Don't Fear the Phyllis

“Bwah!” Sitting up frantically, I reached for my racing heart.

Bah-dump! Bah-dump! Bah-dump! Bah-dump!

I tried to take a few calming breaths, but the dream was still fresh in my mind. This wasn’t my first night terror and would certainly not be my last, but the double-dreams were always the worst.

Feeling over my entire body, I determined that I was all accounted for and that the big bad truck hadn’t hurt me. But it was over this exploratory period that I realized something was different and would require a follow-up visual inspection.

Looking down at my hands and lap, it was easy to tell what was wrong.

“This isn’t body!” I yelped, an unfamiliar voice meeting my ears.

Grabbing at my mouth, my hands began to tremble as I hesitantly spoke again. “Th-This isn’t my voice.”

I’d heard of some miracle makeovers for television, but I was now literally a different person. Like, goodbye to my old body, and hello to something…smaller?

Had I even hit puberty yet?

Taking a second to feel myself over, I was confident this physique was a teenager, still in the prime of his life. And while I didn’t seem unhealthy, I appeared to be underfed in comparison to my other body, which was rotund in all the wrong ways.

What’s going on here? I thought after a thorough inspection of myself.

Sitting up, I decided to move on to inspecting the rest of my surroundings. It was then that I realized I was in—

A mall food court? I thought to myself.

I had been sitting atop a plastic table at the center of a grand eatery with a dozen off-brand restaurants. Giant aubergine bells and amber arches shed their light over a space that stunk of stale fries and gastrointestinal distress.

With a hop to the ground, I disembarked from my arrival table and cautiously explored the area.

Is this hell? Is hell a mall in the nineties?! Yeah, that tracks—

It was definitely a mall food court, decked out with white tile, vintage wall mosaics and the familiar pinks, purples, and blues of neon lights. A quick glance at the stores revealed them to be mostly shuttered, lacking even remnants of names on billboards. Instead, all that remained of their skeletal existence were numbers.

And they weren’t even regular ones, but instead, classic Roman numerals.

X-I-I? I thought, noticing the nearest signage. X-I-I, that’s twelve. And then there’s C-X-X-I-V, one hundred twenty-four.

A mental cog slipped into place, and my memory began to provide information.

Wait, I know this place! Phyllis’ Mall Domain?

“Bwahahaha, it's about time you figured it out.” A cackle echoed through the realm.

Phyllis, a character from my story, was currently talking to me. To me! As in, in the flesh. Not my flesh, but some flesh.

Okay, I’m definitely dead and in Hell.

Phyllis, an ancient lich whose resume was much more impressive than mine, was talking to me. Phyllis, the Draconic Champion of the Shattered Ruby God Raldan, and directly tied to the world of Esseria. My world! A lich who consumed the souls of other evil beings and ensured her longevity by including phylacteries in each of her many franchised shoppe locations—

“Yes, yes, yes,” Phyllis announced as she appeared before me with a fizzle of neon pink sparkles. “Be amazed!”

The impossibly old woman stood no taller than three feet. Her face appeared to be crumpling in on itself, and the wiry white hair barely hung to her scalp. But she stood there, before me, shakily lifting the sleeve of her bright pink wizard robe and hoisting her walker into the air. I watched as the neon tennis balls affixed to the bottom rose slightly up before she continued to speak in earnest.

“I am Phyllis, the evilest of them all. The one who created the work-from-home movement—way before the rest of you h-hipsters! The franchiser of the treacherous treasure trove that swindled numerous adventurers into assisting me in opening four hundred and twenty stores across the Esserian Plane. Capitalism! The evilest power of them all. Mmmhmm! Without a doubt.”

I rushed over to the tiny grandmother of hate and berated her with the questions any normal human would have in a moment like this. Where am I? What happened? Am I in a different body? Is the MacRonalds rib-sandwich available currently?

