“This Podcast has Language some might find offensive
It was fall, 2004. Emily Sloth-Bunny Jr. had just been promoted to production editor on the Ellen DeGeneres Show, having shown early promise at Warner Brothers.
She was aware of the show’s reputation around trans women, according to a diary released by her mother, but she thought she might be the exception to the rule. She thought maybe the rumors had been greatly exaggerated.
She was wrong.
In her fourth week as production editor, Emily Sloth-Bunny Jr. was crushed to death when a piece of the set fell from above the stage.
It was the first Ellen Show death to make national headlines.
But, why? Why was every other death covered up? And how did Warner Brothers keep getting away with these ‘accidents?’
For MICE Media, I’m Ratty Vermington, this is The Dark Side, season three.”
“I like it.” Dan smiled, his tired eyes hanging lazily on the blank cover illuminating his podcast player. He turned the phone over, eyes flicking up to meet those of an excited, young Ratty. The kid had talent, there was no denying that, but this pitch had landed on Dan’s desk at least a hundred times at this point, and it was either going to end with a green-light, or Vermington pitching it to another outlet. There was just one problem.
“Listen, I trust you as a reporter, and I’m glad I’m not hearing it in this one so far, but you cannot do the ghost shit.” Ratty’s excited grin faltered just long enough for a seasoned journalist to pick up.
“Have you SEEN the clips I sent you from that last broadcast before the hiatus?” Ratty fumed.
“Yeah, it’s a scary looking glitch, Ratty. They get them all the time on Ellen.”
“The fact that it happens often enough for you to say that it is a thing that just happens on Ellen is exactly why we should be investigating it.”
“We- look.” The tabby took last month’s magazine out of a desk drawer and slapped it down between the two of them. “We make news, Ratty. If you want to make Ghost Adventures, go to Buzzfeed”
Ratty stopped hiding her disappointment. “Fine, no ghosts.”
“It’s insensitive.” Dan said. “Sloth-Bunny’s family lives a few hours north, I don’t want them knocking on my door, telling me they heard a ghost story about their daughter. There are plenty of other angles, take a different one.”
“Yeah, okay.” Ratty snapped, annoyed as their editor chose to bury his head in the sand and ignore everything she had presented. It wasn’t like she was a ghost-obsessed maniac, she just wanted to report the full story.
Ratty never got the chance to do the ghost angle. No sooner had she shut off her phone’s airplane mode than she was informed that Warner Brothers had bought and spiked the project. In the five hours she was in the air, every employee, former-employee, and family members of the victims had left her a voicemail rescinding their commitment to be interviewed.
She spent a week in California while MICE’s money people figured out how to pay for a flight home, chain-smoking something semi-legal and screaming into cheap, scratchy linens. She returned to Toronto thoroughly burnt out, the cracked and dry ashes of her brain slowly rehydrating as this particular blemish on her record was allowed to gently fizzle out and die.
The beam of Ratty’s flashlight was just about useless in the dusty halls of Warner Brother’s maintenance trenches. They had been abandoned only a few years earlier after the Ellen DeGeneres Show moved out of Studio 11 and the trench-side entrance had just up-and vanished.
Something was fucking with the geometry of this place. The maintenance trenches ran in a loop around the entire lot, wide enough to accommodate a few lanes of golf-carts, but seemingly devoid of any working ones. Ratty and Sapphomet had circled three times so far, each time getting more annoyed. Moving backwards didn’t work either: going clockwise, Studio 12 came directly after Studio 10. Counterclockwise, Studio 12 was followed by Studio 12, was in turn followed by Studio 12, and so on.
The pair’s absent conversation had become tense with frustration, not wanting to miss the studio for a fourth time: “What’re the odds it’s like, an actual ghost?” Ratty asked, making a mental note as they passed studio 9.
“Not sure.” Sapphomet mused. “one in six?”
“one in six?” Ratty asked, incredulous.
“What’s wrong with one in six?”
“I dunno, one in six is like, the way they do dentists in commercials.” Ratty teased.
“I don’t know if there is really any other way to do odds.” Sapphomet cocked an eyebrow, a little offended at being so thoroughly called out for her dentist-style odds-calling.
“You could say it as like, twelve per-cent.” Ratty said, running the math completely wrong in her head.
“Maybe,.” Sapphomet muttered, distracted, trying to figure out just how far behind them Studio 10 was.
