Chapter 2: Figurines of Flesh
Yukio kicked off her sneakers with a groan, letting them thud against the pile of political science textbooks by the door. The dorm room smelled of stale coffee and lavender wax melts—a desperate attempt by her roommate Amy to counteract the odor of academic burnout. A brutal day in the university archives, squinting at microfiche until her eyes felt like fried eggs, had left her with a throbbing headache.
She collapsed into her desk chair, rolling her shoulders. Her eyes scanned the familiar chaos: her laptop humming with a dozen tabs open, Yukio’s own detailed notes on municipal election cycles, and, on Amy’s side of the room, a precarious tower of fantasy novels.Then her gaze landed on something new.
Two figurines stood precisely centered on Amy’s otherwise messy desk. They were exquisitely detailed, painted with an artist’s precision. One was Amy in miniature, captured in her favorite yellow sundress, her willowy blonde hair flowing, a tiny, serene smile on her ceramic face. The other was Jason, looking every bit the Renaissance Faire enthusiast in his embroidered tunic and hose, his wooden sword at his hip.They were adorable. And, knowing Amy’s tendency for heartfelt, dorky gifts, probably a present for Jason.A smirk played on Yukio’s lips. “Cute,” she muttered to the empty room. She reached out and picked up the Amy figurine, her fingers curling around the cool, smooth ceramic.A blinding, white-hot flash seared behind her eyes.
She was suddenly inside Amy’s head.The sensation was instantaneous and total. She felt the soft cotton of Amy’s sundress bunched around her waist, the coarse fibers of a woven rug beneath her knees.The room was warm, humid with late afternoon sun.And she felt Jason. Oh, God, she felt him.
His thick, hard cock was sliding into her from behind, a relentless, perfect invasion. Yukio—through Amy—gasped as the head breached her, the stretch a delicious, familiar burn. She could feel every vein, every ridge as he pushed deeper, until his balls slapped wetly against her cunt. Amy’s body was already soaked, aching, clenching around him in desperate pulses.
“Fuck, Jason,” Amy’s voice, her own voice now, moaned, high and breathy.
Jason’s hands gripped Amy’s hips, his fingers digging into her soft flesh.He pulled back and drove into her again, harder. The impact reverberated through her pelvis, a jolt of pure, mind-numbing pleasure. “You feel so good, Amy,” Jason grunted, his voice husky with effort. “So fucking tight.”
He set a brutal pace, pounding into her with a fervor that felt like worship.Each thrust smashed against her cervix, sending shockwaves of sensation through her core. Amy’s thoughts were a fevered blur: more, yes, right there, don’t stop, I’m gonna come, I’m gonna come so hard—
Yukio was drowning in it. She had been with them before, in Jan’s tangled, sweaty parties, but this was different.This was being Amy. Feeling the absolute surrender, the dizzying crescendo of her own orgasm building, coiled tight and ready to snap. She felt Amy’s cunt flutter and grip Jason’s shaft, milking him, begging for his release to match hers.Then, the world fractured.
The cozy sunlight in the room curdled, bleeding into unnatural, swirling hues of ochre and moss-green. The air thickened, buzzing with a pressure that was not sexual, but ancient and furious. The familiar distorted chorus of jungle noise—the shriek of birds, the growl of big cats—swelled from nothing, drowning out their panting and the slap of skin.Amy’s ecstasy twisted into terror mid-moan. Yukio felt her—their—head whip around. A vortex of ink and leaf-shadow swirled in the center of the room.It had no face, but it saw them.Jason’s thrust faltered. “What the hell—?”
A voice, dry as dead papyrus, scraped across their minds.DERIVATIVE.Amy’s body began to dissolve. Not into pain, but into something worse: abstraction. Yukio felt the solidity of Amy’s legs soften, losing bone and muscle, becoming a cascade of umber and cream-colored glaze. Jason’s grip on her hips melted into streaks of burnt sienna. Their connection—his cock buried deep inside her—remained, but it was no longer flesh; it was a fusion of painted forms, a static, obscene union.Amy’s scream was trapped in her throat, becoming a silent ripple in the ceramic.
The vision snapped.
