Source: maxtapety.pl
The Wishing Map is a full-length fantasy that is being posted episodically at this site. To read the previous episode click here. To read it from the start, click here.
Gina is entangled in the tentacles of a shape-shifting Beast that has assumed the one form she can’t bear to destroy: her perfected self, Divine Gina.
“Let go of her!” her brother shouted. “You can’t have her!” Gina heard a loud stomp, then a horrid shriek, followed by a slimy squish and a sack-of-potatoes grunt. “Ow, crud! Ow! Agghhh…” Zack’s voice gurgled into silence. All that remained was a torturous rasp, like air rushing from a punctured tire.
“Zack? What’s wrong?” Gina forced herself to look away from her flawless twin. What she saw made no sense. There on the turf was her brother—with a foot on his neck. Why would Divine Gina do that, and why did her foot have talons instead of toes? Its jagged yellow claws were piercing Zack’s flesh, causing blood to pool around him. His eyes were darting back and forth in an effort to track the movements of Divine Gina’s…tentacles? None of this made any sense.
Why would Gina’s beautiful, perfected self do this? Was it really happening? What should she do? She’d ask her perfect self, of course! But when she looked up again, Divine Gina suddenly looked a lot less divine. There were hairy hoses sticking out of her face, and her mouth wasn’t a mouth at all, but a muzzle filled with jagged, broken teeth. And her smell! It invaded Gina’s pores like death. And now she—it—was beginning to shrivel and shrink, its flawless flesh turning rotten and grey.
“Jeeeeeeenuhhh,” a voice choked.
“Zack?” Suddenly, what was left of Gina’s divine delusion vanished. There was Zack pinned to the ground, with the Beast about to vacuum his eyes out and plunge its cuisine-art snout into his torso. In a moment her brother would be dead!
“No!” Gina raised her broadsword over her head and brought it down in a furious blur. The Beast saw the flash and disentangled itself from its prey, but not in time to avoid a series of succulent shlunks as the blade hacked through one, two, three, four, five of its tentacles! It screeched like a banshee and jerked away.
Gina dropped to her knees. “Zack? No, no, no, no, don’t be dead. Please don’t be dead!” She caressed the bloody slits in his neck. “Zacky, get up! Please!”
Her brother eyes slid open. “Crud, that hurt!”
“Oh, Zack! I know, I know! I’m sorry, I’m sorry!”
“Why didn’t you—? Look out!”
“What?” Gina jumped to her feet and whirled around, ready to deliver the final blow. But the Beast wasn’t attacking, it was simply staring at them, its soulless eyes unable to comprehend what it was seeing.
And then Gina looked at the mesh patch between its eyes.
“No, Gina, don’t!”
φ
Thoughts: Love, real love, is the only cure for self-deception.


Well, OK, it didn’t exactly “crash.” I mean, there was no hole in the wall. There were no other bleeding computer owners standing around threatening to sue my pants off. Seven years (and one computer) ago, I somehow managed to delete a massive number of important files in one swell foop!







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