“Wild how 1 in 6 is only two percent off 1 in 6.” Ratty chose not to re-run the math as she mentally found more and more flaws in whatever had brought her to: ⅙ = %12. It didn’t matter, really. Whoever said there was a right way to do math.
“Wait.” Sapphomet grabbed Ratty by the back of her shirt and briefly strangling her. They turned, shining the beam of their flashlight on a pair of white painted numerals denoting the end of Studio 10’s section of the tunnel. Ratty, on the other hand, saw 12.
“Fuck. Did we go too far again?”
“No, I think…” Sapphomet yanked on Ratty’s collar, pulling her back over the threshold. In the instant before the possum hit the ground, studio 12’s sign tessellated itself infinitely across her eyes, accompanied by a single segment of some rapper’s deep, booming voice, repeating and overlapping for the second and a half it took to drag Ratty back to the Studio 10 side of the barrier.
“Shit, sorry.” Sapphomet apologized as their wife’s arm cracked off the cement floor.
“No worries. It's like…” Ratty reached out with her unaffected arm as her elbow began to knit itself back together. Knowing the wall was there, her hand stopped easily, like putting a flat palm against a bowl of JELL-O. It was obvious as soon as their eyes adjusted to looking at something barely-there. Dust clung to it like a long forgotten piece of candy at the bottom of a purse. Several person-shaped holes had been punched in the surface where the pair had crossed through, the edges of which now wobbled where Ratty’s dropped flashlight highlighted them. “...It’s there. See it?”
“Oh, yes. Yes I do.” Sapphomet knelt, placing their own palm against it, surprised as it seemingly pushed back against their weight. “Now, how do we break it?”
They closed their fist through the gelatin, attempting to grab any fistfull of universal threads that might be running through it. No dice. The goat rocked back on their haunches, running their eyes along the base of the barrier. Ratty’s legs looked broken where they were still stuck through the barrier, like a straw poking out of a glass of water.
Hm.
“May I see your flashlight?” Sapphomet asked.
“You may.” Ratty teased. Sapphomet rolled their eyes, switching off both lights in unison.
“Oh, wow, okay. Did not know you were going to do that.” Ratty said, just barely panicking as her eyes locked onto Sapphomets, the goat’s glow calming her back down. Sapphomet knelt forward with their own light, pushing it lamp-side-up into the barrier. It was even more obvious on such a small scale: looked almost like someone sawed out the middle inch of the flashlight and tried to glue it back together. The little round bulb disappeared between the barrier.
Sapphoment pressed their thumb into the rubber button, then: a click, a crack like a piece of wood snapping, and...
““-imes your words just hypnotize me,
And I just love your flashy ways (uh-huh),
Guess that's why they broke, and you're so paid.”
“I got it!” Sapphomet beamed.
“You got it!” Ratty smiled back, her ears perking up at the baritone voice now rattling through the trench. “Is that Biggie Smalls?”
“You would know better than I would.” Sapphomet shrugged as they got up, offering their hand. Ratty took it, standing and tilting their ear towards the sound.
“Yeah. That’s Biggie.”
“Huh, neat.” Sapphomet said. “The ghost has good taste. When you were researching Emily, did anything come up to suggest she might like Biggie?”
“Oh, yeah. Her mom gave me this like, ancient mixtape back in the 2020s, actually.” Ratty said, leading the way into the studio. Sapphomet snickered.
“What?” Ratty asked.
“I just like how you say ‘back in the 2020s’.”
“They are ‘back’ for me.” Ratty braced herself against the stuck door, doing her best to push it open gently. Something on the other side had it jammed closed, so Ratty took a half step back and threw her whole weight into it, slamming the door against the opposite wall.
That was pretty hot, Sapphomet thought.
“It certainly smells like a ghost in here.” Sapphomet said, their nose immediately assaulted by the stench.
“What do ghosts smell like?”
“Well, uh- Like this, my love.” Sapphomet explained, doing their best to rub the smell of mildew out of their nose. It smelled disconcertingly like a regular old abandoned building. Then again, most of the Americas were deeply haunted.
The stage was in an incredibly advanced state of decay for the amount of time it had sat empty. Whatever walls hadn’t rotted away were coated in peeling flakes of uncared for drywall paint. The beams that held up rows of lights seemed comfortable in their position; crashed through the stage’s thin vinyl veneer.
In the X where they crossed, on top of a pile of torn up seat-cushions sat the ghost. It had been a long time since Ratty - an ambitious little intern - spent her nights pouring over every scrap of information on Emily Sloth-Bunny Jr., but this was her, almost certainly.
