Chapter 30 Revision
Em’s head swam as she came to. Past her tears, everything blurred together into a singular bright smudge.
Her nose and throat burned with whatever Ming had forced into her system to knock her out.
She was lying on something hard and cold.
Something sharp bit into her wrists, and soft, warmness engulfed her feet.
Em groaned, joints popping as she shifted. A rattle and resistant jerk tugged on her arms.
She’d been bound.
Panic flooded over her, storming through her heart as she jolted upward. Her wrists strained in agony, caught within the restraints.
Reality faded into view: stabbing fluorescent lighting humming overhead, the bleached walls and shut door across from her, the cracked linoleum flooring, the medical bed she’d been handcuffed to.
Em’s breath hitched as she surveyed the emptiness of the space around her. The room was stripped to the barest bones possible, like she was in some sort of hospital.
A modern hospital, no less.
What the hell? She remembered Roden’s strong arms wrapping around her, how the darkness swallowed her as Ming waterboarded her with the sticky-sweet magic.
Then—nothing. At some point, someone had changed her into a simple white chemise, which hung loosely about her body and was a little too sheer for her liking.
It clung to each curve or fold of her body.
She apparently didn’t have a bra or corset on either.
No matter how she pulled or yanked against the fabric cuffs, she was held down tight. Em winced, wishing she could brush the itchy flyaway hairs off her forehead.
She couldn’t check if Inky was still on her person. Nor could she try to write herself out of this scenario.
“Hello?” Her own voice echoed in response off the barren walls, jarring in the silence. Each shift, each breath, each jerk against the cuffs was deafening in the hollow stillness.
“Anyone there? Can anyone hear me? Let me go, dammit!”
The latch of the door clicked.
A hooded figure drifted in. If they had legs, they were hidden under the long, dark layers of their robes. Em couldn’t even make out if the tall form was a humanoid beneath the baggy folds of fabric. There were no eye slits in their robes either. They might as well have been a living sleeping bag.
“Did you sleep well?” the stranger asked, their voice ungenderable to her.
“Did I….” Em couldn’t hold back her snort. “Sleep well? I’m fucking tied up!”
“Yes.” The hooded figure tilted their head in thought. The living blanket blob’s voice was smooth as molasses and calm as a sleeping kitten. Somehow, her blood pressure managed to cool. “This is for your safety.”
“How the hell did I get here?” Em demanded.
“You were admitted yesterday afternoon.”
“What is this place?” Em tugged at her restraints again, hoping the Blanket-Blob would untie her. “Was I injured?”
“You are physically unharmed,” the figure droned. “However, your fellow Secondary Characters have determined you need Main Character Therapy to prevent a further descent into your developing villain arc. This institution serves as a Revision Rehabilitation Center for your current needs.”
Villain arc.
“Oh,” was all Em managed to say, numbed.
Her memory replayed the sinking, gut-dread of realization when Ming pointed out her genocidal deletion of the Shelley’s Ghostly Swamps.
Her heart shriveled deeper into her chest in shame.
This whole situation smelled like Ming was trying to step into her mentorship role to guide Em back to the light.
And it fucking sucked.
“If you do well during our first group therapy session, you may return to your questline,” Blanket-Blob explained, drifting its way across the room toward her. It smelled like lavender laundry detergent, looming by her medical bed.
Maybe it really was just a living blanket.
At least it’s something damn original for once.
“I don’t need therapy,” Em said, “I need Inky back so I can fix my mistakes.
“Your pen is safely locked away with your other belongings in our holding vault,” Blanket Blob said. “Although it is not normal for a Main Character to come through our rehab center with a Great Author’s tool. Stolen, I presume?” It cocked its head again in consideration.
“It was given to me,” Em partially lied. Technically, Stephanie didn’t put up much of a fight when she took the story.
“Very well,” Blanket Blob said.
With a shred and snap, her fabric cuffs tore off.
Em tumbled off the bed. Her feet smacked against the tiled floor, coolness soaking into the balls of her feet through her grippy socks. She wrapped her arms over her fairly exposed chest, shivering.
“Can I have my clothes back?”
“No,” Blanket Blob said. “At this time, until we can assess your development as Main Character and psychological well-being, you are not to associate with anything from the outside world for your safety. Should you pass our first Group Therapy sessions, we will reevaluate this conversation.”
