The Matron - Story Commission

A little written something to share with you all today, coutesy of a certain lovely rabbit 🐰 A little different from the usual, but I won't spoil anything other than to say you'll like it if you like goo-girls. Let's be honest, you're here, so you like goo-girls :3

Stay beautiful, Smooth

<< Commission pasted below and attached in .doc format at the bottom >>

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We all have 'days from hell'. Some worse than others, but mostly they're just full of inconveniences, frustrations and a sense of things just not going our way.

Every once in a blue moon some of us will have days where things go even worse than that; maybe a death in the family, a life-changing accident or a sequence of life-changing events all coming at worse.

There is, however, a kind of 'day from hell' that puts all of these minor inconveniences to shame, that makes such days seem like a cakewalk.

I don't know it yet, but I'm just about to have one such day. The kind of day that nobody will dare tell the tale of, the kind of day that nobody will believe is even possible; tchyeah, that bad!

I've grown used to all kinds of unpredictable and cooky things happening these last three years; working the night-shift for a small-down hospital for so long will do that. Never seen something like this before though...

Even lost in the daze I find myself in, I can't help but see piercing hazelnut eyes cutting through as if analyzing me with the precision of scalpel knives. Attached to those smokey eyes is a face with an almost animalistic beauty: mature yet striking, cold yet also somehow magnetic.

Speaking of coldness, there's something almost unsettlingly odd about how her gloved hands feel under my fingertips, as if the woman inside is incandescent yet what she wears bears a ghostly, almost damp chill; it's impossible to explain and my senses are flailing accordingly.

Why am I touching her hands? Well it's the gentlemanly thing to do after we bumped into one-another around a corner. Gently holding her hands as if to make sure she isn't dizzy from our collision, I find my fingers lingering on her hands just a moment too long.

If I couldn't feel her against me I'd almost believe she were a ghost, that's how suddenly she seemed to spring up on me from my blind-side. Even then I'm not sure; it's impossible to touch a ghost, sure, but people aren't normally this... slightly mercurial.

Maybe it's just her appearance that has me so flummoxed, it really does lend to the idea of her being some kind of spirit from the past. Standing here, momentarily lost for words, it's like I've been teleported into a costume drama and come face to face with some regal duchess.

Her dress, flowing yet cinched in with one of those whalebone corsets, covers her from the neck down and accentuates not just her figure but her copious assets too. She really is like something from a bygone time, someone who once would have had men like me addressing her as 'your ladyship' or something.

Finally, as my peripheral vision takes in all of the bespoke outfit that covers her from the neck down to the floor as if made of one single piece of unimaginably expensive lace, I get my wits about me before Thom, my colleague, can interject.

“I-I'm sorry, ma'am,” I stammer out, my voice struggling to break through the strange malaise I find myself in. “That's completely my fault, I wasn't watching where I was going,” I apologise in an almost grovelling, out-of-character way. Sure, I'm a gentleman, but I'm not some pushover!

For a few long, tense moments, the woman in front of me says nothing, her head slowly tilting as her expressionless face regards me, the one patch of warm, peachy skin poking out from white linen and intricate gold embellishments.

I can't help but feel oddly enraptured, my eyes refusing to blink as if either imitating her or fearing I might miss even a moment of her presence. Shit, I'm a married man; what the hell am I doing?!

“Mmm~?” She responds with nothing more than a vibration yet something about it cuts through me like some spike-festooned weapon from the same sort of age I'm imagining when I look at this corsetted woman with a stature and poise like some kind of amazonian royalty.

“Y-Yeahhh,” I feel compelled to carry on, suddenly realising I'm still touching her and whipping my hands away with a blush to step back out of her intoxicating orbit, “here-” I hurriedly pat myself down as if I've forgotten something vital, taking a few moments to remember which pocket I keep my business cards in. “My card!”

Finally whipping one out I feel strangely compelled to offer it in two hands as if paying penance forsome grave crime. Her gleaming brown eyes, virtually illuminated from within the dark shadows around them, continue to bore into me unblinking.

Another long, awkward moment passes by, her face as featureless and unmoved as it was even when I bumped into her and first felt that ever-so-slightly too soft feedback. I watch her eyes slowly blink as if caught in slow motion only to open locked on the card I'm holding out between us.

“I haven't seen you around before,” I say, but why the hell am I making small-talk? “I'm Tobias, and this is Thom. We're local paramedics, so if you need anything, or you feel dizzy, please let us know.” I offer a cheeky and probably too-warm smile as a white lace-gloved hand reaches up and pinches the card between index and middle fingers.

“W-we like to look after our own here in Cedar lake,” I assure her, not sure if she is or isn't 'one of our own'. For one last brief moment, I take in her utterly unique appearance and the intricacies of the gilded stitching of her glove, patterns as intricate as flowery fractals gleaming in the nearby street-light yet somehow, almost imperceptibly, shifting.

“Good.” One syllable, one word, one statement and one shiver up my spine; equal parts discomfort and arousal.

“Come on, Tobias,” my fellow ambulance crewman interjects before this can carry on any longer, his boney hand slamming on my shoulder with that surprising strength of his for such a slender guy. 'I'm dying for that coffee,' he reminds me, snapping me out of my stupor as I turn and promptly nod.

Almost dragging me away, Thomas leads us past the mysterious woman draped in white and I manage to resist the urge to look back out of curiosity and intrigue. The all-night diner blazes with neon lights ahead of us, while behind us my business card meets a strange and unique fate.

A fingertip clad in an almost sheer silk glove traces over engraved letters as if reading brail, but it's not my name being read, rather the title beneath it being rewritten.

Unseen by anyone but the woman regarding the piece of card, the dried ink forming the word 'paramedic' writhes like loose strands of hair in the wake of her passing fingertip. Slowly, unnaturally, the surreal strands stitch back together into a new word, and the word is 'manservant'.

“Morning, Joe,” my trusty partner exclaims over the tinkling of the doorbell as he leads me through the door of our usual haunt, the only diner open at this hour. “Here for the usual,” Thom adds as the familiar surroundings of the seedy diner welcome us in.