The ghost took a deep hitching breath as Biggie’s backup singers faded into silence, crying softly as she waited for her voice to be drowned out by the next song from her digitally hissing, barely-holding-together CD player.
“Time to get to work.” Ratty rolled up her sleeves, bowing and stepping aside for Sapphomet to take point. Sapphomet gave a short curtsey in response, enjoying their little rituals.
“Hello, Emily.” Sapphomet called, keeping back a good couple feet. These kinds of things could break bad, so it was better to be safe than sorry. The ghost jumped, startled by her sudden visitors. She turned, glancing over her shoulder as though the pair behind them were some variety of horror movie monster.
Heavy, rotting brown tear tracks burrowed through her ethereal fur. Her wispy, white hair just barely hiding a pair of deep, black, terrified eyes.
“My name is Sapphomet, this is my wife, Ratty.” Sapphomet pointed, struggling socially as the ghost barely reacted to their words. The ghost turned, her fear beginning a gradient towards curiosity. Her eyes weren’t black, they were hollow; empty sockets held open with a pair of massive invisible marbles. It was kind of actually kind of cute when she waved.
“Are you able to speak?” Sapphomet asked.
The ghost shook her head slowly, shuttering, almost like a mechanical doll.
“Not a problem. Are you Emily?”
The ghost didn’t respond to this. Her eyes remained empty. Her expression blank, it was clear that she didn’t actually know.
“That’s… also not a problem. My wife and I run a shelter for displaced paranormal entities. We were hoping you might like to come live-”
The ghost interrupted, vigorously shaking her head.
“We could help you get your memory back, you would be safe with us.”
The ghost stopped, lifting a spectral chain in her hand, giving it a tug as if to illustrate:
“You’re stuck.” Ratty stepped in, hopping up on the stage and past the ghost, fascinated with the chain. The ghost nodded.
“So, if we could get you unstuck, and give you a comfortable home…” Sapphomet trailed off as the ghost’s fear and curiosity transformed into an anxious hope. She thought for a moment, her eyes searching the floor, and nodded.
“I bet I could just…” Ratty stomped into the floorboard where the ghost’s chain slipped below the stage, cracking it and spooking the two other women. The ghosts form began to shake as though losing connection to this plane, getting less and less human with each echo.
Ratty lifted her foot again.
“Ratty, wait!” Sapphomet was just a moment too late. Her boot came down, the floorboards came up, and a laminated piece of paper sprung from the gap, springing at the ghost’s face as though snapped like a rubber band. The ghost yelped as it whapped into her face, pulling the chain with it as it fell from the stage.
The ghost transformed in an instant. Gaining a foot as they became extra rabbit-like, her black eyes took over her face - her ankles forcing themselves through their jeans as her legs became more lapine, her fingers sprouted into claws, and she lunged at Ratty.
Ratty rolled out of the way, dropping her flashlight in the process and putting herself between Sapphomet and the creature. It hissed as it was frozen in the beam, struggling against its seizing muscles to cover its eyes. She spun in place, sprinting out of the theatre and into the night with her chain rattling behind her.
“Shit.” The pair of ghost-hunters said in unison.
“It’s okay.” Ratty dropped down off the stage, making her way towards the exit. “We can catch her.”
“Wait. No.” Sapphomet put an arm out to stop Ratty, stared down at their flashlight, then pulled a length of rope from subspace. “I can cut her off with this. You make a trap, I’ll route her back here.”
“Babe there’s like- I don’t know how to make a ghost trap.” Ratty stammered, incredulous as she stared around at the dilapidated heap of studio.
“And? You think her discman lasted for 6 years on a single pair of double-A batteries? There has to be something to work with around here.” Sapphomet called as they broke into a sprint. “Work some magic!”
Ratty stood, stunned at being left to ‘work some magic’ on a bunch of old garbage. As though taunting her, the moonlight seemed to stop in a spotlight on the cross made by two of the beams of fallen lights.
Yeah, that would work.
Tracking the creature was easy. Not only was she trailing the now bright-orange chain that bound her to that slip of paper, not only did she glow bright enough in her panicked state to be seen above the buildings, but she was also tearing at the walls of the main corredor as she zipped through it.
They paused at the exit to Studio 11, tying a thread to an exposed piece of pipe and making a barrier that gave anyone with any reason to avoid a glowing piece of rope cause to duck into the studio. They did this to the rest of the nearest intersection before heading into the main corredor.