Yukio stumbled back, gasping as her own consciousness slammed back into her body in the dim dorm room. The Amy figurine slipped from her trembling fingers, hit the edge of the desk, and clattered to the floor.It didn’t break. It rolled, coming to rest at her feet.She stared at it, her heart hammering against her ribs. The ceramic was warm.Almost feverishly so. It throbbed with a faint, residual hum of trapped awareness.“No,” Yukio whispered. She fumbled for her phone, her thumbs slick with sweat. She found Jan’s contact—a saved name simply as “Red Tornado”—and hit call.It rang once.“Yukio! What’s up?”
“Jan.” Yukio’s voice was a rasp. “I think… I think something turned Amy and Jason into some kind of Warhammer figurines.”
There was a beat of stunned silence on the other end. Then Jan’s voice, all the levity gone.“Shit. Something similar just happened to Mike and Casey.They’re a painting.We’re at their house now. We’ll be right over. I'm bringing Fatima.”
The air in Mike and Casey’s living room was heavy enough to taste. Stacy stood sentinel by the crib they’d moved into the corner, her hand resting on the sleeping Rick’s back. Hank shifted his weight from foot to foot, staring at the massive, horrific canvas. Fatima’s sharp eyes were closed, her lips moving in silent analysis of the magical bindings.
Jan pocketed her phone, her freckles stark against her pale skin.“That was Yukio.Amy and Jason.Figurines. Same MO.”
“Fuck,” Hank breathed, running a hand over his face. “It’s hunting the whole friend group.”
“It’s editing the story,” Fatima said, her eyes snapping open. “Removing characters it finds… unsatisfying.”
“We need to get to Yukio’s dorm,” Jan said, her mind already racing.“Fatima, you and me.Godfrey comes. Stacy, Hank—can you take the painting to your penthouse? And Rick, and Polluck.Keep them safe.”
Stacy nodded immediately, her coach’s decisiveness taking over. “I’ve got the space.And the security. I can do that.”
Jan let out a slow breath, then her gaze drifted back to the painting. She tilted her head, a curious look softening her features. She took a step closer, leaning in towards the twisted image of Casey’s arched back and Mike’s straining form, as if listening to a distant whisper.
She straightened, a ghost of a smile touching her lips.“Hank?Message from Mike. He says: ‘Stop staring at my wife’s tits.’”
Hank’s head jerked back. “What? I—for fuck’s sake, I’ve seen Casey’s tits tons of times!At your parties! It’s not like—”
Jan leaned in again, her ear nearly touching the glossy paint. She nodded, then relayed, “Casey says: ‘This isn’t one of Jan’s parties.’”
Hank stared, open-mouthed, then shook his head with a disbelieving laugh. “Even trapped in a painting, Mike and Casey are still the weirdest people I know.”
Fatima, though her expression remained grave, allowed a small sigh of relief. “At least they are staying calm in there.It means their minds are intact. That is something.”
Jan was already leaning in again, eager for more contact, but Stacy’s voice cut through, firm and practical.“Jan.You need to get to Yukio. Now. Every minute we’re here, Amy and Jason are stuck in… whatever they’re stuck in.”
Jan pulled back, nodding briskly.“Right.You’re right.” She gave the painting one last look. “Hang tight, guys. We’re on it.”
She motioned to Fatima, who was already gathering her purse—a deceptively normal-looking satchel that contained things no normal purse should. Godfrey, sensing movement, trotted over from his spot beside Polluck, his service vest crisp and official.Stacy turned to Hank.“Help me get this canvas wrapped.Carefully. Then we load the crib, the baby, the cat, and we move.”
As Jan, Fatima, and Godfrey hurried out into the night, the living room became a hive of controlled activity. Stacy fetched blankets to shroud the painting. Hank, with surprising gentleness, began disassembling the crib for transport. Polluck watched from his perch on the changing table, his notched ear twitching at every sound, his golden eyes fixed on the covered canvas that held his people.
In the silent dorm room miles away, Yukio sat on the floor, her back against her bed, staring at the two small, warm figurines she had placed carefully on a textbook. The miniature Amy and Jason stared back with painted, unseeing eyes, forever caught in a moment of transformation, their tiny forms humming with a silent, desperate scream. She waited, her phone clutched in her hand, for the Red Tornado to arrive.
