Chapter 5: Chapter 5

“The king of this place? Wasn’t that purple noodle supposed to be the boss and what not?” Mustache Girl looked around, the Subcondite seemed to be hiding from the floating prince.

“Oh, yes, yes, the purple noodle, well, let’s say he and I have… an argument to settle.” Moonjumper cackled.

Hatkid pouted. Who did that guy think he was? Claiming to be the prince, when she knew pretty damn well Snatcher was the prince! Not him! Although he seemed to look the part, and those chains… Was he by any chance Snatcher’s actual corpse? What on earth was even happening?

“What is all that noise? I was finally managing to fall asleep after 100 years and then I was just woken up by your screams!” Snatcher had finally arrived at the scene scratching the cavities of his eyes, when he saw Moonjumper talking with the two girls.

“You!” The ghost pointed out. “What are you doing out of your grave?”

“Oh, hi, my ghostly friend.” Moonjumper looked back at him and smiled. “These two lovely ladies had the courtesy to dig me up and finally free me from this prison I was buried in.”

“You! Who told you to dig up my corpse?!” He pointed to Mustache Girl, who wasn’t scared anymore, rather, she was just confused.

“Your corpse? I was just moving the graves of your stupid minions like you told me to and this idiot made us walk all through the forest all the way here!” She pointed out to the Subcondite hiding behind Hatkid.

“You!” Snatcher grunted yet again and moved past the girl to talk with the Subcondite, who seemed to be trembling in fear. “You better have a good explanation for this, if you don’t want to suffer an eternity in pain!”

“Well, you see boss, you said that we could move our graves to anywhere we wanted and I thought I could just come here and get mine close to yours and–”

“I said… anywhere you want, except close to my own fucking corpse! Don’t you ever even listen?” Snatcher grabbed the Subcondite by the head and screamed right into their face, then he threw them to the floor.

“I guess not… I’m sorry, boss.” They replied, Snatcher just facepalmed.

“Uh… how come that your corpse is still moving and talking on its own?” Mustache Girl asked and turned around seeing Moonjumper grabbing her shoulder. “Who is this guy?”

"This Pecking bastard is no other than an impostor!” Snatcher pointed at him. Hatkid chuckled.
“What are you laughing at?” Mustache Girl asked the girl who was trying to contain her laugh.

“You see little lady, what happened was–”

“No, no. This time, I’m going to tell the story!” Snatcher interrupted.

“Ha, of course.” Moonjumper chuckled. “Go ahead my friend, I would like to hear it myself with your own words.”

Hatkid sat down and crossed her legs preparing to hear the story, smiling with enthusiasm, this sure was about to get interesting! Mustache Girl looked back at her and decided to sit down as well, still weirded out, but thankful she didn’t have to keep working on the relocation of the graves.

“It all started 180 years ago…”

***

It had been around a month since Snatcher had escaped Vanessa’s Manor. He was still trying to assimilate his own death and his spirit was wandering through the forest.

Even when Snatcher was dealing with grief, he also felt anger, he looked around through Subcon which now was turned into a mere graveyard after the curse of Vanessa had killed all of its people.

After mourning his own end, he decided to continue his own goals from his previous life now realizing his consciousness continued to accompany him in the afterlife. And it was not just him, it was also the spirits of other people who had died that day, most of them left into the utmost small part of their souls.

Snatcher realized about his own power as a spirit, fueled by his own anger and grief with the magic he had absorbed in the basement as he slowly died chained up, and decided to rebuild Subcon, and offered aid to the lost spirits who still wandered through the forest.

A lot of adults and even some children, wearing Halloween masks. It seemed most of the souls had been lost to the curse, and now not many were left. Even then, Snatcher gathered enough people to populate a town, giving them bodies made of burlap.

But that wasn’t enough. The Subcondites might have gotten a place in the afterlife, but they still hadn't moved on from their death. Realizing they couldn’t remember who they had been when they were alive.

