the gum without an effort or pain on my part. “What the hell?”

“Get behind me, we have guests,” she said holding the tooth in her open palm. “Dark Overgrowth!” The pulled tooth expanded to a stick of about six feet much to my surprise. “Close your eyes!” I did as instructed right before a giant light bathed my eyelids. A rumble of ground shook near our feet on the grassy field as I opened my eyes to a scene straight out of fantasy.

Ghouls of some kind ran at us while Sanzi used the staff to produce fireballs and threw them at the attackers. Above us, a bright white orb hovered to expose the fact that we were surrounded. Sanzi spun the staff to loop lightning in the air before sending a wave toward all the ghouls encroaching us from all sides. The rumble of the earth was a coffin that arrived open to the chaos.

“Perfect timing,” Sanzi said looking at the open grave with a coffin made for two. She pushed me into it without a moment of hesitation and snapped the staff to a bone-crunching sound which faded the light above us. Right after she rushed in beside me and closed the lid to a pummel of hand on the outside. “Whew. Speak your address, Mike.”

“Oh, umm, 367 Denizen Drive,” I said as the coffin rumbled into the ground. I could feel the earth shift around the wooden enclosure, but had no idea how it worked. It had to have something to do with magic and how Sanzi make my wisdom tooth into a magic staff. “What was that thing you did with my tooth?”

“Dark Overgrowth,” she replied. “I told you that your body was a walking toolbox, didn’t I? You would not believe how many things I can do with just one of your eyes, but a blink walking toolbox is useless. We’re here.” The rumble took us out onto my lawn in the middle of night.

“Yeah, that’s home,” I said. “Was home, I guess.”

“Remember, no touching or hospitals,” Sanzi said. “Just go and get your suit. You gotta look nice for Selemandra. She’s… well, just trust me. Go in and come right back. Standby, coffin.” I scrambled out of the wooden box and wondered if I should even talk to my parents.

“I can make you heat up and pretend to beat like a heart if you need me to,” Salazar said in my head, or was it my mouth speaking? I wasn’t sure. It sounded quiet.

“I think I’ll just sneak in,” I said as my hand formed a thumb to signify that Salazar was with me. “It’s best that my parents think I’m just missing, rather than… whatever I am now.” I climbed up to my window with ease and slipped into my room. I did my best to stay quiet while looking for my suit in the closet, but once I was fully dressed in the suit, footsteps in the hallway got me out of the window in one jump. There was no pain, and I felt Salazar was to thank for not being hurt. I looked back just once more as the light in my room switched on.

“Michael?” it was mom’s voice and it hurt more than any fall could ever. She was worried for me, and this must have been torture, but I couldn’t just let her see me like that. “Mikey, is that you?” After a few minutes, the window closed and the light in my room went dark again.

“What took you so long?” Sanzi asked as I got in next to her.

“Mom woke up,” I replied. “I had to avoid her.”

“Good call,” she said. “It’s best for her to live on hope than to know you’re already gone.”

“Am I gone?”

“Well,” she said, but said nothing more for a minute. “Flaming Bog, New Orleans, please.” It was clear she didn’t want to discuss what she was and in turn what she made me into. I didn’t want to force her into anything, but was curious about my existence as her toolbox.

“Do all teeth become magic staves?” I asked as the rumble took us underground once again.

“Don’t be daft,” she said. “Wisdom teeth are magical. Gnashers are hammers and blunt weapons. Chompers are sharp weapons, and Fangs are spears or pickaxes. It’s almost self-explanatory, really. Not that I need the weapons most often. Salzy can chop people up good with just the nails, but crowds of ghouls are a bit difficult for just two hands.” I ran my tongue over the teeth and wondered what weapons they could be.

“Can I learn the Overgrowth thing too?” I asked feeling stupid for not taking good care of my teeth over the years. “I’m a Half-lifer now, like you. Does that mean I get spells like that and stuff?”

“Shush, toolbox, I mean, Mike,” she said. “Just ‘cause you’re a halfer doesn’t mean you’re a wielder of magic.”

“Though anyone can,” Salazar signed out in the confined space. “I bet he could.”

“Damnit, Salzy,” Sanzi said. “Don’t tell my toaster it can be a transformer. But yeah, you COULD learn to do Overgrowth, but let’s focus on finding out what exists in you aside from Salazar’s Ooze.”

“Right,” I said running my tongue over my teeth imagining what weapons they’d become. Would cavities show up in the expanded version? “Speaking of.” I put my hands below to cover what barely fit in the box.

“I suppose we should test it out,” Sanzi said and knocked my hands way from covering my erection. “You ok with me trying to get you off?” The question exploded in my mind as I forgot to respond for a few minutes.

“Y- Yeah, to test it out, sure,” I said and unbuttoned my jeans. The rumble outside felt like pleasant background music to this once-romantic endeavor. Sanzi’s hand glided along my thigh, which felt dull, but still nice. Right before I had a chance to slip my underwear down, the coffin dinged like a microwave.

“Oop, we’re here,” she said and opened the lid to Deddy above us. He chuckled his eerie laugh at my undone pants.

“That thing REALLY acts like blood, huh?” He asked as I pulled them up in the coffin. Sanzi was already standing beside him as the scents of the swamp poured into the hole. She reached out a hand and I took it just as the hole closed behind me, eating one of my shoes into the ground.

“Guess I’ll just lose the other one,” I said as we all looked to the closed ground. Deddy stepped up and patted the ground to make it wilt. As the grass started to rot, a corpse hand burst from the ground while holding the shoe up. I’d be scared at this occurrence, but being a Half-lifer dulled my reactions. Deddy yanked the dirty shoe out of the grip and handed it to me. “Thanks.”

“And thank you, Jimmy,” Deddy said and low-fived the hand before it sank back down into the ground. “Rest well.”

“So you use people buried in the ground like servants?” I asked while dumping out the dirt which accumulated inside the shoe. I slipped it back on, but it sure didn’t look the same anymore.

“They aren’t really people anymore, bub,” he said. “I take their soul, weigh it, and toss it into the four-way sort. The body left behind is just a ghoul with no commands, dormant until called upon. Jimmy was buried nearby, but I don’t know his full story or how he ended up here. This ain’t my district.”

“Speaking of ghouls,” Sanzi said tapping Deddy with a fist on the shoulder. “We got swarmed over by my place. I guess Moredo’s figured out where I live. If it wasn’t for Mike’s wisdom tooth, Salzy’d get tired fending them all off, but we’ll address this later with Count and Dame. I suppose we should tell Selemandra about it, too, since we’re already here.”

“Got it,” he said.

“So, where is this Flaming Bog?” I asked. “And how is it supposed to transport us.” Sanzi said nothing, but pointed to a direction where flame light danced on the horizon of the tree line.

“We just walk,” Salazar signed. Sanzi set off, but Deddy didn’t move just yet.

“Forgetting something, Sanzi?” He asked. “Like the caster-blocker for the kid?”

“Shit, you’re right,” she said and walked back to me. “Without that on, you’d probably end up skelly like Deddy. The flesh pit is a room with a curse that absorbs all manners of flesh. Much of it ware naked human bodies void of bones suspended in a solution that lets them live as one giant entity. Imagine it, a room that lives as a pool of flesh, ageless and shifting.” I shuddered at the imagery.

“How do we stop them from absorbing me?” I asked as Sanzi took my hands into hers.

“It’s one particular bone in the wrist called ‘lunate’,” she said. “So I’m sorry that I have to do this all random-like.” She put pressure on my wrists and yanked to rip both hands from the wrist joints. I was in shock, looking over my stumps as she dug in the torn skin for a particular bone. No words came to me at throughout this ordeal. I was stunned to silence as she put one of my severed hands into her pocket for better access to the other. With both bones out, she scribbled something on each, or etched it, rather. With that done, she shoved the bones back randomly into each hand.

“Do your thing, Salzy,” Sanzi said and threw my own severed hands at me as Salazar’s ooze expanded from the stumps to catch them. I watched in awe as the reassembled my hands and healed all the damaged skin.

“You’re amazing, Salazar,” I said. Salzy made a bashful gesture with my hand as a response. “Thank you. As for you, Sanzi, if you’re going to rip my hands off like that, give me a little warning next time.” She shrugged.

“I write a caster-blocker rune on your lunate bones,” she said. “That should keep you safe from the flesh pit, but there are other levels to get past that are just as annoying. The flesh pit would cut my toolbox in half if you became a skelly Halfer.” I was confused.

“That’s possible?”

“Yeah, though it’s not pretty,” Deddy said. “All skeletons with oozy insides. They can’t blend in with humans at all, so are useless.”

“Shall we?” Deresanzi asked and walked off before anyone replied toward the dancing fire at the tree line horizon. It looked like a massive forest fire in the distance at first, but as the light vanished behind the trees I noticed the burning oil in the air. It was heavy, much more than what a human could withstand. The closer we got, the more I heard the roar of fire springing out of the bog, until I saw the flames, shooting ten meters high into the sky, spilling flame light into the surrounding puddle of black water and oil. The whole area was sectioned off with fences, but the coffin emerged already passed the metal enclosure.

“They were digging for oil here once,” Deddy said over the roar of the flame gush. “One spark, and the whole bog went up in flame. It’s been burning for a few years now because they couldn’t find a way to drill into the supply from the sides. He walked closer to the flames and put a hand out. The gush angled to him and spun into an entrance.

“Of course Selemandra would make this her new home,” Deddy continued. The fire keeps going because of her magic, mind you. It keeps the humans away and she tends to break their drills so they keep thinking it’s too inaccessible. Brilliant, really.”

“First level’s the ghoul guardians,” Sanzi said. “You should be fine if you avoid touching them. We are just dropping by unannounced, so it’s not like the way is clear, but the runes should protect you from immaterial magic like the flesh pit pull. That’s level four. I’d list them all, but there is just five, and you’ll see them all, so-.” Sanzi shoved me into the ring of fire that didn’t burn me. Deddy was already inside, treading the sticky mud floor that descended to the first level.

It smelled like burning death at first, then just the decaying stench of rot that no longer bothered me for some reason. As we walked among the array of ghouls in the first level, I wondered what could have been inside me that kept me semi-human, and how human that left me. Could Selemandra tell me more about this? The venture already boggled my mind, what with my hands getting ripped off, ghouls being on our heels from some enemy I didn’t even know, and my teeth being able to turn into weapons. I started wondering what it was that Sanzi could do with one of my eyes, and if it would come to that. Was my eye just a magic grenade waiting to be used?

“Hey,” Sanzi said noticing my daydreaming thoughts. “Careful there, Mike. Don’t drift off and bump one of these. One wakes up, they all wake up. If that happens the rest of the way to see Selena is going to be rough.”

“Don’t you just love these places?” Deddy asked dancing around the frozen ghoul statues. Each of these was once a living being. Now they’re all just guards for the great witch Selemandra, the daughter of the original poppa Death. I’m just a magic clone of him, fitted with a personality by chance.”

They all stood in a similar pose, eyes looking up to something. After walking past half a room of ghouls frozen the same, I started wondering why they’d be looking up there. The bog bubbled above, supported by some invisible dark web. In the middle of said web was a spider. At first I ignored it, marveling at the wonderful magical spider that helped make this enclosure under the bubbling bog. The dark shadow web spun above seemed to also coat the ground under our feet. I looked up again to the spider, but now it had a red pattern on the back, with some sort of eye. I was about to mention it to Sanzi, but she beat me to it.

“Oh, crap,” she said looking around herself. “These aren’t the guards, Deddy.” She pointed up and Deddly looked to find the spider just as a red burst of light poured from the eye pattern on the back. He wasted no time pulling out a pocket mirror out of his chest to redirect the laser back in the split second it took to get to him.

“Yeah,” he replied. “The spider’s the guard, and we’re already targets. On the bright side, Selemandra probably knows we’re here already.”

“That’s not very bright at all,” Salazar signed.

“What he said,” Sanzi added. “You know how she is, always trying to kill people just because she can bring them back. Doesn’t apply to us, Mike. You touch her, you die because she will bring you back to life, in turn killing you. That’s the trick to being a halfer.”

“Shouldn’t we run to the next level?” I asked as Deddy deflected another beam of red, possibly stone-making light.

“As long as it’s just one of these guys, I’m fine,” he said as I scanned the dark web above. Three more of the center spiders came out from the edges off the ceiling.

“Big mouth,” Sanzi said. “Guess we’re running then.” I smiled as a beam cut a path toward me and Deddy jumped in to deflect it to the ceiling. We set off, pursued by beams from all four spiders and hiding behind stone ghouls at stages when Deddy couldn’t deflect the beams. The opening to the lower level was now close after a wild chase from getting stoned.

