Chain 3 – A Chance of Tentacles Past - An Exilian Chain-Writing Story 2020

[Leafly]

Chain 3 – A Chance of Tentacles Past

An Exilian Chain-Writing Story

By justatoady, Waddleflap, SLiV, Muxley, Leo, KingSingh, Nakyo, and Jubal



The centaur sees no stars when she looks up at the night sky. Bright, blue-white lamps illuminate the clean streets and the furtive population, and the sound of her hooves on the concrete is absorbed into the city's melody. The centaur's legs have a memory of their own. She lets herself be swept along by the ponderous mass, her mind preoccupied with waking from its trance. She yawns and stretches and is mildly surprised when she comes to a halt in front of her destination. Before entering, she brushes dust from her hooves and undoes the top button of her blouse. At this time of night, she can take her pick of the tables, but she chooses to stand at the bar. She lays her laptop in its large, black bag on the counter, then takes off her glasses and puts them next to the bag.

'I thought you weren't coming,' the Pudding King tells her. He kisses her on both cheeks. 'How late do you work now?' he asks.

'Not as late as you,' she tells him. 'You have my reward?'

The Pudding King produces a heavy crystal chalice and offers it up to the centaur.

'Sticky Toffee Love,' he names his creation.

It smells like a freshly baked cake. She lifts a silver spoon to her lips and loses herself in the warmth and the sweetness.

The Pudding King grants the centaur this single moment of bliss. 'Vanessa is here,' he admits.

The tiniest hesitation as the centaur takes her next mouthful, which has already lost some of its sweetness out of the door the Pudding King's words have cracked ajar in her mind. Studiously unreactive, she continues eating.

The silence threatens to swell into and overflow the gaps of their conversation as the centaur teeters on the edge of memory, the Pudding King unsure of how he might help. Slowly, almost mechanically, the spoon continues on its circular journey between chalice and mouth. She knows she can't just stay silent; the emptiness of the chalice forces her hand as she looks up to meet the Pudding King's eye, one eyebrow arched sardonically.

'Sticky Toffee Love?'

He blinks, mouth slightly agape.

'I...yes. It just seemed fitting somehow.'

'Because she's here?'

'I suppose.'

She snorts. Ever clichéd, always just that one step wide of the mark, the Pudding King's obliviousness to all but the most obvious of facts would be laughable at any other moment. She knows from long experience that there is no point starting an argument over it.

'Did she say anything?'

'Anything?'

'Well, unless she's somehow managed to refrain from speaking, she must have said something. Expecting an answer as to where on earth she's been for the last three years may be a bit much, but you never know.'

The Pudding King tries to make decisions quicker than his mind can actually handle to answer the question. Before he can even open his mouth fully, though, the door behind him opens.
A familiar sense of comfort floods the room. The centaur fights it, determined not to let go of her anger. She looks down and starts playing with the spoon in front of her, hoping to appear too distracted to notice the golden-haired girl stepping through the doorway. Instead she becomes mesmerized by the crystal's cruel reflections, slowly adjusting the angle of the spoon as the inverted figure approaches her.

'I see you still have a sweet tooth,' Vanessa says with a grin.

The centaur glares at her, but says nothing.

It takes a gentle tap on his shoulder to disrupt the Pudding King from hopeful anticipation. 'I'll leave you two to it, then,' he says, before turning around and making his way to the kitchen.
'I know I hurt you,' Vanessa begins when he's gone, more serious this time, but still with an airiness that somehow doesn't feel as inappropriate as it should. 'What we had... I was foolish to think it could work.'

'You knew exactly what you were doing. It's who you are. I don't blame you for that. In your eyes I was just another nymph-head looking for a fix, and you were happy to oblige.'
'That's not true. You were special to me.'

The centaur had felt special, at the time. But then wasn't that the point? Even now, part of her wants to believe Vanessa, to forgive, to forget. She shakes it off.
'That's not what you told the police.'

~

Vanessa paused, taken aback the bluntness of the centaur's statement.

'I was scared.' She said, averting her eyes and sweeping her fringe out of her face. 'I didn't want anyone thinking we had planned it together... it was all your idea, anyway.'

The centaur felt rage surge through her as she stared down her former lover. 'All my idea? Was it my idea to bribe the munchkin council to get the logging rights for the gumdrop forest? Was it my idea to secretly fund teddy bear insurgents to scare the natives away? WAS IT MY BLOODY IDEA TO...!?'

The centaur stopped, peering around at the audience she had been gathering before returning to look at the quivering mass that was once the woman she loved.

'Y-you were the o-one who started emb-bezzling from the pension f-fund' Vanessa stammered, again adjusting the fringe of her blonde wig.

Even with all that had happened, seeing Vanessa so terrified still sent a twinge through the centaur's hearts. She unclenched her hooves as she looked into Vanessa's eyes, all six of them spread randomly over her grey, slimy body.

The centaur raised a hand to brush the Shoggoth's fringe behind one of her many, many tentacles, 'remember when I said I would love you forever?'

Vanessa lifted her gaze, giving a nervous smile through one of her churning maws of nightmare. 'You said nothing could ever tear us apart.'
The centaur gave her a smile right back. 'I lied.'

She couldn't bear to tell Vanessa what she's now been reduced to. She couldn't imagine why an ethereal beauty like her could still have her eyes set on a disgraced centaur. After having done time for five centuries at the Booyardar Penitentiary, the centaur tried to put the failed heist behind her and went on to earn an honest living as a resurrectionist.

For the past three painful years, she had been trying to locate her former lover, but to no avail. With every cadaver she collected, she had wished that she could at least be reunited with the mass of her beloved. If not for the Pudding King, she would still have been kept in the dark. But what was three years compared to five hundred, they both meant an eternity to her.

