The Friendship Puzzle

Inspired by The Hellbound Heart (Clive Barker), this is the origin story for Freya Grey, a character from the Tangled Knot series.
 
 
These are the days of the empty hand, Freya thought. She heard that in a song somewhere and she couldn’t get it out of her head. As it was a new release, it was going to be played on the radio stations until everyone’s ears were bleeding. It would be labeled as the anthem of 1990, this new decade of hope.
 
Hope for what?, Freya hissed. Her life was boring. Nothing ever happened because she was given no freedom. Her Slim Fast Mom restricted her diet as much as she restricted her social life. She was prohibited from befriending anyone but the three mean-mouthed daughters of her mom’s best friends. Mean-mouthed and jealous, all vying for the spot of alpha of the pack.
 
It was always going to be a close competition. They all had the same blond hair and blue eyes, and they were all fearfully respected by the other girls in their grade. And the boys either crushed on them or were gay and wanted to be their best friend. But Freya had found something that might set her apart. It had been left in her mailbox of all places, and really, she should have shown her parents and let them handle it. But it intrigued her. This little box, barely big enough to fill the palm of her hand. It comprised puzzle pieces that slotted neatly into each other, and it was made of heavy, dusky metal. Until just now, when she was starting to sing more of that over-played but intriguing song by George Michael, it had sat in the palm of her hand, heavy and dark and cold. But now, as her singing pelted out to reverberate around the walls of her bedroom, the little box seemed to shudder to life. As it did, the dusky darkness lit up, and on each puzzle piece Freya could see the face of someone who looked like they were struggling to breathe. How strange to feel it pulsating now, this tiny box. With every breath she took, and every breath she let go of, the puzzle box throbbed in unison.
                                
If there was a system to this strange puzzle box, Freya had failed to find it. So intent was this girl on exploring this box that she didn’t hear someone approach her from behind.
“You have the friendship puzzle,” she heard someone say. The voice was high and scratchy, the combination of a mew and a growl.
 
Freya spun around to find someone looming over her. This person, if it was a person and not some creature, must have been well over seven feet tall, making it crook its neck so it could fit beneath the ceiling. Its limbs were so long that its knuckles trailed on the ground, making it seem sad and slow. But there were sudden, sharp movements too, as if it were twitching in and out of consciousness.
 
“I am Terraskin and you must understand the dangers of what is in your hand. What you see before you, inside this puzzle, are the faces of souls who have tried to complete the puzzle that you must now solve.”
As it spoke, Freya flinched because spittle would fly from its strangely grey lips, and the fluid smelled of something rotten. And that face. It was pale, so pale that it looked cold. And inert, like it had been long dead and only awoken by Freya’s actions. There were cracks all over the skin, and had some of her cheek split so deeply that Freya could see the flash of her white bone jaw line? What agony was expressed in that face, but also, strangely, she could see that ecstasy was mixed in there too.
 
“You must make the right choice,” Terraskin continued. “That is all. If you can solve this riddle, you will release unimaginable power from this simple box. But if you make the wrong choice, you will find yourself trapped in that puzzle box, as countless others have.”
 
If Freya had asked, this creature would have explained that it was a Sorocyde, a gatekeeper of sorts, but to where, it would not disclose. Terraskin would also have explained that it was one of three. Freya just hadn’t seen the other three who were lingering in the shadows of her room. She did not see that they were also more than seven feet tall, and their faces also expressed intense agony and ecstasy rolled into one. What distinguished them was the method of torture that they had to endure. Terraskin had a tongue hanging out of a gash in the side of its cheek, and the way it winced every time it talked, it clearly felt every exposed nerve-ending. The second Sorocyde one had a heavy chain running through each eyelid, and it gnashed and gritted its teeth so intensely that white fragments flaked from the corners of its bloody mouth. And the third one rolled and flexed its head so unnaturally that it clearly had a broken neck. Freya could hear a muffled snap of bones breaking beneath its dusky skin.
 
The wounded have the potential to hurt others, so these Sorocydes were carrying implements of torture to inflict on others some of what they had been condemned to endure. They carried and embodied means of piercing or tightening or severing parts of anyone who dared to come close. And I use the word embodied deliberately; these instruments of torture were embedded into their flesh to inflict more torture, but also to give them more power.
 
