章 9: Twisted Stories
Me an mary were walking, she was wrapping her cold hands on my neck. "How do you have a physical body"
"Oh, I mean i have some spare souls since you ate all my lambs which were the souls of my tormentors or just unlucky people, but i was able to make a flesh puppet" What, what does souls have to do with flesh puppets, i am ignoring this broken girl, though i admit her crashout was reasonable.
I suddenly stopped as i realized something chilling. "Wait, that town wasn't real was it?" I asked.
"Uhm it is but the thing is, the things in the town weren't real, well some of them, But i and the other so called 'Children Rhymes' exist" A shiver ran down my spine at Mary's words. "Children's rhymes?" I asked, trying to make sense of the twisted logic in this nightmare world.
"Yeah," she said with a light laugh, as if this was all a casual conversation. "You've heard the stories the rhymes kids sing, the ones that seem harmless. But they all come from somewhere dark, don't they? Like me." She twirled her dark hair around her finger, her expression almost playful.
"And the others?" I pressed, my voice hesitant. "Are they like you?"
"Oh, some are worse," Mary said, her smile fading slightly. "They're like me, stuck in their own little tales of horror. Some try to break free, some embrace it. But we're all bound to this world, in a way. You know Jack and Jill? Little Bo Peep? Ring any bells?"
I swallowed hard, the realization sinking in. The rhymes weren't just stories they were histories, curses, lives twisted into cruel games. I felt a knot form in my stomach as I imagined what kind of nightmare each of them could have endured.
"So what now?" I asked, trying to ignore the unease creeping over me. "What happens to me?"
Mary leaned in closer, her cold breath brushing against my neck. "Oh, that's the fun part," she whispered, her tone playful yet unsettling. "You're part of the game now. You've seen what lies beneath the surface of these stories. That burning soul of yours ties you to this world in ways you don't even understand yet."
I stiffened, her words sinking in. I wasn't just a visitor passing through; I was becoming part of this twisted place.
"But don't worry," Mary continued, skipping ahead a bit and twirling in the moonlight. "You're with me, and I like you. I'll make sure the others don't get to you… yet." She smiled, her black eyes gleaming with something between mischief and malice.
"That's comforting," I muttered sarcastically, but my heart was racing. "What do you mean by 'yet'?"
"Hmm, well," she began, tapping her chin, "everyone's got a part to play. Even if you're not ready to admit it, you've already chosen a side, just by surviving. Michael, the others—they'll come looking for you. You're an anomaly now. And anomalies? They attract attention."
I stopped in my tracks. "Michael… the guy who can't die?"
"Yup! Goldilocks did a real number on him," she said with a giggle, as if it were some kind of joke. "He's not exactly in control of himself, but he has… his moments. He's a hunter, and let's just say he's always looking for someone like you."
My throat tightened. I hadn't asked for any of this, but it seemed like I'd been dragged into something much bigger than I'd realized. Something dangerous.
"Great. So what, do I run? Hide? Fight?"
Mary shrugged. "That's up to you. But this world our world it's not something you can just leave. Not really. You'll have to make choices soon. The kind that stick."
Her words hung in the air, and I couldn't shake the feeling that I was teetering on the edge of something irreversible. "Ugh i think you are more tolerable i guess, i am slowly going insane, also speak normally"
"Ok, do you want to here goldilocks twisted story" I had nothing to do right now so why not.
"Sure but the real one though" i answered in defeat.
Mary's grin twisted as she tilted her head, thinking. "Oh, right, you want the real version, huh? Fine. The bears in the Goldilocks story aren't animals. That's just the sanitized version people tell to make it palatable. The truth? They were humans people, just like you and me if you can call them that."
I furrowed my brow, my stomach tightening. "Humans?"
"Yep," she continued, her voice taking on a more casual tone, like she was telling me a campfire story. "Three men. A father, a son, and a brother. They lived out there, isolated, away from the world, doing what people do when no one's watching. They hoarded their wealth, protected it jealously, and made a ritual of devouring anything or anyone that wandered too close."