“I’m going to need one of your fingers,” Sanzi said and didn’t wait for me to agree as she ripped off the pinky of my right hand. I was curious what she could make from it, but was disappointed when Salzi cut it into slices. “Dark Giantification!” The sliced finger grew in size to plug the entrance. My pinky was gone, and Salazar closed up the stump.

“Why’d you have to slice it up? I asked less concerned that I lost a finger than I would be if I had been alive.

“To maximize the stuffing of the hole,” Salzy signed.

“So Overgrowth works on teeth,” I said. “And Giantification on limbs?”

“Giffy works on everything,” Sanzi said. “You’re just my toolbox, so I used you. We should descend. There are still three more levels before we reach Selena. Flesh pit is the last one. Since I’m pretty sure she knows we’re coming, this is going to her tricky. Gimme some of your chompers.” I opened my mouth as Sanzi pulled out all four of the lower incisors from my lower jaw. I really was just a toolbox for her, and yet by magic of some unknown nature, I wanted her in my arms. I wanted her with me under the sheets. Just as the thought lit up in my head, I felt her eyes on me. She looked below and I followed that gaze to what I’d normally be ashamed of, but found no shame in the protrusion. Sanzi signed.

“We should test it out before the flesh pit,” she said. “Do you mind, Deddy?”

“Nah, I’ve seen some folks do it right before dying,” he said. “It’s usally some old guy dying with a smile on his face at the hands of some young thing, but there have been the opposites.” Sanzi stepped over and pinned me to the sticky wall.

“Just let it happen,” she said. “Salazar, a little help?” The nail shrank to regular size as her hands undid my pants to wrap around the pointing member. I was surprised to feel her hand on the surface, a cold grasp growing warmer thank to me. Her eyes looked into mine as the hand ran across the length, far too serious, like some part of an experiment.

“Relax,” I said and leaned forward to kiss her. When our lips parted, her eyes were closed and her motions felt softer and smoother. After a few minutes of this, I felt that I was reaching something, like a climax, but it felt odd. I wanted it and locked lips as it happened, but Sanzi pushed me away to inspect below. I lurched a few times in her direction, but nothing came out. I felt no euphoria at the act or the finish. It felt like a few useless throbs of the part of my body that no longer worked the way it once did.

“Well, that’s that,” Deresanzi said. “Guess it’s just mimicking interest, but doesn’t produce anything resembling the enjoyment of reproduction that humans relish. Nor is any male reproduction component ejaculated at the mimicry.”

“So what is that thing doing inside me?” I asked as Sanzi stepped away to overgrowth the four teeth she pulled. One turned into a dagger, one a sickle, and two became longer swords.

“Dibs on the sickle!” Deddy burst out and picked it up to inspect. “Prime quality. You must have tested your teeth many times, tempering them to this strength.”

“Why do you even want a bone sickle, Deddy?” Sanzi asked. “Your regular ones are much sharper and more durable. As for your question, Mike, we don’t know. That’s the whole point of this excursion to see the daughter of Death, Selena.”

“It’s not often a chomper turns into a sickle, Sanzi,” Deddy said. “It’s like I won the lottery or something.” Sanzi tossed the dagger over and pulled some of my hair to giantify and make holders for her two swords, much to my disappointment. She did look amazing with them on, and I felt the hardening below again. It made me angry now since it couldn’t give me any pleasure anymore. This other entity had to go or I’d have to chop my own penis off in desperation of not being useful anymore. I pulled my pants up and closed them with some difficulty.

“Oh, look,” Deddy pointed out. “He’s ready for another go.” I punched the protrusion to go away, but it only got harder. Sanzi stopped my hand and looked into my eyes.

“Whatever it is, it thinks that you can still enjoy yourself from it,” she said. “So I can still help you deflate it, but don’t get angry at it because it doesn’t work like it used to. Ok?” I nodded.

“On the plus side,” she said. “This lets me try out some other ways of doing it without the gross stuff coming out.” Sanzi slipped to her knees and unbuttoned my pants. If I had been alive, my mind would be going insane right now, but now I just watched her below and wondered how long she’d be down there before I could kiss her again. This was worse than death.

After the supposed peak, I buttoned my pants back up quickly and avoided her eyes for some strange reason. Was it embarrassment that she just did such a wonderful and special thing but I couldn’t enjoy it? It felt stupid to even think that.

“Was it good?” She asked. I was at a loss for words. “Ahh, I’m just kidding, Mike. Lighten up. Like I said, should the mood hit ya, let me know and I can help you flaccid out.”

“Thanks,” I said understanding that I’d never feel that same rush of endorphins while preforming the act again. A strange thought lit up in my brain, and I just had to ask. “Is there some cool special magic thing you can use my penis for? I mean, since you can use me like a toolbox, right?”

“There is,” Sanzi said. “The spell is best used on a live one, but I see no reason it shouldn’t work on yours. It’s a spell to protect an opening, a barrier for a hole that is invisible and cuts all things that pass through it to atoms.”

“Whoa,” I said. “All that from a basic now-useless tool of the male body? If need be, use it, Sanzi.”

“Don’t be stupid, Mike,” she replied. “We’re going to see Selena for exactly the reason that we don’t know why your dick still works.”

“Hardly,” I scoffed and realized the pun. Deddy chuckled.

“Bone hard,” he said and laughed his creepy snake laugh. Sanzi stepped close to me and kissed my cold lips with hers for a moment. She held eye contact afterward.

“I know this is difficult for you,” she said, “I should have just let you die at the school, and I’m sorry for dragging you into this mess, but now we have a mystery on our hands. I’d love to get it solved before I have to go after Moredo. You’re a pleasant distraction for me, ok? To hell with it feeling good or bad. Just be my toolbox as long as you can. Then you can step into that grave and Deddy will personally escort you to the Four-Way sort.” I didn’t know how to respond, so I just nodded and looked to Deddy who held up a human thumb in his skeletal hand with what felt like a smile.

“What’s on the next level down?” I asked.

“The Drowning Pool,” she said and put an open palm to her forehead with closed eyes and head tilted back for some reason. Her smile curved still with her eyes closed before she turned to me. “Fancy a skinny dip? I wouldn’t suggest it. The contents are filled with drowned individuals, chained to the bottom. Pleasantly enough, we have to get through the half-moon shaped drain to the third down, but that is where you will be useful, my toolbox, you.” Her grin felt ominous as she started heading down the sticky slope on the Flaming Bog level one. Before she got too far down, I caught up and held out a hand to her to hold. She clasped on as we walked down to face the drowning pool.

As we neared the entrance, I found a hidden sea consume the last few yards of the slope with a wave. It came into view around the corner, a giant pool of water with shifting waves. There were lights on the ceiling, eerie orbs hanging from stalactites glowing white to expose the area. I had no idea how we were about to traverse such a thing, not to mention getting down to the drain at the bottom. I had a feeling that I was going to lose parts of my body for the purpose of getting through.

“Don’t sweat,” Sanzi said glancing over to my worried gaze over the dark water. “This one’s all me and Salzy. I’ll just need a tiny little tid-bit from you.” She stepped closer and pulled a handful of hair from my scalp. The cursed nails cut them until it was all tiny bits in the palm of her hand.

“Dark Multiply,” Sanzi whispered and blew on the hand filled with strands of hair so they flew toward the water. Nothing happened at first, but as they touched the surface, each strange multiplied a trillion fold, spreading over the surface of the sea like a carpet. With a hand inside this hair soup, Sanzi used a previous spell variation. “Vicinity Overgrowth.” The hair expanded into the drowned pool, weaving a solid surface on top that was all my hair. Granted, it was pretty nasty magic, but amazing nonetheless.

“How do we get down to the drain with all this hair in the way?” I asked following Sanzi and Deddy onto the woven floating surface.

“That’s where I come in,” he signed.

“Short answer, he’s going to use the nails,” Sanzi added. A few ghoul hands popped up from the hair carpet and her two swords did quick work of them.

“If one grabs you, remember to use that dagger of yours,” Deddy said cutting a leaper in half with the bone sickle that was once my lower incisor. “Nice! Ceramic sharpness, brilliant!” I walked between them with a hand on my bone dagger hoping I wouldn’t have to use it at all with them around. I still couldn’t picture how we’d get to the drain, but trusted Salazar. Watching Deresanzi dance with my tooth-swords in hand while cutting reaching hands from beneath my hair was magnetic. I felt the stupid organism erect my useless member again and cursed. Whatever it was, it had no idea what qualified as excitement, and what was the feeling of affection and awe.

“Come on!” Sanzi called out to me, and dashed toward me. That was the last bit I saw before a hand grabbed my ankle and pulled me under. The scene underwater was insanity. What looked like seaweed and kelp in the distance, was actually drowned bodies, trying to float to the surface to attack. Some chains were too short to reach that far, but others crowded the hair weave stop the shifting sea. I struggled for breath only to realize there was no need for it.

Even with this sudden event, the entity in my body did not give up on the erection. I yanked the bone dagger and slashed the hand pulling me down, but missed. There wasn’t any desperation in my motions, but fear was still in my chest that Sanzi would jump in after me if I didn’t resurface. With a solid slash in thickness of water, the hand popped off the ghoul arm. I kicked off his head and swam to the surface weave just in time to see a hand reach through it. Sanzi pulled me up through the hair as other hands tried to pull her down.

“Sorry about that,” Sanzi said. “I should have been closer to you. I still need you, Michael. Well, hey, at least we know that thing inside you is resilient.” She flicked the tip with a finger. “I’ll take care of it when we get over the drain. Come on.” Rather than grab my hand, she grasped the length over my wet pants to pull me along with a free hand. She only had one sword left.

Deddy was already in the very center of the big pool of hair floating on the water, cutting hands off as they came up. He really looked happy, though had no facial expressions to show it. The way his robed body looked in the heat of the moment just felt so overjoyed.

“Ready for ya, Sanzi!” He called out and took a knee. We rushed at him, and Sanzi sprung off his knee while letting go of me. I crashed into Deddy as Sanzi somersaulted into the air pointing her hand toward us. I watched the five nails extend toward me, sharp and fast. There was no tiem to avoid them. “Get up, bean!” Deddy pulled on my wrist just as the nails were about to pierce my body. Sanzi was still above, but her fall slowed. Salazar’s weapons struck the bottom, now only lowering her to a handstand on the hair surface.

“Got it,” she said. “Sorry we didn’t get you off before this, but Selemandra is definitely toying with us. Normally, there is a churning center you can slide down to the drain. She’s putting us through the wringer for not visiting more often.”

“You know her personally?” I asked as the nails pulled back in from the depths. “Didn’t you say she’s daughter of Death? She must be like millions of years old, and you’re only seventy.”

“Heh, Death doesn’t just have one offspring,” Deddy said. “Just like he doesn’t have just one clone to help him work. Selemandra just happened to specialize in creatures like Salzy here, the ooze of halflife.”

“We’re just friends,” Salazar signed. “From before Sanzi was around.”

“Now let’s take care of that wild little creature in your pants,” Sanzi said and slipped her pants down a bit before unbuttoning to the “Vampire Bait” underwear. While it made sense when she was still alive, there was no way it still applied.

“What are you doing?” I asked as her butt cleared the pants. She didn’t stop until they were off entirely. “Sanzi?”

“Don’t you want to do it in here this time?” she asked. “The water will take a few hours to drain, so we might as well. Not to mention it gets boring when I do everything. Mind if we use you as a table, Deddy?”

“Nah, I got you,” he said and got to hands and knees while Sanzi slipped the underwear down. All this for a toolbox and the most vital tool was damaged beyond sensation. I looked down my body and hated this other compound in my body, but it wasn’t going away without at least a semblance of mimicked stimulation. We were both halfers. Neither of us would enjoy this as we would if we were alive, but when I felt the shaking of the imagined peak void of euphoria, I decided to kiss Sanzi’s lips to a magical surprise. Something electrical jumped between us, giving my brain a second of time to run a wild burst of endorphins. Sanzi gasped and I grit my teeth as the moment faded to shock at what happened.

“Did you feel that?” I asked.

“Fuck yes I did,” she said and touched herself below to seek that sensation of being alive, yet looked disappointed. “How did you do that? I haven’t felt that sensation in fifty years.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I think it had something to do with the other entity in my body.” Her hand held the limp member and tried to revive it, but I stopped her motions.

“Do it again!” she shouted. “Come on, stupid thing!” She tugged it harder, ripping the piece of skin off the main body.

“Salazar,” I said, but he was already reaching with ooze to reconnect and heal it. Sanzi sighed to calm herself.

“Sorry about that,” she said stepping away for a moment. “Still, that was amazing. I haven’t felt such a thing since I got Salzy inside me. With just a taste, I remembered how nice it was once to be a human being. All the sweat, dirt, and feelings.”

