The Truth Part 2

“Here we are…” cleopatra gestured to another nondescript warehouse door. They were in the corners of this world. The tourist and posters were gone, back here there was only flickering lights and echoes.

The door was labeled ‘Hosts’

Cleopatra read it as ‘Armory.’

Shy Molly needed no convincing or gather of strength she opened the door right away and beckoned the other two in. “Let’s finish this.”

The warehouse was much the same as where they’d found Molly’s people. But instead of mannequins stacked on the endless shelves there were boxes 10x10 boxes with a blue light glowing over a red door.

“It’s a prison.” Stand breathed. Perhaps ‘host’ had more than one meaning. It was strange that these other worldly entities took had human forms. He imagined a million little cells holding the humans whose lives these things stole.

Cleopatra aproached a console just as Molly had in the other warehouse. Life dawned upon the screen just as it did on her phone. They seemed to be similiar mechanisms, so she was easily able to bring up the search function It started at ‘A’ she brushed her finger across the screen, and the options moved to ‘B’.

In real life the shelves swept to the left. A gust of wind blew through the warehouse. All those millions of tons of metal moved as quickly and easily as the pixels on the screen. The three mortals shuffled uneasily. Visions of meat smeared across the floor asaulted all their minds.

The queen looked back to Stan, who braced himself with Molly and gave a nod.

Bracing herself with the console, Cleopatra siped her hand across the screen rapidly cycling as quickly as she could from ‘B’ to ‘S’. The hurricane it kicked up was so intense that Cleopatra had to hold onto the console to keep from getting thrown away. Her legs lifted off the ground, and it was only the strengths in her fingers that allowed her to stay in place.

Stand and Molly weren’t so lucky. The two of them were pancaked against the back wall like a tilt-a-whirl.

This was not mechanism mean to be used by humans.

When the gust died down, the three mortals fell to the ground with a groan.

The S collum started with Sabbath, and went on from there. Cleopatra panned he finger down teh she shelf in front of her began to shuffle through the ‘S’ names until they eventually came to ‘Skylar’. Her box no more descript or important than any other.

What was more horrifying? That Skylar’s great hurt and horror was so mundanley hidden among these many million of shelves, or that every box could contain such magnificent foulness?

Stan and Molly both dragged themselves to Cleopatra who was bathed in the glow of the blue light. It was only upon drawing near that Stan noticed the queen was shaking. He slipped his hand in hers. “One last hurdle.”

“I’m not afraid.” She lied. This was an attack on Skylar’s most sacred ground. All the horrors and pain the little devil had inflict on her had all be done in the name of ratings. Who knows what she’d be capable of after this?

Molly checked the console, and saw that each of the rooms has a description. For Skylar, in an unoffensive font read “Skylar teaches Jamie to play the piano.”

Stan’s ears perked up. “She’s lowkey a great piano player.”

“So weird.” Molly shook her head. “Who do you think Jamie is?”

“Another contesant.” Cleopatra put an uneasy hand on the door. “We ready?”

Whether they were or now, there was a great thundering sound that boomed down the entire complex. Like some kind of great explosion had rocked the whole world. Despite there being no movement in the warehouse they all got the sense that they were falling to the side.

“Ready or not!” Molly cried. She grabbed Cleo’s hand and ripped the door open. The three fell forward into a new world.

In the next moment they were out of the warehouse and now stood in a shoddy trailer. There was not an ounce of color for their eyes to harvest from the landscape. Only black and white. The tailer was a tacky little place with a tacky little plastic-wrapped couch. It smelled like cigarette smoke, and Bob Dylan was featured in three framed photographs around the room. Finally, there was the music, sweet sweet music. A talented artist sat at a piano. A new shiny thing that glowed even in the monochrome.

At the piano was a young woman, a child, whose feet didn’t even touch the ground from her stool. She was a majesty, her hands flicked and tickled the teeth of her instrument and produced such art.

The three strangers in the room entered cautiously. This is not what they’d been expecting, thought that would have been the truth for every possible situation that unfolded within these walls. “Skylar has a kid?” Stan whispered to Cleopatra.

