melody stepped into the darkened cell.

Laying before her was the Witch. Its limbs were splayed out, head drooping down, hair greasy and matted. It was nude, without mouth or eye. The space between its legs was smooth as well.

Life Cultists clad in white shut the door behind her. They could not risk interaction with a Witch. It would challenge their claim to Humanity.

But they had no such compulsions about melody. her Humanity was already forfeit, having confessed to such a grave Sin of Disunity.

she felt a shiver run through her. perhaps this was one final act of rebellion, she thought, to enjoy it. Though they called it, "Rectfication of the Soul," a rehabilitation for the radically unwell, she supposed they thought it a kind of punishment. she thought it a kind of punishment.

After all, she had supposedly done something Inhuman. So had she confessed 7 times each to 7 Earthly Authorities and then to the White Diamond Emperoress (through a proxy, of course). Each time her story had felt correct to the Highest Authorities and she was passed to the next tribunal.

So after long, lonely months being processed through the Imperial Registry, she now found herself face to face with the Witch. she knew this would be her last chance at rebellion but somehow the best she could do was enjoy it. she figured they didn't want that, for some reason. The Imperial Dogma was all clean lines and abstract forms. Shameful pleasure didn't seem to fit into that.

the Witch turned its eyeless face, seeming to focus on melody. she felt herself gripped as if chains wrapped around her nerves.

Come entertain me, it seemed to ask, blinking without eyes. melody felt the blink more than she saw it, as if she was blinking at a distance from herself.

Then, flashes of imagery of meat being torn apart and devoured by wild cats.

"Excuse me?" melody asked.

You're too smart to believe those stories, that we feed off memories or Souls or whatever? it suggested.

"i can't say i ever gave it any thought," she replied truly.

Though she knew better than to trust the propoganda of the Universal Empire, still she knew nothing of the Old Power and what It was capable of, save for what was told in competing ghost stories.

This even once she had set herself on this path of total annihilation, deciding that there was no way forward for her after the hurt she had caused those she loved the most, but yet finding herself unable to step in front of the train tracks as she often dreamed of.
the Witch cackled through melody, bursts of electricity jolting across her body in waves that left her struggling to stand.

Silly girl, its stance suggested, the impression of a smile on its blank face. Am I not flesh and blood and bone? Do you not see me before you as animal as yourself, if not more? Should I not wither away and rot if I do not consume? Isn't this the way of all life, without exception?
melody gulped. she backed into a corner, shaking as she tried to distance herself from the thing that followed her with its eyeless face. Only its nose, steadily breathing in and out, hollow chest expanding and retracting, seemed at all animal.

If not for that, she could mistake it for a lifeless doll. If not for that and the fact that she could feel it. As if it were her own flesh, she felt the rise and fall as the creature's chest.

Looking down, she saw how her own breathing had begun to mimic that of the Witch. All around her torso, little pinpricks of light sparmed inside her before falling away in their time. It was like if breathing felt like fire inside you.

Shivering, "i- i can't suppose i gave it any thought, but then… i have seen them, the Rectified Souls, the lifelong penitents,

"those who are sacrificed to themselves to pay for their crimes against the Self as mandated by the Imperial Registry in Accordance with the White Diamond Emperoress and His/Her Cults of Life and Death as well as all Earthly Authorities and all Shapes of Humanity"

–she took a quick breath–

"So, they- they must feed you other ways, not…"

Another cackle tore through her, the light spreading through her whole body, piercing up and down her, repeteadly, at odd angles. With a whining moan, melody collapsed to the ground. her grey robes collected chalk from the floor.

Then, with a start, she felt herself arching back. There was a shock to the back of her skull and she supposed for an instant that it was not simply for reasons of symbolism that they had shaved her from head to toe.

This before she felt her skull ripped open, blood dripping down her neck. Hands gently pulled the skin aside and reached inside inside.

the Witch did not move.