“I enjoyed it,” Deddy chimed in standing back up. “If that was two humans on my back, they’d be dead the second they touched me. I’m death, after all. You guys could make a power couple thanks to Sally and Woody. Salazar signed something I didn’t catch and flipped Deddy the bird. The skeleton hand caught the said bird as if it was a blown kiss and put it to a mimic of a heart he created with his skeleton hands over his chest.

“Those two,” Sanzi said and rolled her eyes.

“Who’s Woody?” I asked.

“That’s what I named the thing inside you that isn’t Salzy,” Deddy said. “All it seems to do is the name.”

We waited as the water from the pool below drained and the chained attackers piled up underneath, weak when not inside the liquid. All we needed to do now was clear the bodies from the drain. The tooth-blades were plenty useful for this ordeal as we dismembered the bodies for easier work. A few times along the way, I thought I’d be sick, but only heaved to find that there was nothing to throw up. All my systems had already shut down. We reached the half-moon drain, marked by a large stalactite from above. The bog structure was already gone. We were now inside a type of cavern or grotto.

Through the drain hole, there was a trippy staircase that dropped off into darkness. I tried to find something in the distance to make out in the surrounding nothingness, but the space felt vast, a drop into dark open space. What exited there, inside the enclosure, was anyone’s guess. As we all stepped down onto the short bit of stairs, the drain above slammed shut. That cut off the only light we had, and not even a slight bit escaped that entrance from above. Now in total dark, I waited for someone to speak with a plan of what to do.

“Damnit, Mandy,” Sanzi said. “That’s why we never visit her. She just loved testing people with her levels of protection. I bet this space is filled with nocturnal predators, not to mention Saix and Garavand.” She groaned.

“So, what do we do?” I asked trying to find her on the staircase. I bumped into something and felt a motion lift me before I fell, tumbling wildly before a bone-breaking fall. To anyone else, that would have been the end, but being a halfer, Salazar stitched me up with his ooze and a slurping sort of noise. “Thanks, Sal.” My hand made a gesture, but it was too dark to even see it. Before I had a chance to call out for Sanzi and Deddy, I heard a ruffle of cloth from above and felt boots land on my face.

“Sanzi?” I asked picking myself up again.

“Sorry about that,” she said. “Deddy was steering the fall and he ASSURED me that he could see in the dark. Here.” Sanzi grabbed my wrist and put some sort of stone into it.

“What is it?”

“A verete lens,” she replied. “You might be my toolbox, but humans are useless for fighting in the dark. It’s just not in your nature. For these guys surrounding us right this very moment, the dark is a time to hunt. Still got your dagger?” I patted to look for it but found only the hilt.

“Broken,” I replied and looked through the verete as a blackout dark stepped into a grey mist. Within the distant mist, eyes appeared with sharp teeth barred at us. Among what looked like wolves, were also a few clouds of grey hanging in the air, motionless. The next sensation I felt was Sanzi’s fingers in my mouth, pulling another wisdom tooth and an incisor.

“Dark Overgrowth,” she whispered and handed me a full size bone sword as she struck the ground to send sparks of many colors flying out into the darkness. “Hold onto me!” I found her with the verete lens at my eyes and put my arms around her feeling the most untimely thing poke against her as another burst of light illuminated the predators running up to attack. This time, the strike of the ground lifted the three of us into the dark above by the staff. Deddy hung onto Sanzi’s midsection, but her pants slipped down as she focused on keeping them aloft. I switched my hold to the bone staff and felt myself poke against Sanzi’s stomach with the erection.

“Well?” she asked. “This is your last wisdom tooth. You won’t get such a golden opportunity again. Go ahead and do it. I’ll keep us airborne until you’re done.” I hesitated to curse my halflife again. Such a scenario would be the best story to tell people, but being dead I could neither enjoy the act, nor share with people of how I once had sex while hovering in a pitch black darkness over a field of monsters trying to kill me while the girl was holding up flying on a magical staff she created from my wisdom tooth. And yet, I was dead. Nobody would hear that story, but I’d still do it.

With one hand still around her shoulders, I reached below to let the pants loose. The principle of said pants was that the top held them up. With the button free and the zipper past the erection, I felt the slip down, but caught them with legs crossed. Now we were both in our underwear, floating in the darkness. Rather than risk them falling, I pulled them to the side exposing the flesh tube. With the last motion of my hand, I folded her vampire underwear over and guided my hips inside, quickly reaching for her shoulders again while holding inside. I faced her again with hands on her shoulders, but something felt wrong.

“Can you smile?” I asked.

“What?”

“It just feels weird this way,” I said and felt stupid for mentioning it. It wouldn’t even feel good, so what was the point? Stupid Woody was just a method of torture and embarrassment.

“Just do the thing,” she replied. “I’m busy keeping us al- well not alive. I’m busy keeping us from being torn to shreds. Granted, Salzy would just put us back together, but I bet it would strain him. Just, here.” She arched her back to pull herself off the erection and then pressed it back in.

“I’ll do it myself if you don’t,” she said and repeated the arching motion.

“Please, stop,” Deddy said hanging onto her legs as she swung them around to thrust the hips. “I’ll fall and take your pants with me.” Sanzi sighed.

“See, I can’t do it, Deddy would fall,” she said. “Can you just get on with it? This flying method won’t be around forever.”

“Just fuck her already, Mike!” Deddy called out from below. I felt forced, but the erection did not fade with stress like a regular one would. There was no turning off one that wasn’t created by excitement.

“Fine,” I said and thrust a few times, shaking us in the air of the dark. I zoned out while doing it, wondering how vast this room was. If this was sex, I’d have to pay attention, but this satisfied nobody, two corpses slamming together with no possibility of sexual release. Just as I felt the shaking of the end, I remembered before when I kissed her during that moment, and repeated the act this time, pressing my hips to her and holding my lips the same.

A shock went through my body again, with a sensation of overwhelming pleasure I could once feel at my own creation. One thing about flying and reaching climax at once, when the latter comes to play, flying goes away. I felt my hands go limp for the moment it took gravity to take me. Hilariously enough, Sanzy let go of the bone staff at the same moment, throwing all three of us hurtling toward the ground, still in that final orgasmic embrace and kiss. By a strange coincidence, the bone staff also fell and I reached for it while slipping out of Sanzi to get the reach. With the staff in hand, I hoped that the magic it produced was based on imagination. I imagined a sheet of purple light below us made taut so that we bounced off. Next I made a solid purple translucent block for us to fall onto. The power of this staff was lost on Sanzi. My brain was filled with such ideas from TV shows, and a lot of them.

“Everyone alright?” I asked and lifted the staff to bring glowing spheres into existence. I scattered them out into the open space, but it didn’t seem to cut through the darkness as much as I’d hoped. The ground was still invisible even thought I was sure we fell quite a way.

“Yeah,” Sanzi said. “I’m sorry. I let go of the staff because I felt something again. We really need to figure out what that thing inside you is, Michael. I want to just pour it into a vial and use that to explore whining if it can give me that sort of feeling.”

Graphic, Deresanzi,” Deddy said. “Sorry about spacing like that. I should have used the marrow cloud to put us on the staircase above again. Speaking of, why did you jump in like that, Procket? Sure, Sally can heal you up, but you could have flown down with me and Sanzi.”

“I didn’t jump off,” I said. “Didn’t you guys lift me up and throw me down?” I paused realizing how that sounded. The best they could do was push me off, and they wouldn’t do that knowingly. “Something lifted me high above, then threw me against bottom. I figured the lights would expose it, but there is something wrong with this darkness. It feel like its eating the light rather than bounce it off.” Sanzi looked up to track the glowing orbs and stood up quickly. I brought the verete lens to my eye for a better view and wished I didn’t. There, in the corner of the vast room, stood some giant figure with red orbs for eyes. It was shrouded in a grey cloak as if it could hide within it. Sanzi put her verete stone to an eyes and tightened a fist.

“Shit! Put them out! Now!” She shouted as the red orbs opened to a dull red glow. “Damnit, Selly, what are you doing with a Hive in the bog?” I motioned the staff to hide the orbs as the giant started running toward us each foot thumping down softer that he should have been able to.

“What do I do?” I asked as the sound of footsteps vanished entirely.

“Give me that,” she said and pulled the staff from my hand. With the tooth branch held high above she chanted a few words I could not make out. A white hot light burst out from the length, stunning the giant mass of shifting flesh, only disfigured and interlocked into a sort of human shape. If my optic nerve was still human, this would no doubt make me go blind, but Salzy had my back healing both eyes right up. “Brace yourself, we’re taking a shortcut!”

Her hand raised above as the staff faded the sharp light, perhaps running out of power. With a thrust, Sanzi threw the fading white length down toward the ground which was only about twenty feet away from where we stood. The impact shook open a hole just big enough for the three of us, but far too small for the hive creature. We fell through as a giant hand of grey and black flesh reached into the hole to catch them, but failed getting stuck in the process.

Expecting a landing like before, I braced for the impact and the sound of bones breaking, but instead I felt a soft surface that felt all too comfortable take all the force. I smoothed a hand over the surface, sensing some patches that felt like ridges and nubs. Why was it that I could feel this, but nothing whenever I was inside Sanzi? Cruel Woody. Still, this pleasant sensation of softness was all around me, and when I finally lifted my head to look for the other two I found pyres of fire burning in the endlessly shifting space of boneless, interconnected human bodies.

The mountains wiggled slowly, shifting with various muscles flexing and breathing like a sea of various pigmentations. My mouth opened wide at the sight, mostly from fear at the horrific sight, but partially from awe. It looked like a dangerous version of an extremely multi-racial orgy, minus the sounds of flesh hitting flesh and moans of enjoyment. Seeing my mouth open, Sanzi ran up to me and closed it shut onto my tongue, which was saved by the lack of lower incisors.

“That was a close one,” she said.

“Don’t lose any part of yourself here,” Salzy signed. “Loose limbs disappear. Open mouths get their insides sucked out.”

“He’s got the turtle and the bone runes,” Deddy said. “The only deficulty here should be getting around on all this sweaty blob of flesh.”

“So this is the flesh pit,” I said and scanned around. The piles and piles of naked bodies became nondescript after the first few dunes, but I did see a bunch of breasts in varying sizes, a few exposed genitalia, but mostly just blobs of fat flesh hiding the reproductive organs. “And the flesh-mongers?”

“Well, let’s hope we DON’T meet any,” Sanzi said. “They look like large humans built out of other human body parts that still have bones in them. The creepy part is that the mongers are entities of their own, even if the humans they wear are still mostly alive. They lead a strange life, the flesh-mongers, but the humans that make them up are way out of it, stuck in a sort of forever haze. Remember that movie, human centipede? It’s an obvious incidence of someone seeing a flesh-monger and surviving to tell the tale. Just, try not to speak too much and keep a lookout.”

“Got it,” I said and looked behind us. “Bad news. There happens to be one right behind us. Oh, and Woody’s back. Terrific.” They both turned as a hand made up of human bodies reached out to try and capture the three of us. Sanzi pushed both of us down and jumped over the reach to deliver a knee to one of the human heads that the monger’s hand was made up of. The human shook the head and looked to regain a sort of consciousness only enough to scream out in fear. Just then a white sort of mist entered his nostrils and he was back out of it.

“Leaving this one to you, Deddy,” Sanzi said and grabbed my hand into a run. I glanced back to see the clone of death pull out Lopsy from his mouth, the carved wooden girl on a stick. I hope that disintegration thing worked on the flesh-mongers as Sanzi’s grip let go to a dropping force. I saw a pile of breasts, stacked and pointing with nipples in different directions. Sanzi already had her pants off.

“Right now?” I asked. “Will Deddy be alright?” She stood over and motioned for me to reveal myself. I fumbled with the button, but was ready as she lowered to sit on it.

“What did I tell you about talking?” she asked parting the vampire bait panties as she lowered herself onto the extension. “He’ll be fine, and yeah, right now. Just one level down and we can find out what this thing’s purpose is. For now focus on that burst of living memory of pleasure that happens. I get a feeling you have a theory, so lay it on me, if you can.” She lifted her hips and lowered them with full utilization of her lower black. She knew how to do this right, even if her magic stuff was outdated. No wonder I had such a good time with her before I was dead. I felt the breasts underneath me, a bed of flesh that humans craved even into adulthood. I no longer felt that pull, but picked two random ones to stick to Sanzi’s shirted chest. They were an upgrade and gave me something to squeeze in pretending to enjoy it.

“That’s kinda the whole thing, my theory,” I managed while she pulled back and thrust again. Sanzi felt the breasts up over my hands.

“What, the boobs?”

“No,” I replied letting them go as her hands pulled them off, then guided my hands up her shirt to feel her cold, smaller ones. They were enough to grab, but I put the other ones on as a joke anyway. All the while we shifted our hands, hungry for that one moment that took some working toward, Sanzi’s pelvic region moved against me, slipping off and back in with monotonous motion. “I think it’s like a system, and the lips close the circuit at a time when the energy can’t remain separated.”