“Well hey, if it isn't my favourite 2 AM customers,” The affable, greasy-slicked 'chef' calls out over the counter, his appearance the stuff of food-safety nightmares. “Coffee's fresh, I'll bring 'em over.”

Of course he will, he always does. It's basically a ritual at this point; the couple of bleary-eyed paramedics shuffling in like clockwork and the spirit-lifting drinks awaiting us.

The usual coffee, tasting slightly of soap and old vegetable oil, the usual seats with peeling faux-leather upholstery, just usual in ever way... except it doesn't feel usual, even as I settle onto the familiarly uncomfortable seat all-but formed to my backside at this point.

I'm preoccupied, my mind still barely awake before my coffee and knocked out of sync by that sudden and completel unexpected meeting with the almost otherworldly woman across the street.

My eyes absently wander to the window as I settle in, squinting at the glass as if I might be able to see through the darkness to where she was stood.

“Sup, bro?” Thom suddenly asks, snapping me out of my haze to look his way, “thinking about that weird broad in the Bri'ish cosplay?” He chuckles, adding a mocking accent to the word.

“I dunno, man. Didn't that strike you as being a bit... weird?” I ask, levelling him a questioning gaze as the hefty barrel-chest of Joe waddles towards us, filthy mugs full of filthy coffee in-hand.

“What's that? Not my boy Toby thinkin' about cheating on his missus?!” Joe interjects, because of course he does; it's a small town, there's no such thing as privacy here. Any scent of drama is suitable grounds for sweeping intrigue and gossip.

“No, no, of course not,” I sharply respond, feeling the understandable need to defend myself, “I love Maisy, but that woman...” I trail off, not even sure what I'm trying to say.

“Tell me about it,” Thom jumps in as if ready to finish my thought after three years working together night after night, “there must be some kind of event happening, one of those things they do in the big cities-” he pauses, trying to remember, “whadda they call them... Cosplays? Convections?”

“Conventions, dummy!” Joe delivers an almost comical slap around the back of Thom's head like an elder scolding a foolish child. “So what there's some broad walkin' around dressed funny?”

“Ow, yeah, seems like it,” Thom responds, rubbing the back of his head more out of shame than pain. “Real stately manor, Queen of England stuff,” he chuckles churlishly and reaches for the satisfying hit of caffeine in a cup.

“Not what you expect to walk into first thing on a monday morning,” I chime in, my eyes glazing over as I remember doing just that, the weird mix of softness, power and chilling presence that made me feel so small and unworthy by comparison.

“Tsch!” Joe turns away, his scoff little more than a snort before waddling back towards the kitchen. “Let people be people, boys,” he instructs like he's offering the sagest wisdom ever bestowed, “I'm sure she ain't hurting nobody.”

What a choice of words and what a time to utter them, because a moment later the tiny bell over the door rings its tinkling little tune again, welcoming in a figure I can't see but am already familiar with.

“So anyway, about this morning,” I turn my attention back to Thom, raising up my stained coffee mug to desperately slurp at the bitter contents, “I was thinking we should start-” I stop myself as I see Thom's eyes wander over my shoulder.

“Hold up,” he instructs and sits more upright in his chair as if either some dignitary or a threat is approaching. “Miss, do you need medical assistance?” His question is professional, rehearsed, and it's not until I slowly turn in the squeaky pleather chair that I see why.

It's her again, the woman I bumped into in the flowing yet oddly clingy and surreal dress. Her piercing eyes fall on mine as she stops beside our table without a word and slowly turns her body as if mounted on a turntable.

“No.” Again, that tone of voice, that lack of indecision; every word she delivers seems like a command, a statement that makes a man want to second-guess any desire to argue. “You.” That word, however, is far more chilling.

Her eyes are still set on me as I nervously gulp down my mouthful of coffee, almost choking on it in surprise and haste.

“Excuse me?!” Thom speaks for me while I'm still half-choking, hurriedly standing and shifting out to the end of the table, “Ma'am, that's not a nice way to speak to a member of the emergency services!”

She blinks with measured, almost robotic calmness and her head slowly rotates to meet Thom's glare. He's just doing what he thinks is best, trying to protect his partner as he knows I'd do for him.

“Not. You.” Her voice is cold, harsh and merciless in delivering such a simple statement; there's not a hint of shame nor fear in it.

“If you have need of assistance, then I am more than happy to-!” Thom's counter cuts off abruptly and then everything happens so fast:

A hand clad in silk flicks out over Thom's shoulder in the blink of an eye, short hair is pulled and an instant later the skinny, yet surprisingly powerful man has his face slammed into the cleavage pushed provocatively high by the mystery woman's corset.

I'm not sure if it's surprise or a misreading of the situation that causes me to pause, but rather than jumping up from my seat, I exclaim “Woah! Lucky gu...y?” The moment Thom starts flailing and scrambling, hands seeking purchase on slick, pearlescent silk, I know that something's wrong.

Cracking... wet, vulgar and bone-chilling fills the diner. Before I can even scramble up behind the statuesque woman with my colleague buried in her bosom, another sound rises over it: muffled slurping.

Like milkshake being noisily sucked through a straw if the milkshake were man-sized and the straw were a gas main! Thom's always been a slender guy, but there's a difference between a wirey build and the dessicated, muscle-deficient bag of bones he becomes before I can even grab at his attacker's silken arm.

“Hey, HEY!” I shout in desperation. I expect her grip to falter as I yank on her arm, but the moment I get a good hold I feel almost diamond-hard muscle beneath the sleek and elegant dress. Where was this when I bumped into her earlier and she felt so soft as to be almost gooey?!

Her grip suddenly relents, not from my efforts but because she reacts to me in her own time. Her head spins around to lock me with a burning glare and her hands releasing my poor amigo.

I catch the briefest glimpse of Thom's face as he collapses lifelessly, drained cheekbones caved in to the perfect sculpt of a pair of corsetted F-cups. It's enough to give me pause, to test the depth of my nerve and experience with grotesque injuries.

