Emilia's Exorcism

This text was inspired (with her permission) by the work of u/soft-n-slow of Reddit's r/gonewild.

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Part 7

"So you finally couldn't make it back into the bath," the phone's artificial voice said. "I've been wondering how things would finally break down."

"... Evening Witch?" Emilia asked.

"Right in one, dearie."

"I... I don't understand." Was this a nightmare? Some sort of bad dream? No, it

felt

real enough... "What's happening to me? How can I be in these clothes? They were on

Katya's

body, not -"

"Wrong."

"What?" Emilia blinked. "But - but the spell - you said I possessed -"

"I lied," the witch said bluntly. "Doesn't work that way, never did. All the spell does is put you in a certain state of mind.

Dissociative fugue

- think that's what they call it these days, anyway. Big words, just boils down to you pretending to be someone else for a while, then letting yourself forget about it."

"W-what..." Emilia felt like her entire mind was lagging. Like it just kept working and working with no result, just a wheel spinning on an upside-down shopping cart. "But... but Katya -"

The phone sighed. "Don't you get it yet?

There is no Katya...

well, more or less. There never was.

You've

been the one doing it all the whole time. Wandering the streets half-naked, enjoying the company of strange men... about time, too. You won't have a body like that forever, you know."

"But - but..." Suddenly, Emilia moved. That is to say, her

body

moved, seemingly of its own accord, without any input from her. She found herself getting out of bed, her head throbbing. "What's happening? Why am I getting up?"

"I don't know, dearie. Why are you?"

She began to undress, dropping the red panties to the floor, stripping off the bodystocking. Emilia tried to stop herself, to sit back down. But her muscles wouldn't respond to her will.

Something else was in control

- she was just a prisoner, trapped inside of her own body.

Oh fuck oh God this couldn't be happening. She could feel her heart pounding. Tears welled up in her eyes. "B-but... why would you do this to me?! We had a deal! I gave you what you wanted!"

"Oh, you mean the scans? Eh." The witch made a dismissive sound. "Don't need 'em. Never did. The thing I

really

needed was

De Vermis Mysteriis.

That's why I hired Eddie Linton to steal it for me - not his real name, of course. He nicked it out of the vault a couple of hours before we first talked."

"L-linton?" She flashed back to the man in the library weeks ago, then to Katya sucking cock inside of a rental SUV. That was the same man? It seemed so obvious now. Why - why hadn't she realized that before?...

"Yep. In fact,

he's

the real reason I contacted you to begin with," the witch said. "Seems you caught his eye while he was prowling around the library. So much so that he called in a favor I owed him. He wanted to have you before he left town. Didn't care how I did it, just so long as you were under his thumb for a night. Lucky for me that you turned out to be quite the little bundle of neuroses, hm?"

Emilia's body tossed the fishnets onto the floor, right next to the leather jacket and bikini top. Her feet walked towards the bathroom.

"Oh, Katya, dear?" the witch added casually. "If it's not too much trouble, could you bring this along with you? I just want to see how all this turns out, thank you kindly."

Emilia's body turned around and picked up the phone from her nightstand.

"B-but... but... that doesn't make any

sense!

" Emilia wailed as her body marched her into the bathroom. "I couldn't have been out doing... t-

that!

I'd know! And - and - I don't even own fishnets! And -"

(Except that wasn't true, was it, she realized in a flash. She

had

owned a pair of fishnet stockings, hadn't she, left over from an abortive cosplay years ago. The red bikini... she'd ordered it online on a drunken whim - tried it on once, then promptly banished it to the back of her closet out of pure embarrassment... the heels had come with a bridesmaid's dress she'd worn to her cousin's wedding. The leather jacket had belonged to one of her exes. He'd never

specifically

asked for it back when they broke up. So she'd held onto it out of spite - because at least that way she'd gotten

something

out of that whole stupid waste of time...)

"Oh, sure. You

could

have noticed," the witch said. "You could've seen all the marks and the bruises on your skin, or wondered about all those strange aches and pains and pulled muscles you kept getting. You could've asked why Katya looked so much like you, or why she always had bits of paint on her skin, or where that extra cash in your bank account had come from.

"But you didn't. Because you didn't

want

to. Did you?"

"But - what do you..." Emilia stopped as her hand picked up a brush. Her body set the phone down next to the sink and opened the jars of ritual paint. Dipping the brush into the blue, it set about applying the pigment to her bare skin. What was it doing?...

"It's simple," the witch continued. "You wanted Katya to exist. No, you

needed

her to exist. To do all the things you couldn't. To act on the desires you can't even admit you have. To take care of the hard parts - the risks, the consequences, the awkward walks home. All those irritating little things you wanted to avoid.

"You needed Katya, so you created her. Willed her into existence, then locked her away deep inside your mind. Problem is, there's nothing free in this world, child.

Especially

not in magic. You outsourced your urges to her. Now she's calling in the bill."

"What's she doing?" Emilia stared into the mirror as her hand drew a pair of red ox horns directly above her heart. "These symbols - they're different than the regular ones. I don't recognize any of this."

"Hmmm. Depends on what she's going for. If I had to guess... I'd imagine she probably wants out right now more than anything else."

"... what do you mean,

out?

" She watched as her hand dotted a kind of leopard pattern on the bottom of her left arm.

"Exactly what it sounds like," the witch said. "Her on the outside, in control, free to do as she pleases. You trapped on the inside, watching or sleeping. Or maybe just gone altogether."