Desperate, they started looking around for their corpses, bodies spread around everywhere back when the ice wave covered the forest. Each one of the Subcondites picked a body that was close to where they had woken up as spirits, and decided to give them a proper burial, trying to give proper respect to an era in their existence they longer had connection with.

Snatcher saw this and after a little while, decided to allow them continue with the burial, and even help them out in the process. He was still angry with his death, but he wanted to help his people, he wanted to be a leader for those who had gotten stuck there in the forest.

Each one of the Subcondites ended up assigned with their own grave and body, some of the minions couldn’t even be sure that the body they had picked up was their own from back then, but having a grave alone and someone to mourn to helped deeply get some closure, it allowed them to heal.

Snatcher realized that his corpse was still rotting away, back in Vanessa’s Manor, and decided he wanted to give it a proper burial as well. He had seen the Subcondites even cry, even when the curse had taken away their memories. It was the first step in moving on, in accepting what had happened, and giving some goodbye to what he had once been.

But Snatcher couldn’t get close to the Manor, no no no, he was scared to go there, or not even that, he was terrified. He couldn’t simply grasp the idea of getting close to the witch that had taken his life, still wandering around like a grim reaper, waiting for him to come.

No, he wouldn’t get there, not in a million years.

He decided to use his faculties learned from Law School and make a new contract. Since most Subcondites were small and short by design, they probably wouldn’t be fit for the job, but he could probably take a couple of small spirits which still haven’t moved on to burlap and ask them to bring his body back to him, using the own energy that carried them as ghosts.

Snatcher signed up the contract with the two spirits. “Bring me back my dead body, and I will give you one for yourself.” It said, but for this contract, he had forgotten to add a punishment clause, and that proved to be his worst mistake.

Both of the ghosts had arrived at the manor, and passed through the small back door into the basement. After passing through some of the walls, they had finally found the prince’s corpse, still rotting away chained up to the wall.

"WHO'S THERE? WHO DARES ENTER MY HOME?" Vanessa’s voice echoed through the whole manor.

“Let’s just do this and get out of here as soon as possible.” One of them said, passing up through the chains locked to the wall, finally freeing the blue corpse. As spirits couldn’t really die, but a curse under Vanessa could mean ending up suffering through all eternity.

“Right behind you.” The second one replied. They got closer to the corpse with the intention of taking it with them, when they noticed a slight pulling force from within. “Hey, do you feel this?”

The second spirit got closer, but turned away after feeling the pulling force. “Oh wait, hey, I think you should turn back as well.”

“What? Why?”

“I don’t know exactly what I am feeling. But it seems as if this body has been constantly given the energy of the forest, being so deep into the ground.”

“What does that even mean?”

“It means it might still be habitable, if you get too close to it, you might get pulled in. I suggest we ask the boss to make us bodies first, so then we can bring back this corpse, otherwise we are going to get stuck.”

The other spirit didn’t reply for a moment.

“Still habitable, you say?” They finally answered, looking into the spirit that was accompanying him.

“And you say this was the body of the prince?”

“Yes, it was.”

It was such a weird feeling. Most spirits didn’t have any memories of their previous life, so they didn’t have any regrets or grudges. They weren’t even attached to an identity anymore they could hold on to, it was a life without a self, without inspirations or objective, an existence without a purpose.

But, it was that lack of identity, that wish to be set up differentiated from the rest, to have a past and something to be called their own, that pushed the spirit to go further inside the prince’s corpse.

The spirit allowed themselves to be pulled over by the force of the body, until getting sucked inside.

“Wait! What are you doing?!” The other spirit screamed.

“Aagh!” The spirit inside the body screamed, finally feeling pain after so long, after a time so long that they didn’t even remember. His mind stretched over as all the nerves of the body he was inside of now connected deep inside him, burning him inside. “Help me, please!”

“Please! Get out of there! We have to get out of here!”

Suddenly, a sea of memories came all over them, overwhelming them. It was not a couple of memories or flashes of a past time, it was entire life, passing through their head.