Freya shook her head and screamed, “Don’t come close!” but the Sorocyde advanced. The girl shook the box in the creature’s face. “You want this?” she screamed, “then you’ll have to let me go.” Already she had backed her way across the room and so she felt the door knock her back. 
 
“What are you doing?” the Terraskin screeched, its eyes widened so much that they pulsated. “Don’t shake it like that, not without intent. Not without purpose.”
The girl shook the puzzle box again.
“You don’t know what you are playing with,” Terraskin screeched again, but the girl was already holding the door handle and she pulled at the door with all her might. It remained inert, sealed shut, no doubt, by a strange force that the Sorocyde possessed.
 
“You summoned us,” the creature spat. “It was your choice and no one else’s. Now you have summoned us, there is no way back from this. We must accompany you to the edge of freedom or the edge of eternal confinement. It all depends on the choice you make. Look carefully at this friendship puzzle because it holds the answers that you seek.”
 
A friendship puzzle? Freya had never heard of such a thing. She had watched her older sister trap herself in friendship puzzles of sorts. Never a puzzle box but a quandary where she was not allowed to be friends with certain girls in her grade, only the alliances kept sliding and slotting in different directions, so Freya’s sister felt trapped. Some days she was so confused that she didn’t want to leave her room. Freya would hear her sister crying to their mother that she didn’t know what to do, and no matter which way she turned, she ended up hurting someone.
 
What a fool, Freya thought. When she had such power, to squander it on tears, regret, and a retreat to the overly safe confines of her bedroom. If power is within my grasp, then I should wield it like a weapon. I should make everyone my subjects because, after all, what purpose is power if it isn’t to be used?
 
Freya pitied her sister for her ignorance. To Freya, it seemed quite simple that there were two truths about a friendship puzzle: The first, that there was always a central piece to that puzzle, an alpha that dictated the voice of the whole group. Whatever was spoken by anyone else must seem like rainfall with its colorless and flavorless banality because a distraction from the words of an alpha would be a grave and foolish mistake. Secondly, the purpose of anyone but the alpha was to appease this central piece. But only for as long as the alpha occupied this position. As soon as there was a recalibration, all other pieces must adjust their positions to fall in line with the new alpha. Sometimes this recalibration was brutal, and the pieces were required to feed the former alpha to the new central piece.
 
Freya’s sister had been foolish not to know all of this about the friendship puzzle. She had failed to identify the alpha, let alone appease her, and now she was in danger of being squeezed out of the puzzle entirely. Meanwhile, Freya had been quick to learn from her sister’s mistakes. She didn’t just identify the central piece, she quickly usurped it and occupied that position for herself.
 
She pressed again and tiny blades shot out from its sides. From this early revelation, Freya knew that this was a weapon that was likely to inflict more harm than just a razor’s edge. She knew it held more potential, and it was simply waiting for the puzzle pieces to be slotted together in the right combination.
 
“Use it wisely. Make the right choice,” Terraskin reminded Freya. But the girl wasn’t listening. She was too busy shaking it and pressing the various parts, and each time she did, she felt the shudder from within the box as if she were pressing the nerve-endings of each soul who was trapped inside this box. This might have horrified her sister but Freya loved it so much that she squealed and giggled. This friendship puzzle promised her great power over all of the girls in her grade, and she wasn’t going to let anyone take it from her.
 
From somewhere far in the distance, a cell phone starts to ring. It isn’t her own because she checked it. The ringing is coming from outside of her bedroom, outside of her house even, and it is now accompanied by the chattering and sneering sound of girls.
 
“Who is that?” she asks. But the Sorocyde does not answer.
“Speak up,” Freya demands, and she points an accusatory finger at the creature. “You said this would give me unimaginable powers. So where are they?”
Again, from far away, a cell phone rings.
“Foolish child,” the creature hissed. “You do not order me around.”
And then the Sorocyde fell silent. And the light bulb in Freya’s bedroom flickered out. And she knew that there was no hope of rekindling.
In the troughs between the chimes of the cellphone, the darkness in the room swallowed Freya whole. It was as if the world she had occupied for thirteen years had ceased to exist.
 