In a hauntingly smooth motion, the killer pivots around her unnaturally twisted neck like a screw, flowing like melted wax only to regain that upright, almost imperious grace the moment she's once more facing me.

“Interloper removed,” she states coldly and methodically as what's left of Thom hits the cold tiles with a sound like a wooden wind-chime landing on plush carpet. Her eyes aren't cold though, her glare not hateful nor murderous, rather there's a twinkle in them; something possessive.

“U-uh-i-int-” I stammer, heart pounding in a mixture of disgust and genuine fright. The contrast between what she just did to my best bud and how she's looking at me couldn't be more stark. Her expression makes me feel like meat, a thing more than a person.

Slowly, almost lethargically, dainty fingers wrapped in the finest silk slide up the front of my scrubs as I shuffle backwards with what little nerve I have left; I feel that weird mix of oppressive heat and clammy coldness as her gloved hand reaches my face.

“Now,” she intones as I stand there, barely able to even react as her hand explores my face with frightful power, her touch exploratory as if she doesn't understand what the different parts of my face do; it's a disgustingly humiliating experience like I'm a trapped animal being measured for culling.

“Pretty servant,” the frightfully beautiful woman continues, her gloved hand continuing to roughly knead and compress my face as if taking in every detail, following my retreat step by step. “You-” She's suddenly cut off by a loud, threatening click.

“Hey, ya crazy bitch!” It's Joe! Her hand suddenly freezes, hovering in mid-air as I slither out of her grasp and put distance between us. “You let go a' that kind young man and stay where y'are!”

My eyes finally leave her almost hypnotic gaze the moment we both half-turn to regard the violent end of a raised twin-barrel shotgun. Joe's eyes birefly flick to me, then the door as if telling me to run.

As much as I like the guy, I don't need an invitation! The presence of the deadly weapon fills me with just enough confidence to get my wits about me; Joe's got this under control so I can go fetch help!

I turn tail as fast as my legs can carry me and almost rip the door off its hinges as I swing it open, the tiny bell not so much tinkling and chiming in peril. I throw myself out the door and my eyes are immediately darting back and forth, not a soul in sight and not a hint of assistance to be found!

I could run back to the Ambulance for the radio, but we parked it two streets over. If only these damned rules about cellphones on-shift weren't a thing then I could- wait, there's a payphone around the back!

I break into a run with all the force my still half-asleep legs can muster, almost slipping as I round the corner of the diner, the warm glow of a roadside phone calling out to me as I do. I barely get three more paces before a muffled yet unmistakable BANG rings out from inside!

I stagger in shock towards the back only to be caught off-guard again as another BANG rings out. I turn to watch through a chain-link fence as the back door flies open and Joe falls out of it with a pained cry, landing hard on his back fifteen yards away.

“What the hell are you?!” He demands while trying to shimmy backwards in the fenced-off yard. Wait, what happened to his shot- oh... there it is. Being carried like a mysterious relic by that phantom-like psychopath as she glides outside, almost floating on a cushion of air.

I'm frozen in rapt confusion undercut by fear as she lifts the gun in one sheathed hand, stock-first, and parts her lips around it. My eyebrows have every right to rise as high as they do, because what the hell am I seeing?!

I'm far enough away that it's a little unclear, but I can almost see her throat bulging as she swallowed the polished wood and machined steel in one long, smooth gulp. It's gone... The only means Joe had of defending himself!

“H-H-” I mutter, choking on the words I need to shout, the only way I can save him. Come on, get it together! As she looks down on the man at her feet, slowly gliding towards him as if taking her time, I finally muster the courage. “HEY! OVER HERE!”

I wave and grab the fence, shaking it to try grab that crazy lady's attention; it works, kind-of. Even as her head slowly rotates towards me with a sickening smirk tilting her ruby-red lips, she continues to loom closer to the poor guy.

“Just a moment,” she responds, her voice smooth and unflustered despite (presumably) having been filled with not just two barrels worth of buckshot, but the barrels, trigger and stock too. “Be patient,” she demands in that same level, monotonous tone as if nothing could concern her.

All I can do is watch through the chain-link fence as her attention turns back to Joe, rapidly running out of room to back away. Her pace accelerates as he spins over and begins crawling, desperately trying to scramble up.

“No! No-no-no!” He exclaims, but before he can get any further, the splayed folds of her gown, which I now see cover her right down the ground, spill over his feet and seemingly trap his legs within.

My eyes unfocus as my fingers dig into the diamonds of metal wire, my brain apparently taking over and making the decision to block it all out once Joe's panic really sets in.

The terrified screams become muffled, the shapes blurry, but despite my own mind's best efforts I can still make out the contrasting shape of a white, triangular figure walking over a dirtier, prone figure.

Bit by bit Joe vanishes under her long, flowing dress but even once the white silky frilly fall over his chest, his legs never appear from the other end. A moment later his head vanishes and the last scream, muffled, vanishes along with the rest of him.

Frozen, frozen in terror and disbelief, I can only watch it unfold from the wrong side of the fence to do anything about it! Without breaking stride, the now lone figure rounds towards me and smoothly continues her relentless, gliding approach as her chin rises to look down her nose at me.

“Ohhh fuck!” Sorry, look I'm not usually the type to swear, but can you blame me?! It takes all the effort I have in me to force my fingers, seized up and white-knuckled, to slip free of the links.

My mind, still trying to process what it's seen, tries to get my body moving on shaking legs, amygdala flooding my traitorous body with adrenaline and cortisol.

“W-wha-” I try to jar myself into action as I shuffle backwards, “What was I-” The phone! The police! I have to call for help! My head snaps around so fast that I swear I hear a soft crack, but I don't feel a thing besides the tarmac under my shoes once my flight instinct kicks in.

I'm on auto-pilot all the way there, legs carrying me in a staggering hurry until I can lunge and throw my weight onto the free-standing roadside phone. I almost can't believe there's still one of these things about, but boy am I thankful for it right now.