Great. Em huffed, letting her arms drop to her sides. Given the Blanket Blob had probably been there for her admittance, there wasn’t much point in covering what it’d already seen. Bitter betrayal soured her mouth.
Damn you, Ming.
“Come along now, it is time for our session.”
Blanket Blob drifted across the room. With a click and whine, the door swung inward, revealing a stereotypical contemporary hospital ward beyond her cell. It led her out of the room, past other gray doors with numbers on them.
She followed Blanket Blob down a windowless hall of nothing but flat walls, flat floor, and naked light bulbs. Nothing for wards to have the opportunity to harm themselves or their caretakers. Nor anything that could be useful for an escape.
Em chewed on her lip, desperate to get this group therapy over with so she could get Inky back before the Lack of Orderly Worldbuilding and earthquakes grew worse.
They passed a few other blanket creatures throughout the various endless corners and long halls. There wasn’t a single other humanoid in sight.
After an eternity of padding her socked feet through the bright, stretching halls, Blanket Blob stopped her outside a pair of conference room doors.
Glass walls enclosed the space. Beyond, she could make out various patients in chemises or white jumpsuits gathered about stiff armchairs in a semi-circle.
At least the other wards appeared somewhat normal-looking.
Blanket Blob opened the doors with a swish of its robes.
A dozen eyes met Em’s, cloudy and sleepy. The patient’s ashy expressions were drained, as if they hadn’t seen the sun in weeks. Their hunched forms were no doubt exhausted from a lack of exercise or enrichment.
Everyone had different colored grippy socks—Em’s were white, but the others were various shades of yellows, oranges, and reds.
Seeing so many other failed Main Characters twisted her chest into a knot. Em swallowed, bracing herself for whatever new, terrible information she was about to learn regarding the heartless. And to think, she once held so much admiration for the writers who held her world together.
“Please make yourself comfortable, Ms. Smith,” Blanket Blob invited her to the last empty chair. “Now that everyone’s here, we may begin our session for this evening.”
Em had no choice but to obey. She flopped into the armchair, the freshly polished material squeaking in protest underneath her legs.
It was chilly against her skin; everything in this damn rehab center was too cold.
She hugged herself, tucking her legs underneath her, trying to find a semblance of warmth in the frigid atmosphere of sanitation and medicine.
“Welcome, everyone. May we find peace and purpose after our gathering today.” Blanket Blob drifted to the center of the semi-circle, expressionless as ever.
“Let us begin with our first case: the failed best friends-to-lovers pair. What would you like the group to know about your current ailment as characters?”
A girl with cropped hair and pointed ears—likely some sort of Elf based on her high cheekbones—shifted in her chair. She shot an icy glare at the fidgety guy beside her, an obvious werewolf in human form based on his clawed fingernails.
“We used to be close, grew up together as kids,” she said, not delaying. “We even got to third base, so to say.”
“Yeah, and now we’re just Vaguely Cordial Acquaintances,” the werewolf grunted, averting his eyes from hers. “She won’t even talk to me in the pub anymore.”
“Your records indicate you’re supposed to be Fated Mates,” Blanket Blob said.
“Yeah, well,” the werewolf snorted. “There’s no spark anymore.”
“What do you mean by that?” Blanket Blob asked, despite the simmering tension between the ex-lovers.
“We hooked up, and there was nothing more to it,” the Elf girl said. “I’m not even attracted to him anymore.”
“Have you considered working through various couple-therapies to work past this bland plot twist to bring back some spice between you both?” Blanket Blob asked. “Without continuing your Fated Mates destinies, your plotlines will fall flat and cannot be completed.”
“I’m just not interested anymore,” the werewolf guy shrugged.
“This sounds like an issue of resolved sexual tension,” Blanket Blob mused.
“I’d say,” the elf girl muttered.
“Who in our session would like to give advice or commiserate with our pair here?” Blanket Blob addressed the room.
“We’re in a similar situation!” A goblin raised his wrinkly hand, his short feet dangling barely over the edge of his armchair.
Another goblin sat beside him, nodding. “We were accidentally assigned roommates by the Bureaucracy in the Collins District back in Bradbury City, but no matter how hard we try to accomplish the forced-proximity romance for our plotline, we cannot achieve any chemistry.”