For what felt like an eternity after the voices faded in the distance, Alice lay absolutely still.

At any moment, she expected her pursuers to return. To finish checking the rest of the floor, eliminating all other possible hiding places. To finish the job.

Seconds passed in silence. Then minutes.

The drying blood on her body began to itch too much to lie still and the bathtub squeaked as she shifted to scratch herself. For a panicked moment she froze all over again, but there was no sound except the faint howl of the wind through the windows and Rita’s mental rage slowly running out of steam.

Then, as it began to sink in that they were really gone, she sagged. For a while she could do nothing but lay there, shaking in relief. Her body felt like jello. Eventually, she managed to gather enough strength to hoist herself over the rim of the bath, sprawling on the crusty floor in an ungainly heap.

She was in shock. The fleeing, the fighting, and facing the fact that she was going to die… it left her feeling drained. Exhausted, physically and mentally.

She had no idea why they had simply left. When she’d heard them stop and talk almost right outside the doorway, she’d been absolutely certain that that was it. That she was going to be killed in short order. And then they’d left. Whatever had happened, she’d gotten very, very lucky.

And if that kind of luck was what she was going to need to survive here, then she had no chance. She was going to have to be better. Rita was going to have to be better.

Or they were both going to die.

That meant doing things properly. Being careful. Situational awareness.

With that in mind, she quickly checked her wounds. She’d left the bath and the floor an awful mess, but her bleeding appeared to have stopped, something she was extremely grateful for. It seemed awful fast, but she attributed that to her own wonky perception of time due to blood loss. Well, no, it had felt like hours that she had lain in the bathtub, perhaps it had been?

She managed to get her legs working in short order and even struggle to her feet without passing out. Then she did a very careful sweep of the floor, cautiously peering around corners and moving as silently as she could the entire time, just to be sure the two had really left.

She found no sign of the Knight, the Demon or anything else dangerous. What she did find, however, was a very dead body. It was one of the masked freaks that, judging from the mangled state of the corpse, the hole in the wall of the building and the copious amount of rubble surrounding the entry point, had somehow been smashed in from the outside. The mask was shattered but was somehow still being held together, the breaks and cracks filled with drying blood. The rest of the body didn’t appear to have a single unshattered bone in it.

“The fuck happened to you?” Alice mumbled to herself as she stared down at the body.

Suddenly she was hungry. Just like when she’d killed the last one of these things and Rita had freaked out. This time, there was nobody around to stop her from having just a little taste. It wasn’t cannibalism, since she clearly wasn’t human anymore. And even if it was, you had a bit of leeway to do unspeakable things when you were in a life or death situation, didn’t you? It looked so tasty…

She knelt next to it, before leaning over stiffly to bite down tentatively on sack of pulverized meat. The last thing she wanted was to tear open the freshly healed wounds on her stomach.

Immediately an explosion of taste flooded her mouth. She just sat there, teeth sunk into the corpse and feeling the rich flavour run down her throat. She hadn’t even bitten off anything yet.

It tasted like coffee mixed with… with… teamwork? Togetherness? Cooperation? Being part of a whole? No, that couldn’t be right, none of those were tastes. Yet there was no other way to describe it. It was like some bizarre form of synaesthesia.

Rita’s incoherent raging had been reduced to a tired mumble by the time she’d started sweeping the area and had by now grown entirely silent, as if she’d fallen asleep.

She snapped awake to the taste of coffee and comradery, only to find her mouth clamped onto a disgustingly crushed corpse, her teeth sunk deep into its mushy flesh. She yanked her head back in shock and horror… only to find that she was stuck to the corpse! There were two pink… things leading from the body back to her mouth!

Rita began screaming as she violently pulled backwards, trying to dislodge the things from her mouth. There was a sudden pop, and both detached from the corpse, wiggling obscenely in front of her face. She tried to grab them to pull them out, but as her hands got close her courage failed her and she just flailed ineffectually while freaking out.

Then, just as she thought it couldn’t get any worse, a particularly disturbing thought crossed her mind.

What if they were brain worms? What if that’s what was wrong with the masked people? That they had some form of disgusting, pink, brain worm that had tunnelled into their skull and made them crazy?

It was surprising how quickly she managed to get over her disgust after that and she grabbed both, one in each hand. They had some kind of joint in the middle which gave her a surprisingly good grip and she yanked as hard as she could on them…

… and nearly blacked out as a sharp stabbing pain shot through her skull. She curled up on the ground in agony as Alice began shouting at her in her head.

Rita! Stop! Stop! Stop! I think those are supposed to be there!

“Aaah?” she mumbled through an open mouth. The things had gone somewhat limp now and for some reason her face felt on fire.

Touch them! Gently, mind you, I think you dislocated something.

After a few moments hesitation she carefully prodded one with the tip of a finger. Beyond the small stab of pain that accompanied it, to her surprise she also realized she could feel it! She could feel the sensation of her finger brushing against… some kind of limb she didn’t know she had.

