* Don't Fear the Phyllis

*

"Tahvin..." A soft, motherly voice whispered in my ear. "Tahvin, time to wake up."

The voice was distant, lurking in the back of my mind. It hid in the darkness of my subconscious, whispering, becoming louder with every passing second as it gently spoke my name.

"Tahvin. Tahvin." Until the voice changed to what I remembered, screaming at me with anger and unwarranted frustration. "TAHVIN!"

“Bwah!”  I sat up frantically, reaching for my racing heart as the panic attack gripped me.

A quiet moment of anxiety followed as I attempted to gulp down calming breaths, but the dreams were 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. There was nothing I hated more than waking from one night terror into another. At least there were no talking kaiju crabs with laser eyes trying to sell me on religion like the dream I had had last weekend after a cheap rum bender.

Shaking off the hazy memory, I began running my hands over my body. I quickly determined that I was all accounted for and that neither the big bad truck nor the equine dildo had 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. The same thing that I had noticed in my most recent terror.

“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 had heard of some miracle makeovers for television, but I had become a different person, literally. Like, goodbye to my old tubby, millennial body, and hello to something…smaller? Malnourished? Tweeny? Had I even hit puberty yet?

Feeling myself up for a second time, I was confident that my physique was that of a teenager, still in the prime of his life. Yes, his life. I still had the bits I was familiar with, thankfully at least. 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.

Sitting up, I decided to move on from fondling this unfamiliar body to inspecting the rest of my surroundings. That was when I realized I was in—

A mall food court? I thought to myself, glancing around the open space.

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 landed on the tiled floor specifically designed for easy cleanup after children and slobs like me spilled full fountain drinks into their poutines. Taking a few steps, I cautiously explored the empty food court, expecting a rogue mop and bucket—or Haut Topic sex toy—to assault me again at any moment.

Is this Hell? Is Hell a mall in the nineties?! Yeah, that tracks—the sleep apnea probably got me, and now I'm in Hell.

The place I explored was definitely a mall food court, decked out with white tile, vintage wall mosaics and the familiar pinks, purples, and blues of neon lights. It had cheap, decorative plants and random hallways to bathrooms and janitorial closets. Currently, all of the knock-off restaurants were dark, their grills cold and cash registers unattended—which sucked because this body most certainly needed some food! In fact, it felt like my stomach was digesting itself just thinking of the food I wished I was eating at that moment.

Stepping away from the source of my hunger pains, I moved to the railing of this second-floor eatery and gave the rest of the mall a glance. It stretched out in three directions from my current edible intersection with shopping corridors reaching to the horizon like a liminal, capitalistic hell as the sound of faint, distant muzak reached my ears. Signage fixed to storefronts, painted the walls and bathed the floor with a rainbow of bright and alluring colours, even though at a glance the shops revealed themselves to be mostly shuttered. Lacking even remnants of names on billboards, all that remained of their skeletal existence were numbers. And they weren’t even regular ones! Instead, classic Roman numerals plastered the signs that had clearly once been an UrbanThreadz, OuiOuiOrange, and Gacy's.

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. Remembering everything I had gone through, my world had blurred and faded into non-existence. I had almost forgotten my life before the night terror. The years spent hating my existence while dedicating every waking moment to a story. My story. And, as the pain of life and self-loathing flowed into this new body, I began to recall those final moments, suddenly realizing where I was.

"Wait, I know this place!" I cried out, my heart racing with a mixture of excitement and panic. "I'm in Phyllis’ Mall Domain!"

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

A familiar laugh. One I had heard in my mind countless times over the years. Phyllis, a character from my story, was currently talking to me. To me! As in, in the flesh. Not my flesh, but some flesh. And if Phyllis was talking to me, it could only mean one thing.

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 Damned Champion of the Shattered Ruby God Raldan, who was 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. Locations connected through a singular, massive exoplane known to her as the Mall Dimension.

“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, eyes closed in a way that feigned wisdom, as the wiry white hair that barely hung to her scalp gently blew in a nonexistent breeze. But she stood there before me, shakily lifting the sleeve of her bright pink wizard robe as she hoisted 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 original work-from-home movement! You can't take that from me! Pandemic-smamdemic! Mmmhmmm!" She shakily nodded her head in agreement with her own statement. "It is I. 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.”

It really was her. Phyllis. My favourite character in my story. The little lich who defined damnation and had lived through every age. Phyllis! My Phyllis!

"Phyllis!" I cried out as I rushed over to the tiny grandmother of hate.

Without hesitation, I berated her with the questions any normal human would have in a moment like this. I looked to confirm where I was, and before she could answer, I followed it up with a question asking what had happened. Then, as she prepared to respond, even more questions flowed from my lips as I tried to understand why I was in a different body. And finally, as I glanced over at the gold arch of the MacRonald's, I wanted to know if the rib sandwich was currently available.