“So, just tell me when to kiss you, Michael,” she said and curved her back against me a few more times before I felt it approach.

“No, do it now,” I said. Sanzi leaned down, still keeping me within, and pressed her lips to mine, this time thrusting her tongue deep down my throat. Something shivered from the base were Sanzi and I began. I felt something exit from my erection into Sanzi and flow back into my through her mouth. Whatever this thing was, it went through her body like a spark, and returned into my body. I felt this happen a few times as my eyes rolled back to sudden existence of endorphins inside my dead brain. I could feel Sanzi’s heat, her scorching insides around the length of my penis though it had to be an illusion. We were both dead and cold, yet I still felt her heat as she mini-thrusted as her nails impaled my body as they extended through it. When our lips parted, she burst out with a wild scream of ecstasy unbound. I held her tight even with the nails still cutting into my body.

Nothing else existed in that moment. We were both defying reality and it felt amazing. All until the scream ended and the many flesh mongers that were relaxing along the mountains of the flesh pit woke up to the loud noise, and headed right for us. I didn’t want to let this moment end, but slipped out from within Deresanzi’s vagina and helped her put clothes on since she looked spent from the burst of pleasure.

“She’s not responding,” Salazar signed. “I’m taking over until she comes to.” Ever since hanging out at her place, I learned the understand Salzy’s hand gestures thanks to the internet on my phone. Deddy ran up with Lopsy in hand.

“Great job, you two,” he said. “You just had to go and scream in the pit of a million ears. I can’t handle this many of these guys. We’ve gotta book it for that big pussy in the distance.” He pointed to what looked like part of the natural surroundings of flesh, but not stood out as the giant vulva entrance it was.

“Sanzi’s out of it apparently,” I said. “Salazar’s in control. Can you use the overgrowth thing, Sal?” I plucked out a gnasher from my mouth and put it into Sanzi’s palm.

“Obllahlah,” Sanzi voiced out. “Blah, ekhem. It’s been a while since I got to use her voice stuff. She and I agreed to stick to signs because otherwise she just looked crazy. I’ve kind of missed this.”

“Focus, Salazar,” I said.

“Sorry, alright, Dark Overgrowth,” he said with Sanzi’s mouth, but nothing happened. “Huh. Sanzi made this look so easy. Maybe if I…” Her hand closed tight as the flesh-mongers gathered en masse around us. “DARK OVERGROWTH!” The tooth burst out as a bone hammer just in time for me to grab it and smash a flesh-monger’s hand away. I pulled out a few more teeth and put them on Sanzi’s palm.

“Let’s go!” I shouted with the hammer in my hands that felt way lighter than how it hit. My dead body had no pain limiters, allowing for more fun without consequences. The three other teeth turned into two staves of no magical nature, and a pickaxe. These weren’t much use, but with a pickaxe in one hand, and the hammer in the other, I led Deddy and Salazar through the mass of mongers to the big pussy exit. Deddy wielded his bone sickle with one of the staves, while Salazar still had a sword from before to pair with the second staff.

There was no time to hesitate at the entrance and consider what awaited us beyond the pink folds as we rushed in, abandoning our weapons for the narrow nature of the cave. While the outside made the path look soft, what really awaited us within was a narrow passageway of stone, barely enough to fit one person at a time and too thin in spots along the way. Sometimes we had to climb up over a collapsed spot and crawl back down to continue. At the very least, flesh-mongers could not follow within. Once the opening widened out, I decided to stop and wait for Sanzi to recover from that extremely loud climax.

“Any signs of her waking up, Sal?” I asked after an hour of waiting. He shook her head.

“It’s like she’s sleeping,” he said with her voice. “I sometimes take over while she’s asleep to walk around. It lets me flex my controlling skills and get to know how the body moves, what limits the joints have and such.”

“While I have you, Salazar,” I said. “Can you tell me how old you are? I mean is it like, millions of years?”

“Ding ding ding,” he said. “I’ve been around since the last generation of humans lived on the planet. When their existence was erased, I escaped to live in the ground. I was just an ooze back then, ageless and lost. It took a long time to gain sentient thought, this level of consciousness, but I had some good teaches along the way.” I surmised that he ended up possessing dead bodies to feed on the internal fluids and expanded to inhabit others through a transfer of said fluids. How did he connect to the type of entity Deddy was spawned from?

“What happened to them,” I asked. “The previous humans.”

“What happens to most creatures who aren’t prepared for a cataclysmic event,” he said and shrugged. “They went extinct. Through a period of re-cultivation, some new bacteria of space landed on the surface and evolved to what they are now, a disease that will eventually eradicate itself. And I, I will be there long past all future generations, it seems.”

“How, so?”

“Bah, enough about silly old me,” he said and motioned to dry Sanzi’s eyes only to find no tears.

“Have you ever taken over living humans?” I asked.

“Of course,” he replied. “Can’t you tell? I learned all their mennerisms and kept them well off, but when they died, I couldn’t just flow back out. A part of me died with them. The living beings I took over were like my children, but when alive, I could do nothing to stop their death. That’s what led me to Death, the original force pulling them closer to himself. I was just an ooze, a puzzle he tried to solve. We became friends, and the task of figuring out what holds me alive as this ooze was passed down to Selemandra, Death’s only daughter on Earth. Don’t even ask how it was that Death had a daughter. Even your dead stomach would get sick at the thought. It’s lovely to think of what Death is as magic, but that is what a lowly creature thinks of a being from the space beyond. While in public eye of the worlds, Death was always busy, but with the coming of Selemandra, his job was outsourced to millions of clones, facilitated by her ideas.”

“So Death is what now? Retired?” I asked and scoffed.

“Well, yeah,” Salazar said. “Plus he gave up on me. Selena has no such curiosity to figure out what keeps me like this, so going there to ask what that thing inside you is, probably just a shot in the dark.”

“What if this thing’s like you?” I asked. “Just less evolved.” Sanzi grimaced.

“Nah,” Sal said. “I’ve tried conversing with it just now, and still got no inkling of a throught. At the very start, I could at least feel around with my sense of thought. Plus then there is the fact that it somehow allows you to experience pleasure sometimes, which is beyond me. I mean, I can keep the brain alive so that you feel alive, but I can’t put your whole system back on, and neither can it. From what I know of the human reproduction, and I’ve been in both living bodies during the act in the past, there is more than just the engorged phallus. The sweat coats the skin. The body puts out heat. The heartbeat quickens as the muscles tense up and relax. The skin gets ultra-sensitive. Your ears pick up more sound, and you’re hard again.” I looked down to the protrusion from my pants. It was a real pain, but maybe we were about to find the answer to who this stupidity was happening at Selemandra’s place. Sanzi stood up and walked over to sit by me. I met her eyes.

“Sanzi?” I asked.

“She’s still out of it,” Sal said. “But I can help you with that.” Her hand undid my pants in an instant and took hold of the length only to rip the penis right off on the first motion up.

“Huh,” he said. “I forgot how weak human skin is. Sorry.” His ooze reconnected the severed member and did it again just a few strokes later. “Ok, damn it. This takes a degree of finesse, huh?” The member reattached and healed as I held back Sanzi’s hand from trying it again.

“Please, stop,” I said. “There is no pain, but the idea of it happening again is making me feel sick.”

“Pish-posh,” Salazar said. “Do people still say that? I did like that era. That was before Sanzi was here, of course. What was that guy’s name again?” I stood up while he talked on and on. I could ignore the obstruction without much effort. Only in a group setting did it become a topic of discussion. Sanzi was too eager to help me with it, and now that she knew my theory had merit, she’d never want to part with that connection of feeling alive even if for just a brief moment. Even so, we still had to figure out what the thing inside me was, and why it acted out beyond what my brain could control.

The cave of wavy walls was tall. The ceiling towered far above our heads, almost in darkness save for a glimmer of firelight from the flesh we just escaped. Why did the daughter of Death need such a room anyway? How did a mythical creature like him even breed? Was Death a “him”? I had a notion that reproduction for him somehow utilized souls of the dead, or maybe even their bodies. Maybe Selemandra was just some essence of Death poured into a human body to create a human-Death hybrid. My kind- my past kind was like that, even though more organic in nature. I was a Half-lifer now. Halfling would have been better, but that name was reserved for things of demi-something status already. Was I demi-Salazarian?

Deddy stepped up to walk with me as Sal kept droning on about some random things.

“Annoying, isn’t he?” he asked. “You can understand why Sanzi opted for the sign language. We’re close now. Just past this stretch is a big iron door that leads to Selena’s place.”

“Is it Selena or Selemandra?” I asked.

“The original was Selemandra,” Deddy replied. “Death named her himself.”

“Aha!” I burst out. “So Death IS a ‘him’.”

“I’m rolling my eyes,” the clone of Death responded. “If you want to be technical, Death has no gender. I suppose Selemandra wouldn’t either, but because of knowing her a bit more, I’ve called her Selena and attached the ‘her’ identifier to the obvious female name. We’ve been fighting Moredo together ever since he arrived a few months back.”

“About that,” I started, but Sanzi stepped up to hug me from behind and slipped a hand into the pants to embrace another part. “Oh, hey.”

“That took me out of my skin, Michael,” she said. “Let’s go again.” She slipped my pants down, but I held the underwear up.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea, Sanzi,” I said. “We’re so close to Selemandra. Let’s go ask her what this thing is. It might be dangerous to use it that way again.” Sanzi scoffed.

“Are you ready to give it up?” she asked. “It’s like the last part of you still human. Not only that, it makes us BOTH feel good. We aren’t alive anymore, Mike. You don’t know how hard it is to be inhibited from orgasms for fifty years. It fucking sucks! To be warm enough for the time we had sex before your death, I had to ask Salazar to do it. Otherwise, you’d feel as if you were fucking a corpse!”

“Heat is hard to make,” Salazar signed. “I miss talking.”

“Still,” I said pulling my pants back up. “We don’t know what this thing is. Stop acting like a relapsing junkie. What, were you a prostitute before Salzy or something?” Her fist punched right through my chest from the back. I could see it still coming out of the front to obstruct the view of the erection. The burst of shock dissipated with the last of pain. Salazar already gathered his ooze back in the wound.

“Oh, real mature,” I said. The ooze held her arm locked inside my chest until she just tore it off at the elbow. “I’m worried, ok?! After this time, you took longer to come back. It scared me. What if the next time we do that closed circuit, you don’t come back?” Sanzi turned me to meet her eyes as Salazar took over the arm still impaling me to produce a middle finger pointed at Sanzi.

“You’re just a toolbox, Michael,” Sanzi said. “I’m using you until there is nothing left. Then Salazar will flow out of you and you will die. Don’t worry yourself about me. I’ll outlive you at the end. So, for now, why can’t you just let me have this? You don’t know the lengths I went to for the ability to feel SOMETHING after becoming a Half-lifer. Nothing could even bring me a flicker of what I once was. Then here you are, with something inside your body that can make me lose my mind as if I was human again. Even Salazar can’t do such a thing.”

“Well, fuck you,” the impaling hand motioned. Sanzi grabbed hold of her own arm and pulled it free to a swing that reattached it back at the elbow.

“All I’m saying is, too much of a good thing is a bad thing,” I said. “Let’s go see this daughter of Death and make sure this isn’t hurting you in some unforeseeable way.” Sanzi reached out to grab me, but Salazar extended his nails to stop her reach. She pushed, only stabbing the nails through me and out the back, but Salzy only kept extending as she pushed the nails further through. When he snapped them back to her hand, the impact threw her back to the cave wall. On some weird instinct, I caught her before she hit the stone.

“Listen to me!” I shouted right at her. “I understand not feeling anything. You’d do anything to feel just a flicker of heat, a chance emotion, but don’t become a different person in pursuit of that. Be the amazing, kick-ass Deresanzi that I know and love… Shit. I think I fell in love with you. I’m such an idiot. Not to mention I’m dead and to you I’m just a toolbox for dark spells. This would be a comedy if it wasn’t so sad.” Rather than reply, Sanzi just slipped a hand down my pants and took care of the problem without trying to kiss me. We just remained locked in eye contact until Woody was floppy in her hand.

“Restraint,” she said slipping her hand out. “I’d almost forgotten that word existed. It’s a common human word that culls the herd. They are beasts made weak by that one word, but thanks to these stupid brains they survive to subjugate other races. It’s clear I don’t consider myself human anymore, but for that split moment between us, I felt human again, with wants and needs that I abandoned long ago. If that’s not dangerous, I don’t know what is.” She stepped away from me and waved Deddy over. They discussed something in whispers as I stood effortlessly infatuated with this amazing woman-no-longer. What was she? While wavering between walls and wants, she attained a higher status in my dead brain kept alive by Salazar. She was regal, royal in my eyes, the Queen of the Half-life. I wanted to serve her until no part of me remained for her to use.