“She looks just like her.” Molly took a step forward. The little princess on the stool was the spitting image of the woman they’d seen on stage just an hour ago.

“She has a child.” You could hear the queen salivating as she said those words. Was there a better weapon, a better tool, a better bribe than this? Babs really came through on this one. Cleopatra took a step forward and reached out for the little girl.

“Cleo!” Stan snapped.

Cleo’s hand went right through the child. The girl made no reaction to the **** other than buzzing into static for a moment. “Damn.”

“Tell me you weren’t about to kidnap her.”

“Don’t be naive.” She snapped. “None of this does any good if we don’t have the loaded gun.”

At that moment, a discordant note split the house into silence. It was so wrong, so against the tune that the little genius had been creating, that it brought dread to all who heard it.

There was silence, and then…

“You little bitch!” A shrieking harpy call. Out from the bedroom came a thing. Stomping on the thin floor with tacky pumps. She was wearing tight hotpants, and a simple black t-shirt. Cleopatra's mind landed on a memory of Atossa. This haggard looking woman pulled the girl's arm off of the Piano and placed her lit cigarette into the flesh of her little arm. The girl cried out in pain. "I'm not going to let you embarrass me in front of those agents, playing like that."

"Ooooooow! Mama I'm tired." The girl whined, in way of explanation. "Can I take a break?"

"Not until you get it right." She swatted at the girl's back and gestured to the piano with the lit cigarette. "Come on, start over. Come on you know if you shine in front of those agent's mama's gonna take you to Disney World, come on."

Music returned to the house, and that thing loomed over her daughter, like a buzzard and a roadkill. It seemed to Molly that the woman was waiting for a mistake, eager for it. And she was right, for the thing this creature feasted on was innocence, and powerlessness.

“Isn’t she beautiful?” Terror stabbed each of their hearts. It was HER.

“Skylar!” Stan whipped around. “I’ll hold her!” Stan lunged for her, but with a swipe of her hand Skylar laid him out on the couch. She was already sitting on the crinkly plastic.

“Now now, you’ve come this far. Let’s at least get some answers.” She seemed calm and almost disinterested in the invaders of her inner place. The whole of her attention was focused on the little girl.

“What is this place?” Cleopatra still had the idea that she could win this.

“Even we don’t know.” Skylar confessed. “These are clips from a previous project. They scrapped the show, but they still use the clips.”

“For what?”

“For us, the hosts.”

“How? What are you things?”

“I don’t know that either. I only know that we are made. I remember simply existing at some point like a light was switched on. I was a formless shade, though. It was me and my other half. We were not yet anything, but they had plans.”

“What plans?”

“The producers have no creativity, they leave that to us. They can only make these shades out of… whatever we used to be. They can’t come up with a Skylar. They can’t make me cute, and sweet and pink. Instead they bring us here. They show us options of who we could be, and we decide.”

“Why would they let you decide?” Molly asked. No one had ever asked for her opinion before they made a new person out of her again and again and again.”

Skylar smiled. “Because they have no creativity. They create us for a job, but they have no idea how to get it done. They only think of things in a broad picture, a show about the devil! How do you even do that? They made a shade with the goal of making that season and the show them a selection of these lives." She gestured to the trailer. "Then we choose what we want to be, some people want cool, or stylish, others want repulsive or evil.”

Stan looked to the woman smoking a cigarette.

“For me they wanted evil. The people they showed me were so mean and nasty I didn’t want to be any of them.” She stood up and walked to the piano. “Even when I was nothing, I knew I'd rather be that than cruel. They told me choose, choose you have to choose, but I kept looking. And then I found her, Skylar.” She said the name as if it were made of gold. She brushed her hand across the girl’s hair, so perfectly it almost looked like she was actually touching her.

“The girl?” Cleopatra asked.

“Skylar.” Skylar smiled. “I sat here watching her…” a tear ran down her cheek. “She was so beautiful I knew I wanted to be her. I wanted to be so talented, so beautiful, so innocent. I wanted someone to love me like her mom loves her, and I wanted to go see Disney World.”