Snatching up the phone between quivering digits, I pull it to my ear and spare a glance back at the mysterious ashen figure hunting me as the diall tone drones in my ear. My jaw drops and my mind blanks.

I can attest first-hand to how solid and tough that fence is, so how could a person just... walk through it? After seeing what I think I've seen so far it shouldn't come as that much of a surprise, but from this distance, some fifteen yards, I can all-but see the way the white-draped woman's form liquefies between the links.

Diamonds of goopy, immaterial silk extrude between the gaps of the mesh like plasticine, smoothing back out on the near-side as the buxom and never-faltering figure simply phases through the security barrier as if it weren't even there!

“lo? ...llo? ...ybody there?” A sound, a voice perhaps, speaking to me from somewhere nearby, but my focus is so rapt, my attention so washed out that I can barely make it out around the edge of my consciousness. “I repeat, you've reached the Indiana State Police Communi-”

“He-hello?! YES! Help, I need immediate help!” I blubber the moment I come to my senses, without pausing to hear another word nor even think about how the hell I'm going to explain this. “Please, It's an emergency!”

“I understand sir, an emergency repair veh-” The voice in the handset, failing to understand the gravity of the situation, needs to be interrupted; I'm not just panicking or being rude... much.

“NO! She's coming, you have to send the police!” I demand, eyes locked on the haunting, flowing white figure as she rounds towards me and continues that graceful, gliding, inexorable approach.

“Sir.” The response is firm, demanding of respect and patience that I really can't afford, “this is an emergency line, if this is a domestic issue then-” I've had just about enough of this conversation and the tilting head and cold glare of the encroaching killer says she's fully aware of what I'm trying to do.

“I am a paramedic,” I snap back, finally getting enough of my wits about me to remember how much weight that carries, “Tobias Shaw; my partner, Thom Carlisle is d-” the all-mportant word seizes in my throat, replaced by a guttural cry of shock as a blinding flash of sparks and electricity jolts the handset out of my grip.

I stagger back, blinking like I've been hit by a stun grenade, but when my eyes refocus I see the thin, beam-like length of prehensile silk speared through the roadside phone like a pike through a dragoon. I trace the length of pearly, slightly undulating fabric back to its source: the raised arm of the still-approaching woman in the seamless flowing gown.

“Bad boy.” Forceful, stern and made all the more impactful by the flexing twist of her arm that swipes the length of destructive matter back like a recoiling whip, her gloved hand reforming nearly instantly.

I'm backing away, arms raised defensively, what the hell else can I do when she just keeps coming?! There's nothing else for it, getting backup is out of the question, my only option left is to run!

All the courage nurtured over years dealing with unruly patients and aggressive characters evaporates in the face of this stunning yet almost otherworldly presence with eyes apparently fixated only on me.

I break into a run, my heavy footfalls and laboured breathing the only sounds besides the faint white noise of distant traffic on the freeway. I know she's still coming, even if the occasional glance back over my shoulder and the haunting silence says I'm alone.

“Stop running.” Her voice, suddenly coming from somewhere both close yet far away causes a spike in my heartrate and a redoubling of my efforts to get back to the ambulance, “You. Are. Mine.”

“No-no-no, fuck fuck FUCK!” I shout, shaking my head in disbelief, perhaps hoping that enough denial and energy will wake me from this nightmare; it doesn't. The thrumming of my heart only grows stronger as a soft, almost playful laugh reverberates through me, all raspy and malevolent.

The blessed sight of red and white paint greets me as I round the corner; my hands are barely coordinated, almost numb as I pat myself down with even more nervous energy than the last time. There, right pocket, pressed cold and hard against my thigh: the keys!

I've never clambered into the ambulance more hurriedly, even in the direst emergencies, but through a mix of haste and pain-numbing adrenaline, I manage to throw myself inside and the old girl doesn't let me down.

She starts up first time and I pull away with a screech of tires that would honestly be quite cool if I wasn't fleeing for my life like a little bitch. “Wheeeew~” I sigh with every fiber of my being mid-skid around the bend.

That crazy woman might be relentless, but there's no way she can keep up with me on foot! I have to put some distance between us, stop and think.

“Thom, Joe,” I mutter out loud, the moment to myself only serving to remind me of what happened. “Shit... now what do I do?”

I'm three blocks away before my senses come back to me, before my unravelling mind focuses on what it needs to do first: report the crime! As I pull up to an intersection on red, I reach over to the radio and pickup the handset.

“10-33, 10-33. Dispatch, we have an officer down. Repeat-” my throat seizes up as the gravity of what happened hits me, my words choked out with a sob, “Thom's dead, dispatch. Homicide.” My head slumps against the steering wheel in dejected disbelief and heartbreak.

The guy was like a brother to me, near-enough family and I watched his life just... vanish; drained like water down a plughole, sand through my fingers. A flashback, the thinning of his flesh, the muffled whimper, the sound! God, this has got PTSD written all over it.

I'm so lost in my moment of shock that the conspicuous lack of a response doesn't land immediately. “D-Dispatch?” I ask once my shaking thumb finally manages to depress the button again. “Do you copy?” Silence, no. Breathing. Soft, almost... excited.

“Ten.” That voice, not dispatch, definitely not dispatch, but chillingly familiar. “Twenty.” It's her, how is she on the radio?! “Three.”

10-23? I know that code, it means- “D-Dispatch?” I gulp, my head slowly rising to sheepishly look up out of the windshield, onto the dark, empty intersection. “Who,” I ask and gulp, eyes squinting as the red of the traffic lights turns a blinding... white? “-arrived on scene?”

The sudden beating of a drum, cushioned hands on the shaped metal of the ambulance's hood and a moment later, a beautiful yet somehow monstrous face staring back in at me having materialised seemingly out of thin-air.

“AAAAAGH!” I thankfully don't freeze in fright, god knows if I'd even live to tell the tale if I did. I hit the gas pedal almost on instinct alone, the heavy-duty emergency vehicle lurching forwards with all she's got.

People don't normally splatter on windshields, not literally, not at such low speeds, but the woman caked in flowing white does. I don't know how she hijacked my emergency signal nor how caught up to me, but maybe, just maybe a bit of a joyride on the hood might at least give her something to chew on!

