setting.sudrien.net

Mrs. L had not opted for a pen name when she wrote her book. This was, by some accounts, not foolish, but by one specific account, extremely foolish. Some corporate type that seemed to be intent on growing an empire. That also seemed intent to getting that book pulled from everywhere it could be found – sometimes by buying stock, sometimes by poor review, sometimes by making massive orders and cancling.

But the author was an investigator. And Complacency was not to be her only work … She set her nose to the ground, made calls. Eventually drove herself to what was said to be a spinster’s mansion. A former author’s family home, left to his wife. Maintained.

And she never left. The books? Their seeds plucked from her mind. The images of coming horror? Stilled. Distant earthly affairs? Handled by agents who would never hear or read her name again.

It was not Paradise. But her previous life was cast as Hell.

“Imelda”, the name came from a book plucked from the library’s shelf. As “Herbert” had been plucked from her – and some intent was honored.

It wasn’t used in front of the houseguests. The name was both a secret treasure and a cracking whip when it was uttered.

She was not to attend to Betty herself, a majority of the time. She didn’t know if the head of Crocker Corp came home in the back of a box truck that day, or unstuffed herself from a limo – but she suspected the latter as the two met in the hall. The presented woman in a crimson pantsuit was smaller, more tired than intimidating.

“Imelda.” she wheezed.

And nothing else mattered.

~

Betty Crocker was a costume several sizes too small for its wearer. Coat removed, blazer removed, skirt undone, blouse carefully unbuttoned, and the still bound figure collapsed on what must be considered an empress size bed.

A corset is considered by most an outdated garment, but the straps, strips, buckles, and laces Imelda started to address were as scientific and arcane as anything that could be considered a corset.

The troll seemed to inflate, pulse visibly puffing skin closer to a natual form, as the human worked.

But the human had seen this before. “How long?”

“It isn’t how long, its that the entire sales department thinks they ain’t getting promotions because I’m not seein their faces. Fuck. Actually meet with customers instead of phoning them once in a while and you’ll see what they are stocking.” Legs spasmed a bit, like the blood circulation had just been restored. Knowing her constitution, there was probably another explaination.

“You can’t just … Lay it on thick like you do in the factory? Or the main office? Must you have to go dolled up like this?”

“It’s drip watering versus torrential rain. I’d have to hit sales so hard they would still be babbling on their planes back to the branch offices.”

Imelda would swear she saw steam raising off the bare skin of the troll as the last set of clasps came undone. Rolls of skin plumped up like rising bread under her slip.

Breath calming, the form inflated from somthing crammed into the bounds to 99-percentile to somthing the scale wouldn’t even consider.

“You have tried smaller, have you not?” A few minutes silence had to be broken somehow.

“Oh, I could crush myself smaller under my own power, but it would not be for hours, and it would not be human shaped.”

“It seems a strange thing for any animal to evolve.”

“Oh, its some ectobiological tautology shit. In some horrid game session, that cloning button needs to be hit by something. In a number of them, its a troll. That troll needed to survivve through grubhood, pupation early life – so more trolls of similar form. On some instances of the world, the species had to survive a monster whos nervous screams could cull 99 percent of them. Thus some of the trolls that could pacify it need to lack the bones it could break with a mere touch. Thus up get bags of blood swimming walking around with more willpower than anything else. Well… Sponge? Inflated jellyfish?”

“I believe earth’s spiders propel themselves in similar manner.”

The troll rolled over to look at the human still standing in attendsance. This conversation had happened before. She still half wondered if it was the dulling of the humans mind that caused it, or if she was actually inviting it. What came next, if she allowed it, was getting handsy. 300 kilograms of pillow resembling an orca from afar was a dynamic she had never been fond of. Oh, not being worried about tiny doors and narrow spaces made human buildings tollerable, but historically the empress was hands off until it became necessary to throw things across the room, lest some errant touch convey somthing other than power. Any appearane of compromise was better dictated.

She would give in to the impulse, of course. As would the human, a mix of impulses carefully pruned to an amenable form, merely deprived of some of the choices she might have had in other timelines. A prosthetic to the trolls own impulses.

The human might disagree, but was dulled just enough to repeat questions it knew the answer to. Or. Perhaps. It feigned. Maybe this species could build up a resistance to her mere presence.

Betty raised a foot recently disgorded from hosiery and shapeware, extenging a phalange, its trimmed claw hovering before the humans nose, but a thing too giving to be flesh tracing her lips. It then warped around the humans face- a portion of the sole pressing the cheek, even as the heel came to rest on her shoulder.

The human coddled it for a moment, considering. The troll, since her arrival, had certain become more concerned over her condition, over her boredom. But even on the long trips away, foul visions did not reappear. Whatever experiment had been done with her mind, it had some staying power of its own. It was probably not forever. But she – Betty, the troll – seemed to be forever. If she could just fold up her safety blanket and tuck it away on a shelf…

Imelda leaned her head towards her shoulder, the ankle taking an even more absurd angle, the slight sensation of slosh within – but no resistance. She pressed, like trying to square a lump in a pillow: it flattened, the slosh emptied, like trousers disdarded. She folded, mid thigh, end over end, being immediately accomadated; and with the slightet effort flattened. Again, again, the costume foot wrapped in a loose spiral of costume leg, its occupant merely observing silently, perhaps the slighest bit of tyrian flush appearing on her cheeks as the troll observed, propped up on elbows.

The human carfully lifted what was left of the hip and folded the remnant leg under, like she was making a bed. With no objections, she took up the other leg, folding and pressing it flat simarly, the blush becoming that slight bit stronger with more blood trapped to truncatred paths.

The human considered he limbless hips. She would have liked them squared, for asthetics. The arms – no, not the arms next. The head. The face. Fetching a bottle of absolvent from the dresser, she addressed the panted on human details. Not thinking to engage in conversation. What needed to be said? The troll knew her. The house. The guests, the grounds, plans shared and plams untold. Can a book omce read contain surprises?

Not grand ones, certainly. Only in the details.

The absovlent, the dirty cotton pads, are set aside. This is a foreign face, with little uncertain details. The scarred remnants of great horns and gills even, hid behind hair most of the time. Or perhaps this is what they always were, and her imagination of what a former empress was is another thing twice projected.

She massages the neck, the face, the scalp. The horns collapse onto each other like a folding table, the hair is carfully gathered, it all starts to roll up as if the alien were entirely a temporary construction. With one hand she pins the rolled mass behind the shoulders, with the other she guides arms out from their positions of support, headless shoulders pinning down the points of observation.

One of the free hands is cracking its knuckles between fingers and palm, not impatiently – not yet. The moves dont get the same human pops of ligaments. More dealing with raised blood pressure while one may. Because as soon as the finished hand is offered, Imelda starts the flattening process – an arm supposedly built to fold in 3 places slowly folded in five. As she finishes, the remaining hand makes a gripping motion, slight adjustments within the wrist audible before being offered. She has to pre-position this one, the supposed blood pressure on the edge of the force she can manage.


The result – a grey mass, almost human save for scale, engourged in its own blood, a waterbed if she could introduce the right tension. But the human can’t.


A picture forms in her mind, a brocure in c-fold. A spiral-rolled desert. It is trying to find somthing she will understand.

She speaks aloud, not knowing how she will be heard. “I can’t lift you like that!” Even alone, she would easily be crushed between matress and troll-

The aura of the room changed. The human was no longer needed.

As she slowly backed to the door, the limbless form was awkwardly trying to bend back in an arch, a abbreviated backbend, while maintaining pinned extremities. Right before the door latched, it awkwardly folded – tumbled – on itself.

There was no helping her.