#theologos

Inspired by @/Stychu-stych cotltober prompts.

"Looking for something, handsome?"

Ron's soul almost left his body as he heard the high-pitched voice coming from behind him as he perused the office's storeroom. He wasn't doing anything... Too illegal, he was just... Curious. And on his break. And bored. So what was the harm in seeing what supplies the higher ups were keeping from them? A small amount of breaking and entering aside, of course.

In hindsight, he probably should have expected someone to be keeping watch over the room. The fact that it had no visible security cameras pointed at the door should have been a big warning that it wasn't as simple as it looked.

He took a deep breath to calm himself down and turned around, a big smile plastered on his face, "h-hey! Yes! I- well, I was looking for a new stapler, I think someone stole mine from my desk, and I... Thought..." but as he talked, he realized there was no one there. He looked downwards, thinking that maybe it was a mouse who spoke or other similarly smaller species compared to his over six-feet lion stature, or even someone's kid, but also coming up empty.

His claws scratched the back of his head. Was he starting to go crazy? But then the voice rang out again, "On the shelf, idiot," punctuation their words with a laugh.

Rob grumbled, looking to the direction of the voice to see a... Decapitated head...? On the shelf, inside some kind of glass jar.

It was a prop. Obviously. There was no way it could be anything but.

It had pink fur and candy-cane horns for fucks sake!

The hyper realistic eyes were... A choice. But there's no way anyone could have that spiral-looking pattern naturally-

The head's smile widened, and it's lips moved as it spoke, "you can scream now."

Rob didn't know at the time that the room was soundproof, and probably never would. But he would probably appreciate the fact that his scream was head by no one except the head in the jar.

The head's bat-like ears pined against its head and it grimaced, immediately shouting back "Cut it out! Do you have any idea how sensitive my ears are?! What do they teach you people nowadays?! How to play monopoly?!"

Rob panted as he tried to regain his breath, the head's comments bringing him out of his fear and into something resembling anger, "what-? You-?" he chuckled, nodding to himself, "right. Right... Great prank, by the way! You can come out now! You had your fun!"

"Ugh, you guys seriously have no imagination." the bathead grumbled, somehow shaking its head (itself?) from side to side in... Was that disappointment? "Why couldn't I be trapped in a jar during the witch hunts...? I'd at least be toasty if anyone found me..."

The lion moved towards the shelf, his panda picking up the jar and turning it this way and that, the head flopping around inside with nothing securing it to the bottom of the jar, "how do you turn off this thing...?"

"Ow! Hey! Rude!" the head used its tongue to right itself as the lion held it at an angle, "How would you feel if I asked how to kill you? And then shake d'you around like a maraca"

"You're not even alive! I can see the black cap at the base of your neck! You're just a prop!"

"Look again, bitch!"

"Why would I- Shit!"

"OW!"

The jar clacked against the floor as Rob dropped it, his hands shaking as he still stared at the pulsing mass of flesh at the base of the head's neck, something that definitely wasn't there before. He could see the blood pumping through closed off veins, the tube of the trachea tensing up and relaxing as the head breathed.

Rob's hands shook with fear, his eyes wide as he stared at the impossibility of nature laying at his feet. "what... the fuck are you?"

The head huffed, puffing up it's cheeks as it pouted, "well, now I don't feel like telling."

"you'll speak or- or..." his eyes darted around the store room, picking up a stapler that was nearby and raising it above the jar, "o-or I'll smash you in."

The head rolled its eyes, sticking out it's tongue at the lion, "well, if you must know, I'm Yoshalah. Disgraced goddess of Chaos." Silence filed the room as the lion stared dumbfounded at the head- Yoshalah, who was also the one to break it, "But call me Yosh. You?"

"R-Robbert- Wait, no. Don't change the subject. I'm asking the questions here." he shook the stapler at her in what was supposed to be a threatening motion, "And how I know you're telling the truth, 'Yoshalah'? If that's even your real name. I mean, how do you even capture the severed head of a goddess in a jar anyway?"

"Disgraced goddess. Pay attention, Robbie." Yosh humph'd, "you know how it is. Not enough prayers, one night of drinking, a few eyes turned inside out-"

"excuse you?"

"-And next thing you know, you're sharing the same fate as Walt Disney!" another pause. "what? That was funny, you gotta give it to me."

"Well, goddess or not, you're clearly unhinged. And I hope you'll stay stuck for a very long time." Rob stood up and threw the stapler away half-harzardly before making his way to the door, ready to chalk this all up as a result of food poisoning and leave it all behind. Honestly, he'd rather the head was thrown into a volcano or buried six feet deep, but he didn't really have anywhere inconspicuous to put the big jar in for the rest of his shift.

"Hey! Robbie! Wait!" Yosh's voice ring out through the room, "Help a gal out! C'mon! I'll even grant you a wish if you'd like~!"

"A wish from you? You'd probably find some way to turn me into a toad or something. No way."

"I can pay you! With money!"

"You're a severed head. You don't have money."

"Goddess. How long do ya think I've been alive for? I got money."

His step faltered for a moment, but he shook his head and said, "too risky."

"At least leave the light-"

Rob closed the door, his hand hitting the switch down on his way out, drowning out Yosh's voice. He smiled to himself at the crazy things he just saw. A fucking goddess' head in a jar. Of all things...

+++++

"... On..."

Yoshalah stared into nothingness as the storeroom was bathed in the familiar darkness once more. At least in her new position she could try rolling the jar around and...

And... Nothing, it seemed. Robbert was the last person she'd seen in... Maymocrone knows how long. And even if she lucked out in the next person being completely blind and deaf to not notice her rolling by, she could not count on the whole world to be like that.

So hello to her old friend, the darkness.

Or "the darkness", as it were.

Because all that time without any stimulus, and any brain starts to go cuckoo.

At first it took a month, or at least she thought it did. It was hard to be sure of time in the dark room. But back then she at least had new ways to entertain herself: from creating mouths on her tongue that led nowhere, to shifting the position of her eyes inside her skull, making them rotate, do summersaults... She even tried juggling them for a while, launching them from the top of her head and catching them with her tongue.

Sometimes she prayed to the other gods, and listened to their prayers back. Her only method of communication with the outside. And since she didn't know where she was, rescue was a very big impossibility.

But eventually it all becomes mundane.

And as the goddess of Chaos... of Transformation... Of Change...

The mundane was a slow and visceral killer.

She could feel her being twist and turn on itself in order to avoid total destruction. And when her brain completely gave up, and began create stimuli to stave off her end.

The lion was the first creature she actually talked with in a while, usually too drunk in her own delusions to distinguish real form fake.

If it wasn't for the feel of the glass sliding beneath her as it swayed form side to side, she might actually have thought he was fake too.

Or maybe she did completely lose it.