She waited, her phone clutched in her hand, for the Red Tornado to arrive. The silence in the dorm room was no longer empty; it felt pressurized, thick with the humming awareness trapped in the ceramic on the floor. Every creak of the old building’s pipes made her jump.
A rapid, urgent knock shattered the quiet. Yukio scrambled up and yanked the door open. Jan stood there, her fiery red hair a mess, Fatima a composed but grim shadow behind her. Godfrey slipped between their legs, his nose immediately working, sniffing the air with purposeful intensity.
“Show us,” Jan said, no greeting, her eyes already scanning the room.
Yukio pointed to the two figurines on the textbook. Jan strode over, Fatima following with more measured steps. Jan snatched up the Jason figure without hesitation. Fatima, with a careful delicacy, lifted the Amy figurine. The transfer of consciousness was instantaneous and violent.
Jan’s vision exploded into sweat and strain and the overwhelming, primal drive to fuck. She was Jason. She felt the incredible, wet heat of Amy’s cunt clamping down on his cock, so tight it was almost painful. The sensation of his balls drawing up, the base of his spine tingling with imminent release. “Amy,” his voice grunted, unfamiliar in Jan’s mind. “Gonna come inside you, gonna fill you up.”
Simultaneously, Fatima was submerged in Amy’s dissolving ecstasy. She felt the broad head of Jason’s cock stretching her open, the deep, internal friction of each thrust. Amy’s pleasure was a rising wave, a tidal force of yes yes yes that was about to crash. Her own body, Amy’s body, was slick, compliant, arching back to meet him.
Then the corruption. The warm light bleached into venomous green. The pressure of the Unknown’s gaze, a weight that crushed the air from their lungs. The awful, silent dissolution—the solid certainty of Jason’s muscles becoming malleable pigment, the feeling of Amy’s own cries solidifying in her throat into cold, glazed ceramic.
Fatima’s hand jerked. A sharp, bitten-off Arabic curse hissed through her teeth as she fought the instinct to fling the tiny, terror-filled statue away. She held on, her knuckles white, feeling the phantom wetness between Amy’s legs vanish into a memory of glaze.
Jan blinked, back in her own body in the dim dorm. She stared at the Jason figurine in her palm, her breathing slightly quickened. “Well,” she said, her voice a bit unsteady. “That was… informative.”
On a whim, her expression turning speculative, Jan began to gently rub the two figurines together. She slid the tiny Jason’s painted front against the miniature Amy’s sundress, a slow, rhythmic motion.
Fatima turned to Yukio. “The vision. Was there anything else? A scent, a specific sound before the transformation, a word you might have missed?”
Yukio shook her head, wrapping her arms around herself. “Just the jungle noise. And that word. ‘Derivative.’ It sounded… offended.”
Jan gasped. Her fingers stilled on the figurines. Her eyes went wide, looking at something neither of the other women could see. “Oh. Oh, wow.”
“What?” Fatima asked sharply.
“They both just came,” Jan said, her tone one of clinical fascination mixed with horror. “Just now. While I was… Yeah. Amy’s orgasm. Then Jason’s. It’s like a… a feedback loop. Trapped in the moment, but the moment keeps happening.”
Fatima felt a hot wave of embarrassment, for herself, for Jan, for the violated intimacy of their friends. She pressed her lips into a thin line. Godfrey, sitting by her feet, looked up at Jan’s fascinated face and then deliberately turned his body towards Fatima, leaning against her leg as if seeking a more sensible master.
“We should probably take them to Stacy’s penthouse,” Jan said, shaking herself out of the reverie. She carefully cradled both figurines. “It has the most wards, and it seems to be the place to go. Everything’s converging there.”
Fatima arched a perfect eyebrow. “The wards in Stacy’s penthouse are mostly there so her neighbors in the luxury building do not hear it every time you start an orgy in her living room. They are acoustic dampeners, Jan, not fortifications against primordial narrators.”
Jan shrugged, heading for the door, figurines held secure. “It isn’t my fault Stacy has the most floor space in the friend group. Come on. We need to get them with the others. Maybe proximity does something.”
Yukio grabbed her jacket, falling in step as they moved into the fluorescent-lit hallway. The three women and the dog formed a strange, hurried procession, carrying the tiny, screaming statues into the night, toward the only place that felt remotely like a sanctuary. The hunt was clearly on, and none of them knew who would be edited out of the story next.