“Did you make it?” Molly asked, overcome with a strange moment of empathy for this creature.

Skylar beamed. “I did.”

She took a moment to shift through her thoughts. “I don’t know what happened to her, or who she became, but i carry her with me. I try to live the good and fantastic life I hope she had.” Then sadness. “I never found someone to love me.”

Stan was so confused. “Why did Babs send us here? She made it sound like you’d be ashamed of what we found. Like this would somehow destroy you.”

“Yeah…” Molly mumbled. “If anything this makes me feel… like you’re not the bad guy.”

Skylar shrugged. “Who knows why that hag does anything? Maybe she’s ashamed of who she picked. Maybe her inspiration’s star never faded, maybe she assumes everyone eventually becomes as hateful and spiteful as her. Whatever her goal was, it failed. Skylar is my greatest treasure, she saved me from being the evil creature they wanted me to be.”

A cruel laugh escaped from Cleopatra’s throat. She tried to suppress her mirth, but the cackle would not be contained. “You stupid little thing.” She crossed her arms, a snake-like smile on her face. “Here is my proposal: crown me the winner when we get back to Colorado, make Stan the master, and give Molly a life in the real world, and I will allow you to continue to live in your comfortable lie.”

Skylar glared, and crackled with power. She was good and bored of being a victim today. “There’s no deal to make Cleopatra.”

Cleo tutted. “Think carefully, this is a question of your very soul. **** me for a hundred seasons, you will never equal the pain I’ll inflict upon you.”

Skylar frowned. “This is just sad Cleo… I got you. Surrender with a little dignity.”

Cleo sighed, but it was a performance. She was elated that Skylar had denied her offer. The room stood mesmerized as a tattoo formed on her neck, it was of a ravenous wolf looming over a toddling child. “You really had no business raising us from hell, don’t you know anything?” She cackled, utterly ascendant within the room. “I am Isis, and I do not surrender!”

Molly took a step towards the door. This was about to get ugly. “Stan…” she whispered and pulled him with her.

“Skylar isn’t the child you stupid little thing. It’s the mother.”

Skylar paused, her brow creased In thought. “What do you mean?”

Cleo was as satisfied with this moment as Boudica had been seeing the entire studio in flames. In this moment, she understood Skylar completely, her pains, her motivations, her desires, it was all laid out before her.

“Babs wanted you to be a nasty little cretin. Don’t you see? They only showed you models who reflected that desire. They wouldn’t have put a child’s personality in with that branch. Her name is Jamie, but this clip is about Skylar. That’s who you chose to be.” Cleo gestured to the tacky woman with the cigarette. To Skylar she looked like Al’s wet dream. “You chose to become a thing that mistakes **** for love.”

Skylar shook her head, she was whirling between Cleopatra and the real Skylar. She looked like she’d seen a ghost. “That doesn’t make any sense, I chose to be Skylar… I’m a princess.”

“Exactly.” Cleopatra twisted the knife again. “You’re under the delusion that you’re a sweet and kind child, but in truth you are an evil and abusive thing, hardly a woman at all. Eve told us all about it, no matter how hard you try you can’t stop the evil thoughts from controlling you.”

She was right…

Skylar quaked. There was christmas… where she’d just wanted them to feel like a family, she lost all control. How many dozens of times had she lost herself on a contestant? Back and back and back all the way until the twins. Her first victims.

“No…”

“Face it Skylar!” Cleo commanded her. “This is who you are.”

Karen was right! Everyone knew but her. They were laughing at her all these years. They knew! Even as she laid awake terrified of her own mind.

“No!” He gripped her head. “I’m not a ripper… I can’t be! I didn’t choose this. I’m a princess… I’m who I choose to be…”

Cleopatra would never be scared of Skylar, you can't be scared of something you hold contempt for. If ever you are to understand an enemy you must first understand yourself, and Skylar didn't even know about her own creation. How pitiful. She watched the shuttering, shaking psychopath, and saw two routes before her. More pain, to punish Skylar not only for her evil, but her innocence as well, to completely break her mind, or mercy. She could allow the blonde a small sliver of hope, redemption as Cleopatra's cool. Greed won out, why destroy when you can own?