“Let’s go, Mike,” she said and waved me over. “Let’s go see little-miss-prissy-Death.”

Just like Deddy told me earlier, there was a large wrought-iron door at the end of the folding tunnel. Even if Selemandra was inside, I couldn’t imagine how she would look like. Why would she live so deep under the Flaming Bog anyway? Did she have nothing to do? As I watched the door get bigger while walking closer, I had to wonder how it opened. Would the giant halves open in the middle, or was there a tiny door at the bottom for regular-sized guests? I had to wait and see, but when the ground sloped away from the bottom, I understood that this was no door after all.

“Huh,” I said. “That’s not a door.” Both Deddy and Sanzi snickered.

“Just wait till they open it,” Deddy said and stepped right under the metal block to hit it five times. The corridor beyond the metal obstruction looked exactly the same as the way we came from, making me feel lost as to which direction was the folded corridor. The knocks resonated on the heavy metal inside for a few seconds. Deddy stepped back as the metal segments parted in the middle to form a staircase heading within. Sanzi nudged me to go first, but as soon as I stepped onto the very first step, something clicked.

I hesitated while the metal shifted upwards, widening the staircase the further up it went. Once the grinding and shifting metal stopped, a cyan blue light burst out from the dark opening above. The glow was intense, but not bright. I glanced back to Sanzi who looked relieved as if this was some final death trap most of the time and I was the scapegoat that didn’t get attacked. With no validation to this theory of mine, Sanzi rushed past me two stairs at a time into the light.

“There she goes again,” Deddy said and patted my shoulder on the way up. I glanced back once down the corridor to where the flesh-mongers roamed before heading within the metal monstrosity.

The widening stairs opened up to a room bathed in cyan light. The whole thing was made of metal, from the walls to the columns, but the space felt empty, unused. Sanzi was already at the door in the corner painted red and black. The colors clashed with the downpour of cyan from metal orb structures in the room. Even while being a halfer, Sanzi retained a certain sense of excitement magnetic enough to sway me into accepting my role as a toolbox for her magic. I’d be glad to be of use to her as long as she had me.

“Come on, guys!” She called with a smile as I walked up to Deddy.

“What’s with her?” I asked. “I mean, I’m happy that she’s happy, but is this because of Selemandra?”

“Well, duh,” Deddy said. “They used to be besties for a time, but when you’ve been around as long as Selena, you don’t value things as much as Sanzi. It hasn’t hit her yet, the reason she no longer comes here unless she needs to. Prepare yourself to see some anger on that excited face pretty soon.”

“Why not just remind her of that?” I asked.

“That’s no fun,” Deddy replied. “If youre going to be hanging around her, it’s best to let her make a fool of herself and pretend she’s not one, than to point out that she is. Honesty kills hilarity, every time.”

“That’s a pretty grim view of being friends with a really cool person,” I said. Was she cool? I shook my uncertainty away. Of course she was cool. She turned my teeth into weapons.

“Did you perhaps forget who I am?” Deddy said throwing his hood over the sugar-painted skull. “I’m the grim reaper, and you’re just a toolbox.”

“At least I’m not a tool like you,” I murmured under my breath.

“What was that?”

“Nothing,” I said and ran up to the striking door that disappeared into the ground rather than swing open. What was with this place and doors that weren’t actually doors? The metal contraption outside was a staircase, and this door was just a partition. I hoped Selemandra wasn’t the one who chose to play with the mind in this manner. Sanzi vanished into the room of darkness following the opening instantly. With his skeleton hand on my back, Deddy pushed me in right after.

For the first few seconds inside, everything was darkness until a female figure appeared in the distance. She walked toward me, or away from me. I couldn’t tell which it was, nor whether this was Sanzi or the daughter of Death in my obstructed vision. Out of the further dark jumped out a second figure, heading right for the first. On instinct of protecting Deresanzi, I jumped in to protect the one being attacked. I expected the slam from above, yet was impaled by a hand from behind instead. It felt like a repeat of before. It didn’t hurt, only reached further through me until the other figure turned and extended a hand to shake. I watched the handshake with awe and even up close only saw the outlined grey figures in the dark.

“Leave us,” said the owner of the hand in my chest as the darkness faded back to a cyan-lit room. I jumped in to protect someone from Sanzi’s attack, only to be impaled for it. Sanzi was none too happy to see this. “Always a pleasure Sanzi, Salazar.” The arm pulled out in a swift motion, but grabbed the side of the wound to spin me to face her. She wore all black, with lines of red running like veins over the robes of such hungry dark cloth that I felt like the most sinister velvet.

“You, I don’t know,” she said with such evocative black lipstick that I felt Woody spring to action again. Her gaze caught a glimpse of the erection below and narrowed. “A human? All the way down here? Hmm. I could use a snack.” Her lips parted to a crimson tongue that found my gently parted lips into the most craving kiss I could only witness without feeling it. Her breath sucked out all of mine and only paused then.

“This usually works,” she said and kissed me again, thrusting her tongue deeper into my throat for a few more moments of desire. “What’s going on here? Am I being Punk’d? You’re obviously a human, but then how haven’t you died yet from the wound?” She parted the wound to find Salazar create a face in the opening.

“Hey, Selemandra,” he said out loud.

“Salazar, you fucking asshome,” she said, and flung my body away. “Did you make him hard to fool me again? You’re NOT welcome here anymore, you bastard!”

“Well, I’m not here of my own free will, you know,” he said as my chest healed itself up. He used Sanzi’s hands for the rest in sign language. “But it’s not me doing that thing. That’s why we’re here.”

“There is another ooze like Salazar inside my new toolbox here, Mike,” Sanzi added. I put up a hand in greeting, if that was even a greeting. The sensation of her lips inhaling mine wouldn’t leave my mind until Sanzi came up to hold my erection. There was a strange silence in the room as she moved her hand back and forth with Selemandra watching us. Her eyes never looked away from the daughter of Death. As the peak came and went, I was glad to have eyes no longer on me.

“As you can see, it acts like blood,” She continues. “Far more than Salzy even. The stranger parts is that if we have sex and kiss at the moment of his supposed climax, we can feel for a short time again. That’s something Sal can’t do, so he was concerned about it. We came here to see if you know anything about this, and to kill you.” Sanzi pounced at the daughter of Death again, but they just tumbled around like cats playing on the floor.

A few minutes later, Sanzi sat by the wall defeated, each of her arms was ripped off at the shoulders and inserted into the two larger holes between her legs. Selemandra stood over her in victory, pushing hips right up against Sanzi’s face. My human self would be somewhat excited by this sight, but I wasn’t sure what governed this other entity inside me.

“Say it!” Selena called out with her foot on Sanzi’s neck. “Come on, out with it!”

“You win again, Selena,” Sanzi said as the foot lifted to free her. Salazar’s tendrils extended from the open wounds in her shoulders and pulled her arms out of her butt and vagina to reattach. Everything retightened back to original form as the other entity pumped up the flaccid penis once more. “So will you take a look? Salazar can’t communicate with it.”

“I’m going to need a demonstration, of course,” Selemandra said and clapped her hands as a giant bed lifted from the floor. “Let me see this miracle in action.”

“With all due respect,” I said. “This could be hurting Sanzi and Salazar. I think it would be better to-.” Her gaze turned cold to silence me. I wanted to speak, but something held my jaw closed. Was it fear I felt? Could I even feel fear anymore?

“You will stay quiet, toolbox,” Selena said. “Or I will feed you all of your limbs in tiny chopped bits.” I gulped.

“Fine,” Sanzi said. “I’ll demonstrate it for you.” She walked over to me and bent forward while brushing up against the front of my body with her butt. I felt her motion stop on the part of me ready to go and slip onto it for just a moment. The holes in her pants made by Selena allowed for easy access, but I mourned the death of her “vampire bait” panties. She led me to the bed and pushed me onto it a bit too hard.

My body flew past the bed and into the wall, never looing the erection. I scrambled back up thanks to Salazar and jumped onto the bed to lay on my back. There I was, dead as a doorknob yet hard as a stone, pointing up in the dim blue light of the room. Not even the presence of Deddy and Selemandra could affect this other being inside me. Before I had even a moment to wonder where she was, Sanzi arrived into the air above me, landing into a bullseye squat that sheathed the sword within her scabbard. Before I could see her face, she turned away from me to face Selemandra and started moving her hips. I watched the buttocks rise and fall, clash against my stomach with a thought to how we’d close the circuit if she meant to be in this position.

When I sat up a bit, I found Selemandra at my feet, eyes locked to Deresanzi’s as if it was the two of them having sex instead. This was show for the daughter of Death, and when I sat up to cup Sanzi’s breasts and play along, she pushed me back down. That motion triggered the end, the approaching peak that did nothing unless we completed the circuit.

“It’s time, Sanzi,” I said. In one swift motion, she bounced slightly off the bed without slipping away from Woody and spun me on that one anchor connecting us. Now my face was right between their locked gaze. While continuing the thrusts, Sanzi bent down to lock her lips to mine in a flood of pleasurable sensation from the circuit. It felt as though a rocket launched into orbit from a standstill in my mind. I felt slammed by tons of pleasure bricks and our lips parted only to produce a unison scream of climax in the metal space.

I felt my mind drift off, floating on a cloud somewhere before Salazar’s tendril caught my leg and pulled me back down to the bed where my floppy member was still inside the unconscious Deresanzi on top. I rolled her over and felt a strange desire to clean up after the encounter like when I was alive, but there was nothing to clean. On the plus side, we didn’t need any lubrication for it, and I was glad to have no feeling anymore since the friction burn would be immense otherwise.

“I see,” Selemandra said stepping up. She put a hand inside Sanzi’s vagina and held onto her hip bone to transport her to a chair. “How long is she usually gone, toolbox?”

“It’s Michael,” I said getting dressed. “And I don’t know. This is the fourth time we’ve done this, and she seems to take longer each time. That’s why I was worried that it might be hurting her.”

“No, I don’t believe it is,” Selemandra said and put her painted nail over Sanzi’s vulva and found the clitoris with her thumb. The daughter of Death looked human, but could be just an illusion meant to appropriate something with no shape. Her hand slipped inside Sanzi as I watched in silence. After a few minutes of rummaging within, she pulled out something resembling a red orb and tossed it over to me. It felt squishy sometimes, but hard. “It’s tikra.”

“What’s tikra?” I asked as Selemandra walked over, took the orb, and shoved it into my throat where it disappeared. “What the hell?”

“I’m not explaining this twice,” she said. “Let’s wait for Sanzi to wake up. The thing you consumed was something you’ve put into Sanzi before. It resonated with the larger version sill inside you allowing your bodies to work for the brief moment.”

“But where did Sanzi go?” I asked. “I came back right away.”

“Poor girl probably got lost in one of her memories since the brain opened those pathways again,” she said. “I suppose we should go in and make sure she’s ok.” Selemandra scanned the room and finally noticed Deddy.

“You,” she said. “What’s your designation here?”

“Hello, miss,” Deddy said removing his hood possibly as a sign of respect. “I’m clone Theta five-one-zero-two, in charge of sector Theta for night hours.”

“Yes, ok, but what are you doing here?”

“Ah, yes, well…” Deddy said.

“He’s a friend,” I said. “To me and to Sanzi. He helped us get down here, which you did not make simple.”

“Shut it, toolbox,” Selemandra said. “I see you’ve painted your skull, 5102. Why is that? How come you’re not patrolling sector Theta right now?”

“It’s my free time,” Deddy said and looked embarrassed.

“Free time, bah,” she said. “Stupid lazy dad, his clones have his ways. How stupid can you be to give servants you create from your own body ‘free time’? The concept is laughable. Anyway, if you’re anything like him, I can’t leave you here alone or you’d break something. You’re coming with us.”

“Coming where?” He asked.

“Inside Sanzi’s mind, numbskull,” she said. “Weren’t you listening at all? God, it’s like dealing with Dad. Every. Time.”

“How do we do that?” I asked.

“I’m glad you asked that, because I just LOVE explaining absolutely every little thing to some random guy my friend found herself to use.” She walked up to Sanzi and cut her arm with a short nail swipe. Salazar poured out thick for a second until he solidified and started shrinking back in. “Open up, Sally. Snack time.” A mouth appeared as Selemandra took out a little chip of blue something from her mouth and threw it in. He bubbled a bit after absorbing it and shot out like real blood from the wound for a few seconds before reeling back inside.

“Whoa!” Sanzi’s mouth spoke, but it was Sal. “This stuff really pack a punch! What is it?” Selena said nothing, only motioned a hand as the room grew darker. Before I knew it, everything was shrouded in the same hungry black cloth that she wore. From the corner of the room, or what I assumed was a corner, a darker blob descended to meet what now as just an outlined grey figure. In a split second, Deddy, Selena and I were in close proximity over Sanzi, then she vanished into the dark. Before I could panic, there she was, in a space of light torn in the darkness to a different time. She was a child of five in the memory, and we watched a scene of joy unfold.

