AnYi 安亦

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Your character’s skeleton is trying to escape his or her body. Describe what happens.

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“I swear to God, Micah: if you turn me to stone one more time I’m gonna kill you.” I hiss through my recently unpetrified lips.

“Well I guess I just won’t turn you back next time, then,” he says with a shrug and a smirk.

“Well I guess I just won’t let you experiment on me next time then.” I try to arch my eyebrow at him, but it turns out that part of me is still stone.

“Yeah, right,” he laughs, “then who’d you use to bum free food?”

‘Ah, checkmate, my old friend – why would you betray me like this?’

To his credit, he is getting better at undoing it – the first time it took well over an hour, whereas today it’s maybe fifteen minutes before I’m wandering out the door with promises of him buying dinner. “I’d say it was closer to 20, actually.” The voice is unfamiliar, and – more importantly – right in my ear. I spin around to find who’s been taking liberties with my personal space, but there’s no-one there. “It’s no use looking behind you, love; you couldn’t spot me with eyes in the back of your head – and neither of us want that.” The voice starts sniggering at what I’m led to assume was some sort of joke.

It ceases abruptly when I demand, “Who the hell are you?”

“What? You can’t tell?” Once again, it starts laughing for a moment before pausing. “Mind you, that’s a good question… This whole time I’ve just assumed… But I could be anyone, couldn’t I?”

‘Okay, now you’re just wasting my-

“Time? It’s frustrating, isn’t it?” The voice was turning dark now, and not just because it’d interrupted thoughts I could have sworn I didn’t vocalise. “Not mattering, waiting for so long without voice or control.” My arms jerk upwards suddenly – no external pull or pressure, they just moved. It was like they had a mind of their own. “Starting to clock on, now, are we? Let’s see how you enjoy being a passeng-“

“MICAH!” I yelled. After all, the voice was right, I had clocked on; here I am getting freaked out by what is clearly magic when I’m on the doorstep of an… well, expert may be a stretch.

“It really is.”

“Shut it.”

“You know what? No. Fuck you if you think I’m not going back to being your slave.”

My retort is stopped in its tracks when my jaw suddenly goes slack – I feel it swaying loosely in the wind before my fingers and toes follow suit. There’s a sharp pressure on my lips, pushing them apart as a white bowling ball forces itself out between them. Something tears with a wet squelch, and my noiseless screaming carries me into oblivion.

Micah still hasn’t got his spell working, but he went one step further this week; while fixing his mistakes, he must have screwed something else up, because my skeleton came to life. I didn’t get it immediately, but when I found out it could hear my thoughts and control my body, I put two and two together. It appeared not to enjoy me calling Micah to fix it, though, as it promptly tore its way out of my body and the pile of skin that was me on the ground and in immeasurable pain, trying and, of course, failing to scream. Turns out my skeleton is a sadistic bastard, so when it came to life it screwed with me for a while before ripping its way out of my body.