Like a dollop of pearlescent white paint, her silk slathers across the windshield as I skid, barely able to see the road out of my smothered windshield while trying to navigate the corner.

In the center of my vision I see her face, still unmoving, expressionless and cold until it isn't. The first flicker of true emotion I've seen from those curious, penetrative chestnut eyes is a hooding of eyes and a soft smirk; an instant later she withdraws.

Not over the windshield or off the side of the ambulance as if peeled off by the rising speed, rather downwards, against the current as if being sucked into the front grill.

Finally able to see where I'm going, I realise I'm running red lights; thankfully there's nobody around to see, nor get in this psychopath's way now that I think about it.

Speeding through the lights soon becomes less of a problem as the engine gives a pained splutter, metal turning in on itself violently as the space in front of my eyes fills with black smoke and fire.

The wheels lock up as I slam on the brakes, my knuckles go white as I try with all I have to wrestle back control, but a street-light has other plans, reaching out through the sparks to crumple the passenger-side of the cabin and send the whole vehicle violently spinning around it!

Crashing, crumpling, jarring, shaking and so. much. noise. When it all dies down and all that's left is the hiss of smoke and the incessant honk of the horn, I blink through the fractured glass of the windshield, dazed but alive.

I take a moment to breathe, to gather my thoughts, but a moment is all I have. White tendril-like growths, raindrops of silk in reverse, drip upwards out of the crumpled remains of the bonnet.

“No. Goddamn. Way!” I'm not in the wrong for being caught out by it, there's no way I should have come out of that crash unharmed, nevermind someone under the hood and very much not strapped in! Through this hole and that crack in the glass, I can see various splotches of that same liquefied white matter splattered across the lamppost, the tarmac and the sidewalk.

It's all coming to life, squirming like individual living things and beginning to piece itself back together. There's no way, there is literally no way! This can't be real, but since it seems to be real, all I can do is quickly unbuckle and throw my shoulder against the warped door to spill out onto the street.

Don't look back! I just have to pretend she isn't there, never look back! I beat it across the street with all I've got, the almost silent schlorping sounds behind me nothing more than a bad dream if I don't let them be.

A dream, it has to be a dream, that's right. There's no wa any of this could actually be happening! A victorian-era corsetted regal lady made of slime chasing me through the streets ready to turn me into breakfast? Ridiculous! The fact that nobody else has shown up proves that this is all a dream.

Unfortunately, just as I finish convincing myself I'm due to wake up any moment now, the commotion of the crash draws an audience. An audience of one, but still an audience. An overweight man in the filthiest tank-top I've ever seen, groggy and snaggle-toothed, swings open the front door of his shoddy home.

He looks past me to the burning wreckage of the ambulance before he meets my gaze with a look of disbelief. Out here squatting on the edge of the delapidated industrial quarter this must be the most excitement he's seen in months.

“The hell happened?!” His question is valid, fair even, but I don't have time to answer, instead I grab him by the shoulders, propping myself up somewhat as I stagger to a halt gasping for air.

“No time- HUNF- Listen to- HUFF- me,” I insist, half doubled over from exertion and panic, my eyes bleading with the equally confused and unsettled man, his sleep apparantly disturbed and his head still groggy.

“There's- a woman- HUFF- chasing me! Go inside, call- HNF- the-” I never get to finish my instructions because an instant later the air itself seems to tear open with a deafening boom like a tornado is suddenly ripping through the space between us.

I'm sent spinning and staggering as my arms are caught in what I can only call the jet of air, and by the time I gather myself I'm left with nothing but arms aching with the telltale symptoms of torn ligaments and a ringing in my ears that refuses to go away.

I got off lucky, the man I was speaking to moments ago? Not so much, seems he was the target of the attack and what's left of him, well it has to rank amongst the most terrible fates I've ever seen a human being subjected to; splatter doesn't do it justice.

I tear my eyes away long enough to look towards the source, a curvaceous yet frightfully powerful woman draped in the finest silk and corset, once more reformed and once more approaching with relentless intent.

Her mouth closes slowly, the probable source of whatever the hell that was. A sound wave? A high pressure blast of air? Doesn't matter, it's all over bar the ringing now and the stalker in pearls is still coming!

How long can I keep running for? I'm already exhausted and nothing seems to stop her, not even a face full of buckshot nor a road-traffic accident! Doesn't matter, I have to keep going, I can't stop now. Maybe there's someone coming, someone who can save me, surely there has to be a way this ends without me getting- I shudder in dread at the thought of it.

I hurriedly M for the street corner, not pausing a second longer than I have to as I hurriedly make out my location by the street signs and familiar buildings. Right when I start fearing that there's nothing and nowhere around for me to run, my luck suddenly changes.

Down the street, cruising this way and perhaps alerted by the crash, the blessed sight of a police patrol! Like all my christmasses have come at once, I break into what will hopefully be the last last sprint I need to make tonight and start frantically flagging the cruiser down.

“Hey! HEEEEEEEY!!!” I yell at the top of my lungs, even running out into the road so that they can't possibly miss me. By the time I get there, the officer on the passenger side is already out of the vehicle, but I don't stop running even as he addresses me.

“Is'at... Tobias?” He asks with a thick, unmistakable accent. In a small town like this any kind of minor trait becomes a calling card, so the accent of an out-of-towner like Jake, impossible to miss!

“God am I glad to see you! We have to get out of here,” I insist, running right up to him as the driver climbs out, leaning over the cruiser's roof. “Quick,” I gesture frantically, making my way past Jake to reach for the rear door, “she's coming!”

“Oh gosh, have you been drinking again, Tobias?” The driver asks, her posture undul relaxed for the level of anxiety I'm displaying. The door's locked, no matter how desperately I yank on it.

“What, seriously Kate? NO! I'm being chased by a god-damned psychopath! She killed Thom and Joe at the diner,” I insist, her expression rapidly changing as she hears the clarity in my voice; I honestly can't believe that's the first place her mind went.