“_They _did this to you Skylar! **** you to be something you didn’t want to be, let you live in a fantasy! You wanted to be someone’s child, but they made you the person who beats the child!”

“No. No! NO! I would never hurt Skylar! No! No!” Head still gripped between her hands she began stomping her feet. The room shook, and objects began to fly through the air, violent missiles. “No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!No!”

“She’s losing it!” Stan cried running for the door.

“You!” Skylar pointed a shaking finger to Cleopatra, her eyes wear teary, bloody, shattered with madness. “You’re a liar! I’m nothing like my mommy!” She lunged towards Cleopatra, in such anguish she forgot she had any powers at all.

With an unassailable cool, Cleopatra slapped the attack away. “I warned you…”

“LIIIIIIAR!” Skylar screamed and threw her hand forward a beam of energy shot forward and chewed up half the room. Cleopatra survived only thanks to Molly pulling her to the door. Anything that got hit by Skylar’s attack was transformed. Half the trailer was now a throbbing moaning landscape of lactating tits.

(If you'd be so kind as to imagine a soundtrack to the next few scenes)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23G9cXnATs4

“That’s our hint to leave!” Cleopatra said pushing the other two out. She closed the door behind herself, but Skylar was on her heels. When she heard the door open, she screamed, “Hold onto something!” She spun around and saw a wild eyed Skylar snarling at her from the threshold. “You know my terms!” Cleopatra cried out. “Come find me when you’re willing to negotiate, I know how to fix you!” She swept her hand up on the console, a barrage of S names flicked across it, and Skylar’s box bolted into the sky. Then Cleopatra’s swiped her hand horizontally, and the letter roulette was spun!

Another hurricane was kicked up as run after row passed by in the blink of an eye. Skylar vanished into that oblivion.

Stan grabbed onto Molly as the two of them were blown back. He groaned as his back hit the wall. Cleo tried hanging onto the console, but her fingers gave up, and she was thrown bodily against the back wall.

When the wind died down, she fell to the floor, cold. “Cleo!” Stan cried, he picked her up. Still breathing. “She’s alive…”

“Or whatever she is.” Molly pushed the exit open. “We gotta go!”

Stan hefted the beauty onto his back, and held onto her legs. Together he and Molly entered the hell that had been unleashed upon the studio. The lights were out, and they had the feeling of running up a steep incline as they ran up the hall like they were on the deck of a sinking ship.

“She had the map!” Molly cried, shoving a bystander out of her way.

“She had both maps! Just find an exit!”

“We’ll never get back home!” Molly hooked around the corner, and a sudden shift of gravity compelled her to start running along the wall.

“Anywhere is better than here!”

A door in front of Molly opened up forcing her to jump over the gap. Stan could see a man pop his head out of the hole. “You’ve got real guts honey! Come into my office and I’ll make you a star!”

Stand used his head as a stepping stone.

“Shit!” Molly halted her stride, just barely coming to a stop in time to keep from falling into a pit. It had been a hallway, but now that the building was tilted as it was, it had become a dire threat, much too far to jump.

“We have to go back!”

Molly shook her head. “There’s a hallway on that side, too, we’re trapped!”

“Look!” Stan pointed to the bottom of the hallway. There was a door labeled with the four glorious letters E,X, I, and T.

“How are we going to get down there?”

There was a snapping sound, and the hallway they'd come from transformed from being tile and drywall to flesh and tits. If they had a better angle, they would have seen Skylar groping her way up the hallway like a Rockwall.

“Jump!” Stand cried before making the leap.

He threaded the needle perfect, landing right on the door. His weight kicked it off its hinges and sent him and the door into utter darkness.

In a panic, Molly looked back at the jiggling rockwall. Whatever was climbing it was getting closer. Behind her and above her doors were opening up with men and women singing her praises. “You’re gorgeous! You’re a star, you have X factor! Come inside let’s talk about making you a star! You belong on reality t.v!”

Molly gulped and jumped. “Sorry, but I always envisioned myself on the sports channel!” And into the nothingness, she went.