I stopped walking, a cold dread creeping over me. "You mean…"
"Yeah," Mary said softly, her voice taking on a darker edge. "Goldilocks wasn't just some girl who ate porridge and broke beds. She stumbled into something much worse. They found her, a young, innocent girl lost in the woods, and decided to have a little… fun."
Her eyes flashed, and I could see the truth behind her words something far more horrifying than anything the rhyme had ever hinted at. "They kept her there for days. They tormented her, played their twisted games, indulging their worst instincts. She tried to escape, but every door she opened just led her deeper into their grasp."
I clenched my fists, bile rising in my throat. "And no one helped her?"
"No one even knew she was there," Mary said, her tone cold. "That's the thing about people like that they make sure no one knows. And by the time they were done with her, she wasn't the same girl who wandered into that house. They broke her, body and mind."
I felt sick, my vision blurring with the weight of the story. "So what happened to her?"
"She snapped," Mary said simply. "She killed them. All three of them. But it wasn't quick, and it wasn't clean. She turned their own games on them. Locked them in their rooms, starved them, made them beg for their lives. When they finally died, she left that house, but she didn't go back to the world she knew."
"Where did she go?"
"Ah yes, where would she go, She died of course, yet she is still alive, She hates humanity, Everyone of us do and soon you will too" I felt a cold dread wash over me as Mary's words hung in the air. "What do you mean I'll hate humanity?" I asked, my voice trembling.
Mary shrugged, her grin widening. "This world changes people, twists them until they don't recognize themselves anymore. Once you've been part of these stories once you've survived them there's no going back. You start to see the cracks in everything. The cruelty, the lies, the way people hide behind their nice little tales. Goldilocks saw that. She saw the ugliness behind the world and snapped."
I looked away, the weight of her words pressing down on me. "I'm not like her."
"You think that now," Mary said softly, stepping closer. "But every choice you make, every moment you survive in this world, brings you closer to becoming like us. Like Goldilocks. Like me."
I clenched my fists, shaking my head. "I won't let that happen."
Mary's laugh echoed through the dark woods. "That's what everyone says. But this place, these stories they get inside your head, they twist your heart until you see the world for what it really is. You start to hate the people who made you part of this nightmare. And when you hate them enough… you start to enjoy it."
I looked into her black eyes, seeing something broken and lost in the depths. "That's what happened to you?"
Her smile faltered for a brief second, but she quickly recovered. "It doesn't matter"
She then kept quiet and refused to talk to me, i sighed and continued walking, its going to be six hours until we arrive at the next town.
The silence between us stretched as we walked, the oppressive atmosphere of the forest closing in. Mary's cold hands remained wrapped loosely around my neck, an uncomfortable reminder of how close I was to something dark and twisted. I couldn't shake the feeling that each step brought me closer to the edge of madness, but at the same time, I felt like there was no way back.
The moonlight cast eerie shadows through the trees, distorting the path ahead. As the minutes dragged on, the world around me seemed to blur at the edges, as if the reality I knew was slipping further away with every breath. I glanced at Mary, her expression unreadable, her eyes fixed ahead as if she were guiding me through her own personal nightmare.
Six hours until the next town. What kind of town would it be? Another illusion? Another trap? I didn't know, and the thought of it twisted my stomach. The uncertainty gnawed at me, but I couldn't stop walking. Not now. Not with Mary leading the way.
"Do you ever miss it?" I asked, breaking the silence. "Being… normal?"
Mary didn't answer immediately. Her grip on my neck tightened slightly, but she didn't look at me. After a long pause, she spoke, her voice soft and distant. "I don't remember what normal feels like."
Her words hit me harder than I expected. The way she said it, like she had lost something she didn't even realize was gone until it was too late, sent a chill down my spine. I couldn't imagine what it must've been like for her, to have her world twisted into something so grotesque that she no longer knew who she was.
But as we walked in that oppressive silence, I couldn't help but wonder if that's what awaited me too. Was I already changing, just by being here? By surviving? Would I eventually forget what it felt like to be myself, swallowed by this world of nightmares and twisted stories?.
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