the third time, you are more excited about smoothies than you’ve ever been in your life. not, you know, the general concept of smoothies – they’re perfectly fine, you suppose – but the prospect of making a smoothie? In your own kitchen?? Making bespoke smoothies to share with your Charmer like some wildberry witch of the woods? that’s exciting.

 

you are also excited about your new blender, which purports to be “a thing of infinite empathy and infinite teeth, infinitely better than Vitamix.” (according to the reviews, it’s a little bit alive and gets a psychic contact-high from the touch of its operator, which is a little unnerving, but it also makes it very energy efficient, so….maybe it evens out? it’s like a hybrid!)

 

you gently scoop ice and fruit and honey and yogurt in. you feed it a secret, too, but that feels less like calling out to something strange and dark and deeply malign and more like the impulse to feed a particularly cute puppy a leftover bit of hot dog.

 

“I think…”

 

watermelon, honey, raspberry. you aren’t throwing it in on a whim! you did exhaustive research to find the optimal smoothie configuration! (so many listicles.) 

 

but even so, even as you tell yourself you're only heeding the guidance of Smoothie Experts, you can’t shake the suspicion that–

 

“I think I like raspberries better than cherries.”

 

your fingers brush against a knob, and it feeds you a secret in turn.

 

[in another life, earlier.]

 

 

the certainty that this was a bad idea this was a bad idea this was! a bad!! idea!!! scuttles your stomach and sinks your heart as your heel hits the point of no return.

 

your ignoble steed wasn’t meant for this. it screams and grinds and whines and it is telling you it wasn’t meant for this, because it can tell that you weren’t meant for this either, and it hoped you’d understand. everything’s alive in some sense, suffused with potential and momentum and intention, but this is alive, and it’s letting you know with a song you can’t unhear. belle opened up a cupboard to reveal a ready-to-go found family, you get a chocomint misery elemental filling your last few moments with a musical number that evokes nothing quite so much as merzbow karaoke.

 

(you can really see her, now. you’re wearing a costume. she’s communing with something, howling over the golfcart’s gearbox.)

 

 

(she’s right, too. ever since the Eclair Affair, the average Puru Puru Paradise character costume looks less bog-standard mascot and more like someone grafted Big Bappy Paws^TM onto an EOD suit. they're rated for surviving wayyyy bigger and scarier themepark golf carts than the sad struggling thing you scrambled into.)

 

so close now, terror and guilt swirling in your gut, hands tight on the wheel. 

 

 

she tugs and tugs and struggles with something you can't quite see and a fluffy fist flies off and bonks you square in the face and then finally, finally–

 

(it happens so fast. a pop, a crash, dizzy drifting thoughts and a smell that stands your hair on end. a hole in the hood. a freshly discarded Puru Puru Promotional Blunderbuss. your ears ring and your sight swims and you decide this is what doomed smells like, smoke from the little engine that couldn’t and sweets in the distance and very literal 𝘣𝘭𝘰𝘰𝘥 𝘭𝘶𝘴𝘵.)

 

 

helpless is a fistful of tulle in her hand, and helpless is exactly what you are as she yanks you out by the overly-elaborate neckline.

 

[now.]

 

 

this is what doomed smells like.

 

this is what doomed smells like.

 

this is what trapped smells like.

 

this is what kept smells like.

 

this is–

 

(little pulses of worry and warmth from the blender, like an all-wrong-angles dog made of glass and teeth picking up on its mistress’ sadness. monsters do tenderness just as well as we can, even if the shape isn’t the same.)

 

this is–

 

(burnt rubber and worn gears and ozone but it fades, drowned out by sugar and potpourri. a little less feral.)

 

this is so much more exciting than those other hidden object games. 

 

(real enough to be scary, sure, but….maybe scary makes for a nice sometimes food? the lulling rhythms of domestic life are comfy in their way, but being wide awake’s fun too.)

 

maybe there’s a story to be found here, rich with twists and turns and tangles.

 

maybe the hidden object game you’ve stumbled into is The HOG in Fata Morgana.