“Whoa. Slow your roll, you little shit!” Phyllis spoke, holding her hands up to stop me

"Phyllis..."

"I said shut up!"

It was only once I had quieted down 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 wobbled and distorted like a degraded VHS tape, as palms and monsteras replaced the pastel plastic flowers of the planters in an instant. And, while both sets were equally fake, they were seasonally distinct and showed that the mall had changed in that moment. Beyond the railing to my side, a ridiculously tall bouncy castle appeared on the first-floor promenade, where a pair of inflatable tube men flanked it with wild, air-filled twerks. Even the muzak shifted to a more upbeat, summer vibe as early afternoon light flooded the space from nowhere in particular, illuminating the faint dust particles that drifted through the space.

Looking back to Phyllis, she now stood before me holding a tray containing an extra-large sleeve of fries and a square box dripping from the bottom with the sauce of a drenched rib sandwich.

“Come sit,” She nodded weakly 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? When an all-powerful entity tells you to do something, you obey, right?

Then it clicked. Everything around me was too surreal. There was no way I was dead. Hell wasn't Esseria. It was fire and brimstone. Something else must have been going on.

Oh, I must still be sleeping. I thought, pinching at my arm as she placed the food before me. That’s what’s happening. It's a dream within a dreams-dream. Wow, absolute cinema, award-winning even—someone call Kris Bolan I've got a sequel to Foundation planned.

My stomach growled loudly as I glanced at the food. Still not awake and definitely ravenous, I was not convinced that this dream body had ever eaten before. So I didn’t hesitate to put this fantasy metabolism to work until the real me could clue in to this night terror. Without a moment to waste, I eagerly began scarfing down the unhealthy meal placed before me.

“So, Tahvin," Phyllis finally said as I furiously consumed the meal. "You’re really dead.”

“Gah—awk!” I choked on the food, reaching for the fountain drink that materialized in an instant.

Coughing up words and barbeque sauce in the moments before taking a big gulp of carbonated syrup, I eventually continued.

“Wha? Dead? I knew it, this is Hell! And, knowing you, 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. To answer your other question, you’re in the body of Ishara.”

“Who? Is-hah-rah? What kind of fuggin’ name is that?!”

“A young Kalish boy from Sutin’eli. And yours now!”

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

The Kalish were a group of ancient people of my world. They were from the First City of Illuhsan’Drayden, which existed some ten thousand years before the most recent Divine Cataclysm. They were spirit walkers who lived normal lives until one day in their teenage years, their true souls awakened. These people then began to hear the voices of every life they’d lived since their first one in that ancient city. Of all the species in this world, they were unique because they were the only ones that could reincarnate, albeit in a limited sense of the word.

Most of the time, the new life could remember only fragments of their past existence, experiencing them in dreams that educated and guided them down a path of righteous purpose. Sometimes the memories were painful, helping them heal, and other times they were helpful, meant to teach them a lesson. But, in some rare circumstances, a previous soul with too strong a will to live overpowered their new Kalish host and wrested control for themselves. In that instance, the new life ceased to exist, falling into a deep and lasting slumber in the subconscious, as the old life took control of their body. These had a specific name—

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

Man, even in death, I do no favours for myself. What kind of asshole am I? This kid had a life, a family and here I am—a shut-in from another world, stealing it away from him in an—

“Yes and no, so hold off on the S-Rank pity party.” Phyllis reached over, cutting into my breakdown, 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. You know I love tropes! You get it, you made me this way.”

“You did this?!” I shouted in reply. "I did this?"

"Don't yell at me! I'm old!"

"You're still spry, go suck on an evil gobstopper or something!"

"I used them all up to get you here, you know this!"

"What?! What are you talking about?!"

And so, we yelled at each other for a while. In that time, Phyllis explained that she needed me to be her oracle and travel the world to complete the Ruby Prophecy. The same world that I had been writing up when I was ripped away.

The Ruby Prophecy she spoke of was a fairly generic fantasy legend that foretold an event that would one day return Phyllis to her full strength as a Draconic Champion. No longer a shell of her former strength, she'd finally have the power to complete the task set to her by the fallen Ruby God, who would then be resurrected in all His glory. But, for her to do that, she needed a 'stooge' or 'hero,' words she used interchangeably. 

Wait—I’m the Champion of my own story. I thought as a chill raced through my body at the idea. Yeeek—Cringe. Oh no, am I a self-insert in my own world? Ugh, that's so lame. What's next, thinly veiled fetishes, self-discovery, harem—ooh, harems. Okay, I'm on board. Wait, no, I can't have a harem of story characters because that's even MORE cringe. Man, this is going to be a complicated life...

Freeing myself from my thoughts of big-breasted catgirls and elves fawning over me, I asked Phyllis for clarification. To which she began to do what I wrote her to do best, avoiding 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 for a while until finally, I managed to get answers to my questions. Answers that, like them or not, set the stage for my new life in this world I had created.