And then, light.
 
It came from them: from the trio of Sorocydes who now, with their shuffling and groaning, had cornered Freya.
 
They stood before her and said nothing. Freya saw nothing of joy, or even humanity, in their faces: only desperation, and an appetite that made her bowels ache.
 
“What are your wishes?” Terraskin enquired.
Freya should have said something, anything, but she stood there before them, wishing that she could slip between the gaps in the floorboards.
“I asked you a question,” the creature added.
It was time for one of the others, the one with a heavy chain running through each eyelid, to speak.
“She asked you where you have been.”
“I heard you,” Freya replied, “I just don’t know what to say.”
“You summoned us. We are to fulfil your wishes. But choose wisely,” the third Sorocyde added. Only now Freya noticed that this creature had part of its hair, scalp, and skull missing. Freya didn’t want to see it but she could see the creature’s brain fluids glistening as it trickled down its face. “So what are we going to do?” the creature continued.
“I don’t know,” Freya replied.
“No,” Terraskin hissed, “I don’t suppose you do.”
 
Outside, somewhere near, the world would soon be going to sleep. It was a world that believed that there was no such horror that stalked Freya’s bedroom. All across the East Coast, parents were putting their children to bed with false reassurances that there was no such thing as a monster that could stalk them until it was hungry and tear them from their bed.
 
The walls of Freya’s bedroom started to tremble. The girl had heard of earthquakes in northern New Jersey but they were rare. And she never expected one that would make the walls shake so much that cracks would appear. From behind the cracks, Freya could see the glow of something. Was there a fire in the void of her walls?
 
“Too late,” Terraskin murmured. “No point in trying to quell your rising fear. The friendship puzzle has been activated and cannot be undone. You asked for power,” the creature continued. “This is power. You will have power for eternity, although it won’t be in the form you expected. You have one last chance to turn back from this. Do you really want this power?”
 
“Of course,” Freya snapped. Any remnants of fear had been washed away by the more common feelings of impatience and irritation. Why did people not just do what they were told? she thought. Why so much talking and questioning without much in the way of action?
 
“Very well,” the creature replied.
 
At first, there was silence, but then Freya could hear the creaking of doors and windows, and maybe the floor joists and supporting walls too. She knew that her world was being turned inside out, and she was being invited into the panic-filled darkness from which this trio had stepped. She smelled the bitterness of their critical thoughts; it pricked her conscience so acutely that she was certain she would bleed.
 
They urged her to step further into their world, and there was just a crack open where Freya thought she might go, where she might actually obey their silent instruction, and in rushed everything to overwhelm her. She heard so much in the creaking of the house and the rushing water through the pipes. She saw endless cracks and joins of wood and flesh and bones, and so she shut her eyes tightly. But that only made things worse. Now she could smell it too, a thousand different ways, and she tasted every inch of her mouth and the residue that was between her teeth. All of this and more; it swarmed through her mind, flooding her so that the old version of herself was swept away and drowned. And she was emerging, baptized, reborn as something new. Someone they had created.
 
She tried to open her eyes. They stayed firmly shut, stuck by something. Pus, perhaps, or glue, or even a needle and thread.
 
“What is happening to me?” she screamed, but she knew the Sorocydes would not reply. The greater distress she showed, the greater pleasure they would derive. She could always hear them cawing and cooing with delight as Freya’s heart pounded in her chest.
 
“You knew this would happen,” they said in unison. “You knew there would be no going back once you joined us.”
 
“Why won’t you help me?” Freya tried to scream but the only noise she made was a scratchy squeal.
 
“You did not want our help,” she heard one of them say. “You acted like you were apart from us. So now you can stay there, on your own, slipping in and out of the darkness like shifting waves set to drown you.”
 
“Please.”
 
“There’s no going back. You knew that.”
 
She thought of hooks and chains binding her to the souls that were trapped inside this friendship puzzle. She thought of how this strange box could lock together or break apart, and she had no control over it. She thought of parts of her body breaking apart, and leaving puzzle-shaped holes in her where pain would take its place.
 
