lay your soul onto mine
Tom’s reaction is immediate and deeply educational. He folds in on himself with a strangled wheeze, both hands flying down to cup his crown jewels as he staggers back a step, colour draining from his face while he drags in a dramatic, panicked breath that sounds like it might be his last. His eyes flick up to Kaisel, wide and utterly baffled, as though trying to reconcile how they got from oh nice soldier man is joking about spa stuff to I am being threatened with peppermint-flavoured annihilation.
"Wh—I—yeah—yeah, okay," he blurts, one hand lifting shakily in surrender, nodding too fast as Kaisel lays out his conditions. "I can do that. Monthly. On my dime. Absolutely." He swallows hard, glancing to Flora, then back to Kaisel, then back to Flora again like he’s suddenly very aware of the social hierarchy he has catastrophically misread. "I’m...I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—" The sentence collapses under the weight of the stare alone, and he tries again, quieter, more earnest. "I’m really sorry."
With that, and one last wary look at the candy cane, Tom hustles away into the steam room like a man fleeing both judgment and fate.
Flora, who has been standing just to the side with her arms loosely crossed, finally lets the smirk she’s been wrestling with creep a little closer to the surface. She rolls her eyes at Tom’s apology in a way that suggests it has been accepted, catalogued, and immediately dismissed, her attention already back on Kaisel. Without warning, she reaches out, fists curling into the front of his collar, and tugs him bodily back toward the heart of the spa. "Come on, you," she laughs affectionately, dragging him along. "That’ll teach you to brag about how skilled my hands are."
What follows feels less like a coordinated sweep and more like a very expensive, very stupid horror montage.
The pair barrel through treatment rooms lit by flickering candles and shattered salt lamps, mud slithering along walls like it’s trying to escape the genre. Kaisel wades in first, swinging the novelty-sized candy cane with gleeful efficiency, smashing and scraping through animated clumps that splatter dramatically before writhing back together. Flora directs the chaos from just behind him, snapping quick commands to her tide jaguar as it lunges and prowls, herding rogue chunks of memory mud away from corners and doorways like an apex predator herding particularly stupid prey.
A mud pile rears up near a massage table? Wham (imagine old batman style lettering) Peppermint justice. Another slaps wetly at Flora’s boots? POW! The jaguar snaps and sends it skittering away like a disgraced villain retreating offstage. At one point a face almost forms in a facial room sink, only to be obliterated mid-scream in what feels suspiciously like a jump scare designed by someone who has never actually been to a spa.
It’s ridiculous. It’s gross. It’s loud. Somewhere between a slasher film and a slapstick comedy, and Flora can’t stop smiling as they fight their way deeper in, because if she’s going to miss her facial, at least she’s doing it with style and the love of her ife weilding a weaponized candy cane, phallic imagery be damned.
~FIN
"Wh—I—yeah—yeah, okay," he blurts, one hand lifting shakily in surrender, nodding too fast as Kaisel lays out his conditions. "I can do that. Monthly. On my dime. Absolutely." He swallows hard, glancing to Flora, then back to Kaisel, then back to Flora again like he’s suddenly very aware of the social hierarchy he has catastrophically misread. "I’m...I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—" The sentence collapses under the weight of the stare alone, and he tries again, quieter, more earnest. "I’m really sorry."
With that, and one last wary look at the candy cane, Tom hustles away into the steam room like a man fleeing both judgment and fate.
Flora, who has been standing just to the side with her arms loosely crossed, finally lets the smirk she’s been wrestling with creep a little closer to the surface. She rolls her eyes at Tom’s apology in a way that suggests it has been accepted, catalogued, and immediately dismissed, her attention already back on Kaisel. Without warning, she reaches out, fists curling into the front of his collar, and tugs him bodily back toward the heart of the spa. "Come on, you," she laughs affectionately, dragging him along. "That’ll teach you to brag about how skilled my hands are."
What follows feels less like a coordinated sweep and more like a very expensive, very stupid horror montage.
The pair barrel through treatment rooms lit by flickering candles and shattered salt lamps, mud slithering along walls like it’s trying to escape the genre. Kaisel wades in first, swinging the novelty-sized candy cane with gleeful efficiency, smashing and scraping through animated clumps that splatter dramatically before writhing back together. Flora directs the chaos from just behind him, snapping quick commands to her tide jaguar as it lunges and prowls, herding rogue chunks of memory mud away from corners and doorways like an apex predator herding particularly stupid prey.
A mud pile rears up near a massage table? Wham (imagine old batman style lettering) Peppermint justice. Another slaps wetly at Flora’s boots? POW! The jaguar snaps and sends it skittering away like a disgraced villain retreating offstage. At one point a face almost forms in a facial room sink, only to be obliterated mid-scream in what feels suspiciously like a jump scare designed by someone who has never actually been to a spa.
It’s ridiculous. It’s gross. It’s loud. Somewhere between a slasher film and a slapstick comedy, and Flora can’t stop smiling as they fight their way deeper in, because if she’s going to miss her facial, at least she’s doing it with style and the love of her ife weilding a weaponized candy cane, phallic imagery be damned.
~FIN