 

[in another life, later.]

 

 

so this is how you're going to die, in a bed of fake flowers with a happy tree fiend's hands around your neck.

 

(not hands. paws? mittens? beans? your thoughts spill out in the shape of some rejected Snuff-leupagus Lovemail tweet and you wonder if it'll last long enough to hurt.)

 

you can make out features in the mascot costume's maw.

 

('her smile is cruel. her smile is kind.' that's maybe what you imagine the dramatic novelization of this disneycore nightmare to say, but....)

 

but it isn't cruel, and it isn't kind. there are streaks of starved glee and a little bit of love and something you’ve no clue how to parse and for all your fear you're still here enough to tell that it's the furthest thing from a simple, uncomplicated 'history's greatest monster/history's greatest mom? her!!' binary.

 

okay, maybe it's a little bit cruel. like she looks at the red in your eyes and the tears and the terror dusting your cheeks like snow-white stage makeup and all she can see is the outline of an old in-joke. 

 

i'm going to puru★puru★pulverize you, princesssssss. 

 

you want to say, oh, but i'm not a princess. 

 

you want to say it for the simple fact that you're a boy, honest, but you also want to say it because the bravest thing you can imagine in this moment is blurting out something like oh, i'm not a *helpless* princess.

 

(this, of course, is how you know you're a boy. isn't daydreaming about only *pretending* to be a meek maiden helplessly ensnared in some feral femme fiend's clutches before hollering that you're Not a princess and saving yourself with a swift headbutt instead of being swept off your feet by a dashing ladyprince Hashtag Just Boy Things?)

 

but she rears back before the words can come and you feel your body brace and your heart race and every inch of your being shrinks into itself like the last comfort you’ve got is the foolish hope she’ll spot a more appetizing target and maybe, maybe you’ll slip her mind and

 

and a fluffy fist 

 

slams 

 

down

 

into the ground

 

just a haaaaaaaaair to your left.

 

(what?)

 

"are."

 

(what??)

 

"you,"

 

(you’re drowning in your own adrenaline like a lone crouton in a cauldron of soup, soaked and s l o w l y subsumed into it. you want to laugh. you want to scream. you want to swear. you want to say something grand and glorious and dumb.)

 

"puru-puru-pulling your punches?"

 

(instead, you settle for just dumb.)

 

oh, god. why would you say that? is she–she's in you now, isn't she? she's--for all your fear, she's made you like her. she's made you want it. you were so nice and normal and now there's no going back from whatever strain of sicko cell anemia she's breathed into you.

 

 

you don’t catch what she says. maybe you don’t have to, not with that look in her eyes.

 

her eyes say, maybe you’re growing on me.

 

her eyes say, asterisk hurriedly scratches that out asterisk.

 

her eyes say, how DARE you insinuate that i’m in this for anything but playing with my food.

 

her eyes say, i practiced this breezy teasy sweetly cruel speech about playing with my food in the mirror ALL MORNING and i s w e a r t o g o d if you don’t validate me (please validate me)

 

her eyes say, i wish this would end any other way than the way it will.

 

she hesitates, settles beside you with a look like it's only just dawned on her that there is another way this ends. 

"maybe." 

a familiar hiss, a sting in your neck. you imagine--

you want to believe this doesn't end here, with an ampoule of poison and another victim of the puru-puru-process of royal succession, so you blink away a tear or three and look up at her and imagine.

you imagine something gentler than you expect. you imagine slippery thoughts and every last willful impulse dripping from your neck, a shiver each time a drop of spine leaks out. you look at her with eyes wild and wary and wet with despair and you devote every last fiber of your being to tuning out the terror and you imagine--

you imagine being helpless. you imagine a world where you can be helpless. you imagine a world where--

(it's really hitting now, whatever it is. thoughts like hot milk and the kind of comfy cozy cottony half-asleep where simply trying to think threatens to send you sinking back down.)

where, where....

 (you hope--you hope you'll wake up.)

you imagine a world where--

 

(a pause.)

"...the princess is perfectly safe in her castle, safe in her spell."