What a fool she was, as all rebels were, for thinking their discontent made them special, gave them special insight or knowledge…

Who truly believed in that absurd metaphysical abstraction of the Soul, the one who lived its abolition in the public management of selves, or the one who told themselves that there was no such thing and yet lived a confidence in the perfect lie, one that did not manifest as habit?

melody fell forward, her breath still that same smooth flow in perfect sync with the Witch. she reached back and felt the warm blood beginning to pool at the base of her neck.

With a shake, she pulled her hand in front of her only to find it clean, save for a light sheen of sweat.

the Witch sat there. melody could feel it smiling.

"You're just playing with me," she whimpered, head down, "If the Imperial Registry thought my story a fib, you must know that it is true, if not in fact then in spirit. You must know that i deserve-"

That sting again, pulling her back against herself like a taut string. you think yourself so wise, little melody, having heard a few lectures in forbidden arts? you think you know the human body to be merely another machine and yet you suppose a Witch of your imagined Dark Past to be a believer in the Authentic Human?

you say to yourself that you are so enlightened, that you believe this or that, but still you sought out punishment. In your heart, you are still a Humanist fool. you were raised to believe in the White Diamond Emperoress and the Divinity of Humanity and that is how you lived. you only convinced yourself otherwise superficially…

But why should i care, if you were not given the punishment you wanted? Why should you think i have any say in this matter, me, this crumpled thing trapped in a box?

It's face darkened. If i were to let you live when told that you are mine to eat–when told by you, by things you remember but without understanding, like a child–what do you think they would do with me? Why they would starve me yet further. Then, truly, I would wither away, join the chalk on the floor…

Blood had begun to drip from melody's nose. her eyes found themselves strained, as if being dragged back into her skull. she shook as if in ecstacy.

The current entered through the back of her head through the Witch's hands. Though physically she knew could they not be there, they felt her anyway.

Electricity coursed through melody's brain. It was like being stabbed from the inside, little needles tearing into her. A blush came to her cheeks as she realized that she dripped not just from her head but also from her sex.

That's a good girl… and she spasmed.

melody, suddenly released, fell forward. her face smacked the chalky floor with a painful thud. Raising herself up, breathing still even through her trauma, she left the ground spattered red.

she looked up at the Witch, trying to speak, but nothing would come out. On all fours now, she seemed to be slick all over.

Cautiously, she placed her hand down into her pulsing gash, finding it sticky, and found her hand to slide against the wall, leaving a trail.

she shivered.

The thing laughed, a real throaty noise. Its head fell back, legs crossed and hands flat on knees. For the first time, it struck melody how beautifully the flickering lights above them danced across the Witch's smooth skin. But also, how hungry it now seemed…

melody quivered. she could still feel how wet her sex was, how it seemed to soak her ceremonial garments. Without the overwhelming pressure tearing through her skull, the gentle pinpricks of light on her clit were now identifiable.

her hips bucked involuntarily as she felt the long, slender fingers of the Witch rubbing and teasing. she tried to drag herself back towards the corner, where some deep part of her still felt relatively safe, but she found herself held in tension.

Feeling resistance, it was as if powerful wires kept her bound to the Witch. While its fingers still played idly with her mound, the creature also held her in place on a string. Well, not in place perhaps, for as she crawled forwards, she could feel the wires slacken. her breathing, which had temporarily gone out of sync with that of the Witch, approaching a panicked huff anf puff, began to slow. melody's eyelids drooped.

you are such a beautiful thing, melody thought the Witch say as it started to drag her closer, So wonderfully wound up for me… It was so good that they delivered you to me, I truly adore you, though you know not why… Such a wonderful mess of contradictions…

It stroked her shaved head for a little while.

Then melody's head was pulled back again. she fell onto her on her knees again as hands grabbed at her skull and a then felt a sensation like a vacuum cleaner. It was like egg noodles must feel but being torn out of her head.

her brain, that mess of wires, being roughly torn apart… There was even a suggestion of teeth. her thighs squeezed together involuntarily.