The centaur tried to hide her bitterness, but her tender affection for the Shoggoth could not mask her true feelings. Nonetheless, she still tried.

'So you lied? All these while?" Vanessa stammered softly, refusing to believe all her eight ears.

'You know you asked for it,' the centaur whispered stoically, with her eyes falling on the shimmering corner of her laptop exposed from her bag at the counter, where the Pudding King was eyeing the duo intently.

Vanessa followed her gaze towards the laptop. 'You're still carrying that old thing round?' she said after a long silence. 'I thought you would have covered up all the evidence.'

'You'd think wouldn't you,' replied the centaur, still staring at the laptop. 'But I thought I'd hold onto it just in case you wanted another crack at the job.'

Vanessa's eyes darted towards the centaur, all twelve of her fang filled mouths twisted in shock, 'Surely you're joking?' she whispered harshly, 'They'd be expecting us, especially after how badly we biffed it last time, and don't forget how you murdered the whole crew as soon as we got past the first gate because one of them looked at you funny!'

The centaur snorted.

"Really. You think after 503 years they're still on high alert waiting for illegal loggers with botched permits?" The centaur said, pointedly ignoring the accusation. Vanessa shifted, her tentacles writhing around her. The centaur could read Vanessa well enough to know that meant her proposal had been rejected.

"I'll take that as a no then." The centaur said, starting to shove the laptop into the bag. 503 years she'd been dragging around that laptop, following any lead on Vanessa she could find. She hadn't realised how much she'd invested in the idea of pulling one last job with Vanessa when she finally found her.

Only to find that the Shoggoth had lost her nerve.

"Shame." The centaur flicked her mane out of her face. This time she didn't even try to hide her bitter tone. "Why are you here then?"
Vanessa shifted again, before she finally said,

"I heard you've become a resurrectionist." Three of Vanessa's eyes were watching the centaur warily, while the other three darted around the room. They rested briefly on the Pudding King, before coming to rest on the centaur again. Confident no one important was listening, she opened just one of her mouths. "I want you to resurrect me."

The centaur blinked, her tail starting to twitch behind her. So, Vanessa already knew about her embarrassing new profession. Shame burned through her, her tail starting to flick more violently in response.

"Well, I hate to state the obvious, but you're not dead."

"Not yet," said Vanessa. "Soon."

"What do you mean? You're nigh invincible..." the centaur looked at the Shoggoth closely. There was something a little different, those eyes still the colour of fresh toffee, the tentacles still delicate, but somehow... oh. Oh, no...

"You think I lost my taste for adventure for nothing?" asked Vanessa. "I cut and ran because I had to, because I knew what was at stake, because..."

"...because you never needed to finish the job," completed her erstwhile colleague, eyes closed and five hundred years of realisation crashing in. "Because you'd already found what you needed. Because it wasn't about gumdrops, and it wasn't about money, it..."

"Yes." Vanessa's voice was quiet. "It was about freedom."

"You didn't trust me." The centaur's voice was flat.

"I am trusting you now. Please."

"And doing this... will kill you. Is killing you."

"Yes, I ate the helix. And if I die," said Vanessa, "what will become of them? Where will they turn?"

"I'm an ex-con with a murder record," snorted the centaur, suddenly laughing despite herself, "and a former lover who you ditched for half a millennium, and I'm somehow the person you have in mind to help you save your entire species?"

"You wanted one last job," smiled Vanessa with half of her mouths. "How about the biggest jailbreak in all creation?"

The centaur grinned. "I'm in."

~

It is morning, and the Pudding King walks out onto the terrace and plucks a sugar-flower, smelling sweetness and lavender between his fingers. Somewhere below the earth, ten thousand shoggoths are writhing free of aeon-old prisons, called to life again by sacrifice and desperation. Their ends will be their own. He hopes they will forgive the sins of his ancient forefathers against them, he hopes that they will find a peace for themselves in this strange new world. But that will be up to them.

He hopes they will enjoy his chocolate implosion cake. Everyone deserves to enjoy chocolate.

The morning is cold, and wisps of his breath solidify into candyfloss in air that feels, somehow, just a little lighter today.





This is one of three stories written as part of our summer 2020 chain writing project. You can read the other two here and here, and find the project wrap-up announcement here.

Editor's Note: At first you think it is a food story, maybe even a cooking battle of some kind that the centaur has come to rule on. Maybe there are a set of contestants? But you would be wrong. A tale of betrayal, nearly lost love and imprisonment. Vanessa once helped imprison the centaur but now needs the centaurs help to eventually help herself and free her people. Though their time away from one another has been great, the memory and assurances are still fresh as ever. Time the centaur spent captive has not been forgotten, as though it happened only yesterday. A story of lost love and being conflicted with many choices. 

The Editor Is Now Concerned About: What you all thought of the story of course!

[Tusky]

This one is amazingly surreal.

[SLiV]

Well this one definitely turned out differently than I thought it would.

For those curious, my part started when Vanessa entered the tavern, and I was trying to communicate that

Spoiler

she was some sort of medusa/sirensong-style drugdealer-but-for-love nymph that accidentally fell in love with her junkie.

I really like where the story went from there, and ending with the Pudding King was a nice touch as well. This was a lot of fun to do!

[Jubal]

I was the final writer, so looping back to the Pudding King at the end, and the endgame being freeing all the shoggoths from ancient prisons, were both me It seemed the best way to wrap it up given the number of twists.

And yes, the whole thing is intensely strange, and I quite like that fact.

[Gmd]

what a surreal read. I just need a story about those teddy bear insurgents now.