The police officers share one-another a glance and Jake shrugs, stepping away but holding the door. “Get in th' frunt, pardner,” he insists, stepping away in the direction I came from and reaching towards his holster.

“Wait! Nonono, you can't face her alone, Jake! I'm telling you, I don't know what she is, but she shrugged off Joe's 12-gauge,” I exclaim, staggering a few paces after him, but never far enough away that I can't reach the safety of the cruiser.

He stops, looking back over his shoulder with an eyebrow raised in doubt, clearly visible in the beams of the headlights. He glances back towards Kate who shrugs, then draws his gun anyway as his partner turns back to me.

“Whatever you think you saw, Tobias, he can handle it,” she insists. “Toughest cop I ever met, lemme tell you. Get in,” she insists, wasting no time in climbing back in the driver's side.

God-dammit, Jake's a good guy. Always seemed like the life of the party, but I'm not going to try and face that crazed killer in a hopeless attempt to save him from his own overconfidence.

I throw myself in the car and fumble hurriedly at the seatbelt, shaking like a leaf and being watched as I do, “drive, go, go!” She's considering me, wondering if this is all just some crazy prank or a hallucination, but my body language tells her to step on it.

She sharply inhales, turns towards the windshield as if ready to dejectedly exhale, but in that instant her entire demeanor shifts.

There she is, gliding towards Jake, his gun raised but also held in a way that can't possibly meet the regulations, arm twisting att an unnatural angle as his other hand briefly shoots to his head like he's suffering the most intense migraine of his life.

“Who the f-” Kate asks almost under her breath, but I don't need to watch as intently to know what happens next, reaching out to grab her hand to snap her out of it. A shot rings out, then two more probably in desperation; by the time I look back out of the window, the only sounds likely to be heard are snaps, cracks and pops.

I've seen people get twisted up, really really mangled before, but nothing prepares you for seeing someone get twisted into a human pretzel by invisible hands. She has telekinesis now too?! How does this keep getting worse?!

“Drive! Sweet Jesus, drive, Kate!” Thank god that training kicks in when it does, because her hands expertly flick to gear shift and wheel like the car's an extension of her body and before Jake's even been fully mangled into something best described as uniformed origami, we're haring backwards at frightening speed.

“What the hell- what IS that thing, Tobias?!” The car suddenly spins, screeching as Kate expertly works the controls and with another screech oftires we take off.

“I dunno, but she-” I suddenly stop with a sharp whimper as all the wind is forced out of my lungs, my whole body feeling like it's been caught in a vice, crushing pressure oppressively squeezing me from all angles. This isn't fair, I was supposed to be safe...

Kate's clearly being affected too, so I have to act for both of our sakes. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that the ornately dressed woman stood back there with one arm raised is behind this!

It takes so much strength it all-but exhausts me, but I manage to reach for the window lever like I'm punching through something as thick as hardened jello. With a yank, giving it all I've got I manage to open a gap, just a little and a sudden gust of wind releases enough pressure to save us both from a messy, squishy fate.

“I dunno-” I pant and heave as the pressure returns to normal as we lose sight of the scary thing that's hunting me, “but whatever she is, she seems to have it out for me in particular!”

“Shit...” Kate curses under her breath, “seems like we're both down a partner now; let's talk to the chief. He'll know what to do,” she offers with absolute confidence in her leader, glancing at me until I nod back, still gasping for air.

I already hear the voice before we even arrive at the station, her voice, the stalker. Whispering not to me, but at me. Those short, simple, domineering phrases.

“Do not run. Come to me. Obey. You're mine.” Louder and louder like a growing migraine, hypnotic and increasingly difficult to shut out and resist. Once we pull up out front it's grown so loud that I can barely hear Kate's voice until she reaches out and grabs my arm.

“Hey,” she snaps, suddenly jolting me back all wide eyed and confused like I've just woken up, “pull it together. Just tell the chief everything you saw and he'll come up with a plan; let's go.”

I give a shaken, disoriented nod and fumble with the door to get outside. The voice is still getting loud but worse is a new, even more unsettling sensation, the doorhandle. It doesn't feel like the dark, rough plastic I expect it to, it bears an odd mix of raging heat wrapped in silken cold... like her!

Whipping my hand away in shock for a moment, I stare at it accusingly. “You will be mine,” it says to me from the deepest, darkest pits of my mind. No, it's her, she's getting stronger and closer again.

Hurrying out while doing my best to ignore it, I hurry around the car towards the police station I've seen a hundred times before inside and out. I'm so familiar with my fellow emergency workers that I know the place like the back of my hand, so much so that I hurry past Kate inside and make a bee-line for the boss' office.

“Woah, hey Tobias; what's goin' on, buddy?” One overly-friendly cop asks as I hurry between desks, sweat probably pouring from my brow as I do everything to maintain control and do what needs to be done.

“I don't have time to explain, I need to see him now,” I stress as I brush past. Behind me I hear Kate starting to spread the word, good. We'll need all the help we can get if we're going to somehow make it out of this nightmare!

There he is, perched on the edge of an officer's desk making small-talk, quite the personable leader to say he all but runs the show in this town. “Clive,” I cry out before I'm even close, my body-language and expression proably telling the tale before I even get there. “We need to talk, now!”

“Huh? Tobias?” He asks, rising from the desk with a stern expression, finally someone who understands the gravity of the situation. “Jesus man, you look like you've seen a ghost,” he declares, stepping in front of me and bracing my shoulders.

His expression grows even more concerned as he feels the shiver running through my body, how do I tell him that I may have actually seen a ghost? Now that I'm here, what have I seen?

“Let's take this inside,” he gestures towards my office before looking around as if scouting out anyone who overheard. I'm too focused on the voice, growing ever louder and more forceful in my head; that crazy stalker's getting not just chattier but more eloquent too.

“Running will not save you. He will not save you. Only I. Can. Save. You.” Shut-up, shut-up, shut-up, shut-up!!! What the hell is she doing to me? Everything seems different, the air bearing the faintest scent of something classically enchanting, every surface carrying an almost silken texture.