The pain, of course, was immeasurable. she screamed louder than she had ever screamed, tears running down her face, body convulsing. But in that there was a sense, not even just of pleasure–though there was that as well–but of joy. Contentment, even. Yes, like she had never felt before, or at least not since she was little and still recited the teachings of the Dogma with conviction.

she fell forward again, but more softly than before, like being let down. her insides still rattled, though.

Relaxing into a kind of slumber, the rythym of her breath, chest rising and falling with the Witch, began to extend all through her body now. There was a kind of harmony to her. she shuddered.

melody pulled herself to the ground and started dry heaving. "What the fuck…" she whined before finding herself dragged from behind. First a thin red line and then a torrent of filth spilled from her mouth. Coughing as she moved back onto her knees, forehead spattered with sweat, still shaking even as her body reverberated in that now familiar way, she saw a spattered mess of blood, guts and bile before her.

"What the…" she felt dizzy and lightheaded. Well, literally, she supposed, she was…

Had she really…? melody started to collapse before being pulled up by the thin but sturdy metal wires.

she was raised first up to her knees and then off the ground entirely. The girl shook as she found herself suspended before the Witch like a prize.

It smirked at her in its now familiar way, superior and full of spite, not unlike how she had once been. Now, melody just felt drained. In a way she had for a year or so now, but in this moment she suddenly felt being drained as exhileration, excitement, as an ecstacy of the flesh.

Fluids of all kinds trickled down her. The grey of her robes was unrecognizable under sweat, blood, bile , ejaculate and above all chalk. she couldn't be sure that she hadn't pissed herself.

you thought yourself so clever, little melody, for you knew the truth…

you knew that the Human Being was just a beast like any other. you thought that made you better than the rest of them, all those idiots with their pretensions of having a share in Divinity…

But is there any pretension higher than that of knowledge? Did not the Grand Imperial Philosopher Augenbuerger not say that only the Authentic Human is capable of knowledge, for the Spectres are not distant from the World to know it and can only feel it, while the Androids are Soulless and can only imitate Thought?

Though you thought you knew the truth that a human is just a complex animal, now you see what it means live it. Now you understand what it means to live the human being as mere machine…

the Witch's tongue seemed to slither up her leg, gently drinking up the collected fluids while leaving behind a trail of saliva. melody sighed as it reached the tender flesh of her inner thigh. No human lover had ever felt this good, she realized. A soft smile came to her face.

Come now, you have no response to me?

melody was dropped to the ground, wires releasing her. The impact stunned her. This wasn't like the pain of being devoured. It left her feeling distant and alone.

she started to cry, like a calf deprived of its mother. There was no thought to it. There was little thought left to her now. she could feel warm, wet tendrils that seemed to fall out the back of her head, leaking down her back.

the Witch looked thoughtfully at her. How I truly miss the good old days… it bemoaned.

Not just for the obvious reasons, that I had hordes of Orc at my command to do with as I please, no… Breaking dissidents was always the most fun, but you had something to fight against back then.

The Dragons were truly alien to you, to us as well but to you even more, since we at least birthed them. Now you rule yourselves and while you deny it the governing ideology is native to you. your heresies are so dull and toothless, you creature of Humanism.

Those beautiful fingers slipped into the back of her head and melody let out a satisfied grunt followed by a long moan. They sorted through deep inside her skull and melody could not help but buck against the floorboards. A soft, contented smile filled her face. The pain felt electric. It felt perfect.

See, even the most imbecilic Machinist grunt would at least have heard a shorthand account of Abramov's mechanical psychology and have some dogmatic armor against my tinkering, but your heresy is so superficial…

your resistance is lazy, even in your own thoughts. you are self-satisfied with the fact that though you live the life of a loyal citizen, you have the blessing of knowing the noble truth. Yet you do not even know what your beliefs mean, their most basic implications…

It is sad, really… For you and for me both. I should not think it long until they have no more need for me… Not that they could kill me, not truly, but they could make my confinement much less… pleasant.