It was the life of the Prince of Subcon. From his infancy when he lost his parents, through his teenage years when working for the Queen in the castle as a humble worker, until he had been chosen between a series of candidates to be the next spouse for the princess, the upcoming Queen of the nation.

The days he went to buy her flowers, until that fateful day the queen found him flirting with her and jailed him up, leaving him to die.

“Ugh… my head.” The corpse spoke. “I really wish I could go for some bacon and some beer.”

“Come on, we have to get out here soon.”

"You don't have anything to fear. Now, why don't we have a little talk?" Vanessa said, sounding closer and closer every time.

The body of the spirit slowly opened its eyes. Using its hands to support itself, it slowly stood up, until tearing apart from its legs.

“Oops, the legs came off.” The corpse spoke, looking back at itself, noticing itself floating. The body extended its arms and looked down to itself. “I’m… I’m… The Prince.”

The spirit spoke, they remembered they had been alive now. It had been the life of the Prince of Subcon.

“I’m out of this place.” The spirit accompanying them replied, and left passing through the walls. It was time for them to leave.

“No wait, I am The Prince, I am the Prince of Subcon!” The body said, he had been once a spirit without a past, a soul without its owner, and now, he had back again a self to call his.

“Does this mean I–”

"Ehehehehaha! Mwuahahahaha!" The door suddenly opened, revealing Queen Vanessa, now in her monstrous form.

“Peck! I’m out of here!” The spirit tried to run as fast as I could past the gate from the basement as much as his hovering body allowed him to, and left before Vanessa could grab him back.

“Don’t you think you can escape! My Prince! You are all mine! All mine!” The Queen's laugh turned into a screech and ended in a scream, seeing how The Prince’s body left her home. Vanessa, unable to leave her Manor due to the magic that tethered to the place, started crawling in a desperate attempt to reach the man.

The last thing The Prince was able to hear was Vannesa cursing him between sobs and screams.

Snatcher was worried, he heard something deep inside into the forest, in the direction he had sent the spirits to. Did something happen? After a while, only one of the spirits had returned.

“What the hell happened? Where is my body? Where is my other contractor?”

“Well… you see..”

“Don’t worry, my ghostly friend. I am right here.” The spirit, now controlling his corpse, appeared in front of him.

“What…?” Snatcher looked at his corpse, smiling at him, and then back at the spirit that had arrived just before. “What is the meaning of this? What on earth happened to my body? And where on earth are my legs?!”

“Let’s just say we ran into some… complications. The body was still being fed energy from the forest, and it pulled me in when I got closer to it.”

“It pulled you in?” If Snatcher still had a human face, he would have raised an eyebrow, the story didn’t convince him.

“Well, it was sort of pulling me in, and I just decided to let myself go and… here I am.”

“It would have been impossible for us to carry it without a body otherwise.” The other spirit replied.

“Right.” Snatcher looked back at the corpse. It didn’t even resemble him anymore, its skin was all blue and his face was totally disfigured and part of its head was even cut off, and of course, it had lost its legs. Its body had lost any of its humanity and anything of what resembled what he had been in his past life. Even then, it had an air of familiarity to him. Somehow, he could feel it inside, and seeing it talking back to him, being controlled by another spirit, just made him feel really angry.

“Alright, very funny. Now, get the hell out of there, I have a body to bury.” Snatcher moved closer to his corpse, but this stood back.

“Wait. Well, you see…” The spirit laughed nervously, seeing how Snatcher tried to get closer and closer. “There is just one tiny problem with that.”

“What? What is this supposedly tiny problem you speak of?!”

“Well, it seems I'm kind of stuck inside.”

“WHAT?”

“And also gained all of your memories from when you were alive.” The spirit smiled, for some reason, it just felt somehow funny to see Snatcher react like that. It was probably his memories affecting him, but he saw in Snatcher a picture of himself.

“What on earth did you just say?! Get the hell out of that body! Right now!” Snatcher launched himself to the spirit, making them fall over to the ground.

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“I can’t!”

“Why the hell not?!”

“My soul! My soul got fused with this body!”