Stumbling inside the office of Clive, the chief of police, I find myself breathing a sigh of relief as he tells me to “take a seat.” Sanctuary at last, I find myself thinking as I barely make my way towards one of two chairs on this side of his desk. “Not that one,” he suddenly addsas I reach for the one further away.

“Huh?” I ask, tilting my head to look at him as he follows me across, pulling out the other chair for me to sit in before perching himself, his favourite pose, on the edge of his own desk.

“Don't worry about it, there's just someone sitting there,” he explains, though maybe I just mishear him through the buzzing and seductive chanting growing louder and louder in my head. “So tell me, what's going on?” He leans forwards, elbow on knee as he measures my expression in ever greater detail.

“Can't you hear it?” I open with as I fix him a stare, my eyes quivering from both the terror and ever-ratcheting up pressure; he just tilts his head in a degree of confusion. “Her voice, it's everywhere! In my head, all around me, even this god-damned chair!”

Clive's expression is professionally measured, not the reaction of someone considering whether you've lost your mind. I take a deep breath, I have to explain this properly...

“Ok, so-” I exhale heavily, “I am being chased, stalked even. By a woman dressed in, god this is gonna sound insane, this flowing, silk-like dress. She looks like something straight out of the Victorian Era except there's sooo much more to it than that!”

I go on, barely pausing to draw breath as I don't know how long I've got before I bring her wrath down on the police too; “She killed Thom-” I stress, fixing the chief with a stare that says I very much mean what I say, “sucked the life- HNGG-” I seize up as she laughs in a part of my mind that's not supposed to hear that.

“Dry as a bone,” she purrs in the depths of my fears, admitting to it proudly. I grind my teeth, balling my fists and doing all I can to shut her out.

“Then Joe, that rotten guy on the edge of the industrial district, even Jake! Your man Jake,” I stress, pouring my heart into every word, letting it all out and painting a deadly picture of what we're dealing with. So why is Clive just tucking his head as if refusing to make eye-contact.

“She's getting stronger too,” I go on, positive I can get it all out before I have to hide or flee again. “At the start she could just absorb people and things, then she started morphing, then altering the air around me, now she's in my GOD-DAMNED HEAD!”

I can't help but raise my voice, it's about the only one to head my own words over the laughter; rising, wet and filthy, dripping with malice, she's laughing at me trying to raise an force to stop her. Wait, that's not just her laughter-

“HmhmhmhahaHAHA! FANTASTIC!” Clive's head suddenly snaps up, the expression one I never would have expected to see on the face of the chief of police. He rises from the edge of his desk, hands on hips and laughing heartily.

“F-f-f-” I stammer, confused, utterly bemused by his reaction. “Aren't you listening, Clive?! She's out there kill. ing. peo. ple!”

“Oh I heard you alright, little buddy,” Clive beams, letting out a heave filled with delight, “welcome to the family, my son! I think she made a great choice!”

Wh-wha- I can't think straight. Is he saying what I think he's saying?! Does he already know about this? About more to it? Has she gotten to him?! “C-Clive, what-?”

“Oh, sorry,” He smirks proudly, his smug expression tilted in a smirk as he puffs out his chest and lifts his tie out of his pants... with his hands still on his hips...? How- what- huh-?

A flicker of light, pearlescent and haunting and from the shimmer a hand appears. Like a cloak being lifted, a concealed figure I know far too well appears sat in the other chair, her silk-gloved hand holding a firm grip on the chief of police's tie. It's a figure I've been running from all night... isn't it?

She suddenly yanks on the tie and Clive, barely putting up any effort whatsoever, crumples to his knees at the foot of her sweeping, elegant white dress. “Good boy, shush.” She speaks, her tone slightly different, almost infinitessimally so, just like her face. There's no doubting it, though; this is another one!

“Hmmm~ yes I think she made a scrumptious choice with you,” the hauntingly familiar, terrifyingly oppressive presence purrs as she looks me over, “and it's so wonderful to hear my 'daughter' has been growing so rapidly.”

Her spare hand gracefully falls onto the police chief's head, running her exquisite silk-gloved palm and fingers over his bald pate and the short, almost invisible stubble flanking his wide bald-spot. “Such a good boy making himself believably trustworthy,” she chuckles, looking down at the almost puppy dog-like eyes of the most respected man in town, “aren't you?”

“Thank-you Matron,” He nods, nuzzling into her casually dominant head-pats, “I live to serve.” Clive turns his head, an almost euphoric expression plastered across it. “I am a good boy.”

That was addressed to me, it was said straight to me, like he's bragging about being praised like a pet dog! The chief of police, reduced to this! Speaking of me, well I've been frozen in terror this entire time, not sure I've even managed to blink while simply trying to make heads or tails of it all.

“W-w-w-w-” I stammer, eyes darting back and forth between one and the other, fingers grip the arms of a chair that feel far too much like her, the one chasing me just like the one sat next to me.

“D'aww, poor baby boy. Are you confused? Allow me to elaborate,” The so-called 'Matron' cooes with such casual disrespect it makes my blood run cold in dread.

“The 'woman' chasing you is not of your kind at all, she's one of us, a 'Matron',” she explains as if that answers anything at all. “We are a superior race; better, stronger, more beautiful and born one-to-another... to rule.”

These words, spoken with such casual abandon, it's all got to be a lie, it can't possibly be true! That would be easy to believe if one of them weren't staring at me like meat on a stick right now, like an acquisition to be considered beforehand.

“My dear daughter just entered this world last night, set out to claim her first man and look at what she decided to bring home,” she giggles, but it's not a childish nor playful giggle, it's an approving yet possessive, vile and sensual giggle. Just like the one in my head, getting louder and closer all the while.

Wait, closer... shit! She's still coming after me! I have to-

“Yyyes indeed, she is still coming after you, Tobias-” she interjects; my slow, tilting glare must speak volumes. There's no way she can-

“Yes there is a way, boy, it's as easy to me as telling what color the sky is,” no way, no way, no way! No wonder the other one could track me so easily, find me wherever I ran!