They started east, careful to keep flat against the sound-stages each time the beam of a guard’s flashlight swept through the of the perpendicular corredors. They tied off each one as they went, hoping to funnel the creature back this way or at the very least limit her options.
The guards didn’t notice. Most mortals didn’t bother to look directly at the way their universe was constructed, content to let their eyes slip over the things that sat right in front of them.
The end of the corredor was a block of outdoor sets: the tall windows and marble architecture of Parisian-style condos sat opposite to a replica of one of Radio City Music Hall’s less ostentatious (and likely less copywritten) marquees with the serial numbers filed off. Center to that was the steps and marble pillars of a courthouse with one presumed Emily Sloth-Bunny Jr. desperately yanking at the fake knob.
“Emily.” Sapphomet risked raising their voice as they tied off the rest of the exits. “It’s okay, Ratty’s sorry she startled you.”
The ghost turned, their massive hollow eyes now held open by panic, shuttering hard enough to rattle the fake door.
“It’s okay. We’re here to help.” Sapphomet took a step closer, reaching out with an open palm to the ghost. She stared at it, slowly creeping down off the steps, seemingly still ready to bolt if need be. Her hand was inches from Sapphomet’s as a guard rounded the corner.
“HEY!” He snapped, startling the ghost and sending her sprinting back down the blocked off corredor. She tried a few side roads as she went, finding each blocked off. Sapphomet allowed themselves a light fist-pump before confronting the guard. “You’re not supposed to be here.” his voice shook as the little demon was seemingly unphased by his threateningly large flashlight.*
“You just saw a ghost, and your first reaction-” Sapphomet started, bewildered. They slipped their belt off as they walked - fearless - at the raised pistol. In one fluid move, they slipped under the guard’s arm, tied the belt around his neck, and pulled.
“You should have fired, and that really is your bad, but the sooner you close your eyes, the sooner you get to wake up in the hospital, okay?” Sapphomet murmured, toeing the line between ‘you don’t have to be nice to cops’ and ‘being nice feels better than not being nice, especially when you’re strangling someone’.
“Yeah, right, work some magic. Because it’s that easy.” Ratty grumbled through a mouthful of torn rubber wire housing as she successfully completed the task that required magic working. It actually was easy enough - not something she was going to admit to anyone, let alone herself.
The lights tore their power lines from the ceiling when they fell, and the ghost had wired her discman into wall power from the adjacent studio 4. The discman, by the way, is also labelled as ‘Emily’s Discman’ with one of those cool black and white embossed labels, so we can all stop pussyfooting around calling her ‘Emily’ now.
So, actually, all there was left to do was tear it out from there and twist them together without shocking herself.
Or, well…
‘Without shocking herself’ was generous. She shocked herself, several times, each time more annoyed than hurt. Ratty was no stranger to playing with wall power, and every zap made her feel more and more like an amateur.
The annoyance faded just slightly as she tied off the last cable, thrumming one last light to life. She clambered up the scaffold and - using her sleeves like gloves - pushed the light so the beams crossed in a central ‘trap zone’. She let go unceremoniously, falling to the ground with a hollow thud.
Stomping like that before was a bad idea. It was shitty not to think about how it could have scared this complete stranger who already looked to be on the complete edge, and it was also just like, needlessly self destructive. Even as her leg had stitched itself back together, she could feel the ache the femur-shattering stomp left behind.
She ignored the aches, most of the time. Ignored the half-hundred times she had been stabbed going on 25 years ago now, ignored the several times she had fallen farther than any living creature should have been able to survive, ignored it all.
Ratty ignored pain. That was what made sense to do, how she was brought up, how she lived her life. It was probably why she had been told to hang back: Sapphomet loved her, and there was no guarantee the possum wouldn’t needlessly throw herself into danger again.
Oh well.
Ratty stood up, bored of introspection. Time to investigate. This was the first - and most likely the last - chance she would get to poke around the old Ellen stage.
The broken board was first on the menu. She picked what was left of it out of the hole, creeped out when a small fortune of paper masks made to look like Ellen DeGeneres with black, hollow cut-out eyes staring back at her. A mask, of course. That was probably what scared Emily.
The vinyl around the hole had also started to chip in a weird pattern, having bloomed a slightly lighter shade of black by what must’ve been heat. Ratty followed it about a quarter of the way along before realizing that yeah, okay, it was just a sigil. Cool.