“And why did you just have to get inside that body in the first place!” Snatcher screamed back at him.

Both of them struggled fighting each other, and ended up rolling down the hill.

“Why… did you… do it?” Snatcher replied as he pushed the spirit.

“You wouldn’t… understand…”

“Make your own life! Don’t steal someone else's!”

“It’s too late for me to do that!”

Snatcher noticed the neck of his corpse about to break in, and he thought that maybe it would be possible to destroy his body piece by piece and take away the control the spirit had over its body by completely destroying it. It would be a shame, but it would at least stop the charade once and for all.

“Your contract told you to bring me back my body!”

“And I did! I got your body back!”

“This is not what we agreed!” He squeezed the neck of his corpse, just about to break it.

“Ahahaha Fooool! You blew it! You totally screwed yourself! Because now I’m inside this body, you have no control over me!”

Snatcher stopped squeezing.

“What did you just say?”

“That now you don’t have control over me? And I technically didn’t even break the contract?”

“No, before that.”

“Uh… fool?”

Snatcher slowly stood up and separated itself from the corpse.

“You know what, this is ridiculous.” Snatcher turned around, not wanting to look back at the spirit.

“What? Are you serious?”

“Yeah, just… do whatever you want. Don’t get in my way.”

“Pretty sweet, but still, what’s the catch? Hey? Hey!” The spirit screamed at him, but Snatcher didn’t answer him back.

“I swear, this is the kind of thing that only happens to me.” He muttered.

10 years passed and Snatcher’s reign over the forest grew, he had gathered a big enough mob of minions signing contracts from the lost souls from his era. After trying to leave the forest, the ghost realized he started to turn weak and dissipate. This took him into a spiral of desperation and madness to the point he lost his head once. He ended up eating the souls of some passengers that came back, and suddenly, his mind went back to normal.

Discovering his ability to steal souls to increase his power and maintain his form outside the forest, Snatcher went through a metamorphosis that ended up making him lose more part of what made him human once, and got his name of Snatcher from part of his minions and the locals of the area, who started to tell his tale, the tale of the Snatcher of Souls.

But that wasn’t the end of the story, since, despite deciding to leave The Spirit to be that distorted mirror he had ended up with, his authority of the forest became weak. It seemed as if The Spirit was also giving his own orders from the shadows, and the minions, recognizing the form of the former prince, decided to follow his orders instead of Snatcher’s. At some point, it seemed as if his influence was being taken away from the forest. One day, he decided to meet him again.

“Hello there, my dear friend!” The Spirit replied.

“Hello, my dear, distorted, beautiful, fake prince!” Snatcher applauded.

“Oh, please, call me Moonjumper.”

“Moonjumper?” Snatcher asked, remembering a short story about a pilot who once found a prince coming from another planet. “What a terrible name, a dog would have named himself better.”

“Well, it certainly is better than Snatcher, is it not?” Moonjumper replied and Snatcher just grunted, the mannerisms, the way he spoke, everything about the person in front of him reminded him of his previous life, in a way it seemed the spirit had come up to learn everything about him just with the intention of mocking him. “But enough with the pleasantries, you have not called me even once in the decade since you left me go, what do I owe the pleasure of you requesting for my presence?”

“Oh, you see moonboy, I just thought that we have been apart from each other for too long!”

“Really?”

“Really! We are two halves of the same whole, are we not?”

“Yes, indeed! I would agree that is indeed the case!” Moonjumper smiled. “I am glad you are finally coming to your senses!”

“So with that said, I think we should both rule the forest together!”

“Together?”

“Together!”

“My dear Snatcher, you don’t know how happy that makes me!”

“Come here you precious monster!” Snatcher extended his arms over without moving from his place.

“Oh, Snatcher!” Moonjumper went closer over with the intention to hug him, when Snatcher screamed.

“Minion! Do it now!”

After that, Moonjumper saw only darkness, a load of dirt fell over his head.

“Well, I guess that settles it for now. You!” He pointed to a little kid dressed with formal clothes. “Make there is no trace of what we buried here today, all the terrain has to look uniform.”