I have to get out of here, but she already knows that I want to escape. This close, trapped in a small room with her, I don't think I'll even reach the door before-

“You will,” the elder Matron humms dispassionately, uncrossing and recrossing her legs as she continues to pet the police chief like he's nothing more than a puppet for her enjoyment, which he quite possibly is.

“You're not mine to claim and you still have your family to say farewell to before you become my daughter's first man,” she instructs, telling me how the end of my life, or perhaps just freedom, is going to go.

“What do you mean... her man?” I ask as I cautiously rise and begin sliding backwards, wary of how easily this could all be a ruse to catch me off-guard.

“Hmm? Are you not a male Homo-sapiens? A... man, in common parlance?” The smirking, oppressively confident and powerful Matron asks, “In much the same way as you human might say 'my dog' or 'my cat', we would say 'my man', you get the idea. You're a runaway pet, darling.”

That... is the most dehumanizing and disturbing thing someone has ever said about me, and that's saying something. A runaway pet? a possession being claimed by a higher entity? What in the seven shades of shit?!

“I don't-” her expression suddenly switches to a chastising frown that tells me to swallow that thought, leaving just one question: “Why me?! Why do this here? In this sleepy little town?”

“Hmhaha, we're in every town, boy!” A bold and frightful claim, “Every city, every nation, we're everywhere... and we own everything,” she concludes, “You honestly cannot yet even begin to comprehend the world of pleasure and excess that awaits you as my youngling's prized possession.”

No. No, I won't just accept this, I can't! I turn and make a break for the door, but before I can get out and make a break for the exit, the elder Matron has a parting shot just for me: “do ask your owner nicely if you're allowed to see your family one last time, she may well let you without so much fuss.”

I burst out of the office door in a hurry, but I barely get two paces before my mind begins questioning everything, begins considering the words being whispered to it from afar. I stumble and slow to a dejected walk, what's even the point?

“Are you going to keep running, pet?” The words are so clear in my head it's like she's in the room, “why do you deny yourself a life of luxury as my thing?” She asks a pertinent question, “is your life not one emergency after another, pain and heartbreak every day?”

I meander more than walk, head throbbing and mind fracturing, “you've done such wonderful things for others,” she says, offering some kind of insight into the question of why she chose me, “just let yourself have this, let me take care of you... Forever. Mine.”

Her words swirl around inside my head as every footfall gets heavier, every step harder to take when I know that it's already over; the moment I step out of this building I'm hers whether I run or not.

“Kate,” I quietly call out, voice hoarse but loud enough to catch her attention while she's in the process of issuing instructions and warnings. She shuffles over in a rush, apparently excited but worried based on my behaviour and bodylanguage.

“What's wrong? Didn't the chief have any ideas?” Her face is a picture, a tapestry of disappointment, heartbreak even at the idea of the system failing her. How could I possibly tell this niave, sweet young woman that the entire system has just been revealed to me as nothing but a sham?

“N-no-” I stutter out, it's the moment of truth, the moment to accept it. There's no changing this, no escaping this fate; this, apparently, is how the world really is, this is what life's chosen for me. “He had an idea, a great plan really...”

I cast my head slowly back, looking up at the ceiling, the white silk of the ceiling in a silken world oozing refreshingly addictive nostalgic fragrances of her from every surface and pore. Seductive, moreish, impossible to defy.

“I need you and everyone to stay here though, I have to handle this alone,” I insist as my gaze falls back to the young officer I've suddenly developed such a bond with in this moment of emergency.

“Wha- you can't be serious!?” I calm her with a hand on the shoulder, she feels like slick, warm silk too, everything does now, everything feels light and dreamy like the lap of luxury I've been promised.

“It's going to be OK,” I put on a brave smile and nod, breathing in the fragrances as the sounds of the whispers in m head become softer, more pleasant and almost musical. Like glorious heavenly pipe-organs playing the dramatic final movement of my life as a free man and possibly as a medic.

It really is going to be OK. No more running, no more panic, no more emergencies. These thoughts churn awa, getting easier and easier to digest with each step of my fateful walk through the front door.

The morning greats me not as a gust of cold, but as something just right. Cozy, homely, welcoming; she waits for me down the steps, sat gracefully watching on the hood of a police cruiser like it's nothing to even worry about.

Every step feels like I'm descending into something terrifying and unknown, the walk towards becoming a possession, a puppet to be used, a figurehead for whatever this 'Matron' has planned for me.

“You finally came to your sense, didn't you?” She asks as I get closer, her powerful figure mostly concealed but hinted at so strongly by the cut of her elegant gown, her potency seems all the more suffocating the closer I get, hypnotic and inescapable.

“Yes,” I slowly nod, my face one of divided loyalties, still fighting against it as much as I welcome it. “Will you-” I gulp before I can finish the question, “let me see them first?” I get it out, the burning question that might haunt me for the rest of my life if I don't ask it.

“Of course,” She smiles ever so slightly, her striking, timeless features expressing something deeply wise that I don't yet appreciate, “if you really must.”

If I must? Do I want to put them through this? Is it better to leave it a mystery, become the dad who went to get milk? “Mmm~” I nod after considering it, “I want to see them, but-” the Matron rises from the hood and reaches out that deadly gloved hand to stroke my cheek possessively.

“Tell them something's come up at work, a big promotion,” she instructs mysteriously. Has she... done that? “Tell them you'll be gone for a long,” her grip becomes more forceful under my chin, pulling me closer as I melt into her touch, “long time.”

My body and mind are alive in ways I can barely remember, drowning in her presence and potency; I'd almost forgotten how it reall felt to live until now.

I offer a warm smile with lowered, accepting eyes and feel her purr as much as I hear it. “Good boy,” she whispers, lips inches away from my own, “Very. Good. Boy.”

I watch her tongue slither over the underside of her top lip, every detail in ultra high definition in my mind, sending pulses of desire and arousal cascading through my body.

Oh it is so over for me; heaven help me, I'm going to have to become a very good boy for my Matron.