The frankly mundane realization was interrupted as Emily came whipping around the corner with her eyes behind her, more concerned with what was chasing her than where she was going, she flew right into the center of the beams.
She froze in place for a moment, like a cartoon character slamming into the side of a cliff, before falling to the stage. Ratty dove forward, catching her out of the air just before she hit the ground.
“Gotcha.” She grinned. Emily’s head lulled around as she recovered from the impact, too dizzy to do anything but stare as her eyes met Ratty’s. Sapphomet brought up the rear, looping her belt back through their pants.
“You get her?” Sapphomet asked, panting.
“I got her.” Ratty replied.
“Good.” Sapphomet sighed. “The… Lights…” they pointed, pausing to catch their breath. “You do that?”
“Yeah.” Ratty nodded.
“They look nice.”
Ratty smiled, looking up at her creation just in time to see one of the lights sag out of alignment with a sad little creak and crack. She shrugged, let go of Emily, propped her up into a sitting position and shimmied back to give her some personal space. “So, your name is Emily, right?” Ratty yanked the electrical assembly, plunging them back into darkness, illuminated only by the ghost’s faint glow. She seemed grateful for this, but she still had no idea what her name was. The possum stared into her eyes for a moment, searching, before she was struck with an idea.
“Actually…” She said, looking past Emily at Sapphomet. “Can I try something?”
“Sure.” Sapphomet shrugged.
“Hand me that mask.” Ratty reached for it. Sapphomet complied. Ratty lifted it to Emily’s face, pausing mid-move as she caught the rabbit’s eyes again. “Do you mind if we try and put this on you?” She asked. Emily’s face remained blank. “Okay…”
Ratty perched the mask on Emily’s face. It settled into a hover a half an inch from her nose. Emily took a deep breath, suddenly remembering the suffocation of being lungless as she - for the first time since she died - filled her spectral lungs with air.
There was not much colour to return to her yellow-gray fur, her hair stayed the same bleached shade of blue-white. The only major change came in the form of a deep, dry maroon that spread from the top of her head, down over her neck, and soaked into her t-shirt.
She was quiet for a moment, a sudden agency behind her hollow eyes.
Like she had to remember what being a consciousness felt like.
Because, yeah. She kinda did.
“You there, Emily?” Ratty asked after having left the requisite gap for soul-searching. Emily stayed silent for just a few more moments before…
“I really don’t know if I’m Emily.” She said, her voice thin, struggling to recover some deeper resonance after years and years of silence.
“That's okay.” Sapphomet hopped up onto the stage next to the rabbit, hovering a caring hand just above her knee and meeting her eyes for a nod. They scooted closer once they got it, doing their best to make comforting contact against the incorporeal. “Let’s start with what you do know. Do you remember anything about your before-life?”
Emily screwed up her face as she searched her memory. “I used to work here...”
“As a production manager, right?” Ratty asked, calling on her own before-life.
“Yeah. Yeah that makes sense...” Emily murmured “...and Ellen, dropped something on my head… She was like, sacrificing people? For views? Or…”
Ratty caught Sapphomet’s eye. “The talk show host?” She asked.
“She’s also an elder god.” Sapphomet explained.
“I mean, yeah-” Ratty started, clearly flustered by information she was supposed to know, but didn’t. “But like, don’t you think she would pick one?”
“This- Ratty did you think that, every time I visited Decay, that she just also happened to live in the Ellen studio?” Sapphomet asked. Ratty’s embarrassment rose in the silence as Emily took a break from her own soul searching to stare - a little bewildered - at the possum she had just met.
“Yeah, maybe.” Ratty replied.
Emily groaned as pain took over her senses. The pain - she assumed - of having something heavy dropped on your head. She shuddered, rubbing some soreness out of her slower eye socket. “Fuck. My head…”
“Right, yes, of course. That’s okay. This is actually a really good start, Emily. The more we can learn about you, the more likely you are to stay like, on this plane.” Sapphomet explained.
“Let’s get you home.” Ratty said, ducking under Emily’s armpit and hoisting the taller woman.
“Cool. For sure.” Emily said, burying her snout in Ratty’s neck to drown out the light - before realizing that she was the light. “Where y’all from by the way?”
“We don’t sound like Californians?” Ratty teased.
“Nah, I mean the goat sounds fine, but you talk like a farmer.” Emily’s voice was muffled by possum flesh.
“I do not talk like a farmer.” Ratty laughed.
“Oh, hun. You totally do.” Sapphomet chose to betray their wife in this, her hour of need.