“Oh, yes, sir, right away!” The kid nervously trembled and started shoveling.

“If you finish before midnight, I just might consider giving you back your soul!” Snatcher replied and left towards where his minion had been holding the strings to throw the bag of dirt over Moonjumper’s head.

“Uh, I guess that wraps it up, eh boss?”

“That’s right. Just make sure to don’t ever fail me again, or you will see the consequences!”

“I understand, boss.” The Subcondite replied, remembering the incident that had led to the problem 10 years ago. “I thought you wanted to dispose of the corpse, though.”

“No, well, I mean… Yes, but I feel that my corpse is too precious to throw away. It is my memento after all, and I do deserve a burial after all of this too.”

“I guess you are right.”

***

“You know what they say about this kind of thing? Let the sleeping dogs lie! But you just had to dig him up! Didn’t you?”

“But I thought you had forgiven him?” Mustache Girl asked.

“Yeah, the boss then told me that he did let him go the first time because Moonjumper told him that his mother was also called Martha, it was a very touching story.” The Subcondite added up.

“His mother was also called Martha because they had the same mom, they are the same person, stupid.” Mustache Girl rolled her eyes to the minion.

“We are NOT the same person! And this man it’s just an impostor! A con and an usurper!” Snatcher rubbed his forehead. “Alright moonboy, we can do this the easy way, or the hard way, you are going back to your grave, or you are going to make me put you back in your grave, again.”

“Oh, I don’t think so, Snatcher. I’m not going to fall for your words anymore” Moonjumper smiled. “And this time, I am done playing easy.”

Moonjumper felt someone touching him on the shoulder. It was Hatkid.

“Why Moonjumper?”

“Why Moonjumper? You want to know why I am called Moonjumper?”

Hatkid nodded. The grin that came out of Moonjumper’s face gave Mustache Girl shivers down her spine.

“You! What are you even doing here anyway?” Snatcher pointed to the hatted girl. “You are not even under contract! So now, tell me the truth, was this your idea? Was it in your plan to dig up this nuisance, just so you could bother me and ruin my day?”

“No way!” Hatkid pouted.

“We were just moving the corpses of your minions like your stupid contract said!” Mustache Girl replied.

In the meantime, Moonjumper looked back at Hatkid and then back to the sky, he moved around the hatted girl and used his fingers to create an imaginary frame around her, he then looked back at the sky and moved around the kid trying to determine something.

“It is all your fault! You better come and give you back your soul! You owe it to me as a payment!”

“Nope!” Hatkid crossed her arms.

“Yes!”

“No!”

“Yes!”

“No!”

“Hey kiddo, do you wanna know why I’m called Moonjumper?” The corpse looked back at her. Hatkid smiled and nodded back.

“Well, it’s because of… this!” Moonjumper punched Hatkid with an upper grip so strong that launched her right into the sky.

“AAAAAHH!” Hatkid screamed all the way passing through the clouds that were above Subcon, through the stratosphere, mesosphere, thermosphere and exosphere and all towards space until finally hitting her head against the glass window of her spaceship.

“Woah…” She whimpered, slipping down the glass.

Snatcher looked back at Moonjumper in disbelief. The corpse kept on laughing.

“Oh, you are so done for!” He jumped back at him, but Moonjumper quickly stepped back.

“Whoops! Not this time!” Moonjumper laughed and took Mustache Girl by the torso. “I guess you are coming with me!”

“Hey! Where are you taking me?” Mustache Girl tried to kick him over, but already had her legs in the air.

“You are not going to get away!” Snatcher screamed.

“Goodbye!” Moonjumper ran as fast as he could, and escaped passing into the horizon, a small portal that seemed to open over the sky of Subcon forest close to the mountains. Snatcher tried to reach them over, but got hit with an invisible wall as he got closer to the horizon, falling over. The portal closed after that.

“I really wish I could go for some bacon and some beer.” Snatcher rubbed his head in defeat.

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