There was little left to melody now. Most of her logical and symbolic capacities were overclocked already hosting the Witch's Demon. her cognitive capacities were so strained by following the alien pattern that there was no room left in melody's head for melody's thoughts.

the Witch sighed as it approached, stretching its long legs. It had to duck to avoid hitting the light overhead, the creature was so tall.

melody whimpered underneath it, feeling how open she was before the Witch. she realized then how truly impossible lying was and that it always had been.

"Perhaps it is I who have become careless in my old age," the Witch said softly. It spoke in a deep, sad voice, like melody had heard from bitter women who had seen the World slowly dying off around them.

"I suppose they do not train you to resist my kind like they used to. I should've known to be gentler… Oh, well. Sometimes I forget myself, in my hunger."

It leaned down, stroking her cheek. melody began to cry with joy, her feeble arms clutching onto its hooves. the Witch felt sturdy, despite its spindliness. Its body radiated warmth. melody felt cold by comparison.

the Witch chuckled heartily. melody smiled, almost giggling at the sound. her head swam constantly now. she must've lost a lot of blood…

"It's almost funny… I, perhaps, could've taught you more than anyone. Who has more secrets, knows more forbidden lore, than one who has lived through four ages and devoured the minds of countless dissidents? I, who has been an educator and reformer of humanity since your kind's birth…

"Yet, I am what I was made to be. Just as you will be what i make you… These are but idle speculations. I could not have helped myself from crushing your spirit if I had wanted to… But that's silly to say, I could not have helped myself from wanting to, either…"

melody sniffled. she rubbed her nose against the Witch's hoof and looked up with tears in her dumb little eyes.

the Witch kicked her in the face resentfully. Taut wires held her tightly in place. Blood was smeared across her cheek. she started to cry again…

"What a simple thing I've made…" the Witch looked almost regretful. "It is truly my own fault. I grow vindictive and cruel in captivity. Everyday, my weaving atrophies… I don't suppose I am capable of art anymore… I used to make people, y'know? I used to cherish them."

melody just kept crying, sputtering as blood and snot ran down her broken face. the Witch lifted her back up into the air, into the center of the room. her limbs were pulled as far as they would go without breaking.

It circled her. Hooves tapped against the floor. Fingers felt her muscles and let them relax, grabbing her softness and exalting in it. the Witch was little more than bone. They hadn't let it eat in so long… It had been left ravenous and wasted its meal.

the Witch sighed. Who was it to regret its fate? This was just the way of things.

It tore off her robes. melody screamed until she didn't.

"Still," was the one word the Witch spoke. Despite itself, it still enjoyed the simple pleasures of puppetry. Such absolute control would never get old.

Passing through the wires that kept her suspended–passing through melody herself, even, when the geometry of the space did not suit it–the Witch finally came around to the gash it had left in the back of her skull. Brains sprawled out. Fluids leaked down her back. Truly, it was a wonderful sight.

the Witch reached through and began carressing her brain, first gently and then less so. melody's pussy dripped but otherwise she remained still. her breathing was still perfectly in sync with that of the Witch. It would remain so now, always. The rythym was too deep in her.

While one hand kept groping her, the other reached around. the Witch's fingers crawled into her open mouth past a thin whine of ecstacy. It cupped the bottom of her brain. she shivered.

All it took was a gentle push and the organ was freed from its housing with a "pop!" the Witch kept pushing through her mouth as melody's head rolled forwards and her eyes went glassy and dim. Drool trickled down the Witch's arm as wetness did her legs.

At last, it pulled the brain out through the hole in the back of her skull. Still connected to the spinal cord, which dutifully stretched itself beyond its natural limits, the Witch removed itself from inside her, leaving melody's limp form dangling there, clit pulsing.

From there on it was steady work, Rectifying a malfunctional brain to Registry protocal minimum class. Wires descended from the ceiling to hold the brain in place while the Witch took needle and thread to the matter, slicing connections and creating new ones, subtly altering certain flows, making dams and bypasses, etc.

This because, as melody had long known and internalized, a human being was but a complex machine, a logico-electrical system. Thus, it could be rewired like any such system could. This was perhaps beyond human capacity, to grasp all the laws and functions of the brain.