“Well, fuck.” She mumbled, annoyed. “I’m from Ontario and Sap’ is from Hell.”
“Oh, uh, cool. Tight, I guess.”
It took a few hours for Emily’s memory to plateau at a stable level. What came back was an outline, structure without substance, the fact that she had been alive at some point, with scarce actual facts about that life. The few details that came back - annoyingly - were largely centered around the Ellen DeGeneres show, and all coloured by the shame of having participated in it.
Explaining it to her new… friends? Landlords, maybe? People in her life, or, afterlife.
Explaining it to Ratty and Sapphomet helped. Each had their own history of participating in an institution they now found incontrovertibly evil.
“So, essentially, we would get these branding deals, right? Everyone in the audience gets a free KitchenAid mixer and KitchenAid gets like, some advertising. It’s like a trade, essentially. The thing is, though, is that we didn’t just do that with KitchenAid mixers. What really brought in the views was when Ellen like, brought in some dying kid on and like, ‘paid’ for them to not die or whatever.” Emily explained.
“We kind of hand-waved it to be like, ‘oh, we paid their hospital bills’ or something, but in reality it’s more like Ellen would use her godhood to take the years that that child would lose to sickness from someone else.”
Still, there was nothing to explain why she was the only ghost out of the presumed hundreds that would die between the show’s inception and Ellen’s eventual death. If the mask was anything, it was just something that was nearby when Emily’s soul needed something to cling to. It was some Halloween episode tie-in that never panned out for obvious reasons.
All of this coming back as Emily lay on a motel bed; the first bed she had ever seen in this version of her memories, waiting for someone named Angel to come pick the three of them up and whisk them off to Toronto, Canada. Here was no better than there, she thought, thoroughly detached from it all.
She thumbed idly at her mask, wondering if she would ever be able to take it off without risking a return to purgatory. Sapphomet had walked her through the risks:
“The worst case scenario? Well, you dissipate, get sent back to the uh… ‘ghost-zone’... and whatever progress you’ve made to constructing this form is reset.” They explained from the opposite bed. It was just the two of them for now, Ratty had gone out for… some reason.
That memory was really going to need some work. What little memory the rabbit retained of non-existence was something akin to a collective, thoroughly nasty, feverish wet-dream. A never ending rave where one could never get tired, just bored and confused and higher and higher before peaking just above the clouds that constructed the barrier between realities.
“I should mention though, that it would not be permanent.” Sapphomet said, doing their best to be encouraging as they scooted to the very edge of the bed and rested a comforting hand on/in Emily's semi-corporeal shoulder. “The people back home are good at this kind of thing - working together, we could find a way to bring you back in no time at all.”
Emily stood, walking through Sapphomet, exasperatedly throwing her weightless form down on the motel’s dusty-smelling couch with a completely inaudible ‘flumf’. She stared up at the motionless ceiling fan through the mask’s tiny eyes.
“This is super annoying.” The rabbit said.
“I can imagine.” Sapphomet got up from their spot and sat back down on the arm of the chair.
“And I mean, it kinda sucks to have to wear the face of the woman who killed me.”
“I can’t imagine how that must feel.”
“And we're not even entirely sure I need it.”
“We-” Sapphomet paused. “No, we are not sure that you need it.”
“Alright then, fuck it.” Emily grabbed the paper face by its chin and whipped it off, slamming it down on her lap with a slap. It went easily, not clinging to her face, as though completely within her control: it would stay when told to stay, and come off when told to come off. Some of the colour drained from Emily’s body, but she was still there.
“How do you feel?” Sapphomet asked.
“Uh, like seven?” Still talking too.
“Out of ten?”
“Yeah. I think so.”
“Are you still with us?”
“Mostly, yeah. I would say… yeah.” For whatever reason, less of a body was actually more comfortable. Less places to ache, Emily guessed as she rolled over onto her side sunk into the couch.
“Do you feel like you're gonna stay at seven out of ten?” Sapphomet asked, standing to take in the rest of the rabbit. Sure enough, she was staying.
“Yeah… probably.” Emily murmured, a sudden exhaustion taking over her voice as she got comfortable.
“Are you going to sleep now?”
“Mmhmm.” Emily said.
“Ah, well. Okay. Good. Sleep well, Emily.” With that, Sapphomet got up, flicked off the lights, and slipped out to wait at the door and warn Ratty that Emily had finally found a spot alone to rest properly.
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