Deresanzi was sitting at a table not designed for a child with two adults who loved her. Sanzi smiled and laughed at the table surrounded by a bounty of food.

“You need the greens, too, honey,” her dad said.

“But they taste so bitter,” she complained. “Why make plants so bitter if they’re meant to be eaten?”

“Not all are bitter,” Mom said. “Some are nice and sweet when you boild them. Try some green beans. Look, Daddy’s eating some. Aren’t they tasty, daddy?” Sanzi watched her dad spear a few with his fork and put them into his mouth. He chewed a few moments and grimaced.

“Bitter,” he said and smiled. “I didn’t notice it until you pointed it out, my little darling. But I do like my bitters. You see, taste changes as you get older, so while now you may like the sweet and the salty, one day you might like bitter and sour like me and your mother do, respectively.”

“What is ‘respetivly’?” young Sanzi asked. The man’s smile was so wark and his eyes so bright in the light of day. It would take a really cold person to tear Sanzi away from this memory. Just as the thought crossed my mind, Selena stepped through the memory tear and put her hand on young Sanzi’s shoulder. I wanted to stop her, but the window into the memory resisted my entry.

With Selena’s shake, the scene changed to a dark road, save for the fiery wreck of a car in a ditch. There was Sanzi, of about age twelve, sitting on the top of the ditch crying. No other sound in the night but the fire and sobs. Selemandra was there again and shook her shoulder to change the scene to a dark room where a late-teen Sanzi sat alone. It was night again right outside the window, and she was curled up on her bed in a room that had no decorations. It was too clean, too organized, not a place that displayed a life lived within.

“Get up, Deresanzi!” Selemandra shouted as the teen girl sat up aging to the Sanzi I knew. “It’s not real! Wake up!”

“Shit!” Sanzi said. “I fucking hate this place! Pull me out, Selly!” Selena reached a hand from outside the memory and pulled Sanzi through the window I couldn’t pass. “Did you have to brign those two?” She pointed to me and Deddy who was so quiet I forgot he was there.

“Your fault,” Selemandra said. “I don’t want people poking around my place when I’m digging around inside you. Let’s go. You need to hear this bit about your boytoybox.” She motioned the darkness to approach and it rushed to surround us with a cloth sound until I saw nothing. Shortly after, we arrived back in the room with the dim blue light, and Sanzi was awake.

“Are you ok?” I asked hugging her. She pushed me away and looked over to Deddy who was on his smartphone.

“What are you doing?” she asked. Deddy glanced up from his phone to realize she was talking to him.

“Just looking up who took your folks away,” he said. “It would be nice to know where they got sorted. Maybe you can visit them.”

“You don’t have to do that, Deddy,” she said. “I don’t want you to get erased because of poking your nose where you don’t belong.”

“You see, I don’t happen to have a nose to poke, so…”he said as Sanzi came up to hug him. I watched Selemandra turn way from the display of affection between what felt like her love interest and a clone of her father.

“I meant to ask,” I said, after counting off thirty seconds of the hug. Any more than that and it felt off-putting. “What do you mean by the ‘sorting?’” Sanzi pulled herself away from Deddy and faced me.

“Not that it matters to you, but there are four places where ‘souls’ go after death,” Sanzi said.

“Not two?”

“Norting into two would get tedious,” Selena added. “Do you know the saying: there is a special place in hell for people like you’?” I nodded. “Well, that one exists and contains the most volatile and disturbing individuals. It’s funny. When you put them into a society where all of them are similar things, they mellow out quite a bit. Sure, they work diligently to destroy the imagined world and often do, resetting forever until they just get tired of the things they do.”

“Another place is for people caught on the edge,” Deddy said. “They’ve done bad things, could have even approached the rank of Chaosis, the previous place, but felt a touch of regret, a sliver of hope. It just takes an inkling that maybe they should not have done some things. I’d say that is often called limbo, or purgatory, but we call it Remorsey. Many people go there, because you can’t really go through life not regretting a single thing. They don’t necessarily live in a community, because their ‘minds’ just pace forever on the regrets and hopes of forgiveness.”

“Then there are the positive ends,” Sanzi said. “The so-called heaven that we call Shore, and the beyond, which we call Void. People who are locked to their world, the people they love, and the planet, end up in Shore. These are the folks who go through life without picking up any solid regrets of terrible mistakes and things they did wrong. It’s not a very populated place, as you may imagine that most people end up in Remorsey. They judge themselves into it, but it’s not so bad in there. Some regrets are small enough so that they can still interact. And that’s that.”

“Wait, what about the Void?” I asked.

“Almost nobody goes there,” Deddy said. “It’s not even worth mentioning.”

“I mean, it IS part of the four,” I said. “So why omit it?” I looked between the three of them and wondered why they hesitated to explain Void. It couldn’t be worse than Chaosis, could it?

“Void is… well, unpredictable,” Selemandra said. “And that’s me saying it.”

“Yeah,” Sanzi took over from her. “To be sorted into Void, the soul has to have no regret weighing down on it and have no solid chains binding it to where it existed. That puts them in the Void where… Well, anything is possible. Some people that should be in Chaosis sometimes end up in Void, if they have no regrets, but Void is a lonely existence. There is no interaction with other souls, just endless anything they desire in their little bubble. It’s hard to know what happens in there. If you enter their bubble, it becomes your reality. Hence, it’s a tough place to visit, but I doubt my folks ended up in Void. Maybe Shore, but that’s too hopeful. Remorsey houses about eighty percent of the souls after Selemandra is done with them.”

“What is it you do with them?” I asked and met her bored eyes.

“Enough of the info session about my work,” she said. “I explained out of courtesy, but there is no point telling you anything more, toolbox.”

“Ok, ok,” Sanzi said. “But what about that thing inside him? Is it like Salazar?”

“I doubt it,” Salzy signed. The painted nails grew and shrank repeatedly to show off.

“It’s tikra,” Selena said. “When you two fucked the first time, a bit of it remained inside Sanzi and resonated whenever you did it again. It has the property to enliven dead tissue, but as to how your boytoybox gained tikra inside him, I haven’t got a clue.”

“What IS tikra?”Sanzi asked.

“Put simply, blood,” the DoD said. “But this blood has highly transformative properties. In the original containment, it had to mimic being an erection, and so when toolbox here has an exciting thought that Sally ignores, tikra reacts.”

“Blood of what?” I asked.

“A Tisyros, toolbox,” Selemandra said. “A being of the starts that feeds on energy. Think, space vampire. I have no idea how you ended up with tikra inside you, but the fact that you put some into Sanzi is the reason you were both having mutual orgasms. Those aren’t common, impossible even, for Half-lifers.”

“So how do we get it out of me?” I asked. “IS there a way?” Selena nodded.

“It’s simple, really,” she said. “You’ll have to die again for a second. Clone, hold his soul down. Salazar, flow out now.” I thought I misheard her, but she cut my throat with a swipe of her hand and Salzy the ooze flowed out of me like blood. As it fell, I stepped forward as the soul and felt a pull from above, but Deddy tackled me from the air and held me with his skeleton hand as if I was still solid. I looked to Selena as she pulled out an item to use on my dead body. It looked like a silver flashlight.

“Vestigial light should do the trick,” she said and cast a heavy green light. It felt heavy to look at, even with the spirit eyes I had, or whatever it was I saw all this with.

“And vestigial light is…?” Sanzi asked holding my dead body upright.

“Dead Tisyros spirits,” she said and cast the glow over my body. At the presence of this beam, my body vanished to reveal a brown patch of fluid, frozen in space. “Grab that for me, would you, Shades?” A hand of shadows reached from behind her and pierced the see-through flesh to pull out the solidified substance. The light stopped pouring out, but the bundle of now crimson color, remained frozen while hovering above. I looked down at the brutal tear in my body, and hoped Salazar could still fix it.

“Stasis it, please,” Selemandra said as the shadow poured its own coverings onto the object. When handed over, this tikra was enveloped in a layer of shifting grey smoke. “Head back in, Sally. You know I hate to see you in the ooze.”

“To each their own,” Salazar said with a deep voice produced by a manifested mouth. I watched him flow back into my body and heal the wounds inflicted.

“Sanzi, bring toolbox over,” DoD said. “I’ll stitch his soul back myself.”

“Are you sure, miss?” Deddy asked. “I can handle this part. You don’t need to worry about it.”

“Quiet, clone,” she replied, but Sanzi put a hand on her arm.

“That’s Deddy, and ‘toolbox’ is Michael,” she said. “They’re my friends, and if you’re not going to call them by name, we’re not going to be friends anymore.” They held together in place with eyes locked until Selemandra stuck out her tongue.

“You and your attachments,” she said. “I’ve got this, Deddy. I should flex my stitching. Since Dad implemented his cloning, there’s been little use for me to do this.” Sanzi moved my body and put it down by Deddy still on top of me for some reason. I did feel that pull upward still, but figured gravity would hold me down. Ah, but with no body there was nothing to hold down. Selemandra pulled out a needle from her pinky finger with a black string that also glowed white at the same time.

The needle went through my body and my spirit, alternating between them as she pierced my feet, hands, head, and a line of stitches along my spine ending at the crotch. There was a network of black threads glowing white between my physical body and the incorporeal one. The needle she used, extended magically over the course of this procedure, but now shrank back down and returned to her pinky.

“Alright, Deddy, let him go and let us see how I did,” Selena said. Deddy stepped off and let my spirit body go. The pull I felt took me instantly upward as the strings tightened to hold me down. “Good, they held. Now, seal!” She clasped her hands together as the strings reeled me back into the lifeless body. When I stood up again, I felt heavy, gravity once more holding me down.

“Very well done, miss,” Deddy said. “Perfect string length throughout.” DoD said nothing in response.

“So that’s it?” I asked. “No more tikra?”

“No more tikra, tool- erm, Mike,” Selena said. “Though how you got tikra inside you is still a mystery. I mean, it’s a finite resource for Tisyros used mainly for reproduction. Unless one of them thought you were a Tisyros, they wouldn’t put tikra inside you.”

“Allow me to field that question,” a voice spoke from above. “I mean, ah, damn it. You didn’t ask a question, did you? Ugh. I should have waited longer for that line to work.” There was a figure on the ceiling, sitting on a cloud of shadows. Selena reached for the green flashlight, but a tendril of shadow pulled the device up to him.

“See? I’ve got a Garavand friend, too,” he said and jumped down to meet our eve levels with the device in hand. “Vestigial light, huh? Poor little trapped Tisyros. It’s a very evil technology to use. Are you friends with a Karinenn perhaps? I’m sure you are, daughter of a Marrow Leech that you are. That’s what my kind call those of you- Now, don’t think of doing anything stupid. I’m not here for a fight.”

“Then why ARE you here, Tisyros?” Selemandra asked and relaxed a bit. I wasn’t so quick to trust him. That was a line you gave people to catch them off guard.

“Please, call me Martin,” he said and tossed the flashlight back to Selenadra with a grin that dropped my defenses. “It’s a lot less formal that way. The reason I’m here is my tikra. Well, no, that’s a lie. I’m here for you, Deresanzi Mills.”

“Just Sanzi,” she said. “Why me?” Her hand trained on the hilt of a tooth dagger I didn’t even realize she made.

“Calm down, Half-lifer,” he said putting his hands up. “First, would you mind if I reabsorbed what is mine?” He motioned to the cluster of Tikra that bundled up into blob on the floor resembling a human heart. Martin walked over and extended a foot to the blob with his hands still raised. The shoe he had on peeled open together with the foot, and the blob skipped happily inside.

“Ahh, that’s so good,” he said. “Thank you. Now then, let me explain. I put tikra into this boy’s body simply for tracking purposes of finding you, Sanzi. When he died, I figured I’d just collect it, but then you brought him back and went through some tough stuff. Man, it was fun to watch you guys from the shadows. When you had sex while floating in the pitch black room, I almost burst out laughing. When you fell, I moved the staff into the guy’s hand to help.”

“Alright, guy,” Sanzi said again putting a hand on her dagger. “This is coming off real stalker-ish. Make your case, or leave.”

“Alright, alright, calm down,” he said. A shadow jumped from above onto Martin’s face, claws digging into what looked like real flesh. While the first few swipes cut the surface, the next few got stuck and started sinking into the flesh of the face. “This anyone’s cat?” A tendril appeared from Sammy’s back made of up of Salazar’s ooze.

“He’s a Half-lifer,” Salazar said in a deep voice. “Let him go.” The Tisyros flesh parted as if putty under a hairdryer and dropped the cat to all fours.