What the fuck?

Umm, Rita, I think we have extendable teeth.

Sure enough, at the tip of the pink thing was a tooth. A little longer and sharper than a normal human canine, but the same white as her other teeth. It was embedded in the pink… flesh as if it was a gum.

Which you just dislocated. Great job, genius. Welcome back by the way.

“Wha’ a’ fa’ a’ ai’…” she tried, but she was unintelligible with the shit hanging limply out of her mouth. Trying to close it hurt like hell.

I think you’re going to have to… undislocate it. Try pushing them back in, maybe?

Rita took one of her… teeth in each hand, far more gently this time. The pink bit was some kind of small pink limb, jointed in the middle, that felt like something in between her gum and the roof of her mouth.

She tried gently pushing them back into her mouth but a sharp, burning pain made her hesitate.

That’s not how you pop a joint back in. You’re just going to have to suck it up, Princess.

With a sudden lurch her arms jerked as her muscles spasmed, shoving the twitching pink teeth things back into her mouth with force. She wasn’t sure whether the pain was worse than when she’d accidentally dislocated them, but it certainly felt that way.

Then something clicked and like eighty percent of the pain just disappeared.

“Owww…” she wheezed weakly and made no move to get up.

You’re welcome.

“’uck you, A’ice.”

Eventually she managed to get her two teeth back inside her mouth and folded away. Turns out – and it had been pretty obvious as soon as she started prodding around with her tongue – that her teeth extensions were attached deep in her gum above her canine teeth, and in fact, replaced them. Furthermore, behind them were two giant hollows in the roof of her mouth, as if she had some kind of freaky double hare lip!

A little bit of experimentation revealed that with the middle joint folded double, they fit perfectly. So perfectly that unless she was specifically paying attention when poking it with her tongue, it was easy to miss that there was something odd entirely. Even the teeth slotted into place perfectly next to the rest of her teeth (none of which could extend, she checked) and unless she intentionally pulled her lips back or smiled really, really widely, you couldn’t even tell the difference.

Probably. She’d only been able to find a shard of scratched bathroom mirror to inspect herself with.

Stop worrying, it looks fine.

“I’m turning into a spider…” Rita moaned at her reflection in the mirror shard.

You’re already half of one…

“But look! I didn’t have these before!” she complained as she extended them again. The joint was still tender and sore, but she’d discovered that she actually did have control over them, even if they were a whole new set of muscles she’d never used before. She’d been so freaked out by the dead body and the face worms that she’d done it subconsciously before… which had only made her freak out about the face worms more.

Erm... honestly its rather possible that we, in fact, did. I mean, they feel kinda natural, you know? Like if you aren’t paying attention you might not even notice.

“We ate a person… and we became more of a monster…” Rita whimpered.

Now, now, let’s not jump to any conclusions here… woah!

Rita retched, trying to vomit over the bathroom sink, but despite her recent meal it just didn’t feel like there was anything in her stomach. All that came out were a few dribbles of blood and some spatters of a glowing blue goo.

“What the fuck…” she whimpered for the umpteenth time, before just sliding down to the ground and crying softly into her hands.

She couldn’t cope with this anymore. Her home was gone, she was stuck in this horrible half-spider body and everything was trying to kill her. She just… couldn’t.

Rita… Rita talk to me; we can’t just sit in a heap and cry…

“I can’t do this… I’m done…”

Listen to me, I think you’re having a mental breakdown.

“You had me eating people! Get out of my head! I hate you!” Rita screamed.

Would you please just calm down? We need to decide what we are going to do next…

Rita wasn’t listening anymore. She’d clenched her eyes shut and clamped her hands over her ears as she tried desperately to somehow think Alice gone.

To both her and Alice’s surprise, she accomplished… something. A faint fizzing sensation passed from her stomach to her brain before she experienced a sensation not unlike her ears popping, except in her brain.

Then she felt something entirely new. It was not unlike being near a bonfire. Even with your eyes closed, you could still sort of pinpoint the fire just from the heat it radiated. Except, what she was feeling wasn’t heat, and it was a lot further than she would have been able to feel a fire at.

What did you just do?

Rita ignored her. She had no idea what was going on, but the feeling was calling her. Just as she had lost hope and had no idea where to go next, it began calling to her like a beacon! Surely this was a sign!

She stumbled to her feet… her far too many feet… no, don’t think about it, just focus on the beacon. Repress everything. It didn’t matter that she had nearly died several times, it didn’t matter that she had been stabbed, it didn’t matter that she had cannibalized another person… the beacon was all that mattered. It was all she could process at this point. She was just going to think of nothing else until she reached it.

Hey, great! Feeling better? It’s good that we’re getting moving… ah, you’re going to that thing we’re feeling, right? Could we go have another nibble at the dead masked guy before we go?

And she was certainly not going to think of the horrible person living in her head.