◀ Prev • [ All parts ] • Next ▶
Part 2-3: Ring
It was a man and woman. They looked middle aged, rich, and very much dead. They were semi-reclined, their legs and arms wide, reminding me of someone who couch-plops with dramatic flair after a long day. They held hands. The heads lolled down, mouths open a touch, eyes half lidded.
I squatted, massaging my hand and preparing to spring away in case one of them jumped at me. It seemed too quiet for that to happen, but as the age-old saying goes: when an evil clock warps you to a strange, fake parlor room, trust not even the chillest of corpses.
Persi copied my pose as I looked into their glassy eyes. It’s a human tendency, I think, searching for a clue in someone’s eyes.
“I’m going to touch one,” Persi said.
“Go nuts.”
She grabbed the man’s ankle. Nothing happened. She shook it. His clothes rustled.
“Well?” I said.
“I have no idea what we’re doing.”
I smiled, despite a tiny little idea that begged me to acknowledge it. The idea had to do with being trapped here forever, that I was dead wrong about avoiding Persi’s original fate, but I was not about to entertain it until we’d been thorough in our investigation.
I stood up and rubbed at my hand again, examining the lady. In life, her skin had been a deep brown, not unlike Persi’s. She wore a slim, flowing yellow ball gown. All her gorgeous accessories had yellow or white accents, from white velvet heels to golden hair clip, from pearl necklace to sand leather clutch. I got up, snagged the clutch and looked inside. Empty.
Persi got up and poked around at other things. I remained convinced that the bodies were the key. Persi had said they were different.
The man had lighter skin than the woman, and sported a well-fitted stone grey suit. It looked modern. His shoes were gleaming; no dust in this sham place. Then I looked at where their hands joined, and my knuckles twinged again, hard.
I sucked in a sharp breath, and Persi looked over, alarm on her face.
“Just my hand,” I said. I checked for blood. Perhaps I’d contracted a demon virus from a cursed splinter. My knuckles seemed fine, besides being a little reddened. The big middle knuckle kept on pulsing, complaining, tingling.
Tingling.
There were tingles. I knew the feeling. It was like when I’d touched Eden’s book. I took a step back, scanning the surroundings for a source. Eventually, my eyes came back to the stiffs’ clasped hands, and my knuckle flared.
“Oh, jeez,” I said. I knelt again, hovering my fingers over their locked mitts, unsure of how to go about untangling or exploring. His hand was over hers. I felt like someone faced with a wobbling Jenga tower made out of dynamite. Persi came over and watched from behind the couch. I explained what I was doing. Before I could protest, she reached down, grabbed the man’s wrist, and shook.
The hands flopped apart. No ancient spell broke, the bodies did not reanimate and eat me alive. Regardless, I had still fallen backwards onto my butt with my arms shielding my face.
“What?” said Persi.
“Don’t… like… next time give me a heads up before you do something like that, okay?”
“They’re dead, are they not?”
“You one hundred percent sure of that?”
“A fair point. Sorry.”
“It’s alright,” I said.
I spied a yellow ring. It was on the woman’s right middle finger, the same one that tingled for me now. As the idea of a ring entered my head, I could feel that the tingle wasn’t really my knuckle, but rather the whole base of my finger. I mustered up my courage and held the dead lady’s wrist as I eased the ring off of her. The fingers were stiff though, so I had to curl the middle one back. In my nervousness, it was all I could do to not dissolve into a fit of mad giggles. I had forced this fancy corpse to flip the bird.
I got the ring off and re-curled the finger. My own finger buzzed. I knew I had to put it on, but I examined it first. It wasn’t gold or plain like a wedding ring. It was all gemstone: light yellow, translucent, with a million little sparkles inside. Deluxe would later declare it to be yellow sunstone (well, she’d say, “adventurescent feldspar,” and I’d Google that and figure out the normal name). The ring was cut and smoothed so it was wavy like the dead woman’s gown.
“One ring to rule them all,” I said to Persimmon, holding the tip of my finger at the edge of the band.
“Hmm? Rule who all?” she said.
“When all this is over, remind me that I need to show you a particular trio of movies.”
“I like movies.”
I wanted to say more, but the itch and tingle was growing into pain. I looked once more at the two bodies, still assuming that something was going to cause them to become undead and mean. Ring bearing seemed like a great candidate. As I slipped it home, I noticed that they had both closed their eyes.
◀ Prev • [ List of parts ] • Next ▶
📚 Readlist 📚
Now Persi will turn out te be Sauron in disguise 😂everyone knows about the Lord of the Rings: her luck of knowledge is suspicious ahahaha
!LOL
lolztoken.com
So they could learn to draw blood.
Credit: reddit
@jfuji, I sent you an $LOLZ on behalf of @arc7icwolf
Thanks for supporting The LOLZ Project. We !LUV our users!
(4/8)
@arc7icwolf, @lolzbot(4/4) sent you LUV. | tools | discord | community | HiveWiki |
NFT | <>< daily
I hope it doesn't cause her to leave Persi trapped there all alone! Or worse, get Eden's attention 😲
!PIZZA !ALIVE !LOL
This post has been manually curated by the VYB curation project
lolztoken.com
If you think about it.
Credit: reddit
@jfuji, I sent you an $LOLZ on behalf of @wrestlingdesires
Use the !LOL or !LOLZ command to share a joke and an $LOLZ
(5/6)
I gifted $PIZZA slices here:
@wrestlingdesires(15/15) tipped @jfuji (x1)
Send $PIZZA tips in Discord via tip.cc!
Persi has more balls than any other character in this story, she can mess with anything be it corpses or clocks.
Making an ancient couple to untie the knot😂😂😂
One ring to rule them all! I feel like I’ve heard that before! They closed their eyes…but but…onwards we buzz!