“Ugh, that felt sticky,” Sammy said and started licking the parts that were on the inside of Martin’s face just a few moments ago.

“What are you doing here, Sammy?” Sanzi asked scratching him behind the ear as the fur shifted in black and white patterns.

“Got bored,” he replied between licks. “Chased mouse… into dark space…caught it… ended up here… Attacked unknown person riding the high of a dead mouse. I did well.” Sanzi smiled and petted Sampson’s head.

“Can I continue?” Martin asked. “Right, well. I followed you guys to help you kill Moredo.”

“What do YOU know of him?” Selemandra asked.

“I know he’s relentless,” he said. “He wants to control this world, capitalize on the dark magic and escape beyond. For that, he needs Selemandra, so I was glad to find you thanks to Sanzi. Basically, I’ve come to join your gang, and as a sign of good faith, here.” HE reached into his chest and pulled out three small orbs of tikra.

“This should be enough tikra for each of you to feel something during imitations of sex,” he said. “I don’t derive pleasure in that way, but humans are easy to satisfy. You can trust what I’m saying. I’m over four thousand years old.” He grinned preforming a magic trick with the three orbs, turning it into one and back to three again.

“That’s nothing,” Salazar signed with Sanzi’s hand. “I’m a few million years old.”

“I’m well aware, elder,” Martin said. “Because you’re also a Tisyros, sir.”

“Huh?” Salazar signed. “No way.”

“It’s true,” he replied. “Tisyros don’t really die of old age. Most often, we overfeed and explode, or starve to death. You, sir, are the true ending we all hope for. Karinenn also kill us or freeze us, or cut our elders to create those flashlights. That’s why it’s pretty cruel, but I don’t mind. Karinenn have been using vestiges for a long time now. Back to the matter at hand, and the reason why I brought Sampson here. Moredo’s making big moves soon. Best you don’t go back home for the time being. Sorry. I didn’t want him to use Sammy as a hostage.”

“Well, thanks,” Sanzi said finally relaxing enough to unhand her bone dagger. “That would suck, but you won’t find any gratitude from Sampson. He’s still a cat, even as a halfer.”

“It’s fine,” he said. “So, do you want these tikra? You could feel again, even if for brief moments at a time. Maybe you two could finally be together. There sure is a heavy sort of chemistry there.” He motioned between Selena and Sanzi as they locked eyes.

“Sure,” I said to break the tense moment. If there was a connection between them, it was meant to remain secret. I walked over and held one of the red orbs that was sometimes squishy and other times solid. “This won’t make me keep getting erections at every little thing, will it?”

“That was only because you had a pint of it inside you, umm,” he paused not remembering my name.

“It’s Michael, Martin,” I said after a minute of silence. “Will I be able to control it like when I was alive?” He nodded.

“As long as we’re giving out TRACKING CHIPS,” Selemandra said pulling out a purple stone. “Eat this.” She walked over and put the pebble in his mouth. He was willing, but it became apparent why as his body moved the stone to his hand just under his skin to inspect it.

“What is it?” He asked. “Has an eerie sense of being alive, but it can’t be. I sense no life from it.”

“There is none,” Selena said. “That there is a garem. I’m surprised. You said you have Garavand friends and you don’t know about their remnants? Maybe the garems only exist where the hives settle down. That’s beside the point. If you want me to trust you, keep that garem inside you while I have your tikra.” She took an orb and swallowed it. Sanzi did the same just before the DoD pulled her aside into a room. I watched as the partition closed and wished that made me excited. Lo and behold, there it was.

“Man, I wish I could be a part of this,” Deddy said. “I feel left out all of a sudden. Besides, Selemandra isn’t a halfer. Are you sure that tikra stuff will work on her like it does on Sanzi?”

“Trust me, it will,” Martin said. “Want some help with that, Mikey?” I met his eyes and got confused.

“But I’m a guy,” I said.

“We Tisyros don’t necessarily care about gender. If you’re capable of enjoying yourself, you should. Indulge yourself.”

“No, I mean, I’m not attracted to guys,” I said feeling like an asshole. “Sorry. I mean, I support the LGBTQ relationships, but don’t think I want one.”

“Alright, how about this?” He asked as his body fluctuated into the shape of a woman. “Call me Marie.” I was stunned by the transformation as Marie pushed her breasts together under the orange shirt. Realizing they were a bit small, she grew them to the perfect size in my eyes. I still had no words, but Martin, or Marie walked over and unbuttoned my pants.

“What are we thinking, big boy?” she/he asked. “Hand, mouth, breasts, or do you want to give it a shot below?” I tried to imagine it was still a guy, but could not. With her hand on the piece of enlivened flesh, I gave into the moment. Deddy stepped away with his arms thrown up in exasperation.

Once we were all in the same room again, Sanzi had a kind smile on her face I thought was impossible. She always looked bored. There had to be a reason for her matter-of-fact attitude, but it melted away for the time being. I was glad that Martin’s tikra allowed her that escape. I felt a bit of shame for only craving him when he was Marie. He was every bit a woman at that point, and it felt as if I’d been alive again.

“So, what exactly is a Tisyros?” I asked the room. Deddy and Sampson just arrived to complete the new squad against one evil. “And can he help us combat this Moredo?” Everyone looked at me in silence of blue light. Selena smiled, but her face did not look as relaxed as Sanzi’s. I watched as the smile turned to annoyance and found Martin turning into her form to mock her as the source.

“If I don’t kill him first,” she said. “don’t you know it’s rude to impersonate others, Tisyros?” He scoffed.

“All I DO is impersonate others,” he said and was about to remove clothes from the current form, but Selemandra flickered over to his neck with a singing blade. This was an actual metal structure that played a strange pitch when stationary. “Is that supposed to- e- sca-.” He cut out entirely as the room willed with that one pitch tone. In a few more seconds, it absorbed all the sound in the room to a dull tone. Martin dropped to his hands and knees more bothered by this than others and formed his regular human body. Selemandra sheathed the blade in her cloak, restoring sound to the room.

“That was just a warning, Tisyros,” she said. “I know of ways to hurt you, so don’t pick a fight with me. If you want our help, don’t mock us.”

“Geez, take a joke, lady,” he said. “I was just showing off my playful side.”

“There is no playing with Moredo, Marty,” Sanzi said.

“I mean, I was trying to be the much-needed comic relief for this team,” he added. “We can’t always be frowny and angry.”

“I know,” I said, much to sour looks from Selena and Sanzi. “I still would like to know more about your kind, from your perspective rather than an external one.” He was regarded in negative terms by the rest of the room, and I had to know why that was.

“Sure!” Martin burst out with a joyous grin on his face. “If we’re to be a team, you should all know about what I can do. Now… Where to begin?” He put a finger to his chin and grew a beard out right before our eyes to stroke.

“How about you tell him about all the humans you eat on a weekly basis?” Selemandra suggested.

“Tisyros eat humans?” I asked and distanced myself away from him on instinct that was no longer there.

“Liar,” he said. “We don’t kill humans, just feed on them like vampires. True, once fed on, the human loses all intent to stay alive, but I wouldn’t consider that related to what my kind does. To leave less of a husk footprint on worlds we visit, we set up farms of our food source. There, we restore those humans with the tastiest hearts with purified ones from the worst crop, the homeless and dying.”

“You take the hearts of drifters, homeless, and elders?” I asked trying to understand whether they had doctors who performed those tasks staffing the human hospitals.

“You’re misunderstanding again,” Martin said. “How do I explain I best…?” He stroked his beard as it reeled back into the chin slowly.

“Nothing to explain,” Sanzi said. “Tisyros are evil. They feed on human souls.”

“Ok, it’s not a soul,” he said. “It’s a point that moves human energy around, a chakra, a plexus, a chi center. When removed, they tend to lose function. But it’s not their SOUL. Death barters in those, doesn’t he? Is this so, Selemandra, Queen of the Flaming Bog, Grand Witch and Daughter of Death?”

“Of course he does,” she said. “And so do I, and Deddy, and about a million other clones just like him. The world wouldn’t function without this service.”

“Service?” Martin asked. “You pretty much feed off the body like I feed on their energy!”

“Enough!” I burst out as all eyes and eye sockets looked to me. “I get it! Tisyros and the Death community don’t get along! Table it for a goddamn minute, will you? I DID want to hear the Tisyros account of his kind, not an outside perspective. I get that you’re THE daughter of THE Death, Selena, and I probably wouldn’t raise my voice to you if I was still human, but stop butting in. Please.” For a moment, she looked as if she’d explode, but a hand of shadow surrounded her face just as I expected her to scream. When it cleared, her face was composed again. Sanzi’s eyes were still in shock at my outburst, and Martin slapped a hand on my shoulder.

“Thank you, Michael,” he said. “I’m really glad I put my tikra inside you, and that I could make you climax. You may be missing some parts of your body, but you’re one hundred percent in my book as cool, dude. Anytime you want Marie again, just let me know.” Sanzi’s eyes narrowed, but still looked at me as I slipped Martin’s grip.

“Did you two…?” She asked and motioned between the two of us. I said nothing, but Martin formed into Marie for a second and nodded. Sanzi smiled that relaxed smile again.

“Continue,” I said. He formed back into Martin and grinned.

“Right, well, I can transform into anything from twice my size to half my size,” he said. “Beyond that it feels like I’m stretching myself out or stuffing myself into a box. Also, here is my original look.” He skipped into the air as his legs vanished.

In their place, eight tendril hung down from a smaller torso of grey flesh. The chest had three arms, two at the supposed shoulders, and one coming out like a penis from the middle. They were all long and jointed with an extra bone to a regular human arm. Each hand had three fingers, equally having one bone more in them than a human finger would. Up the shoulders was a blank-faced head that opened to three, red-glowing holes of undeterminable purpose. The arms folded forward to join all nine fingers in a triangle.

“It’s a sign of greeting,” Deddy chimed in and created a photo with his hands as if he was casting a photo. When Martin reformed back into a human being, everyone looked to Deddy. When he realized the surprise on their faces, he felt the need to explain himself. “What? Can’t I use my cell to look up some details? It’s not like his kind are hiding from ours, only from humans.

“It would be nice to leave this world and travel the stars with a Tisyros, but those are just the dreams of a clone. The business keeps me locked down, and Moredo’s threatening the way we do things. Not to mention that clones are just slaves to the system, no notice given that we all have our own dreams and wants beyond all this death and human body commerce. What? You thought we were just some happy worker bees? It’s not that simple, Princess Death.”

“Well,” Selemandra said to break the silence following Deddy’s speech. “It’s nice to see that Dad can be an asshole by just creating clones. Again, I didn’t make the cones, Death did. Take it up with him, if you can find him. I just manage to company. As for being slaves, what point is there to you having money? It’s not like you can just go out and spend it, right? The main thing about taking people to the sort is not being seen, and some jokers like Dad himself manifested himself to humans back when he did it. Now they all thing Death is this hooded figure with a giant scythe that comes to take you away, but it could also be just a skeleton, or some naked human, or Deddy with his ridiculous sugar skull designs.”

“Hey!” Deddy exclaimed. “I- uhh… I resent that.” He realized that he was talking to his boss and softened his aggression. “I mean… I get plenty of free time, so that’s nice. It’s just, I feel locked down, Selly.”

“Don’t try your hollow eyes on me,” Selemandra said. “You’re not my dad. He ALWAYS does this, gripes about stuff and looks to me with those endless sad eye sockets. You’ll get over it, Deddy.”

“Oof,” I said. “Workplace tensions. I’ve been there, had a summer job once.”

“Can I keep going?” Martin asked.

“Yeah,” I replied.

“I can put people to sleep with sweat I secrete,” he said and looked to Selemandra for a witty comeback, but she said nothing. “People who lived a life of struggle, taste too greasy to me, and the ones with hidden traumas make me sick. Oh! And I can fly. Just like in my original form.” He folded his legs and sat in the air with a meditative pose.

“Cool,” I said. I looked to Sanzi and fond her hand-in-hand with Selena. It was good to see something good came out of the visit, but I had no idea what happened next. “So, what now? Do we all go after Moredo?” A distant sound of crunching metal turned everyone away from me. In the next second, I found myself missing an eye as Sanzi stood over me dangling it from the optic nerve. With a cupped grip around it, she brought it to her mouth.

“Dark Evolution,” she whispered as the eye expanded to pop into a crystal orb twice the size. What crashed through the metal wall was a giant robot with a person sitting at the top to control it. “Damn it! Get up, Mike! This is no place to sleep!” I scrambled up just as a burst of light from the once eye flowed right into the metal surface without much effect. Without a moment of hesitation, Sanzi ripped out a bundle of my hair and spoke into it to create a weave of hair that held the robot down for a moment.

“Selena!” Sanzi called out until the DoD answered from beneath a piece of ripped metal with a deep and loud voice.