Freya’s voice kept going, with pleas and sobs, rippling over and over like beating wings of a bird to ripple through the air. And then it stopped. All of it. All the sounds and sights and smells. All of the pain. She was left to doubt her own existence, but she could still feel her heartbeat, so she was still here, in this space.
 
She looked to the Sorocydes, hoping for some kind of mercy, but, in unison, they raised a finger to their dry and tattered lips.
 
“Silence? That is what you want from me? Silence? Or what?” Freya screamed. “You can’t do much worse.”
 
And that made them smile. Quickly, too quickly to really comprehend, she saw each Sorocyde perched on top of a pile of rotting human heads. They smiled at their friend, and the collision of kindness and death appalled her. Freya was certain that these were the heads of friends that preceded her. These were the ones who had been trapped with the promise of kindness, only for them to be torn apart and fed to this trio of malice.
 
Freya had been lied to. There was no pleasure in the air, no hope of kindness. She had made a mistake to accept this puzzle box. A very terrible mistake.
 
One of the Sorocydes stepped down from its pile of heads and smiled at its friend. “Now you have seen it all, it is time to go a little further. Now we can finally begin.”
 
Then a force pushed Freya against the wall, and she realized it was each Sorocyde pushing her hard so that the cracks widened. The combination of each creature’s effort resulted in Freya slipping through the gaps in the wall to the heat of the glowing light within. And there she saw and felt it all. She felt each sinew of her muscle tighten and she heard each beat of her heart, and the slosh of the blood in her veins. The gurgles of her stomach, digesting this morning’s breakfast, became a torrent and gush to her ears, and the fetid stale milk smell on her breath covered her face in a noxious cloud.
 
She tried to struggle but of course she shouldn’t have done that because every movement brought on an avalanche of more pain. She could feel the hardness of her bones, and to such a degree that she feared they might snap. In fact she heard a cracking beneath her skin, and her legs buckled, and this collapse brought more agony. Her nails were growing, and her hair, and she was acutely aware of each strand and each fingertip. The hair and nails were piercing through her skin, breaking apart each atom, and as soon as she was aware of that, she became hysterical because there was now too much awareness, of every atom throughout her body. It was all being crushed or split and there was no escape.
 
She tried to scream but the crumbling wall filled her mouth with its chalky residue. And she could smell the dust and the layers of paint from the layers of years. And she was then acutely aware, and could taste, the metal of the pipework that ran beneath the floorboards. She felt the cool of the water rushing through those pipes, pulsating against the walls of her arteries as if it were clear blood coming to purify her.
 
“No such luck,” she heard someone (or something) scream. She assumed it to be one of the Sorocydes, and it added, “You wanted this.” It repeated this over and over again as it got louder and louder. She begged it to stop, if not with words, because her mouth was full of masonry, but with her thoughts that she was certain they could read.
 
And the smell of her skin, how it sickened her. She seemed to regurgitate every meal and every drink she had consumed, and then she knew where this was going, because of the backwards motion of her memories, and she clawed at the walls as if that would stop this. But it didn’t. And she crashed headlong into her mother’s breast and her mother’s milk, and how foul it tasted, and how much there was. But it still kept pumping and filling her throat so she could not breathe, but this didn’t seem to matter as much as the foul smells and tastes that continued to assault her.
 
And then she was deep in the crevice of her mother’s body, splitting her open as she returned to where she came from. All manner of bodily fluids and other matter splattered around her face, and then she was inside, deep inside her mother, and unable to see or breathe, but she could hear her voice, and the voice of her father.
 
The Sorocydes squeeze into the wall void. Even though there is not enough room, they do not seem to care. They can, after all, bend Freya into whatever shape they wish.
 
They watch her terror and agony, and they croon, they purr, they quicken with excitement.
 
“Have you seen what we are capable of?” one of the Sorocydes asks her.
 
She tries to answer but still her mouth is too full to make a sound. She regrets ever playing with that friendship puzzle. She wishes she could just throw it far from here. But it is embedded into her hand.
 
“Good,” another Sorocyde says. “You have opened the portal, and now you can watch as we continue our work.”