It’s been a lovely day at the seashore, even if there was a brief moment when Emily might have discovered that not all is well with me.

Then various compulsions from Kimmy’s own software and Patrick’s malicious inhibitions kicked in, and the opportunity passed by.

It’s getting a little late in the afternoon and the cold weather is probably on its way, so I suggest we leave. I see Emily’s expression wrinkle.

“Can we get some selfies please?”

I groan, but there’s no preventing the inevitable. “But it’s November, and I’m not supposed to be wearing this Halloween costume after all this time.”

“Oh, John,” Emily says crossly, while I’m wondering how I just escaped triggering one of Patrick’s compulsions with that sentiment.

I figure that the metaphor of ‘wearing this Halloween costume’ is too vague to trigger the inhibition against me talking about being locked and trapped inside Kay. That is an insight really worth hanging onto, if I can. Maybe I can use a range of other metaphors?

Emily’s got her phone at the ready, and I’m helping her to stand on her stumps, half out of the wheelchair, so we’re at the same height, rather than me having to be bending down or standing too tall. “Smile, John!”

I’m naughty, and give another type of expression.

“No, that won’t do at all,” Emily says when she checks the selfie and sees me sticking out my tongue—or rather, Kay’s tongue. “Another, please.”

I have the opportunity to mentally review the image I saw sidelong on Emily’s phone, and I mentally rotate it, keystone it, then crop and stretch to the correct aspect ratio.

My eyes are gone.

I can see the telltale evidence of the standard Kimmy eyes, with their intricate striations across the iris, instead of the typical flecks that a human eye would have; and before they were assimilated, the contact lenses I’d been wearing had no patterning on the irises at all.

I tell Emily, “You win—I promise I’ll behave this time. Could you do another two—one including the whole background scene, and then a close-up?”

“Your request is my command,” she says, and I wish I could tell her that no, it is really the other way around—her merest requests become my commands.

Once she’s satisfied herself with the two selfies I ask, “May I see?”

“Of course,” she says, as she resumes sitting in the wheelchair and passes her phone to me.

I flick to the second photo, shut my new eyes closed, and mentally go through the steps to freehand a shape onto the image. Then I hand the phone back.

Emily’s a little confused, and she asks uncertainly, “Uh, yes?”

So it’s time to go with metaphor again, and see how far I can get.

“I think the Halloween costume might not have been dead after all.”

I hunch down right in front of her, looking slightly above her head so I don’t have anything in the centre aperture, and I start playing with my new eyes. I can alter focus, f-stop, zoom. And I can move each eye independently.

“Your eyes have changed.”

I can’t answer directly without running straight into one of Patrick’s behavioural limiters like colliding with a brick wall, so I’ll try extending the metaphor and see if Emily picks up the idea. “I prefer to think of it as the Halloween costume having become a lot more realistic than it was, nearly a week ago.”

Wow. I think I might be onto something here.

Emily’s eyes flash angrily and she starts saying out loud, “Yes, but that means—”

I quickly whip one of my fingers to her lips, before she can plough on further and wreck everything.

I’m relieved she stops in mid-sentence.

“It’s taken me several days to work this out, how to do this,” I begin telling her. “I have to couch what I want to say in metaphor, for… reasons. That Halloween costume we were working on a couple of months ago? The Halloween costume had a life of its own. We removed almost all of the costume’s mind, but we didn’t get rid of all of it. So now it’s got another one that it can take over instead.”

I can see terror in Emily’s eyes, and she wants to speak, so I take my finger off her lips and tell her, “Metaphors only!”

“Um. I don’t know how to say this…” Emily begins, and she’s looking incredibly upset and frustrated. “Oh, I think this might work. So Cinderella went to the ball, and she had to leave before midnight, to go back home and return to her normal self. But that didn’t happen?”

It’s not the perfect story to use, but I’ll take anything that allows me to talk about what’s happened to me without Patrick’s compulsions kicking in.

“Cinderella’s a great story! But I know a variation on it, so even though it’s getting late, would you mind if I tell you a story?”

“I’m all ears.”

“Okay. Once upon a time…”
 

_* ^* _*

 
Once I finish Cindarella’s tale, Emily ruminates for several long minutes before saying, “We need to go shopping for some things, before the stores shut.”

It is a very unusual shopping expedition, and Emily is almost convinced her plan has been ruined when we ran into her colleague Arlene Kern. I convince her that the opposite is true.

“Au contraire, my dear. Arlene will be able to attest to the fact that we were leaving for home at three p.m., if we are ever asked about where the ugly sister disappeared to.”

I am really digging into the Cinderella legend. It’s my job to lure the ugly sister to the seashore, and I send him a panicked email as the light begins to fail. Then Emily turns all of my networking off. We don’t want the ugly sister rooting around inside my head, remotely.

It’s twilight, and the rocky outcrop is completely deserted when we see the headlights of a car approaching. I zoom in at maximum magnification, and yes, it’s the ugly sister’s ugly little red shitbox. The ugly sister has a long walk from the car park to the secluded spot we’ve designated for the coup de grâce.

“I’m really annoyed at having to come and rescue you both,” he says when he’s within earshot.

“But you do understand that I’m not able to get into the water to pull John out? And my bag is all the way back at the car. I couldn’t crawl all that way to get my phone.”

“I suppose.”

The ugly sister turns her back on Emily, preparing to wade into the shallow water to retrieve me. Emily whips up the taser she’s had concealed, and shoots him in the back.

Zap! Sparks fly in the dark, and the ugly sister crashes to the edge of the shore like a sack of potatoes. A very ugly sack.

I wade back to shore just as the ugly sister is trying to get back to his feet, and Emily presses the trigger to deliver another two thousand volt shock.

Zap! Down he goes again.

“I’m enjoying this,” Emily tells me.

“I don’t doubt it,” I reply. The ugly sister slowly tries regaining his footing.

Zap! Convulsing even more horribly this time. Good.

“How many charges did the salesman tell us we’d get from the battery?”

“Between five and ten, depending on how heavy the discharges were.”

Zap! Writhing in real pain now.

“I’m glad we bought a spare. You’ll be able to quickly change it?”

“No problem.”

We get thirteen shots out of the theoretical maximum of twenty. The ugly sister is extremely groggy and almost unconscious. I take the taser from Emily and pass her the next weapon.

“I’m going to enjoy this so much,” she tells me.

“I wish I could help you, but I’m incapable.”

She wheels the chair almost up beside him, as he’s managed to assume a half-seated slump. The baseball bat connects solidly with the side of his head, and he’s out cold. For the second swing, she smashes down right on the top of his head. He’s not getting up again, but Emily isn’t finished.

“John, would you be so kind as to roll the ugly sister onto his back, face up?”

I arrange the ugly sister’s soon-to-be-corpse to my owner’s desire.

She raises the baseball bat overhead like a stumping pole, and brings it down hard. She caves in the front of the ugly sister’s head.

“I think that’s that,” Emily says. “Now that he’s no longer your ugly sister, do you think you might be able to have a go? If you want to, of course.”

“I’m sure I’ll give him a few whacks closer to nine p.m.,” I reply. “It’s only a short time to wait for low tide.”

“Then we can work out how to undo the ugly sister’s evil spell.”

“Yes,” I reply, “Though it’s far too late for Cinderella to be put back the way she was, before her mind was taken over.”

We cuddle in the dark for a long time.