“Now you’ve done it,” She said as her eyes glowed a cyan blue until her body exploded into a structure of blue energy like cyan lightning and threw itself at the robot in the room, imploding it as the metal folding unto itself. The guy controlling it vanished from above, but could have just gotten squished into the metal implosion. The lightning formed back into a shadowy figure and Selena’s face reappeared from the shadows. “The bastard ported out! He’ll be back! We have to leave!” Sanzi pulled me up from the floor as Selena threw a giant chunk of wall to the side with a swipe of her arm.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“Moredo,” Deddy said running up with Sampson on his shoulders. “We’ve gotta go.”

“I thought he was just some old guy who sent minions out to do his work, like the ghouls,” I said looking around for Martin.

“Looks like he got tired of that,” Selemandra said. “All the ghouls he sent down here never made it past the flesh pit, so I don’t know how he found out where the gate was.” We all ran down a metal staircase into a dark room.

“Maybe he tacked a camera onto someone,” Martin said appearing beside me in a vague human blob shape. “Just an idea.”

“I didn’t see you helping out with the robot, Marty,” Sanzi called out behind me.

“Technology is not my forte,” he said. “I go where the food is.” Selena touched the dark wall and put her forehead to it. She turned to the Tisyros with a pointed finger.

“Who brought you here?” she asked. “Was your Garavand a friend of just transport?”

“Ahh,” Martin said. “It was an outside hire for transport. My friend was busy. I’m sorry, folks. This one’s on me.”

“Hold your breath, everyone,” Selemandra said and punched the wall as the shadow peeled off to reveal a button underneath. The shadows that clung to the wall enveloped us all, cutting off all access to light. I felt my body in motion, but saw nothing until the moving stopped. The darkness subsided to Sanzi’s room, and I was about to say that the location was compromised, but she beat me to it.

“This won’t do, Selly,” she said. “I got swarmed by ghouls just outside before we took the coffin express over to the bog.”

“Shit,” Selena said. “Deddy, call in some clones to help us.”

“I got it,” he said and pulled out his smartphone with two human hands that transferred onto his skeleton hands so that he could text quickly.

“Martin, do you know anybody who can take us in?” I asked as the Tisyros floated up in the room almost carefree.

“I guess we can go to my place,” he said. “But I have my food staying over right now. You’d have to be ok with that. I mean, I don’t leave them husked, only eat and replenish them.”

“That’s fine,” I said.

“There’s a place,” Sampson said walking up to me. “It’s where I go when Sanzi doesn’t want me around. An old lady nearby, assuming Tissy can charm her into submission. And then there’s Count and Dame, if we’re really desperate.” Sanzi grimaced at the latter idea.

“I’ve got five guys on the way,” Deddy said and vanished his phone into the ribcage. “So where are we heading? I have them tracking my location.”

“Martin?” I asked.

“Fine, let’s go to the old lady,” he said with a grimace. “It’s not like I HAVE to eat her poisonous little heart.”

“They’re gonna bring the coffin express XL over,” Deddy said. “We should wait outside for now.” Everyone rushed to the exact same spot of lawn near the scary-looking house that the ghouls swarmed before. I felt a sense of déjà vu at the moment, even more so when the ghouls came into view all around us. Selena put her hands up and shrouded the group in darkness, but a beam of light cut the bubble to fall apart. Another robot stood at the back of the horde of ghouls in a quiet little night of the suburban neighborhood.

“Your demise will subjugate this world to my reign!” A voice burst from the direction of the robot.

“I’m going to need your heart, Michael,” Sanzi said. Before I could say the cheesy line in my head about how it was always hers, she plunged a hand into my chest and pulled it free of vein attachments. With the useless blood pump in her hand, I watched her incant something in another language before she threw the bloodless part of me into the air where it reformed into a giant ox and dropped to the ground is intense impact. Without a moment lost, the bull took off, shredding into the masses of ghouls with horns.

As the beast pulverized the lowly ghouls, the robot called upon them to build into bigger versions resembling flesh-mongers, but made of corpses and skeletons. I watched the mass form just as the rampaging bull tacked it. The mass of ghouls in humanoid shape stopped the charge, lifting the giant red ox into the air using the strength of his charge as fuel. While in the air, a giant maw of ghoulmass opened to bite into the airborne beast. I felt a tightness grip my chest watching the teeth sink into flesh that was once my heart.

“I got you, buddy,” Salazar signed and put himself where my heart once was to regulate himself around my body.

“How long?” Sanzi shouted over to Deddy. Selemandra kept putting up shadow bubbles, but each was show down with beams from Moredo walking closer among ghoulmass figures of his height.

“TWO MINUTES!” Deddy shouted back looking at his smartphone.

“We don’t have two minutes!” Sanzi called out.

“IS THIS ALL A DAUGHTER OF DEATH CAN DO?” I shouted for Selena to hear me. “MAKING BUBBLES? REALLY?” Her face contorted in anger as shadows swarmed her body.

“DON’T BLAME ME IF YOU SHIT YOURSELF!” said a new voice, a deep trembling sound that shook me in fear, and I had no heart for that to even work. This meant even Salazar was scared. My jaw shook as I tried to apologize, so I shut it tight instead and watched the shadowform emerge. When the dark wrap surrounded her body, it didn’t bubble, only wrapped tightly on her female figure. The bindings tightened further until it looked like all the air was purged from the body. With a burst, the bondaged body exploded in size to a giant woman clad in some sort of velvet spandex that defied reflection mechanics. It felt as if all light that was meant to bounce off her body, was absorbed into a void insitead. She now towered way above the robot and ghoulmass figures below.

“ONE MINUTE!” Deddy yelled and pulled out his sickles to fend off a few smaller ghouls. Salazar was cutting them up left and right with the cursed nails while Selemandra stomped down with her feet and swiped at them with her hands. The robot avoided her attacks as the ghoulmass shredded in the path of the motions. I just stood there, out of my element, useless in this fight. My heart-bull was off to the side, still and oozing magic in the shape of black liquid. I walked through the fight as Salazar fended off ghouls charging me and put my hand on the dying beast, my dead heart. I felt sad all of a sudden as the creature took a final breath and went still.

“THEY’RE HERE!” Deddy shouted across the battlefield. The ground bust underneath him as four other clones of Death arrived out to the surface. The fifth had to remain to hold the coffin express open. In order they pulled out different weapons adorned with black skull keychains like Deddy’s sickles. “ON ME!”

They stood in a circle with hands out to the center until the keychains melted their variety of weapons to five full-size scythes. Once they all had scythes in hand, a circle of remaining black tar at their feet divided into ten partitions and sank underneath the robes. A second later, they were all floating just above the ground, pushed up by something on their feet. Deddy glided over to me looking like a hockey player who used human skulls as pucks for his scythe hokey stick. He peeled his hood back to the sugar skull design face.

“We’ll handle these guys,” he said. “Get to the coffin and take it somewhere safe with Sanzi and Selly.” I nodded as he slid away on his shadow skates. I dashed over to Sanzi as he protected me from ghoul charges, cutting them up before they had a chance to get to Salazar.

“Sanzi!” I called out to her, but when she looked to me, she had fear on her face. The glow of the robot was next to me as a big metal hand yanked me off the ground and squeezed until I heard a number of bones break. I didn’t feel pain, but felt the pressure forced Salazar into my head. What remained of him in the crumpled body, held it together like gum in my veins.

“MOREDO!” Sanzi shouted as nails extended from her hands through the distance stabbing the robot through in five places, but not the seat on top. His smile was maniacal at this attack and he threw my squashed body toward her at great speed. Rather than catch me, Sanzi dodged out of the way until I was past her and used my momentum to launch herself away from Moredo, nails reeling back in as we flew.

Our hands held tight spinning in the air, but our eyes were locked in contact. I smiled, and she did the same. In a few more seconds, we slammed against a house in the distance, breaking more bones in the process. Salazar stitched us up so we could stand again, setting the joints and binding the bones back together. Moredo was already running full tilt toward us, batting off Death clones and dodging Selemandra’s swipes.

“I need something from you, Michael,” she said, but I noted how she never asked my permission before. This had to be something serious.

“Well, take it!” I shouted as we dodged a fist launched from an extending arm together.

“You don’t understand!” she called back. “This will impair you! You won’t be the whole ‘you’ anymore!” As we rolled into the street, followed by whirr of servos, I grimaced at Sanzi.

“I wasn’t the whole me ever since Salazar brought me back,” I said. “I’m your toolbox, Deresanzi Mills, as long as you’ll have me.” In a swift motion, one finger extended a nail and cut my left arm off. There was no blood, but Salazar flowed out to patch the opening. Sanzi crouched over the severed arm and stabbed Salzy’s nails into the elbow and wrist joints.

“DARK MUTATION!” she called out as the arm bubbled into a sack of skin filled with air clinging to her hands. When the surface popped, the structure underneath was revealed, but there wasn’t even a second to admire it. Sanzi lifted the brand new hand-cannon crafted from dark magic and my old arm and aimed it at Moredo. “Shut your eye! This is gonna be bright!” I closed my one remaining eye just as a bright white beam exploded out of the weapon heading right for Moredo’s robot. The sound was electric, shaking the air with vibrations and throwing waves of air pulsating from the machine’s direction. When the light subsided, I opened my eyes to find a long tunnel of fire and displaced ground where Moredo’s robot stood not a second before. Sanzi tossed the weapon into the air as it turned to ash and scattered to the night air.

“Are you alright?” she asked helping me stand. The lack of my left arm would take a bit to get used to.

“Yeah, thanks,” I said and used her grip on my torso to get near her for a kiss.

“What was that for?” she asked with a little smile. As my eyes opened, there was a figure behind her. It was Moredo, aiming a gun right at her head. This was my fault. I created the opening for him to sneak up on her like that. With a quick drop, I replaced her neck with mine just as the beam burst to singe my body to ash. I felt it, even if I was dead. The parts of Salazar in the rest of my body felt the beam cut into ageless Tisyros flesh and burn it to nothing. My head fell to the ground and could only watch the rest.

Sanzi sprung back up with her nails extended, but Moredo was gone, vanished in a cloud of blue-glowing powder. Without skipping a beat, Sanzi made a sling from her jacket and put my head inside to carry me back. We walked silently and joined Selemandra in the coffin express toward Martin’s place.

“I’m sorry, Michael,” Sanzi said over the rumble of the earth just outside the coffin. “I can’t carry you around like this all the time. I need to have my body free and my toolbox mobile.”

“I know,” I said. “Thank you for showing me this world, your world of dark magic.”

“Thank you for jumping in to save me from Moredo,” Sanzi said and held my head in her embrace. “My fight with his is far from over, but maybe with Marty and Selena on my side, we can stop him.”

“You never said where he came from,” I said. “Moredo?”

“That’s one of the things I’d like to know,” Selemandra said.

“Hey, Selena,” I said to get her attention. I wanted to tell her to take good care of Sanzi, but already knew she would. “Where do you think I’ll end up? After I die?”

“Depends,” she said. “Do you regret anything from your life and Half-life?”

“No, not really.”

“Do you feel a deep attachment to your family and friends?”

“They have their own lives to lead.”

“The Void,” Sanzi and Selena said together and smiled at each other.

“But don’t let the name fool you,” Sanzi said. “There is plenty in there for you to explore.” There, your imagination blossoms full, from what Selly told me of it.”

“Yeah… I’ve never actually visited Void before,” she confessed. “Only heard Dad talk about it.”

“Hey, it’s alright,” I said. “Once you deal with this Moredo guy, come visit. Maybe you’ll be able to see me somehow, though I’m probably just being hopeful.”

“If it works like that, then we’ll be sure to come visit you,” Sanzi said and held me close to her chest again. “I’ll even bring Sampson, Deddy, and Martin. We’ll have a reunion of a sort.” Selemandra wasn’t smiling. The Void probably didn’t work like that.

“I’m ready,” I said as we exited the coffin express XL to another grassy lawn.

“Are you sure you don’t want Deddy to do it?” Selena asked. “I can call him over.”

“Nah,” I said. “I don’t want him to be bogged down by transporting a friend to the sort. Salazar, whenever you’re ready. Bye, you guys. It’s been a blast.” I watched as Salazar the ooze crept out of my severed head and back into Sanzi’s cut on the arm. A mouth manifested in the crimson ooze.

“Thanks, pal,” he said. “You’ve been a good host, a great toolbox, and a fun mind to be inside.”

“Thanks… Sal… A… zaaar…” I said as my consciousness slipped out. That was it. My life as a Half-lifer was over. I only saw Selemandra pick me up and transport via darkness to a well with four tunnels leading away below. One was glowing white, one was yellow, third was red, and the last was just darkness. When I fell, it sorted me into the dark, where I found out what the Void truly is firsthand.