“Whoa. Slow your roll, speedy-nuts!” Phyllis spoke, holding her hands up to stop me.

It was only once I had quieted completely that she slowly walked her way over to a comedically large red button at the edge of the food court. Raising her walker, Phyllis jammed the toggle in with a satisfying click!

“Mall. Change seasons. Summer vibes.”

The world flickered as palms and monsteras replaced pastel plastic flowers. Both sets were equally fake but seasonally distinct. A ridiculously tall bouncy castle appeared on the first-floor promenade, where a pair of inflatable tube men flanked it with wild twerks.

Looking back to Phyllis, she now stood before me with an extra-large meal and a square box of a drenched rib sandwich.

“Come sit,” She motioned to a table nearby. “There’s something I need to tell you, Tahvin.”

Obeying the lich, I followed her slow steps and slid into the uncomfortable seat she directed me to.

I mean, what else was I supposed to do?

Oh, I must still be sleeping. I thought, touching my chest as she placed the food before me.

That’s what’s happening. A dream within a dreams-dream. Wow, award-winning—someone call Kris Bolan.

My stomach growled loudly as I glanced at the food. I was not convinced that this dream body had ever eaten before, so I didn’t hesitate to put this fantasy metabolism to work. Without a moment to waste, I eagerly began scarfing down the unhealthy meal placed before me.

“So—Tahvin—you’re dead.”

“Gah—awk!” I choked on the food.

Coughing up words and barbeque sauce, I continued

“Wha? Dead? I knew it, this is hell! You waited to say that until I had food in my mouth on purpose, huh.”

“Heh, gotta get my kicks where I can. I’m old. Anywho, yep, you’re dead. Well, Tahvin’s dead. You’re in the body of Ishara.”

“Who?”

“A young Kalish boy from Sutin’eli.”

I nodded knowingly, even though my mind spun as world lore flooded my consciousness.

The Kalish were a group of ancient people from the First City of Illuhsan’Drayden, which existed over ten thousand years before the most recent Divine Cataclysm. These spirit walkers lived normal lives until one day in their teenage years, their true souls awakened, and they began to hear the voices of every life they’d lived since their first, all those millennia ago.

Most of the time, the child could remember only fragments of their past existence, experiencing them in dreams that educated and guided them down a path of righteous purpose. But, in some rare circumstances, a previous soul had too strong a will to live, overpowering their new Kalish host and wresting control for themselves. These had a specific name—

“So, I’m a Kalish-nik. I stole this boy’s body.”

Man, even in death, I do no favours for myself. What an asshole I am.

“Yes and no, so hold off on the S-Rank pity party.” Phyllis reached over, her wrinkly hands gently tapping mine as she continued, “The boy's parents sought me out. They wanted to make a deal, so I gave them what they asked for, and in turn, their firstborn son would seek me out on his sixteenth birthday. This boy, Ishara, would not have lived past the age of five without my help, so he got, like, ten…eleven extra years? Which was good for him! And, in turn, when he awoke to his unbeknownst Kalish abilities, I put you in there. Oh yeah, also, sorry about the whole truck-kun thing. I just love tropes! You get it.”

“You did this?!” I shouted.

And so, we yelled for a while. Phyllis explained that she needed me to be her oracle and travel the world to complete a prophecy. The very world I had been writing and completing at my computer desk when I was ripped away.

The Ruby Prophecy she spoke of was your fairly generic fantasy legend that foretold an event that would one day return Phyllis to her full strength as a Draconic Champion, and at that time, the Ruby God would be resurrected in their glory.

Wait—I’m the Champion of my own story. Yeeek—Cringe.

But as I asked for clarification, Phyllis did what she did best: avoided directly answering any question where I looked for specifics.

Instead, she replied with her typical, ‘Well, you know how prophecies are,’ or ‘You sure have a lot of questions for someone who knows how the story ends,’ or, her favourite, ‘Shut up, I’m not done talking!'

And so the arguing for information would continue...