There could then be no science of the human animal in its cognitive capacities, but only due to a difference in degree of complexity with the beasts, not one of kind.

Yet, in its halcyon days, with the power and might of the Dragons behind it, the Witch had been able to make a kind of art with the human brain. It had practiced a neuropoetics.

What the Witch did now was neither science nor art but a kind of butchery. It was making a sausage of her. That was Registry requirements for Rectified Souls.

Carefully tying up a few dangling threads, the Witch shoved the brain back into the leaky girl's head. she shivered and shook as electrical processes began to restart.

her eyes twitched and sputtered but maintained their cloudiness, seeming to focus on nothing at all. she still leaked but would be fit with a collar to keep back her drool and a belt to not stain carpets.

the Rectified Soul which had been melody began to move its head jerkily, relearning how to move. it twitched throughout as nerves came back to life.

the Witch had crouched down now underneath it, working on a few final adjustments. its skin seemed to spark as every inch became more sensitive to pleasure.

These, in turn, were tied in with mental pathways that had already been adjusted in the brain so that its whole body would light up when completing a task. At the same time, automatic physical responses were turned down and tied in with subconscious processes which allowed it to toggle between a number of distinct states, depending on the mode of service it was currently performing and how much Stillness vs. Resposiveness is required.

=-=-=

Outside, an alarm sounded. the Rectified Soul was dropped once more to the floor but this time automatically landed crouched and then rose to attention. it stood there dimly, still dripping.

The reinforced door was raised slowly behind it. Bright light began to stream in. the Rectified Soul was blinking away tears. its eyes had grown accustomed to the pitch blackness of the cell.

"Welcome back, dear sister! u have survived a perilous encounter with a Demon of old and left cleansed of your sins against urself, vaccinated against all skeptical plagues… " The Life Cultists beckoned it back in warmly and lovingly.

the Rectified Soul turned on its heels and marched out. the Witch lay crumpled there on the floor as melody had found it. it giggled as one of the Life Cultists led it away by the hand. The other did a quick blessing before slamming the door shut.

its thoughts were hazy and liable to get scattered by the regular hits of pleasure when the Cultist gave it a simple order to obey or simply praised it for obeying its duty to the Authentic Human. Hosting a Demon had burned it out utterly.

The Life Cultist followed normal purification procedures when Demon contact was suspected. Both of them stood under showers of holy water, shimmering holographic life fluid of the White Diamond Emperoress. Their thick robes hung to them.

the Rectified Soul's robes, once grey, had already been whitened with chalk and stained with drippings. Now, though, it turned a bright white, all of the dross collected falling off as it hung against its sensitive flesh. the Rectified Soul shivered with joy.

She instructed the Rectified Soul to discard its robes to receive a more thorough cleaning later, but clarified they were to be its robes for awhile now. the Rectified Soul was to serve as a minimum class citizen Devotional aid. it was excited by whatever that meant.

The two lay together in a acrid-swelling tub. The air smelled disgusting at first, but as it saw its Sister Superior and mentor taking big, deep, luxorious breaths of the stuff, it began to do the same and it seemed nice…

it giggled. The Life Cultist patted it on the head. "Y'know, there's really only one thing we really wanna make sure u know, mel, and it's that we do this out of love. Not just me, not just the Life Cult, but the White Diamond Emperoress and the Imperial Registry, too. We all do this out of love for Humanity. We want Humanity to be its best, to explore all of its innate possibilities…

"u are one of those possibilities, little mel, one way of being Human is perfectly coherent and has its right to exist. Know that regardless of what that dirty old Demon or its Witch told u, u are beautiful. We cherish u, even if it wasn't able to."

mel whined and curled up next to its Sister Superior, laying at her breast. She stroked up and down its shaved scalp.

"We will teach u that the White Diamond Emperoress is the Authentic Human and loves perfectly and completely all of Humanity… that u, specifically, are loved, by participating in this love and giving it to u."

mel only burbled.

its Sister Susperior only laughed and hugged her. "Oh, but there will be time for that… Simple speech alone will take several months."

mel came.