"She w-wants to

kill

me?!" Her left hand awkwardly drew an odd trio of symbols on her right wrist - a stick figure dog sitting on its rump, a sidewise pair of glasses, a capital T with a half-completed box around its center.

"Or just as good as dead!" the witch said cheerfully. "You've heard of a hostile takeover before, haven't you? Think of it like that - but instead of a company, it's your mind."

(This wasn't happening, Emilia thought. It couldn't be true. There was no way. If it was, then she'd be able to remember -

- fuck yes they were doing it, the frat bros were really fucking doing it to her. They'd actually managed to get her

air-tight -

one cock fucking her pussy, another pounding her ass, a third inside her mouth, all while two or three hands mauled and pinched and slapped her tits. Oh hell the fuck yes she'd been waiting for this she'd wanted to be used like this for so fucking long - no time to think, nothing to do but move her hips and hump and suck and slide the cock back and forth through her lips she wanted it she wanted their raw cum inside of her she wanted to taste it and swallow it and feel so dirty and slutty and perfect...

- what - wait, no, that couldn't - she wasn't -

"- this way, baby." She took Eddie by the hand and led up him the stairs, her tits hanging lewdly out of her open jacket, her bare ass exposed for all to see. Oh, fuck, she was so wet. This was all Eddie had let her wear during the drive back from the strip club. She'd spent the whole thing flashing passersby through the windows, growing more and more turned on with each person who saw her, knowing the whole time she still had his dried cum on her face and chest...

As she hurriedly undid the locks, he casually ran a finger back and forth over her dripping pussy lips, sending tiny shivers through her entire body. Oh fuck. Needed a cock inside her again - needed it so bad. She threw the front door open. Grabbing Eddie by the belt, her hands already working at the clasp, she pulled him into the apartment, straight towards Emilia's bedroom...

... oh, God.)

"H-help me," she pleaded in a small voice. "You can stop this, can't you? Please. Just make it stop. I'll do whatever you want."

"And why would I do that?" the witch countered. "You never had anything I wanted to begin with, remember?"

"Y-you

used

me." Tears fell from her eyes as her hand painted a stylized deer on her forehead. "I

trusted

you. I t-thought you were

good.

Or, I dunno... nice, at least..."

"And when did I ever say

that?

" An annoyed growl entered the witch's voice. "Let's get this straight. I'm not

good.

And I'm most definitely not

nice.

I do as I please, child. And a foolish little twit of a girl like you? You're just

entertainment.

An idiotic mouse running around a cage of your own making. Why do you think I gave you the spell after Eddie was gone? I

knew

you'd fuck it up - and I wanted to see every last frabjous second of it."

Emilia's hand put down the brush. Her body walked towards the bathtub, still full of water from the night before, its color turned a grimy purple by the dissolved paint.

"P-please." Emilia hiccuped through her tears as she begged, her panicked breaths reaching a crescendo. "Stop. Make it s-stop. I d-don't want this... I d-d-don't want to..."

"You don't?" the witch snapped. "Then stop

yourself,

girl."

Her body stepped into the ice cold water. It slid down into the tub, vanishing into the freezing muck.

Then Emilia stopped herself. Somehow. Barely.

She managed to hold her head just above the soiled water. In a sudden flash, she somehow knew the rules here. If she let herself sink below the surface, that would be the end of it. The end of

her.

The water would wash her and everything she was away, leaving only Katya.

She couldn't be Katya, she thought. She just couldn't let herself become...

that.

She tried to imagine an entire life as Katya. As a completely shameless slut - a whore for fun, without a hint of pride or dignity or self-control, everything her parents had ever told her not to be. A whole life of bouncing from bed to bed, fucking stranger after stranger, cumming over and over again in cheap motels and dive bars and bathroom stalls and wherever the fuck else she wound up. Exposing herself to the crowd at Heathcliff's, moonlighting as Hindley's pet fucktoy, letting the regulars use her body whenever and however they pleased. Eating out Nellie and the other strippers in the back during their breaks. Letting the frat bros run trains on her for kicks. Willingly degrading her body, getting piercings and more tattoos and whatever else it took to announce to the world she was a cock-addicted, pussy-eating nymphomaniac, always horny, always down to fuck. She couldn't... that couldn't be...

... that...

... that didn't sound so bad, actually...

... is this what she really wanted? To just exist like... like some kind of animal? Free from any and all expectations, never planning past her next orgasm? How long could she really live like that? Did she care?

She tried to think of a single reason to stay herself. Her job. Her career. Her hobbies and interests. Just one thing that made her life worth living. One reason - aside from all the things she was

supposed

to be - for her to be here instead of Katya.

She couldn't.

Emilia closed her eyes. She let her head sink beneath the water, into the hungry void she could hear calling her name.

—————

A full minute passed.

She burst out of the dirty bathwater, hacking and coughing, her skin and hair stained purple.

Emilia wiped off her face and opened her eyes. "What? But..." She examined her hands, turning them over and back. "I... I don't feel any different."

"You're not," the witch said, any trace of malice or irritation abruptly gone from her electronic voice. "That's the point."

The phone made a chiming sound and shut itself off. When she eventually got around to turning it back on, she found everything related to the last month was gone - the spell files, the scans, the chat app she'd used to talk to the witch. All completely erased, as if they'd never even been there.